Nightmare (7 page)

Carole looked back at Delilah. She looked fine. She still seemed a bit aloof, and she was definitely curious about why she was being taken to the feed shed, but she
seemed healthy enough. She even paused to take a nibble of fresh grass.

“These flies, are they everywhere?” Carole asked.

“They’re not uncommon,” said Judy. “They tend to live in swampy areas, which is why stables in swampy areas and near wetlands are particularly susceptible. They are a summer insect, and this warm fall must have kept them around.”

“Pine Hollow isn’t near any swamps,” Carole said.

“Right, but Hedgerow Farms is,” Judy said. “It could also be that King Perry was infected during the summer and nobody knew or suspected it until he began to show symptoms. In rare cases, a horse can be infected long before any symptoms show up. In some cases, symptoms never show up. There are horses who are just carriers of the disease, like Typhoid Mary.”

“Who?” Carole asked.

“She was a woman who never got sick but managed to infect a lot of other people with a terrible disease. There was an epidemic all around her, and finally all the victims were traced to this one common source. They tested her and found she was a carrier but had no active symptoms.”

Carole led Delilah into the feed shed. It had been the original stable at Pine Hollow when Max’s grandfather had bought the place. There was room for three horses in it. Two of the stalls were filled with bags of grains, and the loft had a supply of hay and wood shavings. Because
the feed was kept there, it was especially important to keep the place free of insects and rodents. That made it a particularly good place for Delilah to wait out her quarantine. She’d be isolated. Unlike those on the stable, the doors on the feed shed were screened and generally shut. She’d be protected, and so would the other horses.

Carole cross-tied Delilah in the shed’s small open area so that Judy could give her a physical exam and draw the blood sample. While Judy began checking the mare, Carole put fresh wood shavings in the single open stall. She wanted Delilah’s temporary home to be extra nice. Delilah might enjoy peace and quiet, but it could be hard on her to be so isolated from her stablemates for forty-five days.

As she worked, Carole found her mind wandering to the larger possible consequences of King Perry’s death. She’d read about this disease. It was bad. Judy wasn’t telling the worst of it. Swamp fever had been known to sweep through entire stables. The thought took Carole’s breath away.

Judy removed her stethoscope from Delilah’s belly and spoke to Carole. “Now, don’t go and think about all the awful things that could happen.” Judy was clearly reading Carole’s mind—though Carole suspected the tears that had brimmed in her eyes when she considered what might happen to Starlight had given her away.

“The point is that Delilah has been back here less
than twenty-four hours. We don’t have a large tabanid population, particularly at this time of year. Delilah’s at risk, certainly. But most of the other horses really aren’t. We have to treat them as if they are at risk because it would be idiotic not to—and illegal as well—but I think their prospects are good. For now, Delilah isn’t showing any symptoms, so the blood test is really important. We have to be patient and responsible.”

Carole finished freshening the stall, added some hay to the feeder, and poured fresh water into a hanging bucket. Then she held Delilah’s halter and patted the mare while Judy completed her physical examination and drew the blood sample.

“She looks okay to me,” said Judy. “No symptoms at all. We’ll just have to send the blood to the lab and wait.”

“And cross our fingers?” Carole suggested.

“That too,” said Judy.

Carole unhitched the cross-ties and closed Delilah securely into her new temporary home. They both patted the mare and said good night before turning off the light and leaving, closing the door securely behind them.

“Not one fly is going to get in there!” Carole said.

“Good idea,” said Judy.

As they walked back to the main stable, Judy told Carole more about the disease and its consequences. None of the news sounded very good to Carole.

“First of all, it’s only transmitted by blood, nothing
else,” said Judy, “so the fact that she was mated to King Perry wouldn’t mean anything whatsoever, unless there were flies around. Next, it’s a disease that horses get, that’s why it’s called
equine
infectious anemia. People don’t get it at all. There is no danger whatsoever to humans—”

“Except maybe breaking their hearts,” Carole said.

