"Johnny!" she screamed. "I can't find my sewing box! It isn't in the closet!"

He poured her a glass of water from the pitcher on the nightstand and held it to her lips but she thrashed again and almost knocked it from his grasp. He set it back down where it would be in reach if she quieted.

He had never been so bitterly aware of his muteness as the last two days had made him. The Methodist minister, Braceman, had been with her on the twenty-third when Nick came over. He was Bible-reading with her in the living room, but he looked nervous and anxious to get away. Nick could guess why. Her fever had given her a rosy, girlish glow that went jarringly with her bereavement. Perhaps the minister had been afraid she was going to make a pass at him. More likely, though, he had been anxious to gather up his family and melt away over the fields. News travels fast in a small town, and others had already decided to get out of Shoyo.

Since the time Braceman had left the Baker living room some forty-eight hours ago, everything had turned into a waking nightmare. Mrs. Baker had gotten worse, so much worse that Nick had feared she would die before the sun went down.

Worse, he couldn't sit with her constantly. He had gone down to the truck-stop to get his three prisoners lunch, but Vince Hogan hadn't been able to eat. He was delirious. Mike Childress and Billy Warner wanted out, but Nick couldn't bring himself to do it. It wasn't fear; he didn't believe they would waste any time working him over to settle their grievance; they would want to make fast tracks away from Shoyo, like the others. But he had a responsibility. He had made a promise to a man who was now dead. Surely, sooner or later the State Patrol would get things in hand and come to take them away.

He found a .45 rolled up in its holster in the bottom drawer of Baker's desk, and after a few moments of debate he put it on. Looking down and seeing the woodgrip butt of the gun lying against his skinny hip had made him feel ridiculous-but its weight was comforting.

He had opened Vince's cell on the afternoon of the twenty-third and had put makeshift icepacks on the man's forehead, chest, and neck. Vince had opened his eyes and looked at Nick with such silent, miserable appeal that Nick wished he could say anything-as he wished it now, two days later, with Mrs. Baker-anything that would give the man a moment's comfort. Just You'll be okay You'll be okay or or I think I think the fever's breaking the fever's breaking would be enough. would be enough.

All the time he was tending to Vince, Billy and Mike were yelling at him. While he was bent over the sick man they didn't matter, but he saw their scared faces every time he looked up, their lips forming words that all came down to the same thing: Please let us Please let us out. Nick was careful to keep away from them. He wasn't grown, but he was old enough to know that panic makes men dangerous. out. Nick was careful to keep away from them. He wasn't grown, but he was old enough to know that panic makes men dangerous.

That afternoon he had shuttled back and forth on nearly empty streets, always expecting to find Vince Hogan dead on one end or Jane Baker dead on the other. He looked for Dr. Soames's car but didn't see it. That afternoon a few of the shops had still been open, and the Texaco, but he became more and more convinced that the town was emptying out. People were taking paths through the woods, logging roads, maybe even wading up Shoyo Stream, which passed through Smackover and eventually came out in the town of Mount Holly. More would leave after dark, Nick thought.

The sun had just gone down when he arrived at the Baker house to find Jane moving shakily around the kitchen in her bathrobe, brewing tea. She looked at Nick gratefully when he came in, and he saw her fever was gone.

"I want to thank you for watching after me," she said calmly. "I feel ever so much better. Would you like a cup of tea?" And then she burst into tears.

He went to her, afraid she might faint and fall against the hot stove.

She held his arm to steady herself and laid her head against him, her hair a dark flood against the light blue robe.

"Johnny," she said in the darkening kitchen. "Oh, my poor Johnny."

If he could speak, Nick thought unhappily. But he could only hold her, and guide her across the kitchen to a chair by the table.

"The tea-"

He pointed to himself and then made her sit down.

"All right," she said. "I do feel better. Remarkably so. It's just that ... just ..." She put her hands over her face.

Nick made them hot tea and brought it to the table. They drank for a while without speaking. She held her cup in both hands, like a child. At last she put her cup down and said: "How many in town have this, Nick?"

