Dave got up, went to the back of the bus where some oil lamps were stored in a box, and used his Bic to light two of them. He brought them up front and set them where the glow would be a comfort, and Hannah turned off the interior safety lights. Rain was hammering down on the roof, a noise that further tested the nerves. Dave returned to his seat and stretched his legs out in the aisle. “I figure we’re about seventy or so miles from the turnoff to Highway 191.” That was the road in Utah that would take them south to the White Mansion. From I-70, the distance to their destination was about one hundred miles. “That what you figure?”
“Near it,” said Hannah. She stood up and stretched her back. “We’ll need to fuel up again real soon.”
“Right.” Dave had had no illusions that they’d be able to get to the White Mansion on a full tank of fifty gallons. “We’re about a quarter tank now?”
“Little less.”
“Okay.” Dave looked out the window nearest him and saw only rainswept darkness; they were vulnerable here to whatever might be lurking in the night, but in this downpour they couldn’t move. “You all right?” he asked Olivia.
“I’ve been better. But…yes, I’m all right.”
“JayDee? How you holding up?”
John Douglas had known Dave was going to ask him this, and the truth was that he was not holding up well at all. His bones ached. His joints seemed to be on fire. It had begun early this morning as little jabs of knife-like pain here and there and had gotten worse through the day. He’d tried to let it go as his age or being worn out or whatever…but he was afraid it was much more than that. Pain was shooting up his right leg, and it was more than the sprained ankle. He said, “I don’t think I’m doing so well. Would you bring one of those lamps a little closer?”
Dave did. JayDee caught Ethan watching him, and he thought the boy knows. Just as I know, because I’ve seen it happen. JayDee pulled up his pants leg to check his injured ankle.
There on the thin calf of his leg was a splotch of gray. It was about eight inches in length and four in width. It was upraised just a bit, like a keloid scar.
No one said anything.
JayDee stood up. “I’m going to take off my shirt,” he said in a calm and quiet voice though his heart was pounding. “Let’s check my chest and back.”
His chest was clear. But when he turned around to let Olivia and Dave check his back he knew because he heard her catch her breath.
“Is it just one or many?” he asked.
It was a moment before anyone answered. Then Dave said, “Just one.”
“How large?”
“I guess…twelve or thirteen inches across. About ten inches long. Almost right between your shoulder blades.”
JayDee made a noise—a mumble of assent, a grunt, a muffled curse. Even he didn’t know exactly what it was. The rain was a torrent and a torment. He felt light-headed but was keenly aware of all the pricklings of pain in his body. “I don’t think there’s any need to take my pants off,” he said, trying for some levity that did not lift off. He put his shirt back on, buttoned it with hands that were remarkably steady, and tucked the shirttail neatly into his pants. He said, “Thank you, Dave. You can put the lamp down now.”
“What is it?” Jefferson asked, his voice tense. “What’s that thing on his back?”
“Shut up,” Dave told him. “Nobody said you could talk.”
“Yeah, well…I think I have a right to—”
“I said SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Dave roared, and was on Jefferson Jericho before anyone could stop him. Both Olivia and Hannah tried to get in the way, but Dave had hold of the man’s dirty brown t-shirt and was shaking him like a mad dog with a bloody bone. For a moment it looked as if Dave might smash him in the face with the oil lamp he was holding. “Shut up shut up shut up!” Dave shouted, and Jefferson cringed down in his seat because he thought the guy had gone crazy, and both the women were pulling at Dave and over the noise of Dave’s shouting and the rainfall crashing down JayDee said, “It’s not his fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. Let him go, Dave. Come on, let him go.”
Dave did not, though he stopped making the brain rattle in Jefferson’s skull.
“Let him go,” JayDee repeated, and this time it was spoken with a grim finality that made Dave remove his hand from the other man’s shirt and step back.
“Why?” Dave asked. It was not a question directed to anyone on the bus, for no one could answer it. It was directed to God, or Fate, or whatever threw the dice in this insane game of Life. Ethan had seen the gray patches on JayDee’s leg and back as clearly as anyone else, and he knew what that meant. It looked as if the blood had stopped circulating on those places and the flesh had begun to die. A new Gray Man was about to be born; this was just the beginning of the changes.
“Well,” said JayDee, and he couldn’t look at anyone so he stared at the floor. He gave a quiet sigh of resignation. “My friends…I don’t think I’ll be finishing this trip with you.”
“Do something.”
Dave had fired this command at Ethan, who stared blankly at him not knowing how to respond. “Yes,” Dave said. “You. Master of the Universe or whatever the fuck you are.” Dave’s eyes were black and his mouth twisted with helpless anger. “Heal him. Fix him. Whatever. Don’t let him be one of them.”
All attention was concentrated on Ethan, who felt their nearly overwhelming pain. John Douglas was more than a friend to Dave, Olivia, Hannah and Nikki; he was as dear to them as the loved ones they had lost. He had been a journeyer with them over this landscape of despair, and he had been there when they needed him. They could not bear this moment, it crushed their hearts because they did love him, and they knew…they knew…
“He can’t fix this,” said JayDee, who lifted his gaze to Dave. “Don’t put that on him.”
“He’s from outer space,” came the answer, as if it was really an answer. “If he can make earthquakes and kill monsters with his mind…he can heal you. Can’t you, Ethan?” The last three words had left the sound of begging in the bus, which might have been the supreme gesture from a man with the stony countenance of Dave McKane.
And Ethan’s answer, the answer he was given when he asked himself if he could do this, was No, you cannot. He didn’t have to speak it out loud, though, because John Douglas spoke it for him. “He can’t do that, Dave. God…I wish he could. But if he could do that…he would’ve helped those three people I had to…” He stopped for a moment, steadying himself. Rain thrashed the bus and lightning streaked amid the mountains. “I had to leave behind,” the doctor finished. “Don’t ask him about this anymore. It’s not what he’s here to do.”
Dave started to protest, to keep going like a bull the only way he knew how to go, but he looked back and forth to Ethan and JayDee and he saw that, no, the alien could do things that were miraculous, could come to this planet on a beam of light or through the door of a different dimension, could raise an earth boy from the dead or from near-death and keep him breathing and powered like a puppet on galactic strings for the task it had to carry out, could sense fresh water and cause the earth to quake and do other things that were so far beyond the human kind it made all the technological advances and scientific miracles of this planet seem pathethic and childlike in contrast, but—no—the alien could not save Dr. John Douglas from becoming a Gray Man, and don’t ask him about this anymore, said the doomed man, because it’s not what he’s here to—
“I want you to try,” Dave said to Ethan. “I’m telling you to try. Heal him. Don’t let him turn into one of those things.”