There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (81 page)

Josie at last felt Ham’s focus upon her. A chill ran up her spine as she turned her head to face him. The look in his eyes so startled her that she dropped the tray.

Ham’s eyes!
Looking at her
Thatway!

The coffee mug shattered, spraying Ham’s pants legs with the hot beverage. She bent down to clean up the mess, blinking back the tears in her eyes. 

“Leave it be,
”
he said, pulling Josie up roughly by her arm. She trembled in his strong grasp and allowed her tears to fall free, as her favorite person on God’s green earth stared unabashedly at her quivering breasts. Stripping her bare with his hungry eyes.

His rude, roaming eyes…

Blinking, Ham pushed her away. “Go on, Josie! Get the hell on out’ a here! Put on some damn clothes, girl!”

Josie fled the wheelhouse and was halfway down the stairs, when Rusty burst out of the gangway in the galley below. He saw the stricken look on Josie’s face and it hit him that his mother had already spread it to his father.

“Daddy? No! Not my daddy!”

Josie grabbed his hand and pulled him down through the other galley hatch, leading to the engine room and storage hold below. The only place left on the boat for a private word. Josie didn’t know why her friend was crying, but the look on his face felt identical to the one stretched out on hers. Scared and a little bit betrayed.

“What’s going on, Rusty? Why are you so upset?”

Rusty glared back at her. “You first, Joe! Why the hell are
you
crying?”

Josie wiped her eyes and dismissed the whole thing with a flip of her hand. “Your dad wasn’t acting like himself, that’s all.”

She didn’t fool Rusty. He saw the truth in her watery eyes, the way her chin trembled, like someone had just broken her heart. “You’re a lousy liar, Josie O’Hara! Did my daddy…did he…
touch
you?”

“No! He just looked at me kinda weird. It upset me, Rusty. I’m sure he didn’t mean anything by it. He’s exhausted, you know. Now why were you crying? Is it about your mom?”

              Rusty sat on one of the boxed up crates from the Tolsons’ house. He stared at his sneakers and wiped his nose. “Mom has it.”

             
Josie gasped. “Has
what
, Rusty?”

             
“The virus. My mother has the rabies virus. And by the look on your damn face I think she gave it to my dad.”

             
                            *******

“What should we do, Bud?” Rusty asked, looking up to his large friend
.
The Creep
s
were holding an impromptu meeting in the
Betty Anne’s
main hold.

             
Bud tried to calm the rising tide of panic he felt welling up in his chest. If Rusty’s parents had the disease, it probably meant the virus had already spread on Moon.
This is it!
The day he’d been dreading for
so
long. His nightmares were about to go from black-and-white, to living, breathing color. He’d known it, in fact, ever since he’d encountered Tubby on the front steps of the Academy. He was their Fourth, the one who would precede the dark days. Truth was, he’d resisted the idea that the recent rabies scare had anything to do with his dreams—and considering the symptom of the glowing red eyes, so prevalent in the victims, it had been a
deliberate
choice on his part to remain ignorant. It was evident his newfound relationship with Josie had dulled his senses. He had been so happy—a state of being Bud Brown was totally unfamiliar with—that he’d disregarded the obvious, hoping it was a matter of weeks, maybe months before things began to unravel, rather than the handful of days his dreams seemed lately to portend. The smart thing to do now would be to turn for the mainland, instead of going back to God knows what on the island.
The only problem with that solution is dad’s still on the island!
Not only that, maybe a vaccine existed on the island as well! A vaccine that might yet save Rusty’s folks. Maybe this was what his dreams had also been trying to tell him all along—that these events
had
to happen.

             
He could prepare for the future, in much the same way they had prepared for the hurricane, but the future, like a large storm, was a force unto itself. All they could hope to do was weather it with the means at their disposal.

             
And The Bunker holds all those means.

Resigning himself to the whims of Fate, Bud sighed. “I think your instincts were right, Gnat,” he said, spitting out the side of his mouth. Tubby barely got out of the way in time. “We’ve got to find Bidwell and get your folks that vaccine.” Like Rusty, Bud ignored his inner voice, telling him it was too late for Ham Huggins (Betty Anne’s Fate was a forgone conclusion). He couldn’t possibly know that, and yet he did. Still, they had to try.

              “Should we tell my parents?” Tubby said, raising his hand. As if he was in school.

             
              “Don’t see how we can avoid it. It would be unfair to keep the truth from them.”

“Not to mention dangerous,” said Josie.

              Tubby blinked. “Dangerous?”

             
Josie put her hand on the back of his neck. “Yes, love. They’ll need to know what to look out for once we get back to the island…not to mention keeping their distance from Betty Anne and Ham.” The news, while horribly distressing, had at least relieved her about Joel being over in Beaufort. No matter how bad the hurricane might’ve been, it couldn’t begin to compare to the viral storm that might now be raging on Moon.

             
Tubby nodded. He didn’t have a clue, though, on how to approach his parents with this sort of news. Not without scaring his mother to death! “My mom will want to speak to Ham…about taking us over to Beaufort, I mean.”

             
Bud nixed that. “No one is to approach Ham or Betty Anne until we get the vaccine! That includes you, Rusty. There’s no telling what they might do in their present condition. You said your mother has the red eyes? Is she…is she
foaming
at the mouth?”

