Wormwood (25 page)

“No Shane,” Larry said.  “I’ll take you.  There’s no reason for me to stay.”

“I thought maybe… you know,” Shane shrugged.  “You might want to be with them.”

Larry looked down at the street, giving himself a moment to sort out his emotions.

“I was with them most of the night,” he finally said, and left it at that.

6

The door to the Sturling house was locked.

They’d done this the previous evening as a precaution against trespassers: locking all the doors and windows in the unoccupied houses.  Not because they feared someone might walk in and steal the television or the microwave oven (and with the electricity out, who would bother?), or the food and ammunition (they’d done that themselves), but because it was possible that someone passing by — or worse yet, a group of desperate strangers — might see the plywood reinforcements and decide to take up residence during the night.  Someone who wasn’t as neighborly as Keith and Naomi Sturling.  Someone who might dig in and take the rest of the street by force.

Of course, if they were that determined, a lock wouldn’t keep them out for long, but they would have to make some noise breaking in.  Then again, the city was full of unlocked houses… maybe the effort alone would persuade them to try something along the next block, something easier.

So once they’d collected the bodies for the pyre, they’d locked the houses up as tight as they could and hid the keys in a place where everyone in the cul-de-sac could find them.  Just in case.

Rudy felt the underside of the Sturling’s mailbox and found the square of duct tape hiding the house key.  He peeled it free and inserted it into the front door.

The house opened up its jaws, expelling a stale black odor.

“I’ll go through and open the garage,” Rudy volunteered.  He looked back at the two men huddled on the step behind him and when neither one spoke up or offered to accompany him, Rudy switched on his flashlight and stepped over the threshold.

The blood splashed over the walls and the carpeting had turned dark and corrupt during the night, though this time he made no attempt to follow it.  Instead, he strode purposefully across the living room, cut a corner off the dining room, walked straight through the kitchen and reached for a door that would take him two steps down to the concrete pad of the garage.  He did this in a matter of seconds, not wanting to linger in the house on his own, already sensing the memories gathering about him like ghosts, waiting for him to stop and look around.  The garage, by contrast, felt cleaner.  It smelled not of blood or stale abandonment, but of gasoline, rubber tires and dry grass clippings.

Rudy thought he saw something crouched down behind the tool bench, but when he turned his light toward it, it was only a barbeque, a kettle-shaped carapace standing in the corner on three thin legs.

The motorcycle was just where Shane said it would be: pushed to the back of the garage, dusty and dejected, as if no one bothered to ride it much anymore.  A Yamaha 350 with fat, knobby tires.

Naomi’s sporty little Mazda was parked in front of it, but with Keith’s pick-up out in the driveway, Rudy thought they’d be able to shift things around enough to free the bike without moving the car.

He walked to the overhead door and disengaged the lock.  The door itself was rigged to an electric opener and required some muscle to lift, but once he got it started, Shane and Larry were on the other side to help.

The first thing he saw when he stepped back into the daylight was the border collie, watching from the shadows across the street.

7

“These are the ones I want you to look for,” Pam said, handing Shane a list with half a dozen drugs spelled out in her careful hand.  “The one on the top, the Vancomycin,” she said, pointing, “is the antibiotic I need for your father.  It’s intramuscular, so I’m going to need syringes.  Pharmacies carry them for diabetics.  Bring back the biggest box you can comfortably fit in your backpack.”

“All right,” Shane agreed, frowning at the list, trying to sound out the names in his head.

“The three below it are also antibiotics.  The Keflex, Tequin and amoxicillin.”  She moved her finger to a second column.  “These are painkillers and anesthetics.  Morphine, lidocain, novocain.  Get everything off the list that you can, but the Vancomycin and morphine are the most important, and the syringes to inject them.  If you come back without syringes, the drugs will be of no use to us.  Do you understand that?”

Shane nodded.  “Yeah, I won’t forget.”  He folded the list and put it in his pocket.

She gazed at him for a long moment, until tears began to spill over her lashes.

“Mom,” he said, about to protest, but instead finding himself in a sudden and fierce embrace, as if she didn’t expect to see him again.  “I love you,” she told him, looking into his eyes, kissing his face.

“I love you too, Mom.”

“You’re not to take any chances,” she warned, reaching to brush away her tears.  “Get in and get out then get yourself back here as quick as you can.”

“I will.”

“I
won’t
lose the both of you,” she said vehemently, giving him one last kiss before letting go.

8

Shane went inside to say goodbye to his father and the shut-in stench of the bedroom almost knocked him flat.  He lit a match and touched it to the candle beside the bed.  His father lay shivering, his body sour with perspiration.

Don’t expect to make any sense out of what he says,
his mother had warned. 
He’s not fully conscious.  He may not even recognize you.