"I don't know anymore," Nick wrote. "It's pretty bad."

"Have you seen the doctor?"

"Not since this morning."

"Am will wear himself out if he's not careful," she said. "He'll be careful, won't he, Nick? Not to wear himself out?"

Nick nodded and tried a smile.

"What about John's prisoners? Has the patrol come for them?"

"No," Nick wrote. "Hogan is very sick. I'm doing what I can. The others want me to let them out before Hogan can make them sick."

"Don't you let them out!" she said with some spirit. "I hope you're not thinking of it."

"No," Nick wrote, and after a moment he added: "You ought to go back to bed. You need rest."

She smiled at him, and when she moved her head Nick could see the dark smudges under the angles of her jaw-and he wondered uneasily if she was out of the woods yet.

"Yes. I'm going to sleep the clock right around. It seems wrong, somehow, to sleep with John dead ... I can hardly believe he is, you know. I keep stumbling over the idea like something I forgot to put away." He took her hand and squeezed it. She smiled wanly. "There may be something else to live for, in time. Have you gotten your prisoners their supper, Nick?"

Nick shook his head.

"You ought to. Why don't you take John's car?"

"I can't drive," Nick wrote, "but thank you. I'll just walk down to the truck-stop. It isn't far. & check on you in the morning, if that's all right."

"Yes," she said. "Fine."

He got up and pointed sternly at the teacup.

"Every drop," she promised.

He was going out the screen door when he felt her hesitant touch on his arm.

"John-" she said, stopped, and then forced herself to go on. "I hope they ... took him to the Curtis Mortuary. That's where John's folks and mine have always buried out of. Do you think they took him there all right?"

Nick nodded. The tears brimmed over her cheeks and she began to sob again.

When he left her that night he had gone directly to the truck-stop. A CLOSED CLOSED sign hung crookedly in the window. He had gone around to the house trailer in back, but it was locked and dark. No one answered his knock. Under the circumstances he felt he was justified in a little breaking and entering; there would be enough in Sheriff Baker's petty cash box to pay any damages. sign hung crookedly in the window. He had gone around to the house trailer in back, but it was locked and dark. No one answered his knock. Under the circumstances he felt he was justified in a little breaking and entering; there would be enough in Sheriff Baker's petty cash box to pay any damages.

He hammered in the glass by the restaurant's lock and let himself in. The place was spooky even with all the lights on, the jukebox dark and dead, no one at the bumper-pool table or the video games, the booths empty, the stools unoccupied. The hood was over the grille.

Nick went out back and fried some hamburgers on the gas stove and put them in a sack. He added a bottle of milk and half an apple pie that stood under a plastic dome on the counter. Then he went back to the jail, after leaving a note on the counter explaining who had broken in and why.

Vince Hogan was dead. He lay on the floor of his cell amid a clutter of melting ice and wet towels. He had clawed at his neck at the end, as if he had been resisting an invisible strangler. The tips of his fingers were bloody. Flies were lighting on him and buzzing off. His neck was as black and swollen as an inner-tube some heedless child has pumped up to the point of bursting.

"Now will you let us out?" Mike Childress asked. "He's dead, ya fuckin mutie, are you satisfied? You feel revenged yet? Now he's got it, too." He pointed to Billy Warner. will you let us out?" Mike Childress asked. "He's dead, ya fuckin mutie, are you satisfied? You feel revenged yet? Now he's got it, too." He pointed to Billy Warner.

Billy looked terrified. There were hectic red splotches on his neck and cheeks; the arm of his workshirt, with which he had repeatedly swiped at his nose, was stiff with snot. "That's a lie!" he chanted hysterically. "A lie, a lie, a fuckin lie! that's a l-" He began to sneeze suddenly, doubling over with the force of them, expelling a heavy spray of saliva and mucus.

"See?" Mike demanded. "Huh? Y'happy, ya fuckin mutie dimwit? Let me out! You can keep him if you want to, but not me. It's murder, that's all it is, cold-blooded murder!"

