"Thirty-five?" Alex said. He knew she was forty-two.
"No way, I'm almost forty. I had a kid once who could almost be your age now. Kid died, though."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
She swung the hammer. Bang. Wham. Clank clank dank. "Yeah, they say having a kid can keep your marriage alive, and it's really kinda true, because a kid gives you something to pay attention to, besides each other. But they never tell you that losing your kid can kill your marriage." Whack. Crunch. "Y'know, I was young and kind of stupid back then, and I used tofight with that guy a lot, but hell, I married him on purpose. We got along. And then our kid died. And we never got used to that. Not ever. It just murdered us. We couldn't stand the sight of each other, after that."
"What did your child die of?"
"Encephalitis."
"Really? My mom died of encephalitis."
"You're kidding. Which wave?"
"The epidemic of '25 was pretty bad in Houston."
"Oh, that was a late one, my little boy died in 2014. It was a State of Emergency thing."
Alex said nothing.
"Can you fetch me that big-ass vise grip over there?"
Alex pulled the coil of smart rope from his shoulder, put his gloved hand on it. The thin black rope slid out instantly across the bubblepak flooring, reared like a cobra, seized the end of the vise grip in its metal-collared noose, and lifted the tool into the air. It then swayed across the floor, the vise grip dangling gently from the noose, and hung the tool in midair, within her easy reach.
"Christ, you're getting good with that thing." Carol took the vise grip, with gingerly care. The rope whipped back to coil around Alex's shoulder.
"I've got something I need to tell you," Alex said.
She clamped the vise grip onto the bumper and put her back into twisting it. "I know that," she grunted. "And I'm waiting."
"Do you know Leo Mulcahey?"
Her hands froze on the vise grip and she looked up with eyes like a deer in headlights. "Oh hell."
"You do know him."
"Yeah. What about Leo?"
"Leo was here at camp yesterday. He came in a truck. He wanted to see Jerry, he said."
She stared at him. "What happened?"
"I sent him off with a flea in his ear; I wouldn't let him come in the camp. I said I would punch him out, and that there was a Trouper in the tents who would shoot him. He had a Ranger with him, that tracker guy who was here earlier. But I wouldn't let him in camp, either."
"Christ! Why?"
"Because Leo is evil. Leo's a spook, that's why."
"How do you know that bullshit?"
"Look, I just know he's a spook, okay?" Alex coughed, then lowered his voice. "Spook biz has this atmosphere, you get to where you can smell it." It had been a bad mistake to get excited. It felt as if something had peeled loose inside his chest.
"How did he look? Leo?"
"Very smooth. Very spooky."
"That's him all right. Very charming." Carol picked up her mallet, looked at it blankly, set it back down. "Y'know," she said slowly, "I like Greg. I like Greg a lot. But on the off-season, I don't hear word one from that guy. Not a phone call. Not even E-mail. He'll be off mountain climbing or shooting rapids or some fucking thing, and he never calls me, never." She was scowling. "That's why you need to be nicer to Janey. It's not like other Troupe romances; if you can call them romances, whatever the hell they are, when tornado freaks get together. But Jane really loves Jerry. She's loyal to him, she's good to him, she'd go through hell for Jerry. If I had a sister like that, and I was her brother, I'd try to look after my poor sister some, I'd try to help her be all tight."
Alex digested this strange speech, and reached the only possible conclusion. His throat was really starting to hurt.
"Are you telling me you've been fucking Leo?"
Carol stared at him, guilt written all over her face. "I hope I never hit you, Alex. Because you're not the kinda guy that I. could hit just once."
"It's okay," he said hoarsely. "I figured Leo must have some plant inside the camp. That's why I didn't tell anybody yet. I'm still trying to figure how to break the news to His Highness."
"You want me to tell Jerry about it?"
"Yeah. If you want to. That might be good." He drew a breath. "Tell Jerry that I wouldn't let Leo in camp, unless Jerry said it was okay first."
"You know what Leo is?" Carol said, slowly. "Leo is what Jerry would be, if Jerry wanted to hick with people's heads, instead of fucking with the whole universe."
