Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 4-Book Bundle (116 page)

Holding out a coiled rope made from a bedsheet, Gronski said, “A nurse found this tied to the window post in a patient's room.”

“When?”

“Half an hour ago. We've searched the grounds.”

Nobody would climb out a window and down a rope unless he knew he would not be allowed to walk out a door.

“What patient?” Jarmillo asked.

“Bryce Walker, the Western writer.”

“What does he know? How does he know it?”

Gronski shook his head. “No idea. There's a kid missing, too. Travis Ahern. Nurse says he and Walker visited a lot this afternoon, in the boy's room.”

When earlier it had been learned that Nummy O'Bannon and the vagrant, Conway Lyss, escaped the jail after having seen a Builder at work, Jarmillo had decided that the breach of secrecy didn't warrant the immediate lockdown of the whole town. Nummy was well liked, but no one would be quick to believe such a fantastic story coming from a boy who treated a stuffed animal as if it were a real dog. Lyss, booked on a charge of burglary the previous day, was wanted for several crimes in Nevada and Idaho. He would most likely want nothing more than to put as much distance between himself and Rainbow Falls as he could. Considering Lyss's appearance, crackpot demeanor, and ripe stench, most people would tune out the grizzled vagrant or keep their distance from him. Even if they listened to him, he would seem irrational; he apparently wasn't a dead-end drunk, but he looked like one.

The longer Jarmillo could avoid putting roadblocks on the two exits from town and the longer he could restrict the interruption of phone service to one or two venues at a time—currently only the hospital—the less likely that people would realize something out of the ordinary might be occurring. The farther into the operation they got without arousing widespread curiosity or suspicion, the more certain they were to have eliminated everyone in town and to have transformed Rainbow Falls into the first Community stronghold by Friday morning.

Nine-year-old Ahern wouldn't be a much better witness than Nummy O'Bannon, but Bryce Walker couldn't be easily dismissed. A lifetime resident, personable, and articulate, he had many friends who trusted him and would believe almost anything he said.

Ned Gronski had the same concern. “It's Walker that worries me. He's an institution in this town.”

Whatever Bryce Walker knew or suspected about what was happening at the hospital, he most likely would come to the police to tell his story—and they would deal with him. In the unlikely event that he had some reason to worry that the department was not to be trusted, what would he do then? Organize some citizen militia to inspect the hospital for nefarious activity? Let the inspection occur. When they carried their search to the basement, they would be more fodder for the Builders.

Jarmillo decided to take no drastic action. To Gronski, he said, “I'll alert every officer in the department and all other replicants currently among the population to be on the lookout for Walker and Ahern. I'll send their photos to everyone's cell phone. They should be subdued on sight by any means necessary and at once returned to the hospital for execution and processing.”

As he finished winding the bedsheet rope into a ball, Gronski pointed to the glass doors of the lobby. “Speaking of execution and processing, here come the first visitors of the evening.”

The stairs led up to an unlocked door that opened into a ten-foot-square room. Bryce switched on the overhead fluorescent panel and switched off the stair light behind them. A second door stood directly opposite the first. On the walls hung shovels, push brooms, and other implements.

Bryce examined the door through which they had just come, to be sure that, as he recalled, it did not automatically lock, and then he eased it shut behind them.

The hospital maintenance staff called this space the lid-service room. From outside on the roof, it looked like a shed.

Bryce opened a supply cabinet. On the top shelf, he tucked away the pillowcase that now contained Travis's pajamas and slippers.

“We'll wait here until dark,” he told the boy.

“Will they really think we climbed down from your window? What if they realize the bedsheet is a fakeout?”

“We could what-if ourselves into paralysis, son. Anyway, in this situation, we can't have contingency plans. There's one way out.”

Although unheated, the service room had to be warmer than the open roof. Yet within minutes Bryce felt a chill. He remained on his feet because the soles of his slippers provided better insulation between him and the floor than would the seat of his pajamas.

Among the maintenance supplies, he found twine. He fashioned a strap for his blanket roll, so he could carry it over his shoulder.

“How did you know this was here?” Travis asked.

“When Rennie, my wife, was hospitalized for the last time, they allowed me to stay with her 24/7 during her last few days. Sometimes when she was sleeping, I'd come up to the roof, especially at night, with all the stars. When you stand there with your head tipped back, at first each star seems to be on the same plane as the others, some brighter than others but equally distant. Then slowly your perception improves, so you see that some are nearer, some farther, and some very far away indeed. You see how the stars go on forever, out there to eternity, and you know then, if for a moment you doubted it, that going on forever is the fundamental way of things.”

“There won't be any stars tonight,” Travis said.

“The stars are always there, whether we can see them or not,” Bryce assured him.

The boy worried that his mother might not be safe, out there in the suddenly unknown streets of this long-familiar town. In spite of what Bryce had said about what-ifs, Travis Ahern shuffled through a deck of them, waiting for nightfall.

After a while, Bryce steered the boy from worries to shining memories. His mother was his hero. When he recounted their good times together, his eyes were bright with love, his voice tender.

Jean-Anne Chouteau came to the hospital to visit her sister, Mary-Jane Vergelle. She arrived with Julian, Mary-Jane's husband.

