Better in the Dark (24 page)

Suddenly she tripped and looked down. A dead woman lay at an angle against the building, and Natalie knelt to check her. She rose again and found herself shaking. The woman had died of cholera. She had not seen that disease at Van Dreyter, and she feared now that the pandemic was further advanced than even she and Harry had feared.

But she was ten miles away from the Van Dreyter house, and it would take her a good part of the night to get back there. She knew now that it had been a mistake to come to Inner City, for neither Miles Wexford nor Peter Justin had been willing to see her. And there had been no way back to the Van Dreyter house but on foot, since there were no longer any buses, and private cars were open targets to vandals.

Down a side street she heard a scuffle. Something clattered, and there was a shout.

Natalie thought about it and knew that she would not let herself stop now. She began to walk faster and kept her mind on where she was going. There was too much to do at the Van Dreyter house for her to risk being waylaid here. As she lengthened her stride she found herself wishing that her shoes didn’t make so much noise.

“No, we won’t talk about it later,” Carol Mendosa shot back at Harry. “You tell me right now how we’re going to manage four hands short? Or is it five? Lisa said one of the nurses is sick, too. How much sleep can you get along without?” She braced her back on the kitchen wall and held her coffee mug almost like a weapon.

“I haven’t got any answer for you, Carol. But I’m not leaving.” He was glad that most of the others were on rounds, and that only Dominic and Alexes could hear their argument.

“How many of us have to die before you’ll leave? Two more? Four more?”

“I don’t want any of us to die,” he said, and in spite of himself he had to stifle a yawn. He knew that he really ought to look in on Stan, and to spell Ernest, who was sitting with Dave.

“What about burial? Or haven’t you heard that the coroner’s wagon hasn’t been around since yesterday? Are you in any shape to dig Amanda’s grave?”

Harry looked up sharply. “Stop it, Carol,” he said softly. “Maybe you can handle this better than I can, but I can’t bear to talk about Amanda yet.”

“What about Natalie?”

“For Chrissake, Carol!” Dominic cut in. “I’m as antsy as you are. But leave it alone, can’t you?” He filled his cup with more coffee. “I’ve got to get back to the lab.”

“Any luck on the polio thing?”

Dominic turned to Harry. “It’s a variant polio, all right. My guess is that it’s mutant. That’s the thing we have to stop. All the others we have the tools for already, but this stuff is brand new. And, now that we’ve got three deaths from it, it’s safe to say that it can be fatal.”

Harry slumped in his seat. “I see.” His voice was as dull as his eyes.

Carol slammed her mug down and left the room.

None of the kids who surrounded Natalie were more than fifteen. They were dressed in standard, tattered clothes, and nothing but the feral light in their eyes revealed their intent. One of them, a little taller than the others, was the first to speak. “Where you going, lady?”

“Home,” Natalie said, hoping her panic did not color her voice.

“Where’s home, lady?” asked another.

“Six miles northwest, more or less,” she said honestly.

“What do you do, lady?” This was the first kid again, and he was moving closer. He chuckled as he saw Natalie flinch. “You got nothing to be scared of. We aren’t sick. We take care of ourselves.”

Natalie said nothing, but saw with alarm that there were now three of the teen-agers in front of her, cutting off any escape.

“We got some questions to ask you,” said another. “You answer them right and we’ll leave you alone.”

“You got any kids, lady?” said a new voice, one that cracked with adolescent change.

“My son died.” Natalie had not meant to say it aloud.

“A lot of kids are dying, lady,” the apparent leader said, without sympathy. When Natalie did not answer, he said it again. “Lots of kids are dying, lady.” He started to clap slowly. “
Lots of kids
are
dying, lady. Lots
of
kids
are dying,
lady. Lots
of
kids
are
dying, lady
.”

The others took it up, clapping or snapping their fingers, their walks bouncing with the rhythm. Some of them laughed at Natalie’s protesting, “No.”

Again the leader spoke. “Tristam might be interested in you.”

A few of the others broke off their chant to whistle suggestively.

“We haven’t had a lady doctor yet. You a lady doctor? Most folks out this late, they’re either robbers or doctors. Now, it don’t look like you’ve stolen anything. But you don’t have a bag. So what are you?”

