Jubal laughed. “Remind me to stay here.”
“I talked to Larry Jeffers at the Albuquerque post this morning. They got it bad up there.”
“I feel their pain,” Jubal said. “Everybody in the of?ce is out today except me.”
“No shit?”
“Nope. That’s why I’m calling. I’ve got to run some errands and we don’t have a dispatcher, so-”
“Sure, ol’ buddy. If I hear anything, I’ll ring you. Still got the same cell number?”
“Yep. I appreciate it, Dooley.”
On the other end of the line, Jubal heard a series of loud coughs.
“Dooley? You okay? They didn’t give you that gun already…”
“Funny,” Dooley said, then coughed again. “It’s my allergies or somethin’. Anyway, go take care of your, uh, errands.”
“Something you want to say?”
“Naw. I just heard y’all got real good service down there at your Rite-Aid.”
“Dooley?”
“Yeah?
“Bite my bag.”
Dooley laughed until he started to cough again. Jubal punched the END button on the satphone.
The Rite-Aid did have good service; they just weren’t very busy today.
Jubal walked past the greeting cards, magazines, laxatives and sinus medicines until he reached the pharmacy. A tall woman in a white lab coat and jeans was sprawled in one of the customer chairs in front of the counter, a paperback book in her hands. On the cover a shirtless man with long blonde hair and large arms was embracing a woman in an old fashioned low cut gown.
“Hey,” he said, “I heard that crap gives you an unrealistic expectation about romance.”
Without looking up from the book, the woman said, “I tried to?nd one about a short deputy who falls in love with the most beautiful pharmacist in the state, but they were all out.”
“I’m not short. You’re just freakishly tall.”
She stood up with the grace of a ballerina. A very tall ballerina. She was an inch taller than Jubal, so she didn’t really have to bend down to kiss him. She just liked the effect.
For a brief moment, all of Jubal’s worries vanished. She tasted like honey and peppermint and he felt the same way he always did when they touched: like nothing could ever harm them.
Jubal had known Fiona Huerta his whole life. She had been the next-door neighbor who had picked on him when they were kids. An unapologetic tomboy, Fiona could run faster, jump higher and throw farther than any boy in the neighborhood. After he stopped hating her, he was in love with her.
Fiona’s parents had been best friends with his folks. Her father had come from Torreon; her mother was a native of New England. From grade school on, Fiona enjoyed introducing herself as New Mexico’s only Mick Spic.
They were in high school before she showed any interest in him, but after she?nally said yes to one of his constant date invitations, they had been inseparable.
When she left for UNM in Albuquerque, he didn’t sleep for a week, worried that she would?nd someone else.
He shouldn’t have worried. They stayed in touch by phone and email nearly every day. Every couple of weeks he would borrow his roommate’s car and drive up to Albuquerque or she would come to Las Cruces.
In their sophomore year, he had picked her up and driven her back to Serenity after her parents died in a house?re.
During spring break of their junior year, he proposed. She accepted on spring break of their senior year.
Fiona always had to do things her own way. That was okay. He was content to wait. There had never been anyone else for Jubal and there never would be. She was simply the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and she was his other half.
“You’ve got that warm and fuzzy look again, Jube. You’re not going to say something sappy, are you?”
“Your ass looks great in those jeans.”
“You can’t see my ass.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You have a superior posterior.”
She rolled her eyes. “I think I would rather hear the sappy stuff.”
“For a town where everybody’s sick, you’d think this place would be hopping.”
“It has been all week,” Fiona said. “Until today.”
“Maybe they’re all getting better.”
“Have you seen anybody who’s better?”
“Good point.” Jubal picked up a package of cough drops from a rack by the counter. He thought of Dooley and his nasty hack.
“Speaking of that, how’s your mom?”
Jubal sighed. He sat down next to her in one of the customer chairs and leaned his head against the counter.
“Is she worse?”
Jubal nodded. “Damon, too.” He pointed at the shelves full of bottles behind the counter. “Ma wants to know if you have any miracle drugs back there.”
She sat next to him, taking one of his hands in hers. “I wish. This is one nasty bug. I had an alert this morning from the state department of health. This is the worst outbreak of…whatever it is…in thirty years.”
“So I guess that’s a no.”
Fiona smiled at him, and Jubal suddenly found it hard to concentrate.
“Make sure she stays hydrated. Give her something for the fever. Get her to eat a little.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry, babe. That’s all I can do.”
“As long as she’s feeling good by the wedding,” Jubal said. “So she’s got four weeks to whip this thing.”
He expected her to laugh. Instead she muttered a sleepy “Mmm-hmm.”
“Am I keeping you up? It’s getting to be a specialty of mine.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Hey.” He used his free hand to gently shake her shoulder. “You’re not getting sick, right?”
Fiona sat up and rubbed her eyes. “I’m?ne. I just didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Hell, I hope you’re not getting this shit…”
“No, no. It was…bad dreams.”
Jubal didn’t think he had heard Fiona mention having nightmares before; she always seemed so upbeat and happy that he?gured her dreams consisted of?owers and bunnies.
“Want to tell me about them?”
Jubal didn’t like the way her complexion suddenly paled.
“It was so strange…yet so realistic. Whenever I’d wake up,?guring it was okay to drift back to sleep, I’d have the same exact dream again. That’s never happened before-ever. Finally I just gave up and got out of bed around four AM.”
Fiona’s grip tightened on Jubal’s hand.
“So,” Jubal said. “Do you want to tell me about it? My ma always says if you tell someone your nightmares, they’ll go away.”
“It was so weird. In the dream…the air all around is smoky. ”
“Smoky?”
She nodded. “And yellow.”
“Holy shit.”
“What?”
“…Nothing…go on.”
“In the distance,?gures move toward me across a barren plain. For the most part, they appear to be people, but they are people who seem to have problems walking; they sort of…shamble and shuf?e forward.”
The skin on Jubal’s neck tingled.
“Maybe you’re dreaming about all the sick people in town.”
“No…this is different. Anyway, among these people are stranger shapes, inhuman shapes. There are only a few, but they are nothing like I’ve ever seen before, even in my wildest imaginings. I guess they’re…monsters.”
Jubal chuckled. Maybe this dream wasn’t so prophetic after all. Monsters?
He stopped laughing when he saw the hurt in Fiona’s eyes.
“It was very realistic, Jubal Slate.”
Jubal felt like a heel.
“I’m sorry. Really. Go on.”
“The most terrifying part of the dream-the part that always scared me awake-had to do with the?gure that walked out in front of this group. Like, he was the leader or something.”
Damn, there went Jubal’s hairs again, standing at attention. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t some little kid who was frightened by ghost stories.
The silence in the store seemed ominous now. Some part of Jubal wished Fiona would stop, but he said nothing to her.
“This guy was taller than the others, except for maybe one or two of the monsters. And as he moved closer, I could see he was dressed in red,?owing robes. And in his hand, he held some sort of weird walking staff, or something.”