Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)(106)

“There are Cokes in the fridge,” Dave said. He stroked Abra’s hair, then the side of her face, then the back of her neck. As if to reassure himself that she was still there.

They waited until John came back with a can of Coke. Abra seized it, drank greedily, then belched. “Sorry,” she said, and giggled.

Dan had never been so happy to hear a giggle in his life. “John. Measles are more serious in adults, yes?”

“You bet. It can lead to pneumonia, even blindness, due to corneal scarring.”

“Death?”

“Sure, but it’s rare.”

“It’s different for them,” Abra said, “because I don’t think they usually get sick. Only Barry is. They’re going to stop and get a package. It must be medicine for him. The kind you give in shots.”

“What did you mean about cycling?” Dave asked.

“I don’t know.”

“If Barry’s sick, will that stop them?” John asked. “Will they maybe turn around and go back to wherever they came from?”

“I don’t think so. They might already be sick from Barry, and they know it. They have nothing to lose and everything to gain, that’s what Crow says.” She drank more Coke, holding the can in both hands, then looked around at each of the three men in turn, ending with her father. “They know my street. And they might know my name, after all. They might even have a picture. I’m not sure. Barry’s mind is all messed up. But they think . . . they think if I can’t catch the measles . . .”

“Then your essence might be able to cure them,” Dan said. “Or at least inoculate the others.”

“They don’t call it essence,” Abra said. “They call it steam.”

Dave clapped his hands once, briskly. “That’s it. I’m calling the police. We’ll have these people arrested.”

“You can’t.” Abra spoke in the dull voice of a depressed fifty-year-old woman. Do what you want, that voice said. I’m only telling you.

He had taken his cell out of his pocket, but instead of opening it, he held it. “Why not?”

“They’ll have a good story for why they’re traveling to New Hampshire and lots of good identity things. Also, they’re rich. Really rich, the way banks and oil companies and Walmart are rich. They might go away, but they’ll come back. They always come back for what they want. They kill people who get in their way, and people who try to tell on them, and if they need to buy their way out of trouble, that’s what they do.” She put her Coke down on the coffee table and put her arms around her father. “Please, Daddy, don’t tell anybody. I’d rather go with them than have them hurt Mom or you.”

Dan said, “But right now there are only four or five of them.”

“Yes.”

“Where are the rest? Do you know that now?”

“At a place called the Bluebird Campground. Or maybe it’s Bluebell. They own it. There’s a town nearby. That’s where the supermarket is, the Sam’s. The town is called Sidewinder. Rose is there, and the True. That’s what they call themselves, the . . . Dan? What’s wrong?”

Dan made no reply. For the moment, at least, he was incapable of speech. He was remembering Dick Hallorann’s voice coming from Eleanor Ouellette’s dead mouth. He had asked Dick where the empty devils were, and now the answer made sense.

In your childhood.

“Dan?” That was John. He sounded far away. “You’re as white as a sheet.”

It all made a weird kind of sense. He had known from the first—even before he actually saw it—that the Overlook Hotel was an evil place. It was gone now, burned flat, but who was to say the evil had also been burned away? Certainly not him. As a child, he had been visited by revenants who had escaped.

This campground they own—it stands where the hotel stood. I know it. And sooner or later, I’ll have to go back there. I know that, too. Probably sooner. But first—

“I’m all right,” he said.

“Want a Coke?” Abra asked. “Sugar solves lots of problems, that’s what I think.”

“Later. I have an idea. It’s sketchy, but maybe the four of us working together can turn it into a plan.”

6

Snakebite Andi parked in the truckers’ lot of a turnpike rest area near Westfield, New York. Nut went into the service plaza to get juice for Barry, who was now running a fever and had a painfully sore throat. While they waited for him to come back, Crow put through a call to Rose. She answered on the first ring. He filled her in as quickly as he could, then waited.

“What’s that I hear in the background?” she asked.

Crow sighed and rubbed one hand up a stubbled cheek. “That’s Jimmy Numbers. He’s crying.”

“Tell him to shut up. Tell him there’s no crying in baseball.”

Crow conveyed this, omitting Rose’s peculiar sense of humor. Jimmy, at the moment wiping Barry’s face with a damp cloth, managed to muffle his loud and (Crow had to admit it) annoying sobs.

“That’s better,” Rose said.

“What do you want us to do?”

“Give me a second, I’m trying to think.”

Crow found the idea of Rose having to try to think almost as disturbing as the red spots that had now broken out all over Barry’s face and body, but he did as he was told, holding the iPhone to his ear but saying nothing. He was sweating. Fever, or just hot in here? Crow scanned his arms for red blemishes and saw none. Yet.