Dead Earth: The Green Dawn (3 page)

Jubal winced. “That sure doesn’t sound good,
Damon.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.”

The old guy sounded weary and rundown.

“So, what did you bring me?” Damon said.

Jubal’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. He
could now see the sheriff dressed in a red and white striped
bathrobe. His unkempt graying hair was a nimbus around his square
head and dark bags hung beneath his watery eyes.

“This is something Patty made for you, Damon.
I think if you eat it, it will make you feel better.”

“If it’s Wednesday, it must be roast
beef.”

“Damn, that’s pretty good, chief; Ma did the
same thing. I can never remember what food they’re having on which
day at Conchita’s.”

“Well, you should try to remember. How are
you going to become sheriff someday if you can’t remember
details?”

Jubal nodded sheepishly.

“Now let’s sit down in the living room before
I fall over and you have to pick my fat ass up off the carpet.”

Damon dropped onto the wide sofa. The coffee
table in front of him was covered with Kleenex boxes and used
tissues.

Jubal set the carton on the table in front of
Damon. “I’m going to get you a fork, chief.”

“Nah. Not right now; I can do that later.
Sit. Sit.”

Jubal sank into the indicated leather chair;
it was very comfortable. Damon sure had some nice things. Not bad
for a small town sheriff. He must certainly know how to invest his
money.

“Don’t tell me you came all this way just
because I had the sniffles? You and the other boys have a town to
patrol.”

The other “boys” called in sick too. But
Jubal wasn’t ready to tell Damon that yet.

“I brought my ma some lunch, so I thought I’d
swing by and drop some off for you too.”

“Thanks, son. How is your mother by the way?”
Damon said.

“Same as you. Really down with some bug. Did
the doc make it out here yet?”

Damon shook his head and whooped out a cough
that made Jubal cringe. The older man grabbed a handful of tissues
and rubbed them against his forehead.

“I don’t need a doctor; I’ve had worse than
this,” Damon said. “God, is it hot in here?”

“Do you want me to turn up the air
conditioner?”

Damon sat still and didn’t respond for a
while, then: “I hope Rafe and Denny aren’t out delivering meals on
wheels too. Crap, who’s watching the town?”

“Well...”

“C’mon. What is it?”

“Rafe and Denny called in sick this morning
too.”

“What the—? Nora?” Nora was the
dispatcher-slash-receptionist.

Jubal shook his head, staring down at his
hands, where they wrung in his lap.

“First, my kids. Now this.”

Jubal’s head came up. “What’s wrong with your
kids, chief?”

“Oh, nothing I know of, but I can’t call them
for some reason. The satphones seem to be down, and my old cell
phone doesn’t work worth shit.”

Jubal noted the despondent tone creeping into
his boss’s voice. And like the fear he’d seen in Pops’s eyes
earlier, it worried him. The sheriff, his greatest hero after his
own father, should not sound like this. Jubal sat up straighter in
his chair.

“Listen, chief. I have everything under
control. I feel fit and so do Fiona and Patty down at Conchita’s.
And I saw Pops Perez at lunch, and he looks strong as ever. There’s
no beating that old guy, is there?”

Damon said nothing, his head hung low, and
Jubal began to think he had fallen asleep. Then the sheriff coughed
again.

“Jubal, I think I need to rest a little. If
you see Doc Mitchell, be sure he takes care of everyone in town
before he comes out here. You hear me?”

“Sure, but Serenity needs you on your
feet...”

“Shit, boy. You know that little sweetheart
of a town pretty much runs itself. Everything will be fine; don’t
worry.”

“Sure it will, chief. I’ll take care of
everything.”

Damon was silent again.

“Chief?”

The sheriff began snoring.

Jubal stood and watched the man for a moment.
He had a lot of love for Damon. The man had been his father’s best
friend and one of his most loyal deputies. When Sam Heironimous had
robbed that bank in El Paso, he thought Serenity would be a nice,
safe place to hide out. He hadn’t counted on a small town having
real law enforcement. But Sheriff Danny Slate had been following
the news and recognized Heironimous’s truck the instant it turned
down the lake road. Jubal’s father had been heading down there with
Damon to drown a few worms. When he spotted the truck, the sheriff
had pulled his old .45 from the console and asked old Damon to call
it in.

If Heironimous, that dumbass, recidivist
lowlife, had just kept the scattergun inside the car, he would
still be alive.

And so would Jubal’s dad.

Sometimes it was hard for Jubal to look at
Damon without remembering the big man coming to the house to
deliver the bad news. He’d always had a big, round baby face and
that morning it was so contorted with grief that Jubal and his
mother immediately knew what he was going to say.

In the ten years since, Damon Ortega had done
everything he could to be there for Jubal and his mom. While Damon
could never replace his father—at home or on the job—Jubal
appreciated the effort and he knew most of Serenity did too.

Jubal quietly closed the door. It seemed he’d
spent most of his day trying not to wake people.

He started the cruiser, cranked the AC and
turned the radio down. He satphoned the NMSP District Three Post in
Roswell, and he recognized the dispatcher who answered.

“Dooley? Jubal. How you doing?”

“It’s hotter than the ass end of a bitch in
heat, son. Other than that, I’m tolerable. You?”

“I’m okay. ’Bout the only one in town,
though.”

“Y’all got the bug, too, huh?”

“Yeah. Don’t tell me it’s spread to
Roswell?”

“Hell, Jubal, half the post is out. They’re
so desperate they’re talkin’ about givin’
me
a gun.”

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 office 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 find 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 finally 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 find 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
fire.

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 fine. 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 figured her dreams consisted of flowers 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, figuring 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, figures 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 shuffle 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 figure 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.