Hot Zone (21 page)

“Thank you,” she said, looking back over her shoulder towards the woods. “Uh, would it be terrible of me to ask you to drive back with Ryan? I think I want to stay here a bit.”

“Sure. Let me know about the food and shelter ideas. And do you want me to tell people, or do you want to do it, or keep it quiet for now?”

“I think I’d like to tell them. Uh, can I have a day or two? Then I’ll come back and grab a shower and let them know. Let’s say after dinner tomorrow. Can you get some of the house people together?”

“I can and will.” I knew Ryan might wet his pants, but I leaned forward and hugged her. “Take care Pewter. And don’t turn up your nose at love, even though it didn’t come in a tidy little package.”

“Thanks Lammie, but you might want to consider your own advice and apply it to your own situation. Sure, weird crap happens these days, but we should grab what happiness we can, right? Think about it.” She opened the door, and I made her wait while I pulled off the hoodie I was wearing over a t-shirt and tossed it to her. “I’ll see you tomorrow evening,” she called as she jogged towards the woods, pulling the hoodie on as she went. I got out of the car, leaving the keys in it, and went back to Brian’s car. By the time I looked at the woods, Pewter had already disappeared.

Chapter 14: Little Jacob

The meeting with Pewter and Fred, Karen (Oh gosh, isn’t Gabriel perfect?), Tucker, Meri, Phil, Granny, Mark, Zack, Jeanette, Evan, Randy and I went pretty well. I should add that Jacob was also present, but he didn’t do much except urp every once in a while. I’m not sure how much that baby actually drank, but he must have spit up at least a gallon of formula/stomach gunk a day. I was all for measuring both liquids because I had a sneaking suspicion that he was somehow manufacturing his own liquids somewhere inside him. Okay, that was probably just me being strange, but seriously, the kid was the spit-up king.

Everyone was very understanding about Pewter and Chris, at least on the surface, and they all agreed that Pewter should do whatever she needed to do and we’d help. I could see Tucker’s brain working as he considered what we could do with someone who could call animals, some of them, anyway. The big stunner, at least for me, was when Granny said casually to me, “Couldn’t your friend ask her runner boyfriend about your mom and dad? The groups keep in touch with each other, don’t they? Maybe they know each other.”

I stared at her for one short moment before turning to give Tucker an accusatory glare. If I’d wanted the suspicion that Dad was a runner floating around, I’d have told everyone myself. I really hadn’t dealt with it yet, so I couldn’t tell anyone. I had some major hero worship going with my dad, and I just couldn’t
think of him running around dirty and mute. It did help that I had met Chris and could see him and the other runners in a different light, but I just wasn’t ready to have it public knowledge. Maybe I felt like I was protecting Dad’s image in the town.

Tucker frowned at Granny. “What makes you think her dad’s a runner?”

Phil was looking at me, and then turned and watched Granny carefully, looking at her rather than listening.

Granny said airily, “Oh, Fred told me.”

Several pairs of eyes turned to Fred who immediately shook his head and put up his hands. “I have no idea what she’s talking about. The real question is why is anyone listening to her? Is she right?”

I realized we should have all just blown it off, and that might have been the end of it. Now we had reacted so obviously that everyone there knew something was up.

Granny swatted the air. “No, not him
.
Fred Senior, his father.”

Now Fred was looking at her. “Dad’s gone.”

Granny laughed gaily. “Of course he is. I didn’t say he was alive when he told me.”

I could see the group was beginning to roll their eyes and dismiss Granny until Phil caught everyone’s attention with her next words. “A ghost,” she said, nodding.

Granny nodded and tickled Jacob’s toes. He gave her a gummy grin.

I looked at Phil, but she didn’t look in the least as if she were kidding. “A ghost?” I asked her.

“I have been seeing spirits ever since I got sick,” she said matter-of-factly. “They wander around often. On TV they’re sort of hard to see, but I can still usually make them out.”

Karen’s eyes were wide. She grabbed Tucker’s arm and said, “Is she serious? Ghosts?” Apparently her mind reading was on the blink right now.

Tucker shrugged and patted her back, comforting her. That made me uncomfortable. Maybe it was that I wasn’t a big fan of Karen’s since her meeting with Gabriel.

