The Winslow Incident (36 page)

A box of jawbreakers sat open on
the table beside the chair; she’d been chomping on them Sunday night while she
waited for her dad to come back from checking on the wolf at the Rhone’s house.
Now she grabbed the box and stuffed it into the back pocket of her shorts. Then
she crept to the drapes and parted them just enough to peer outside.

Nobody there. No zombies waited on
the porch, eager to eat her brains.

While she had slept, the shock
from the horrors at the hotel had dulled—as if it were a movie she’d
seen, not something she’d experienced. A fully messed up, torture porn kind of
movie that leaves you feeling damaged, that is the product of a damaged mind. Now
with scary people roaming the streets, her dread had been fully restored,
weighing heavy on her spirit. She dragged it out of the living room, across the
entry, and into her dad’s office.

Despite the hot stale air, the
office had a cold feel to it, perhaps because none of the electronics were
glowing or beeping, more likely because her father wasn’t there.

She skirted the desk and plopped
down onto the leather seat of her dad’s wooden chair. After swiveling to face
his computer she clicked the mouse to wake the machine. As it warmed up she
willed the phone line to be working again. She needed information off the Web.
And she needed to send an e-mail SOS to the Stepstone Valley Sheriff’s office—with
a cc to the whole world.

While she impatiently tapped her
foot, the modem made a lot of loud and labored noises but ultimately found no
dial tone and gave up.

“Sonofabitch!” She picked up the
telephone base unit and slammed it up and down until it started making broken
chirping sounds each time it hit the desk. Then she swiveled this way and that
in the chair, pausing only to kick at the desk. Finally, she settled down and
glanced at the bookshelf.

After Patience’s father’s fudge
shop went belly-up (Hazel always figured it was because he’d spelled it Shoppe),
Hazel’s dad had felt sorry for Chance Mathers when he came calling in his new
salesman vocation and bought an entire set of encyclopedias even though the
library had a perfectly decent collection they could reference anytime. Handy
for the first time now, she jumped up, pulled the E–G volume from the
shelf, and dropped it on the desk with a thud.

Returning to the chair, she opened
the thick book. “Maybe this is actually mass demonic possession.”

Then she realized that talking to
herself was probably not a good development.

Uncertain how to spell it, she
spent a few minutes flipping through thin pages and in her haste ripped through
the biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson and a picture of an emu. Once she found
what she was looking for, she switched on the banker’s lamp, leaned forward,
and read.

Ergot
fungi
are molds that attack wheat, rye, barley, and other wild and cultivated
grasses. Wet spring weather favors the infection of growing crops.

Mold—Hazel recalled Violet
saying that the bread was moldy.

She skimmed down the page past all
the C
₃₃
H
₃₅
N
₅
O
₅
’s and C
₃₅
H
₃₉
N
₅
O
₅
’s.

Ergotism, a disease of humans
and domestic animals, is caused by excessive intake of ergot: in humans by
eating breadstuffs made with infected flour, and in cattle, by eating
contaminated grain. Acute and chronic ergotism is characterized by insomnia,
mood swings, mental disorientation, delusions, hallucinations, fever, slow
pulse, muscle aches and spasms, convulsions, and gangrene of the extremities.

Chronic? She wasn’t positive but
thought that meant it might not get better—or at least wasn’t going away
anytime soon. Remembering how Doc Simmons had shaken his head when she’d asked
him how long it will last gave her the chills.

She kept reading.

Great epidemics of the Middle
Ages were caused by ergot poisoning, and outbreaks continued into the twentieth
century. Ergotism broke out August 17, 1951 in the south of France, where
people in the town of Pont-Saint-Esprit ate contaminated bread. Three hundred
people were affected in the largest epidemic since the Russian outbreak of
1926. The disease has often been referred to as St. Anthony’s Fire since those
suffering from gangrene would pray to St. Anthony for relief from the burning
sensation in their extremities.

