The Cure (23 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-S
EVEN

S
TARING DOWN THE HILL AT
D
UBLIN
, Hope ignored the ringing telephone. The air was perfectly still, which allowed the fog to blanket the town below, obscuring everything except a fearsome iridescent flickering within it, and a plume of smoke that seemed to collect the fog into itself and swirl straight up thousands of feet before the wind currents sent it streaming inland. It was as if the clouds had fallen from on high and an upside-down tornado had arisen to do damage to the empty heavens instead of dropping down to devastate the earth in the usual way.

Bree shouted from upstairs, “
Mother
, will you
please
answer the phone!”

Hope sighed and tore herself away from the spectacle outside her kitchen window. With Riley still standing there looking down the hill, she crossed the room and lifted the portable phone from its cradle.

“Hope, are ya all right?” Steve Novak sounded frantic.

“Sure, Steve. What’s goin’ on?”

“We got arsonists settin’ fire to houses on the north side a town.”

Hope closed her eyes. “Anybody hurt?”

Steve paused a moment before saying, “There’s a chance Riley was in one of the buildings, Hope. I’m sorry.”

“No. He’s okay. He’s right here.”

Another pause. “Everything all right up there?”

“How come you keep askin’ that?”

“I got a report the fires were started by some fellas who are after Riley. They could be comin’ up there next.”

“I see.”

“Ya don’t seem surprised.”

She glanced across the kitchen at Riley’s back and the roiling tower of destruction he was watching in the sky beyond the window. “No.”

“I’m on my way to your place now. Dave Henson’s also comin’ in another car. He might get there first.”

“Okay.”

“Till we get there ya need to lock up the house and close your window blinds. If someone comes, just pretend nobody’s home. Don’t open the door to anyone but me or Dave.”

“All right.”

She hung up the telephone and said, “Is anybody out there?”

Riley said, “Ayuh. A few people coming up the street.”

“Get away from the window.”

“How come?”

“Just get away, Riley!”

She rushed across the kitchen and reached for the cord to drop the window blind.

Riley said, “Hey, they’re coming up the driveway!”

In spite of herself, Hope paused to look out through the glass. The column of smoke looked solid as it stood over her town, a living creature with undulating skin, a repulsively obese serpent uncoiling high above its prey. But close by was the greater danger, at least twenty strangers marching toward the house. She saw others coming far behind them. Everyone held big sticks and rocks, their filthy, bearded faces set in masks of fury. Then she saw one man who seemed oddly out of place. He had a powerful body underneath a clean black suit. His hair was neatly cropped close to his skull. As Hope stared at him in fascination, he raised his hand. In it was a handgun.

The glass before her face exploded. A wave of darkness strewn with stars draped itself across her consciousness. She sensed her body falling and heard a snap and felt a spike of pain drive up her spine.

Then she was on the floor, her vision clearing, staring at the ceiling. A brick crashed through the window just above, soaring safely past but leaving a comet’s tail of jagged glass to shower down on her. She threw an arm across her eyes, burying her face in the crook of her elbow. Suddenly Riley was there, moving her hair to look at the side of her head, asking if she was all right. More stones and bricks flew through the shattered window. She saw him shield her with his body, saw the stones and bricks go bouncing off his back. She heard the endless stream of dull thuds, like a gorilla pounding on its chest. She watched Riley wince, and wince, and wince again, and heard him grunt with pain, but he did not move from over her. If anything, he moved closer.

“Get Bree . . .” she said.

Stones and bricks continued crashing in, and he did not move. There was no more gunfire, but she saw a large rock hit the back of Riley’s head. He cried out at that, and she thought she saw his eyes losing their focus, but still he sheltered her. Finally, when it seemed the cursing mob outside had directed their attention to another window, he gripped her arms and began to pull her toward the middle of the house, away from the falling rocks and glass. Burning agony shot through Hope’s hip as he dragged her across the kitchen floor. She tried to help him, but the pain was just too much. She heard other windows crashing. Ugly curses accosted her from just outside her home. Riley left her in the hallway. She heard her husband’s familiar footsteps charging up the stairs, and then she heard her daughter’s voice nearby. She opened her eyes (had she been asleep?) and Bree was there above her, her daughter’s beautiful face above her, filled with fear and worry just for her, and she thought, oh, she does still love me, she really does.