Meri said to Phil, “Are there any here now?”

“Yep,” Phil said. She began to point. “One over there by the TV, two outside on the deck. They usually stay outside. I don’t know why.”

Tucker turned to Phil. “Is there a reason you didn’t mention this before now?”

Phil looked surprised at the question. “Should I have?”

I looked over at Pewter, who looked a little bored and kept glancing towards the doors. It was full dark now. “Pewter, do you want to leave? Is it safe?”

She stood and gestured for me to follow her. “It’s safe enough. He was going to stay near here anyway.”

“And it’s going okay?” I worried about her outside at night, and really, just all the time. There were some bad people out there.

“No, I’m safe enough. I uh … well.” She lowered her voice some more. “I could ask Chris about your mom and dad.”

I sighed. I guess the cat was out of the bag now. “Okay. I don’t know if one or both of them went runner, but if he knows anything …” I shrugged. “They were a long way from here when it happened.”

“Won’t hurt to ask. Also, Chris says there is a group of men who plan to come here to the house. Don’t ask me how he finds out these things. I got the idea they weren’t coming to bring you frankincense and myrrh. Be careful the next few nights, okay? We’re going to stay away from here for a bit. Chris thinks you or one of the others might get nervous and start shooting and hit one of them.”

“Great. Okay, I’ll tell the guards. Did he know what they did want?”

“No, I didn’t get any more than that. Sorry,” she shrugged.

“But you’re okay? And happy?” I persisted, thinking she hadn’t really answered that question.

She nodded, a little shy. I had seen Pewter with just about every emotion there was, but I don’t think I’d ever seen her be shy. “I feel like my world completely changed the minute he walked into it. He’s … well, I’m sure I’d gush, and I figure you wouldn’t like that.”

I smiled, truly happy for her. “I’m glad.” I pretended to think. “Some people have all the luck. I mean, who else can just mentally call her guy out of the woods? You never cease to amaze me.”

“Yes.” She put a hand on her hip. “I always knew I was too good for any normal guy.” She made a move to hug me, got the hairy eyeball from Tim, and sighed. “See you later, Lammie, my friend. You stay safe, and get happy if you can.”

“You stay safe too. Come back often, and let us know if there is any way we can help you or them, okay?”

I wandered back to the ghost conversation. Meri turned to me instantly. “Okay, to catch you up: Phil can see spirits, but she usually can’t understand what they say, and she usually doesn’t recognize them because they look different or something. Granny, on the other hand, says she can hear them sometimes, but only rarely sees them. Phil wants to work with Granny because if Granny can tell her what they’re saying, interpret if you will, then she might learn to understand them too.”

The whole subject of ghosts had mostly sidetracked everyone from my mom and dad. I didn’t try to remedy that. Instead, I said to Tim, who was hovering close by, “Hey, you probably want to be in on this.” It was funny that he looked surprised to be included. I had to often remind myself to be nice to Tim. I had an easier time being nice to Ryan and Nick, the other guard, than Tim. Don’t as me why. Tim came over and stood near me, looking expectant.

“So, Pewter—um, Tina told me that her mate told her there were men near here who want to come here to the house. I don’t know any more than that except he didn’t think they were here as a welcome wagon.”

Tucker frowned. “He didn’t say when?”

“I believe he thought it would be tonight or tomorrow night.”

Tucker looked at Tim, who seemed tense. “What is your current security?” Tim asked. He and Tucker were soon deep in discussion.

I, personally, was tired, and if we expected trouble, then I should sleep while I could. I’d spent most of the day talking to individuals and planning a meeting for Saturday to vote on the choice of joining with Gabriel. I was supposed to be back at the medical center Tuesday at 2:00, and figured Gabriel would want to see me before that.

Now that it had been a few days since I’d seen Gabriel, I was wondering if it was really as big of a deal as I’d made it out to be. I mean, sure, I was attracted to him, but was there more than that? I remembered how scared I’d been, and how sure I’d been then that he had felt the connection too, that he had been altered by the meeting as I had. Now I wondered if that had been wishful thinking on my part. I mean, if he had been so drawn to me, why hadn’t he called? Not that I wanted him to call, of course not. But that was the main reason I hadn’t insisted that Tim call him. I didn’t want to come off as needy or whatever. This was ridiculous. I wasn’t in middle school! I was shaking my head as I excused myself and went off to bed.