As president of the VFW Auxiliary, the lay chaplain of her church, and the founder of the Rainbow Falls Red Hat Society, she visited Memorial at least once each week, to sit a spell with one afflicted friend or another.

Jean-Anne carried a Tupperware container filled with miniature homemade muffins, some walnut-carrot and some pecan-zucchini. Julian clutched a bouquet from Fantasy Floral and a paperback book wrapped in kitten-patterned paper.

Even before they went through the glass door, Jean-Anne saw Chief Jarmillo and four deputies, and she said, “Oh, Julian, some poor soul must've been shot.”

“Police don't always mean gunplay,” Julian said as the automatic door slid open in front of them.

But three years earlier, when Jean-Anne was leaving the hospital after paying a visit to a friend recovering from an encounter with a drunk driver, an ambulance followed by three squad cars came racing along the approach road to the ER entrance. Don Scobey—
the
Don Scobey of Don Scobey's Steakhouse—had been shot by a stickup artist. Ever since, when from time to time Jean-Anne saw a police officer at Memorial, she steeled herself for the news that someone had been gunned down.

As they stepped into the lobby, Officer John Martz—who was married to Anita, a Red Hat lady, and who always took the microphone as auctioneer at the annual charity auction for the hospital—came toward them, smiling.

In spite of John's smile, Jean-Anne said, “Who's been shot?”

“Shot? Oh, no, Jean-Anne. It's nothing like that. There's been a contamination problem. Nothing serious but—”

“What kind of contamination?” Julian asked.

“Nothing serious. But anyone who's been to the hospital the last few days, and anyone who has a friend or family member currently here as a patient—we need you to give us a blood sample.”

“Is Mary-Jane all right?” Jean-Anne asked.

“Yes, yes, she's fine.”

“Is she infected with something, after what she's already been through?”

“No, Jean-Anne,” John Martz said. “She's already been tested, and she's fine. We don't need much blood, just a drop, a thumb prick will do it. If you'll follow me … ”

Moving with the officer as he crossed the lobby to the elevator alcove, Jean-Anne said, “Her gallbladder wasn't just inflamed and full of stones, poor thing. She said on the phone it was abscessed.”

And Julian said, “I hope this contamination thing isn't going to lead to complications for her.”

“No, like I said, she's fine,” John Martz assured them. “She tested negative.”

“What do the police have to do with any kind of contamination?” Jean-Anne wondered. “Where are the doctors and nurses?”

“They have their hands full. They asked us for assistance. By law, we're obligated to help in a health emergency.”

“Emergency?” Jean-Anne frowned. “But you said it was nothing serious.”

“It's not that serious,” John Martz said, escorting them into the elevator. “They're short on staff because of the flu, and when this situation came up, they had to declare it an emergency for us to be able to assist.”

As the doors closed, Julian said, “What kind of contamination? You still haven't said.”

“I'm no medical scientist, Julian. If I tried to explain it, I'd only make an idiot of myself. Dr. Lightner will lay it out for you.”

The elevator was already descending when Jean-Anne said, “John, I think the blood lab is on the main floor.”

“Yes, it is. But Dr. Lightner has set up a second testing station in the basement to speed things along.”

The elevator doors opened, and they stepped into the corridor. John Martz turned right, with Jean-Anne at his side and Julian a step behind.

A strikingly handsome young man came out of a room on the left. His looks were so singular that Jean-Anne thought he must be someone famous, perhaps someone she had seen on TV.

She glimpsed a few peculiar objects in the room beyond him: what seemed to be bags made of a silvery fabric, hanging from the ceiling, approximately pear-shaped and evidently filled with something heavy.

Then the young man closed the door behind him, and John Martz led them farther along the corridor as he said, “It only takes a few minutes to get the test results. And they're gentle with the needle.” He held up a thumb. “Can't even see where they pricked me.”

Jean-Anne thought she might have seen the young man on
American Idol
. She glanced back, but he had disappeared.

John Martz ushered them into an unfurnished room in which sat five patients in wheelchairs. Closing the door and remaining beside it, he said, “It'll only be a minute.”

Of the patients, three were strangers to Jean-Anne. The others were Lauraine Polson and Susan Carpenter.

Lauraine, a waitress at the Andy Andrews Café, had been admitted on Monday with a severely prolapsed uterus. She was supposed to have had a hysterectomy this morning. The previous evening, Jean-Anne
visited her, bringing a book of crossword puzzles, to which Lauraine was addicted, and a small basket of fresh fruit.

“Dear, you didn't have surgery?”

Lauraine grimaced. “It's annoying, but there's nobody to blame. There's a shortage of surgical nurses because of the flu. I've been rescheduled for tomorrow.”

“Until tonight, I haven't heard anything about the flu going around,” Julian said.

“It's hit a few of our guys in the department,” John Martz said.

Susan Carpenter, a beautician at Rosalie's Hair and Nails, indicated the semitransparent Tupperware container in Jean-Anne's hands. “Are those your mini muffins, Jean-Anne, like you brought us at the shop last Christmas? I usually don't like muffins but they were fabulous.”