Nick shook his head, and Mike had a tantrum. He began to throw himself against the bars of his cell, bruising his face, bloodying the knuckles of both hands. He stared at Nick with bulging eyes while he banged his forehead repeatedly.

Nick waited until he got tired and then pushed the food through the slots in the bottoms of the cells with the broomhandle. Billy Warner looked at him dully for a moment, then began to eat.

Mike threw his glass of milk against the bars. It shattered and milk sprayed everywhere. He slammed his two burgers against the graffiti-covered rear wall of his cell. One of them stuck in a splat of mustard, ketchup, and relish that was grotesquely cheery, like a Jackson Pollock painting. He jumped up and down on his slice of apple pie, boogying on it. Apple chunks flew every which way. The white plastic plate splintered.

"I'm on a hunger strike!" he yelled. "Fuckin hunger strike! I won't eat nothing! You'll eat my dingle before I eat anything you bring me, you fuckin deaf-mute retard asshole! You'll-"

Nick turned away and silence immediately descended. He went back out into the office, not knowing what to do, scared. If he could drive, he would take them up to Camden himself. But he couldn't drive. And there was Vince to think about. He couldn't just let him lie there, drawing flies.

There were two doors opening off the office. One was a coat closet. The other led down a flight of stairs. Nick went down and saw it was a combination cellar and storage room. It was cool down there. It would do, at least for a while.

He went back upstairs. Mike was sitting on the floor, morosely picking up squashed apple slices, brushing them off and eating them. He didn't look up at Nick.

Nick gathered the body up in his arms and tried to lift it. The sick smell coming off the corpse was making his stomach do cartwheels and handstands. Vince was too heavy for him. He looked at the body helplessly for a moment, and became aware that both of the others were now standing at their cell doors, watching with a dreadful fascination. Nick could guess what they were thinking. Vince had been one of them, a whiny gasbag, maybe, but someone they hung with, just the same. He had died like a rat in a trap with some horrible swelling sickness they didn't understand. Nick wondered, not for the first time that day, when he he would start to sneeze and run a fever and develop those peculiar swellings on his neck. would start to sneeze and run a fever and develop those peculiar swellings on his neck.

He laid hold of Vince Hogan's meaty forearms and dragged him out of the cell. Vince's head leaned toward him because of the weight on his shoulders, and he seemed to be looking at Nick, wordlessly telling him to be careful, not to joggle him too much.

It took ten minutes to get the big man's remains down the steep stairs. Panting, Nick laid him on the concrete under the fluorescents, and then covered him quickly with a frayed army blanket from the cot in his cell.

He tried to sleep then, but sleep only came in the early hours of the morning after June twenty-third had become the twenty-fourth, yesterday. His dreams had always been very vivid, and sometimes he was afraid of them. He rarely had out-and-out nightmares, but more and more often lately they were ominous, giving him the feeling that no one in them was exactly as they seemed, and that the normal world had skewed into a place where babies were sacrificed behind closed blinds and stupendous black machines roared on and on in locked basements.

And, of course, there was the very personal terror-that he would wake up with it himself.

He did sleep a little, and the dream that came was one he had had before recently: the cornfield, the smell of warm growing things, the feel that something-or someone-very good and safe was close. A sense of home home. And that began to fade into cold terror as he became aware that something was in the corn, watching him. He thought: Ma, weasel's got in Ma, weasel's got in the the henhouse! henhouse! and awoke to early morning light, sweat standing out on his body. and awoke to early morning light, sweat standing out on his body.

He put coffee on and went in to check on his two prisoners.

Mike Childress was in tears. Behind him, the hamburger was still stuck on the wall in its drying glue of condiments.

"You satisfied now? I got it too. Ain't that what you wanted? Ain't that your revenge? Listen to me, I sound like a fuckin freight train goin up a hill!"

But Nick's first concern had been for Billy Warner, who lay comatose on his bunk. His neck was swelled and black, his chest rising in fits and starts.