Reactions depend upon the
individual and amount ingested. Some become too weak to leave bed, while others
exhibit superhuman strength. Delusions occur sporadically with lucid moments
between. Some report having beautiful religious experiences, others, hellish
visions of the apocalypse. In Pont-Saint-Esprit, a war veteran believed he was
surrounded by his dead comrades, conversing with the ghost soldiers day and
night. Another victim believed he could fly and after jumping out of a fourth-floor
window, he rose and ran down the street on broken legs.

She slammed the encyclopedia shut.

Hellish visions. Dead comrades.
Broken legs.

“We’re screwed.” Hazel’s heart
sank. “We are completely screwed.”

Gangrene?
Was that like
leprosy? She didn’t know, but it sounded bad. Gangrene. She decided not to look
it up. Then she couldn’t help herself. She reopened the book and flipped to the
G section, cringing as she read.

Gangrene occurs when there is
extensive tissue death and is characterized by severe pain and swelling. This
often occurs due to compromised blood circulation. The most common sites are
toes, feet, legs, fingers, and hands. The skin is firm and sounds are heard
when it is displaced or bent.

Her eyes flew across the
page—no stopping now despite her revulsion.

Gangrene leads to the
development of black skin with dead underlying muscle and bone turning red if
the skin breaks open. As the tissue decays, there may be ulceration and
discharge from the tissue that is rancid. If not treated, the infection can
spread to the rest of the body.

“Oh, no no no no no . . .” Her
stomach was backing up into her throat. This was too much to grasp. Soon
everyone’s appendages were going to start oozing and falling off? She imagined
the wood plank sidewalk on Fortune Way littered with blackened, foul-smelling
hands and feet, and a town full of human stumps—a freak show for the
tourists.

This was
way
too much to
grasp.

Her eyes darted around the office.
She hoped somebody might magically appear—Sean, her dad, her grandmother,
her grandfather’s ghost, her mother, anybody—because she sure as hell
couldn’t handle this all by herself.

Panicked beyond all reason, she
snatched up the telephone handset and futilely pressed
talk
. “Hello? Stepstone General Hospital? This is Hazel
Winslow and we are in deep shit up here. Can you please send a doctor? Better
yet, send a whole team. Everyone you’ve got. Right away. You see, we’ve all been
poisoned by moldy bread.”

Heart racing, she sprang from the
chair and began to pace furiously. “And I think my boyfriend is in seriously
deep shit too. Better let me talk to Sheriff Washburn now.”

She kicked the chair and sent it crashing
into the bookshelf. “Riley Washburn? It’s Hazel, Nate’s daughter. Listen, Riley,
you have to promise me you won’t bust Sean Adair, okay? I don’t know why he
wrote I’m sorry on the granite wall, and I don’t know why Tanner Holloway told
me to tell Sean that Zachary Rhone is looking for him, but do you really
believe that Sean would let his little brother Aaron eat that apple fritter if
he thought for one split second that it’d hurt him?” She paused to gulp some
air. “You’re right, Riley! There is no fucking way!”

She threw the handset against the computer
monitor so hard the casing burst apart. Then she shouted at the pieces of
plastic strewn across the floor, “Hello? Hello?
Hell-o!
”

She glanced around the room;
nobody had shown up to help her. “Okay. Okay. I have to get out of here.” She
took a deep breath, pulled the bottle of eye drops out of her pocket, and gave
each eye a good squirt. “No more screwing around.” She strode out of the
office. “I’ll figure out a way to protect Sean while I’m driving down. But I
need to get help
now.
”

Then she remembered her right arm
and paused to gaze at the t-shirt sling.

“So what?” she challenged the
foyer. “I’ll just get the Jeep into any gear and leave it—I can work the
clutch if it starts to stall, screw the transmission. I’ll be down the mountain
by sunrise.”
If I can steer.