             
Rusty swiped at the tears flowing nonstop down his face. He nodded, unable to speak. Josie put her arm around his shoulders and pulled him tight to her.

             
“Joe, what about Ham’s eyes?” Bud asked her.

             
“I think they’re normal.” Realizing how significant this was, she considered it a moment more. “Yeah! I’m sure of it, Bud! And he wasn’t salivating either!”

             
Rusty smiled crookedly. “T-that’s a g-good sign, isn’t it, Buddy boy?”

             
“Could be,” Bud said, not wanting to get his friend’s hopes up too much. But yeah, he thought it good news. “Josie, I want you up top with Tubby. Make sure his folks understand the severity of this situation.”

             
“No,” said Tubby, shaking his head. “I better tell them myself, Bud.” He knew his mother might go off the deep end, hearing the news, and he didn’t want Josie to witness that spectacle. “But what if my parents insist on taking me over to the mainland with them?”

             
‘Yeah, so? Damn, Tubby! I hope they do just that! And they can take Josie with you while they’re at it!”

             
“But I want to help you find a vaccine for Rusty’s folks. What about our motto?”

             
Bud shook his head. “Motto?”

             
“You know
…
Creep
s
go it together…”

             
“…always and forever,” Josie said, smiling sadly.

             
              Bud laughed a little at that. “Yeah. Thanks, Ralph. It’s still up to your folks, though.”

             
              It was a moot point and Bud knew it. Tubby wasn’t going anywhere. One way or another, like the rest of them, he would live or die on Moon Island. Suddenly, he had a disquieting thought. Mr. T. was up top, on the bow. And Ham, of course, was steering the damn boat. That left one
sane
person unaccounted for. “Ralph…where’s your mom?”

             
                                          *******

Emma Tolson paused for a moment more at the Captain’s Cabin, situated in-between the two smaller berths, before timidly knocking on the hatch. After telling Frank she was going to start packing up their things, she’d decided at the last second to ignore Rusty’s earlier instructions and look in on his mother anyway. If Betty Anne didn’t answer her knock she’d leave her friend be. Despite the woman’s plea for peace, not offering any assistance to her friend ran completely counter to Emma’s compassionate upbringing.

              Besides, Betty Anne might need some attention she was too proud to ask for; the kind of attention only another woman could properly give.

             
“Betty?” she called softly. “It’s me, Emma.” She waited five seconds more, and then knocked again anyway.

            
 
“Enter,
”
said a guttural voice on the other side.

             
Emma was relieved she’d made the extra effort. It sounded as if Betty had taken a turn for the worse. She opened the hatch, which for some reason Rusty had latched from the outside, and held her hand up to her nose.

             
Oh, my word! The smell!

             
She crossed the room and stopped in front of the privacy curtain covering the Huggins’s bunk. As she slid the muslin drape aside, cold laughter floated out of the shadows on a raft of foul air. The stench bespoke of more than vomit and body waste. Glowing, reptilian eyes peered out at Emma Tolson from within the gloom…

             
                          *******

“I told you, I locked mom in her berth!” Rusty followed Bud and Josie to the berths below. Tubby had gone up top, where they’d last seen Frank Tolson on deck, hoping Emma was also there by now. “Then I locked the other two cabins down there for good measure! I’m telling you, guys, she can’t get out of her room!”

              Holding onto the railings, Bud leaped down the gangway steps, three at a time. “Yeah, but can anyone get to
her
?” Reaching the bottom landing, Bud stopped dead in his tracks. Two of the three cabin doors were locked tight, just as Rusty had claimed. The one in the middle, however, stood wide open. Bud brought his hand up to his nose and coughed. “Jesus. What’s that awful stink?” He peered into the murky shadows beyond the open hatch.

             
The Captain’s Cabin was dark, the curtains and blinds pulled down over the portholes. A trail of ink-black fluid streamed out of the darkness, flowing to and past Bud’s boots. It looked like oil…
No
…Blood.

             
That’s what it was.
Blood
. A lot of it, too.

             
The hatch opened and closed with the swaying of the surging boat. As the
Betty Anne
drew closer to land, the seas once more grew choppy and rough. The louvered hatch slammed with a hollow bang each time it struck the metal frame. Like a loose shutter thwacking against a house on a windy night. Scaring the hell out of the kids each time.

             
Bud reached out and grabbed it before it could do so again…just in time to hear the stifled giggles. The laughter of a wicked child with an evil little secret.

             
He looked back at Josie and Rusty, to see if they’d heard it to—their frightened eyes told the story.

Again came the giggles. Coming out of the dark. The loose, unhinged laughter of insanity. To Bud, it was an all too familiar refrain. He’d heard that same evil titter eight years ago. In the darkness of his room.

And in his dreams each night.

             
Rusty squirmed his way past Bud. “Momma?” he said, dashing over to the open hatchway. Bud tried to grab him but Rusty was like a spastic squirrel on the move.

            
 
“Come to me, baby!
”
said the thing in the dark
.
“COME TO ME NOW!!!”

             
“Rusty!
No!”
cried Josie, also snatching at thin air.

             
Finding himself in the midst of a huge red puddle, Rusty paused in gawping wonder, his timidity saving him this terrible day. “Look at all the blood! Oh, Momma! What have you done? For the love of God what have you
done
?”