Dead Earth: The Green Dawn (4 page)

The silence in the store seemed ominous now.
Some part of Jubal wished Fiona would stop, but he said nothing to
her.

“This guy was taller than the others, except
for maybe one or two of the monsters. And as he moved closer, I
could see he was dressed in red, flowing robes. And in his hand, he
held some sort of weird walking staff, or something.”

Jubal watched the clear tan skin on Fiona’s
arm suddenly break out in goose pimples.

“His head...well, he had a large helmet on
his head that was disproportionate to his body. It was like one of
those Aztec masks. And as he drew closer, I saw that he moved in an
odd manner; it wasn’t noticeable at first compared to the way the
others staggered and shambled about.”

“Then what happens?”

“Then he raises his staff above his head and
makes some sort of shrieking sound, but I think it’s some sort of
freaky language...”

“Then?”

“Its voice is so horrible that I wake
up.”

Jubal put his arm around Fiona and patted her
far shoulder. She laid her head on his shoulder.

“Damn, that’s some wild dreaming you’re doing
there, Fee. It’s bad enough you had the nightmare once, but to have
it all night long—maybe you
are
getting this flu or virus or
whatever the hell it is.”

There was a jingle and a bang and then
someone was running down the aisle of the store straight toward
them.

Jubal recognized Billy Owens, a local
teenager.

“Jubal! There’s something going on
outside.”

Jubal bolted out of his chair and ran, nearly
knocking Billy over in the process.

Down the street, at the western edge of town,
a trail of dust plumed. A car. Judging from the sound it made: it
was a solar. And it was moving fast into town.

Too fast.

Before Jubal could even leave the sidewalk,
the car whizzed by down Main Street. Jubal watched it shriek into a
sharp turn and pull into an abandoned car wash.

A
thwooping
sound, unnoticed until
now, grew louder as a black helicopter flew low above him, rattling
his shirt and sending his hair into disarray. As it cleared town,
it barely missed smashing into the billboard atop the auto shop
across the street.

“What’s going on?” Billy said from behind
him.

He looked back at Billy. Fiona and some other
townspeople gathered on the sidewalk around him, watching the sky
and the abandoned car wash.

Just as Jubal was about to respond, the solar
car pulled out of the car wash and sped back down the street in the
direction it had come from, racing past them at full speed.

Jubal started round his car to give
chase.

Fiona called out, “Look!”

Someone was crawling, hand over hand, out of
the car wash.

Jubal jogged down the sidewalk toward the
crawler. The others followed close behind.

The person stopped moving. As Jubal
approached, he saw something that made him halt in his tracks. He
turned around toward the trailing crowd.

“Okay, everybody. Don’t move any closer; I
want you to stay back. This is official police business.”

Everyone stopped, some nearly running into
the person in front of them. They all looked at him with blank
faces. Some nodded their heads in response to his instructions.
Others tried to look around him at the person on the ground.

“I mean it, now,” Jubal said, then turned
away.

The Wet ’N’ Dry wash had been abandoned for a
decade. Once the Amoco down the street had set up its own
drive-through car wash, business had dwindled. Dry weeds surrounded
it now and graffiti covered its graying cement walls.

“Oh, my god.”

The woman on the ground had rolled onto her
back. She whimpered through dry, parted lips. Her exposed skin—face
and hands—was as gray as the car wash’s cement walls and covered
with large, ugly blisters. She was so disfigured, her face a
swelling mass, that the only way Jubal knew it
was
a woman
was from the large breasts beneath her buttoned shirt. As he
watched, one of the blisters on her cheek popped—he could
hear
it pop—and yellowish pus splattered across the woman’s
face.

“Jesus,” said someone from behind Jubal’s
right shoulder. It was Fiona.

“I thought I told you...”

The woman on the ground mumbled
something.

“What’d she say?” Fiona asked.

Jubal leaned his head closer.

“Dead army...” she hissed, then passed
out.

Dead army?

Was it some sort of military accident that
had caused this woman’s terrible disfigurement?