“Yes, there’s that,” Judy agreed.

L
ISA
HEARD
C
AROLE
’
S
footsteps coming up the walk to the house and opened the door to welcome her home. It had been a long day, Carole’s first without her father there. It would be good for her to have a smiling face at the door.

But a smiling face wasn’t what Lisa got in return. “Carole! Are you okay?” she asked. “Is something wrong—your dad?” She barely whispered the last words.

“Is something wrong with Dad, too?” Carole asked, looking even more alarmed, if that was possible.

“No, no, nothing at all. But what do you mean, ‘too’? What
is
wrong?”

Carole walked through the door, greeting Lisa’s parents absently as she walked past the den to the stairs.

“It’s at Pine Hollow,” Carole said. “I wish I’d never answered the phone.”

“What are you talking about?” Lisa asked.

Carole went into her temporary bedroom, dropped her book bag and her riding clothes bag on the bed, then flopped down on it herself.

“Oh, Lisa,” she began, and then she told her friend about everything that had happened—from the phone call until she’d left Pine Hollow.

“So now Judy has all the blood samples and she’s taken them to the lab,” Carole concluded. “She says it’ll be two to four days until we know anything. Of course, since Delilah got back so recently, she couldn’t have infected any of the other horses at Pine Hollow yet—or, I mean, she could have infected them, but if she did, it wouldn’t show up in their blood tests yet. But what if it wasn’t just King Perry who has it and there’s a lot of it around and, and …?” She couldn’t even go on.

Lisa felt every bit as bad as Carole did, but she wasn’t also feeling the stress of her father’s departure, a super-early morning, and a frantic afternoon. She was simply calmer than Carole was.

“Take it easy, Carole,” she said, sitting down on the bed next to Carole. Idly she began rubbing her friend’s back to comfort her. “This disease isn’t all that common, although it is deadly and has to be taken seriously.”

“Easy? How can I? Do you know what they do to
horses that test positive for it? I mean horses that have the disease or carry it—like Typhoid Mary?”

“Sure, they isolate them,” Lisa said.

“For
life
,” Carole said. “They have to spend the rest of their lives away from every other horse, whether they are showing symptoms or not, covered by nets so they can’t spread it. That is if they’re lucky. Most of the time, if they test positive for it, a kind owner or a compassionate vet will have the horse put down, euthanized,
killed.
” She spat out the last word, and it was followed by a gush of tears. “And what if Delilah has it? That tiny foal will never be born!” she said through her sobs.

It would be awful if Delilah was sick with swamp fever and died as King Perry had. But if she’d infected other horses at Pine Hollow …? That could mean the end of Pine Hollow as they knew it. No, it couldn’t be. She couldn’t even think about it.

“Carole,” Lisa said, trying to sound calm even though she was worried, too. “It just doesn’t make sense that any of the other horses would be infected now. You said that it’s really late in the season for tabanid flies, and Delilah’s only just returned. It’s going to be okay.”

Carole took the tissue Lisa handed her. She tried to stop crying and calm herself down. Lisa was a friend, a good one, a logical, cool-thinking one. She was right. It wasn’t sensible to assume that all the horses at Pine Hollow were going to be infected. It didn’t even make a lot of sense to assume that Delilah was going to be infected.
Judy had looked her over. She hadn’t seen anything. Delilah was fine.

And then Carole remembered the carrots. Delilah didn’t want carrots. Delilah always wanted carrots. She’d never refused them, even when she’d just eaten her breakfast.
Carrots.
No, Carole couldn’t think about that now.

Mrs. Atwood called up the stairs then. “Carole, dear, it’s that nice Sergeant Fowler on the phone for you.”

They hadn’t even heard the phone ring.

Her father. How could she be worried about horses when she should be worried about her father? What did Sergeant Fowler know? How could there be news already? Was it bad?