“Where are the car keys?” shouted Riley.

Bree’s voice was very calm. “I’ll get them.”

A moment later they were lifting her, Riley on the left and Bree on the right, and when they raised her upright, her broken bones shifted like a carnivore sinking fangs into her flesh from somewhere on the inside, savaging her body to get out. She screamed, but Bree and Riley did not stop. She begged, yet they kept moving. In the mudroom Bree peered through the shattered glass in the upper half of the door.

“I think they’ve gone around to the front,” she said. “Come on!”

Hope’s legs were completely useless, trailing behind them as they carried her down the steps and along the driveway.

“Not the Pontiac,” said Bree, the burden of her mother’s weight heavy in her voice. “Dead battery.”

They dragged her toward the Mercedes. She heard the jeers and curses getting louder. She heard more glass breaking. She wondered if they would get to the car before the mob realized they had left the house.

“How do I work this?” asked Riley.

“It unlocks itself when you get this close with the key,” said Bree. “Just open the door.”

The predator inside Hope’s body kept gnawing on her bones as they laid her in the back seat. Through the waves of pain she smelled the leather. She tasted her own blood. She heard a man’s voice, closer than the others. She heard him shout, “Back here! Back here!” and she thought, please hurry, and Bree got in the back of the car beside her, Bree cursing, and she thought, watch your mouth, young lady, and she heard Riley say, “How do I start this thing?” but Bree must have leaned over the seat to push the button on the shifter instead of answering, because the next thing she heard was all twelve cylinders roaring, then came another spike of vicious pain, another swipe of the creature’s claws within her as the impossibly expensive car Riley thought she needed charged down the driveway.

Hope screamed again as Riley took a right turn out of the driveway, throwing her against the door in spite of Bree’s hands on her shoulders. “Please!” she screamed, but the only answer was the engine’s roar. “Oh, please, please, please,” she pleaded, but by then she was whispering, begging God to make it stop.

Incredibly, Riley stood on the brakes. Only Bree’s firm grip kept her from rolling off the back seat and onto the car’s floor. She heard her daughter shout, “Run ‘em over! Run ‘em over!” but Riley did not run them over; instead she looked up from the seat to see him twist and throw his arm across the back and staring out the rear window, staring through the air above her, ignoring her as he reversed the car at top speed, the transmission whining as they backed up the street.

This time, she could see his face. This time, she saw it coming and she braced herself as best she could, and the pain was only terrible when he hit the brakes. Then she lay staring up at the ceiling of the car, trying to breathe, hearing the engine idling, hearing Bree say, “You got to go right through ‘em!”

“I can’t do that,” said Riley.

“You got to!”

“I can’t!”

“They’ll kill us!”

“What’s happening?” asked Hope.

“What’s the matter with you?” screamed Bree at her father.

“What’s
happening
?” screamed Hope.

“They’re coming up both ends of the street,” said Riley, calmly. “We’re boxed in.”

“They’re gonna kill us, Mom!” said Bree. “Make him drive through them!”

“No,” said Riley. “It’ll be okay. They won’t hurt us.”

Hope knew he was wrong, of course. She heard the first blow on the trunk of the car, and a face appeared in the side window above her, leering down at her, teeth bared like an animal, an outer extension of that inner slashing beast within her bones. Then another savage face at the opposite window, the same rage in it, the same barbaric bloodlust in it, and another, and another, and she thought this must have been what it was like for those poor doctors when The People came for them, except the doctors had guns and could fight back.

The glass around the car completely filled with the heads and upper bodies of them, even on the hood and trunk, the metal sides of the car resonating with the terrifying pagan drumbeat of their sticks and stones, the top of the car reverberating with The People’s pounding feet as they danced the death dance over her, the tempered glass crinkling in a dozen spider webs of cracks as they pounded to get at her, the car shaking, provoking the carnivore within her, which bit down harder on her bones as the car shook side to side with screams within and curses without, and the certain knowledge that her husband had been wrong again to trust them.