But then, everything clicked into place and
Jubal did not like the result: this woman, whoever she was,
obviously had an extreme case of the sickness that was spreading
throughout Serenity. He hoped to God his logic was inaccurate and
that it was something else entirely—anything else.

Jubal felt faint.

“We have to get this woman over to the
hospital in Carlsbad. Right away,” Fiona said.

Snapping out of his spiral of despair, Jubal
said, “Okay, but get the hell away from her, Fiona. Now!”

Fiona looked shocked for a second at Jubal’s
harsh outburst, but then moved away from the unconscious woman.

Jubal ran past the retreating Fiona, toward
his patrol car. As he passed the small group of gawking
townspeople, he shouted, “Stay away from that woman, godammit!”

He swung the car door open and plopped into
the driver’s seat, banging his head on the roof of the car in the
process.

“Fuck.”

Rubbing the pain in his forehead with one
hand, he called up the state police on the radio beneath the dash.
After several failed attempts, during what seemed like the longest
minutes of his life, he finally got someone. It wasn’t Dooley; the
voice told him Dooley had gone home sick. Jubal explained the
situation to the dispatcher.

“I’m sorry, deputy, but we’re short-handed
beyond belief. Everyone seems to have the flu lately...”

“Well, what can you do for me? This woman
doesn’t have long.”

“I’ll try patching you through to an
ambulance service.”

Jubal stared out the windshield as the
dispatcher put him through. The townspeople of Serenity stood
about, staring at the woman on the ground. With gratitude, Jubal
noticed that at least they were staying well away from the sick
woman. He felt awful for having abandoned her there on the ground
by herself, and wished there was some way he could help her. But he
had to think of the people who were still healthy, too.

His radio crackled.

“Man, if you’re looking for ambulance
service, you are fucked, buddy!”

Jubal punched the button.

“Who the hell is this?”

“Red-E Rescue Ambulance. And who in the name
of the sweet baby Jesus might I be speaking at?” The young man,
whoever he was, sounded drunk.

“This is the Mescalero County Sheriff’s
Department. We got a real sick lady in Serenity and we need a
transport now.”

The ambulance service dispatcher cackled.
Jubal clenched his teeth so hard his jaws made a popping sound.

“What’s so goddamn funny?”

“Well, I’ll explain it to you, officer—”

“Deputy.”

“—so listen careful like, so I only have to
talk to you once. See, even if I could get there, we would be faced
with a whopper of a dilemma, which is to say, where the fuck would
I fuckin’ take her?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I’m sayin’ is that there’s no room at
the inn. The hospital at Carlsbad is full up. More than full.
They’ve pitched tents on the lawn and they’re stackin’ ’em and
rackin’ ’em. Now ain’t that some crazy shit? And the punch line to
this particular joke is this: There ain’t nothin’ the docs can do.
I haul ’em in so somebody in a white coat and a mask over their
face can stand by with his thumb up the ol’ poop chute and watch
’em. It’s some ugly stuff, too. It starts out like the flu with a
fever and maybe a cough. Then the circus really comes to town. The
skin turns gray and they develop blisters on their faces.”

The dispatcher made a soft sound and Jubal
pictured the man shivering. Despite the heat, he felt like
shivering himself. He glanced at the woman on the ground.

“What about other hospitals?” he said.

“I guess I didn’t make myself clear. Carlsbad
is havin’ a good day, compared to the rest of the state. It’s the
end of the world, Deputy Fife. I suggest you drink up.”

The whole state? Jubal felt his lunch go sour
in his belly.

“What about El Paso?”

“My cousin Randy drives an ambulance down
that way. Let me just say this: you are fucked up the old tail
pipe, podna.”

Texas, too? But how could—

Jubal looked at the hills that comprised the
walls of the valley that Serenity sat within. Could the same
natural structure that had often protected the area from seriously
bad weather have slowed the progress of whatever this was?

He wasn’t a geologist or pathologist. For all
the good he was doing the town, he wasn’t even much of a law officer
at the moment.

