Mercy
MAYBE IT’S THE thrill of having Milo back in my arms or maybe the drugs are wearing off, but either way, I’m feeling a little more like myself and regaining control of my body. There’s still a heavy fog in my head and every touch feels electric, but my need to survive tampers down the drug’s effects.
“Let me go first,” Philomena says as she reaches for the door handle. “I’ll make sure no one is in the hallway, then we’ll start unlocking doors.”
“Do you know how many there are?” She must, since she’s responsible for bringing them food, ensuring they’re bathed and prepared for whatever things Papa used them for.
“Yes.” Philomena slips out of the door then motions for us to come along.
We move to shuffle out, but Milo throws an arm across my chest, stopping me. “Wait.”
I want to scream that we’re wasting time and that—
“For you.” He reaches down to the hem of his sweatshirt and pulls it off over his head to reveal a black, long-sleeved Henley.
I slip my arms through the oversized sweatshirt and pull up the hood.
“Good.”
He grips my hand as we head out into the hallway. Philomena’s at a door just across and down from mine. She cracks open lock after lock then disappears into a dark room. I squeeze Milo’s hand, terrified of what I might see as we follow her inside. Milo curses, and it takes a few seconds for my vision to focus.
Philomena sits on the edge of the bed and whispers to a person who sits up at the sound of her voice. Not just a person. A child.
I release Milo’s hand only to have him reach out and grip me tighter. I drag him with me to the child and flip on the light at the bedside, but I recoil immediately.
A boy stares up at me with eyes the color of my own. He can’t be older than ten, and when he pulls his bed sheets from his body, I realize he’s missing three fingers on one hand.
All those stories I read about the mutilation of albino children come flooding back to me.
The murmuring of voices echoes all around me, but I can’t pull my eyes away, imagining the horrors he must’ve endured. He jumps from the bed, wearing a similar robe to what I’ve worn my entire life while living in this den of nightmares.
“Get on some shoes. We need to move,” Milo says to the kid.
“We don’t have shoes.” The dull, lifeless tone in my voice shocks even me considering the fire raging within me. “No use for them.”
“I’m scared.”
The small voice speaking heavily accented English rips my eyes from Milos. He releases me, and I move toward the child who looks at me with a hint of wonder in his eyes that I’m sure matches the wonder he sees in mine. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone like me, and the way his wide eyes study me say I am the first he’s seen as well.
“What is your name?” I ask.
“I am called Demonio.”
I flinch at the sound of Milo’s fierce curse and turn to him only to see his eyes alight with vengeful anger.
He must sense the question in my gaze. “Demon. They fucking named him demon.”
I lick my lips and try to put on a mask of serenity when I turn back to the boy. “They called me Angel, but when I left, I got to change my name.”
He eyes Milo cautiously but focuses back on me. “What do they call you now?”
“Mercy.”
He repeats my name and nods.
“So listen, when we leave here, things could get scary, but staying here will be scarier. When you come with us, at least you won’t be alone.” I hold out my hand.
He eyes it for a few seconds before he takes it. As my fingers wrap around his, the pad of my thumb brushes over the buds where his pointer and middle finger used to be. My chest cramps, but I push forward and on to the next door.
“Hurry.” Philomena unlocks the same door I knocked on earlier today.
After a few tries with different keys, she gets the door to swing in, and Milo ushers us inside while leaving himself as a protective barrier behind us, checking the hallway before closing the door.
“Wake up.” Philomena clicks on the light. “You have to hurry.”
Another young person, this one smaller than the boy clinging to my hand as if he’s hanging on for his life.
“Why?” The tiny voice is as light as a bell and most definitely female.
I get closer to take a better look, and when I do, she catches sight of me and the boy and stares with parted lips. She is like us, like me when I was that age. Small, maybe seven years old, but rather than having long pale hair like mine, hers is in tight curls close to her head.
I approach cautiously and hear Philomena say, “It’s okay.”
That seems to settle the girl as I study her hands and toes, noticing she has all twenty. I breathe a sigh of relief. “We’re going to get you out of here.”
“I don’t want to leave. Papa will—”
“Papa’s dead,” Milo says, drawing the girl’s eyes to him.
Tears fill her pale blue eyes, and her lip quivers.
I gently cup her face and wipe her tears with my thumb. “It’s all right, I’ll explain everything, but Papa is gone and you can’t stay here. There’s no one here to take care of you, do you understand?”
She nods, but I’m not convinced she’ll walk out of here willingly. My mind throws me back to the day I woke up strapped to a bed with Laura explaining how I’d been “rescued” when I felt as though I’d been ripped from my home. I didn’t feel safe, I felt robbed, taken from the safety of Papa’s twisted castle and thrown into a world that was completely foreign to me. I was more than twice this girl’s age.
