"And after that grow wings." Chase turned back to the bed and suddenly doubled up as pain twisted like a knife in his gut. He fell the next two steps and collapsed across the foot of the bed, mouth pulled back, groaning through clenched teeth. The sweat was now gushing off him, drenching Ruth's hands as she sought to help him. His skin felt to be on fire. He was burning up with fever.
Ruth darted across the room to get the medical pack from the closet, and as she touched the handle of the sliding door she heard a dry rattling noise from inside. She whipped her hand back, her fingers cold and numb, heart palpitating with fear. Step by wooden step she withdrew, eyes bulging and straining to see in the darkness. Faintly she heard the closet door creak as if, perhaps, a heavy weight was leaning
against it. She waited, fists knotted by her sides, almost unable to hear anything because of the blood pounding in her ears.
Thinking it had broken through the door, Ruth almost leaped out of her skin. The room filled with crimson light and there was another deafening drumroll of thunder. Behind her Chase moaned and writhed on the bed. Her mind snapped shut like a steel trap.
The decision made, she acted calmly and swiftly. Dragging and cursing him, she got Chase into the corridor, returned for the battery lantern, and slammed the door shut, making sure it was securely on the catch. She switched the lantern on and by its light saw that his face was white as paper, his hair plastered to his head like a skullcap. Ruth was afraid he was dying.
A footfall behind her jerked her upright, her nerves taut as piano wires.
Dan knelt beside her. "Is he sick, too?"
It was only then she became aware of groans and stifled screams in the other rooms along the corridor. Chase wasn't the only one. Was it the food or the water?
They moved Chase to another room and tried to take stock of the situation. Out of twenty-seven people nine had the same symptoms as Chase, suffering from intense stomach cramps and vomiting. Half a dozen of the others complained of feeling unwell and Ruth supposed it was only a matter of time before everyone was stricken. At Nick's suggestion they carried all the sick into one of the larger apartments with two connecting rooms, where it would be easier to keep an eye on them. Mattresses were brought in and arranged around the walls. Soon the rest came to join them, obeying the primitive group instinct of herding together for mutual protection and companionship. From the jungle to the complete floor of a hotel and now to two rooms: They could hardly huddle any closer.
The storm raged around them with terrifying ferocity, battering at the walls and shaking the windows in their frames.
Nick knelt by Ruth's side as she made one of the children comfortable. "How are you feeling?" he asked her worriedly.
"All right so far. But 1 don't think any of us will escape it, Nick. We've all eaten the same rations and drunk--"
A middle-aged man was crying out piteously for water, raising himself on one elbow, mouth gaping. One of the women hurried to him with a plastic cup and Ruth leaped up and knocked it from her hand.
"No water!" She swung around, shouting it at everyone in the room and those through the connecting door. "The water could be contaminated. Nobody is to drink it!"
"Is it the water?" Nick asked her. "Are you sure?"
"I don't know anything for sure. It could be the food, the heat, the air--" Ruth made an empty, angry gesture. "How in hell do I know?"
Nick looked across at Chase whose face was contorted in an awful grimace of pain. He turned slowly, seeing the writhing bodies, hands clutching their stomach. "We have to give them something. Have we any pain-killers left?"
"Yes," Ruth said stonily and told him about the medical pack and the noise she had heard.
"Did you actually see it?"
"I didn't wait to see it. Would you?"
"That means you can't treat Jo," Nick said in a hushed voice. His lips thinned. "You can't give her a shot--"
"I can't treat anybody!" Ruth snapped coldly. She closed her eyes, screwed them tight, and clenched both fists. After a moment she opened her eyes, hollow and rinsed out. "I'm sorry, Nick, forgive me. No, I haven't any drugs at all; they're in the medical pack"--she suppressed a shudder--"in that room."
Ruth turned away. There was nothing more to say and precious little she could do. She tried to comfort Chase, who was delirious, babbling something about being lost in Antarctica.
Nick closed his hand around the doorknob and very carefully increased the pressure. As it began to turn he said, "Is the safety off?" His voice was thick and ragged.