"I don't know what Jerry is," Alex said. "I never saw anything like Jerry before. But Leo-you can ask any dope vaquero in Latin America about a guy like Leo, they all know what he is, and what he's doing. They may not know up here in Estados Unidos, but down in El Salvador they know, in Nicaragua they know, they all fuckin' know, it's not any secret to anybody." He broke into a fit of coughing.
"What the hell is with you, Alex? You look awful."
"That's the other part I have to tell you," Alex said. He began, haltingly, to explain.
By the time he finished, Carol had become quite pale.
"They call it a lung enema?" she said.
"Yeah. But it doesn't matter what they call it. The point is that it works, that it really helps me."
"Lemme see that jug."
With an effort, Alex hefted the plastic medical jug onto the workbench. Carol squinted at the red-on-white adhesive label.
"Palmitic acid," she read aloud, slowly. "Anionic lipids. Silicone surfactant. Phosphatidylglycerol
Jesus Christ, this is a witches' brew! And what's all this other shit down here, all this stuff in Spanish?"
"Isotherm of a PA/SP-B1-25m on a NAHCO3-buffered saline subphase," Alex translated swiftly. "It's just a Spanish-language repetition of the basic ingredients."
"And I'm supposed to put a tube down your throat and decant this stuff into you? And then hang you upside down?"
"That's pretty much the story, yeah."
"Sorry, no way.
"Carol, listen. I'm sick. I'm a lot sicker than anyone here realizes. I've got a major syndrome, and it's coming down on me hard right now. And unless you help me, or somebody helps me, I could die here, in real short order."
"Why don't you go back home?"
"They can't help me at home," Alex said simply. "All their money can't help me, nobody can fix what's wrong with me. Not that they didn't try. But it's not just encephalitis, or cholera, or one of those things that kill you quickly. I'm not that lucky. What I've got, it's one of those complicated things. Environmental. Genetic. Whatever. They've been patching me up since I was six days old. If I'd been born in any other time but now, I'd have died in my crib."
"Can't you get somebody else to do this fucking thing for you? Janey? Ed? Ellen Mae?"
"Yeah. Maybe. And I'll ask 'em, if I have to. But I don't want anybody else to know."
"Oh," Carol said. "Yeah, and I can see why not.. Y'know, Alex, I've been wondering why you've been hangin' out here with us. Anyone can tell that you and Janey don't get along for hell. And it ain'j because you like to play games with rope. It's because you're hiding. You're hiding something."
"Yeah, that's right," Alex told her. "I was hiding. I mean, not so much from those contrabandista medicos that I burned down in Nuevo Laredo-they're a tough outfit in their way, but hell, they don't really give a shit about me, they've got a line of no-hope suckers outside that clinica that's longer than the Rio Grande. I was hiding here from my own goddamn life. Not my life, but that thing that I do, that other people call living. I am real close to dead, Carol. It's not all in my head, I'm not making this up. I can't prove toyou what's wrong with me, but I know it's the truth, because I've lived in this body all my life, and I can feel it. There's not much left of me. No matter what anybody does, no matter how much money anybody spends, or how many drugs they pump into me, I don't think I'm gonna make twenty-two."
"Christ, Alex."
"I'm just
hiding up here because it's like-a different life. A realer life. I never do very much for the Troupe, because I just can't do much, I'm just too sick and too weak. But when I'm here with you people, I'm just some kid, I'm not just some dying kid." He stopped a moment, thinking hard. "But Carol, that's not all of it, either. I mean, that's what it was like at first, and it's all still true, but it's not the way I really feel anymore. You know what? I'm interested."
"Interested?"
"Yeah. Interested in the F-6. This big thing that's been hanging over us. I really believe in it now. I really know it's there! I know it's gonna really happen! And I really want to see it."
Carol sat down, heavily, on a folding camp stool. She put her head in her hands. Strong, wrinkled hands. When she looked up again, her face was wet with tears.
"You had to come pick on me, didn't you? You had to come tell me that you're dying."
"I'm sorry, Carol, but you're the only one here that I really trust."
"Because I've got a big soft heart, you little flicker. Because you know you can pick on me! Christ, this is just what I went through with Leo. No wonder you scoped him out so fast. Because there's not a dime's worth of difference between you and him."
