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CHAPTER
3
CONSCIOUSNESS RETURNED LIKE the flip of a light switch, though Mercury’s thoughts didn’t catch up with her body for several breaths. She lay on the ground with her face in the grass. What the hell? Why am I on the ground? Her mind was sluggish, like she’d washed down a Xanax with a glass of wine. Something slid across her temple and cheek and down her nose. She wiped at it and then stared at the splash of scarlet on her hand—and memory rushed back, chasing away her confusion.
She sat up and then gasped and held her head in her hands while pain spiked through her temples. Her body felt strange—tingly—and bruised. Her joints ached like the last time she’d had the flu, and blood seeped from a cut over her left temple, down her face. Mercury brushed it away with her sleeve and crawled the short distance to Stella. Her friend was curled on her side in a fetal position, facing away from her. Something had torn through the faux fur of her car coat and turned the sleeve of her ripped sweater red.
“Stella! Oh Goddess! Stella!” Mercury touched her. Stella’s skin felt cool—unnaturally cool—but her eyelids fluttered and then opened.
“Mercury? Wha—” She tried to sit up, but Mercury gently held her in place.
“No! Don’t move. We have to make sure you’re not broken anywhere.”
“Mercury!” On her right Jenny sobbed her name.
“Stay still, ’kay?” Mercury said quickly. “Gotta check on Jenny.” Her focus was tight. It included Stella and Jenny, though from her periphery she could see that mounds of debris were scattered around them, but her brain couldn’t seem to process more. Still on her hands and knees, she crawled to the younger teacher. Jenny sat up. She rubbed her wrist as she stared at Mercury, who asked, “Are you okay? Is anything bleeding or broken?”
“You’re bleeding.” Jenny’s voice sounded bizarrely normal, like she’d just commented on a new haircut or outfit.
“Yeah.” Mercury wiped at her face again. “I think I’m okay, though.” She felt Jenny’s shoulders, arms, legs—as she checked for breaks and tears.
“My wrist is sprained, but not too bad. I—I don’t understand. What could have—”
A moan sounded from the other side of Jenny, and Mercury felt a terrible foreboding. “Amelia!” She and Jenny crawled to their pregnant friend, who was bent over at the waist, on her knees with her forehead pressed into the grass and her arms wrapped around her bulging belly.
“He’s coming!” Amelia’s tear-soaked face looked up at them. Her skin was almost colorless except for her cheeks, which were bright spots of flushed pink—drops of blood in a pail of milk. “It’s wrong. Something’s wrong.”
She panted between words and then another contraction took control of her and she made an inhuman growling noise deep in her throat.
“Nothing’s wrong!” Mercury spoke automatically. “He’s just coming a little early, that’s all.”
“Yeah, you’re going to be okay.” Jenny’s voice was calm, but her eyes were dark saucers in her face.
“Press your hands into her lower back,” Mercury told Jenny, who nodded and shakily complied. Mercury bent so that her face was near Amelia’s. “Breathe with me. You remember! You know how to do this!”
Amelia turned her head so that she could meet Mercury’s gaze. Her pale skin was shiny with sweat, and her eyes were wide and glassy. “No,” she moaned. “It’s never been like this. And he’s too early. It’s too early! Something’s wrong—something feels broken inside me.”
Panic made Mercury’s legs so weak that she was glad she was already on her knees. This was Amelia’s third child. The other two had been born at home uneventfully with a midwife and a doula. She does know how to do this, but that also means she knows if it feels wrong. The thought flitted through Mercury’s mind, and with it her brain finally caught up with her body. “Just breathe! Everything will be okay. You’re a pro at this,” Mercury insisted. She panted with Amelia while her focus expanded. She looked around frantically for Coach Davis, who worked as an EMT at his second job for the Broken Arrow Fire Department. Mercury ignored the broken trees and crevasse-like gaps that had appeared in the ripped earth around them. “Where the hell is the coach?” she hissed under her breath when Amelia’s body relaxed momentarily between contractions.
“He was standing just over there, on the other side of Amelia when—” Jenny began, but her words broke off as her gaze rested on something on the ground not far from Amelia.
Mercury recognized the coach’s sweatshirt by Will Rogers High’s bold royal-blue, gold, and white colors, but it looked strange. Before she could think herself out of it, she lurched to her feet and staggered to the coach.
Mercury saw what was wrong and the sight made her body freeze in place. Coach Davis had… flattened. Blood and body fluids squished under her feet as a pool of liquid expanded from him. He lay on his back. His mouth and eyes were open as if in surprise. His eyeballs had turned red. Congealed blood leaked slowly from them, and as Mercury stood there with the back of her hand pressed against her mouth to hold in her screams, the coach’s body dissolved into a pancake of clothes, skin, bones, teeth, and hair.
The next contraction consumed Amelia, and her scream was a feral thing that tore from between her panting lips. The sound of it thawed Mercury, and she rushed back to the laboring woman.
Stella was there, crouched beside Amelia. Mercury joined them as Jenny shifted to allow her near, which gave Mercury a view of the back of Amelia’s maternity dress. The bright, happy butter color was now soaked with red, like a terrible rose that bloomed larger and more brilliantly scarlet with each contraction. Stella met her gaze and shook her head. Mercury swallowed bile.
“I have to push!” The words burst from Amelia. “Help me up!”
Mercury, Jenny, and Stella supported her torso as Amelia half squatted, half knelt. Her dress was hiked up around her waist. Her fingers scrabbled at her panties, which Mercury slid down her blood-slick thighs just as her body tensed and wetness gushed from between her legs.
Amelia slumped back in Jenny’s arms as she gave birth with a torrent of blood. Mercury caught the baby. Its tiny body was viscous and began to disintegrate immediately. It seeped through her fingers while the placenta poured from Amelia, followed by more and more blood that continued to pump from the young mother—a new tide of red with every beat of her heart.
Mercury bit the inside of her cheek and positioned herself so that Amelia could not see what was left of her son as she placed the little body on the grass between his mother’s thighs. She glanced over her shoulder at Jenny, who was sobbing as she cradled Amelia in her arms, and shook her head slightly. She saw in Jenny’s gaze that she knew—she understood—and the young woman held Amelia more tightly. Stella moved up beside Mercury.
“No! Oh no,” Stella whispered and then tore off her coat so that she could pull her sweater over her head and hand it to Mercury.
