The Winslow Incident (24 page)

But one-armed, she couldn’t drive
the Jeep, and she couldn’t think of any vehicle around town she could manage. She
racked her brain,
Who has an automatic?

The creek beside her answered with
a useless roar, telling her all it knew about high water after the wet spring,
but nothing about transmissions.

Then she realized that even if she
found an automatic to borrow, it was unlikely she could handle the sharp curves
of the pass using only one hand to steer. Defeated, before she’d even turned
the key.

She glanced up at the towering
pines, their branches like the spokes of enormous wheels, and wished she could
fly away instead, skip the pass altogether.
Because everyone’s in a bad way
so we need help and Simmons is worse than no help.

“He’s a fucking lunatic,” she told
the trees.

She crunched down the trail and
thought about Old Pete saying that they have to assume it’s contagious, and
figured if she was going to get it, she would’ve gotten it by now. From what
little she’d gleaned out of the lessons Gus Bolinger had taught on European and
early American history, it seemed to her that when contagious disease sweeps
through a town, not every citizen falls to the fever—some are spared to
change soiled sheets and swab sweating brows.

Hazel swabbed her own sweating
brow with the hem of her tank top.

If it isn’t food poisoning
,
she wondered,
what is it?
What’s making
everybody climb out of their skulls?
She looked to the blank sky, hoping a few
answers might fall from it.

Only it wasn’t everybody. Not her,
at least not yet. And Samuel Adair wasn’t sick, or her grandmother. Certainly
Kenny Clark seemed in fine form yesterday, almost running over Jinx and telling
her the dog wouldn’t be so lucky next time.
And he wasn’t
, she thought
with renewed anguish.

There was no question Jinx was
injured; now she could only pray that his injuries weren’t fatal. After the
crash, she’d scraped herself up off Loop-Loop Road and gone to him. “It’s only
a bad dream, boy,” she’d sobbed to the unconscious dog—the same soothing words
she always whispered whenever he twitched in his sleep. Unable to carry him,
she’d had no choice but to leave him there, but not before promising to come
back with help, not before begging her dog to please, please wake up from this
really, really bad dream.

The creek was rushing in the
opposite direction Hazel walked. It would’ve been nice to get in, rinse her
bloodied arm, cool off . . . but she felt that she needed to keep moving.

She wondered if Tanner had it. She
hadn’t seen him since he broke the mirror in the Mother Lode Saloon Saturday
night. Her Uncle Pard wasn’t sick either, or at least he hadn’t sounded like it
when he was yelling at her dad last night.

Something skittered in the ferns
beside the trail and Hazel jumped half a foot off the ground.

Just a bird. A bird. A stupid
little bird.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to
calm her thudding heart.
Get a grip.

She hurried down the path, her
mind racing ahead of her feet. Had any of the tourists who visited over the
weekend come down sick?
If it’s worse than food poisoning, then people will
go to the doctor, right?
Maybe somebody would figure out that they’d gotten
it in Winslow. Maybe somebody was on their way up right now.

I can’t count on it
, she conceded. Then she’d have to find someone who seemed
okay and get them to drive down to the valley. Samuel Adair, maybe.

If only she could just pick up a
cell phone like everyone else in the civilized world.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
she thought bitterly, glancing at the mountaintops that surrounded them on each
side.

Leaving the creek, she took the
path that led to the backyard of The Winslow, her elbow throbbing mercilessly
to the beat of her heart. When she reached the gazebo and heard a car turning
around in the driveway, she dashed around front.
Somebody’s driving
, she
thought.
That’s good.

Halfway down the stone steps, she
realized it was Kenny Clark, who must’ve noticed her in his rearview mirror
because he slammed on the brakes and the El Camino went sliding in the gravel
for a few feet. Then he backed up to where she now stood at the base of the
staircase.

“What the hell are you doing
here?” she yelled at the back of his head through the open rear window. Kenny’s
hair was light and curly tight and reminded her of cheap carpet. “This is
private property—didn’t you see the sign?”

He leaned his head out the side
window and gestured with his thumb toward the hotel. “You’d better get up there
with the rest of the sickos.”

“Screw you, Kenneth.”

“Whoa!” He opened his car door.
“Those are awful big words for a gal whose big boyfriend doesn’t seem to be
anywhere around for once.”

Glancing down, she spied a
nice-sized rock a couple of feet away. She picked it up with her good arm and
hoped that he made her use it.

“But then Sean Adair is really
just a big pussy.” He stepped out of the El Camino.

Kenny and Sean had gone at it
before, back when Sean was still scrawny and Kenny beat the crap out of him in
front of Cal’s Fish ’n Bait. Suddenly Hazel hated Kenny Clark more than she’d
ever hated anybody or anything in her entire life. She took three rage-filled
strides toward him, holding the rock behind her, ready to swing at his head.
C’mon
. . .

“Or should I say, Sean Adair is pussy-whipped?”
He was only four feet away now.

She didn’t care that he could come
over and flatten her with one punch or worse, tweak her wounded arm. All she
cared about was wiping that smirk off his face. “If you say one more word about
him, if you even say his
name
, I’ll smash this rock into your ugly
mouth.”

And Kenny must have believed her
because he backed off. That or he was scared she had the sickness and didn’t
want to get too close. Whichever, he couldn’t seem to come up with anything
else to say to her and he got back into his El Camino and gunned it down the
driveway.

She threw the rock after him but
her arm was tired from the weight of it so it just landed in the gravel with a
thud as she watched him tear down the drive and whip right onto Ruby Road.

Then she sank down to the driveway
and cried.

