The Night Parade (39 page)

“Just like on the news,” Ellie said.

“Yes. Just like on the news.”

“It's because of the sickness.”

“Yes.”

“Are we okay?”

“Yes, baby.”

“I mean, we aren't sick, are we?”

“No.”

“Did everyone on our street get sick?”

“No, honey. It's just a precaution.”

“So where are we going now?”

“Away.”

“Why?”

“Because, Ellie, we were not supposed to leave the house. But we did. So now we can't go back.” His mind was reeling.

“That doesn't sound like a good idea.”

“Just give me a few minutes to relax, okay? Why don't you close your eyes and try to get some sleep? I'll explain it all to you later.”

“We always call Mom before bedtime.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, imagining the roadway a hundred miles wide. “We can't right now. So just get some rest.”

“Later?” she said.

“Yes. Later.”

“Promise?”

He promised.

Several seconds later, he felt her cold fingers touch the back of his neck.

They drove south.

W
hen he opened his eyes, he found the sky cloudless, pure blue. There were no sounds except for the wind sighing in the trees and the bugs chattering away in the tall grass. He ran his palms overtop a fringe of wildflowers.

The headache claimed him the moment he sat up. It slammed around in the center of his brain, ricocheting like buckshot off the walls of his skull. Wincing, he pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. When he touched beneath his nose, he felt the warm slickness and saw the bright red blood on his fingertips. There were streamers of red running down the front of his shirt, too.

Before he could stand, he was alerted to a tickling sensation along his left arm. When he looked at the bandage Tim had applied, he could see specks of blood blossoming up to the surface. And then the bandage
bulged,
swelling momentarily before sinking back down. The tickling turned to a frantic itch. The bandage—or, more accurately, whatever was
beneath
the bandage—swelled like a balloon before deflating again.

He tore the bandage off and stared in abject horror at the avalanche of small black beetles that spilled out from his perforated wound. He shrieked, swatted at the wound, feeling no pain, feeling nothing except the sensation of those bugs crawling all over his flesh. It wasn't until he'd torn open a number of stitches that he realized there were no bugs there. And he was left bleeding freely from the reopened wound.

He reached out and used the leg of the nearest rabbit hutch to hoist himself to his feet. Behind the meshwork, large gray rabbits scampered about, panicked. One of them roared at him like a lion. On closer inspection, he saw that they weren't rabbits at all, but alien creatures with slender, segmented legs and bodies comprised of thick, iridescent shells. Their heads were mainly a system of eyes of varying sizes, some of them mirrored so that David could see his own terrified reflection in them.

He staggered back to the house, up the steps, in through the porch. It seemed to take a great effort, as if he was doing this simple exercise on a planet with a stronger gravitational pull and less oxygen.

When he came in through the kitchen door, he saw Tim standing there, tugging on a lightweight jacket. Ellie stood beside him. At the sight of David, a shadow darkened her features.

“Dad,” Ellie said, her voice low.

“I was just coming out to look for you,” Tim said. He stood frozen in the middle of pulling on his jacket.

“I think I'm sick,” David said.

“Yeah,” Tim said, finally shrugging off his jacket and folding it over one of the kitchen chairs. “We know.”

David shook his head. “How . . . ?”

“I could tell the moment I laid eyes on you,” Tim said, “right when I came up and hugged you outside. Ellie told us when you guys got here.
She
knew.”

Their secret conversation at the breakfast table,
David thought, his mind racing.
Their secret birds at the breakfast car.
His head pounded and his thoughts were muddled.

He looked at Ellie. “I'm sorry, baby. I'm so sorry.”

“I didn't want to believe it,” she said, “but I knew. I could feel it in you.” She was fighting off tears. He wanted to go to her, comfort her, lie and tell her it would be okay. But at that moment he didn't trust himself to move.

“Sit down, David.” Tim moved toward him, pulling out a kitchen chair.

“No,” David said. He took a step in Ellie's direction but the world seemed to cant, the floor sliding out from beneath him.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Tim said, and hurried to his side. He grabbed David beneath the armpits and helped lower him onto the kitchen chair. He went down like wet laundry.

