The woman's eyes fluttered open at the sound, and Piper saw that her pants were soaked with blood.
"Li'l Walter," the woman croaked, which Piper misheard.
"Don't worry, there's water in the car. Lie still. I've got your baby, he's okay." Not knowing if he was or not. "I'll take care of him."
"Li'l Walter," the woman in the bloody jeans said again, and closed her eyes.
Piper ran back to her car with her heart beating hard enough for her to feel it in her eyeballs. Her tongue tasted coppery. God help me, she prayed, and could think of nothing else, so she thought it again: God, oh God help me help that woman.
The Subaru had air-conditioning, but she hadn't been using it in spite of the heat of the day; rarely did. Her understanding was that it wasn't very eco-friendly. But she turned it on now, full blast. She laid the baby on the backseat, rolled up the windows, closed the doors, started back toward the young woman lying in the dust, then was struck by a terrible thought: what if the baby managed to climb over the seat, pushed the wrong button, and locked her out?
God, I'm so stupid. The worst minister in the world when a real crisis comes. Help me not to be so stupid.
She rushed back, opened the driver's door again, looked over the seat, and saw the boy still lying where she had put him, but now sucking his thumb. His eyes went to her briefly, then looked up at the ceiling as if he saw something interesting there. Mental cartoons, maybe. He had sweated right through the little tee-shirt beneath his overall. Piper twisted the electronic key fob back and forth in her fist until it broke free of the key ring. Then she ran back to the woman, who was trying to sit up.
"Don't," Piper said, kneeling beside her and putting an arm around her. "I don't think you should--"
"Li'l Walter," the woman croaked.
Shit, I forgot the water! God, why did You let me forget the water?
Now the woman was trying to struggle to her feet. Piper didn't like this idea, which ran counter to everything she knew of first aid, but what other option was there? The road was deserted, and she couldn't leave her out in the blaring sun, that would be worse and more of it. So instead of pushing her back down, Piper helped her to stand.
"Slow," she said, now holding the woman around the waist and guiding her staggering steps as best she could. "Slow and easy does it, slow and easy wins the race. It's cool in the car. And there's water."
"Li'l Walter!" The woman swayed, steadied, then tried to move a little faster.
"Water," Piper said. "Right. Then I'm taking you to the hospital."
"Hell ... Center."
This Piper did understand, and she shook her head firmly. "No way. You're going straight to the hospital. You and your baby both."
"Li'l Walter," the woman whispered. She stood swaying, head down, hair hanging in her face, while Piper opened the passenger door and then eased her inside.
Piper got the bottle of Poland Spring out of the center console and took off the cap. The woman snatched it from her before Piper could offer it, and drank greedily, water overspilling the neck and dripping off her chin to darken the top of her tee-shirt.
"What's your name?" Piper asked.
"Sammy Bushey." And then, even as her stomach cramped from the water, that black rose began to open in front of Sammy's eyes again. The bottle dropped out of her hand and fell to the floormat, gurgling, as she passed out.
Piper drove as fast as she could, which was pretty fast, since Motton Road remained deserted, but when she got to the hospital, she discovered that Dr. Haskell had died the day before and the physician's assistant, Everett, was not there.
Sammy was examined and admitted by that famed medical expert, Dougie Twitchell.
8
While Ginny was trying to stop Sammy Bushey's vaginal bleeding and Twitch was giving the badly dehydrated Little Walter IV fluids, Rusty Everett was sitting quietly on a park bench at the Town Hall edge of the common. The bench was beneath the spreading arms of a tall blue spruce, and he thought he was in shade deep enough to render him effectively invisible. As long as he didn't move around much, that was.
There were interesting things to look at.
He had planned to go directly to the storage building behind the Town Hall (Twitch had called it a shed, but the long wooden building, which also housed The Mill's four snowplows, was actually quite a bit grander than that) and check the propane situation there, but then one of the police cars pulled up, with Frankie DeLesseps at the wheel. Junior Rennie had emerged from the passenger side. The two had spoken for a moment or two, then DeLesseps had driven away.
