Yesterday was Friday, 04/05/2024
The Stand - complete edition, by Stephen King
(from internet transcript)
Chapter 21
Stu Redman was frightened.
He looked out the barred window of his new room in Stovington, Vermont, and what he saw was a small town far below, miniature gas station signs, some sort of mill, a main street, a river, the turnpike, and beyond the turnpike the granite backbone of far western New England—the Green Mountains.
He was frightened because this was more like a jail cell than a hospital room. He was frightened because Denninger was gone. He hadn’t seen Denninger since the whole crazy three-ring circus moved from Atlanta to here. Deitz was gone, too. Stu thought that maybe Denninger and Deitz were sick, perhaps dead already.
Somebody had slipped. Either that, or the disease that Charles D. Campion had brought to Arnette was a lot more communicable than anyone had guessed. Either way, the integrity of the Atlanta Plague Center had been breached, and Stu thought that everyone who had been there was now getting a chance to do a little firsthand research on the virus they called A-Prime or the superflu.
They still did tests on him here, but they seemed desultory. The schedule had become slipshod. Results were scrawled down and he had a suspicion that someone looked at them cursorily, shook his head, and dumped them in the nearest shredder.
That wasn’t the worst, though. The worst was the guns. The nurses who came in to take blood or spit or urine were now always accompanied by a soldier in a white-suit, and the soldier had a gun in a plastic Baggie. The Baggie was fastened over the wrist of the soldier’s right gauntlet. The gun was an army-issue .45, and Stu had no doubt that, if he tried any of the games he had tried with Deitz, the .45 would tear the end of the Baggie into smoking, burning shreds and Stu Redman would become a Golden Oldie.
If they were just going through the motions now, then he had become expendable. Being under detention was bad. Being under detention and being expendable… that was very bad.
He watched the six o’clock news very carefully every night now. The men who had attempted the coup in India had been branded “outside agitators” and shot. The police were still looking for the person or persons who had blown a power station in Laramie, Wyoming, yesterday. The Supreme Court had decided 6–3 that known homosexuals could not be fired from civil service jobs. And for the first time, there had been a whisper of other things.
AEC officials in Miller County, Arkansas, had denied there was any chance of a reactor meltdown. The atomic power plant in the small town of Fouke, about thirty miles from the Texas border, had been plagued with minor circuitry problems in the equipment that controlled the pile’s cooling cycle, but there was no cause for alarm. The army units in that area were merely a precautionary measure. Stu wondered what precautions the army could take if the Fouke reactor did indeed go China Syndrome. He thought the army might be in southwestern Arkansas for other reasons altogether. Fouke wasn’t all that far from Arnette.
Another item reported that an East Coast flu epidemic seemed to be in the early stages—the Russian strain, nothing to really worry about except for the very old and the very young. A tired New York City doctor was interviewed in a hallway of Brooklyn’s Mercy Hospital. He said the flu was exceptionally tenacious for Russian-A, and he urged viewers to get flu boosters. Then he suddenly started to say something else, but the sound cut off and you could only see his lips moving. The picture cut back to the newscaster in the studio, who said: “There have been some reported deaths in New York as a result of this latest flu outbreak, but contributing causes such as urban pollution and perhaps even the AIDS virus have been present in many of those fatal cases. Government health officials emphasize that this is Russian-A flu, not the more dangerous Swine flu. In the meantime, old advice is good advice, the doctors say: stay in bed, get lots of rest, drink fluids, and take aspirin for the fever.”
The newscaster smiled reassuringly… and off-camera, someone sneezed.
The sun was touching the horizon now, tinting it a gold that would turn to red and fading orange soon. The nights were the worst. They had flown him to a part of the country that was alien to him, and it was somehow more alien at night. In this early summer season the amount of green he could see from his window seemed abnormal, excessive, a little scary. He had no friends; as far as he knew all the people who had been on the plane with him when it flew from Braintree to Atlanta were now dead. He was surrounded by automatons who took his blood at gunpoint. He was afraid for his life, although he still felt fine and had begun to believe he wasn’t going to catch It, whatever It was.
Thoughtfully, Stu wondered if it would be possible to escape from here.
The Stand - complete edition, by Stephen King
(from internet transcript)
excerpts, Chapter 22
“You know who that was on the phone.”
“It was really him, then?”
“The President, yes. I’ve been relieved. The dirty alderman relieved me, Len. Of course I knew it was coming. But it still hurts. Hurts like hell. It hurts coming from that grinning, gladhanding sack of shit.”
