by Karen Randau
When I reached the pavement of Vista’s Edge Road, I breathed a sigh of relief and loosened my grip on the steering wheel. Blood flooded into my fingertips. I shook my hands to get the feeling back into them.
At the end of Second Street, I glanced to the right before turning left onto the highway. Blue and red lights flashed atop dark, unmarked SUVs that blocked the road. Who were those people? This didn’t feel right.
With a shiver and a feeling of isolation, I turned toward home.
An eerie quiet filled the town. Dark restaurants and empty parking lots increased my loneliness.
I turned onto my cul-de-sac, and every light in my house and yard greeted me. As I pressed the button to open the security gate, I leaned forward to look up. Spikes had been installed at the top of the fence.
I eased into the driveway, but the only car outside my garage belonged to Taylor. The fence guy was gone, and Taylor sat in a chair on the front porch.
I pushed the button to open the garage door.
Taylor ran down the stairs and followed me into the garage. As I got out of the car, I felt weak-kneed and shaky.
“What happened?” Taylor placed a warm hand on the back of my wet, cold shoulder.
I turned toward her, and she gasped. “I had a flat. The tire rolled down the hill, and I fell in the mud when I ran after it.” Oh, how I wanted to cry. Instead, I let out a single whimper.
She touched my sore and swollen cheekbone, then pulled me into a tight hug.
“You’ll get covered with mud.” I resisted the urge to hold on to her and pushed myself away.
She wrapped her arm across my shoulder. “Let’s get you inside.” She nudged me toward the door.
“The fence guy did the work without being paid?” I asked.
“He said he’d drop by tomorrow to collect. I hope you don’t mind, but I gave Mary a camping chair. She’s made herself at home in your backyard and said something about feeling like she’s in heaven. I gave her colloidal silver mixed with water, along with an herb cocktail that seems to be working on Cliff and Travis.”
My mood lightened. “Thank you. I think she can help us figure out what happened.”
“She hid while the fence guy was here, but she accepted leftover spaghetti I found in the fridge.”
“Good.” I turned to open the Jeep’s back hatch.
Taylor nudged me aside. “I’ll take these supplies inside. Leave your muddy clothes out here in the garage and go out back to shower. We tried to save some sun-warmed water for you.”
“That sounds so good.” Again, I held back tears.
“I have a plan to get Cliff and Travis out of the hospital,” she said. “First, we need to get you cleaned up, feed you, and treat those wounds. Why are you limping?”
15
As Taylor suggested, I shed my soggy clothes in the garage before entering the house, loping though the basement, up the stairs, past the kitchen and dining area, and down the hall to my bedroom. As I entered the bathroom, I turned on the light and groaned at the sight of the gash on my face and my red and swollen right eye.
I pulled twigs from my hair, followed by leaning to inspect my body.
Scrapes, slashes, and mud covered my arms. Bruises darkened my elbows, knees, and right foot. My ankle felt stiff as I moved my foot left, right, up, and down.
I straightened to linger in front of my shower stall, longing for the hot massage offered by the showerhead. Instead, I grabbed a towel from the linen closet, set it on the counter, and shed my under clothes. Pebbles fell from my bra.
The towel warmed me when I wrapped it around myself and dared another glance in the mirror before turning to leave the room. What a pitiful sight. I gimped toward my walk-in closet to secure flip flops and clean clothes.
Why was there a set of green scrubs on my bed?
Pondering the question of why Taylor would be in my room with me gone, I donned jeans and a T-shirt and headed for the back to search for Mary.
She sat in the blue camp chair beside her cot and stood as I approached.
Instead of taking her tennis-player stance, she greeted me with a calm smile followed by a glimmer of concern. She had showered and washed and combed her hair. Rather than darting around in search of a safe place to spring, her eyes focused on my lacerations.
“I’m okay, Mary. I just returned from getting us food, medicine, and water, and now I need to shower.”
Like the nurse she had once been, she inspected my wounds, turned me toward a floodlight, and used her thumb and index finger to widen my swollen eye and peer into my pupil.
