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wheeled cart. Justin bit his lip harder. That was Irma, all right. And the men
taking care of her wore gas masks and orange rubber gloves.
Mr. Brooks and Justin both took half a step back before they knew they'd done
it. Justin laughed at himself, not that it was really funny. As if half a step
could make any difference in whether they came down with whatever it was.
"She always seemed fine," Mr. Brooks said. "I thought we were worrying over
nothing."
"I hoped we were worrying over nothing," Justin said. Amazing how changing one
word in a sentence could change the whole meaning.
Siren wailing, the ambulance zoomed away back up Highway 14 toward
Parkersburg. Justin and Mr. Brooks both watched and listened till the flashing
lights vanished in the distance and the siren dopplered away into silence.
Then the coin and stamp dealer kicked a pebble of his own. "Well, not much use
pretending we haven't been exposed," he said. "Now we see what happens next."
"Yeah." Justin didn't see what else he could say. He took his phone off his
belt. "I'd better let Mom know what's going on."
"She won't be happy," Mr. Brooks said.
"I'm not real happy myself," Justin said. "I'm especially not real happy
'cause we're stuck here." Any of the locals who overheard him would think he
meant stuck in Elizabeth. And he did. But he also meant stuck in this whole
alternate. And he and Mr. Brooks were stuck, because no transposition chamber
would take them back to the home timeline, not with a genetically engineered
disease loose here.
He punched in Mom's number. The phone rang once, twice. "Hello?" Mom said.
"Hi. It's me."
"Hi, you. What's up?"
"An ambulance just took Irma the waitress away. She may have it." There.
Justin had said it. He waited for his mother to pitch a fit.
She just said, "Oh," in a strange, flat voice. Then she said, "I was hoping
you'd miss it in a little town where nothing ever happens. It's here in
Charleston, too."
"It is?" Justin said in dismay. But he wasn't only dismayed he was angry, too.
"They haven't said anything about it on TV or anything."
"They wouldn't," Mom answered. "They don't want to make people jump up and
down and worry or anything. But it's here, all right."
"That's ... too bad," Justin said, which would do for an understatement till a
bigger one came along. Mr. Brooks raised a questioning eyebrow. He pointed
south, toward Charleston. Justin nodded. The older man clapped a hand to his
forehead.
"Stay well, you hear me?" Mom said.
"I'll try." Justin didn't want to tell her that someone who'd come down with
it had been breathing into his face every morning for the past week. "You stay
well, too," he said. What kind of things was Mom not telling him? Did he
really want to know? He didn't think so.
"I'll do my best. The doctors say they're getting close to a cure." Mom
spoiled that by adding, "Of course, they've been saying the same thing since
it broke out, and there's no cure yet. Dummies." Anyone who overheard her
would think she was complaining that the local doctors weren't as smart as
they thought they were. And she was. But she was also complaining that they
knew less than their counterparts in the home timeline. She was right about
that, too.
Sometimes being right did you no good at all. This felt like one of those
times. "Love you, Mom," Justin said. Some things you didn't want to leave
unsaid, not when you might not get another chance to say them.
"Love you, too," she answered. "Be careful."
"Sure," he said. "You do the same."
They were both whistling in the dark. Justin knew it. No doubt his mother did,
too. They both did it anyhow, to make each other feel better. Justin didn't
feel much better. He hoped Mom did.
"It's really in Charleston?" Mr. Brooks asked as Justin put his phone away.
Page 40
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"Uh-huh." Justin nodded. No, he didn't feel very good about the way things
were going, not even a little bit. He glanced over at Mr. Brooks, hoping the
older man would do or say something to cheer him up.
Mr. Brooks was looking south, toward the city where he lived and worked. His
face usually wore a smile, but now his mouth was set in a thin, hard, grim
line. "A lot of nice people down there," he said. "Oh, plenty who aren't so
nice, too, but I can't think of anybody who deserves to come down with a
mutated virus."
Justin, by contrast, was looking around Elizabeth. By now, it was more
familiar to him than Charleston ever got the chance to be. "I can't think of
anybody here who does, either," he said. "Including you and me." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]