Germ

He scampered away from the hole on all fours, then rolled onto his back, breathing hard. Trees converged high above, forming a leafy canopy through which moonlight seeped like rain. Those tall leaves danced on a breeze that Allen couldn't feel. Beyond them, faint wisps of clouds drifted by, flush with lunar radiance. Between the canopy and loamy ground, a fine mist hovered, stirring faintly.

He remembered that the cemetery occupied a patch of land where the slope leveled before dropping off again. It was a disrupted place. Time had seen the surface either collapse in on rotted caskets or swell into great mounds, pushed by unknown forces from below. The result was land as wavy as windblown seas. The wood itself contributed to the sense of fracture. It had moved in to reclaim its estate, sending dense bushes in to obscure toppled headstones, pencil-thin pines to impale graves like vampire stakes, gnarled roots to reach up through the ground like hands of the dead pleading for release from this distressed place.

Resting now, Allen began to feel every bruise, every cut, every abrasion on his body. His muscles hurt and his lungs burned. Acid churned in his stomach. He couldn't stay there; he had to find help. He listened for the snap of a twig, the scuff of a shoe. He rose to a sitting position and started to tuck his legs under him. If he stood slowly and walked carefully, he might be able to quietly weave his way down the mountain . . .

He stopped.

The hazy red beam of a laser panned the night air on a plane three feet above his head and stopped on the trunk of a tree six feet away, a burning red dot as vicious as a demon's eye.

twenty-two

Julia woke, still sitting on the bed, her back against the wall. She moved her head, feeling her neck tendons stretch and pop. She wiped drool off her chin. Most likely she had been snoring as well. Drooling and snoring—the only time she did either was when she was exhausted. This time it wasn't physical but mental and emotional exhaustion she had succumbed to.

She looked at the clock. It was late, but she needed to check on her mother. If she was having a bad day, she may not have moved from her bed, which meant no food, no drink, no meds. She kept a bedpan handy, but she hated to use it, and having it sit there dirty was to Mae Matheson akin to messing on the carpet.

Julia rolled off the bed, fished an anonymous calling card out of the Wal-Mart bag, and left the room. She found a phone booth at a gas station a mile from the motel; calling home, she would be more vulnerable to a trace than if she were to call nearly any other number. Mae answered on the fifth ring, sounding groggy.

"Hi. Are you okay?"

"Julia? I didn't hear from you. Where are you?"

"Mom . . ." Her voice cracked. Tears marshaled in her eyes.

Not now. Mom first.

"Have you been up? How are you feeling?"

"Oh yes, I'm fine. I made a sandwich and watched American Idol. I'm telling you, if that Jesse wins, I'll be so angry. He can't carry a tune in a suitcase . . ."

Julia listened, smiling sadly. She could tell her mother was truly feeling okay—not good, but okay—and not just saying it, which she sometimes did even on the worst of days. She didn't want Julia changing her life to accommodate her illness—at least not more than she already had. But Julia suspected her denials had more to do with kidding herself that she wasn't as ill as she was.

"Mom, I gotta go. I won't be home tonight—something came up."

"Oh, I see."

No, you don't, but what you're thinking is better than the truth.

"Do you want me to call Homecare?"

"Don't be silly. I'm fine."

"I'll call tomorrow, then. You know the number if you need help?"

"I do, but I won't." Being stubborn now.

"I love you, Mom."

"Love you, honey."

She cradled the receiver and held on to it. She wished things were different. But who didn't? She sniffed, ran the back of her hand over her eyes, got in the car.

Before she arrived back at the motel, again her mind started grinding through the day's events, transcribing conversations, forming questions, following leads. She felt overwhelmed by the number of fragments of information to sift through. Her experience had taught her that while all the clues available might not lead to a solution, they always led to another clue. Eventually the solution presented itself. The next clue was somewhere among the known facts; she simply had to find it. She was overlooking something.

Goody said Vero was talking about a virus . . .

Looking, thinking, trying to understand . . .

twenty-three

The glowing red dot of the laser lingered on the tree an instant, then slid off and continued its sweep over the cemetery.