He glanced over at Mr. Brooks. The older man licked his lips. Was he paler than he had been a moment before? Justin thought so. But then, he was probably paler than he had been himself. "That doesn't look so great," he said.
"No, it doesn't." Mr. Brooks tried not to sound worried. That only made him sound more so.
"Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with . . . stuff like that," Justin said. "Maybe somebody got burned or something."
"Maybe." Mr. Brooks didn't sound as if he believed it. Justin bit his lip. He didn't believe it, either, no matter how much he wanted to.
The paramedics or whatever they called them here brought somebody out on a wheeled cart. Justin bit his lip harder. That was Irma, all right. And the men taking care of her wore gas masks and orange rubber gloves.
Mr. Brooks and Justin both took half a step back before they knew they'd done it. Justin laughed at himself, not that it was really funny. As if half a step could make any difference in whether they came down with whatever it was.
"She always seemed fine," Mr. Brooks said. "I thought we were worrying over nothing."
"I hoped we were worrying over nothing," Justin said. Amazing how changing one word in a sentence could change the whole meaning.
Siren wailing, the ambulance zoomed away—back up Highway 14 toward Parkersburg. Justin and Mr. Brooks both watched and listened till the flashing lights vanished in the distance and the siren dopplered away into silence. Then the coin and stamp dealer kicked a pebble of his own. "Well, not much use pretending we haven't been exposed," he said. "Now we see what happens next."
"Yeah." Justin didn't see what else he could say. He took his phone off his belt. "I'd better let Mom know what's going on."
"She won't be happy," Mr. Brooks said.
"I'm not real happy myself," Justin said. "I'm especially not real happy 'cause we're stuck here." Any of the locals who overheard him would think he meant stuck in Elizabeth. And he did. But he also meant stuck in this whole alternate. And he and Mr. Brooks were stuck, because no transposition chamber would take them back to the home timeline, not with a genetically engineered disease loose here.
He punched in Mom's number. The phone rang—once, twice. "Hello?" Mom said.
"Hi. It's me."
"Hi, you. What's up?"
"An ambulance just took Irma the waitress away. She may have it." There. Justin had said it. He waited for his mother to pitch a fit.
She just said, "Oh," in a strange, flat voice. Then she said, "I was hoping you'd miss it in a little town where nothing ever happens. It's here in Charleston, too."
"It is?" Justin said in dismay. But he wasn't only dismayed—he was angry, too. "They haven't said anything about it on TV or anything."
"They wouldn't," Mom answered. "They don't want to make people jump up and down and worry or anything. But it's here, all right."
"That's ... too bad," Justin said, which would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along. Mr. Brooks raised a questioning eyebrow. He pointed south, toward Charleston. Justin nodded. The older man clapped a hand to his forehead.
"Stay well, you hear me?" Mom said.
"I'll try." Justin didn't want to tell her that someone who'd come down with it had been breathing into his face every morning for the past week. "You stay well, too," he said. What kind of things was Mom not telling him? Did he really want to know? He didn't think so.
"I'll do my best. The doctors say they're getting close to a cure." Mom spoiled that by adding, "Of course, they've been saying the same thing since it broke out, and there's no cure yet. Dummies." Anyone who overheard her would think she was complaining that the local doctors weren't as smart as they thought they were. And she was. But she was also complaining that they knew less than their counterparts in the home timeline. She was right about that, too.
Sometimes being right did you no good at all. This felt like one of those times. "Love you, Mom," Justin said. Some things you didn't want to leave unsaid, not when you might not get another chance to say them.
"Love you, too," she answered. "Be careful."
"Sure," he said. "You do the same."
They were both whistling in the dark. Justin knew it. No doubt his mother did, too. They both did it anyhow, to make each other feel better. Justin didn't feel much better. He hoped Mom did.
"It's really in Charleston?" Mr. Brooks asked as Justin put his phone away.
"Uh-huh." Justin nodded. No, he didn't feel very good about the way things were going, not even a little bit. He glanced over at Mr. Brooks, hoping the older man would do or say something to cheer him up.
Mr. Brooks was looking south, toward the city where he lived and worked. His face usually wore a smile, but now his mouth was set in a thin, hard, grim line. "A lot of nice people down there," he said. "Oh, plenty who aren't so nice, too, but I can't think of anybody who deserves to come down with a mutated virus."
Justin, by contrast, was looking around Elizabeth. By now, it was more familiar to him than Charleston ever got the chance to be. "I can't think of anybody here who does, either," he said. "Including you and me."
Mr. Brooks managed a smile for that, but it was a halfhearted one, not one his face really meant. The corners of his mouth curled up and he showed his teeth, but his eyes. . . . Behind his glasses, his eyes didn't brighten at all. "Well," he said, "if you're going to fuss about every little thing . . ."
"I don't think you ought to let them in the house any more," Gran said to Mrs. Snodgrass. 'That woman has it, and they've been eating where she works."
"You know the saying about locking the barn door after the horse is gone?" Mr. Snodgrass said. "Well, Myrtle, you're trying to lock the horse out after he's already got his nose in the barn."
"Are you sure, Ted?" Mrs. Snodgrass said. "Maybe they weren't catching yet, and now they are."
"Maybe." In Mr. Snodgrass' mouth, it came out, Mebbe. "Don't reckon it's what you'd call likely, though."
Beckie didn't reckon it was, either. She laughed at herself for even including the word in her thoughts. She didn't think she'd ever heard it in California, even if it seemed natural as could be here. She almost said what she thought, but at the last minute kept quiet. These people were four times her age. They wouldn't pay any attention to her no matter what she said. The only people Gran ever paid attention to were her mysterious they.
"I don't want to turn them away," Mr. Snodgrass said firmly. "I just don't. It wouldn't be neighborly. How could I do business with Randolph Brooks again if I told him he wasn't welcome inside my house? I'd be ashamed to, I would."
That got through to his wife. "Well, you're right," she said. She didn't sound happy about it, but she didn't argue any more, either.
Neighborly, Beckie thought. That was another word you didn't hear much in California—certainly not in enormous Los Angeles. In little towns in the mountains or the desert? She supposed so, but she wasn't from one. She'd never stayed in one till now.
She'd never stayed anywhere with a tailored virus loose, either. She could have done without the honor. Only trouble was, it didn't look as if she had a choice.
"How is the woman, anyway?" Gran asked. "Does anybody know?"
"The hospital in Parkersburg doesn't want to say anything," Mrs. Snodgrass said. "You know how hospitals are."
"But we need to find out," Gran said, as if that made all the difference.
"Good luck," Mrs. Snodgrass said. You could tell she and Gran were cousins, all right—she was ready to argue about anything, too.
"Maybe somebody could call and say they're a relative."
Gran actually had an idea. Beckie blinked. She couldn't remember the last time that happened. It wasn't even a bad idea.