“I’m a woman going home. I went to the hospital to try to see someone, and they wouldn’t let me in, and there aren’t any buses.” She fought the rising pitch in her voice. “So I have to walk home.”

“Don’t you know they don’t let you see anybody in hospitals, lady? Boy, you’re dumb.” The others agreed that Natalie was dumb.

“Maybe we’ll take you along to Tristam, anyway.” The leader pulled out a flashlight and shone it in Natalie’s face. “I don’t know. You aren’t very pretty...”

One of the kids on the fringes, a girl, said, “Aw, Gordy, leave her alone. If she’s got a dead kid, she knows what’s happening.”

In a moment of shock Natalie recognized Alison’s voice. Was it gangs like this one that had kept the girl from helping her when she and Harry first went to the Van Dreyter house.

“Alison,” Gordy said, “Come on, cut it out.”

“No, honest, Gordy. I know who that lady is.”

Natalie’s heart sank. She started to speak to Alison.

“That’s right about her kid dying. She used to live near where I do. She’s nobody.” The contempt in Alison’s voice was very convincing, and Natalie was filled with gratitude.

But Gordy was disappointed. “If you say so, Alison.”

“Come on, leave her alone. She’s got enough troubles without you messing her up. Come on.” Alison tugged at Gordy’s arm. “Tristam told us to be back at midnight anyway, and it’s almost that now.”

“Okay.” Gordy reluctantly allowed himself to be persuaded. He turned to Natalie. “But remember about the dying kids, lady.”

“I will,” Natalie said.

“Come
on
,” Alison insisted, and as the kids moved off down a cross street, she gave Natalie a one-finger salute, and Natalie knew she would not get help from that girl again.

Dominic leaned against the shovel and looked up at Harry. “Sorry, Harry, that’s all I’m good for. Do you want me to ask someone else to come out? I know Howard’s up and I think Roger is available.”

“Never mind,” Harry said as he looked at the sheeted bodies beside the incomplete graves. “I can dig a while, and then Ernest can give me a hand if he has some time. We’ve got to get them buried. It’s going to be hot today, I think. The proper forms are in Lisa’s desk. If you’ll sign one of them, I’ll sign the others.” He gave Dominic a hand and pulled him out of the grave.

“I wish there were some kind of minister around here, someone who knew the words.” Dominic rubbed his hands on his slacks and left long stains there.

“I didn’t know you were religious,” Harry said, as he jumped into the grave Dominic had just left.

“I’m not. But the words might help. It might help some of them in the house, some of those who aren’t going to get well. I used to think it was silly, and maybe in a place like Westbank it is, but I don’t know, around here it might help. My father was a very religious man, and when he died they did the whole routine—masses, prayers, all the pomp. My father said he liked the requiem mass because it was the same for everyone; no matter who they were or how they died, they were buried with the same words. It made his dying easier for him, I think.”

Harry reached for the shovel and began to dig. The work was slow, he found, and not entirely because the ground was hard.

“I’ll see if anyone can come out, Harry. Maybe only to keep you company.”

Harry desperately wanted company, but the last hours of the night were the worst, and now they were too shorthanded to spare him the help. “Don’t bother.” He felt his breath coming hard already, and he leaned more heavily into his digging.

Dominic paused by the draped body of Amanda. “I liked her. I wish she hadn’t died...”

For a moment Harry stopped digging. “Let’s not talk about her now, Dom. This is rough enough without being reminded of Amanda.”

“Yeah,” Dominic said, reluctant to leave. “Do you think any of us are going to get out of this in one piece, Harry?”

“You saw a lot of deaths in radiology, Dom.” He tossed another shovelful of earth over his shoulder. “You had a lot of machines to mask it, but it was the same thing.” He wanted to believe it, he knew. If he didn’t believe it his courage would fail him.

“No, this isn’t the same thing,” Dominic said softly, then went back to the house. Behind him the sky was fading from night to the first touch of morning.

On the third insistent ring, Harry went to the door. He was not ready to deal with emergency cases yet. A quick shower had taken the dirt off him, but the miasmic sense of death was still around him. Officially there were more than two hours until their nine o’clock opening of the Van Dreyter house to new patients, but where real need was concerned there was no limitation on office hours. “I’m coming,” he called, disappointed to hear how harsh his own voice had become. He hoped that this time the trouble was not desperate, because he knew that grief was muddling his judgment, and that could be critical. He took a moment to steady himself while the bell pealed a fourth time. Then he opened the door.