Then she heard a gunshot, very close.

And another.

And she thought, now they’ll kill us.

Then they were all gone.

The sudden silence was enormous, a tangible thing, like the smoke towering above her town. She stared up at the caved in ceiling of the car and said, “What’s happening?”

“It’s hard to see out through this glass,” said Riley. “But I think it’s over.”

She lay still, knowing it was Steve, of course, or Dave, or both, and knowing this was far from over, knowing Riley Keep was not yet done with being wrong.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-E
IGHT

R
ILEY SLAMMED HIS SHOULDER INTO
the car door until it opened. Outside, the mob had fallen back, at least a hundred of them in a ragged circle, glowering under the threat of handguns wielded by Chief Novak and another policeman. Riley felt the weight of every angry eye on him and knew he had to bear it as his own. He saw Brice in all their faces—Brice dead on the laundry floor for want of medicine beyond his means—and the prospect of five thousand dollars left Riley with no place to hide from the sullen accusations in their stares.

“Everyone okay?” called the chief as he approached the Mercedes with his eyes and weapon on the crowd.

“No,” said Riley, tugging on the rear door, which opened more easily.

Chief Novak backed up to the Mercedes and took a quick glance at Hope where she lay in the rear seat. He looked back toward the gang of angry alcoholics and said, “Hi ya, kid.”

“Hi,” said Hope.

“Where does it hurt?”

“My head and hip.”

Riley saw a bright red bloody sheen slowly coursing across her forehead and face, but that seemed the least of Hope’s own concerns as she pressed against her right hip with both hands and squeezed her eyes shut tightly.

The chief called out, “Radio for an ambulance.”

Over between a Ford Explorer and a Crown Victoria patrol car Riley saw the other man lift a radio to his lips, then the man walked in their direction, his weapon panning the crowd behind the chief. When he got close enough to avoid being overheard by them he spoke softly. “They’re all en route to the fires, Steve. It’ll be at least an hour.”

Riley glanced at the mob, a besieging wall of anger. He would not wait if he were them. He would want satisfaction. They deserved that from him, at the very least.

The chief’s words mirrored Riley’s thoughts. “They’ll rush us way before then. We gotta get out a here.”

“You drive me,” said Hope. Riley saw her eyes open, staring up at him.

Steve said, “We’ll put her in my truck and go together.”

Hope groaned. “Don’t let them move me, Riley.”

The chief spoke to him. “Even if this car still rolls, ya can’t see out the windshield.”

Riley wished for orders or instructions, but the chief faced the mob without a word and Hope lay mute within her solitary world of pain. This was somehow up to him.

He glanced at the intricate network of cracks on the windshield. After so many vicious blows, the way ahead would not be clear. He leaned close inside the car and looked down at Hope and said, “Don’t worry.” Then, turning to Bree in the back seat he said, “Cover your mom.” It might have been the first time he had ever told his daughter what to do. She leaned across Hope, turning her back to Riley as he slid into the front seat and lifted both feet up to the glass. Drawing back, he kicked against the inside of the windshield again and again until it broke free and fell away.

Minutes later they were rolling in a convoy with Chief Novak up front in the Explorer, the other policeman behind in the squad car, and Riley in the middle at the wheel of the Mercedes, the air blowing fresh against his face through the hole where the windshield used to be. Ahead he saw the chief holding his drawn weapon high in his right hand while steering with his other. Riley kept his front bumper less than a yard behind the Explorer. As the Mercedes passed, his accusers pounded it with palms and fists. He wanted to beg them for forgiveness, but it was too late for that.

