Lori Armstrong - Mercy Kill

They’d been on the dance floor when it blew up. What if they were dead, burned beyond recognition, wrapped in an eternal lover’s embrace?

I couldn’t think about worst-case scenarios because I was in one.

Warmth dripped down my cheek. For a second I thought I was bleeding. Maybe crying. But it wasn’t tears. It was water. I squinted at the ceiling. The flames above me were now tendrils of sooty black smoke.

Oh God. They were spraying something on the fire, and it was weighting down the plastic. Now the pieces were splatting like raindrops. Sticking like glue.

No! I screamed. Stop! Turn off the goddamn water!

But no one heard me above the pandemonium.

A wet chunk splatted onto my right eye. I pursed out my bottom lip and attempted to blow upward, like I had as a girl whenever my bangs hung in my eyes. I puffed out breath after breath until I was dizzy from lack of air, but the warm plastic had molded to my forehead.

Dread and panic created a lethal cocktail, and I debated the fastest way to die. Crank my head to the side and let the glass sever my jugular? Bleeding out wasn’t painful.

Was it?

Yes. I remembered the guard in Afghanistan. I sliced his throat, watching gurgling foamy blood dripping from his lips as he struggled.

Payback is a bitch, ain’t it?

With half my vision compromised by the plastic molding to my forehead and eye, I didn’t notice the larger chunk of plastic until the sheet covered my entire face. I gasped, allowing the warm plastic to line my mouth. The immediate suction pulled the plastic into my nostrils, too. I couldn’t breathe. At all. My heart raced so fast it nearly burst.

I was suffocating.

I pushed at the plastic with my tongue. Closed my jaw and tried to grind my front teeth through it or even bite a little hole that’d allow the tiniest bit of air in.

No such luck.

I used my last breath to try to force the plastic back out, but it’d formed to my mouth like shrink-wrap.

My lungs were devoid of air. My chest felt full, yet it was empty.

My life didn’t flash before my eyes, nor did a montage of my favorite memories, or a vision of unrealized hopes and dreams. No, my last thought was regret that I hadn’t died in combat, in uniform, as a soldier.

My body twitched. The throbbing in my head abated. Consciousness faded. Then nothing.

I sputtered awake now, like I had then, with big gasping breaths and no freakin’ clue where I was or what’d happened.

Fuck. I pushed back in the darkness of my room, heart jack-hammering, blood pumping hot and fast; clammy sweat coated my brow, my neck, my chest, my belly. Even my toes were damp from pure fear.

As much as I hated combat nightmares, this one was worse. It was a memory, not a fucked-up collection of faraway places, random body parts, death, destruction, and the graphic vileness of war. This had really happened.

I’d died.

Jason Hawley had brought me back to life. He’d dug me out from beneath the pile of bodies and debris, peeled the plastic off my face, and given me mouth-to-mouth. He returned me to the land of the living almost by sheer will.

Of course, I hadn’t known any of it until days later.

For a while I’d considered calling him Jesus, secretly hoping he’d rechristen me Lazarus, but J-Hawk hadn’t found any humor in it.

During my stay in the military hospital, I had plenty of time to relive that night. The term “reliving” something that’d killed me made me crazy. The army sent in shrinks to evaluate my mental state. I’d sent them away after answering the minimum number of questions. The army sent in a clergyman. I’d sent him away, too.

But he was persistent. He kept coming back until I informed him I no longer believed in God because there was no afterlife, no heaven, no hell, no nothing. In the minutes I’d been dead, I hadn’t been shrouded in white mist. I hadn’t felt a sense of ultimate peace. I hadn’t seen the faces of my dearly departed loved ones. I hadn’t heard angelic voices warning me it wasn’t my time. Neither had I heard the devil’s gleeful cackling. Or felt the heat from the fiery pits of hell. None of the near-death experiences I’d seen on TV or heard about was true.

Everything about the afterlife was a big, fat fucking lie.

The clergyman never returned.

I’d mostly blocked the Bali incident from my mind in my day-to-day life. But I was indebted to Jason Hawley in a way no one who’d never lived through a death experience could possibly understand. The only time we’d talked about that night, he said he saved me because he couldn’t have my death on his conscience.

But now his was on mine.

My night had too little sleep and my morning wasn’t starting out better. No coffee. I dressed in my favorite Johnny Cash T-shirt, jeans, turquoise ropers, and my army of one ball cap. I didn’t wear a sidearm, but I brought one along.

Once I hit town, I bypassed the Q-Mart for my morning cup of coffee. Margene, a sweet-natured cashier with a mouth the size of the Grand Canyon, would grill me about finding Jason’s body. I wasn’t in the mood to feed her gossip hunger just to fuel my caffeine addiction.

Shocking, to see John-John’s El Dorado in the parking lot of the sheriff’s department. After I parked, he motioned me over, and I climbed in his passenger seat. The scent of patchouli nearly choked me. “What are you doing here?”

“You didn’t get my text messages?”

I shook my head. He wouldn’t find the humor in my remembering to bring a gun but not my cell phone.

His piercing gaze wasn’t as unsettling as his clipped tone. “Why didn’t you call me last night?”

As Clementine’s owner, John-John should’ve been notified immediately, probably before I called 911. Chalk it up to another instance of handling things myself. “Believe it or not, I was pretty damn frazzled. I waited for the cops to arrive, and it went downhill from there.”

“Downhill?” he repeated. “Tell me everything that happened after I left.”

I laid it out exactly as I remembered it.

A lull filled the air. John-John’s fingers tapped out the passing seconds on the steering wheel. When he finally looked at me, he was far calmer than I’d expected. “Let’s go in and get this over with.”

“You’re coming with me?”

“Of course.” His gaze dropped to my chest, and he rolled his eyes. “Really, Mercy? A FOLSOM PRISON BLUES T-shirt?”

I smiled. “Just be happy I didn’t wear my I SHOT THE SHERIFF T-shirt.”

Inside the reception area, a young chickie, who’d look more comfortable in a cheerleading uniform than in a county uniform, manned the receptionist’s desk. Blue eyes appraised us coolly. “The entrance to the jail is around back and down the stairs. But visiting hours don’t start until three o’clock.”

This blond bimbo saw an Indian guy and automatically referred him to the jail? I braced my hands on her desk blotter and got right in her face. “I’m here to see Sheriff Dawson.”

“And you are?”

“Mercy Gunderson. He’s expecting me.”

Her smooth brow wrinkled as if she should recognize the name. “Have a seat. I’ll buzz the sheriff.”

But I was feeling ornery and stayed put during her brief phone call. Poor little twig. Made her nervous to have me looming over her.

“Like I said, if you’ll take a seat-”

“I’m fine right here.”

Her berry-colored lips pursed, and she buzzed the sheriff again.

Worked like a charm. She shooed us down the hallway to Dawson’s office. I wouldn’t have put it past her to spray the reception area with Lysol after we left.