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reminded her of what might have been.
Today, though, Mr. Brooks beat him to the news: "The doctor who's treating
the sick soldiers has come down with it himself. It's a shame he was brave to
stay with them."
"I haven't felt so good myself lately," Gran said. She was healthy as a
horse, but she couldn't stand to let anybody upstage her.
"Are they sick, or are they dead?" Mr. Snodgrass asked.
"At least one of them is dead," Justin said before Mr. Brooks could answer.
Beckie sent him a sharp look. He didn't sound nervous or scared, the way he
should have talking about something as nasty as germ warfare. He sounded
excited. His eyes glowed. He was thinking about something, all right. What?
Did Mr. Brooks notice? He didn't seem to. To Beckie, it stuck out like a sore
thumb.
"That's a terrible business," Mr. Snodgrass said. "TheseOhio people, you want
to hunt 'em with coon hounds and tree 'em and shoot 'em right out of the
blamed tree,is what you want to do." He didn't sound as if he was kidding.
Would he have felt the same way if his wife hadn't got sick and died? He might
have.Virginia was his state, andOhio was giving it a hard time.
"It's pretty bad, all right," Mr. Brooks said. "I don't like it that our
doctors haven't got a better handle on the disease by now."
Mr. Snodgrass' face had been angry. It went grim, which was scarier."I don't
like that, either, not even a little bit. What does it say about our state?
Only two things I can thinkof, and neither one of 'em is good. Maybe our
people are just asleep at the switch, and they'll get off the shilling and set
to work in a spell. That's bad enough, but the other choice is worse. Maybe
those Ohio, uh, so-and-so's" he nodded to Beckie before he said that, so it
would have been something juicier if she weren't around "really are smarter
than the best we've got. If they are, that means we're in deeper than anybody
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figured on when the war started."
"I hope not," Mr. Brooks said. "If people decide that's so, the consul won't
get reelected, and you can take that to the bank." ____"If it is so, he
shouldn't be," Mr. Snodgrass said. "They
oughtto ride him out of town on a rail instead."
Listening to older people going on aboutVirginia politics was the last thing
Beckie wanted to do. At least getting hit by a shell was a quick end a lot
quicker than getting bored to death. Any second now, Gran would jump in, and
Beckie already knew all her opinions by heart. Gran's politics were a little
to the right of Attila the Hun's.
"You want a fizz, Justin?" Beckie asked. "We can talk about stuff outside."
She was still mad at him how couldn't she be, when he was hiding things from
her? but talking with him had to be more interesting than what was happening
in here.
His face lit up. "Sure!" Did he think she'd forgiven him already? If he did,
he was dumber than she thought he was.
Going into the kitchen sobered her. Mr. Snodgrass had naileda plywood square
to the outside of the house to keep the bugs out and the air conditioning in
till he could get proper repairs made. Every time Beckie saw the hole that
square patched, she remembered the dreadful day she almost died. If not for
Justin, she might have. She couldn't very well forget that, even if she was
mad at him.
The half-roofed trench in the back yard was sobering, too. The cold fizz can
felt wonderful against her blistered palm. Of all the things she'd never
imagined herself doing, digging like a mole stood pretty high on the list.
"How you doing?"Justin asked her, maybe a little too casually.
"Fair to partly cloudy," she answered, which made him blink till he figured
it out. She went on, "You've got something on your mind something pretty big,
I think. Can you tell me what it is?"
He looked alarmed. "How did you know? Uh, I mean, I do?"
She laughed at him. "Yeah, you do. And I know 'cause it's written all over
your face. C'mon.Spill."
If he tried to deny it, she intended to push him into the trench and then
maybe bury him in it. You could lie some, but you couldn't lie that much. He
thought about it she could tell. But then he must have decided it wouldn't
work. He spoke in a low voice, to make sure nobody inside could hear: "I think
I know how to get back toCharleston and make sure my mom's all right."
"Oh, yeah?How?"Beckie asked. He told her. She stared at him in admiration
mixed with horror. "You're nuts!"
"I know," he answered, not without pride. "But I'm gonna try it anyhow."
Chapter Ten
THREE MINUTES AFTER four in the morning. That was what Justin's watch said as
he got out of bed and slid into a pair of jeans. In the other bed, Mr. Brooks
went on breathing smoothly and evenly. Justin tiptoed toward the door. If Mr.
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Brooks woke up and heard him go, the older man would stop him.
Don't let him hear you, then, Justin told himself. He opened the door and
unlocked it so he could close it quietly. He slipped out. The latch bolt still
clicked against the striker plate. Justin froze, waiting for Mr. Brooks to
jump up and yell,What was that? But the coin and stamp dealer went right on
sleeping.
The door to the room where the doctor had put Adrian and Millard stood open.
Justin knew why: the doctor was sick, too, and couldn't close it. Nobody
else certainly not the motel manager wanted to come near enough to take care
of it.
Justin's thought was, I haven't caught this thing yet, and I've had every
chance in the world. He hoped his immunity shots from the home timeline really
were good for something. Going in there was risky for him, but a lot less than
it would have been for other people. And he couldn't do what he wanted to do
what I need todo, was the way he put it to himself without taking the risk.
Except for a distant barking dog and an even more distant whip-poor-will,
everything was quiet. Quiet as the grave, Justin thought, and wished like
anything he hadn't. He slipped into the motel room. Millard and the doctor
both lay unconscious, breathing harshly.Adrian wasn't breathing at all he'd
died the day before.
If he weren't more or less Justin's size, this scheme would have been
worthless. Since he was . . . Justin hadn't thought he was squeamish, but
stripping a dead body made his stomach twist. It also wasn't as easy as he'd
thought it would be, sinceAdrian had started to stiffen.
Pants and shirt and service cap fit well enough. Justin worried more when he
started putting onAdrian 's socks and shoes. He had big feet, and he was still
in trouble if the luckless soldier didn't. But the socks went on fine, and the
heavy combat boots were, if anything, too long and too wide. He laced them as
tight as he could. His feet still felt a bit floppy in them, but he could put
up with it.
One of the packs against the wall wasAdrian 's. So was one of the assault
rifles. When Justin slung on the pack with the longer straps, he gasped at how
heavy it was. It had to weigh thirty kilos, easy. Were these Virginians
soldiers or mules? The rifle added another four kilos or so. He'd thought he
was in pretty good shape. Trying to lug all this stuff around made him wonder.
Dawn was painting the eastern sky pink when he tramped out of the motel room.
From the outside, he was aVirginia soldier. On the inside, he felt half proud
of his own cleverness, half nervous about what happened next. If things went [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]