There was no trouble that night, and I got a good night’s sleep. The next day went quickly as we planned for the meeting, which was the following day. We were on edge that evening as we fully expected some kind of visit or problem. Tucker had organized a whole town alert, which seemed a good idea in case more fires were set or more looting or other attacks occurred. We’d had two more people move in with us, and it was getting obvious that until things were safer, we were going to have to consider getting a bigger place if we kept grouping like this. The only bigger place I could think of that might work and hadn’t been destroyed by the fire was Hillmen’s Hotel not far from the fire-ravaged area. This old hotel had been bought and renovated by some rich guy from New York. It had been finished three months ago, but there had been some problem with finances of the rich guy, or maybe he just hadn’t paid his bills. Either way, it had never been re-opened. It was undamaged by the recent fire and in good shape. Most of the rooms had a kitchenette, and there was a middle-sized dining room/restaurant on the lowest floor, along with a lobby and mini-theater. I decided that we should look it over tomorrow or the day after and consider whether we could start either a second group of people over there, or just move everyone there. Apparently I had no trouble now just moving into buildings that weren’t actually mine.

I was deeply asleep and it was Saturday morning early—a little after three AM, when a rough shaking of my shoulder awakened me. I had been dreaming I had hit a train and was being thrown all over the car. I woke up and saw the person shaking me was Meri.

“What is it? Are we under attack?”

Meri looked pale and worried. “No. It’s little Jacob. He’s sick.”

“What? Why wake me? I’m no doctor.” I felt groggy and confused.

“No, he’s really sick. He won’t even cry anymore. He just lies there. The baby book I have says we need to take him to the ER, only there is no ER. Fred is losing it. He thinks it’s the same illness we all got—from the bombs.”

I pushed back my hair and rubbed my face. “But why now? No one has gotten sick for a long time.”

“The book says that sometimes babies are immune to illnesses in their first few months. And honestly, I don’t know. Maybe it’s something else.” She bit her lip. “I’m afraid he’s going to die.”

This was one of those times I hated being in charge. I had no idea what to do and here was Meri waiting for me to tell her how to deal with this.
Okay
, I told myself.
Think
. Where was the closest working hospital? Well, that was an easy one. The only working hospital I knew of was in St. Paul, the same place I was supposed to go to on Tuesday to get poked and prodded. I made up my mind in an instant. I couldn’t just sit by and let him die. I looked at Meri. “I want to see him.”

She led me out to the main room, where at least ten people were huddled around Fred, who was holding little Jake. As soon as I saw him, I was worried. He was pale and rather limp and already looked like he was losing the battle. I said, “Let’s put him in the car and head to St. Paul.”

Fred kept watching little Jacob, rocking him a little. Tucker frowned. “How will that help?”

“I know they’re using the medical center there. I met a doctor when I was there last Tuesday.” I saw Tucker look askance at me and I knew he thought I was keeping something from him. Karen was holding his hand, and she brightened. “We could ask Tim to call Gabriel. He’d know what to do.”

I asked Ryan, my guard who was on tonight, to wake up Tim since he was the only one who was allowed to call Gabriel. I don’t know if he would let me or not, and hadn’t asked, but if Tim wouldn’t call him I was going anyway and hoping for the best. I couldn’t just sit by and watch the baby die. Not little Jakie.

Ryan didn’t argue as Nick would have, just ran off to get Tim. Soon they were both back, Tim looking more alert than he had a right to for someone who had just been asleep. I went over to him. “Okay, Tim, our little Jacob is very sick. Do you know of a hospital closer than St. Paul that could help him?”

Tim shook his head, glancing at the baby.

“Then get on your phone and call Dr. Si English. I want to talk to him.”

Tim looked unsure. “I don’t …”

I decided to bluster my way though. “Look, I didn’t ask you, I’m telling you. Get on your cell phone and call whoever you have to call to get to Si English.” As he took out the phone I thought I had him, but he shook his head.

“That’s not part of my instructions.”

I looked him in the eye and said in a hard voice, “Either call, give me the phone, or I’ll just get in the car and go anyway, waking up your precious Gabriel and anyone else I have to in order to get help for Jake.”