Len Creighton nodded.
“Well,” Starkey said, passing a hand over his face. “It’s done. Can’t be undone. You’re in charge now. He wants you in Washington as soon as you can get there. He’ll have you on the carpet and he’ll chew your ass to a bloody rag, but you just stand there and yessir him and take it. We’ve salvaged what we can. It’s enough. I’m convinced it’s enough.”
“If so, this country ought to get down on its knees to you.”
“The throttle burned my hand, but I… I held it as long as I could, Len. I held it.” He spoke with quiet vehemence, but his eyes wandered back to the monitor, and for a moment his mouth quivered infirmly. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Well… we go back a country mile or three, Billy, don’t we?”
“You can say that again, soldier. Now—listen. One thing is top priority. You’ve got to see Jack Cleveland, first chance you get. He knows who we’ve got behind both curtains, iron and bamboo. He knows how to get in touch with them, and he won’t stick at what has to be done. He’ll know it’ll have to be quick.”
“I don’t understand, Billy.”
“We have to assume the worst,” Starkey said, and a queer grin came over his face. It lifted his upper lip and made it wrinkle like the snout of a dog protecting a farmyard. He pointed a finger at the sheets of yellow flimsy on the table. “It’s out of control now. It’s popped up in Oregon, Nebraska, Louisiana, Florida. Tentative cases in Mexico and Chile. When we lost Atlanta, we lost the three men best equipped to deal with the problem. We’re getting exactly nowhere with Mr. Stuart ‘Prince’ Redman. Did you know they actually injected him with the Blue virus? He thought it was a sedative. He killed it, and no one has the slightest idea how. If we had six weeks, we might be able to turn the trick. But, we don’t. The flu story is the best one, but it is imperative—imperative —that the other side never sees this as an artificial situation created in America. It might give them ideas.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/navy-fires-commander-biomedical-research-204757582.html
From 5/8/1994 ( premiere USA TV miniseries "Stephen King's The Stand"::miniseries premiere episode "The Plague" ) To 4/5/2024 ( Friday ) is 10925 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 10/1/1995 ( premiere USA TV series episode "Space: Above and Beyond"::"The Farthest Man from Home" ) is 10925 days
From 7/22/2005 ( as me, Kerry Burgess, from my official records United States Veterans Affairs psychiatric-hospital in Seattle: "Mr. Burgess checked into Urgent Care this AM complaining of constipation" - Psychiatry Emergency Services ) To 4/5/2024 ( ) is 6832 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 7/17/1984 ( as Kerry Burgess my official US Navy documents includes: Date Enrolled - Basic Electricity and Electronics School, Service School Command, Naval Training Center, Orlando, Florida, Advanced Electronics Field course of curriculum AND Ronald Reagan, 40th President of USA: Remarks on Signing a National Minimum Drinking Age Bill ) is 6832 days
From 11/3/1976 ( premiere USA film "Carrie" ) To 4/5/2024 ( ) is 17320 days
17320 = 8660 + 8660
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 7/19/1989 ( the United Airlines Flight 232 crash in Sioux City Iowa and from the thoughts in my conscious mind, coinciding with United States of America Veterans Affairs hospital psychiatric doctor medical drugs: the end of Kerry Burgess - *me* - the natural human being cloned from another human being {Thomas Reagan} ) is 8660 days
From 7/9/1949 ( Harry Truman, 33rd Prsident of USA: Letter to the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on the Problem of Concentration of Economic Power ) To 12/11/2007 ( premiere USA film "I Am Legend" ) is 21339 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 4/5/2024 ( ) is 21339 days
From 10/16/2012 ( Justin Cronin "The Twelve: A Novel" Book Two of The Passage Trilogy ) To 4/5/2024 ( ) is 4189 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 4/22/1977 ( the world's first optical link providing regular telephone service to the public was placed in operation ) is 4189 days
https://www.yahoo.com/news/navy-fires-commander-biomedical-research-204757582.html
Yahoo! News
Navy fires commander of biomedical research lab
Geoff Ziezulewicz
Fri, April 5, 2024 at 1:47 PM PDT
The Navy fired the commanding officer of a Lima, Peru, based biomedical research lab on Friday, less than a year after she assumed command.
Capt. Abigail Y. Marter was relieved as head of Naval Medical Research Unit South “due to a loss of confidence in her ability to command,” the Navy said in a statement.
Such boilerplate language is often used by the Navy when first announcing the relief of commanding officers and other senior personnel.
