The decision made, she acted calmly and swiftly. Dragging and cursing him, she got Chase into the corridor, returned for the battery lantern, and slammed the door shut, making sure it was securely on the catch. She switched the lantern on and by its light saw that his face was white as paper, his hair plastered to his head like a skullcap. Ruth was afraid he was dying.
A footfall behind her jerked her upright, her nerves taut as piano wires.
Dan knelt beside her. "Is he sick, too?"
It was only then she became aware of groans and stifled screams in the other rooms along the corridor. Chase wasn't the only one. Was it the food or the water? The water. Poisoned water from the skies. It was impossible; they couldn't win. With unbreathable air and undrinkable water what hope was there for any of them?
They moved Chase to another room and tried to take stock of the situation. Out of twenty-seven people nine had the same symptoms as Chase, suffering from intense stomach cramps and vomiting. Half a dozen of the others complained of feeling unwell and Ruth supposed it was only a matter of time before everyone was stricken. At Nick's suggestion they carried all the sick into one of the larger apartments with two connecting rooms, where it would be easier to keep an eye on them. Mattresses were brought in and arranged around the walls. Soon the rest came to join them, obeying the primitive group instinct of herding together for mutual protection and companionship. From the jungle to the complete floor of a hotel and now to two rooms: They could hardly huddle any closer.
The storm raged around them with terrifying ferocity, battering at the walls and shaking the windows in their frames.
Nick knelt by Ruth's side as she made one of the children comfortable. "How are you feeling?" he asked her worriedly.
"All right so far. But 1 don't think any of us will escape it, Nick. We've all eaten the same rations and drunk--"
A middle-aged man was crying out piteously for water, raising himself on one elbow, mouth gaping. One of the women hurried to him with a plastic cup and Ruth leaped up and knocked it from her hand.
"No water!" She swung around, shouting it at everyone in the room and those through the connecting door. "The water could be contaminated. Nobody is to drink it!"
"Is it the water?" Nick asked her. "Are you sure?"
"I don't know anything for sure. It could be the food, the heat, the air--" Ruth made an empty, angry gesture. "How in hell do I know?"
Nick looked across at Chase whose face was contorted in an awful grimace of pain. He turned slowly, seeing the writhing bodies, hands clutching their stomach. "We have to give them something. Have we any pain-killers left?"
"Yes," Ruth said stonily and told him about the medical pack and the noise she had heard.
"Did you actually see it?"
"I didn't wait to see it. Would you?"
"That means you can't treat Jo," Nick said in a hushed voice. His lips thinned. "You can't give her a shot--"
"I can't treat anybody!" Ruth snapped coldly. She closed her eyes, screwed them tight, and clenched both fists. After a moment she opened her eyes, hollow and rinsed out. "I'm sorry, Nick, forgive me. No, I haven't any drugs at all; they're in the medical pack"--she suppressed a shudder--"in that room."
Ruth turned away. There was nothing more to say and precious little she could do. She tried to comfort Chase, who was delirious, babbling something about being lost in Antarctica.
Nick closed his hand around the doorknob and very carefully increased the pressure. As it began to turn he said, "Is the safety off?" His voice was thick and ragged.
"Yes," Dan whispered. In the light of the flashlight his face had the appearance of a Halloween mask. The automatic was a burnished blue glint at the level of his hip. He raised it in front of him as the door opened a crack.
At first sight the room was empty.
Dan crouched and shone the light under the bed. Nothing there. He turned the beam on the door of the closet, which was closed. Ruth had said it was the double closet farthest from the window. If there had
been anything in the closet, it hadn't come out. Snakes didn't close doors behind them, no matter how well brought up they were.
Nick said, "As soon as I open it--fire." He cleared his throat, trying to muffle the sound. "Ready?"
Dan went down on one knee and held the gun straight in front of him and sighted along the barrel. "Ready."
As if in slow motion Nick bent at the knees and reached out at full stretch. He touched the handle with his fingertips and pushed and the door slid back, rolling silently on polyurethene bearings. Dan's finger tightened on the trigger, but he didn't fire because there was nothing to shoot at. The bulky brown canvas pack, flap unbuckled, stood on the third shelf down with two cartons of cotton swabs beside it, one opened. The rest of the closet remained hidden behind the center and side panels, an unknown quantity.
"Move to the left," Nick murmured. "Shine the light inside."
Still on one knee, Dan sidled around, holding the flashlight in his left hand. His throat felt cramped but he was unable to swallow. Nervously he saw Nick craning forward, trying to see into the shadowy recesses, and wanted to warn him not to go too near, to edge back out of the way, but his tongue was bloated, filling his mouth and tasting of dried leather.
Jagged lightning forked beyond the window. Then came a rolling boom of thunder and with it another sound, that of a sinister warning rattle.
Time stood still.
Dan's blood seemed to freeze in his veins as the rattle ceased, and simultaneously he fired as the reptile struck. A long pointed splinter spun through the flashlight beam, sheared from the center panel. Dan fired again as the broad diamond-backed body recoiled, winding back upon itself, and again, aiming into the heavy curled mass of coils, pumping the trigger until the clip was exhausted and the hammer clicked metallically in the sudden deathly silence.
"Did 1 get it, is the bastard dead?" Dan asked in a rushed whisper.
He shone the light into the spattered closet and saw a quivering mound twitching convulsively. The head, almost severed from the body, was lying on one side, mouth gaping slackly, the extended fangs dripping blood. . . .
Blood?
Blood!
Dan blinked sweat from his eyes. Couldn't be. Wasn't time. Too quick. He'd fired before . . .
He shone the light down to where Nick was lying, his face obscured by an elephant's trunk with two deep raking marks in it. The trunk ended in a hand, Nick's hand, raised across his forehead to protect himself. The trunk was his arm, huge, gross, puffing up and turning blue-black.
Nick's flesh was warm and yet clammy with a strange mottled pattern underneath the skin. There was no need to check his pulse: The venom had reached his heart in seconds. He was already dead.
Dan stuffed the two cartons of cotton swabs inside and shouldered the medical pack. In the corridor the dense cloying smell of rotting carpets and the fungi growing on the walls made his stomach heave. It was the stench of putrefaction. Of things growing in dank musty darkness and decaying even while they grew. Feeding other things that decayed and died. The evolutionary process spiraling downward into protozoic mush.
His shoes made squelching, sucking sounds as he went along the corridor. In the beam of the flashlight the walls appeared to shimmer whitely, the bell-shaped fungi trembling and exuding tiny white pearls of fluid. He stepped closer. He held the flashlight up close. The pearls were white grubs with rudimentary features and a bifurcated division in the tail. He watched as one of them squirmed over the lip of the bell and dropped to the floor. The floor was alive with them--he swung his flashlight in an arc--thousands, numberless millions.