“On the fourth day, though, our boy Mike followed Harold to an abandoned summer cottage a half mile away, place with a generator and Internet. The boy is in there on a laptop, typin’ e-mails with one hand and crammin’ down a pepperoni Hot Pocket with the other. Not only was Harold right back to the same tricks, spillin’ our secrets to the same people, but he had a whole deep freezer full a chow he was keepin’ to his own self.”
Don passed the job of telling the story to Allie with a sidelong look. She nodded and went on, “I was there when Mike showed up. This was over at the House of the Black Star, where my aunt lives with Granddad. This wasn’t so long after my mom passed away.” Allie spoke quietly, neither hiding her pain nor making a display of it. “Aunt Carol had some of Mom’s things and she asked me to look through them and see if there was anything I wanted for Nick and myself. There wasn’t anything, really, except this.” She touched a finger to the book-shaped gold locket at her throat. “When Mike came in and said what he had seen, we stopped what we were doing, and Granddad sent me to find Mr. Patchett. By the time I got back with Ben, Aunt Carol was sitting in a chair with her face in her hands and she had gray threads of smoke coming off her. She was so stressed.
“She said we needed to force Harold out of camp. But Mr. Patchett said that would be the worst thing we could do. If we sent Harold away and he got picked up by a Quarantine Patrol, they’d make him tell everything he knew about us. Mr. Patchett wanted to lock Harold up somewhere, but Granddad said it would be enough to make Harold promise to remain on camp grounds and stop contacting outsiders. Carol and Mr. Patchett gave each other this look, like: Which of us is going to tell him that’s the most senile thing he’s ever said? But the thing about my granddad is . . . it’s kind of hard to convince him people won’t just do the right thing. You hate to say anything that sounds hostile or untrusting or small-hearted around him. You feel like he’d be disappointed in you. Mr. Patchett gave in. He got Granddad to agree to keep Harold under close watch and that was it.”
Allie put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in the cradle of her hands. She wasn’t looking at any of them now, had lowered her gaze to stare disconsolately inward. Harper felt they had just about come to it, now. The end of Harold Cross’s story . . . which also happened to be the end of Harold Cross.
At last she went on, “After Mr. Patchett confronted Harold about what he had been up to, Harold came down with stomach pains and took himself to the infirmary. Mr. Patchett made sure there was always a Lookout stationed there, day and night, to guarantee Harold didn’t wander off. If they weren’t stationed right in the ward with him, they were in the waiting room. When it happened, it was on my shift, during the day, when the whole camp was asleep. At some point near the end of my watch, around dusk, I had to pee, and the only way to get to the bathroom is to walk across the ward. I crept through on tiptoe, real careful, trying not to wake Harold up. He was in one of the partitioned-off sleeping areas. I could just see him under his sheets, through a crack between the hanging curtains. I had almost made it to the bathroom when my hip bumped a bedpan and it fell with a loud bang. Harold didn’t even roll over. Suddenly I got a cold sick feeling and I pulled aside the curtain to have a closer look at him. It was just pillows under the sheets.” She looked up and met Harper’s eyes, and her gaze was wounded and ashamed. “See . . . I was asleep most of the afternoon, while I was supposed to be on guard in the waiting room. I told myself it wasn’t hurting anyone. I figured if Harold tried to sneak out past me, I’d hear him. I thought I was too light a sleeper for him to get by me. Some light sleeper. I must’ve been in a low-grade coma. Maybe Norma Heald slipped a roofie into my tea, hoping to get lucky with me.” The corner of her mouth tweaked up in a little smile, but her chin trembled.
Don put a leathery hand on the back of her neck and gave her a gentle, awkward sort of pat. “You ever think if you woke up when he was trying to sneak out, he might a belted you one? He was goin’ out that door, one way or t’other.”
“Harold couldn’t fight his way past Nick,” Allie said, brushing roughly at her eyes with the back of one hand.
“Who says he would a fought? He might a called you into the ward and then socked you with a wrench. No, ma’am. He was goin’ to depart our company, by hook or by crook. It was mad to think we could hold him prisoner without lockin’ him up. I’d fistfight sharks for your grandpap, but he was wrong about how t’handle Harold, and Ben Patchett was right.”
Nick had noticed Allie rubbing at her eyes. He scribbled something on the place mat. Allie read it and shook her head.
“No, I don’t want your last marshmallow.”
He wrote something else, then stuck a spoon in his mug and dredged out part of a melted marshmallow. Allie sighed and opened her mouth and let him feed her.
“He says it’s medicine for misery,” Allie told them in a muffled sort of way, chewing gummy marshmallow. A bright tear skipped down one cheek. “It does make me feel better, actually.”
Don Lewiston leaned in, elbows on the table. “I can tell the rest, I s’pose, quick enough. Allie got Mike, and Mikey ran for Ben Patchett. My cot is next to Ben’s, and all their whisperin’ woke me up. When I heard they were all settin’ out to see if they could bring Harold back, I offered to go with ’em. Maybe I felt like I had to go. Harold had been part of my crew. My lack of supervision is what gave him the chance to get back in contact with the outside world. I don’t remember who went and got a rifle from the range, but I think it was on all our minds Harold might not come back of his own free will. I remember this one”—he patted Allie’s shoulder—“was tolt to stay here. As you might guess, that did about as much good as shoutin’ at clouds. We covered probably three miles of hard trail in twenty minutes, makin’ a beeline for Harold’s little hideout, and Allie was out in front the whole way. And it was still a damn’d close thing. When we got there, it was pretty much the worst-case scenario. Maybe some a the people Harold had been e-mailing with were who they said they were. Maybe most of ’em were. But one of ’em wasn’t. When we got to the cabin, there was a van parked out front and men with guns. Not a state-run Quarantine Patrol. Cremation fellas. We saw the whole thing from behind this old stone wall that was out behind the cabin. They had Bushmaster rifles and were thumpin’ Harold with the butts. Shovin’ him around. Havin’ fun. Harold was down in the dirt, clutchin’ his laptop, and beggin’ them not to kill him. He was sayin’ he wasn’t dangerous, that he could control his infection. He was tellin’ em he could lead ’em to a hidin’ place where there were lots of people who could control the Dragonscale. That was when Ben asked Mikey if the rifle was loaded.”
“I thought we were going to fight for Harold,” Allie said. “Like on a TV show. Four of us against twelve of them. Pretty stupid, huh?” Her voice was rough and strained, and Harper was conscious of Allie trying to hold back her tears.
“Mikey’s hands were shaking so hard he spilled bullets all over the ground, but Ben—he turned into a different man altogether. He was a cop in his former life, you know. You could see the cop in his face. He went calm, but he also went hard. He said, ‘You better let me do this, son,’ and took the rifle out of Mikey’s hands. He put the first one in Harold’s throat. He put the second in the laptop. The Cremation Crew hit the dirt and for all I know they’re lying there still, because we got up and ran like hell and never looked back.” His coffee was gone. He rolled his mug between his palms. “Ben Patchett looked icy enough out in the woods, but when he got back, he cried his eyes out. Sat on one of the pews with Father Storey holdin’ him like a child. Father Storey shushed him and told him if it was anyone’s fault it was his own, not Ben’s.”
Nick was frowning, writing on the place mat again. He pushed it to Allie, who read it, then turned it toward Renée and Harper so they could read it.