Instinct (29 page)

“Remember to let her sober up for a bit before you give her anything more.”

“I will.”

“Follow this hall down through the dark and you’ll find your way to the patient wing. There are no stairs, and each room has a sofa that converts to a small bed.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll bring you some food in a bit.”

“That’s very generous. Thank you.”

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By the time night began to fall, Tim was eyeing the pills. Amy Lynne still seemed dopey, so he didn’t want to dose her with more painkillers, but he was beginning to wonder if he should take one himself. Perhaps he would be able to get some sleep. Her moaning and squirming were unbearable. Even when he moved to the adjacent room, the sounds from her room kept him awake.

Cedric didn’t like it either. He whined in sympathy with Amy Lynne until Tim yelled at him to stop.
 

At first, the minutes ticked by slowly. Then, as Tim’s patience evaporated, the passage of time seemed to come to a complete halt. He began to wonder about what Ty had said. The big man had talked about what was humane, and then said, “I have some pills.” Did he mean euthanasia? That must have been what he meant. Maybe he was right. It took a certain amount of heartlessness to listen to the girl suffer and not do anything about it. Tim was beginning to wonder what the more compassionate solution would be. Should he care for her the best he could, or put an end to her pain?

The thumping of Cedric’s tail against the floor alerted Tim to Ty’s presence in the hall.

“You awake?” the low voice asked.

“Can’t sleep. Her eyes are still slow to dilate, so I don’t think it makes sense to give her any drugs yet.”

“I think you mean they’re slow to constrict, and that’s not a great indicator of sobriety.”

“Oh.”

“I’ll go check her.”

Cedric followed the giant man as he left to go to the next room, where Amy Lynne was groaning. Tim felt jealous of the dog’s instant kinship with Ty. He knew Cedric would come back. In a few seconds, he was right.

Ty came in after a minute. Miraculously, Amy Lynne’s moaning didn’t start up again.

“I gave her two. You can give her two more in four hours.”

“Thank you.”

Tim studied the man’s face to see if the crooked smile would appear. He couldn’t see anything except the whites of his eyes. Ty was scratching Cedric’s chest again. Tim heard the dog’s leg thump against the floor and hoped it wouldn’t elicit a response from Amy Lynne.

“You have dreams, Tim?”

“Sure. Sometimes.”

“Recurring dreams?”

“No.”

Ty was silent for a few minutes. Tim wondered if he should probe to find out what the man clearly wanted to tell him.

“I do,” Ty said, eventually. “I have the same dream almost every night.”

Tim thought carefully. He could remember a few dreams. It was only the scary ones—the ones that woke him up—that he really remembered. They were different each time though. In one dream, he was being chased by an alligator, or some other kind of lizard. The thing kept hiding in the grass. In another, his teeth fell out all at once. He couldn’t find anything to eat and he began to waste away rapidly. The dreams were scary right when he woke up, but almost comical by morning. It helped having Cedric there.

“What’s your dream?”

“It’s stupid, but it scares the living shit out of me,” Ty said. The giant man sounded like a frightened child.

Tim’s throat went dry again. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know what would make such a powerful man feel that afraid.

“Right after everyone disappeared, I came to work, expecting to find patients. There wasn’t a soul. No matter what happens—blizzard, power outage, hail storm—it always brings in a flood of patients. We even had a tornado one time. Nobody was hurt. The thing touched down in a potato field and it didn’t do any more than turn over a couple of tractors, but we still had patients. People came in with all manner of injury, even though the tornado didn’t hit any of them. But on Thanksgiving, this place was empty. That night I had the first dream.”

Ty stopped talking. For a second, they both listened for Amy Lynne. She muttered something to herself and then she was quiet again.

“I was here in the hospital, alone. This was the first night that everyone disappeared, but I knew in the dream that I’d been here for weeks, maybe even months. I climbed the stairs to look out at the city and there was a blue lightning running down the highway. In the distance, I saw something moving. It was coming towards the hospital, and for a second, I was glad. A hospital needs patients. The building is like a living thing, and the patients are like the blood cells that keep everything oxygenated. As they got closer, I realized that the people who were headed my way weren’t going to stop at the hospital. They weren’t moving under their own control. The worst part was that I knew that I was going to be one of them before long.”

“What were they?”

“I don’t know. I never get that far into the dream. I always wake up screaming.”

“Every night?”

“Every single night.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Tim said. He tried on a smile.
 

Ty shook his head at the memory. “There should be a peace in death. The dead shouldn’t have to march.”

“What does the blue lightning represent to you? Maybe if you can figure out the symbolism of the dream, you can make it go away.”

“Wait.”

“What?”

Ty reached out through the darkness and put his hand on Tim’s knee. Tim understood and shut his mouth. A fraction of a second later, he understood why. There was something coming down the hall. It clicked on the tile floors as it walked, as if it were wearing metal shoes. It had the slow, uneven pace of a gentleman on a stroll. Tim looked down at Cedric. The dog had been sitting at Ty’s feet. Now, Cedric silently crawled towards Tim. The dog stopped when his head reached Tim’s foot. Tim put his hand down on Cedric’s head and felt as it turned towards the door. All three were focused on the sound.

The only light in Tim’s hospital room was the starlight coming through the windows. The door to the hall was like a rectangle of black construction paper. Tim could imagine anything moving across that canvas. He wondered what he would see first. Would a naked white skeleton move by the door with its boney feet tapping out the rhythm on the floor? Would a well-dressed aristocrat pass by with metal taps nailed to the soles of his shoes?

The clicking reached a crescendo. Each footstep was louder than the last. Tim knew the thing would have to reveal itself at any second.