David's gaze lowered to the table. Three perfect circles of blood, each one smaller than a dime, formed a constellation on the tabletop. He turned his hands over, examined his palms, and thought he saw the ghostly impressions of the wildflowers hidden there among the whorls and creases and crosshatches.

Ellie took a single step toward him. She seemed hesitant to approach him, though he knew she wasn't afraid of touching him, of getting sick. She was
seeing
him, and in perfect clarity, from where she stood, and she was reluctant to move from her vantage because she was digesting every bit of him.

She's a special one,
Kathy said in his ear.

“Yes,” he said aloud. “She is.”

And then she was just Ellie again, Eleanor Elizabeth Arlen, his Little Spoon, the delicate spray of freckles across the saddle of her nose, her eyes impossibly filled with so much intuition and wisdom and understanding that she looked like an old soul in the body of a young child, and she came to him with economical footsteps, a firm expression of both compassion and sadness—

—and when she reached out and hugged him about the shoulders, he found himself desperate to inhale her every scent, embrace every molecule of her, terrified at the prospect of his traitorous brain dismissing all his best memories of this wonderful, impossible, fierce, loving, inimitable girl, and their brief time together on this planet.

“I want to save you,” she whispered in his ear.

“It's too late for me,” he said.

Gently, Ellie pulled away from his embrace. He expected her to be crying, but she wasn't. She was her mother again in that instant, so clearly Kathy that David had to wonder if he wasn't suffering another hallucination.

“How bad is it, David?” Tim asked.

David looked at his brother but didn't respond. Tim nodded; David's look spoke volumes.

“Could you give us a minute, Uncle Tim?”

“Sure thing, El.” Tim smiled at them both, then left the room, his heavy footfalls receding down the hall until David heard the front door squeal open.

Ellie turned back to him, not speaking right away. Her eyes scrutinized him. “Does it hurt?” she said.

“Not really. Just here.” He pointed to his heart.

Ellie nodded. “Me, too,” she said. A tear rolled down the side of her nose. “I tried to make you better. While you slept, I tried to take it all out of you. I thought maybe . . . maybe the stronger I got, I might be able to do it. But I just couldn't do it. I'm not strong enough. Not yet. I can't get the sickness out of you.”

“It's okay, baby. It's okay,” he said. “That power of yours is meant for something. Do good with it, Ellie, but be careful with it, too. Do you understand?”

She lowered her gaze and nodded.

Gently, she pulled away from him so that she could see his face. Then Ellie did a strange thing—she reached out and caressed the side of his face. It was something Kathy had done a million times in their marriage. “Daddy Spoon,” she said. Just as he closed his eyes, he heard Ellie say, “You've been a good dad. You've done your best. I love you.”

“I love you, baby.”

He tried to wrap her up in his arms, but his body refused to obey him all of a sudden. Perceptive as always, Ellie intuited his intention, lifted his arms for him, and wrapped them around her waist. He drew her into a hug.

“I don't want to keep running and hiding,” she said into his ear. “I want to help the good people, not hurt the bad ones. I want you to let me go. I want you to let me do it.”

He managed to summon enough strength to squeeze her tightly. He could instruct Tim that she was to stay here in the farmhouse and remain hidden, and Tim had already agreed to do whatever David thought was best . . . but then what would happen if Tim got sick? Ellie would be left alone. He thought of those terrible bugs that had uprooted themselves from the molehills in the yard—and even now, he wondered if they had been real or merely a hallucination brought on by the Folly and his own deteriorating brain—and imagined the farmhouse surrounded by them, swarmed by them, and Ellie trapped inside. Alone.

We have come to the end of the line,
said the head-voice. Bright swirls capered behind his eyelids.
This is it, David.

When they separated, he kissed her on the forehead. Her eyes were planets, her eyelashes like butterfly wings.

“All right,” he said. “You're a big girl. You make your own decision. I trust you.”

She squeezed his hand in hers.

“I don't want to go to those doctors who have been looking for us,” she said.

“No?” This surprised him.

“No,” she said. “I want us to go back to Goodwin. I want to find those people living in the firehouse, and the man who can heal the sick. Do you remember that story the man Turk told us about those people?”

