through the connecting door, hacking away like a hound dog.
Trish expected that Hector’s symptoms would abate in the morning—croup was a lying-down sickness—but by noon of the twentieth, she admitted to herself that it wasn’t happening. The aspirin wasn’t controlling the fever; poor Heck was just glassy-eyed with it. His cough had taken on a booming note she didn’t like, and his respiration sounded labored and phlegmy. Whatever it was, Marsha seemed to be coming down with it, too, and Trish had a nasty little tickle in the back of her throat that was making her cough, although so far it was a light cough that she could smother in a small hankie.
“We’ve got to get Heck to a doctor,” she said finally.
Ed pulled into a service station and checked the map paper-clipped to the station wagon’s sun-visor. They were in Hammer Crossing, Kansas. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we can at least find a doctor who’ll give us a referral.”
He finally found a doctor in Polliston who would look at Hector if they could get him there by three. Polliston was off their route, twenty miles west of Hammer Crossing, but now the important thing was Hector. Ed was getting very worried about the boy.
They were waiting in the outer office of Dr. Brenden Sweeney by two in the afternoon. By then Ed was sneezing, too. Sweeney’s waiting room was full; they didn’t get in to see him until nearly four o’clock. Trish couldn’t rouse Heck to more than a sludgy semiconsciousness, and she felt feverish herself. Only Stan Norris, age nine, still felt good enough to fidget.
During their wait in Sweeney’s office they communicated the sickness to more than twenty-five people, including a matronly woman who just came in to pay her bill before going on to pass the disease to her entire bridge club.
This matronly woman was Mrs. Robert Bradford, Sarah Bradford to the bridge club, Cookie to her husband and close friends. Sarah played well that night, possibly because her partner was Angela Dupray, her best friend. They seemed to enjoy a happy kind of telepathy. They won all three rubbers resoundingly, making a gland slam during the last. For Sarah, the only fly in the ointment was that she seemed to be coming down with a slight cold. It wasn’t fair, coming so soon on the heels of the last one.
She and Angela went out for a quiet drink in a cocktail bar after the party broke up at ten. Angela was in no hurry to get home. It was David’s turn to have the weekly poker game at their house, and she just wouldn’t be able to sleep with all that noise going on . . . unless she had a little self-prescribed sedative first, which in her case would be two sloe gin fizzes.
Sarah had a Ward 8 and the two women rehashed the bridge game. In the meantime they managed to infect everyone in the Polliston cocktail bar, including two young men drinking beer nearby. They were on their way to California—just as Larry Underwood and his friend Rudy Schwartz had once gone—to seek their fortunes. A friend of theirs had promised them jobs with a moving company. The next day they headed west, spreading the disease, which came to be known on the West Coast as Captain Trips, as they went.
Chapter 9
They set on him sometime after dusk, while he was walking up the shoulder of US Route 27, which was called Main Street a mile back, where it passed through town. A mile or two up he had been planning to turn west on 63, which would have taken him to the turnpike and the start of his long trip north. His senses had been dulled, maybe, by the two beers he had just downed, but he had known something was wrong. He was just getting around to remembering the four or five heavyset townies down at the far end of the bar when they broke cover and ran at him .
Nick put up the best fight he could, decking one of them and bloodying another’s nose—breaking it, too, by the sound. For one or two hopeful moments he thought there was actually a chance that he
Trish expected that Hector’s symptoms would abate in the morning—croup was a lying-down sickness—but by noon of the twentieth, she admitted to herself that it wasn’t happening. The aspirin wasn’t controlling the fever; poor Heck was just glassy-eyed with it. His cough had taken on a booming note she didn’t like, and his respiration sounded labored and phlegmy. Whatever it was, Marsha seemed to be coming down with it, too, and Trish had a nasty little tickle in the back of her throat that was making her cough, although so far it was a light cough that she could smother in a small hankie.
“We’ve got to get Heck to a doctor,” she said finally.
Ed pulled into a service station and checked the map paper-clipped to the station wagon’s sun-visor. They were in Hammer Crossing, Kansas. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we can at least find a doctor who’ll give us a referral.”
He finally found a doctor in Polliston who would look at Hector if they could get him there by three. Polliston was off their route, twenty miles west of Hammer Crossing, but now the important thing was Hector. Ed was getting very worried about the boy.
They were waiting in the outer office of Dr. Brenden Sweeney by two in the afternoon. By then Ed was sneezing, too. Sweeney’s waiting room was full; they didn’t get in to see him until nearly four o’clock. Trish couldn’t rouse Heck to more than a sludgy semiconsciousness, and she felt feverish herself. Only Stan Norris, age nine, still felt good enough to fidget.
During their wait in Sweeney’s office they communicated the sickness to more than twenty-five people, including a matronly woman who just came in to pay her bill before going on to pass the disease to her entire bridge club.
This matronly woman was Mrs. Robert Bradford, Sarah Bradford to the bridge club, Cookie to her husband and close friends. Sarah played well that night, possibly because her partner was Angela Dupray, her best friend. They seemed to enjoy a happy kind of telepathy. They won all three rubbers resoundingly, making a gland slam during the last. For Sarah, the only fly in the ointment was that she seemed to be coming down with a slight cold. It wasn’t fair, coming so soon on the heels of the last one.
She and Angela went out for a quiet drink in a cocktail bar after the party broke up at ten. Angela was in no hurry to get home. It was David’s turn to have the weekly poker game at their house, and she just wouldn’t be able to sleep with all that noise going on . . . unless she had a little self-prescribed sedative first, which in her case would be two sloe gin fizzes.
Sarah had a Ward 8 and the two women rehashed the bridge game. In the meantime they managed to infect everyone in the Polliston cocktail bar, including two young men drinking beer nearby. They were on their way to California—just as Larry Underwood and his friend Rudy Schwartz had once gone—to seek their fortunes. A friend of theirs had promised them jobs with a moving company. The next day they headed west, spreading the disease, which came to be known on the West Coast as Captain Trips, as they went.
Chapter 9
They set on him sometime after dusk, while he was walking up the shoulder of US Route 27, which was called Main Street a mile back, where it passed through town. A mile or two up he had been planning to turn west on 63, which would have taken him to the turnpike and the start of his long trip north. His senses had been dulled, maybe, by the two beers he had just downed, but he had known something was wrong. He was just getting around to remembering the four or five heavyset townies down at the far end of the bar when they broke cover and ran at him .
Nick put up the best fight he could, decking one of them and bloodying another’s nose—breaking it, too, by the sound. For one or two hopeful moments he thought there was actually a chance that he
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