He noticed movement all round him. The crowd
that had gathered to gawk at the sick woman had inched closer to
his cruiser. Jubal realized that they could hear the radio, could
hear what the drunken ambulance dispatcher had been saying. He
pulled the cruiser’s door closed. Within seconds the interior of
the vehicle turned into a furnace. The keys were deep in his pants
pocket. He’d have to climb out again and stand up to reach them, so
he let it go, hoping the conversation would be over soon.

“What am I supposed to do?” he said,
painfully aware of the desperate note in his voice. “This woman has
the symptoms you described, only ten times worse. And I’ve got a
town of sick people getting sicker.”

For a few seconds, Jubal heard nothing but
static. Then the voice of the dispatcher returned and he sounded
sober. “Buddy, let me tell you a story. A year ago, there’s this
kid graduating high school. Not a genius, but not a dummy, either,
right? So he knows a guy who knows a guy who gets him a dispatching
job at an ambulance company. This kid wants to do more, though, so
the boss—who’s not a total asshole—gets the kid some EMT classes
and he gets the kid licensed to drive the bus, so the kid can go on
runs and make some extra cash. Now the kid is close to getting
certified. See, the kid could never get into medical school, but
doing this—man, it’s like bein’ on the front lines, you know? And
when he has his ticket, he’ll get a big bump in pay; the boss has
already told him that. Good thing, too, ’cause this kid got his
girl knocked up and he—he’s gonna be a dad. Only...only she’s not
answerin’ her phone today and I’ve got such a terrible fuckin’
feelin’—”

The voice was replaced by static. Jubal
couldn’t move. Even with sweat freely pouring into his eyes and
down his sides, he sat there in the heat, holding the mic and
waiting for the next words to come through the speaker. He thought
about Fiona and their plans together.

“You still there?” the dispatcher said.

“Yeah, man.”

The unknown man sniffed. “I’m gonna take off.
I’m the only one who showed up today and I’ve been stickin’ around
like a fool, even though there’s nothing I can do.” He paused to
take in a deep breath. “If you believe in God, pray. If you got any
Indians left down there, get ’em to do a blessing. I got a real bad
feeling that this won’t have a happy ending. Good luck to you. I
got some things I gotta do.”

“Wait,” Jubal said. “You still there?”

The rattle of static was the only thing that
he heard.

Jubal wiped the sweat from his face with the
back of his hand. It was a futile effort, since he was perspiring
faster than he could clean it away.

He had a hand on the door handle, ready to
step out, when the radio came to life.

“What is it, man? I really have to go.” The
dispatcher now sounded very tired.

Jubal keyed the microphone. “Earlier you said
‘even if I could get there.’ What did you mean?”

The man sighed. “You been on the highway
lately?”

“No.” Jubal had spent the past couple of days
in town, not wanting to be too far from his mother or the office. He
hadn’t been on the county back roads.

“When you get a chance, you ought take a
look. Head up toward Carlsbad, if you like. Now I’m sorry for your
troubles and I’m sorry for the way I acted when I first talked to
you. I was raised better than that. But I’ve been drinkin’ some.
That’s not an excuse. I’m just tellin’ you how it is. I hope things
work out for you, but I suspect they won’t.”

The voice was gone.

Jubal got out of the cruiser, thankful for
the small breeze. The air smelled funny, though. It might have been
his imagination, but the back of his throat burned and his sinuses
felt raw. He thought about plague germs, manufactured in some
secret government laboratory in Nevada, now drifting down to
Serenity.

No. This was not the time for that kind of
thinking.

“Blankets.”

It took Jubal a moment to realize that
someone had spoken to him.

“Jubal, I need blankets.” Fiona was next to
him. She looked calm but serious.

“Why do you need—”

“I don’t know what’s going on, but everybody
saw you close the door, and I can see your face. I’ve known you a
long time, Jubal Slate. It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

“Okay.” She ran a hand over her mouth. Jubal
had seen her father make the same gesture many times. “Okay. You
can tell me later. Right now I want the blankets in your
trunk.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the sickest person I’ve ever
seen and she’s laying on dusty blacktop while half the town—the
half that
isn’t
sick—gets to stand around and watch. I have
to do something.”

“Fiona, no. What she has, it’s catching.”