by sara12356
“That’s alright,” she said.
“What happened to your head?” he asked quietly. “What are those places?”
“I told you. It’s where the medicine goes.”
“What do you mean? What kind of medicine?”
She shrugged one shoulder, still laying on the other.
“Who does this to you?” he whispered, heartsick and stricken because he knew. Did your father do that, Alice? Oh, God, did that son of a bitch hurt you?
“Can I stay here with you, Andrew?” Alice asked. “Please?”
He nodded, slipping his hand against hers, squeezing her fingers gently. “Yes. Of course you can.” Raising his hips, he leaned forward and kissed her brow through her hair. “I promise, Alice. I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
****
“Oh, my God,” Dani gasped when he told her about the wound on Alice’s head, moved the girl’s hair aside so she could see for herself the grim evidence of past trepanning beneath the dark curls.
He’d fallen asleep like that, holding Alice’s hand as he sat beside the bed, resting his cheek against the crook of his elbow while the girl had dozed again, It wasn’t until Dani had knocked on the door that he roused.
“I brought you some supper,” she’d offered, looking somewhat sheepish as she’d held out a foil-covered plate between her hands. “It’s not very good. I’m not even exactly sure what it is. C Squad’s on KP tonight.”
The plate remained wrapped tight and untouched atop the TV set. “The poor thing,” Dani whispered, helping as he pulled the bedspread over, folding it in half so he could drape its warm folds over Alice’s diminutive form. “What are we going to do?”
Andrew met her gaze grimly. “We’re going to take her out of here. I’ve still got my backpack and you can get us some supplies. We’ll bundle her up in these blankets to keep her warm and take turns carrying her.”
“What? Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight—right now.” Even if the things he’d heard in the forest earlier, the people Alice had called the screamers were real, what choice did they have? “We can cut through the woods down to Highway 460 and head for the nearest town. If it’s not big enough for a hospital, it at least has to have a police station.”
“I can’t leave,” Dani said. “That’d be going AWOL. I could face desertion charges.”
“How? You wouldn’t be doing anything wrong, Dani.” He shoved his finger emphatically at the door. “Edward Moore’s been cutting holes in Alice’s skull for God only knows what sick fucking purpose. Major Prendick’s got to know about it. How could he not? And if he knows about it and he lets it happen, if he doesn’t do anything to stop it, then he’s just as sick and twisted and wrong as Moore is—and you have every right in the world to walk away.”
She looked at him, then down at the girl, visibly torn.
“Dani,” he pleaded. “Please. If Moore’s doing this to his own daughter, what’s he capable of doing to you? To any of us?”
Alice murmured in her sleep, burrowing more deeply beneath the folds of the comforter. At this soft, fluttering sound, Dani’s expression softened, and when she cut her gaze back to Andrew, she nodded. “Alright. Give me thirty minutes and I’ll be back.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
She was back, slapping urgently at his door, in less than ten.
“I need your help,” she told him, grabbing him by the arm, yanking him into the hallway. “It’s Thomas. He wasn’t at supper again tonight. I just thought he wasn’t feeling well again, but just now, he came to my room.”
“Is he alright?” Andrew asked, a stupid question considering he knew O’Malley wasn’t alright based on that frightened, frantic look in Dani’s eyes, the worry and fear that were both stark and apparent in her face.
“He’s burning up with fever. I need to get him to the infirmary. Will you help me? He won’t walk by himself, says it hurts too bad.” Her voice had grown strained, choked with tears. “I had to leave him on the floor in my bathroom. He fell down and he’s too heavy. I can’t lift him by myself.”
“Of course,” Andrew said. Closing the door behind him as quietly as possible so he wouldn’t disturb Alice, he hurried with Dani downstairs to the first floor.
Her bedroom was smaller than Andrew’s by at least half the diameter, furnished in equally Spartan fashion, but she’d brightened it as best she’d been able with photographs of her children and a variety of colorful drawings and paintings, rendered in marker, crayon and acrylic on sheets of construction paper she’d taped to the walls. She’d been in the process of packing when O’Malley had come to her door. He saw a large duffel bag open on her bed, a loose assortment of clothes surrounding it.
