The Missing (23 page)

He squeezed her shoulder. She tried to turn, but her bum leg buckled. This time he didn’t catch her. She used the wall for support and slid down the side of it. Sparks radiated from her foot to her groin, all the way into her stomach. Her ankle hurt so much that she wished, for a moment, she could amputate it. “
Ooohhhh
.” She was crying. She couldn’t help it. The only thing that kept her from fainting was that it would mean leaving this luna- tic alone with her body.

At first she hardly noticed how close he’d gotten. Hardly noticed his hot, rotten breath until a bead of

sweat rolled down the side of his face. It dripped onto her cheek. His eyes got strange. The pupils dilated so they looked almost black. They shone, and inside them, she saw her own terrified reflection. It was getting closer. Its mouth opened into a silent scream. He was getting closer, too. “I love you,” he whispered.

She clenched her fists, and remembered what every Italian mother tells her daughter: Go for the balls, then the eyes. “Get out. Now. Don’t come back. I don’t love you. I never did. I don’t even like you,” she said.

The smell was worse. It wasn’t just his breath. His body was rotting.

“Go!” she shouted, and then she flinched, because her voice echoed throughout the library, and no one came running. She was alone here, with this predator, and now he knew it.

He was almost close enough to kiss her. She scooted in the opposite direction and her ankle twisted. “Oooshttt,” she cried out with closed eyes and gritted teeth. Sparks of pain ignited anew, and she shivered, as if strapped inside an electric chair. His breath was strong against her cheek. Then something wet. It couldn’t be, could it? The blood drained from her face and for a very short instant, her revulsion outweighed her pain.

Graham Nero ran his sandy tongue along her fore- head, and her cheek, and all the way down her chin, to her neck.
Where did I go wrong?
he asked, only it didn’t sound like him. It sounded like her father.

Then he was standing. He straightened his shirt, put on his sunglasses, pulled a tin of Altoids from his pocket, opened it, and emptied its entire contents into his mouth. “The woods, Meggie. Tonight. It can be nice or it can hurt. Don’t make me do it the hard way,” he called over his shoulder as he walked out.

As the saliva dried on her skin, she watched him get into his Porsche and pull away. She realized then what was wrong with the view out her window. Not once today had she seen any birds.

E I G H T E E N
‌

Bloody Carpet

I

t was mid-afternoon, and the sun’s rays were turning red. They shone through the newly colored leaves. Fenstad drove, but he didn’t notice any of it. Not even the fact that there was no traffic near the hospital, and hardly any of Corpus Christi was out enjoying the

pretty day.

He’d just come from Lila Schiffer’s hospital room, where he’d convinced her to sign self-commitment pa- pers. First Albert, now Lila. He was starting to take this personally. Lila’s blood alcohol had been three times the legal limit. In session she’d told him that she drank Robitussin infrequently, and only late at night. He knew now that wasn’t true. She drank all the time, and in front of the kids, and in doing so had damaged herself and everyone around her. He should have tried harder. He shouldn’t have been daydreaming about Meg Bonelli while people with real problems had sat across from his desk every week, begging for help. Maybe that was why he’d agreed to drive to Lois Larkin’s house even though the last time he’d seen a genuine house call, it had been on an episode of
Dr. Kildare
. He didn’t want to lose another patient. Well, that, and the hospital was a Petri dish full of mystery cough.

He’d learned through the grapevine that the feds were in town. This bug had spread fast enough to war- rant their notification by the hospital’s public health advocate, and since no one had determined whether its source was viral, bacterial, or chemical, the Centers for Disease Control and the Environmental Protection Agency were each conducting investigations. Right now scientists from both teams were interviewing the pa- tients clogging the emergency room halls, and measur- ing toxicity levels in the water, air, and public buildings. By the time Fenstad left the hospital, ambulances were being redirected to neighboring towns for two reasons: There wasn’t room for them in Corpus Christi, and the town might soon be under quarantine.

So far today seven patients had moved from the emer- gency room to the morgue. It had happened with stun- ning speed, and Fenstad was still reeling. Every one of them had suffocated—drowned in his own phlegm. He’d seen a boy Maddie’s age with black hair and a jaw sharp enough to cut glass coughing one second, and dead the next. He’d gone out smiling, like he’d wanted to reassure everyone that he was fine, please don’t worry, Mom and Dad.