He hurried back to the office, looked at the telephone, and in a fit of rage and guilt he knocked it off the desk and onto the floor, where it lay meaninglessly at the end of its cord. He turned the hotplate off and ran down the street to the Baker house. He pushed the bell for what seemed an hour before Jane came down, wrapped in her robe. The fever-sweat was back on her face. She was not delirious, but her words were slow and slurry and her lips were blistered.

"Nick. Come in. What is it?"

"V. Hogan died last night. Warner's dying, I think. He's awful sick. Have you seen Dr. Soames?"

She shook her head, shivered in the light draft, sneezed, and then swayed on her feet. Nick put an arm around her shoulders and led her to a chair. He wrote: "Can you call his office for me?"

"Yes, of course. Bring me the phone, Nick. I seem ... to have had a setback in the night."

He brought the phone over and she dialed Soames's number. After she had held the receiver to her ear for more than half a minute, he knew there was going to be no answer.

She tried his home, then the home of his nurse. No answer.

"I'll try the State Patrol," she said, but put the phone back in the cradle after dialing a single number. "The long-distance is still out of service, I guess. After I dial 1, it just goes wah-wah-wah in my ear." She gave him a pallid smile and then the tears began to flow helplessly. "Poor Nick," she said. "Poor me. Poor everybody. Could you help me upstairs? I feel so weak, and I can't catch my breath. I think I'll be with John soon." He looked at her, wishing he could speak. "I think I'll lie down, if you can help me."

He helped her upstairs, then wrote: "I'll be back."

"Thank you, Nick. You're a good boy ..." She was already drifting off to sleep.

Nick left the house and stood on the sidewalk, wondering what to do next. If he could drive, he might be able to do something. But ...

He saw a child's bicycle lying on the lawn of a house across the street. He went to it, looked at the house it belonged to with its drawn shades (so much like the houses in his confused dreams), then went and knocked on the door. There was no answer, although he knocked several times.

He went back to the bike. It was small, but not too small for him to ride, if he didn't mind his knees whamming the handlebars. He would look ludicrous, of course, but he was not at all sure there was anyone left in Shoyo to see ... and if there was, he didn't think many of them would be in a laughing frame of mind.

He got on the bike and pedaled clumsily up Main Street, past the jail, then east on Route 63, toward where Joe Rackman had seen the soldiers masquerading as a road crew. If they were still there, and if they really were soldiers, Nick would get them to take care of Billy Warner and Mike Childress. If Billy was still alive, that was. If those men had quarantined Shoyo, then surely the sick of Shoyo were their responsibility.

It took him an hour to pedal out to the roadwork, the bike weaving crazily back and forth across the center line, his knees thumping the handlebars with monotonous regularity. But when he got there the soldiers, or road crew, or whatever they had been, were gone. There were a few smudgepots, one of them still flickering. There were two orange sawhorses. And the road had been torn up, although Nick judged it would still be passable, if you weren't too choosy about the springs of your car.

Black flickering movement caught the tail of his eye, and at the same instant the wind stirred around a little, just a soft summer breath, but enough to bring a ripe and sickening odor of corruption to his nostrils. The black movement was a cloud of flies, constantly forming and reforming itself. He walked the bike over to the ditch at the far side of the road. In it, next to a shiny new corrugated culvert pipe, were the bodies of four men. Their necks and swollen faces were black. Nick didn't know if they were soldiers or not, and he didn't go any closer. He told himself he would walk back to the bike, there was nothing here to be scared about, they were dead, and dead people couldn't hurt you. He was running by the time he was twenty feet from the ditch, anyway, and he was in a panic as he rode back toward Shoyo. On the outskirts of town he hit a rock and crashed the bike. He went over the handlebars, bumped his head, and scraped his hands. He only hunkered there for a moment in the middle of the road, shivering all over.

