It looked unpronounceable. Que-quer? Was that how you'd say it?
Everything else read as English. Why not that? Unless it was a word that had no translation. Like a name.
The verse below that was even more frustrating:
And then the Seven became One
But the One could not hold
And all with him were vanquished.
Yet though the Q'qr was cast down it endured
The Q 'qr died yet lived on
The Q 'qr is gone yet remains
Absent from sight
But present in deed
Present in spirit
Present in body.
What the hell did that mean? The lines might have rhymed or had some cadence in their original tongue, but now they were simply a clunky progression of contradictory statements about… what? A stick figure?
The author was obviously telling a story, but seemed to assume that the reader knew the details. Jack figured it was like showing a drawing of an egg sitting on a wall and reciting "Humpty Dumpty" below it. If you weren't familiar with the nursery rhyme and didn't know Humpty wasn't real, you'd be left scratching your head. Just as Jack was scratching his.
The bigger question that remained was where Thompson had come up with the figure. He'd said in a dream. If that was true, where had his dream come from?
Shaking his head, Jack copied down the lines and bookmarked the page. Then he began to leaf through the rest of the Compendium, looking for other appearances of the figure. The book was thick, the pages thin. He had a long way to go.
MONDAY
1
Jeremy awoke feeling rank. He'd puked three more times during the night and still had a funky taste in his mouth. But at least his stomach had settled. In fact, he felt hungry.
But not for Work's extra spicy Buffalo wings. He'd never try those again. From now on it'd be strictly sandwiches and burgers when he ate there.
He turned over and found the bed empty. Where was Dawn? She'd come home last night and gone straight into nurse mode. Got him some Pepto and rubbed his back and gave him sips of Gatorade. Nice try, but it all came back up again.
He heard the toilet flush and a few seconds later Dawn came in. She wore a short T-shirt and a thong and nothing else, and the sight might have put a little wood in Mr. Willy if she hadn't looked like hell. She wobbled on her feet and her face was the color of three-day-old grits mixed with some of that lime Gatorade she'd been spooning into him last night.
She groaned as she dropped onto the bed like a hundred-pound sack of corn feed and pulled the blanket up to her neck.
This was her second morning in a row like this.
"You okay?"
Another groan. "Like totally not. Like anything but. I think I caught what you have."
"Had. I'm feeling much better." He gave her arm a squeeze. "All thanks to you."
She pulled her arm away and pouted like a cranky child. "Sharing a bed's okay, but not a virus."
Virus… Jeremy had been under the impression he'd had food poisoning.
But Dawn hadn't eaten anything Jeremy had. Could you catch iood poisoning? He didn't know all that much about medicine, but he didn't think so.
So maybe it was a virus. But if not…
He bolted upright.
"Puh-Zea.se/" Dawn said. "Do not rock the bed!"
"Sorry. You…" Had to be careful here. Didn't want to spook her. "You felt this way yesterday too, didn't you?"
"What do you mean?" She looked at him. "Tell me you're trying to say I gave this to you."
"No-no. Not at all. But you know, these viruses, sometimes they hit you like a ton of bricks and sometimes they sneak up on you for days, and when they finally hit you look back and say, 'Oh, yeah, that's why I was feeling so crummy.' Was it anything like that?"
She closed her eyes. "I didn't feel so hot yesterday morning, but I didn't hurl or anything. Felt like I could have, though. Didn't even want my morning coffee."
Jeremy tried to hide his excitement.
Could it be?
Suddenly she was out of bed and running for the bathroom. He heard her puking. An ugly sound, but if the reason was what he hoped, it was like music.
He put on a concerned expression as she stumbled back to the bed and sat on the edge.
"You all right, darlin?"
She gave him a look. "Oh, I'm just fine. I just love totally puking up my guts. If I didn't know better, I'd be scared I was pregnant." She turned to face him. "You don't think I could be pregnant, do you?"
He wanted to scream YES! but kept his expression straight.
"I don't see how, darlin, what with me havin a vasectomy and all."
"I know, but I feel so totally rotten."
"It's the virus, I'm sure." He reached over and stroked her upper arm. "But you know what? Just so's you're not worrying about it—because if I know you, I know you're gonna dwell on it—we'll pick up one of those pregnancy test kits and give it a try."
"Oh man, that's scary. I do so not want to be pregnant. That's like the totally last thing in the world I need right now."
And the thing I need most, Jeremy thought.
2
"Well, you were right," Levy said. "Whoever those strands of hair came from, Jonah Stevens fathered her."
As usual, Levy had refused to discuss anything on the phone, so Jack had had to meet him for a face-to-face. He'd refused to go to Rathburg and Levy hadn't wanted to return to the city, so they'd compromised on Yonkers. Jack hadn't been to the Argonaut Diner in a while, and it seemed like a good choice, especially since he was heading for Forest Hills after this.
They'd grabbed a rear booth. The place had burned to the ground back in the late nineties, but was restored to its former tacky nautical-themed splendor. Jack had fond late-night memories of platters of Disco Fries—French fries slathered with melted cheese and gravy. Yum. He wondered if they were still on the menu. Yeah, he could check, but it was almost as thick as the Compendium.
Levy ordered a stack of buttermilk pancakes and Jack a western omelet with a pot of coffee. He'd been up late last night, poring through the Compendium. No luck on finding another Kicker Man. Hadn't seen another mention of Q'qr either. He'd leafed all the way through, but had barely scratched the surface of the text.
"Three kids in three states. How many towns did this guy alley cat through? How many more little Jonahs are running around?"
Levy shrugged. "Who knows? I'd love to find out. Turns out your client scores as high as her two half brothers—they make an unholy trio of oDNA carriers."
"So she could explode at any minute too?"
"Doubtful. She doesn't have the trigger gene."
Jack eyed him. "You said you couldn't discuss this over the phone. You could have simply said, 'Yep, Jonah's the daddy.' Must be something else is going on."
"There is. I—"
The waitress—a lot younger and tons better looking than Sally from
Moishes—brought their orders. Jack watched fascinated as Levy drowned his pancakes in syrup and tore into them.
"Hungry? Haven't eaten since, oh, maybe the Depression?"
Levy swallowed a huge mouthful. "My wife's on this low-carb kick."
"I thought low carb's fifteen minutes were over."
"Not in my house. You can get scrambled egg whites and turkey sausage for breakfast—and it's not as bad as it sounds—but finding a piece of bread for toast is like searching for a pot of gold."
"So you make up for it when you're out."
"Better believe it."