“I was just going to change the record.”
“Do you have to have music?”
“No.”
“Then get out of those clothes and into this bed before I have second thoughts.”
He did as he was told, and they made a music of their own far into the night.
Chapter 20
Corey awoke at dawn. It was a habit from his army days that he had never been able to break. He reached down sleepily to scratch an itch and discovered he was naked. He usually slept in the bottom half of a pair of pajamas.
He frowned, still half-asleep, trying to remember what had been different when he had gone to bed the night before that would cause him to forget the pajamas. A second later he discovered he was not alone.
She lay on her side, facing away from him. The caramel-blonde hair lay in a soft tangle across the pillow. Corey lay his hand on the smooth curve between the woman’s rib cage and hip, and with a relieved smile he remembered who she was and why they were in bed together naked.
Dena stirred in her sleep and moved closer to him. He put an arm around her, letting his hand rest on her breast. The nipple stirred under his fingers. He nuzzled the back of her neck, inhaling the floral scent of her hair, mingled now with the tang of her sweat.
He drifted off again into a pleasant semisleep, always aware of the woman’s body next to him. Increasingly aware.
About seven o’clock Dena rolled over. With her face an inch away from his, she said, “Did you bring a gun to bed, or are you just glad to see me?”
For the next hour Corey showed her just how glad he was to see her.
For breakfast he scrambled eggs with what was left of the onions chopped into them. Dena found a jar of instant coffee in the rear of the refrigerator, and they ate together comfortably, making small jokes and smiling a lot.
With her second cup of coffee, Dena lit a cigarette.
“Do you know, this is my first one since yesterday afternoon? How about that?”
“You trying to quit?”
“Cut down, anyway. You don’t smoke?”
“I used to. Tried a pipe for a while, but I couldn’t keep the thing lit. Kept losing them.”
“You’re better off if you don’t,” Dena said.
“I’ve got other vices.”
“So I’ve observed.”
They sat silently for a minute, drinking their coffee, Dena smoking. Finally, Corey spoke.
“It’s been nice, but I guess we’d better reenter the real world.”
She nodded, watching him.
He got up, kissed her once, and went into the living room where he turned on the radio.
“Corey?”
He turned and saw that she had come out and was standing behind him. He straightened up and faced her.
“Last night was good,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”
“It just occurred to me that it might not happen again.”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because of what’s going on outside. Because of the brain eaters. Because we might lose this fight.”
He stepped toward her and took her in his arms. “We might win, too.”
“Do you think so?”
“Hell, think any other way and you’re finished. What’s more, I don’t intend to lose you.”
“Do you mean that?”
“You’re damn right I mean it.” He kissed her hard and long, and she believed then that he really did mean it.
He turned on the radio, and the news hit them like a bucket of cold water.
Unrest was growing as people across the country continued to suffer attacks by the brain eaters. However, the number of reported cases was down from a high on Friday. This was interpreted as a hopeful sign, but Corey remembered Doc Ingersoll’s graph with the projected line that climbed steadily up and away.
There were disturbances in the cities ranging from a gay people’s protest march in West Hollywood to a full-fledged riot in Detroit. There was looting in the Bronx and vandalism in Atlanta. A sociologist in Boston suggested that the brain eaters were just an excuse for release of tensions. There were always people ready to pounce on any excuse for rioting or looting.
A conference of mayors had been hastily called to discuss evacuation of the cities. The trouble was that there was no safe place to go. Rural and suburban areas were as hard hit as the population centers.
One area where the brain eaters had not yet struck was the prisons. To protect their isolation, inmates demonstrated against the admission of any new convicts. They even demanded a moratorium on visitors. The result was a greater glut than ever in the courts and dangerous overcrowding in county and municipal jails where the new criminals were held awaiting transfer.
Prisons were not the only places where newcomers were unwelcome. Everywhere strangers were met with hostility. The feeling was that anything as foul as the brain-eating parasites had to be brought in by the other guys. However, as more people saw their own friends, neighbors, and family members stricken, it became harder to deny the terrible truth — anyone could be a carrier. The national paranoia continued to grow.
When the stories on the all-news station started to repeat, Corey snapped off the radio.
“How long will it take us to get up to Biotron?” he asked.
“Three hours, more or less, depending on the traffic.”
“It’s nine now. We’d better get going.”
“I left my car in the Herald parking lot.”
“Leave it there. We can take mine.”
“And my bag is at the Beddie-Bye Motel.”
He grinned at her. “Cute name.”
“Yeah, isn’t it. I’m starting to think of it as my home away from home.”
“We’ll stop on the way and pick up your things.”
As soon as they were outside, they could sense the tension that hung over the city. Traffic was sporadic, with a sudden jam at an intersection one minute, empty streets the next. Pedestrians were few. People moved in small clusters, as though staying close to friends could protect them.
Many small businesses were closed and shuttered. Corey tried three gas stations before he found one open. The surly young attendant seemed reluctant to stand too close as Corey proffered his credit card.
“Cash only,” the boy said.
“Since when?”
“Since now. Who knows if anybody’s gonna be around to pay their credit-card bills?”
Corey started to argue but thought better of it when he saw the young man scratching at a rash under his chin. He paid for the gas and got quickly back into the car with Dena. They headed north on Highway 41.
The traffic out of Milwaukee was neither heavier nor lighter than normal, but the flow was uneven, tentative. There was a nervous, uncertain feel to it. The faces of the people in the other cars were set in tense lines. They gripped their steering wheels as though holding on to sanity.
Corey kept the car radio on but soon turned the volume down. The voices of the newscasters droned on gravely about the brain eaters. There were continuing new outbreaks and wild speculation on where they came from and how they could be banished. It soon became clear that nobody knew anything. Or if somebody did, he was not talking. It gave Corey a perverse sense of relief to know that the story still belonged to him.
They skirted the city of Appleton and headed northwest on a narrower state highway.
“What are the chances of Kitzmiller’s being at the plant when we get there?” Corey asked.
“Chances of his being there are excellent,” Dena said. “I’ve never known him to be anywhere else. He has living quarters in the biochem lab building. The chances of his seeing us are something else again. I told you about the brush I got last time I tried to talk to him.”
“One way or another, we’ll run him down,” Corey said.