“He’s in here.” Dani rushed to the bathroom door, but when she reached for the light switch, a low voice groaned from the shadow-draped interior.
“Leave the light off.”
“Thomas, it’s me,” Dani said. “I’ve got Andrew Braddock with me. We’re going to get you over to the infirmary. It’s going to be okay.”
“Light…hurts my eyes,” O’Malley mumbled from inside, and past Dani, Andrew caught sight of him sprawled on the floor, half-upright, half-slumped against the wall, his legs splayed out in front of him. The smell of vomit struck him even before he got near the threshold.
“What’s wrong with him?” he whispered, shying back reflexively.
“I don’t know.” Seeming oblivious to the pungent odor, Dani went into the bathroom and knelt beside her friend.
“I got sick,” O’Malley croaked, sounding feeble and miserable.
“It’s okay,” she said.
“There’s puke on your floor.”
“It’s okay,” she said again.
“I’m sorry,” he moaned.
“Shut up, Thomas,” she said, then looked back at Andrew. “He can’t stand. He told me his legs hurt, his knees and ankles are all swollen. Can you help me?”
Andrew nodded, stepping into the narrow confines of the bathroom, blinking owlishly for a moment as his eyes adjusted to the gloom. He saw a thin puddle of vomit on the tiles near Dani’s feet. As he squatted on the other side, he drew back in reflexive surprise. Even in the dark, he could see O’Malley’s face shining with febrile sweat. His breathing sounded heavy and labored.
“Hey, Just-Andrew,” the Corporal croaked, managing a feeble smile. “Dani told me…you went out in the woods…looking for me today. Thanks. That…that was alright of you.”
“Well, hey, you know, I’m a nice guy.” Andrew tried to force a smile, a nonchalant tone to his voice.
“Yeah.” O’Malley nodded once. “She…told me that, too.”
“Let’s get you out of here,” Andrew said, slipping his arm around O’Malley’s back. “Lean on me. You think you can stand up?”
“I don’t know.” O’Malley grunted as Andrew pulled him into a more upright, seated position, allowing Dani to get her arm around him from the other side. “My legs…feel like they’re on fire.”
Dani cut a frightened look at Andrew. “On three?” he asked and she nodded. Andrew counted off, then they both gritted their teeth, struggling with O’Malley’s considerable and mostly dead-weight. They managed to get him on his feet, although it took them several tries. The effort to stand likewise exhausted O’Malley, and he leaned heavily against Andrew, his eyes rolling back into his skull, uttering a soft, breathless moan as his consciousness waned.
“Thomas?” Dani first tapped, then more vigorously slapped his cheek, trying to rouse him. “Thomas, wake up.”
“Help me get him to the bed,” Andrew said, struggling to keep his own feet underneath him while supporting O’Malley. Together, he and Dani wrestled the young man to her bed, and she shoved aside the duffel bag and clothes to clear space for him.
“Oh, my God,” Dani whispered, once they’d let O’Malley collapse against the bed spread. Now, beneath the fluorescent glow of her overhead lights, they could see the left side of his face and nec
k were covered in some kind of rash. Bright red welts, raised like poison ivy or hives and all but covered his cheek and forehead, encircling his left eye, swelling his eyelid shut.
She leaned over, pulling open his shirt, revealing more of the weal-like rash cutting thick splotches down his neck and chest. Golf-ball sized nodules had risen beneath his skin in places, following the contours of his ribcage, his abdomen and the back of his neck. The warning signs Andrew had seen plastered throughout the house of pain came immediately to mind:
CAUTION: BIOHAZARD
CANCER HAZARD
BIOSAFETY LEVEL 2
“That’s not Rocky Mountain spotted fever,” Andrew said. Drawing back from the bed, he wiped his hands fervently on his pant legs. “I don’t know what the hell he’s got, but it’s not that.”
“Will you stay with him?” she asked. “Just for a few minutes, until I can find Suzette?”
“Suzette?” Andrew blinked in bewildered surprise.
“She’s a doctor,” Dani said. “Look at Thomas. He needs medical attention.”