“Yes,” David said.

“I don't know why, but I think that story is true, and that there is a man there who has abilities like mine. Only he's older and his powers are . . . stronger. I don't know how I know this, but I do. I think I even saw him that morning in the street, and it was like he wanted me to follow him, to go find him. And I think maybe he can show me what I need to do to make my powers stronger, too, and use them the right way. There might even be other people out there like me and him, too.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I don't know. I just do. I feel like I might be part of a puzzle, one piece that needs to come together with other pieces to stop the world from dying.” She looked down at her hands and said, “Maybe it's not the cure in my blood that's supposed to save the world, but the mystery of my power.”

“You're such a smart and wonderful girl,” he said.

“And this man, whoever he is,” she said. “He can help you, Dad. I can't cure you, but he can. I
know
he can.”

He just smiled wanly at his daughter, taking both of her hands in his. He brought her hands to his mouth, kissed her knuckles.

“What?” Ellie said. “What is it?”

“Ellie, I'll never make it back to Kentucky. I'm very sick.”

Her face seemed to change in subtle increments before his eyes until she was crying again. She withdrew her hands from his. “No,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“It's okay,” David said. “I'll talk with Uncle Tim. He'll take you. It's a good plan, Ellie. You need to do it. And you need to get on the road right away.”

She shook her head. “No. No, Dad.”

“It'll be okay.”

“No,” she said.

“I can't make the trip, Ellie. I'm at the end here, sweetheart.”

“Then I'll stay with you until the end. I'll make it better for you in the end.”

“No. I don't want you to see me like that. I don't want your last memory of me to be . . . to be whatever is going to happen.”

“I can make it better for you,” she sobbed. “Like I did with the girl on the highway.”

“I don't want you to do that,” he said. He leaned toward her so that their foreheads touched. “Now, you go and save the world. You hear me? You go and save the world, Eleanor Arlen.”

She closed her eyes and nodded, her forehead still against his.

“That's my girl,” he said, closing his eyes and smiling to himself.

His head was full of locusts.

D
avid watched as Ellie and Tim loaded the Tahoe with some snacks, fresh clothes, and a few jugs of water. Tim also packed the two shotguns and the pistol in the back of the Tahoe, along with several boxes of ammunition. Tim estimated they could make it back to Kentucky in two days, unless they ran into trouble on the road. He had been apprised of Ellie's plan and had agreed to see it through. “I'll take care of her like she's my own daughter,” Tim assured him. “Don't you worry about that, David.”

David hugged his brother and kissed the scruffy side of his face.

He managed to make it out into the yard as they finished packing the Tahoe. Ellie stood beside the Tahoe's open rear door, hands in her pockets, her face emotionless. She stared at him as he crossed the yard. And she hugged him when he reached her.

He knelt down so that they were eye to eye.

“I've been meaning to give this to you for a few days now,” he said. “It was Mom's.” He twisted Kathy's wedding band off his pinkie and held it out to his daughter. “It's too big for you now, but you'll grow into it.”

Ellie took it between two fingers, holding it up so that the sunlight caused it to sparkle.

“Happy birthday,” David said.

She hugged him around the neck. Cried against him.

“I love you,” he said, and kissed the burning hot side of her face. He braced her head in both hands and pressed the tip of his nose against hers. “Listen to me. Listen to me.”

She nodded.

“I'm so proud of you. Your mom and I, we've always been so proud of you.”

“I don't want to leave you.”

“It'll be okay.”

He kissed her forehead, the side of her face. Said, “
Shhh, shhh
,” over and over to her until her sobs tapered off, leaving only the sharp hitching of her chest in their place.

“Okay,” she told him, once she'd gotten herself under control. “I'll be brave. I'm okay.”

“That's my girl.”

“Little Spoon,” she managed.

David smiled. “That's right,” he said. “My Little Spoon. Don't you forget it.”

His brain must have shut down for a few seconds then, for when he regained consciousness, he was watching the Tahoe drive away, Ellie's small silhouette framed in the rear window. She had one palm pressed against the glass, Kathy's wedding band shining on her finger. She was crying.