Junior went up the PD steps, but instead of going in, he sat down there, rubbing his temples as if he had a headache. Rusty decided to wait. He didn't want to be seen checking up on the town's energy supply, especially not by the Second Selectman's son.
At one point Junior took his cell phone out of his pocket, flipped it open, listened, said something, listened some more, said something else, then flipped it closed again. He went back to rubbing his temples. Dr. Haskell had said something about that young man. Migraine headaches, was it? It certainly looked like a migraine. It wasn't just the temple-rubbing; it was the way he was keeping his head down.
Trying to minimize the glare, Rusty thought. Must have left his Imitrex or Zomig home. Assuming Haskell prescribed it, that is.
Rusty had half-risen, meaning to cut across Commonwealth Lane to the rear of the Town Hall--Junior clearly not being at his most observant--but then he spotted someone else and sat down again. Dale Barbara, the short-order cook who had reputedly been elevated to the rank of colonel (by the President himself, according to some), was standing beneath the marquee of the Globe, even deeper in the shadows than Rusty was himself. And Barbara also appeared to be keeping an eye on young Mr. Rennie.
Interesting.
Barbara apparently came to the conclusion that Rusty had already drawn: Junior wasn't watching but waiting. Possibly for someone to pick him up. Barbara hustled across the street and--once he was blocked from Junior's potential view by the Town Hall itself--paused to scan the message board out front. Then he went inside.
Rusty decided to sit where he was awhile longer. It was nice under the tree, and he was curious about whom Junior might be waiting for. People were still straggling back from Dipper's (some would have stayed much longer had the booze been flowing). Most of them, like the young man sitting on the steps over yonder, had their heads down. Not in pain, Rusty surmised, but in dejection. Or maybe they were the same. It was certainly a point to ponder.
Now here came a boxy black gas-gobbler Rusty knew well: Big Jim Rennie's Hummer. It honked impatiently at a trio of townsfolk who were walking in the street, shunting them aside like sheep.
The Hummer pulled in at the PD. Junior looked up but didn't stand up. The doors opened. Andy Sanders got out from behind the wheel, Rennie from the passenger side. Rennie, allowing Sanders to drive his beloved black pearl? Sitting on his bench, Rusty raised his eyebrows. He didn't think he'd ever seen anyone but Big Jim himself behind the wheel of that monstrosity. Maybe he's decided to promote Andy from dogsbody to chauffeur, he thought, but when he watched Big Jim mount the steps to where his son still sat, he changed his mind.
Like most veteran medicos, Rusty was a pretty fair long-distance diagnostician. He would never have based a course of treatment on it, but you could tell a man who'd had a hip replacement six months ago from one currently suffering with hemorrhoids simply by the way he walked; you could tell a neck strain by the way a woman would turn her whole body instead of just looking back over her shoulder; you could tell a kid who'd picked up a good crop of lice at summer camp by the way he kept scratching his head. Big Jim held his arm against the upper slope of his considerable gut as he went up the steps, the classic body language of a man who has recently suffered either a shoulder strain, an upper arm strain, or both. Not so surprising that Sanders had been delegated to pilot the beast after all.
The three of them talked. Junior
didn't get up but Sanders sat down beside him, rummaged in his pocket, and brought out something that twinkled in the hazy afternoon sunlight. Rusty's eyes were good, but he was at least fifty yards too far away to make out what the object might have been. Either glass or metal; that was all he could tell for sure. Junior put it in his pocket, then the three of them talked some more. Rennie gestured to the Hummer--he did it with his good arm--and Junior shook his head. Then Sanders pointed to the Hummer. Junior declined it again, dropped his head, and went back to working his temples. The two men looked at each other, Sanders craning his neck because he was still sitting on the steps. And in Big Jim's shadow, which Rusty thought appropriate. Big Jim shrugged and opened his hands--a what can you do gesture. Sanders stood up and the two men went into the PD building, Big Jim pausing long enough to pat his son's shoulder. Junior gave no response to that. He went on sitting where he was, as if he intended to sit out the age. Sanders played doorman for Big Jim, ushering him inside before following.