Then they were free and moving more quickly down the road. Riley backed away from the chief’s truck as their speed increased. They turned at the first cross street, descending toward the center of town into the fog. The lower they went, the deeper into the mist, the more people Riley saw out on the streets. Dark silhouettes of citizens standing in front yards, almost all of them holding weapons of some kind—everything from rifles and handguns to shovels and baseball bats. He saw others, citizens of another world, drifting in and out of obscurity, large groups of indigents along the sidewalks and standing together in parking lots. Some dashed furtively here and there between commercial buildings, all of which were closed for business. Riley saw three homeless men standing with their backs to the front door of a house. It looked like they were refusing to allow their friends to break in. Ahead, the chief slowed and stopped as five military vehicles rolled slowly out of the murkiness to cross the intersection, the helmeted troops inside the transports holding rifles upright, index fingers straight and at the ready beside trigger guards, eyes hidden behind goggles. Alarms sounded everywhere in the background—car alarms, burglar alarms, sirens from ambulances and fire trucks and squad cars. The chief rolled on, with Riley close behind, smelling smoke.

A wall of white drifted across the street as they came to Riley’s neighborhood, or a few blocks from it, which appeared to be as close as anyone could get.

The streets they passed were cordoned off with metal barricades and soldiers standing guard to turn away all traffic. Riley saw flames a few blocks over, leaping higher than the rooftops. Then the fog flowed across his line of sight and he could only see a glowing hint of the destruction, as if a murderer had drawn a translucent cloak around himself even as he did his grisly work.

“Riley” came Hope’s voice from the back seat.

“Uh huh.”

“I smell smoke.” Her words were strangely slurred, as if she had been drinking.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re almost there.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Ayuh.”

“Don’t I smell smoke?”

“It’s comin’ from the houses.”

“How many?”

“Hard to say.”

“Well, would ya guess at least?”

“Maybe fifty.”

“Lord protect us.”

Riley glanced back to see Bree sitting stiffly with her hands on her mother, and Hope lying very still.

At least a dozen cars and pickup trucks sat unoccupied in the no parking zone outside the hospital emergency portico. Ahead of Riley, the chief rolled up as close as he could get and parked and ran through the fog toward the entrance. Riley parked behind his truck, got out and opened the rear car door. He knelt on the pavement, reaching in to lay a hand on Hope’s shoulder. The bleeding at her forehead had stopped, but although her eyes were open she did not seem to notice he was there. Bree stroked her mother’s hair. She did not speak. They were a long way from the emergency room doors, and a lot of people stood outside those doors. Riley wondered if there was room inside for Hope. After a few minutes, the chief emerged from the mist. Close behind him was a woman in hospital scrubs pushing a gurney. As gently as they could, Riley, Bree, the chief, and the nurse lifted Hope out of the back seat and laid her on the gurney. She only cried out once.

Riley would have followed as the nurse pushed Hope’s gurney back across the pavement, but the chief laid a hand on his arm, gripping him tightly. He said, “Bree, honey, go on with your mom, will ya? Your dad and I gotta talk a minute.” Bree’s attention was so focused on her mother, she barely seemed to notice the Steve Novak’s hand on her father.

When they were alone the chief said, “I know who ya are, Riley. Gettin’ rid of the beard and hair and cleanin’ up like ya did, that sure fooled me, but I know now.”

Riley watched his daughter enter the hospital behind Hope’s gurney. He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The chief shook his head. “My town’s burnin’, so I got no time for ya right now. But don’t leave Dublin. If ya do, I’ll come for ya. Wherever you go, I’ll come, an’ I won’t be too awful worried ‘bout the fine points of the law.” The chief released Riley’s arm. “Gimme the keys to this car.”

“What for?”

“I’m impoundin’ it. It’s a crime scene.”

Riley dropped the key into his hand.

An ambulance rolled into the parking lot, its siren screaming. The chief glanced at the battered Mercedes, then back at Riley. He had to shout above the siren. “The car will have your fingerprints all over it. We’ll match ‘em to the ones we took before. We’ll prove you’re the fella had her necklace.”

“I never did a thing to Willa.”

“Well, that’s a queer thing, Riley. If ya don’t know what I’m talkin’ about, how come ya went and mentioned Willa?”