Firechild Read Online Free PDF Page B

crackpots were everywhere, shouting alarm about every chimera they could invent. Such paranoias had no place in medical science, and he refused to entertain them now. Evident panic had hit the town, but it had to be—surely it had to be—merely hysteria.
    He tried to relax at the wheel, taking cautious stock of his own sensations. His seat felt numb, his shoulders stiff from driving too long. His head ached a little. That slab of cold pizza heavy in his stomach, he had eaten nothing till late afternoon, then only a quick double cheeseburger. Now, longing for a cold beer and a good rare sirloin, he certainly felt no symptom of any synthetic virus working in him.
    Again he tried the radio. A slick commercial for an album of country music stars. A drawling local newsman, reading official estimates of a bumper wheat harvest. A hoarse evangelist screaming threats of hellfire in the hereafter. Nothing of any hell in Enfield, here and now.
    Ahead, the ENBARD MO EL still flashed its gap-toothed invitation. Though the flickering neon said NO VACANCY , the place looked empty. Nowhere better in view, he stopped and walked inside. The jangling bell brought a thin little woman out of a dark hallway. Limping a little, she wore the penetrating turpentine stink of some patent liniment.
    “Yes, sir?” She squinted warily though steel-rimmed glasses. “Want a room?”
    “Maybe. If I can use a telephone.”
    “Pay phone yonder.” She nodded vaguely.
    He found the phone on the wall beyond the Coke machine and dialed the number Jeri had answered. A busy signal beeped. The woman stood waiting till he came back, both bony hands flat on the cracked glass counter, dourly patient.
    “Single is thirty-seven eighty-nine if you want to stay. Cash now.”
    “VISA card?”
    “Not tonight.”
    “Why not tonight?”
    “Pay now if you want the room.” She pushed an index card across the broken glass.
    “What’s going on tonight?” He tried to decipher her pain-pinched, pale-eyed face. “Has something happened in Enfield?”
    “They’s some crazy tale.” She rolled a tape-wrapped ballpoint after the card. “On the room TV if you want to hear about it. Channel Five.”
    “The roads are closed,” he told her. “Both directions.”
    “So you got stuck?” Her bird-quick nod reflected no regret. “Hope you ain’t hungry. We don’t serve meals. Not even breakfast since Mr. Bard died—my late husband.” She shrugged toward the vending machine. “Fritos and candy bars if you want a snack.”
    “Later, maybe.”
    He signed the card, and her yellow talons took his cash.
    “I’ll put you in number nine. Straight back. Has to be tidied up.”
    She gave him the key on a heavy wooden ball. He parked outside number nine, and she limped after him into the room. The bed looked unused, but soiled towels littered the bathroom floor and empty beer cans had been tossed at the wastebasket.
    “Full up before sundown, but that fool tale scared everybody out.”
    She collected the clutter and took it away. He used the bathroom and tried Channel Five. A national network news show was just ending on heart-rending shots of big-bellied infants dying of famine in the Sahel. A cosmetics commercial followed, then one from Enfield Federal, “where we take interest in you and you get interest from us.”
    Mrs. Bard rapped and shuffled in again with a water-stained glass and two skimpy towels. He asked what she had heard on Channel Five.
    “Hokum!” She hung up the towels and flushed the toilet. “From nobody regular. Some crazy guy there in the news studio. Drunk as a skunk. Making up wild lies that panicked all our guests till they jumped in their cars and took off. Most never settled for their rooms. I’d like to sue him.” Her gaunt jaw set stubbornly. “It’s got to be another hoax, like way back the year I married Mr. Bard. That radio thing about the monsters from Mars.”
    “Just a hoax? I saw a car go off the road and burn.”
    “Crazy!”