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.