Something broke loose inside him when he saw that grinning corpse that somebody had once called “son.” He thought of Maddie, and how he’d feel if she was gone. Like a hurricane had smashed the house he’d spent his whole life building. This mystery infection wasn’t Meg’s long-suffering ennui, or the slight social embarrassment of a gay son and a purple-haired daugh- ter, or even a lost job. This was serious.

He called Meg’s cell phone. As soon as she answered he told her, “Pull Maddie out of school, buy a few gallons of bottled water, and a HEPA filter and purifier from Target. I promised I’d stop by Lois Larkin’s house—I’m

afraid she might be suicidal, but after that I’m coming straight home.” Turned out she’d had a bad day at the li- brary and was already at the house watching the soaps. As soon as he told her how many people were sick, she was hobbling into the Saab to get Maddie. “We’ll be waiting. Take care of yourself. I love you,” she said.

Ten minutes later he was on the road, headed for Lois. Police cars and government sedans were parked at the top of the hill near the woods. They were still searching for James Walker, and rumors had spread at the hospital that a lot of other people were missing, too.

He wasn’t sure what it all meant. The bug caused chest congestion, light sensitivity, rash, foul breath, and if Lila was to be believed, it altered the personality. In less than two days, it had spread to at least twenty-five percent of the town, which meant either it was air- borne, or it had contaminated the water supply. So far no one had gotten better, and at least seven people had died. It didn’t look like a regular infection; it looked like immune response. Something got in their systems that their bodies recognized as an enemy, but couldn’t kill. White blood cells and oxidative damage inflamed organs and tissues at an accelerated rate. These caused the rash and lethally wet lungs, while the infection per- sisted unharmed. The same thing had happened during the 1918 influenza epidemic. Two million people died. In an obscene perversion of the natural order, the young and the women, whose metabolisms and immune re- sponses were the most reactive to foreign invaders, were the first to fall. A dread settled over him, because he remembered that in 1918, people had gone missing, too. Only they weren’t missing: Entire families expired overnight in their homes, and no one found them until the epidemic was over.

With luck the CDC would know more tonight. The

hospital or perhaps the government would issue a press release. If the news was bad, he and Meg needed to give some serious consideration to leaving town.

At the end of Micmac Street, he pulled his Escalade in front of the Larkins’ wooden ranch house. Its white paint was peeling, and the lawn was brown and short, as if someone had lit it on fire. On the front porch was a dead bluebird. Its head and half its chest were miss- ing, but its wings were still spread, as if captured in mid-flight.

He rang the bell and waited. It chimed the tune of “Michael Row the Boat Ashore, Hallelujah!” He wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to shiver. He rang the bell twice more while the chimes continued. To his relief, Jodi Larkin finally opened the door. She stepped aside without speaking, and he entered the house. The place was dark, and all the shades were drawn. Its furniture was frozen in 1980s gold-gilded wallpaper and worn velvet couches like a shrine to better times, or perhaps just younger ones. Jodi was a small, shriveled woman who reminded him of the photos he’d seen of dust bowl survivors from the Great Depression: mean and ugly.

“She hates the sun all the sudden,” Jodi whispered, as if Lois might hear. “Don’t ask me why. Miss Smarty Pants and all her pie-in-the-sky ideas, she never made any sense to me. And look where she wound up after all that school.”

“Where is she?” he asked.

Jodi nodded her head down the hall. “Her room. She’s been begging me to call you since the kid went missing, so she should be happy you’re here, but who knows. She’s not herself most of the time. I was think- ing you could give her something to calm her down.”

Jodi began walking. She favored her left hip, which

reminded him of Meg. He hoped that she and Maddie were safe at home.

Lois’s room was dark and damp. The wooden floor- boards groaned as he walked across them. Some of them were loose. The place smelled like the sickly-sweet baby’s breath flowers from a funeral. In a few strides he reached the window and pulled open the blinds, which reminded him of Maddie for a second:
Rise and shine, munchkin
. It reminded him of his mother, Sara, too.