“Alright,” Andrew said, not because he particularly wanted to—because the only thing that might have made him more anxious than the prospect of exposure to anthrax, ebola or other weapons-grade germs was that of another confrontation with Suzette—but because Dani had asked it of him, pleaded for it.
“I’ll hurry, I promise.” Dani leaned over and stroked O’Malley’s close-cropped hair, speaking as much to him as to Andrew, even though the young corporal was pretty much incoherent now, oblivious to her.
Dani rushed from the room, leaving Andrew standing beside the bed, uncertain. Semi-lucid, O’Malley moaned weakly. Not only did his breathing sound strained, but Andrew realized it sounded moist, sodden somehow, like maybe when he’d vomited, he’d aspirated some of his own bile and now it churned and frothed with every labored inhalation.
“It’s going to be okay,” Andrew told him, feeling obliged to say something at least remotely comforting, if only for his own benefit.
O’Malley turned his head weakly to one side. As he did, a thin stream of frothy, pale foam dribbled out of his mouth, down his cheek and onto the bedspread.
“Oh, hey,” Andrew said, eyes widening in abrupt panic. He darted to the bathroom and grabbed the first towel he found. Rushing back into the bedroom, he crammed it against O’Malley’s mouth, trying to tuck it beneath his head without getting any of the vomit on his hand.
O’Malley groaned. This turned into a low, warbling croak, a nasty, visceral sort of belch, then he convulsed sharply on the bed, spitting out a sudden, thick spray of bile all over Andrew.
“Shit!” Andrew recoiled in disgust, holding his arms out impotently in the air, watching as more of that mucous-like emesis dripped from his now soaked sleeves. The front of his shirt clung to his chest, sopping and stinking. “Shit.”
O’Malley uttered another of those throaty cawing sounds, ending abruptly in a gulp as he spewed again, this time splattering Andrew’s shoes.
“Jesus,” Andrew said, seizing a waste can from across the room and shoving it unceremoniously beside the bed. “Here, man. Get it in this.” He tried to get his arm around O’Malley, the sour stink of stomach acid making his own gut roil. He could feel more of those weird, knot-like growths on the Corporal’s back through his shirt. What the hell are those, boils or something? Tumors?
“Lean over the side of the bed.” Grunting, he tried to lug O’Malley closer to the edge of the mattress. It was like trying to drag a fallen telephone pole out of the middle of the road. “Help me out here.”
When O’Malley hurled again, this time he hit the can, much to Andrew’s relief. He also seemed to emerge somewhat from the haze of semi-consciousness into which he’d lapsed, and he blinked up at Andrew, vomit hanging in dangling, thick strands from his chin, his eyes glassy and dazed.
“Hurts,” he groaned, spitting weakly, trying to dislodge those tenacious strings of phlegm.
“It’s alright.” Moved with sudden pity, Andrew pulled the towel loose from beneath him and tried to wipe his mouth. O’Malley’s skin felt like molten wax, blazing with heat, sticky with sweat and spattered bile. “Hang on.”
Andrew left the bedside, hurrying to the bathroom sink. Turning the cold tap open full blast, he stuffed the towel into the basin, letting it soak up the water. Carrying it, soaked and dripping between his hands, he returned to O’Malley, mopping his face with it.
“What’s…wrong with me?” O’Malley whimpered.
Andrew shook his head. “I don’t know.” He had a sudden, horrifying flashback in his mind—his sister Beth, lying in her hospital bed on the day she’d died. She’d had that same glazed look in her eyes, that frightened, helpless, hopeless sort of light.
Hey, Germ.
The door to Dani’s room flew open wide and she rushed in, followed closely by Suzette.
“He threw up again,” Andrew said, stupid and unnecessary, considering the smell was ripe and thick in the air, and he was still pretty much soaked from the chest down with puke. If he’d been expecting animosity from Suzette, he was surprised when instead, she was the portrait of consummate professionalism. Brushing past him without as much as a glance, she hurried to O’Malley’s bedside, rolling the younger man onto his back.
“Can you hear me, Corporal?” Suzette asked, leaning over. Using the pad of her thumb, she gently peeled back O’Malley’s eyelids, looking down into his eyes. “How long has he been unconscious?”
