“Oh, I know. I know. You just hate taking orders. But hear this order from me,” Lois said. “There is so much more that will become clear in time, and as soon as I can say, you’ll be the first to know. But until then, know that this will blow over soon. Just stay strong. Won’t you?”
The old woman sounded so much like his mother before her death: confident, optimistic, bright. He stuttered a brief agreement before hearing the final order.
“I think you should go visit Darcy Crawford,” Lois said then. “I really think she deserves your support.”
“Alayna went out this morning, when I met you at the diner,” Clay explained. He stared at the dirt on his boots, remembering the early morning’s inspection of the farmhouse and barn.
“I know that,” Lois said, irritated. “But she and her father are important to this town. And I know, more than anyone, how much this town means to you. It’s been your life for far too long to sit around and mope.”
“You’re getting all sentimental on me, Lois,” Clay said, feeling blood pump in his veins once more. The old mayor was right. “I suppose I could head over there. I don’t know what else I’ll do here at the office, besides worry about what Colonel Wallace and his band of no-goods are doing at the perimeter.”
“That’s the spirit,” Lois said. “Hey. I have to run to a meeting. But we’ll speak soon.”
A meeting on a Saturday? Clay wondered. “Yeah, sure.”
“And Clay?” she offered, her voice hesitant.
“What is it, Lois?”
“Be careful.”
Chapter 15
Clay gave a brief good-bye to Alayna before bounding away from the station, already feeling like the day wouldn’t end. It was only five in the afternoon, and he didn’t sense leaving his post anytime soon, or slipping out of his treacherous shoes. Jesus. He stretched his toes within the thick, unforgiving material. He ached.
He pulled into the lot at the hospital, parking close to the emergency room. As he walked, he sensed questioning eyes upon him. He bowed his head in greeting to several nurses who stood outside with cigarettes between their lips. They looked harried, their eyes bloodshot and red. “Afternoon, ladies,” he said.
A nurse at the waiting station led him to Darcy’s room. He felt outside of himself as his boots squeaked on the linoleum floor. As gurneys pushed past him, he realized he didn’t fully recognize everyone who passed. These were the people he was meant to care for. These were the people he planned to protect. And yet they were invisible, anonymous.
The moment Clay saw Darcy in the hospital bed, his breath caught sharp in his throat. Her hair wove around her face, creating a kind of dark cloud. And her eyelashes fluttered at her red-tinged cheeks, giving her an angelic appearance. Her thin wrists looked unsuited to do any labor: like tiny, mouse wrists, broken with an ounce of weight. He couldn’t imagine how this girl could endure a brief windstorm, let alone survive the meteorite.
Beside the bed sat Mack Crawford, her father—a man Clay had been rather friendly with over the years. Mack’s back was curved, his elbows upon his knees. He looked like he was weeping, shuddering with tears.
Clay reached toward him, nearly ready to touch his shoulder, to offer support. But immediately the man lurched back with a violent motion. His eyes were red, his skin splotchy. He popped his lips in a moment of recognition.
“Sheriff,” he said gruffly.
“Mack. Are you doing all right?” Clay asked, his voice tentative. He instantly noticed how profusely Mack was perspiring. “You don’t look too well. Do you have the flu or—”
Mack stood up and began pacing, interrupting Clay. His boots rattled across the floor and his words came spastically. “Jesus, Clay. I wish everyone would stop getting on my case about this. I’m fucking fine,” Mack said. He slapped an open palm on an adjacent wall. The sound echoed throughout the room and rang through Clay’s ears. He eased back, standing in the doorway.
Mack continued. “All this. Darcy being in the hospital. I lost the entire farm. Do you know how hard I’ve worked for that farm? The barn and the house? It’s all I have!”
“The fields are mostly fine,” Clay offered. “I stopped there this morning. It was bad luck, for sure, but you haven’t lost your daughter. That’s what’s most important, isn’t it?”
Mack continued to pace, wringing his hands. Sweat continued to pour, staining his shirt in splotches beneath his armpits. “If I could only get some space,” he sputtered. “I just wish everyone would leave me alone.”
