Sanctuary (19 page)

“You guys okay back there?” I yelled, and was relieved to see Seth’s white face, and Chigger’s laughing one, right there.

“We lost ‘em!” Seth yelled, triumphantly. “Look!”

I looked. And Seth was right. The four by four had tried the same jump we had, but hadn’t been able to get up as much speed as we had. Now it lay with its crumpled nose in the creek bed, the two men inside struggling to get out.

Something burst from within me. Suddenly, I was yelling, “Yeehaw!” like a cowboy. I never lifted my foot off the gas, but it was all I could do to stay in my seat behind that wheel. I wanted to jump out and kiss everyone in sight. Even Dr. Krantz. Even Chigger.

And then, without warning, we were bursting through the trees, and sliding onto the main road. Just like that. The moon was shining down hard, reflecting off the snow carpeting the barren fields all around us. After being so deep in the dark woods, all that light was almost blinding … blinding and the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. Even as I was slamming on the brakes and we went sliding across the icy highway, I was smiling happily. We’d made it! We’d really made it!

When the truck finally slid to a halt, I risked a glance at the wooded hill behind us. You couldn’t tell, just by looking at it, that it housed a bunch of wacko survivalists. It just looked, you know, like a pretty wooded hill.

Except for the smoke pouring from the top of it out into the moonlit sky. Really. It kind of looked like pictures I’d seen of Mount St. Helens, right before it blew up. Only on a much smaller scale, of course.

I looked around. We were in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t a farmhouse, or even a trailer, to be seen. Certainly nowhere I could make a phone call.

Then I remembered Dr. Krantz’s cell phone.

I glanced over at him, but the guy was out. I guess that last burst of speed did him in. I leaned over and pawed around in his coat for a minute, then finally located the phone inside a pocket that also contained a Palm Pilot, a pack of Juicy Fruit, and a lot of used-up Kleenex. I helped myself to a piece of the Juicy Fruit, then opened up the rear window and passed the pack, along with the cell phone, to Seth.

“Here,” I said to him, as he took both. “Call your parents to let them know you’re all right, and that they can pick you up in five minutes at County Medical. Then call the cops and tell them what’s happening up at Jim Henderson’s place. If the fire department’s going to get up there, they’ll need to bring a plow.” Then I remembered the blown-out bridge. “And maybe a road crew,” I added.

Seth, after stuffing the Juicy Fruit in his mouth, eagerly began to dial. I turned back to face the road. My arms ached from my battle with the steering wheel, and despite the cold, there was a ribbon of sweat running all up and down my chest. But we had made it. We had made it.

Almost.

I committed twenty-seven traffic violations getting Rob and Dr. Krantz to the hospital. I went thirty miles over the speed limit—forty outside of town—went through three stoplights, made an illegal left-hand turn, and went the wrong way down a one-way street. Not that it mattered much. There was practically no one out on the streets, thanks to all the snow. The only time I ran into traffic was outside the Chocolate Moose, where a lot of kids from Ernie Pyle High hang out. It was after eleven, so the Moose was closed, but there were still kids around, necking in their cars. When I blew past them, I laid on the horn, just for the fun of it. I saw a number of startled heads lift up as I flew by. I yelled, “Yeehaw,” at them, and a couple of irritated jocks yelled, “Grit!” back at me. I guess because of the truck. And maybe because of the yeehaw. And quite possibly because of Chigger.

But you know what? They couldn’t have called me something that filled me with more pride.

When I swung around the entrance to the hospital, I saw that I had a choice of two entrances: the one for emergency vehicles only, and the one for general admittance.

Of course I chose the one for the emergency vehicles. I figured I’d come skidding to a halt in front of it, you know, like on
The Dukes of Hazard
, and all these emergency room personnel would come running out, all concerned about hearing the brakes squeal.

Only it didn’t happen quite like that, because I guess most emergency vehicles don’t go skidding into that entrance very much, and even though it had been plowed and salted, there was still a lot of ice. So instead of skidding to a halt in front of the emergency room doors, I sort of ended up driving through them.

But hey. All the emergency room personnel
did
come running up, just like I’d thought they would.

