"I guess," Justin said vaguely. He'd missed some of the back-and-forth between the doctor and the major.
"You can pull out if you want, sir," the doctor shouted. "I'll stay behind and take care of them. . . . No, I'm not afraid, or not too much. I don't go into combat, the way you do. I do this instead."
Justin thought he would rather go into combat. If you had a gun, at least you could shoot back. What could you do to a tailored virus?
The major said something. "Sir, I would have to disobey that order," the military doctor yelled back. "The patients come first. I'll stay here."
"He can play on my team any day," Mr. Brooks murmured. "Oh, yeah."
Another yell from the Virginia major. The doctor didn't answer. The major said something else. This time, Justin understood it perfectly. It made the officer's opinion very plain, even if it was on the earthy side. The doctor only laughed. "Thank you, sir. I love you, too," he said, and blew the major a loud, smacking kiss.
"Yeah," Mr. Brooks said. Justin found himself nodding. Whatever else you said about the doc, he had style. As for Justin . . . Justin had the beginnings of an idea.
Beckie had started to hope Ohio troops would occupy Elizabeth. Her passport and Gran's had Ohio visas that were just as good as their Virginia visas. Maybe the Ohioans could do something about the disease they'd turned loose, and wouldn't keep people in the area they occupied all cooped up. If Beckie and Gran could get back to Columbus, they could probably get back to California.
She knew better than to say anything about that where Mr. Snodgrass could hear it. He was, and had every right to be, a good citizen of Virginia. If he saw soldiers from Ohio on Prunty Street, he might take out a shotgun and bang away at them. If he did, the Ohioans would likely shoot him and another dozen people besides, but that might not be enough to stop him.
The soldiers from Virginia were pulling out of Elizabeth again. The disease had got its teeth into them. Beckie thanked heaven that she'd stayed well, and her grandmother, and Mr. Snodgrass. She wasn't so sure he was glad to be well. He might want to join his wife. He kept going on about how empty his days were without her. Beckie didn't know what to tell him. What could you tell somebody who said something like that?
Off to the west and northwest, Virginian guns still fired at the Ohioans in Parkersburg. "How many shells come down on the enemy, and how many land on people who just happen to be in the way?" Beckie wondered after one especially noisy bombardment.
"Can't make an omelette without breaking eggs," Gran said. To her, nothing Virginia did in the war could be wrong. To Beckie, the cliche sounded like one of the things the mysterious they would say.
"It's a hard business, war," Mr. Snodgrass said. "A lot of the time, I think nobody comes out on top."
"I think you're right," Beckie said. Gran just sniffed. Beckie hadn't really expected anything else from her.
Somebody rang the doorbell. If that wasn't one of the soldiers wanting something, it was likely to be Mr. Brooks and Justin. Beckie couldn't very well tell Justin not to come over. This wasn't her house—it was Mr. Snodgrass'. And Justin hadn't done anything to make her hate him. He'd just. . . disappointed her. If he couldn't tell her whatever it was that he couldn't tell her, then they weren't going anywhere no matter what. She'd wondered if they might. Knowing they wouldn't— was too bad.
Even if they weren't, he still made better company than anybody else in Elizabeth. That was pleasant and annoying at the same time, because it reminded her of what might have been.
Today, though, Mr. Brooks beat him to the news: "The doctor who's treating the sick soldiers has come down with it himself. It's a shame—he was brave to stay with them."
"I haven't felt so good myself lately," Gran said. She was healthy as a horse, but she couldn't stand to let anybody upstage her.
"Are they sick, or are they dead?" Mr. Snodgrass asked.
"At least one of them is dead," Justin said before Mr. Brooks could answer.
Beckie sent him a sharp look. He didn't sound nervous or scared, the way he should have talking about something as nasty as germ warfare. He sounded excited. His eyes glowed. He was thinking about something, all right. What? Did Mr. Brooks notice? He didn't seem to. To Beckie, it stuck out like a sore thumb.
"That's a terrible business," Mr. Snodgrass said. "These Ohio people, you want to hunt 'em with coon hounds and tree 'em and shoot 'em right out of the blamed tree, is what you want to do." He didn't sound as if he was kidding. Would he have felt the same way if his wife hadn't got sick and died? He might have. Virginia was his state, and Ohio was giving it a hard time.