"Yeah, except that he kills people, and I'm fucking dying! C'mon, Carol."
"We didn't kill anybody," Carol said bitterly. "All that structure-hit stuff-it's just killing things, is what it is. Leo knew. Hell, Leo was the best we ever had. You never saw us just mow people down, even though we could have done that real easily. We were just trying to kill the machineiy. 'Get rid of it. All that junk that had killed our world, y'know, the bulldozers and the coal plants and the logging machines and the smokestacks, the Goliath, the Monster, Behemoth, the Beast. It!" She shook herself, and wiped at her cheeks with the backs of her hands. "'Cause it was too late to stop it any other way, and we all knew damn well what was a ning to the world. . . . And if you think the Underground is all gone now, well, you got it wrong! They're not gone at all. Hell no, they're just real different now. They've got power now, a lot of 'em. They're actually in the government, what passes for the govermnent these days. Now they've got real power, not that hopeless pissant rebel shit with the Molotovs and the monkey wrenches and the builshit manifestos, I mean real power, real plans, terrible power, terrible plans. They're all people like him."
"Sorry.
"Guys like you, though ... you new kids, you hopeless little chickenshits . . . People will get used to anything, yeah, if they're young enough! People used to scream their heads off at the thought of dying of stupid slit like Th or cholera, now you don't even raise your voice, you just make it your own little secret, and you keep watching TV until you drop dead discreetly on the couch. People just put up with living in hell! They just ignore it all, and they're sure the world is always, always gonna get worse, and they don't ever wanna hear about it, and they're just grateful they're not in the relocation camp."
"I'm not giving up, Carol. I'm asking you to help me. Please help me."
"Look, I'm not a medic. I can't do anything like that. It's too awful, it's too much like it was in the camps."
"Carol," he grated, "I don't care about the weather camps. I don't care about your crazy Luddite friends. I know it was heavy then, and I know it was horrible then, hut I was only five years old then, and it's all history to me, it's dead history. I'm living in a cam p right now', this camp right now, and if I die in a camp I'll think that Cm lucky! I'm not gonna have any history. I'm not even gonna make it through another year! I just want to see this thing that's coming, that's all that I'm asking of you!" He leaned against the table, heavily. "Frankly, I kinda hope that the F-6 is gonna kill me. I kinda like that idea, it's worthwhile and it saves a lot of trouble all around. So now, if you'll just help me out here, I think I'm gonna be able to see it while I'm standing up on my own feet, that maybe I can pass for a human being while I'm busy getting killed. Will you help me please, Carol? Please!"
"All right. Stop crying."
"You started it."
"Yeah, I'm stupid." She stood up. "I cry. I have a big mouth, I have no operational discretion at all, and that's why I hang out here in the ass end of nowhere, instead of with a real life in some real city, where some good-looking male cop can wheedle it all out of me, and yank a bunch of former friends out of their condos and bust them all on a terror-and-sabotage rap. I'm a born sucker, I'm a real moron." She sighed. "Look, if we're gonna do this at all, let's get it over with quick before anybody sees us, because it's a really sick and twisted thing for me to do to you, and Greg has got a big jealous bone."
"Okay. Right. I get it. Thanks a lot." Alex wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
"And I want you to promise me something, Medicine Boy. I want you to promise to stop picking on your sister. She doesn't need any trouble out of a damned fool like you, she's a good person, she's an innocent person, she means well."
"Maybe," Alex said. "But she used to beat the shit out of me when we were kids. I have tapes of her trying to smother me to death with a pillow."
"What?"
"I was three, she was eight. I'd been coughing a lot, at the time. I think it got on her nerves."
Carol stared at him a long time, then rubbed her reddened eyes with her thumbs. "Well, you're just going to have to forgive her that."
"I forgive her, Carol. Sure. For your sake." Alex climbed up onto the workbench and lay down flat on his back. He pulled a narrow translucent hose from his jeans pocket and a flat packet of anesthetic paste. "Here, take this and screw it on that threading on the end of the jug."
"Wow, this jug is hot."
"Yeah, I kept it out in direct sun today, it's pretty damn close to blood heat."
"I can't believe we're actually doing this."