Fortunately the emergency room doors were glass, so crashing into them really didn’t cause that much damage to my passengers. I mean, once the front wheels hit the emergency room floor and got some traction, the brakes worked, so Seth and Rob were fine. And Dr. Krantz was unconscious anyway, so when his head hit the dashboard, it probably didn’t even hurt that much. It was more like a little tap. I know that’s how it felt when I was flung against the steering wheel. Fortunately the truck was so old, it didn’t have air bags, so we didn’t have to deal with
that
embarrassment.

Still, the people in the emergency bay were surprisingly unsympathetic to my predicament. I mean, you would think that after what I’d been through, they’d be a little more understanding, but no. They didn’t act at all like the emergency room people on that show on TV.

“Are you crazy?” one nurse in blue scrubs was yelling, as I lifted my head from the steering wheel.

That made me mad. I mean, all I’d done is gotten a little glass on the floor. It wasn’t like I’d run over anybody.

“Hey,” I said. “There’s a guy in the back of this truck with a head injury, and this guy next to me is about to lose a leg. Get a couple gurneys, then get off my back.”

That shut her up, let me tell you. In seconds, it seemed, they’d gotten Dr. Krantz out of the cab, then helped me back the truck up so they could get outside, and help move Rob. Seth was able to climb down from the cab bed unaided, but Chigger didn’t seem too pleased to see his rescuers. He did a lot of growling and snapping until I told him to knock it off. Then, ever hopeful of more mashed potatoes, he leapt from the back of the truck and followed me inside, as I trailed after the gurney Rob was on.

“Is he going to be all right?” I kept asking all the people who were working on him. But they wouldn’t say. They were too busy barking off his vital signs and writing them down on charts. The weirdest part was when they unwrapped him, and I saw what the yellow thing that had been around him the whole time was.

Oh, just the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag from the True Americans’ meeting house.

The one with the giant hole in it, from where I’d accidentally blasted it with a shotgun.

It was as I was standing there staring at this that I heard a voice call my name. I looked around, and saw that Dr. Krantz, who was being worked on over on the next gurney, had regained consciousness. He gestured for me to come close. I edged in between all the doctors and nurses who were hovering around him and leaned down so that he could whisper to me.

“Jessica,” he hissed. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, sure,” I said, surprised. “I’m fine.”

“And Mr. Wilkins?”

“I don’t know,” I said, throwing a glance over my shoulder. I couldn’t see Rob, for all the doctors and nurses crowded around him. “I think he’s going to be okay.”

“And Seth?”

“He’s fine,” I said. “Really, Dr. Krantz, we’re okay. You just concentrate on getting better, okay?”

But Dr. Krantz wasn’t through. He had something else to say to me, something that seemed of vital importance for him to get off his chest. He reached out and grabbed the front of my coat, and pulled me closer.

“Jessica,” he rasped, close to my ear.

I had a feeling I knew what he was going to say, so I tried to head him off at the pass.

“Dr. Krantz,” I said. “Don’t worry about thanking me. Really, it’s all right. I’d have done the same for anybody. I was happy to do it.”

But Dr. Krantz still wouldn’t let me go. If anything, his grip on the front of my coat tightened.

“Jessica,” he breathed, again. I leaned even closer, since he seemed to be having trouble making himself heard.

“Yes, Dr. Krantz?” I said.

“You,” he rasped, “are the worst driver I have ever seen.”

C H A P T E R
18

T
he county hospital saw a lot of action that night. And that’s not even counting having a pickup ram through its ambulance-bay doors.

It also admitted forty-eight new patients, seven of them in critical condition. Fortunately none of the people listed as critical were friends of mine. No, it looked as if most of the damage that was done that night was done to the True Americans. As I sat in the waiting room—they wouldn’t let me in to see Rob once he’d been admitted, because I wasn’t family—I saw each person as they were wheeled in.

Of course, that didn’t start happening for a while, because it took a pretty long time for the fire engines and ambulances and police to get out to Jim Henderson’s place. In fact, merely my explanation of
how
to get out there took a while. The police interviewed me for about forty minutes before the first squad car even started off in the direction of the True Americans’ compound.