"It's pretty bad, all right," Mr. Brooks said. "I don't like it that our doctors haven't got a better handle on the disease by now."
Mr. Snodgrass' face had been angry. It went grim, which was scarier. "I don't like that, either, not even a little bit. What does it say about our state? Only two things I can think of, and neither one of 'em is good. Maybe our people are just asleep at the switch, and they'll get off the shilling and set to work in a spell. That's bad enough, but the other choice is worse. Maybe those Ohio, uh, so-and-so's"—he nodded to Beckie before he said that, so it would have been something juicier if she weren't around—"really are smarter than the best we've got. If they are, that means we're in deeper than anybody figured on when the war started."
"I hope not," Mr. Brooks said. "If people decide that's so, the consul won't get reelected, and you can take that to the bank." ____"If it is so, he shouldn't be," Mr. Snodgrass said. "They
ought to ride him out of town on a rail instead."
Listening to older people going on about Virginia politics was the last thing Beckie wanted to do. At least getting hit by a shell was a quick end—a lot quicker than getting bored to death. Any second now, Gran would jump in, and Beckie already knew all her opinions by heart. Gran's politics were a little to the right of Attila the Hun's.
"You want a fizz, Justin?" Beckie asked. "We can talk about stuff outside." She was still mad at him—how couldn't she be, when he was hiding things from her?—but talking with him had to be more interesting than what was happening in here.
His face lit up. "Sure!" Did he think she'd forgiven him already? If he did, he was dumber than she thought he was.
Going into the kitchen sobered her. Mr. Snodgrass had nailed a plywood square to the outside of the house to keep the bugs out and the air conditioning in till he could get proper repairs made. Every time Beckie saw the hole that square patched, she remembered the dreadful day she almost died. If not for Justin, she might have. She couldn't very well forget that, even if she was mad at him.
The half-roofed trench in the back yard was sobering, too. The cold fizz can felt wonderful against her blistered palm. Of all the things she'd never imagined herself doing, digging like a mole stood pretty high on the list.
"How you doing?" Justin asked her, maybe a little too casually.
"Fair to partly cloudy," she answered, which made him blink till he figured it out. She went on, "You've got something on your mind—something pretty big, I think. Can you tell me what it is?"
He looked alarmed. "How did you know? Uh, I mean, I do?"
She laughed at him. "Yeah, you do. And I know 'cause it's written all over your face. C'mon. Spill."
If he tried to deny it, she intended to push him into the trench and then maybe bury him in it. You could lie some, but you couldn't lie that much. He thought about it—she could tell. But then he must have decided it wouldn't work. He spoke in a low voice, to make sure nobody inside could hear: "I think I know how to get back to Charleston and make sure my mom's all right."
"Oh, yeah? How?" Beckie asked. He told her. She stared at him in admiration mixed with horror. "You're nuts!"
"I know," he answered, not without pride. "But I'm gonna try it anyhow."
Ten
Three minutes after four in the morning. That was what Justin's watch said as he got out of bed and slid into a pair of jeans. In the other
bed, Mr. Brooks went on breathing smoothly and evenly. Justin tiptoed toward the door. If Mr. Brooks woke up and heard him go, the older man would stop him.
Don't let him hear you, then, Justin told himself. He opened the door and unlocked it so he could close it quietly. He slipped out. The latch bolt still clicked against the striker plate. Justin froze, waiting for Mr. Brooks to jump up and yell, What was that? But the coin and stamp dealer went right on sleeping.
The door to the room where the doctor had put Adrian and Millard stood open. Justin knew why: the doctor was sick, too, and couldn't close it. Nobody else—certainly not the motel manager—wanted to come near enough to take care of it.
Justin's thought was, / haven't caught this thing yet, and I've had every chance in the world. He hoped his immunity shots from the home timeline really were good for something. Going in there was risky for him, but a lot less than it would have been for other people. And he couldn't do what he wanted to do— what I need to do, was the way he put it to himself—without taking the risk.
