“Abra?” Dave looked bewildered and a little frightened. “What?”
Abra ignored him for the moment. It was Dan she spoke to. “They deserve it for what they did to the baseball boy.” She wiped at her mouth with her cupped hand, as if to erase that smile, but when she pulled the hand away the smile was still there, her thinned lips showing the tips of her teeth. She clenched the hand into a fist.
“They deserve it.”
PART THREE
MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CLOUD GAP
1
EZ Mail Services was in a strip mall, between a Starbucks and O’Reilly Auto Parts. Crow entered just after 10 a.m., presented his Henry Rothman ID, signed for a package the size of a shoebox, and walked back out with it under his arm. In spite of the air-conditioning, the Winnebago was rank with the stench of Barry’s sickness, but they had grown used to it and hardly smelled it at all. The box bore the return address of a plumbing supply company in Flushing, New York. There actually was such a company, but it had had no hand in this particular delivery. Crow, Snake, and Jimmy Numbers watched as Nut sliced the tape with his Swiss Army Knife and lifted the flaps. He pulled out a wad of inflated plastic packing, then a double fold of cotton fluff. Beneath it, set in Styrofoam, was a large, unlabeled bottle of straw-colored fluid, eight syringes, eight darts, and a skeletal pistol.
“Holy shit, there’s enough stuff there to send her whole class to Middle Earth,” Jimmy said.
“Rose has a great deal of respect for this little chiquita,” Crow said. He took the tranquilizer gun out of its Styrofoam cradle, examined it, put it back. “We will, too.”
“Crow!” Barry’s voice was clotted and hoarse. “Come here!”
Crow left the contents of the box to Walnut and went to the man sweating on the bed. Barry was now covered with hundreds of bright red blemishes, his eyes swollen almost shut, his hair matted to his forehead. Crow could feel the fever baking off him, but the Chink was a hell of a lot stronger than Grampa Flick had been. He still wasn’t cycling.
“You guys okay?” Barry asked. “No fever? No spots?”
“We’re fine. Never mind us, you need to rest. Maybe get some sleep.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead, and I ain’t dead yet.” Barry’s red-streaked eyes gleamed. “I’m picking her up.”
Crow grabbed his hand without thinking about it, reminded himself to wash it with hot water and plenty of soap, then wondered what good that would do. They were all breathing his air, had all taken turns helping him to the jakes. Their hands had been all over him. “Do you know which one of the three girls she is? Have you got her name?”
“No.”
“Does she know we’re coming for her?”
“No. Stop asking questions and let me tell you what I do know. She’s thinking about Rose, that’s how I homed in, but she’s not thinking about her by name. ‘The woman in the hat with the one long tooth,’ that’s what she calls her. The kid’s . . .” Barry leaned to one side and coughed into a damp handkerchief. “The kid’s afraid of her.”
“She ought to be,” Crow said grimly. “Anything else?”
“Ham sandwiches. Deviled eggs.”
Crow waited.
“I’m not sure yet, but I think . . . she’s planning a picnic. Maybe with her parents. They’re going on a . . . toy train?” Barry frowned.
“What toy train? Where?”
“Don’t know. Get me closer and I will. I’m sure I will.” Barry’s hand turned in Crow’s, and suddenly bore down almost hard enough to hurt. “She might be able to help me, Daddy. If I can hold on and you can get her . . . hurt her enough to make her breathe out some steam . . . then maybe . . .”
“Maybe,” Crow said, but when he looked down he could see—just for a second—the bones inside Barry’s clutching fingers.
2
Abra was extraordinarily quiet at school that Friday. None of the faculty found this strange, although she was ordinarily vivacious and something of a chatterbox. Her father had called the school nurse that morning, and asked if she would tell Abra’s teachers to take it a bit easy on her. She wanted to go to school, but they had gotten some bad news about Abra’s great-grandmother the day before. “She’s still processing,” Dave said.
The nurse said she understood, and would pass on the message.
What Abra was actually doing that day was concentrating on being in two places at the same time. It was like simultaneously patting your head and rubbing your stomach: hard at first, but not too difficult once you got the hang of it.