Clay rested his hands on his hips, mentally stepping away from the grieving man and his unconscious daughter. He remembered the panic in Cliff’s eyes back at the jail cell and drew a direct comparison to Mack, who was all but thrashing between him and the hospital bed. He imagined the possibility of Mack’s violent thrusts coming down upon Darcy, his own daughter.
He spoke tentatively. “Listen. I know you aren’t feeling well, Mack. Just admit it to yourself and head to a hotel. Get some sleep. We all know you need it. And the nurses will call you the minute your daughter wakes up.”
Mack burst forward, then, sending his fist to the base of Clay’s chin. He growled slightly, the whites of his eyes showing jaundice yellow. “Don’t you fucking tell me what to do,” he spat. “You get out of here.”
The sheriff’s instinct took over once more, forcing him to wrap his arms around this manic man who was on the edge. He pushed Mack to the ground, beside his sleeping daughter’s form, and held him between his calves before reaching back and tugging his cuffs from his pocket. He cuffed him, surprised at the strength in the forty-something man, nearly causing him to topple toward the ground.
“Easy, there,” Clay said, scarcely believing what he was doing. Mack wasn’t fully berserk, not like Cliff had been. But as Clay began to help the man to his feet, Mack heaved back and vomited all over the linoleum. The smell was wretched, curdling in Clay’s nose. But still, he held fast to Mack’s upper bicep, feeling his straining strength.
“You feel better?” he asked.
Mack heaved several breaths, clearly unable to answer. He shot himself back to his feet, sputtering with anger. He gave a final look to his daughter before asking, “So. Where the fuck you gonna take me now, Mr. Sheriff?” His eyes were dark over the yellow background. And his skin seemed off, like the inside of a sour grape.
“We’ll head back to the station for now,” Clay said, trying to sound sure of himself. But in reality, the strangeness of the day made his every movement seem fictional. He ached for his bed.
Clay gave a final glance to Darcy, then led her father from the room.
Chapter 16
Mack thrashed several times as they marched through the hallway before finally giving up and walking slowly, dispassionately, his arms hanging behind his back in their cuffs.
Clay had half a mind to let him free in that moment. Perhaps he was truly just upset about his daughter. Perhaps he was truly a grieving father, yearning to be left alone.
But the moment Mack’s skin felt the assault of sunlight outside the hospital, he began to toss himself violently once more. He screamed wretchedly, highlighting the wrinkles on his forehead, his cheeks, around his eyes. Clay waffled around him, catching him at his shoulders, trying to calm him.
“Mack! Hey! It’s all right, buddy!” But his words sounded weak and tired in the face of such anger. Clay felt himself staggering left, then right as he clung to him, moving with each of Mack’s insane thrusts. He was nearly pummeled to the ground but soon righted himself, finding the strength to stand firm in his boots.
Just as Clay assumed Mack would never halt this violence, that he would have to carry him the rest of the way to his sheriff’s car, he heard a loud engine revving behind him. His heart sank with intense fear. His fingertips dipped deeper into Mack’s biceps, hoping he was wrong. That the sound was nothing. Just another farmer in a loud truck.
But the footfalls behind him told him a different story. The angry, obnoxious voice coiled with
in his ears, chilling Clay to the bone.
“Well, well. Sheriff Dobbs. What in the world do we have here?” Colonel Wallace drawled, assessing Mack’s ominous behavior. “Seems rather peculiar to me. Not just like a man who almost lost his daughter today. But more like a man on the brink of insanity. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Clay maintained his steady posture, turning his head so that only his stark profile showed to Wallace, hoping to retain control. “He’s just upset,” he affirmed. “He’s had a hard day.”
As if on cue, Mack squealed wildly, like a pig. He thrust himself so violently in Clay’s arms that Clay lost his hold. Mack stumbled backward, nearly tossing himself in front of an ambulance, hightailing it through the crunching pavement. From this distance, Clay sensed the danger in this man. He sensed that he’d crossed over the line, much closer to the behavior exhibited by Cliff earlier that afternoon.