"My whole life is just like this." Alex tilted his head back and practiced relaxing his throat. "Do you have any idea how deep Jerry is into her? I mean, financially?"
"I think he's pretty much wiped her out, Alex. Not that he wants to do that, but he just doesn't care about anything except hacking storms."
"Well, don't tell anybody. But I've made Juanita my sole heir. I think that'll probably help the Troupe some. A lot, really."
Carol hesitated. "That was a pretty dumb thing to tell me. I'm a Trouper, too, y'know."
"It's all right. I want you to know."
"You really do trust me, don't you?"
"Carol, I think you're the only actually good person here. One of the few truly good people I've ever met. Thank you for helping me. Thank you for looking after me. You deserve to know what's going on, so I told you, that's all. I'm probably gonna pass out during this. Try not to worry too much."
He opened the packet of anesthetic paste, smeared it with his smart-gloved fingers over the nozzle of the tubing, and then, with a single gesture that took all the courage he had, deliberately shoved it down his own throat. He successfully avoided the back of his tongue, felt it fficker down his sore and swollen larynx, down through the beating center of his chest. He'd nerved himself to do this, maybe even to talk, but as the anesthetic kicked in. all the strength flew out of him like an exploding covey of quail, and left him empty and cold and sick.
Then the fluid came. Are you a good swimmer, Alex? It was cold. It was too cold, it was cold as death, cold as the red Laredo clay. A great rippling belch burst out of his lungs. He heaved for air, eyes bulging in panic, and felt a great interior tide of the stuff slide through his tubercles, a deadly, crazy, cold amoeba. His teeth clamped on the hose, he panicked, he sat upright. Liquid shifted inside him like a strong kick to a half-empty beer keg, and he began coughing convulsively.
Carol stood there with the jug still clutched in her arms, the picture of disgust and terror. Alex pulled the hose, pulled the hose, pulled the hose, like a hateful battle with some deadly tapeworm, and finally it came free, in a frothy spew. Carol jumped back as the jug kept siphoning, the hose trailing and spewing, and Alex kept coughing. His lungs felt like bloody foam r
ubber.
He stood up. He was extremely weak. But he was still conscious. He was half-full of lung-enema fluid, and he was still conscious. He was carrying the weight of it around inside him like some kind of obscene gestation.
He tried to talk, then. He faced Carol and moved his mouth and a sound came out of him like a drowning raccoon and his mouth filled with great crackling sour bubbles.
Something inside him broke, then, and it really started to hurt. He fell to his knees, doubled over, and started venting the stuff across the bubblepak floor. Great deadly vomitous gouts of it, a huge insupportable fizzing bolus. His ears rang. I-Iis hands were spattered with it. It was all over his clothes. And he still wouldn't, couldn't pass out.
It was starting to feel good.
Carol stared at him in disbelief. All the fluid was draining from the jug, trickling relentlessly from the hose. Shut it off, shut it off, he gestured, making a drowned gobbling noise, and then another fit of the coughing seized him, and he made another long, blackening, agonized swoop toward collapse.
Some moments later he felt Carol's arms locked around him. She sat him up, propping him against the leg of the table. She looked into his face, checked his eyelid with her thumb, her broad-cheeked face pale and grim. "Alex, can you hear me?"
He nodded.
"Alex, that's arterial blood. I've seen it before. You're hemorrhaging."
He shook his head.
"Alex, listen to me. I'm gonna get Ed Dunnebecke, and we're going to take you to a hospital somewhere in a city."
Alex swallowed hard. "No," he whispered. "I won't go, you can't make me. Don't tell. Don't tell. I'm getting better."
CHAPTER 9
By June 15 it was obvious to the veriest wannabe weather tyro that an outbreak from the dimension of hell was about to descend upon Oklahoma. As a direct consequence, the state was having its largest tourist boom in ten years.
Everyone with the least trace of common sense had battened down, packed up, and/or evacuated. But the sensible evacuees did not begin to match the raw demographic numbers of people without any common sense, who had come swarming in an endless procession of trailers, chartered buses, and motorized bicycles. Oklahoma had become an instant mecca for heavy-weather freaks. And there were far more of these people than Jane had ever imagined.
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