The two selectmen had no more than left the scene when a quartet came out of the Town Hall: an oldish gent, a young woman, a girl and a boy. The girl was holding the boy's hand and carrying a checkerboard. The boy looked almost as disconsolate as Junior, Rusty thought ... and damned if he wasn't also rubbing one temple with his free hand. The four of them cut across Comm Lane, then passed directly in front of Rusty's bench.
"Hello," the little girl said brightly. "I'm Alice. This is Aidan."
"We're going to live at the passionage," the little boy named Aidan said dourly. He was still rubbing his temple, and he looked very pale.
"That will be exciting," Rusty said. "Sometimes I wish I lived in a passionage."
The man and woman caught up with the kids. They were holding hands. Father and daughter, Rusty surmised.
"Actually, we just want to talk to the Reverend Libby," the woman said. "You wouldn't know if she's back yet, would you?"
"No idea," Rusty said.
"Well, we'll just go over and wait. At the passionage." She smiled up at the older man when she said this. Rusty decided they might not be father and daughter, after all. "That's what the janitor said to do."
"Al Timmons?" Rusty had seen Al hop into the back of a Burpee's Department Store truck.
"No, the other one," the older man said. "He said the Reverend might be able to help us with lodgings."
Rusty nodded. "Was his name Dale?"
"I don't think he actually gave us his name," the woman said.
"Come on !" The boy let go of his sister's hand and tugged at the woman's instead. "I want to play that other game you said." But he sounded more querulous than eager. Mild shock, maybe. Or some physical ailment. If the latter, Rusty hoped it was only a cold. The last thing The Mill needed right now was an outbreak of flu.
"They've misplaced their mother, at least temporarily," the woman said in a low voice. "We're taking care of them."
"Good for you," Rusty said, and meant it. "Son, does your head hurt?"
"No."
"Sore throat?"
"No," the boy named Aidan said. His solemn eyes studied Rusty. "Know what? If we don't trick-or-treat this year, I don't even care."
"Aidan Appleton !" Alice cried, sounding shocked out of her shoes. Rusty jerked a little on the bench; he couldn't help it. Then he smiled. "No? Why is that?"
"Because Mommy takes us around and Mommy went for splies."
"He means supplies," the girl named Alice said indulgently.
"She went for Woops," Aidan said. He looked like a little old man--a little old worried man. "I'd be ascairt to go Halloweenin without Mommy."
"Come on, Caro," the man said. "We ought to--"
Rusty rose from the bench. "Could I speak to you for a minute, ma'am? Just a step or two over here."
Caro looked puzzled and wary, but stepped with him to the side of the blue spruce.
"Has the boy exhibited any seizure activity?" Rusty asked. "That might include suddenly stopping what he's doing ... you know, just standing still for a while ... or a fixed stare ... smacking of the lips--"
"Nothing like that," the man said, joining them. "No,"
Caro agreed, but she looked frightened.
The man saw it and turned an impressive frown on Rusty. "Are you a doctor?"
"Physician's assistant. I thought maybe--"
"Well, I'm sure we appreciate your concern, Mr.--?"
"Eric Everett. Call me Rusty."
"We appreciate your concern, Mr. Everett, but I believe it's misplaced. Bear in mind that these children are without their mother--"
"And they spent two nights alone without much to eat," Caro added. "They were trying to make it to town on their own when those two ... officers "--she wrinkled her nose as if the word had a bad smell--"found them."
Rusty nodded. "That could explain it, I guess. Although the little girl seems fine."
"Children react differently. And we better go. They're getting away from us, Thurse."
Alice and Aidan were running across the park, kicking up colorful bursts of fallen leaves, Alice flapping the checkerboard and yelling, "Passionage! Passionage!" at the top of her lungs. The boy was keeping up with her stride for stride and also yelling.
Kid had a momentary fugue, that's all, Rusty thought. The rest was coincidence. Not even that--what American kid isn't thinking of Halloween during the last half of October? One thing was sure: if these people were asked later, they would remember exactly where and when they had seen Eric "Rusty" Everett. So much for stealth.
The gray-haired man raised his voice. "Children! Slow down!"
The young woman considered Rusty, then put out her hand. "Thank you for your concern, Mr. Everett. Rusty."
