Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(91)
I’ve heard talk of calling in the government for assistance, but what help could soldiers be? Then we’d have armed murderous madmen in our streets, as opposed to the armed murderous madmen who stay in their homes or fling themselves into the ocean.
Chatter goes around regarding some plague, unidentified and untreatable; and there are worries that specialists from the city will be called for, and we shall all be trapped in our homes, as in older times, when people knew nothing of cholera or anything bubonic. There are whispers that men in masks and official jackets will patrol the streets, and the calls of yesteryear, “Bring out your dead!” will ring through the town. We shall all be cut off, from our loved ones and the rest of the world alike. We shall die alone and in infamy, victims of things we do not understand and cannot fight. Fall River will go down in history as a place where people die in awful, unexplained ways. It’ll be a ghost town in a year. The government will burn it to the ground as a public health hazard.
Not the worst idea I’ve ever heard.
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So anyway, there’s talk.
And there’s plenty of fear to go around, even though the denizens of Fall River know nothing about what’s coming, or who’s coming. They have no idea what they’re up against. Neither do I, but knowing what little I do . . . somehow that’s worse. It’d be better, easier, I think, if I only worried about what germ or contagion we fought. It’d be simpler if I did not know that it had a name, and that it wore a man’s face, and it killed more viciously (if more swiftly) than any microbe.
Whatever it is, it comes from the water. I’m confident of that now—as confident as I am that the tetanus pattern is a pattern in fact, and not in theory. Not a perfect one, but a recognizable one. I will cling to that which I recognize. But regardless of what Emma thinks, I do not cling to it without reason or clarity, without evidence. It is there. I know it’s there. I can see it.
That’s why I cling. It gives me a direction, and reinforces my sense of purpose.
Especially now that Nance is gone. Especially now that this Zollicoffer comes closer.
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Nance is gone, but that wasn’t the first thing I knew this morning.
The first thing was the express package from Wolf, and the second was that Mrs. Easley down at the dry goods store has taken a pair of scissors and shut herself in the storeroom, and no one has been able to speak with her or open the door—but there was water pouring from underneath it. No pipes had burst, for there were no pipes to fail; no pump was within the store, and no one could explain the flood that poured out from under the doors, and the mist that steamed the windows from within.
I learned this when a neighborhood boy came charging up the steps, right as I was finished reading the news clipping, standing there on my own stoop in a dressing robe and bare feet, stunned and full of questions.
The boy’s name is Arnold, or Arthur, or Allan, or something along those lines. He gasped out that I had to come to Granston’s quick, because Mrs. Easley was infected and she had holed up in the store with a set of shears.
Infected. They now speak of it in terms of illness. As they damned well ought to.
I thanked the boy for the information, told him I’d be on my way as soon as I could find some shoes, and shut the door in his face. Too abruptly, I’m confident. He must’ve thought he’d angered me, or that I was a jackass; I don’t know. But I spent a moment leaning my back against the closed door, wondering if I should bother to go address the situation. I was thinking of Ebenezer Hamilton, and that terrible scene, and knowing that whatever awaited at Granston’s Dry Goods would surely be no better.
Then I wondered if she was alone. I hadn’t given the boy time to say one way or another. There might be other victims within. There might still be someone to save. Not too little, not too late, for one person or more.
It was a stupid hope, but I held it aloft regardless as I found proper clothes and dressed myself; it took longer than it should have—yes, I know. My house is filling with detritus, with nonsense. I’m entombing myself and even I can see it, plain as day.
I have stopped seeing patients in my home, and will only make house calls—and every day, more do clamor for my attention. I’ve canceled what appointments I can, and spent those hours in Lizbeth’s laboratory.
It’s a good laboratory she’s built. She’s done a fine job. I’ve lost what feels like days there; down in that space, the time doesn’t pass the same way, I don’t think. Something about the stones she keeps in the box beneath the floor. I know where they are, under what floorboards the cabinet lies, but I do not even stand atop it. I walk around that place on the floor, lest the temptation to open it become too great.
It will not become too great.
I know too well what became of Nance before we lost her. It cannot happen to me, too. If it happens to the rest of the Maplecroft crew, then truly the world is done for.
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As I said, or as I tried to say and lost track of myself . . . we lost Nance.
I mean to write about that, and I will. It happened the day after I gave her the heavy dose of the toxoid, so I suppose we know that, at least. Or do we? Correlation and causation . . . post hoc, ergo proper hoc. It’s bad science, but it’s all we have time for.
So I’ll say it then: The toxoid brought about a change in her.