The Mesmerized
Water splashed beneath her boots. The pile of the deceased at the base of the waterfall caused the torrent to slosh over the rim. Feet slipping slightly, Minji held her arms out at her sides in an attempt to keep balanced.
Minji stepped over one young man with dirty blond hair who gurgled, bloody foam trickling from between his lips. Feeling helpless, Minji leaned over long enough to give him a pat on the arm. She recognized it was a meaningless gesture. He most likely was dying and didn’t even know she was there, but she couldn’t walk past him without offering some comfort. With slumped shoulders, she pressed on.
Minji was almost to where Jake was splayed beneath a pyramid of humans when out of the corner of her eye she spotted someone scampering around the remains of those who had been trampled or fallen. Whipping about, she spotted a short, slight man with a receding hairline dressed in jeans and a wine-colored shirt rushing away from the direction of The Palazzo Casino.
“Wait! Wait!” she cried out, waving her hands.
The man stuttered to a stop and stared at her in shock.
“Please, help me,” Minji continued, her voice cracking slightly. Now that help was in sight, she was trembling from the rush of adrenaline. “I need help with my husband and children.”
“I...I...you’re not one of them,” the stranger said, pointing toward the casino. “I thought I was the only one inside that wasn’t affected.”
“I’m okay, too. It’s not taking control of me. But my husband fell. He’s under...” she gestured toward the bodies, her voice fading. “Can you please help me?”
Bailey let out another high pitched wail of distress.
Jumping in fright, the man backed away a few steps.
“Those are my daughters. The baby isn’t affected, but my older daughter is. Please, I need to help my husband.”
Jerking about as he surveyed the area, the man’s expression grew increasingly horrified. “It’s worse here than in the casino.”
“People fell...my husband fell.”
Gesturing, yet not really looking at her, the man said, “We have to get outside. It’s not over the entire city. I saw the news report on the television back in the casino. We need to exit through The Venetian and head south. That’s where they said to go on the news.” The man spoke in a rush of breathless words. He looked directly at her then. “Why isn’t it affecting us?”
“What is it? Did the news say?”
“No, no!” He shook his head, and then his eyes trailed over her form. Minji instantly felt his judgment as he took in her black and purple dreads and alternative clothing. Shifting his gaze to her daughters, he took several tentative steps away from her. “I need to go!”
“Please, help me! My husband is hurt!”
“I’m not a nurse, lady! I need to get out of here!”
He bolted down the hallway toward the Grand Canal Shoppes in The Venetian side of the resort.
“Asshole!” Minji screamed after him.
Her words echoed after his fading footsteps.
Glancing toward her daughters, she was relieved that both girls were still secure. Bailey’s face was beet red from her temper tantrum. Ava continued to face the direction of the casino, but didn’t appear to be straining on the leash.
It was gut wrenchingly awful to step over the dead and wounded, and even worse to shove them out of her way with the toes of her boots. Nearing the waterfall, she gulped in the cold, moist air and clenched her hands into fists. Jake’s blood-splattered shoes were visible under the sprawled form of an elderly man. Fear strangled her and froze her in place. If Jake was dead, how would she endure it? How could she live, knowing he was gone?
With a hiccupping sob, she leaned over and pushed the old man aside. A young black woman and a red-headed white teenage boy also covered Jake. The boy’s head was bashed in on one side, and he was clearly dead. Minji averted her eyes as she rolled him off Jake. When she thrust the female to one side, the woman groaned. Lethargically, her eyelids fluttered open and she stared past Minji with big dark eyes. Very slowly, she rotated onto her stomach and started to crawl across the bodies of the others.
“Let me help you,” Minji called after her before realizing the woman was mesmerized. “Oh, fuck.” It would be just her luck that the only other person not affected had been a jerk and had left her to deal with the situation alone.
Kneeling next to Jake, Minji rested her hand against his neck praying she’d feel a pulse. Her husband rested on his stomach, his arm twisted and obviously broken. Head turned toward the basin, his face was pale and his elegant nose was bloody and a bit battered. Closing her eyes, she frantically searched for the sign of his heart beating. Despite his proximity to the pool of water, he still felt warm.
“Please, Jake, please...”
She was rewarded with the faint pulse of his blood pumping through an artery.
“Oh, thank God!”
With an exhalation of relief, she ran her fingers over his body seeking out injuries. One leg appeared to be broken and the foot on the opposite one was twisted. There was no way to tell if he had internal injuries, but he didn’t appear to have any wounds to his head other than his bashed nose. Blood bubbled in the nostrils as he breathed, so she hoped that was a good sign.