Officials did not immediately respond to follow-up questions from Navy Times regarding the reasons for Marter’s firing.
“Navy commanding officers are held to the highest standards of personal and professional conduct,” the Navy said. “They are expected to uphold the highest standards of responsibility, reliability, and leadership, and the Navy holds them accountable when they fall short of meeting these standards.”
Cmdr. Michael Prouty has assumed temporary command of the unit, and Marter has been temporarily reassigned to Naval Medical Research Command.
A family nurse practitioner, Marter took command of the unit in July.
Formerly known as Naval Medical Research Unit 6, the command monitors and researches infectious diseases in Central and South America.
Its main hub is on a Peruvian naval base, but the command also runs a satellite lab on an air base in Honduras.
The Stand - complete edition, by Stephen King
(from internet transcript)
excerpts, Chapter 22
“Our people got those vials one week ago. They believe they contain radioactive particles to be charted by our Sky-Cruise satellites. That’s all they need to know, isn’t it, Len?”
“Yes, Billy.”
“And if things do go from bad to… to worse, no one will ever know. Project Blue was uninfiltrated to the very end, we’re sure of that. A new virus, a mutation… our opposite numbers may suspect, but there won’t be time enough. Share and share alike, Len.”
“Yes.”
Starkey was looking at the monitors again. “My daughter gave me a book of poems some years ago. By a man named Yeets. She said every military man should read Yeets. I think it was her idea of a joke. You ever heard of Yeets, Len?”
“I think so,” Creighton said, considering and rejecting the idea of telling Starkey the man’s name was pronounced Yates.
“I read every line,” Starkey said, as he peered into the eternal silence of the cafeteria. “Mostly because she thought I wouldn’t. It’s a mistake to become too predictable. I didn’t understand much of it—I believe the man must have been crazy—but I read it. Funny poetry. Didn’t always rhyme. But there was one poem in that book that I’ve never been able to get out of my mind. It seemed as if that man was describing everything I dedicated my life to, its hopelessness, its damned nobility. He said that things fall apart. He said the center doesn’t hold. I believe he meant that things get flaky, Len. That’s what I believe he meant. Yeets knew that sooner or later things get goddam flaky around the edges even if he didn’t know anything else.”
“Yes, sir,” Creighton said quietly.
“The end of it gave me goosebumps the first time I read it, and it still does. I’ve got that part by heart. ‘What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?’”
Creighton stood silent. He had nothing to say.
“The beast is on its way,” Starkey said, turning around. He was weeping and grinning. “It’s on its way, and it’s a good deal rougher than that fellow Yeets ever could have imagined. Things are falling apart. The job is to hold as much as we can for as long as we can.”
“Yes, sir,” Creighton said, and for the first time he felt the sting of tears in his own eyes. “Yes, Billy.”
Starkey put out his hand and Creighton took it in both of his own. Starkey’s hand was old and cold, like the shed skin of a snake in which some small prairie animal has died, leaving its own fragile skeleton within the husk of the reptile. Tears overspilled the lower arcs of Starkey’s eyes and ran down his meticulously shaved cheeks.
“I have business to attend to,” Starkey said.
“Yes, sir.”
The Passage (2019) s01e09 Episode Script
"Stay in the Light"
(from internet transcript)
You saw that thing in the cave, right? [GROANS.]
Something's happening to me.
I'm changing.
It's not good.
Come on.
AMY: There were so many times they could have turned back. That they could've said "stop." But they didn't. By the time anybody bothered to try, it was too late.
The Passage (2019) s01e08 Episode Script
"You Are Not That Girl Anymore"
(from internet transcript)
They're all asleep anyway.
Not for long, sir.
Please, son, don't do this! The thing is, I I don't have a choice.
And neither did you.
No, no.
[BEEPS.]
Grey! You'll kill us all! What is this? FANNING: This is something extraordinary and beautiful that only a few of us in the whole universe have ever seen before.
I don't feel good.
The Passage (2019) s01e08 Episode Script
"You Are Not That Girl Anymore"
(from internet transcript)
You were in charge of logistics when Guilder got here, right? - Mm-hmm.
- Did you know a Martinez, the security wonk you've been working with? I met some of his uniforms, and a couple of body men, but no suits.
RICHARDS: These were the guys he had with him, right? - Yeah.
- Just uniforms? Yeah, why? [SIGHS.]
I'm try What'd I tell you about the eyeballs? [SIGHS.]
I'm trying to find this guy.