“What happened?”
Stress melted away while telling my spare tire adventure and laughing with her about the sequence of events. “This will be a great story to tell once it’s over. You couldn’t have convinced me then, but I lived through it.”
She hugged me and accompanied me to the tarp.
As I opened the enclosure of my makeshift shower, Mary clawed at the air with a wide smile. “I am woman; hear me roar,” she said.
“Yes. We can do anything we set our minds to and will work for.” I stepped on the cement.
“Sometimes,” she said with a sad glimmer in her eyes. “I’ll go see Emma while you shower.” She shuffled away.
Did she just stay still long enough to have a whole conversion, complete with full sentences? After years of misery, was Taylor’s remedy already working on Mary? If so, maybe it would fix her shuffle and limp.
Mary had said a drone sprayed her after the cow exploded in Afghanistan. Did the drones spray pesticide on crops? Could a negative reaction to that have caused her shuffle? The explosion probably caused her limp. Mary didn’t mention any farms where she was. I made a mental note to investigate farming and pesticides in Afghanistan once things were back to normal.
As my mind wandered to the fresh fruits and vegetables I bought at the farmer’s market, my knees nearly gave out. I heard buzzing a few nights before that. Mary said she saw drones spraying something on the farms near the reservoir.
Were local farmers spraying pesticides with drones? And contaminated water from the water treatment plant made it worse? Were Cliff and Travis so sick because I didn’t wash contaminated produce I thought was healthier than what the grocery store carried?
The thought made me stumble as I dried myself and approached Mary’s cot.
I remembered packing vegetables for Cliff and Travis before they left yesterday morning, Cliff went to work and Travis to an attorney function. What made them sick came from me.
I needed to report Mary’s claim of seeing drones spray farms near the reservoir. But to whom would I report it? I made a mental note to call Chief of Police Ronald Williams.
Mary’s camp chair looked inviting as I pulled it close and set my clean clothes and towel on it. I had no time to rest and picked up the hose to the solar shower, turning the lever to let out just enough almost-warm water to wet my body and hair to wash off the mud that streamed off my head and down my body.
I wanted to linger under the refreshing flow but couldn’t waste precious water.
Instead, I shampooed my hair, rinsed, soaped up my body, and rinsed. Groans escaped as I dried off and struggled to don my jeans without allowing the hem to get wet or dirty.
My entire body ached and begged for rest. I longed to sit in the camp chair but feared I wouldn’t be able to get up again.
I retrieved another five-gallon bucket of water from under the house and rolled it to the cement base. After refilling the shower bag, I set it on the cement where the sun would warm it come daylight and grasped my aching back as I straightened and headed toward the house.
Grabbing the handrail, I climbed up the stairs and stepped inside.
Taylor shut the door to the microwave and punched the number two, which brought it to life. She rushed over to help me sit at the dining room table and pulled a black duffle from under the table. With it on the chair to my left, she sat and removed supplies. She attended to my
wounds and used a flashlight to check my eyes, probably for signs of a concussion.
“What did you give Mary?” I asked. “She checked my wounds and eyes while carrying on a whole conversation before leaving for her version of a visit with her daughter and brother.”
She named a bunch of herbs that my mind was too tired to comprehend. The words goldenrod, colloidal silver, garlic and salt were all that stuck in my brain.
The microwave dinged.
“You’re looking… well, not good but not awful,” Taylor said as she gave me a gentle tap on the shoulder. “I’ve seen you in worse shape.”
We shared a meaningful glance, and I tried to smile.
She moved to the microwave and pulled out a plate holding a generous serving of spaghetti. “This is the last. I put one of Katy’s casseroles in the fridge and everything else in the freezer. I’m so glad we at least have electricity.”
She set the plate in front of me, and I gobbled a forkful.
“Mm.” I took another bite. “Who knew leftover spaghetti would taste like a gourmet meal? I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”
“When was the last time you ate?”
“Breakfast, I think. I’m not sure.”
She leaned her back against the kitchen sink. “You need to take better care of yourself. And rest.”