“Carole, pick up the phone and ask her, will you?” Lisa prodded her. Carole hadn’t even realized she’d been talking out loud.

“Hi?” she said tentatively into the phone.

“Oh, Carole, it’s Sergeant Fowler calling. I just wanted to let you know that I had a fax from your father already. He’s doing just fine and asked me to let you know that.” Carole sighed with relief. At least something was going right today. “They’ve arrived safely and have been deployed to their quarters,” Sergeant Fowler continued. Carole could almost see it. In her mind, he was in a bleak, pale, isolated desert. Thousands and thousands of soldiers were there, hunkering down in tents for the night. Outside, a sandstorm, camels fenced
into hastily assembled paddocks. Inside, her father, his computer with built-in fax machine, and nothing on his mind except for her. She smiled to herself. She loved him so much. And he felt the same way about her. He was the best dad in the world.

“And he wanted me to let you know that he really likes the place where he is,” Sergeant Fowler said. “In fact, he said that one day he hopes to take you there. That’s all for now, dear. I’ll let you know when I hear from him again.”

Carole hung up the phone and shared the message with Lisa.

“See, I told you he’d be fine,” she said.

“I guess,” Carole said. Then she wondered why her father wanted to take her to the desert. All that sand?
It must be sort of starkly beautiful
, she thought.
And then the oases are supposed to be great, interesting food, exotic markets, camels, and, of course, horses.
Arabians were bred for their stamina in the desert. Yes, that must be what her father knew she’d like about it—lots and lots of horses.

Mrs. Atwood’s voice came up the stairs again.

“Dinner’s ready, girls!”

“Oh no,” Carole said. “I didn’t do anything useful and I haven’t even showered!”

“No problem,” said Lisa. “For one thing, I helped with dinner and set the table, so you’re off the hook on that. For another, it’s corned beef and cabbage, and that stuff
has such a strong smell that Mom and Dad will never notice a little eau de horse on you. And for a third, we can do the dishes together, and just because you missed table-setting, I’ll make you dry and put away.”

Carole laughed. “Deal,” she said. “Only I still think I’ll wash up a tiny bit before I join the family. Can you delay a little?”

“No problem. I’ll go pour milk veeeeeeeery sloooooowly. You’ve got three minutes—okay?”

“Okay.”

Five minutes later, Carole joined the Atwoods at the dinner table, apologizing for keeping them waiting.

“It’s no problem, Carole,” Mrs. Atwood assured her. “I somewhat misjudged the doneness of the potatoes, so your timing actually turned out to be just about perfect.”

Mr. Atwood handed Carole a plate. “Lisa told us about the message from your dad. It sounds like everything is going fine there.”

“Yes, it does,” Carole agreed.

“But what’s this Lisa was telling me about the horses?” he asked.

“What’s wrong with the horses?” Mrs. Atwood asked.

“It’s a disease,” Carole began explaining.

“They’re sick?”

“Um, no—I mean, I don’t think so. What I really mean is that I hope not. Nobody’s sick except King Perry, but he isn’t sick anymore. Oh, I’d better begin at the beginning.”

Carole started to explain the whole thing, but it wasn’t easy because Mrs. Atwood kept interrupting. She was a kind woman and a loving mother, but she wasn’t a very good listener and had a nasty habit of jumping to conclusions.

“I’ll call Dr. Peterson right away,” she said, getting up from the table.

“What?” Lisa asked.

“Well, you girls will have to be tested, too. This is a deadly disease.”

“It’s a horse disease, Mom,” Lisa said. “People don’t get it.”

“But if people get bitten by the flies … and you children are so susceptible to all kinds of infections—”

“Its full name is equine infectious anemia,” Lisa explained slowly. “
Equine
means it’s a horse disease. People don’t get it.”

“I’ll call Dr. Peterson anyway,” said Mrs. Atwood.

“Why don’t you call Judy Barker first?” Carole suggested. “Perhaps she can explain it better than Lisa and I seem to be doing.”