Except for a distant barking dog and an even more distant whip-poor-will, everything was quiet. Quiet as the grave, Justin thought, and wished like anything he hadn't. He slipped into the motel room. Millard and the doctor both lay unconscious, breathing harshly. Adrian wasn't breathing at all—he'd died the day before.
If he weren't more or less Justin's size, this scheme would have been worthless. Since he was . . . Justin hadn't thought he was squeamish, but stripping a dead body made his stomach twist. It also wasn't as easy as he'd thought it would be, since Adrian had started to stiffen.
Pants and shirt and service cap fit well enough. Justin worried more when he started putting on Adrian's socks and shoes. He had big feet, and he was still in trouble if the luckless soldier didn't. But the socks went on fine, and the heavy combat boots were, if anything, too long and too wide. He laced them as tight as he could. His feet still felt a bit floppy in them, but he could put up with it.
One of the packs against the wall was Adrian's. So was one of the assault rifles. When Justin slung on the pack with the longer straps, he gasped at how heavy it was. It had to weigh thirty kilos, easy. Were these Virginians soldiers or mules? The rifle added another four kilos or so. He'd thought he was in pretty good shape. Trying to lug all this stuff around made him wonder.
Dawn was painting the eastern sky pink when he tramped out of the motel room. From the outside, he was a Virginia soldier. On the inside, he felt half proud of his own cleverness, half nervous about what happened next. If things went the way they were supposed to, he'd be a hero. If they didn't. . . He hadn't thought much about that.
The extra weight he was carrying made the shoes start to rub. He trudged west anyway. If he got a blister on his heel, then he did, that was all. He remembered the blisters on Beckie's palms. She'd kept on digging after she got them. He could go on, too.
When the sun came up, he rummaged in Adrian's pack for something to eat. Canned ham and eggs wouldn't put Jack in the Box out of business any time soon. He ate the ration anyway. By the time he finished it, his stomach stopped growling. Not seeing anything else to do with the can, he tossed it into the bushes by the side of the road. He didn't like to litter, but sometimes you were just stuck.
Somewhere up ahead was the Virginia artillery unit that had been shooting at Parkersburg. He really was limping before he'd gone even a kilometer, though. He wouldn't get to them as fast as he'd hoped to.
Then he heard a rumble up ahead. A string of trucks and armored fighting vehicles was heading his way. He got off the road and onto the shoulder to let them by. Or maybe they wouldn't go by. Maybe they would . . .
One of the trucks stopped. The driver, a sergeant not far from Mr. Brooks' age, shouted to Justin: "What the devil you doin' there, son?"
"I was supposed to go out with the rest of the soldiers in Elizabeth," Justin answered, "but I was on patrol in the woods and I twisted my ankle. They went and left without me." He put his limp to good use.
"Some people just use their heads to hang their hats on," the sergeant observed. "Maybe you were lucky you were off in the woods. They've had people die from that disease." He used ten or fifteen seconds describing the plague in profane detail.
"Tell me about it," Justin said, "Millard's a buddy of mine.
I think Doc has it, too." He figured he could earn points by knowing what was going on in Elizabeth.
"If Doc makes it, there isn't a medal fancy enough to pin on his chest," the noncom said. "Anyway, pile on in. We can sort out all this stuff—he used a word something like stuff, anyway—"when we get back to Charleston."
"Will do!" Justin said joyously. They were heading just where he wanted to go. He'd hoped they would be. He limped around to the back of the truck. One of the men inside held out a hand to help him up and in. "Thanks," he told the local, who nodded.
Everybody already in the truck kind of squeezed together to give him just enough room to perch his behind on one of the benches against the side of the rear compartment. It was a hard, cramped seat, but he couldn't complain. He was in the same boat as all the other soldiers there. All the other soldiers, he told himself.
With a growl from its diesel engine, the truck rolled forward again. It ran right through the exhaust fumes of the vehicles in front of it. Justin coughed. A couple of soldiers lit cigarettes. He coughed some more. But nobody else grumbled about it, so he kept quiet. Lots more people smoked in this alternate than in the home timeline. Virginia raised tobacco. He tried to tell himself this one brief exposure to secondhand smoke wouldn't do him in. He hoped he was right.