After plucking the spare set of
keys off the hook, she swung open the front door. The three-quarters moon had
risen in the clear sky, so it wasn’t especially dark out. She doubled back
anyway to grab her dad’s aluminum flashlight off the hall-tree. She instantly liked
the heft of it in her hand. Returning to the doorway, she swept the yard with
the flashlight beam, searching for zombies. All clear.

But then she hesitated at the top
step of the porch, her confidence faltering.

It was a long walk back to where
she’d seen the Jeep parked on the fire road that morning. And what if it wasn’t
there anymore? She’d waste a lot of precious time and still be no closer to
leaving. Rose and Owen would let her take their Jeep but it would need to be
parked at the Crock because the Peabody’s house was way down on Loop-Loop Road
by Doc Simmons’ place. And even if it was at the Crock, that would mean going
back to The Winslow to get the keys from them.

And I can’t do that.
Hazel shuddered.
I won’t.

She decided to check if Patience’s
parents next door would let her take their Dodge pickup. She hadn’t seen
Constance or Chance Mathers since the rodeo but she’d noticed lights on in
their house. Maybe they weren’t even sick. And maybe Patience would go with
her. Though she was probably still sick, she could at least shift gears while
Hazel worked the clutch, maybe even help steer if she wasn’t too far gone on
ergot.

As she started toward their house
through the yard full of flowers, she heard animals growling. Her pulse sped
up. It definitely didn’t sound like wolves. Still, their tone held menace. She
scanned the yard with the flashlight. Everything looked surprisingly normal,
the yellow and red blooms on Constance’s rose bushes shone bright as jellybeans
in the beam of her flashlight.

More growls and Hazel discovered
the source. Patience’s jet-black cat Ajax and Violet’s cat Boo were in a
standoff beneath the dining room window, issuing low hateful rumblings. Clearly
bad blood existed between these two—a feud for the ages.

“Stop it,” Hazel hissed at them
but that only set them off and they went after each other, rolling around in a
tight ball, screaming in vengeful fury, tufts of black and gray fur shooting
into the air. “Stop it,” Hazel yelled at the spinning cat ball. “Stop!”

When they finally separated of
their own volition she tracked Boo with her flashlight as he scampered around
the side of the house. Ajax flew up a tree, sailed onto the roof, and was gone
too.

Then the porch light switched on
and Hazel saw Patience’s parents peeking through the colored glass squares in
the tall window next to the front door.

She bounded up the porch steps and
knocked even though they were already looking at her. When they didn’t open the
door Hazel moved in front of the window, where they continued to stare out at
her with wide eyes. They wore masks that covered their noses and mouths, and
acted as though she couldn’t see them—as if they could look and look at
her but they themselves were invisible.

Hazel pounded the door. “Please,
Constance, Chance. I need to talk to you.” When they made no move to let her in
she pounded harder, taking out all of her frustration on the carved walnut
door. She considered breaking the stained glass window. They’d never be able to
replace it.
We’ll never be able to replace a lot of things
, Hazel suddenly
realized.

Finally, Constance responded, “If
you stay back, we’ll open the door. But you have to stay back.”

After Hazel moved several feet
away the door opened.

“We can’t risk catching it, you
see?” Constance said, her moving lips making the mask dance. “Why aren’t you at
home, Hazel? We’re under quarantine.”

“It isn’t contagious. It’s in the
bread.” Despite the masks, Hazel could read skepticism on their faces. “If you
don’t eat any bread, you won’t get sick.”

“Bread?” Constance said. She and
Chance shook their heads, not buying it for a minute.

She didn’t have time to argue with
them. “I need to borrow the Dodge.”

“Oh no you don’t.” Chance’s mask
buckled on his face. “Not my truck.”

“Wait—”

“Absolutely not. I’ve seen the way
you tear around town on that motorcycle.” Chance shook his head again. “Not in
a million years, little miss.”

She was wasting her time here.
“Where’s Patience?”

Constance and Chance looked at
each other with questioning eyes.