کتاب 09-27

27

They spent the night in a public campground that had been marked specifically for the use of the infected. The dirt road in was flanked by a pair of enormous wooden heads, carved to look like noble Indian chieftains, complete with sad, wise eyes and feathered headdresses. Hung above the entrance was a banner that proclaimed SICK STAY HERE WATER FOOD TOILETS.

They slept under picnic tables, rain plopping on the wooden planks and dripping down on top of them. But there were port-a-potties, an inconceivable luxury after over a week of using rags to wipe, and John surprised Harper by sleeping through the night, his chest rising and falling deeply and his lean, lined face set in an expression of dreaming calm. He woke just once, when she put the syringe in his mouth to give him another squirt of the antibiotic, and even then he only made a small sound, an amused sort of snort, and slipped away again.

They stayed in the campground most of the morning, waiting for the rain to pass. It quit around lunch and the afternoon was fine for walking. A cool breeze shushed in the big-leafed oaks. The daylight glittered on every wet surface, made spiderwebs into nets studded with diamonds.

They followed THIS WAY SICK signs north and east—mostly north—past forest and lake. Once they passed a folding table by the side of the road where someone had set out a bowl filled with individually wrapped Oreo cookies, a steel jug with blessedly cold milk in it, and Dixie cups. There were no houses in sight. The table stood alone at the end of a dirt lane that led back into trees.

“This is fresh,” Harper said. She shut her eyes to savor an icy swallow. “It can’t have been sitting outside for long.”

“No. ’Course not. They know we’re coming,” the Fireman croaked from his stretcher.

Harper almost coughed milk up her nose.

In the next moment they were all on their knees around the travois. John looked at them from half-shut eyes, his chin bristly and his cheeks caved in from all the weight he had lost. His color was ghastly. His smile was fond but weak.

“I wouldn’t say no to some of that milk myself, Nurse Willowes,” he said. “If it won’t interfere with my recovery.”

“Not at all. But I want you to take some aspirin with it.”

She put a hand behind his head, propping it up, and gave him slow sips from her own cup. She didn’t say a thing. For the next ten minutes, Allie and Renée were talking over each other while Nick gestured furiously with his hands, all of them trying to tell the story of the last week and a half at the same time. The Fireman looked this way and that and nodded sometimes, making a drowsy effort to attend to each of them. Harper wasn’t sure how much he was getting, although his brow furrowed when Allie told him they had left Bucksport behind that morning.

“The four of you carried me all the way to Bucksport?”

“No,” Harper said. “Just Allie.”

“Lucky your bony English ass is light,” Allie said.

“Lucky you don’t know how to quit,” John said to her. “Lucky for me. Thank you, Allie. I love you, girl.”

Allie wasn’t good at the emotional stuff. She looked away into the trees, clenching her jaw and clamping down on some intense upswell of feeling.

“Try not to get nearly killed again,” she said, when she was able to speak.

They all seemed to run out of things to say at the same time, and then there was a pleasant silence, no sound except for the swish of the cool wind in the trees and the twittering of the birds. Harper found herself holding John’s hand.

“Perhaps we can procure me a crutch,” he said. “Or fashion one. I wouldn’t like to burden you all any longer.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Harper said. “Yesterday this time, I wasn’t sure you’d live to see another morning.”

“That bad?”

“Buddy,” Harper said, “I thought you were smoked.”

“Ha ha,” he said. “Good one, Willowes.”