But Mike
had
recognized him.  Enough to reach out his good hand and tell him he was sorry they were going to miss the ball game.  He just didn’t have the strength to get out of bed.  Must be some sort of virus going around.

“That’s all right, Dad,” Shane said, thinking that the last baseball game his father had taken him to must have been at least five years ago, when he was eleven or twelve.  “You just stay here in bed and let Mom take care of you.  I’m going to ride into town with Mr. Hanna and see if I can get you some medicine.”

“You’re a good boy, Shane,” his father grinned, the hollow shadows spreading across his face.  “You’ve always been a good boy.”  The hand slipped away, back to the sweat-stained sheets, and his eyes closed.

Standing beside the bed, the candle flickering on the nightstand, Shane felt a terrible constriction in his throat as he watched his father struggle within the grip of his delirium.  His skin looked flushed, almost burning.

On impulse, Shane reached out and touched his forehead.

Mike Dawley’s eyes flew open and Shane jumped back, startled, his heart hammering, his fingertips felt blistered and numb, as if he’d just plugged into a bad electrical circuit.

His father was staring at him, watching him back away toward the door with an intensity that unnerved him.

Shane remembered the candle and walked back to the nightstand to blow it out.

The last image he had of his father was a grin, and then the room went dark.

He walked slowly to the door, arms out slightly, feeling his way.  There came a soft sound behind him: fingernails running down damp sheets.

His father’s soft laughter.  “Son?”

Shane hesitated, halfway across the room.  “Yeah Dad?”

“My fingers… I can feel them growing back.”

9

Larry kick-started the bike and nodded for Shane to climb on.

With the front end pointed toward Kennedy Street and the engine burning gasoline, the surviving members of Quail Street gathered around the departing pair and wished them luck.  Amid the final handshakes and embraces, farewells were exchanged and promises solemnly reaffirmed, yet there was a reluctance to let them go, a sense that the trip was fated to go badly.

Opposed to this was a gathering momentum, as if they could no more remain than hold back the sun, which was already climbing the eastern sky, scorching away the hours until nightfall.

Larry picked up his feet and the bike began to roll.

The wind brushed his face, warmed by the sun.

He glanced over his shoulder at his house, feeling it slip away like a stone off his chest.  He had a premonition that he would never set foot in it again.

It was, he decided, not an altogether unpleasant feeling.

10

As Rudy watched them go, he also wondered if he would ever see them again.  The odds, he supposed, were about a thousand to one.  He looked at Pam Dawley’s face, at the toll the night had taken on it, and wondered if there would be anything left for them to come back to.

Feeling depressed, he turned to shepherd his wife and children back toward the safety of the house, the buzz of the motorcycle distant, already fading into memory.

Perhaps Larry was right, he ruefully reflected.  All their plans and efforts…

Perhaps they were nothing but folly.

11

The plan, as it had originally been proposed, was for Shane and Larry to follow a route similar to that Rudy and the others had taken to 7-Eleven, along Kennedy down to where it met Valley View, then navigating that arterial past the former convenience mart to Long’s drugstore, six blocks further on 4
^th
.

This, however, was debated and discarded as too risky due to the densely populated neighborhoods they would have to pass through along the way, not to mention the large apartment complex directly across from the shopping center itself.

Long’s had always been convenient; it was where most of them had gone to have their prescriptions filled, but now it was likely a deathtrap, if not a burned-out cinder.

Pam had then suggested they take a right instead of a left at Kennedy and go west over the ridge and down the other side, where they could hook up with County Road 27 and then the old highway.  The land out that way was mostly ranches and farms, with only a few new housing developments clustered amid the empty pastures.

If they stuck to the outskirts and navigated around the congested streets of the city, there were any number of smaller drugstores they might reach.

Consulting the yellow pages, they found three that might prove relatively easy to access.  The first was the Medicine Shoppe in the Summertides shopping center on 27 next to the Summertides golf course.  A small pharmacy sandwiched between a hair salon and a pizza parlor; small but specialized, exceedingly well-stocked.

The shopping center itself was small and somewhat isolated.  Built in the early 60’s (at the same time as the golf course), it drew its lifeblood from the upscale RV park and condominiums which had sprung up around the fringes of the links.  Getting in and out would not be a problem.

The second option was Hoilman’s Drug in the tiny neighboring community of Brace, three or four miles further on.  Brace itself was little more than a bump on the old highway; a bump which just so happened to have a drive-in burger stand and a Mom and Pop grocery.  The drug store (also a Mom and Pop affair) clung like a concrete parasite to the side of the grocery store; not exactly promising — no one on Quail Street had ever found occasion to step inside — but once again, it was small and easy to approach.