The sound stopped.

After a minute, Tim’s muscles vibrated with anticipation. Where was the source of the clicking footsteps? Where had the thing gone?

He heard Ty release a deep breath.

“That’s the closest it has ever come,” Ty said.

“What has come? What was it?” he asked. As soon as Ty’s hand lifted from his knee, Tim couldn’t help himself. He rose and moved towards the door, aware that Cedric was right next to him. He stuck his head out into the black hallway and waited for his eyes to adjust. He still couldn’t see much. He pulled out his flashlight and stabbed the beam of light into the dark. He cut it back and forth, finding nothing.

He shut off his light before returning to Ty. Tim took his place on the sofa near the window.

“What was it?”

He saw the man’s head shake back and forth in the dark.

“I don’t know. No matter where you go in this hospital, it will eventually track you down.”

“That’s terrible! Why would you stay here? I’d be out of here the next morning.”

“What makes you think the walls of this place will confine it? Besides, it has never hurt me.”

Cedric hopped up beside him and pressed his furry body against Tim’s side.
 

“No wonder you’re having nightmares. You need to get out of here. I’ve stayed in several places and I’ve never heard any phantoms wandering around. You’ve never seen what makes the noise?”

“There’s never anything there,” Ty said.

“I don’t think that makes me feel better about it. So you’ve been here since Thanksgiving?”

“Yeah. I knew people would come here, looking for help.”

“Forgive me for saying, but when we came, it didn’t seem like you were very willing to help.”

“I was willing, but I wasn’t convinced that treating her was the same as helping her. You understand?”

“Yes, you made that point clear earlier. Has anyone else come?”

“A few. I do what I can. Most of the problems I’ve seen aren’t physical though. Too much stress will break more than bones. I can set the bones, but I’m not qualified to do much about the other things.”

“Where did the people go?”

“They moved on. Everyone’s headed somewhere. A pair from Ohio thought they needed to get to the CDC in Connecticut. They read about it in some book. I met a guy from the Finger Lakes who thought that the Gulf of Mexico was where he’d find salvation. He was diabetic. He came in to find insulin.”

“What was wrong with the people from Ohio? I mean why did they come to the hospital?”

“Nothing wrong with them. I used to run a generator up on the fifth floor. It was hooked up to a light. They saw the light and came to see what it was for. The man was a bit unstable, but there was nothing really wrong with either of them”

“I wonder if they made it to the CDC. You didn’t have any desire to go with them?”

“No.”

“I’d go crazy if I were on my own.”

“I’ve always preferred it,” Ty said.

They sat in silence for several minutes. Cedric seemed to relax a bit. He moved away from Tim’s side and curled into a tight circle on the sofa.
 

“Will the thing in the hallway come back again tonight?” Tim asked.

“Maybe. If it does, it will be right before dawn.”

“Great.”

Eventually, Tim slept.

CHAPTER 19: VERMONT

R
OMIE
SEEMED
TO
CHOOSE
her turns randomly. Pete flipped through his maps, trying to figure out their location. It seemed that as soon as he found a clue, she would turn again and he would lose their place. She utilized a lot of gravel and dirt roads with few markings.

The car smelled stale. Brad couldn’t quite put a name on the smell, but he kept picturing french fries that had been fried in rancid oil. His stomach flipped as he imagined shrimp left out in the sun. Even opening the windows didn’t seem to help much.

“Are we going the right way?” Lisa asked Robby, in a whisper. They were packed into the back seat. Robby was in the middle, and Brad was on the far left. Brad’s neck hurt from leaning forward to try to see where they were going.

To Lisa’s question, Robby only shrugged.

“Would you just slow down a bit?” Pete asked. “Some of these roads don’t go anywhere, you know. They just come to a dead end on the side of a mountain.”

“I’m sure they’ll be marked,” Romie said. She barely slowed as she steered around a sharp curve and lined the car up with a narrow bridge.

As far as he could tell, Brad was the only one looking out to make sure they didn’t cross any of the killer liquid. He hadn’t seen any yet.

“Wait,” Pete said, looking up from his map. “Did that say Woodford Road? Shit! Go back and take a right.”

Brad was surprised when the vehicle slowed. He couldn’t believe that Romie was actually taking a suggestion on their route. She turned around and stopped with the headlights pointed down the intersecting road.

“I think you’re right,” she said. “That road follows the creek.”

She pulled down Woodford Road and brought the vehicle back up to speed. This was a much better stretch of asphalt. The center line was clear, and the potholes could be avoided. Brad noticed Lisa relax, now that they weren’t being jarred upright by the bumpy road.

“Deer,” Robby said.
 

Brad was thrown forward against his seatbelt as Romie screeched to a stop. She must have seen the animal at the same time as Robby.

“Where? I don’t…” Lisa said. She angled her head to see around Romie.

They all watched the doe. She stepped carefully from the brush to the side of the road, keeping an eye on the car. She bent down and nibbled at the vegetation. The light inside the glove compartment came on when Pete opened it and took out the gun stashed there.

“Don’t you dare,” Lisa said. “She could be a mother.”

“No,” Robby said. “She’s not.”

“You don’t know,” Lisa said. “You’re not going to shoot the first living thing we’ve seen in a month.”

“How long has it been since you’ve had fresh meat?” Pete whispered.

“I don’t care,” Lisa said.

“It would go to waste,” Romie said. “We couldn’t eat all of her, and we don’t have a refrigerator.”

“I could salt it,” Pete said. The desire in his voice was already turning to melancholy. He sensed he was outnumbered. The gun clunked on to the dashboard.