And the truck was heading for Charleston! Once he got there, all he had to do was ditch his uniform, put on the regular clothes he'd stashed in his pack, and find Mr. Brooks' coin and stamp shop. Mom would be there, and everything would be fine. He nodded happily. He had it all figured out.
Somebody knocked—pounded, really—on the door to Mr. Snodgrass' house. "I'll get it," Beckie called.
"Thank you kindly," Mr. Snodgrass said from his bedroom.
In Los Angeles, the door would have had a little gizmo that let her look out and see who was there. No one in Elizabeth bothered with such things. Living in a small town did have a few advantages. She opened the door. "Hello, Mr. Brooks," she said, and then, after taking a second look at him, "Are you okay?"
"Well, I don't exactly know." He was usually a calm, quiet, self-possessed man. He seemed anything but self-possessed now. "Have you seen Justin? Is he with you?"
"No, he's not here," Beckie said. "I haven't seen him since the last time the two of you came over."
'Then I'm not okay." Mr. Brooks' voice went hard and flat. "He's gone and done something dumb. I wondered if the two of you had gone and done something dumb together." A beat too late, he realized how that had to sound and added, "No offense."
"But of course," Beckie murmured, and the coin and stamp dealer winced. She went on, "Whatever he's doing, he's doing without me, thank you very much." And then she realized she had a better notion of what Justin was up to than his uncle did.
Her face must have given her away, because Mr. Brooks said, "You know something."
"I'm not sure. Maybe I do." What am I supposed to say? Beckie wondered. Justin had told her, but he plainly hadn't told Mr. Brooks. But shouldn't Mr. Brooks know what he was doing? He was Justin's uncle, and as close to a parent as Justin had here.
Yeah, and Gran is as close to a parent as I've got here. Beckie knew that wasn't fair. Unlike Gran, Mr. Brooks had a clue. Even so ...
"What's he gone and done?" the coin and stamp dealer asked, sounding like somebody braced for the worst.
"Well, I'm not exactly sure." Beckie was stalling for time, but she wasn't quite lying. Justin hadn't known exactly what he would do, because he didn't know how things would break. /'// just have to play it by ear, he'd said.
"He's figured out some kind of scheme to get back to Charleston, hasn't he?" Mr. Brooks said. "I told him
that wasn't a good idea, but I could see he didn't want to listen. Is that what's going on?"
Beckie didn't say yes. But she didn't have to. Once Mr. Brooks got hold of the ball, he didn't have any trouble running with it.
He clapped a hand to his forehead. "Oh, for the love of... Mike. Does he think he can con the soldiers into giving him a lift? They won't do that, not unless . . ." He hit himself in the head again, harder this time—so hard, in fact, it was a wonder he didn't knock himself flat. He'd done his best not to cuss before. What he said now almost peeled the paint off the walls in the front hall. "I'm sorry," he told Beckie when he ran down, though he obviously didn't mean it.
"It's okay," she said. "I want to remember some of that for later, though."
Mr. Brooks smiled a crooked smile. "Hope you never get mad enough to need it, that's all I've got to say. One of the soldiers who got sick was about his size. Did he tell you that?"
Again, Beckie didn't say yes. Again, she didn't need to.
"Okay, the good news is, he didn't go off somewhere and then come down with the disease. The gypsies didn't steal him, either—though right now they're welcome to him." Mr. Brooks didn't sound as if he was joking. "The bad news is, he doesn't know thing one about what being a soldier means."
"And you do?" Beckie asked.
She regretted the question as soon as the words were out of her mouth. The ordinary-seeming bald man looked at her— looked through her, really. All of a sudden, she had no trouble at all imagining him much younger, and very tired, and scared to death. "Oh, yeah," he said softly, his eyes still a million kilometers—or maybe twenty or twenty-five years—away. "Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do."
"I'm sorry," she whispered. Then she wondered what she was sorry for. That she'd doubted him? Or that, a long time ago, he'd seen and done some things he'd likely tried to forget ever since? Both, maybe.
He shook himself, almost like a dog coming out of cold water. "Well, as a matter of fact, so am I," he said. "But I'm afraid I'm not half as sorry as Justin's going to be. The question is, will he be sorry because he did something dumb and got caught, or will he be sorry 'cause he did something dumb and got killed?"
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