"Probably overconcern. Occupational hazard."
"You're totally forgiven. This has been the craziest weekend in the history of the world. Chalk it up to that."
"You bet. And if you need me, check the hospital or the Health Center." He pointed in the direction of Cathy Russell, which would be visible through the trees once the rest of the leaves fell. If they fell.
"Or this bench," she said, still smiling.
"Or this bench, right." Also smiling.
"Caro!" Thurse sounded impatient. "Come on !"
She gave Rusty a little wave--no more than a twiddle of the fingertips--then ran after the others. She ran lightly, gracefully. Rusty wondered if Thurse knew that girls who could run lightly and gracefully almost always ran away from their elderly lovers, sooner or later. Maybe he did. Maybe it had happened to him before.
Rusty watched them cut across the common toward the spire of the Congo church. Eventually the trees screened them from sight. When he looked back at the PD building, Junior Rennie was gone.
Rusty sat where he was for a moment of two, drumming his fingers on his thighs. Then he came to a decision and stood up. Checking the town storage shed for the hospital's missing propane tanks could wait. He was more curious about what The Mill's one and only Army officer was doing in the Town Hall.
9
What Barbie was doing as Rusty crossed Comm Lane to the Town Hall was whistling appreciatively through his teeth. The fallout shelter was as long as an Amtrak dining car, and the shelves were fully stocked with canned goods. Most looked pretty fishy: stacks of sardines, ranks of salmon, and a lot of something called Snow's Clam Fry-Ettes, which Barbie sincerely hoped he would never have to sample. There were boxes of dry goods, including many large plastic canisters marked RICE, WHEAT, POWDERED MILK, and SUGAR. There were stacked flats of bottles labeled DRINKING WATER. He counted ten large cartons of U.S. GOV'T SURPLUS CRACKERS. Two more were labeled U.S. GOV'T SURPLUS CHOCOLATE BARS. On the wall above these was a yellowing sign reading 700 CALORIES A DAY KEEPS HUNGER AT BAY.
"Dream on," Barbie muttered.
There was a door at the far end. He opened it on Stygian blackness, felt around, found a light switch. Another room, not quite so big but still large. It looked old and disused--not dirty, Al Timmons
at least must know about it because someone had been dusting the shelves and dry-mopping the floors, but neglected for sure. The stored water was in glass bottles, and he hadn't seen any of those since a brief stint in Saudi.
This second room contained a dozen folded cots plus plain blue blankets and mattresses that had been zipped into clear plastic covers, pending use. There were more supplies, including half a dozen cardboard canisters labeled SANITATION KIT and another dozen marked AIR MASKS. There was a small auxiliary generator that could supply minimal power. It was running; must have started up when he turned on the lights. Flanking the little gennie were two shelves. On one was a radio that looked as if it might have been new around the time C. W. McCall's novelty song "Convoy" had been a hit. On the other shelf were two hotplates and a metal box painted bright yellow. The logo on the side was from the days when CD stood for something other than compact disc. It was what he had come to find.
Barbie picked it up, then almost dropped it--it was heavy. On the front was a gauge labeled COUNTS PER SECOND. When you turned the instrument on and pointed the sensor at something, the needle might stay in the green, rise to the yellow center of the dial ... or go over into the red. That, Barbie assumed, would not be good.
He turned it on. The little power lamp stayed dark and the needle lay quiet against 0.
"Battery's dead," someone said from behind him. Barbie almost jumped out of his skin. He looked around and saw a tall, heavyset man with blond hair standing in the doorway between the two rooms.
For a moment the name eluded him, although the guy was at the restaurant most Sunday mornings, sometimes with his wife, always with his two little girls. Then it came to him. "Rusty Evers, right?"
"Close; it's Everett." The newcomer held out his hand. A little warily, Barbie walked over and shook it. "Saw you come in. And that"--he nodded to the Geiger counter--"is probably not a bad idea. Something must be keeping it in place." He didn't say what he meant by it and didn't need to.
"Glad you approve. You almost scared me into a goddam heart attack. But you could take care of that, I guess. You're a doc, right?"