Nobody's laid eyes on him.
Well, maybe he's CIA.
Sometimes you don't notice those guys, even when they're right in front of you.
They're like ghosts.
You're coming with me.
This guy look familiar? Huh? Your security advisor is a serial rapist and a murderer.
And viral number two.
Do you have any idea what you've done?
The Stand - complete edition, by Stephen King
(from internet transcript)
excerpts, Chapter 1
It was still a quarter of a mile distant, the day’s last light putting a dusty shine on what little chrome was left to it. Stu’s eyes were sharp, and he made it as a very old Chevrolet, maybe a ‘75. A Chevy, no lights on, doing no more than fifteen miles an hour, weaving all over the road. No one had seen it yet but him.
“Now let’s say you got a mortgage payment on this station,” Vic was saying, “and let’s say it’s fifty dollars a month.”
“It’s a hell of a lot more than that.”
“Well, for the sake of the argument, let’s say fifty. And let’s say the Federals went ahead and printed you a whole carload of money. Well then those bank people would turn round and want a hundred and fifty. You’d be just as poorly off.”
“That’s right,” Henry Carmichael added. Hap looked at him, irritated. He happened to know that Hank had gotten in the habit of taking Cokes out of the machine without paying the deposit, and furthermore, Hank knew he knew, and if Hank wanted to come in on any side it ought to be his.
“That ain’t necessarily how it would be,” Hap said weightily from the depths of his ninth-grade education. He went on to explain why.
Stu, who only understood that they were in a hell of a pinch, tuned Hap’s voice down to a meaningless drone and watched the Chevy pitch and yaw its way on up the road. The way it was going Stu didn’t think it was going to make it much farther. It crossed the white line and its lefthand tires spurned up dust from the left shoulder. Now it lurched back, held its own lane briefly, then nearly pitched off into the ditch. Then, as if the driver had picked out the big lighted Texaco station sign as a beacon, it arrowed toward the tarmac like a projectile whose velocity is very nearly spent. Stu could hear the worn-out thump of its engine now, the steady gurgle-and-wheeze of a dying carb and a loose set of valves. It missed the lower entrance and bumped up over the curb. The fluorescent bars over the pumps were reflecting off the Chevy’s dirt-streaked windshield so it was hard to see what was inside, but Stu saw the vague shape of the driver roll loosely with the bump. The car showed no sign of slowing from its relentless fifteen.
“So I say with more money in circulation you’d be—”
“Better turn off your pumps, Hap,” Stu said mildly.
“The pumps? What?”
Norm Bruett had turned to look out the window. “Christ on a pony,” he said.
Stu got out of his chair, leaned over Tommy Wannamaker and Hank Carmichael, and flicked off all eight switches at once, four with each hand. So he was the only one who didn’t see the Chevy as it hit the gas pumps on the upper island and sheared them off.
It plowed into them with a slowness that seemed implacable and somehow grand. Tommy Wannamaker swore in the Indian Head the next day that the taillights never flashed once. The Chevy just kept coming at a steady fifteen or so, like the pace car in the Tournament of Roses parade. The undercarriage screeched over the concrete island, and when the wheels hit it everyone but Stu saw the driver’s head swing limply and strike the windshield, starring the glass.
The Chevy jumped like an old dog that had been kicked and plowed away the hi-test pump. It snapped off and rolled away, spilling a few dribbles of gas. The nozzle came unhooked and lay glittering under the fluorescents.
They all saw the sparks produced by the Chevy’s exhaust pipe grating across the cement, and Hap, who had seen a gas station explosion in Mexico, instinctively shielded his eyes against the fireball he expected. Instead, the Chevy’s rear end flirted around and fell off the pump island on the station side. The front end smashed into the low-lead pump, knocking it off with a hollow bang.
Almost deliberately, the Chevrolet finished its 360-degree turn, hitting the island again, broadside this time. The rear end popped up on the island and knocked the regular gas pump asprawl. And there the Chevy came to rest, trailing its rusty exhaust pipe behind it. It had destroyed all three of the gas pumps on that island nearest the highway. The motor continued to run choppily for a few seconds and then quit. The silence was so loud it was alarming.
“Holy moly,” Tommy Wannamaker said breathlessly. “Will she blow, Hap?”
“If it was gonna, it already woulda,” Hap said, getting up. His shoulder bumped the map case, scattering Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona every whichway. Hap felt a cautious sort of jubilation. His pumps were insured, and the insurance was paid up. Mary had harped on the insurance ahead of everything.