Wallace smacked his hands together, throwing an echo across the hospital’s brick wall. On this cue, three of his men marched forward and grasped Mack Crawford by the arm, the leg, the torso, and then flung him in the back of one of their transports, still handcuffed. He screamed like a caged animal.
“What do you expect you can do with him that I wasn’t already going to?” Clay demanded, leaning toward the colonel.
“He’ll be quarantined for evaluation,” Wallace said, sniffing. “It’s a technique we often use in these situations.”
“You do realize that it’s probably just the flu,” Clay said hopefully. “Faced with the condition of his daughter and the loss of his farm, he’s just a little manic.”
“Leave your diagnosis attempts to the professionals. And please, Sheriff, if you see anyone else exhibiting these symptoms, send them our way. We have our quarantine facility set up just outside of town, and we have the tools and the know-how to deal with this.”
“Is that an order?” Clay challenged, still hearing Mack fighting himself in the back of the transport. Clay swallowed, almost thankful not to have Mack’s fate on his hands. Not like Cliff. He couldn’t handle that twice in one day.
“Sure is,” Wallace said, stretching a smile across his face. “You don’t want to destroy one of your fellow men in the process, now, do you?” He turned his eyes back to his soldiers, who stood in a straight line, their eyes toward him. “Let’s move out, boys. Lucky we were in the neighborhood, eh?”
They stomped back to their vehicles and sped from the parking lot, leaving Clay alone, staring into the ether. He sensed that the life he’d woken up to, with his wife and daughter in his quaint, country home, might very well be a figment from his past. But he couldn’t think about that now. He had to move beyond this helpless feeling and get to the bottom of this wretched day. What the fuck was going on?
And for all their pomp, he wasn’t entirely sure that Colonel Wallace and his troops had all the answers.
Chapter 17
Clay paced his office hours later, his hands clasped behind his back. Alayna sat with her feet upon his desk, her fingers jittering as she thought aloud.
“When I saw Mack at the hospital, he was exhibiting these same symptoms,” she said again. “And it seems that Darcy had similar signs. But she wasn’t ranting and raving like you say Mack was.” She paused, gazing out the window. “Where do you think they took him?”
“Colonel Wallace said the facility was set up just outside of town. Probably just over the county line and out of our reach.” Clay threw up a bewildered shrug. He felt his stomach lurch within him once more and nearly hacked into the trash can. He couldn’t decide if he actually felt ill or if the stress of the day had its hands around his neck. He absentmindedly scratched at some scaly skin on his forehead. His hand returned to his side trailing several strands of his salt-and-pepper hair. He searched his fingers, aghast, and noted that on his forearm were the beginnings of some lesions, lying just beneath the surface of his skin. He dropped his arm back down, noting that Alayna had turned toward him.
“What was that?” she asked.
“Nothing. I hit my arm on a burner the other day,” Clay lied. He felt a bead of sweat form at his temple.
Alayna bought it easily. She had no reason not to trust him. She cracked her knuckles and bound back into the discourse, leaving Clay with his roving thoughts.
“Anyway. With the military presence, the mood in this town has really taken a nose dive. Don’t you think all the activity is overkill? It’s making the natives uneasy. We had almost ten people in the station when you were gone, demanding answers about all the transports and the tank. We’re a small town, here, you know? I just don’t think we need all this.”
Clay nodded, gliding a hand over his forearm, sensing that the lesion was somehow related. He was frightened, but he couldn’t show it. “We’ll take steps to get them out of town and get Mack some actual medical attention. Imagine. I’m sure they’ve just thrown him in some kind of cage until he stops showing symptoms. That could kill a guy.”
In that moment, the door swung open, revealing the tiny, angular face of Mayor Washington. She breathed quickly, like a tiny bird. She lifted a paper into the air and flung it across Clay’s desk, pointing at the headline spread across the page.