And I’m not too sure they believed what I told them. That might be one of the reasons they didn’t go tearing off right away. I mean, a militia group, under attack by a ragtag band of bikers and truck drivers? Fortunately at some point, Dr. Krantz regained consciousness, and they were able to go in and confirm everything I’d said. He must have been pretty persuasive, too, because when I saw the sheriff leaving the examination room Dr. Krantz had been shoved into while the hospital staff scrambled to find a surgeon skilled enough to sew his leg back together, he looked pretty grim.

For a short while, the only person in the emergency waiting room with me was Seth. Well, Seth and Chigger. The hospital people weren’t too happy about having a dog in their waiting room, but when I explained that I couldn’t leave Chigger outside in the truck, as he would freeze, seeing as how the truck had no heat—nor much of a windshield left—they relented. And really, once I’d gotten him a few packs of peanut-butter Ritz crackers from the snack machine, Chigger was fine. He curled up on two of the plastic chairs and went right to sleep, worn out from his long ride and all that barking.

Seth’s reunion with his parents, which came about ten minutes after our arrival, was touching in the extreme. The Blumenthals wept with happiness over seeing their son alive and in one piece. When they heard about my part in bringing Seth home, they pulled me into their group hug, which was fun, even though I assured them that I had, in fact, played only a very small role in the liberation of their son from the militia group that had kidnaped him.

But when Seth, while explaining precisely what the True Americans were all about, showed his parents the burn on his hand, which I had sort of forgotten about, they freaked out, and Seth got whisked off to the burn unit to have the wound treated.

So then it was just Chigger and me in the waiting room.

Finally, though, my parents, along with Douglas and Mike and Claire (because the two of them are attached at the hip) showed up, and we had our own tearful reunion. Well, at least, my mom cried. No one else did, really. And my mom only cried because she was so relieved that Great-aunt Rose had been wrong: Apparently the whole time I’d been gone, she’d been telling everyone that I had probably run off to Vegas to find work as a blackjack dealer. She had seen a show about teenage runaway blackjack dealers on
Oprah
.

Great-aunt Rose, my dad said, was leaving on the first bus out of town in the morning, whether or not she was ready to go.

It was a little while after this that Mrs. Wilkins showed up. I had called her right after I called my parents. But Mrs. Wilkins, being family, was let into the room where they were keeping Rob, so it wasn’t like we had a chance to visit or anything. She only came out once, and that was to tell me that the doctor had said Rob was going to be all right. He had a concussion, but the doctor didn’t think he’d have to stay in the hospital for more than a day or two, so long as he regained consciousness by morning. My dad told Mrs. Wilkins not to worry about her shifts at the restaurant while Rob was convalescing, so that was all right.

One thing my dad didn’t ask—no one in my family did—was what Rob and I had been doing, saving Seth Blumenthal and battling the True Americans together. Mike and Claire and Douglas already knew, of course, but it didn’t seem to occur to my parents to ask. Thank God.

All they wanted to know was was I all right, and would I come home now.

I said I was fine. Only I couldn’t come home. Not, I told them, until I’d heard that Dr. Krantz was safely out of surgery.

If they thought this was weird, they didn’t say so. They just nodded and went to get coffee from the machine over by the cafeteria, which, this late at night, was unfortunately closed. I was famished on account of having had nothing to eat since lunch, so we raided the snack machines some more. I had a pretty good dinner of Hostess apple pie and Fritos, some of which Chigger helped me eat. Much to my surprise, no one in my family seemed really to like Chigger, who was quite charming to all of them, sniffing each one carefully in case he or she had food hidden somewhere. My mom looked a little taken aback when I asked if I could keep Chigger. But she softened when I explained that the police had told me any pets found on seized property would be impounded and probably put down.

Besides, no one could deny Chigger made a very good guard dog. Even the cops had given him a pretty wide berth while they were questioning me.

And then, just as I’d suspected, about an hour after this, the first of the casualties from the battle of the Grits versus the True Americans began to flood the ER. I’m not sure, but I think it was around then that my parents began to suspect that my real motivation for staying at the hospital wasn’t to find out whether or not Dr. Krantz’s surgery had been successful. No, it was because I wanted to be there when they brought in Jim Henderson. I wanted to be there really, really bad.