“Guy must have been pretty drunk,” Norm said.
“I seen his taillights,” Tommy said, his voice high with excitement. “They never flashed once. Holy moly! If he’d a been doing sixty we’d all be dead now.”
They hurried out of the office, Hap first and Stu bringing up the rear. Hap, Tommy, and Norm reached the car together. They could smell gas and hear the slow, clocklike tick of the Chevy’s cooling engine. Hap opened the driver’s side door and the man behind the wheel spilled out like an old laundry sack.
“God-damn,” Norm Bruett shouted, almost screamed. He turned away, clutched his ample belly, and was sick. It wasn’t the man who had fallen out (Hap had caught him neatly before he could thump to the pavement) but the smell that was issuing from the car, a sick stench compounded of blood, fecal matter, vomit, and human decay. It was a ghastly rich sick-dead smell.
A moment later Hap turned away, dragging the driver by the armpits. Tommy hastily grabbed the dragging feet and he and Hap carried him into the office. In the glow of the overhead fluorescents their faces were cheesy-looking and revolted. Hap had forgotten about his insurance money.
The others looked into the car and then Hank turned away, one hand over his mouth, little finger sticking off like a man who has just raised his wineglass to make a toast. He trotted to the north end of the station’s lot and let his supper come up.
Vic and Stu looked into the car for some time, looked at each other, and then looked back in. On the passenger side was a young woman, her shift dress hiked up high on her thighs. Leaning against her was a boy or girl, about three years old. They were both dead. Their necks had swelled up like inner tubes and the flesh there was a purple-black color, like a bruise. The flesh was puffed up under their eyes, too. They looked, Vic later said, like those baseball players who put lampblack under their eyes to cut the glare. Their eyes bulged sightlessly. The woman was holding the child’s hand. Thick mucus had run from their noses and was now clotted there. Flies buzzed around them; lighting in the mucus, crawling in and out of their open mouths. Stu had been in the war, but he had never seen anything so terribly pitiful as this. His eyes were constantly drawn back to those linked hands.
He and Vic backed away together and looked blankly at each other. Then they turned to the station. They could see Hap, jawing frantically into the pay phone. Norm was walking toward the station behind them, throwing glances at the wreck over his shoulder. The Chevy’s driver’s side door stood sadly open. There was a pair of baby shoes dangling from the rearview mirror.
Hank was standing by the door, rubbing his mouth with a dirty handkerchief. “Jesus, Stu,” he said unhappily, and Stu nodded.
Hap hung up the phone. The Chevy’s driver was lying on the floor. “Ambulance will be here in ten minutes. Do you figure they’re—?” He jerked his thumb at the Chevy.
“They’re dead, okay.” Vic nodded. His lined face was yellow-pale, and he was sprinkling tobacco all over the floor as he tried to make one of his shitty-smelling cigarettes. “They’re the two deadest people I’ve ever seen.” He looked at Stu and Stu nodded, putting his hands in his pockets. He had the butterflies.
The man on the floor moaned thickly in his throat and they all looked down at him. After a moment, when it became obvious that the man was speaking or trying very hard to speak, Hap knelt beside him. It was, after all, his station.
Whatever had been wrong with the woman and child in the car was also wrong with this man. His nose was running freely, and his respiration had a peculiar undersea sound, a churning from somewhere in his chest. The flesh beneath his eyes was puffing, not black yet, but a bruised purple. His neck looked too thick, and the flesh had pushed up in a column to give him two extra chins. He was running a high fever; being close to him was like squatting on the edge of an open barbecue pit where good coals have been laid.
“The dog,” he muttered. “Did you put him out?”
“Mister,” Hap said, shaking him gently. “I called the ambulance. You’re going to be all right.”
“Clock went red,” the man on the floor grunted, and then began to cough, racking chainlike explosions that sent heavy mucus spraying from his mouth in long and ropy splatters. Hap leaned backward, grimacing desperately.
“Better roll him over,” Vic said. “He’s goan choke on it.”
But before they could, the coughing tapered off into bellowsed, uneven breathing again. His eyes blinked slowly and he looked at the men gathered above him.
“Where’s… this?”
“Arnette,” Hap said. “Bill Hapscomb’s Texaco. You crashed out some of my pumps.” And then, hastily, he added: “That’s okay. They was insured.”
The man on the floor tried to sit up and was unable. He had to settle for putting a hand on Hap’s arm.
