Plague Read Online Free PDF Page B

long word.
    “You doing okay, Hunter?” Roscoe asked again.
    “Yes. I have food. And my sleeping bag is dry after I cleaned it in a stream.”
    “You got fresh water to wash in, huh?” Roscoe asked. “I’m jealous. Feel this shirt.” He invited Hunter to feel the stiff saltwater-washed cotton.
    “It feels okay,” Hunter said warily.
    Roscoe made a rude noise. “Yeah, right. Salt water. Feel your shirt.” And Roscoe reached out to touch Hunter’s shirt. He touched the shoulder of Hunter’s shirt.
    The wrong shoulder.
    “Aaahh!” Roscoe cried in shock and pain. “What the—”
    “I didn’t mean to!” Hunter yelled.
    “Something bit me!” He held out his finger for Hunter to examine. There were teeth marks. Blood.
    Roscoe stared hard at him. And at his shoulder. “What’s on your shoulder, man? What is that? What’s under there? Is that some kind of animal?”
    Hunter swallowed. No one had seen his shoulder. He didn’t know what would happen if anyone did.
    “Yes, Roscoe, it’s an animal,” Hunter said, seizing gratefully on the explanation.
    “Well, it bit me!”
    “Sorry,” Hunter said.
    Roscoe grabbed the wheelbarrow handles and hefted it. “I’m not doing this job anymore. Marcie can do it every day, I’m not dealing with this.”
    “Okay,” Hunter said. “Bye.”
    Jennifer B set out sometime around dawn.
    If she stayed in the house she was sure she would die. She’d slept for an unknown period of time—hours? days?—on the floor, with her blankets gathered around her.
    The chills came in waves. She would be too hot and would kick off her blankets. Then the fever would start to spike again and she would feel cold, cold all the way down to her bones.
    Jennifer H was dead. Jennifer L didn’t answer when Jennifer B moaned to her to join her.
    “Jen . . . I’m going to . . . hospital.”
    No answer.
    “Are you alive?”
    Jennifer L coughed, she wasn’t dead, and she coughed normally, not the crazy spasms that had killed Jennifer H. But she didn’t answer.
    So Jennifer Boyles set off, on her own. She slid on her butt down the stairs, blankets gathered around her. Shivering, teeth chattering.
    She managed to stand long enough to reach the front door and open it. But she sat down again very unexpectedly on the porch. Hard on her butt. She sat there shaking until the chills passed.
    She tripped walking down the porch stairs. The fall bruised her left knee badly. This destroyed the last of her will to stand up. But not the last of her will to live.
    Jennifer began to crawl. Hands and knees. Down the sidewalk. Impeded by her blankets. Delayed by coughing fits. Pausing whenever the chills rattled her so hard she could only moan and hack and roll onto her side.
    “Keep going,” she muttered. “Gotta keep going.”
    It took her two hours to crawl as far as Brace Road.
    She lay there, facedown. Coughing wracked her chest. But it was not yet the superhuman coughs that had killed Jennifer H.
    Not yet.

Chapter Five
62 HOURS, 18 MINUTES

    “LESLIE-ANN, TRY TO do a little better on cleaning my night pot, okay?” Albert told the cleaning girl. “I know it’s not a fun job, but I like it clean.”
    Leslie-Ann nodded and kept her eyes down. She was a little afraid of him, Albert knew. But at least she didn’t seem to hate him.
    “There’s not much water,” Leslie-Ann mumbled.
    “Use sand,” Albert said patiently—he’d already told her this. “Use sand to scrub it clean.”
    She nodded and fled the room.
    Not everyone liked Albert. Not everyone was happy that he had become the most important person around. Lots of people were jealous that Albert had a girl to clean his house and the porcelain basin where he did his business at night when he didn’t want to go outside to the only actual outhouse in Per-dido Beach. And that he could afford to send his clothes to be washed in the fresh water of the ironically named Lake Evian.
    And there were definitely people who didn’t like working