“Come now,” I say. “I promise you’ll be safe. We just need to move fast before someone gets hurt.”
Her spine snaps straight. “Hurt? But I can heal them. Papa says I’m very powerful for—”
“That sick son of a bitch,” Milo says with both hands in his hair, gripping the strands with white knuckles.
The sounds of yelling and feet stomping above our heads forces us back to reality.
I reach my hand out to the young angel. “We must go. Now. You have to trust me.”
She crabwalks backward on the bed, recoiling.
“Angel.” Milo steps forward and scares the girl even more.
She’s probably not used to seeing many people outside of Philomena and Papa. But Milo has a way with people like us. He was the only person who brought me comfort in a way that even now I can’t explain. He sets his eyes on the girl, and she spots the tattoo on his neck. He hooks my sweatshirt and pulls me forward before spinning me so my back is to the girl. Then he lifts the sweatshirt and I hear the young girl suck in a breath.
“So you see? She’s an angel like you,” he says.
“But—”
“You know angels can’t lie, they can only do good, right?”
“Yes,” says the tiny voice.
Milo drops my sweatshirt and moves away for me to take his place.
“You’re safe with me.” I nod to the boy, who hooks his arms around mine again. “With Dom. We’re all the same. We have to stay together and help each other.”
“Papa said I can’t leave, that the sun—”
“Which is why we must leave now, while it’s dark.”
The voices and stomping get louder, and a door slams down at the end of the hallway.
Milo leans in and whispers, “If she doesn’t get the fuck up, I’m throwing her over my shoulder. They’re gonna find a body and then we’re all fucked.”
I nod and scoop the girl from the bed. “I’m sorry. We have to go.”
The little girl squirms for a second but quickly gives up and slumps in my arms. Philomena grabs the angel’s slippers and Milo stays behind me to keep from scaring the kids while he palms his weapon.
Philomena, Milo, and I take a collective breath as if we’re preparing for a deep dive beneath water.
Milo leads the way and slowly opens the door, peering outside. He turns back to Philomena. “We don’t have time to get more. We have to run. Now.”
The little angel’s arms wrap tighter around me, stealing my breath, and I’m just grateful she’s not screaming for help. “Milo—”
“I’m sorry, but if we don’t get out now, we’ll all . . .” He doesn’t say the word in front of the kids, but he doesn’t have to. I can read it in his eyes. “If we leave now, we’ll make it out so we can come back.”
He means at least if we leave now, we’ll make it out alive so we can lead the authorities back to this place. If we stay, no one will make it and the place will continue to torture and abuse children.
“Shit!” He ducks back in. “There are men outside. They’re hitting every door. There’s no way we’ll get past them unless . . .” He jerks his chin to Philomena. “Is there another way out?”
“No, there’s only the hallway.”
“And the bookshelf,” the little angel says innocently, pointing at a shelf similar to the one in my old room. “That’s how I leave when Papa takes me.”
The voices get louder and doors slam.
“The device is in my pocket.”
Milo rips the small black device from my sweatshirt. “Ay dios, I hope this works.”
We scurry as a unit to the bookcase, and Milo presses the button but nothing happens.
“Sigan buscando! Tiene que estar escondido aquí en alguna parte!”
“They’re not giving up.” Milo presses the buttons again. “They’re looking for me.”
I squeeze the kids closer to me and feel Philomena curl up to my back while Milo presses the series of three buttons in random order. Time slows, and I realize this could very well be my last moment. That all of us will die and possibly in the most horrific ways.
I close my eyes. “Mother Merciful, please, release us from this prison.”
“Mother merciful, please . . .” Dom’s voice whispers the same prayer.
“Help us to be safe, oh Mother of deliverance,” little angel’s sing-song voice joins in.
Even Philomena joins the prayer.
A fist pounds the door. “Abierto!” The sound of keys jiggling in the locks.
Milo whirls around and points his gun. “I only locked two of the four.” His thumb continues to hit buttons, but his eyes and gun stay aimed at the door. “Get down, lie on the floor—”
The bookshelf clicks and glides open. I don’t hesitate but launch my body forward, taking the kids into the dark passageway though I have no idea where it leads. A gun fires, and I squeeze the kids tighter to me and pray that Milo makes it out alive.
Milo
I FIRED TWO shots toward the door as it swung open but didn’t hang around to see who got hit. I also didn’t hang out long enough to see who was after us. I just needed them both to stop and drop while I got myself behind the bookcase door and hit the right buttons to get it to close. As the latch clicks into place, the voices of the desgraciados who are after us sound just beyond the door.