“I thought you said you had a plan to go get Cliff and Travis out of the hospital.” I remembered the text Cliff sent me hours ago. Get us out of this death trap, he had said. “Rescuing them seems like the next urgent thing we need to tackle.”
She looked at her phone. “It isn’t time yet. It’s seven now. Set your alarm for three and a half hours and take a nap. I put scrubs on your bed. I hope they’re not too baggy. Wear them when we head over to the hospital morgue during the shift change. That’s when we’ll attract the least amount of attention.”
My face went numb. “Morgue? Please don’t tell me…” I couldn’t continue.
16
Taylor assured me that Cliff and Travis were alive. “I made a deal with the mortician,” she said. “If we can get them to the morgue without being found out by the goons guarding the hospital exits, he’ll transport them to the mortuary for us to pick them up.”
“Why did Cliff call the hospital a death trap?” I asked.
“Maybe it feels like that. The weakest people are dying. Cliff and Travis are strong, and they’ve responded to the natural remedies I’ve offered. People who refused to allow me to experiment on them aren’t getting better.”
She took my hand and led me to my room. “Meet me in the kitchen in three hours.” She stepped into my bedroom and waited for me to go inside before closing the door. I heard her pad down the hallway toward the front door.
I wondered where she was going but pushed the question aside. Taylor would wait outside to let Mary into our fortress after she finished her visit with Emma and David.
I left my clothes in a pile beside the bed and slipped between the sheets, sighing at the cool against my feverish wounds and sore muscles. Exhaustion heightened the pain on every part of my body, and I ached for Cliff’s embrace.
Before I shed a single tear, the wake-up alarm sounded. A quick check of my phone confirmed that over three hours had passed.
My face throbbed where I’d landed on the ground as the spare rolled down Mule Train Trail. My scraped-up arms and legs stung from tumbling over rocks and gravel, and my gut hurt from bashing into the tire.
Still, I jumped out of bed and dressed for the early morning mission of getting Travis and Cliff out of their room and to the hospital’s morgue during the shift change. The top to Taylor’s scrubs fit, but I had to roll up the pant legs six inches and secure the waistband with a belt to keep them from slipping down.
When I met Taylor in the kitchen, she winced. “Did you know your eye is swollen shut?”
I nodded. “Battle wounds. Let’s get going.” I headed to the garage.
“I secured a permit for the staff lot,” she said from behind me. “It’s closer to the entrances, so let’s take my car. May I take the remotes to open the garage door and security gates from your Lexus?”
“Sure.”
She snagged the openers and pressed a button to raise the garage door.
Once I’d limped past her to the driveway, she closed the door and waited for me to drop into her seat. As I waited for Taylor to slip in behind the steering wheel, I glimpsed Mary stretched out on the cot in the backyard, Taylor’s sleep mask over her eyes.
Taylor backed into the street and closed the gate as she said, “There are protective masks under the seat. We must keep our faces covered with them the whole time we’re in the hospital, so no one recognizes us. I don’t think that will draw attention to us because all the nurses wear masks as they check on patients, but I’m not so sure about your swollen eye.”
She drove through the deserted streets and parked in the hospital’s employee lot. We donned our masks, and Taylor hid her distinctive strawberry blond ponytail under a baseball cap. She handed me an employee ID. The photo was of a dark-haired woman named Janice.
“Where did you get this?”
“Pilfered it when Janice turned away.” She clamped it to the bottom of my shirt, so the picture was hidden. “Hopefully, no one will notice this isn’t you. Keep your head down while we’re in there and don’t look at any security cameras.”
We stepped through the door of the ambulance entrance and stopped to survey the surroundings. The smell of vomit permeated the air even more than when I visited yesterday morning. A yellow bucket of dirty water held a mop, its handle leaning against the wall.
Three nurses huddled around a table in a nearby office with a window for a wall.
“Follow me.” Taylor looked at the floor as she walked past the nurses and down the hallway toward Cliff’s room.
