and there, “sulfur powder . . . antibiotic . . . penicillin …”
They bandaged his shoulder again.
Clocker gave him an injection in his good arm. He watched. With all of
his other pains, he couldn’t feel the prick of the needle.
For a while he was in a hall of mirrors again.
When he found himself in the motel bed once more, he turned his head and
saw Charlotte and Emily sitting on the edge of the adjacent bed,
watching over him. Emily was holding Peepers, the rock on which she had
painted a pair of eyes, her pet.
Both girls looked terribly solemn.
He managed to smile at them.
Charlotte got off the bed, came to him, kissed his sweaty face.
Emily kissed him, too, and then she put Peepers in his good right hand.
He managed to close his fingers around it.
Later, drifting up from dreamless sleep, he heard Clocker and Paige
talking, “. . . don’t think it’s safe to move him,” Paige said.
“You have to,” Clocker said. “We’re not far enough away from Mammoth
Lakes, and there are only so many roads we could’ve taken.”
“You don’t know anyone’s looking for us.”
“You’re right, I don’t. But it’s a safe bet. Sooner or later someone
will be looking–and probably for the rest of our lives.”
He drifted out and in, out and in, and when he saw Clocker at the
bedside again, he said, “Why?”
“The eternal question,” Clocker said, and smiled.
Refining the eternal question, Marty said, “Why you?”
Clocker nodded. “You’d wonder, of course. Well . . . I was never one
of them. They made the serious mistake of thinking I was a true
believer. All my life I’ve wanted adventure, heroics, but it never
seemed in the cards for me. Then this. Figured if I played along, the
day would come when I’d have a chance to do serious damage to the
Network if not vaporize it, pow, like a plasma-beam weapon.”
“Thank you,” Marty said, feeling consciousness slip away and wanting to
express his gratitude while he still could.
“Hey, we’re still not out of the woods yet,” Clocker said.
When Marty regained consciousness, he wasn’t sweating or shivering, but
he still felt weak.
They were in a car, on a lonely highway at sunset. Paige was driving,
and he was belted in the front passenger seat.
She said, “Are you okay?”
“Better,” he said, and his voice was less shaky than it had been for a
while. “Thirsty.”
“There’s some apple juice on the floor between your feet. I’ll find a
place to pull over.”
“No. I can get it,” he said, not really sure that he could.
As he bent forward, reaching to the floor with his right hand, he
realized that his left arm was in a sling. He managed to get hold of a
can and yank it loose of the six-pack to which it was connected. He
braced it between his knees, pulled the ring-tab, and opened it.
The juice was barely chilled, but nothing ever tasted better partly
because he had managed to get it for himself without help.
He finished the entire can in three long swallows.
When he turned his head, he saw Charlotte and Emily slumped in their
seatbelts, snoozing in the back.
“They’ve hardly gotten any sleep for the last couple of nights,” Paige
said. “Bad dreams. And worried about you. But I guess being on the
move makes them feel safer, and the motion of the car helps.”
“Nights? Plural?” He knew they had fled Mammoth Lakes Tuesday night.
He assumed it was Wednesday. “What sunset is that?”
“Friday’s,” she said.
He had been out of it for almost three days.
He looked around at the vast expanse of plains swiftly fading into the
nightfall. “Where are we?”
“Nevada. Route Thirty-one south of Walker Lane. We’ll pick up Highway
Ninety-five and drive north to Fallon. We’ll stay at a motel there
tonight.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Wyoming, if you’re up to it.”
“I’ll be up to it. I guess there’s a reason for Wyoming?”
“Karl knows a place we can stay there.” When he asked her about the
car, which he had never seen before, she said, “Karl again.