“My wife… my little girl…”
“They’re fine,” Hap said, grinning a foolish dog grin.
“Seems like I’m awful sick,” the man said. Breath came in and out of him in a thick, soft roar. “They, were sick, too. Since we got up two days ago. Salt Lake City…” His eyes flickered slowly closed. “Sick… guess we didn’t move quick enough after all…”
Far off but getting closer, they could hear the whoop of the Arnette Volunteer Ambulance.
“Man,” Tommy Wannamaker said. “Oh man.”
The sick man’s eyes fluttered open again, and now they were filled with an intense, sharp concern. He struggled again to sit up. Sweat ran down his face. He grabbed Hap.
“Are Sally and Baby LaVon all right?” he demanded. Spittle flew from his lips and Hap could feel the man’s burning heat radiating outward. The man was sick, half crazy, he stank. Hap was reminded of the smell an old dog blanket gets sometimes.
“They’re all right,” he insisted, a little frantically. “You just… lay down and take it easy, okay?”
The man lay back down. His breathing was rougher now. Hap and Hank helped roll him over on his side, and his respiration seemed to ease a trifle. “I felt pretty good until last night,” he said. “Coughing, but all right. Woke up with it in the night. Didn’t get away quick enough. Is Baby LaVon okay?”
The last trailed off into something none of them could make out. The ambulance siren warbled closer and closer. Stu went over to the window to watch for it. The others remained in a circle around the man on the floor.
“What’s he got, Vic, any idea?” Hap asked.
Vic shook his head. “Dunno.”
“Might have been something they ate,” Norm Bruett said. “That car’s got a California plate. They was probably eatin at a lot of roadside stands, you know. Maybe they got a poison hamburger. It happens.”
The ambulance pulled in and skirted the wrecked Chevy to stop between it and the station door. The red light on top made crazy sweeping circles. It was full dark now.
“Gimme your hand and I’ll pull you up outta there!” the man on the floor cried suddenly, and then was silent.
“Food poisoning,” Vic said. “Yeah, that could be. I hope so, because—”
“Because what?” Hank asked.
“Because otherwise it might be something catching.” Vic looked at them with troubled eyes. “I seen cholera back in 1958, down near Nogales, and it looked something like this.”
Three men came in, wheeling a stretcher. “Hap,” one of them said. “You’re lucky you didn’t get your scraggy ass blown to kingdom come. This guy, huh?”
They broke apart to let them through—Billy Verecker, Monty Sullivan, Carlos Ortega, men they all knew.
“There’s two folks in that car,” Hap said, drawing Monty aside. “Woman and a little girl. Both dead.”
“Holy crow! You sure?”
“Yeah. This guy, he don’t know. You going to take him to Braintree?”
“I guess.” Monty looked at him, bewildered. “What do I do with the two in the car? I don’t know how to handle this, Hap.”
“Stu can call the State Patrol. You mind if I ride in with you?”
“Hell no.”
They got the man onto the stretcher, and while they ran him out, Hap went over to Stu. “I’m gonna ride into Braintree with that guy. Would you call the State Patrol?”
“Sure.”
“And Mary, too. Call and tell her what happened.”
“Okay.”
Hap trotted out to the ambulance and climbed in. Billy Verecker shut the doors behind him and then called the other two. They had been staring into the wrecked Chevy with dread fascination.
A few moments later the ambulance pulled out, siren warbling, red domelight pulsing blood-shadows across the gas station’s tarmac. Stu went to the phone and put a quarter in.
The man from the Chevy died twenty miles from the hospital. He drew one final bubbling gasp, let it out, hitched in a smaller one, and just quit.
Hap got the man’s wallet out of his hip pocket and looked at it. There were seventeen dollars in cash. A California driver’s license identified him as Charles D. Campion. There was an army card, and pictures of his wife and daughter encased in plastic. Hap didn’t want to look at the pictures.
He stuffed the wallet back into the dead man’s pocket and told Carlos to turn off the siren. It was ten after nine.
Chapter 2
"The Twelve: A Novel" (Book Two of the Passage Trilogy)
Justin Cronin
Page 52 of 593 (Amazon Kindle Version)
So it was that Deputy Director Horace Guilder (were there any actual directors anymore?) had found himself sitting before the Joint Chiefs (enough stars and bars around the table to start a Girl Scout troop) to offer his official assessment of the situation in Colorado. (Sorry, we made vampires; it seemed like a good idea at the time.)
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 3:37 PM Pacific-time USA Saturday 04/06/2024
