“Took it in high school.”
“You’re in tech, though.”
“Sales.”
“Uh-huh. Big company?”
“Google, actually. I thought I mentioned it.”
“They only hire the best. You must know something about electricity. You ever see the trick of rubbing a plastic comb against wool? It’s like walking with your socks on the carpet. You can get a good shock.”
He rubbed the black plastic comb against the wool jacket, back and forth, with increasing vigor. So much so that it threatened to tip the man out of his chair. All the while, Lyle stared at Alex. She met his gaze, then dropped it, looked up again, and there he was, still staring. His blank face gave away little of his thinking. Then he looked down at the man sitting in the chair with the jacket. This man’s throat was exposed. Lyle put the comb to the side of the man’s head. Nothing happened.
Lyle began rubbing the comb again, more vigorously still. Alex took two steps forward, mesmerized.
Lyle withdrew the comb from the jacket and placed it on the man’s exposed neck.
The man jerked. Alex stepped backward.
“Dr. Martin, you’re…”
He studied her face.
“You’re doing it.”
“Doing what?”
“You’re—”
A gunshot exploded from outside the mobile home. Then—bang bang bang—a knock on the door. Lyle stared at the man’s body, now back in its paralysis state but, clearly, something had happened. The man no longer smiled. His head lolled to the side. Some movement.
Jerry slammed the door open. “We have to go. Now!
“Hurry! Someone’s alive!”
Twenty-Three
Lyle felt a hand around his arm. Jerry yanked him toward the door. Lyle yielded but stared at the man at the table. The guy wasn’t back to normal but he’d had a reaction. His head lolled now. Still in a state that Lyle thought of as stasis and yet not so beyond reach. Outside, the pickup had pulled as near as it could without hitting the tree line. Twenty feet to the right, the black bear sat on its haunches, growling.
“I had to shoot it,” Jerry said. “I think it can live but it’s pissed. We have to make a run for it.”
“Why?” Alex said.
“A car just passed. Heading down the road. In the direction of town.”
Jerry started running to the pickup, prompting a louder growl from the bear. Lyle followed, and so did Alex, stumbling behind. The bear started forward at them. They reached the car as the bear sped up.
“Get in, get in, get in!” Eleanor said. She laid on the horn to scare the bear.
“It’s going to eat us,” the girl screamed.
They slammed shut the door. The bear crashed into the driver’s-side door. It rocked the cabin. The girl screamed again. Eleanor had ducked to the right and fumbled from a bent position with the controls. The bear swiped at the window, cracking it. Eleanor yanked the gear shift into reverse. Without looking, zoom, the pickup spun backward. Then with a thwacking sound, paused and spun to the right. They’d hit the KOA sign.
Eleanor put the truck in drive and pulled the wheel sharply to the left. Just before she hit the accelerator she paused and saw the bear fifteen feet away, growling and bleeding. “Sorry,” Eleanor mumbled. She guided the vehicle into a sharp U-turn and back onto the main road. The truck slipped and slid and the reason was now plain to the eye: the snowfall had intensified. It wasn’t quite a blizzard and also not at all a time to be out in the middle of the night. The clock said 2:45.
“There!” Jerry said.
Up ahead, quickly getting away from them, taillights. They were heading east, away from the airport and toward Steamboat proper. A stunned silence overtook the passengers of the pickup. Not even the girl made a sound. The windshield wipers thwapped and squeaked. In the back, the boy and girl sat beside each other with Alex now on the right and the three of them huddled. Eleanor leaned forward in the driver’s seat. Jerry clicked the ammunition out of the handle of the gun and saw six bullets and clicked it back in and checked the safety. He stared vacantly out the window until he saw a sign and then said, “Two miles to town.” The industry turned more dense: a car dealership, a veterinary hospital, a shuttered café and gas station. Signs of life but not the living. Not a soul walking or driving, other than the car they had been following and could no longer see.
Lyle stared at the electrical wires running alongside the road. Then Lyle turned his head to the back of the truck. “Hey, kiddos, I could really use your help.” In his periphery, he could see the girl’s face remained choked with terror and the boy stared stoically ahead. Neither acknowledged Lyle. He said: “My wife has a son.”
This seemed to perk up the boy. “He died?”
“No, I just don’t see him anymore. It’s a long story. I’m very sad about it. I want to make sure that you guys see your parents again soon. Can I ask a question?”
It was how Lyle used to speak to patients or their families, with the human touch. Sincere in a way they might not expect from a doctor. It seemed to connect to the boy. He focused on Lyle while the snow drifted down and Eleanor followed in the direction of the ghost car.
“Do you remember when your dad got sick?”
“I was asleep and when I woke up he was… like that.”
“Did he move?”
“Yes, they all moved!”
It was an outburst from the girl. Alex put her hand on the girl’s back.
“What do you mean, Andrea?”
“They…” She was trying to tell them and she didn’t have the words.
“Did they get mad at each other?” Lyle asked.
“What? No!”
“Did they,” Lyle moved his arms around, “jerk their bodies?”
“Kind of, I don’t know, maybe like they were dreaming. I don’t know.” She sniffled. “There was this sound. I heard this sound. It was a siren. I thought the ambulance was coming.”
Lyle looked at Alex, who was staring at the girl.
“Did you hear a siren?”
Alex shook her head.
“Static, like the radio?”
“I didn’t hear a thing,” Eleanor said. She passed a motel with a blinking vacancy sign, and then another mobile home park on the right. On the left, a high rock wall buffeted the highway. Trees and tufts grew nearly at right angles. The road veered to the right.
“Stop,” Jerry said.
“Why?”
He was looking out the right side of the car at Elk River Guns.
Eleanor kept driving.
“Pollyanna,” Jerry muttered.
Eleanor almost retorted but she was distracted by the emergence in front of them of a downtown strip. Lyle was still turned backward, talking to the children, but his eyes were elsewhere: on Alex.
“Did you feel anything in your body, Andrea?”
“My head hurt.”
“Have you ever had a shock, like getting your finger stuck in a light socket?”
“No.”
“I got one when I walked on the carpet in my socks,” Tyler said.
“Did it feel like that?” Lyle asked.
Both children shook their head.
“Is that what it feels like?” Lyle asked Alex.
“What?”
“When you were in the airplane and all those people got stuck. Is that what it felt like?” He really was eyeing her now, with great intensity. She shrugged. Lyle kept trying to place her and her knowing look. It looked like she felt some intimacy. Was she grasping at straws and seeing him as a source of stability amid this chaos? Or was it something more?
Did she have the disease? Was this what it looked like, a kind of intensity or derangement? Maybe this was onset. But why did it take her so long to get it? Did it have to do with her limp? Something odd about that.