“Shut the blinds, Dr. Wintrob,” Lois said. Her voice was gravelly, and she held a slender hand over her eyes to protect them from the late-afternoon glare. “The sun . . . It
hurts
.”

Tacked to her walls were two Brad Pitt posters. A pile of stuffed animals stood like sentries along her pink desk. The pink wallpaper was peeling, and her blankets were white eyelet that had faded over time into yellow. This was the room of a child, and yet she’d lived here for seven years since graduating from college.

He put his hand on her neck, where her lymph nodes had swollen like goiters. Her temperature was subnor- mal, and her hands were covered in the telltale rash. She’d been scratching, and her fingers were bleeding. One of her fingernails was missing, and the flesh there was bright pink. “Please, Mother,” Lois repeated. “It burns.”

Jodi shut the blinds so the room was dark and stag- nant. He caught himself holding his breath. This virus would be quite a present to bring home to his family to- night. Then again, if this thing was airborne, precau- tions wouldn’t make much difference. “How long have you been feeling this way?” he asked.

She wheezed her answer. It sounded more like breath with shapes than words. “Since the woods.”

“There’s a bad bug going around. You’ve definitely

got it.” He sat on the corner of her bed and felt her pulse. It was slow and thick. Her breath smelled like offal, and he thought for some illogical reason of the bird on the stoop. What had she been eating, to smell this bad?

Jodi fluffed the pillow behind Lois’s head. Then she felt Lois’s forehead with her lips. He’d seen this before. The enabler and the enabled switch places. It confirms their relationship, and binds them more tightly together, like an oath sealed in blood.

After her failed engagement to Ronnie Koehler, Lois had been considering leaving town. Now she spent her time watching afternoon game shows in bed. Albert, Lila, Lois, the kids in the morgue. He was losing them. One after the next, like ducks in a shooting rage. Pling, pling, pling.

“I’ve got to get my
TV Guide
. Season premieres start this week,” Jodi announced. “I’ll be right back.”

After she left the room Fenstad said, “You’ve had some bad luck.”

“Yeth.” she said. Then she started coughing. The phlegm left a trail between her lips and her bedsheets. He handed her the box of Kleenex at her bedside. She breathed out fast when she took it, and her breath al- most initiated his gag reflex. He swallowed fast to keep from retching, and thought again about the bird.

“A lot of people have this, so I don’t think you should go to the hospital. You won’t get any decent attention. But the second your breathing gets worse, don’t tell your mother. I don’t trust her to make a smart decision. Dial nine-one-one.”

She nodded, and he knew she would heed his advice. She was a sensible girl, with the exception of the com- pany she kept. She reached out her hand, and he took it. A small, guilt-filled voice told him that he needed to

leave here—she was infected, and now he might get in- fected, too. He might bring this home to the women. He silenced that voice. They didn’t pay him three hun- dred thousand dollars a year to abandon the people who needed him most.

Lois was cold, so he folded her palm into a fist and rubbed. He liked her a lot. Every time she came in for therapy, he hoped she’d stand up during a session and realize what he’d known all along: She was lovely in every way.

“I need your help,” Lois breathed. He saw that her eyes were wet. “In the woods. Tim Carroll found me. Did he tell anyone what he saw?”

Fenstad shrugged. He’d heard she was hysterical, but that was all.

She smiled wryly. He didn’t like that smile. It looked like defeat. “Then he didn’t tell anyone. He’s thuch a gentleman. I wonder how they didn’t notice the ani- mals. I guess they didn’t want to thee them . . . I ate the dirt out there. The dirt was full of blood. James’s blood. And thomething else, too. Something’s inthide me now. At night I don’t even lisp . . .”

Her tone was flat and her lisp was indeed less pro- nounced. Autohypnosis, perhaps. It was understand- able. Under extreme stress, otherwise ordinary people crumbled. Like buildings, they toppled in unpredictable ways.

“How do you know you ate blood?” he asked.

A tear ran down her face but she didn’t break down. “Because it tasted tho good.”

Fenstad let out his breath. This was worse than he’d guessed. This was hospitalization bad. Maybe even schizophrenic-break bad.

“I would have eaten the toe, too. Thath why I screamed. Because I was hungry for it.”

He tried to conceal his shock. It wasn’t easy. “What toe?”