Doctor Sleep (The Shining #2)(93)

He hesitated a long time. “I don’t know. Maybe we do have it, all of us. Maybe it’s like an alarm clock set to go off or dy***ite on a timer. According to the latest scientific thinking, that’s sort of how rubes age. They go along and go along, pretty much the same, and then something turns off in their genes. The wrinkles start showing up and all at once they need canes to walk with.”

Crow had been watching Grampa. “There he goes. Fuck.”

Grampa Flick’s skin was turning milky. Then translucent. As it moved toward complete transparency, Rose could see his liver, the shriveled gray-black bags of his lungs, the pulsing red knot of his heart. She could see his veins and arteries like the highways and turnpikes on her in-dash GPS. She could see the optic nerves that connected his eyes to his brain. They looked like ghostly strings.

Then he came back. His eyes moved, caught Rosie’s, held them. He reached out and took her unhurt hand. Her first impulse was to pull away—if he had what Nut said he had, he was contagious—but what the hell. If Nut was right, they had all been exposed.

“Rose,” he whispered. “Don’t leave me.”

“I won’t.” She sat down beside him on the bed, her fingers entwined in his. “Crow?”

“Yes, Rose.”

“The package you had sent to Sturbridge—they’ll hold it, won’t they?”

“Sure.”

“All right, we’ll see this through. But we can’t afford to wait too long. The little girl is a lot more dangerous than I thought.” She sighed. “Why do problems always come in bunches?”

“Did she do that to your hand, somehow?”

That was a question she didn’t want to answer directly. “I won’t be able to go with you, because she knows me now.” Also, she thought but didn’t say, because if this is what Walnut thinks it is, the rest will need me here to play Mother Courage. “But we have to have her. It’s more important than ever.”

“Because?”

“If she’s had the measles, she’ll have the rube immunity to catching it again. That might make her steam useful in all sorts of ways.”

“The kids get vaccinated against all that crap now,” Crow said.

Rose nodded. “That could work, too.”

Grampa Flick once more began to cycle. It was hard to watch, but Rose made herself to do it. When she could no longer see the old fellow’s organs through his fragile skin, she looked at Crow and held up her bruised and scraped hand.

“Also . . . she needs to be taught a lesson.”

2

When Dan woke up in his turret room on Monday, the schedule had once more been wiped from his blackboard and replaced with a message from Abra. At the top was a smiley-face. All the teeth were showing, which gave it a gleeful look.

She came! I was ready and I hurt her!

I REALLY DID!!

She deserves it, so HOORAY!!!

I need to talk to you, not this way or ’Net.

Same place as before 3PM

Dan lay back on his bed, covered his eyes, and went looking for her. He found her walking to school with three of her friends, which struck him as dangerous in itself. For the friends as well as for Abra. He hoped Billy was there and on the job. He also hoped Billy would be discreet and not get tagged by some zealous Neighborhood Watch type as a suspicious character.

(I can come John and I don’t leave until tomorrow but it has to be fast and we have to be careful  )

(yes okay good  )

3

Dan was once more seated on a bench outside the ivy-covered Anniston Library when Abra emerged, dressed for school in a red jumper and snazzy red sneakers. She held a knapsack by one strap. To Dan she looked as if she’d grown an inch since the last time he’d seen her.

She waved. “Hi, Uncle Dan!”

“Hello, Abra. How was school?”

“Great! I got an A on my biology report!”

“Sit down a minute and tell me about it.”

She crossed to the bench, so filled with grace and energy she almost seemed to dance. Eyes bright, color high: a healthy after-school teenager with all systems showing green. Everything about her said ready-steady-go. There was no reason for this to make Dan feel uneasy, but it did. One very good thing: a nondescript Ford pickup was parked half a block down, the old guy behind the wheel sipping a take-out coffee and reading a magazine. Appearing to read a magazine, at least.

(Billy?)

No answer, but he looked up from his magazine for a moment, and that was enough.

“Okay,” Dan said in a lower voice. “I want to hear exactly what happened.”

She told him about the trap she had set, and how well it had worked. Dan listened with amazement, admiration . . . and that growing sense of unease. Her confidence in her abilities worried him. It was a kid’s confidence, and the people they were dealing with weren’t kids.

“I just told you to set an alarm,” he said when she had finished.

“This was better. I don’t know if I could have gone at her that way if I wasn’t pretending to be Daenerys in the Game of Thrones books, but I think so. Because she killed the baseball boy and lots of others. Also because . . .” For the first time her smile faltered a little. As she was telling her story, Dan had seen what she would look like at eighteen. Now he saw what she had looked like at nine.