“Meteorites and Militia: The Day Carterville Went Crazy.” Beside the headline was a photo of Colonel Wallace, his face intense and demanding, and Clay. His own presence in the photo seemed trivial in comparison—not a person you’d allow to watch over your town, let alone your dog for the weekend. Not one of Clay’s best photogenic moments.
He hadn’t expected this. “They printed a special edition in the middle of a Saturday?” he said, remembering the faces at the Carterville Gazette. They’d turned on him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lois said, her head rigid. “What matters is, we need to do something about the rumors floating around this town. People have watched too many sci-fi movies, and now they’re running rampant with all these postapocalyptic thoughts. On my walk here, I saw two mothers weeping over their strollers, like it was the end of the world. Clay, we have to do something. We can’t have the entire town go mad as we sit idle.”
Clay’s mind raced. Alayna began to stutter an answer, but he held up his hand, halting her. “Listen, Lois, I can’t control what people think. Sure, I get why they’re scared. Heck, I didn’t know how much ‘assistance’ Helen was going to send over when I requested it. They dispatched an entire military outfit.”
Lois dropped her eyes and stared at the newspaper, visibly shaking.
“But we’ll get things under control,” Clay continued. “Sure, we’ve lost a few good people today. But give my team some time to figure things out, and if we’re lucky, we won’t lose any more.” Clay wasn’t entirely sure how they’d follow through on his words, but he had confidence in each and every deputy in his department. A slight grin stretched across his face.
Lois answered immediately. “I suppose you haven’t heard about the new cases, then?”
Clay’s jaw dropped. “I’m—I’m sorry?”
“The military has quarantined five more people, all exhibiting similar symptoms. First, it’s the sweats,” Lois said, “followed closely by uncontrolled vomiting before it devolves into a kind of animalistic, crazed behavior during which they forget who they are and where they came from.”
Clay nodded, remembering the eyes of both Cliff and Mack. “So the military believes it’s all related to the meteorite?” he asked, feeling small beads of sweat form once more at his hairline. He flicked them away, hoping Lois didn’t notice.
“Sure, maybe. They don’t know its precise relation, but that whatever this ‘virus’ is, it’s contagious.”
“Isn’t this all a little premature?” Clay asked. “I know there are several cases of the flu running around town. Hell, Maia is fighting it off as we speak.”
“Right now, no one is sure.” Lois sniffed. “We have the makings of an epidemic on our hands. And if we’re not careful, it’ll overtake us all.”
A
layna gasped and tilted her head back, clearly falling into the initial levels of grief. Clay could empathize. Carterville was his town. And he felt he was watching it sink into the sea.
“That leads me to my next question,” Lois said. “Have either of you begun experiencing symptoms? I know that both of you have been around the Crawfords. Clay, you even saw the meteorite with your own damn eyes.”
Clay shook his head almost imperceptibly. He could practically feel the hair leaping from his scalp. But he took an offensive path, his voice coming out almost in a growl. “Lois, you know we wouldn’t endanger the people of this town. The moment we experience symptoms, we’ll let you know. All right?”
Lois turned toward Alayna, who shook her head as well. No symptoms.
“Well, good,” Lois said, pressing her hands together as if to break out in a prayer. “Then I suppose we all have a job to do. Keep the peace as much as possible—”
“And what about the military? Allow them to keep up this horrid ‘gathering up’ of sick people?” Clay demanded. “We need to keep our town, Lois. We can’t afford to give it up. The hospital can certainly handle whatever this it, wouldn’t you agree?”
As he spoke, the door burst open once more, revealing the man of the hour: Colonel Wallace. He lifted his hand into the air and began to bark his words in such a deep, terrible pitch, it took a moment for Clay to wrap his mind around his meaning.
Chapter 18
“This town is falling into chaos,” Wallace began. “We’ve picked up more locals exhibiting symptoms, fifteen in total at this point, and know that several more will fall to this illness.”
“Colonel, aren’t you exaggerating the situation just a bit?” Lois asked, straightening her posture and shifting her gaze upon the commander. “The sheriff has just informed me that there’s widespread instances of influenza running amok. How can you be certain that everyone you’ve picked up isn’t just suffering the common flu?”
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