The Night Parade(68)

While Ellie slept in the small bed beside him, her shoe box of oriole eggs on the fiberboard nightstand, David sat propped up on a stack of pillows flipping through muted TV channels. His heart hadn’t regained its normal rhythm since their escape from the theater.

After a time, he set the remote down on the nightstand and went into the bathroom. His hands were shaking, and his entire body ached. He still looked like death in the mirror, but he was thankful that his nose hadn’t gushed any more blood since the theater restroom. Leaning close to the mirror, he examined his pupils. His eyes looked okay.

You’re sick, David. Your last blood test. You’ve got it.

A thought occurred to him then—one worse than him dropping dead while on the road and leaving Ellie to fend for herself. He thought of Sandy Udell, the kid who had jumped out of the window of his classroom while shrieking about monsters, and of Deke Carmody’s madness, which had resulted in the man setting his whole house on fire while he was inside. He thought, too, of the countless horror stories he had heard on the news and read in newspapers since the beginning of the outbreak. All those terrible things people did to themselves. . . and to others.

What if it wasn’t a ruse, and that he really was sick?

What if he hurt his daughter?

Terror flooded through him at the notion of it. What if he awoke with his hands wrapped around his daughter’s throat? What if he . . . Jesus Christ, what if he did something to her with the f*cking handgun?

No. I’ll keep it together. I won’t let that happen.

Which was probably what everyone in the world thought . . . until it happened to them and proved them wrong.

Please don’t let that happen. Please let me hand her off to Tim without a problem. After that, if I’m really, truly sick, and it wasn’t just that f*cking doctor messing with my head, then I’ll give up the ghost. Just a little while longer . . .

As if summoned by his prayer, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He dug it out and saw the blocked caller ID.

“Thank God,” David breathed shakily into the phone.

“You guys okay?” Tim said. “You hanging in there?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, good. Listen, here’s the deal. Remember the road trip from hell? The one we all took when we were kids?”

“You mean the cross-country trip in that camper?” David said. Tim’s father had rented a camper and the four of them had piled inside and toured the country for five weeks. They’d visited national parks, campgrounds, various cities, and other banal landmarks of interest only to David’s stepfather.

“Best left forgotten, I know,” said Tim, “but do you remember the Great Vomit Fest and Mystery Fire? The one at the campsite?”

“Jesus Christ. Of course I do.” To his own amazement, he felt a smile break out across his face.

“Perfect. Meet me there tomorrow night around nine. You should have plenty of time to get there if you leave early enough in the morning.”

“Tim, it’s not necessary for you to drive all that—”

“Quiet. Don’t talk about it. You just get your butt out there.”

“I will. Christ, Tim, thank you. You have no idea.”

“Not a problem. You sure you don’t need money?”

“I’m good.”

“And how are you feeling? You holding up? Are you able to drive?”

“Yes.”

“And Ellie?”

“She’s amazingly okay. She’s tough.”

“Okay, okay. Look, we’ll take care of it. In the meantime, stay off the cell phone. Those things are like hauling around a tracking device. Don’t use a GPS, either. Stick to old-fashioned road maps. And try to get some sleep.”

“I will. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Don’t thank me yet, bubba,” Tim said.

“Good night,” David said into the phone before realizing that his stepbrother had already hung up.

Fatigue crashed down on him. Suddenly, it was all he could do to keep his eyes open. He crawled back onto the bed and switched off the lamp. He thought he could sleep for a thousand years, and imagined he was already dead. His eyelids stuttered closed. He yawned. Somewhere in the street, a car alarm blared then went silent, as though garroted. He wondered if it was real or if he was just imagining things.

After a time, he got up and gathered the Glock up from beneath the bed, where he’d wrapped it in his T-shirt. He released the magazine and racked the slide so the chambered round popped out. He stuck the gun back under the bed but hid the magazine on the shelf in the closet. In the event something terrible took hold of him in the night—in the event that Dr. Kapoor hadn’t been lying to him after all—he might not retain the memory of where he’d hidden the mag, the gun, or both. He hoped so, anyway.

That night, his sleep was restless and plagued by demons.





34


Six months earlier


The day after Sandy Udell launched himself from a second-story window of the humanities building, both David and Burt Langstrom were interviewed by a police detective named Watermere. They were interviewed separately, taking turns occupying the cramped, book-laden office adjacent to the teachers’ lounge, where the cloying, antiseptic smell of Watermere’s aftershave was more intimidating than the police detective himself. Watermere’s questions were benign and shallow little probes, and he appeared fatigued and overwhelmed by the details of it all. David described what had happened, up until the paramedics arrived on the scene.