My blood roars in my ears. We’re not safe yet.
I pocket the device and whirl around to chase Mercy, Philomena, and the kids. We have no idea what we’re going to stumble upon when we reach the end of this tunnel. The space is dark except for a few flickering bulbs that give light every ten feet or so. The tunnel is narrow enough that I can run my hands along both of its walls. The concrete is warm. We must be close to the surface or it would be colder down here.
There has to be something above these subterranean levels where Mercy and the kids have been kept. Possibly a whorehouse like the woman from the restaurant said. It would be the perfect cover-up for a place like this.
“Milo,” Mercy whispers as I finally get close enough to hear. She’s huddled with the kids, and Philomena paces in front of another secret door. “We need you to open it.”
I hand the device to Mercy, and she goes to work pushing the three buttons in a series of patterns. I keep my face toward the way we came. If those guys figure out a way to get through that door, they’ll be down here in seconds and we’re all sitting ducks.
“I got it!” Mercy brings the kids back to her side and moves to head through the door.
“Let me go first. We have no idea what we’re walking in on.”
I lean slowly into the room that looks similar to the other rooms we’ve been in. However, rather than a bed and dresser, this room has a desk and file cabinets.
“It’s an office.” I flag them all into the room. “Mercy, try to get that thing shut. The more obstacles we put between us and them, the better.”
She must remember the series of buttons that opened it, because after a couple tries, the door closes to become nearly invisible against the wall.
I can’t begin to imagine the information that lies locked in those filing cabinets or the ton of illegal shit stored on that computer, and we don’t have time to find out. The children cling to each other as Mercy searches through the desk.
“No time for that,” I say, holding my hand out for her to join me at the door. I need her close so I can protect her.
“Hold on, there’s got to be something . . .” Her hooded head disappears beneath the desk, and she comes back up with a gun. She stares at it and flips it over in her hand, meanwhile pointing it all over the room.
I lift a palm. “Mercy, stop.”
Her eyes jerk to mine.
“Give it to me.”
“I can protect us—”
I’m already shaking my head, and she brings it to me and slaps it in my grasp. “I don’t need you accidently killing one of us.”
She glares. God, how I’ve missed her spark and subtle defiance.
“Over here!” Philomena is halfway out the door. “Hurry. I think I know where it leads.”
I herd Mercy and the kids toward the door and squeeze in front of them to make sure the exit is clear. “Okay, go.”
Philomena runs down a hallway, this one different than the ones before. There’s tile on the floor and a warm gray paint on walls that aren’t just poured concrete but have drywall and decorative lights.
Out of the underground and into the real life of the one they called Papa.
Two flights of steps up to a door that is, again, locked. I search for surveillance cameras but find none. It would seem that whatever this dickbag was up to in this place, he didn’t want it recorded.
I rear back, leveraging all of my weight into the flat of my foot, and kick the door. The sound of wood splintering gives me hope, and I kick again. Again. Sweat beads on my brow, and urgency bleeds into my veins. Again. A snap of cracking wood echoes around us. I kick again, and the thing shoots open in a rain of dust and slivers of wood.
Even though it’s dark, I know we’ve made it outside as a warm wave of desert air slaps me in the face and wakes me up.
“Run.” I take off at a slow jog to keep pace with the children as we race into the night. The only lights are those that glow around the multi-leveled house, and when I turn back to see what we’re running from, I’m happy to see no one is chasing us.
“Where are we going?” the little boy who Mercy nicknamed Dom says as he stumbles over rocks and small plants. “My feet, I can’t do it.”
The little angel does the same, slowing down and stepping cautiously with her slippers. We’ll never make it out of here at this rate.
“We need to get as far away as we can as quickly as possible.” I squat and point at my back. “Hop on.”
“I . . .” Dom shakes his head.
Mercy brings him to me and explains how to climb on my back and hold on to my shoulders. She squats and motions for the little angel to climb on her back.
“Mercy—”
“I got her.” Her arms lock around the young girl clinging to Mercy’s shoulders like a monkey. Mercy stands and takes off at a jog, not nearly as fast as she was moving before she decided to take the girl, but fueled by adrenaline and the need to survive, she manages.
“Philomena, do you know where we are?”
She squints and searches the surrounding area. “I don’t think so. I haven’t been outside in years.”
“It’s all right, we just need to find some shelter.” I stare around the space and see nothing but black night over a flat desert landscape.
Once the sun comes up, we’ll all be sitting targets. Without my phone or a car, there’s no way to get help, and even if I could call someone, who would I call? After skipping out on tonight’s pickup, I’m wanted by Esteban’s crew.
I only hope we didn’t escape death only to die out here in the middle of nowhere, taken over by the elements.