King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) by Joseph Nassise Page B

least of our troubles.

 
    15
    HUNT
    We did what we could to put the room back to rights and sat around a bit longer, waiting for the others. Eventually Gallagher sent word that their examinations of the patients were going to take much longer than expected and had one of his people show us to our rooms in the building next door. Our luggage had been delivered there earlier by another of Gallagher’s men. Dmitri and I shared a pizza for dinner and then called it a night.
    The next morning I found Clearwater already up and eating breakfast when I entered the kitchen just after seven. Dmitri was with her, which saved me the trouble of having to track him down as well.
    “Good morning,” he said, as I pulled out a chair and settled down at the table between them.
    “What’s so good about it?” I replied.
    He laughed. “We’re not serving life sentences for homicide yet, for one.”
    Leave it to Dmitri to get right to the heart of things.
    I wasn’t in the mood for cheery optimism though, and only grunted back at him in reply. I hadn’t yet eaten, but the smell of bacon and eggs was making my stomach churn. I was irritable and more than a bit anxious as a result.
    The night had not gone well. I’d awoken several times with my heart pounding and that sense of doom I’d felt as we’d entered the city hanging over me like a cliff about to fall on my head. Even now I could feel that pressure pushing at the edge of my thoughts …
    Relax, I told myself. There’s still time to get out of here. All you need to do is convince them to go with you. That shouldn’t be too hard.
    “I need to talk to you both,” I said to them.
    “So talk,” Denise replied, her fork clicking against her teeth as she took another bite of her omelet.
    I shuffled uncomfortably in my chair. I didn’t think she was going to like what I had to say next, but it needed to be said. I thought about calling up a ghost in order to borrow its eyesight, just so I could see her face as we talked, and then decided against it. Maybe I was better off staying in the dark for this one.
    As she waited expectantly, I debated just how to say what I needed to say. I finally decided that straight out was my best option.
    “We need to figure out where we’re going and then get back on the road. Being here isn’t safe for us.”
    There was a moment of silence.
    Dmitri cleared his throat and started to say something but Denise cut him off.
    “You want to … leave? Now?”
    She didn’t sound as angry as I’d expected her to be and so I pressed on, figuring this was my chance to show her the logic behind my decision.
    “Yeah, I do. We all should, in fact. Big cities are dangerous for us, you know that. There’s too much potential for being seen, for being recognized. We should stick to the smaller towns and communities where there’s less of a chance of running into a cop on every street corner.”
    “What about the people here, Hunt?”
    I shrugged. “What about them? They’re sick. So are hundreds of thousands of other people across the country.”
    “And you don’t think we should be helping them?”
    If I hadn’t been so damned eager to have her see my point of view I might have noticed the tightness in her voice, the way she sounded as if she was struggling to hold something back, but I rushed on, heedless, and missed the one clue I had that might have told me what was coming.
    “I’d like to, sure,” I said, “but that’s just it. I can’t help them. Neither can Dmitri. Of the three of us, you’re the only one who can, but since they’ve got their own set of healers, I honestly don’t see why we should put ourselves in danger by staying.”
    She wasn’t having any of it.
    “I’m supposed to be here, Jeremiah.”
    “Says who?” I countered.
    “My vision.”
    Just how was I supposed to answer that? It’s like being asked if you were still beating your wife. No matter what you said, you were screwed. On the one hand, if I told her