Chapter 16
Boiling Over
The affliction started as an angry red rash crawling up arms. Within hours it spread into multitudes of weeping sores and the thick stench of illness clung to Ender’s Ridge.
McKinney was the first. Willa was the second. Most of the town was the third.
Nails pierced through the fresh coat of white paint as Laurie and Cricket boarded up the windows of the chapel and scrawledquarantinein thick letters.
“Crick, grab that side.” The pew groaned as they dragged it over, making room for the people flocking to the only place they might find hope. Blankets huddled across the rotten floor and shrouded the pews, warming under the fevered foreheads of parents and children as Sister Inez ushered them in, murmuring comfort and giving sips of cold water.
She sponged down faces glistening with sweat, her black and white habit fluttering behind her like angel-wings as she hurried from one patient to another, stern face pinched with worry.
Decker wove between them to reach his old friend stretched upon a blanketed pew. Her face was grey under her light freckles, her eyes heavy.
“I brought you some water.”
Willa’s cracked lips parted as he lifted a clean cup to her mouth. She winced when the yellow-edged sore on her cheek split open and blood trickled down her jaw.
“You survived on spite this long. Don’t give up yet,” Decker said softly.
Willa’s eyes fluttered closed. “Been talkin’ to that preacher too much.”
“Only since you’re keeping my wife occupied.” Decker slipped his gloved hand into hers, squeezing lightly.
We crossed an ocean together. Don’t go like this.
Decker kept moving like a rusty, oiled machine.
Pus dripped from a washerwoman’s hand, her fair skin blistered with weeping red sores. A keening wail left her throat—a herald of death, her cry now foretold her own. Decker moved on when her mouth fell open in a soundless, black howl and her dead eyes spiderwebbed in red.
McKinney lay in the corner, the sores on his face weeping through the sheet over him. Lee knelt next to him, holding his cold hand. The elegant points of their ears drooped when they let him go.
Decker’s cup dropped back into the empty bucket with a clatter, and he stepped around a motionless child cradled in her mother’s arms to reach Sister Inez’s side. Straightening, she cast a look at Willa, the lines in her dark brows deepening.
“How is she?”
“Being Willa,” Decker made a tired attempt at a smile. “She would try and shoot the blisters if she thought it would help.”
Sister Inez did not smile. Only moved to the next feverish soul.
Decker needed fresh air.
The water pump behind theLoose Goosewould’ve been lonely aside from Cricket taking a long drink. He hooked the cup back on the rusty nail and Marshal lipped at the dented metal.
“I couldn’t take it anymore.”
“No one’s making you, kid.” The pump grated under Decker’s hands and water splashed into his bucket.
Cricket scuffled his boots and tugged at the shirt buttoned up to his throat. He dug a crumpled cigarette out of his pocket and lit it, dropping the dead match at his feet with the others.
“Last time I saw my girl was in a pine box in Amaretto.” He dragged on the cigarette like it was his lifeline. “I never got to tell her, Decker. I need to tell my momma before my luck runs out.”
Decker gave him a faint smile. With the way things were going around here, he didn’t blame him.
But Cricket couldn’t know about those things because he was Cricket.
“That’s a fine thing, kid. She’ll be happy to see you,” he murmured. Cricket could do what he never could, but he knew Cricket would be welcomed back with open arms, no matter how long he’d been the prodigal son.