“Harry!” Natalie cried out, the name assuaging her terror. She came through the door to cling to him. “God, Harry.”

Now that he had his arms around her, Harry was almost giddy with relief. “Natalie. You’re back.” The words sounded inane, even to him, but her hold on him tightened. They stood together for many long minutes, and then Harry pulled back and demanded, “What happened to you? You were supposed to be back yesterday afternoon.”

The anger in his eyes stung her. “Harry, I told Amanda I was going to Inner City if I didn’t get any help at Westbank...” She stopped as she saw his face grow rigid. “Harry?”

“Amanda died yesterday. She didn’t tell me.” He reached out and closed the door as he spoke, to be doing something.

“Died?” Natalie looked puzzled, and knew that the realization would hit her later. “Her heart?”

“Yes.” To change the subject, he said, “You look a fright. What are you wearing?”

“Just clothes. Harry, there’s so much to tell you. There’s a lot we didn’t know. And we have to be ready. It’s a lot worse than we guessed, and there isn’t any help...” She put her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m not making any sense.” She took his hand in hers. “Is there any coffee? I could use a cup of coffee.”

“Sure.” He led the way toward the kitchen, saying nothing, anger with her still ripe in him.

Radick was in the kitchen, for it was his morning to fix the breakfasts. “Natalie,” he said, and embraced her, “you must not frighten us that way again, little one.”

“She left a message with Amanda,” Harry explained reluctantly.

“Oh.” Radick let her go. “I see.”

“Harry told me about Amanda. I am so very sorry.” She stopped. “No. I can’t do this now. There’s too much you have to know. It’s too important.” She made a strange gesture, as if pushing her sorrow away. “First, you have to know about this pandemic, and what’s gone wrong. And you must know who Tristam is. Let me have some coffee, and I’ll tell you.”

Radick handed her a mug and filled it, saying nothing. He motioned her to a chair.

Before she started to tell them what she had learned, she asked, “Did Mr. Younts survive the night?”

Harry thought of the bodies he had just covered with earth. “No.”

She nodded sadly. “I didn’t think he would. He wasn’t fighting back any more.” She studied the mug for a moment and then began to speak.

Long before she was finished, both Harry and Radick were filled with worry.

The afternoon rounds were terribly slow, for there were fifteen new patients to be dispatched to Ernest Dagstern’s few willing colleagues. There were no more beds to be had at the Van Dreyter house. But the patients kept coming, frightened, sick, aware that the hospitals had let them down.

Lisa Skye shook her head and remarked to Natalie that they had to get out of Stockton before August, or none of them would be alive.

“Why do you say that?”

Lisa patted a handkerchief over her damp forehead. “This heat. It makes everything worse. I’m glad my daughter is in Carmichael. You said that the central sanitation facilities aren’t working any more, which means that we’re going to have a big sewage problem soon, and that will make all the diseases more virulent. You remember what happened with the old epidemics, don’t you? When the weather got hot, they got worse. It’s in the high eighties today. A month from now we’ll break a hundred during the day and be lucky if it cools to eighty at night.” Her slender hands were unsteady. She grabbed the handkerchief more tightly. “I hate the heat.”

Natalie nodded. “It’s worse upstairs. I went up for a nap but it was stifling. So I came back. You said you’ve got a possible scarlet fever in this afternoon?”

“Yes. Howard’s taking the case.” She put her hand to her head again. “Do we have any aspirin? My head’s killing me.”

“I’ll ask one of the nurses. Tony Michaelson brought some supplies with him when he came by. He must have taken them out of one of the pharmacy warehouses.

“Bless Tony,” Lisa said with real feeling. The ambulance driver had been the one link they had not lost with the hospitals. Tony Michaelson was perennially on the side of the underdog, and was willing to take a great many risks.

“He said he was thinking of coming over here permanently to be an emergency paramedic for us. He’s had the training, and we could use him.”

“We could use a couple of dozen Tonys,” Lisa said. She folded her handkerchief. “Will you mind running a test on Thornton?” she added after a swift glance at her notes. “She said she’s afraid she might have picked up one of the bugs running around. We can’t let our nurses get sick. We haven’t enough of them to spare.”