John Burley - The Absence of Mercy

He lay there for another half hour, listening to the sounds of the house. He could hear music coming from Thomas’s room down the hall. Susan was on the phone downstairs, giving admission orders to a nurse for one of her patients who required hospitalization tonight. Joel was giggling as he played with Alex in the living room. The big dog’s thudding tread echoed through the house as he chased down whatever object Joel was throwing for him.

Twenty minutes later, Ben heard the sounds of Joel preparing for bed. Water ran in the upstairs sink as his son brushed his teeth, and a few minutes later he could hear his wife tucking Joel into bed. The sound of music coming from Thomas’s room continued at reduced volume after Susan asked him to turn it down just a bit. No protest there. Thomas responded differently to her than he did to Ben. The two seemed to have a special connection, and for a moment Ben felt a surge of jealousy and resentment. It seemed like it had been that way for as long as he could remember.

The bedroom door opened, and Susan’s silhouette appeared in the entrance. “You still awake?” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Ben spoke up. “Still here.”

She crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “I thought you’d be asleep by now.”

“Me, too.”

She brushed back his hair and planted a kiss on his forehead.

“I’m sorry about tonight,” he told her.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” she replied. “You’re worried about the kids. That’s your job as a parent.”

“No, but lately I’ve been afraid to even let them out of my sight. That’s not good for them, it’s not good for me, and it’s not good for our relationship as a family. I can change that. I’m going to try to loosen up a little.”

“Okay.” She nodded. “I’m going to get ready for bed.”

He watched her proceed to the doorway leading to their bathroom, watched her pass through, shutting the door behind her.

Somewhere in the midst of the next few minutes, while he waited for her to return to their bed, thinking that perhaps they would make love, the stress and exhaustion that had been chasing him over the past eight weeks finally caught up with him, and at last he slept. In his dream, he was standing with his family on the platform of a vast subway station. A flurry of passengers scurried around them, making their way toward a massive steam locomotive, which waited silently on tracks that passed into the tumescent mouth of the subway tunnels at either end of the platform. Fastened to a wall high above the platform was a large clock whose minute hand emitted an audible clunk with each sixty-second progression, and the train’s conductor watched it from his position with strained intensity.

Although they stood together, Ben and his family, the crowd seemed to pull at them with the momentum of a brisk stream. Already he could see Joel wandering off a few paces to his right. An old man in ratty clothes sat on one of the platform’s few benches, holding a small piece of glass—a specimen slide with a transparent cover slip on top—pinched between his thumb and forefinger. A small biopsy of tissue was trapped beneath the slip, and it appeared to writhe and struggle as Joel reached a cautious hand in its direction.

“ Joel, don’t touch that! ” Ben called out, moving quickly toward his son. “ It’s dirty! ”

But already Joel had grasped the slide in his small, delicate hand and was examining it with fascination as the thing beneath the slip—pink and vascular and pulsating slightly—continued to squirm.

“ No! Put it down! ” Ben yelled as Joel began to lift the cover with his careful fingers. Free of the slip, the specimen shot up the slide toward the boy’s hand with horrible, blurring speed. His son dropped the slide, but not before the thing disappeared beneath the sleeve of his jacket. A moment later, he began to scream.

Ben lurched forward and spun the child around to face him. Staring back at him was the tattered face of Kevin Tanner. The sutures Ben had placed in the autopsy room had sprung loose, and the gaping bite wound hung half open once again, seeping some yellow, putrid fluid from its recesses. “ Joel! ” he called into the boy’s face, but Joel was gone and all that remained in Ben’s arms was the corpse he had examined in the CO two months before.

He lifted the dead child into his arms, unable to leave him lying crumpled and deserted on the subway station’s floor. Ben turned back to what remained of his family, but the spot where they’d previously stood was now empty.

“ Aalll abawwwed! ” the conductor called into the crowd, and the pace of the foot traffic quickened. People began running toward the waiting cars, jostling with one another on the steps for purchase. An old woman was knocked to her knees by the surge of would-be passengers, and Ben watched helplessly as she was trampled underfoot in the mounting stampede.

“ Aaaalll abawwwwed! ” the conductor called out again, and this time the remaining crowd on the station’s platform erupted in panic. The stairs leading into the passenger cars were hopelessly clogged, and people began climbing on top of one another in an effort to squeeze through the cars’ open windows. A middle-aged man with a developing paunch grabbed a lady of perhaps seventy by the hair and yanked her from the steps in order to make room for himself. She went flying backward and landed gracelessly on the platform, the back of her head striking the tile with a sickening crack.

Ben continued to scan what was left of the crowd for his wife and son. Did they make it onto the train? He began walking along its length, looking into the cars as he went. The body of the boy grew heavy in his arms. A piercing whistle filled the station and steam spewed upward from the locomotive’s smokestack. The coupling rods began to move, driving the massive steel wheels that propelled the train forward.

Finally, at the second-to-last car, Ben spied a familiar face hanging out through one of the open windows.

“ Sam! ” he yelled, craning his neck backward. “ Sam, it’s Ben! ”

Chief Garston looked down at him casually. “Oh. Hi, Ben.”

“ Sam, I can’t find Thomas or Susan. Have you seen them? ”

“No, I haven’t seen them,” he responded. Then, with more urgency: “Hey, you’d better get on the train.”

“ I can’t find my family, ” Ben repeated. The train was starting to pick up speed, and he had to walk quickly along the edge of the platform—stepping over several bodies as he went—in order to keep pace with the car Sam was in.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about them,” Sam chuckled reassuringly. “I’m sure they’ll be fine. But— say! —you’d better worry about yourself. You don’t want to be left standing here when this train leaves the station. That wouldn’t be good at all.”

With growing unease, Ben realized that Sam was right. He didn’t want to be left behind—but now the train was moving too fast for him to climb aboard. If he tried, he would be swept neatly beneath the wheels and crushed in an instant.

Ben’s feet slowed, and he came to a shuffling halt. The last car was past him, heading into the tunnel. He stood alone on the platform, except for the dead boy in his arms and the few scattered bodies lying motionless around him. As the train began to disappear, he saw Sam Garston’s receding face looking back at him, hanging half out of the open window. His friend looked a little sad.

“So long, Ben,” Sam called out to him, his voice small against the background of the rumbling machine. “Take care of that boy of yours.”

The last passenger car vanished into the darkness. For a few seconds Ben could still hear the sound of the wheels moving along the tracks. Then all was still. He stood holding the dead boy and wondering what was next for him, until a tentative voice floated up to his ears. It was little more than a croak, and it came from the lifeless thing that he held in his arms.