For the next hour and a half of that morning, yesterday morning, Nick knocked on doors and rang bells. There would be someone well, he told himself. He himself felt all right, and surely he could not be the only one. There would be someone, a man, a woman, maybe a teenager with a learner's permit, and he or she would say: Oh, hey, yes. Oh, hey, yes. Let's get them to Let's get them to Camden. We'll Camden. We'll take the station wagon take the station wagon. Or words to that effect.

But his knocking and ringing were answered less than a dozen times. The door would open to the length of a latch-chain, a sick but hopeful face would look out, see Nick, and hope would die. The face would move back and forth in negation, and then the door would shut. If Nick could talk, he would have argued if they could still walk, they could drive. That if they took his prisoners to Camden, they could go themselves, and there would be a hospital. They would be made well. But he couldn't speak.

Some asked if he had seen Dr. Soames. One man, in a delirious rage, threw the door of his small ranch-house wide open, staggered out on the porch dressed only in his underpants, and tried to grab Nick. He said he was going to do "what I should have done to you back in Houston." He seemed to think Nick was someone named Jenner. He lurched back and forth along the porch after Nick like a zombie in a third-rate horror picture. His crotch had swelled terribly; his underpants looked as if someone had stuffed a honeydew melon into them. At last he crashed to the porch and Nick watched him from the lawn below, his heart thumping rapidly. The man shook his fist weakly, then crawled back inside, not bothering to shut the door.

But most of the houses were only silent and cryptic, and at last he could do no more. That dream-sense of ominousness was creeping up on him and it became impossible to dismiss the idea that he was knocking on the doors of tombs, knocking to wake the dead, and that sooner or later the corpses might begin to answer. It didn't help much to tell himself that most of the houses were empty, their occupants already fled to Camden or El Dorado or Texarkana.

He went back to the Baker house. Jane Baker was sleeping deeply, her forehead cool. But this time he wasn't as hopeful.

It was noon. Nick went back to the truck-stop, feeling his night's broken rest now. His body seemed to throb all over from his spill off the bike. Baker's .45 banged his hip. At the truck-stop he heated two cans of soup and put them in thermos jugs. The milk in the fridge still seemed fine, so he took a bottle of that, too.

Billy Warner was dead, and when Mike saw Nick, he began to giggle hysterically and point his finger. "Two down and one to go! Two down and one to go! You're gettin your revenge! Right? Right?"

Nick carefully pushed the thermos of soup through the slot with the broomhandle, and then a big glass of milk. Mike began to drink soup directly from the thermos in small sips. Nick took his own thermos and sat down in the hallway. He would take Billy downstairs, but first he would have lunch. He was hungry. As he drank his soup he looked at Mike thoughtfully.

"You wondering how I am?" Mike asked.

Nick nodded.

"Just the same as when you left this morning. I must have hawked out a pound of snot." He looked at Nick hopefully. "My mom always said that when you hawked snot like that, you was gettin better. Maybe I just got a mild case, huh? You think that might be?"

Nick shrugged. Anything was possible.

"I got the constitution of a brass eagle," Mike said. "I think it's nothing. I think I'll throw it off. Listen, man, let me out. Please. I'm fuckin beggin you now."

Nick thought about it.

"Hell, you got the gun. I don't want you for nothing, anyway. I just want to get out of this town. I want to check on my wife first-"

Nick pointed to Mike's left hand, which was bare of rings.

"Yeah, we're divorced, but she's still here in town, out on the Ridge Road. I'd like to look in on her. What do you say, man?" Mike was crying. "Give me a chance. Don't keep me locked up in this rat-trap."

Nick stood up slowly, went out into the office, and opened the desk drawer. The keys were there. The man's logic was inexorable; there was no sense in believing that someone was going to come and bail them out of this terrible mess. He got the keys and went back. He held up the one Big John Baker had shown him, with the tag of white tape on it, and tossed them through the bars to Mike Childress.

"Thanks," Mike babbled. "Oh, thanks. I'm sorry we beat up on you, I swear to God, it was Ray's idea, me and Vince tried to stop him but he gets drinkin and he gets crazy-" He rattled the key in the lock. Nick stood back, his hand on the gunbutt.