Ten Plagues

Paul shoved at the space where the car’s door should be and found bricks. Chico stirred beside him, but Paul thought of Juanita and kept digging, shoving. He knocked a hole in the stack of bricks, and they clattered to the pavement as he squirmed outside into blinding grit and ear-piercing squalling sirens. He stumbled over debris covering the street and fell to his knees. His hands landed on shards of glass and jagged brick. He was only distantly aware of the pain.

He stared, curious about the spreading stain of red on the ground around him. An echo deep in his head told him it was blood, and the blood was his. A plague of blood.

Juanita. Those pictures.

A man emerged like a phantom from the cloud of smoke and grit and crouched beside Paul. “Sir, let me help you.”

The letters EMT on the man’s chest blurred. “I’m not the one who needs help. In … in the car. A boy.” The letters faded completely. “And Juanita. I have to save her.”

Paul saw the ground rushing up to meet him.

He had the presence of mind to thank God for the car.

Keren dropped to her knees beside the boy. He didn’t move. Whatever strength he’d had to get this far was gone. She slapped at sparks that still ate at the remnants of his clothes. A piece of the boy’s crisp, blackened skin slid away. Tears cut like acid through the grit in her eyes as she pulled her hand back.

“God, please, don’t let me hurt him any more.” She reached for his neck to feel for a pulse then stopped. He was so badly burned on his upper body she didn’t dare touch his throat. She caught his wrist. She couldn’t find a pulse. He wasn’t breathing. His chest was burned black. She gritted her teeth, tilted his head back to open his airway, and began chest compressions. An ambulance, siren wailing, whizzed past Keren and skidded to a stop. Two men climbed out.

She looked up, pressing rhythmically on the boy’s breastbone. “He doesn’t have a heartbeat.”

They gently moved her aside and took over as another ambulance screamed up. She stared at the boy’s blackened flesh where it had peeled away from him and stuck to the palms of her hands. Blood seeped through her fingers.

“Let me help you, miss. You’re bleeding.” A woman pulled Keren toward the ambulance.

She shook off the hands. “I’m Detective Collins, Chicago PD. There are a lot of people here who need help more than I do.” Teenage boys, bleeding and moaning, were collapsed all along the street.

More ambulances arrived with glaring lights and screaming noise. Keren yelled over the cacophony, “A man, over there, and a little boy.” She started to lead the woman there.

O’Shea came lumbering up to her. The medics headed toward the right spot, and she saw that a couple of paramedics were already lifting someone into their ambulance. She couldn’t bear to see that heroic man and that little boy, crushed to death.

“Keren, what happened? Are you all right?” O’Shea pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it to her forehead.

Mick O’Shea had taught her nearly everything she knew about being a cop. He’d saved her when she came close to being busted off the force by an arrogant, grandstanding superior officer, and Mick was lead investigator on the Juanita Lopez case.

She brushed his hand away and saw the handkerchief was soaked with blood. “Where’ve you been?”

“I got hung up in traffic,” O’Shea said. “There was an accident on the Dan Ryan Expressway, and I was the first cop on the scene.” The EMT drew a sheet over the burned boy’s face. She pressed the handkerchief back against her head wound and let her bloody hands cover her eyes.

The fire department arrived, and more police came. The rubble crawled with rescue workers. Keren turned toward the chaos. Her steps faltered. She looked at the sky-high cloud of billowing grit. It wasn’t the sight of the carnage that stopped her—the air was so clogged with dirt that she couldn’t see any details—but Keren knew evil. From her earliest memory, she always had. She was almost overwhelmed by what she sensed about whoever had done this. Usually she had to be in the presence of someone before she could discern their spirit. But this was more powerful than anything she’d felt before.

She saw a rescue dog whining and digging at shattered bricks. She and O’Shea exchanged a grim look and plunged into the madness.

Keren was a tough cop. She liked to think she was a little tougher than most.

So those weren’t tears running down her face, soaking the dust mask she’d been issued, salting her lips. It was grainy air that made her eyes run. She ignored it and kept working. She was grateful for the cover of night, even though it meant she’d been working nonstop for twelve hours. The whole block had burned out. The buildings were all condemned, but there were homeless people living in them. Many had gotten out, but with terrible injuries. Keren knew there had to be many more trapped inside and most likely dead.