“Not long,” Dani said, shied near Andrew, her eyes enormous and glossy with tears. “He was awake when we got him out of the bathroom. He passed out right before we helped him into the bed.”
“He woke up a little bit before you got here,” Andrew said. “He told me he was hurting.”
“Look at his skin,” Dani said. “He’s got some kind of rash all down the left side of him, those bumps.”
“Erythema marginatum,” Suzette said. “It’s a type of skin inflammation, pretty characteristic of rheumatic fever.”
“Rheumatic fever?” Dani asked.
“He had it as a child,” Suzette said. “I talked to him earlier, when he first started feeling bad, and he told me. It can recur throughout your life once you’ve had it, an uncommon complication of a streptococcus infection. Strep throat.”
Andrew cut Dani a surprised and dubious glance. That’s caused by strep throat? he thought, staring back at the stricken Corporal. He hadn’t smelled any alcohol on Suzette’s breath—surprising in and of itself—but he wondered now if she wasn’t drunk after all, as crazy as her diagnosis sounded.
“Once you’ve had it, you’re prone to recurrences in adulthood,” Suzette said. “It’s rare, but it happens. I’d suspected this was the cause and gave him some antibiotics from the infirmary. I should have tried something more aggressive, stronger.”
She awarded Andrew a brief once-over. “The strain of streptococcus that can lead to rheumatic fever is contagious. You might want to change your clothes, take a shower.”
She said this with a brittle edge to her voice, the sort that clearly imparted she’d just as soon have him catch whatever ailment had affected O’Malley, if only so she could enjoy letting it go untreated.
To Dani, she added in a far more amiable tone, “Specialist Santoro, you’ll want to wash your hands, too, and see me later on. I’ll get you started on some preventive antibiotics, just in case.”
****
“I’m sorry,” Dani said to Andrew at the doorway to her room. Suzette had gone to the infirmary long enough to get a rolling stretcher, the sort carried in ambulances, and return with it in tow. Andrew and Dani had both helped drag O’Malley from the bed to the litter by grabbing handfuls of the bedclothes beneath him and using them as a rudimentary sling.
“These will need to be burned anyway,” Suzette had remarked of the sheets and comforter. “It’s all contaminated now. You two go get cleaned up.”
“I need to let Major Prendick know what�
�s going on,” Dani had said, but Suzette had shaken her head.
“I’ll take care of it. He’s still helping Moore search the grounds for Alice. I can handle things from here.”
“It’s alright.” In the corridor, Andrew reached up to caress Dani’s cheek, brush her hair back behind her ear, but realized he still had O’Malley’s vomit drying on his hand, sticky on his sleeve. With a wince, he dropped his hand again, moved to wipe it on his pants, realized these were soaked, too, and grimaced.
“I can’t leave,” Dani said. “Not now, not with Thomas so sick.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.” Her brows lifted. “I know what you said about Dr. Moore, what he’s doing to Alice, but I just can’t leave Thomas.”
“It’s alright,” he told her again.
“Let me see how he is in the morning,” she said. “If he’s stable enough to transport somewhere, it could be the excuse we need to smuggle Alice out of here.”
Andrew frowned, thoughtful. “I can’t keep her in my room for too much longer. Moore thinks she’s in the lab. Suzette said he’s tearing it apart looking for her. But sooner or later, he’ll check the barracks. You know the compound better than me. Is there someplace I can bring her for tonight? Someplace safe where Moore won’t think to look?”
Dani shook her head, then her eyes widened. “Wait a minute. There’s a bathroom in the back of the garage. It doubles as a storage closet, so it’s pretty big.” She shoved her hand into her pocket and he heard the jangle of metal on metal as she pulled out a small key ring. “It’s one of the only doors in the whole complex with a keyed lock.” With a wink, she added, “And I’ve got the only key.”
She dangled them in the air and when he held out his hand, she let them fall noisily into the basin of his palm.
“God, I love you.” He said this with a laugh, meaning it playfully, but the moment the words were out of his mouth, his smile faltered. He hadn’t said I love you to anyone since Lila. For some reason, though, instead of sounding foreign and strange as they lingered in the air between Andrew and Dani, they seemed right somehow.