Cried because her elbow hurt like
hell and she was scared bone chips would travel her veins and lodge in her
heart. She cried for Jinx, her sweet dog who never deserved to be shot at or
have a motorcycle crash into his furry little body. She cried for her dad, who she
feared was losing his mind and his nerve and who knew if he’d ever find them
again. And she cried for Sean, who was sick and missing and she missed him and had
only herself to blame for that.

After a while she had nothing left
in her so she let out a shaky sigh, got to her feet, and headed for The
Winslow. Crossing the yard, she went around to the side kitchen door, the way
Sean always entered the hotel. Maybe she’d find him sitting at the kitchen
table, happy to see her, as though nothing had ever happened . . .

Instead, Sean’s father Samuel Adair
sat at the table drinking from a bottle of bourbon. Honey Adair had been busy
cooking; every pot and pan in the kitchen was in use. What looked to be pancake
batter coated the countertops, the floor, the copper hood above the stove.

“Has Sean come home?” Hazel asked
Honey.

Honey was concentrating on
something inside the kitchen sink. “Why won’t you cook?” she said, oblivious to
Hazel.

But Samuel was looking at Hazel
bleary-eyed. “If you see Sean, tell him to hightail it back here. His brother’s
been asking for him.”

Hazel suddenly felt afraid for the
small boy. “Where is Aaron?”

Samuel made a noise, “Blaah,” and
took back to his bottle.

“Whoops-a-daisy,” Honey said.

Hazel turned to see that she had
started a fire in the sink. Hazel dashed over and cranked on the tap, running
cold water over flaming newspaper, burnt bread, and melted butter. Gaping at
Honey, Hazel struggled to keep exasperation out of her voice. “What are you
doing?”

Blank-faced, Honey blinked at
Hazel. “Making toast.”

“Stop cooking, Honey, before you
burn the whole place down.” She took the matchbook from Honey’s hand and
glanced at the cover. Beneath a pig in a bib eating ribs, it read,
Stepstone BBQ Grill
.

Hazel shoved the matchbook into
her pocket and turned back to Samuel. “Now where’s Aaron?”

“Upstairs,” Samuel said.

“Upstairs? Alone?” Hazel longed to
smack Samuel upside his soggy head but instead shoved past him to the servants’
staircase.

She found Aaron in the Adairs’ quarters.
She could sense his fear as soon as she entered his bedroom. “It’s Hazel,
Aaron.”

He peeked out at her from beneath
his Seattle Seahawks bedspread. The bed was lumpy. When she pulled up the
spread on one side, she found Spiderman and X-Men action figures crowded in
with him. She sat on the edge of the bed and tugged down the covers enough to
see his face. Those expressive eyes, that soft brown hair—he looked so
much like his big brother that the mere sight of him made her heart ache
miserably.

She could barely make out his
amber irises because his pupils were so dilated. “You all right?” she asked.

He shook his head,
uh uh
.

“A lot of people are sick.” She
touched his cheek: burning hot. “Sean too.”

“I can’t keep inside,” he
whispered.

“You can’t keep inside what?”

“My body.”

Hazel gasped. Then she tried her
best not to sound spooked. “Where are you now?”

“Above my bed.”

She glanced up as if she might see
his spirit hovering there. “Well, okay, that’s not so bad,” she said as though
this were an ordinary occurrence.

“Before, I was outside,” he said.

“Outside your room?”

“Outside the hotel. All over the
place. I don’t want to go back—it scared me.”

“Did you see Sean out there?” she
asked and immediately questioned why she had.

“I can’t find him.” He looked as
sad as she felt. “I looked everywhere.”

“Me too.” After she struggled to
give Aaron a soothing smile, they shared a sigh.

“Should I go look again?” he
asked, his fever-flushed face screwed up in frustration.

She could tell he didn’t want to
go anywhere and suddenly she was terrified that if he went too far, he’d be unable
to find his way back. Whenever Sean finally returned, he’d ask,
Where’s my
little brother?
And she’d have to confess that she let Aaron float up and
over the mountaintop and now he’s lost to them forever . . . all they’re left
with is a shell of the boy.

“Listen to me, Aaron.” She shook
him harder than she meant to. “You have to get back in your body. Right now!”

“I’m so tired,” he said and looked
it, so she figured he wouldn’t stray far for a while.

Shoving aside Wolverine and
Cyclops, she eased onto the bed beside him.

It was then that Hazel realized she’d never known
what tired truly is. Positioned on her side so they’d both fit on the twin bed,
she laid her injured arm lightly across the boy’s chest to keep in his soul
while they both slept.

H
azel woke to music coming from the ground floor
of the hotel. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep but it must have been
a while because the light in the room was different.
It’s late morning now
,
she figured,
maybe noon.

She couldn’t bend her arm. At all.
And damn, did it hurt.

After she half-climbed, half-fell
out of the bed, she went down the hallway and into the Adairs’ pink tiled
bathroom, praying for something strong in the medicine cabinet. All she found
was orange baby aspirin. She chewed five and took two more back to Aaron’s room
where she roused him and made him take the tablets. Then she dragged a bean bag
chair over next to his bed, plopped down in a crunch of pellets, and tried to
come up with some sort of a plan.

Not a single thing came to her.

Nothing.

Aaron appeared to have fallen back
asleep, but his breathing was rapid and shallow.

She grabbed a small t-shirt slung
over the desk chair and held it up: lime green with a caped and toothy vampire
climbing out of his purple Chevy van. A single word was emblazoned beneath his
pointy-booted feet:
Vanpire
.

Pulling the collar over her head,
she eased her damaged arm through one sleeve and pulled the rest of the shirt
around her arm to create a sling. It would help, she hoped, but for the moment she
longed to scream from the tender agony of having jarred her miserable elbow. To
keep herself from crying out and waking Aaron, she squeezed her eyes and mouth
shut, digging her fingernails into the palm of her left hand and curling her
toes inside her tennis shoes.