I followed her example but watched the office until a nurse glanced up and squinted my direction. I turned my head, so she wouldn’t see my wounded eye.
Taylor opened the door to Room 112 and let me go in first. I strode to Cliff’s bedside, and she stopped beside Travis. When she bent to whisper in his ear, he lifted his head and looked around.
I gave him a thumbs-up, but he winced when he saw me. He opened his mouth, but I shushed him and leaned in to whisper in Cliff’s ear. “Cliff, honey, we’re here to rescue you. Stay quiet and play dead.”
He opened his eyes, winced, and grasped my hand. “What happened?”
“I’ll tell you later. I’m okay.”
Taylor covered Travis’ face with the sheet, and I did the same to Cliff.
She held the door open for me, and my sneakers slipped on the wet, shiny floor as I pushed to get Cliff’s bed rolling. When I cleared the doorway, I slid to a stop next to the wall, then stepped over to hold the door for Taylor.
As we rolled past the office where the nurses were meeting, one of them opened the door. “Who do you have there?”
“Room 112,” Taylor said, rolling past without looking up.
“Damn,” the nurse said as she returned to the office and closed the door. “I thought they were getting better.” As she closed the door, she hollered, “Ladies, Taylor’s witch doctor remedies aren’t working any better than our meds.”
Taylor rounded a corner next to a sign pointing to the morgue. My feet slid as I followed. She stopped at double doors, and I leaned back to halt Cliff’s bed.
“Hold up there.” The man’s voice came from behind me, causing my stomach to tighten, my swollen eye to twitch, and a shudder to roll down my spine. A slender man in a white coat stepped in front of us and punched a silver button. Dr. Sullivan, his nametag read.
The doors swung open, and Dr. Sullivan helped me drag Cliff into a cold room lined with silver drawers. I knew I was holding my breath as I tried to hide my wounded eye, but I couldn’t force myself to let it out.
Two men stepped forward, each wearing a jacket with the words Rim Vista Mortuary emblazoned on it. A matu
re, heavy-set man laid his hand on Cliff’s bed. The word Luke embroidered his left breast pocket.
“We’ll take them from here,” Luke said. He smiled at Dr. Sullivan and locked eyes with Taylor.
“I hate to see so many of our residents ending up in here,” the doctor said as he turned and left.
The doors closed behind him, and I allowed myself to breathe.
“Get out of here,” Luke said, gesturing toward the outside.
Taylor and I sprinted past him toward the sidewalk. I paused at a white van with shelves stacked three deep on both sides of the cargo area. Two bodies in bags laid on the shelves.
“Oh, God,” I said. “They have to ride in that van with dead people.”
“Better that than staying in the hospital,” Taylor said. “They can’t keep up with the body fluids. Corpses stay in the beds for hours before they’re discovered. Did you see that dirty mop bucket in the hallway?”
I nodded and hurried behind Taylor to the car.
She drove to the mortuary and parked near a rear door.
The van pulled up to the door. Luke and his assistant got out and rushed to the rear to open the doors. He pulled out the shelf holding Cliff, and he and Taylor helped him into the back of Taylor’s car. I climbed in beside him and threw my arms around his neck.
“I thought I would die in there,” he said. “What took you so long?”
“Taylor and Luke thought it would be best to wait for the shift change,” I said.
Luke deposited Travis onto the front passenger seat. He had the strength to fasten his seatbelt, but he rode the entire way home with his eyes closed.
At home, Cliff and Travis both made it up the stairs on their own but had to rest at the top. Taylor helped Travis to his room, and I wrapped my arms around Cliff’s waist as we trudged toward our suite.
We entered the room, and Cliff stopped in front of the loveseat where I left his folder from work. He stared at the face of the Iraqi-American.
“One of my roommates at the hospital worked at the water treatment plant with that man,” he said. “Before he died, he said that the man, Jacob Haddad, was a devout Muslim who prayed every day at certain times. He described him as a gentle and humble man who would hurt no one. He took his family to Iraq to visit family he had never met after he came into some money. Have you investigated him?”