Finally, they pulled ahead of the car behind them. Swerving down the snaking road, they gained so much ground that its lights were always at least one turn behind, no longer lighting up the rear window. At last, they reached the foothills on the outskirts of the valley, and the road straightened out before them, an unbroken ribbon of highway. Off to the right, a sign flashed by.
Jude suddenly doused the headlights, careering ahead in almost total darkness.
"What're you doing?" exclaimed Tizzie.
"Hold on," was all he said.
He suddenly swerved the car to the right. Tizzie felt it hit a flat stretch, then rise in a single stomach-dropping motion as if they were swinging on a loop-the-loop, the weight and momentum alone carrying them forward and up. Looking ahead, she saw the stars descend across the windshield, and she tightened and waited for the crash. Time moved slowly. Then she heard gravel kicking up on the undercarriage, and gradually, by force of gravity and friction, she felt the vehicle slowing down like a carnival ride coming to rest. Finally, it stopped.
Jude turned off the engine, opened the window and listened.
"We're on a runaway truck turnoff," he said. "I think we lost them."
And they had. They waited a few minutes at the top of the man-made mound, stepping outside to collect their nerves in the twilight. Jude smoked a cigarette, and together they watched the last rays of the sun expire in the west and the stars turn even brighter.
As Jude drove back to Camp Verde, his thoughts were unsettling. His first impulse was to keep them to himself, but then he reflected that he and Tizzie both had been doing too much of that lately; he was still feeling a glow from her confessional honesty in the mine shaft.
He stepped on the gas.
"Tizzie, something occurs to me. We have to face the fact that it's not likely that this was just a bunch of guys out to have a little fun by forcing us off the road."
"I know, I've been having the same thought."
"Which means that it was probably connected to the cave-in and my car going off the cliff."
"I'd say the odds of that are pretty good. And that means that they have decided to eliminate us. In which case that feeling you had — that somehow you've been spared by them for some unknown reason — is no longer valid. That's if it ever was, which I doubt."
She braced her hands against the dashboard and turned to him angrily.
"Jude, for God's sake, slow down. We don't want to crash."
He was going close to eighty — on an unfamiliar road at night.
"We're in a hurry," he said.
"Why?"
"What I was about to say was: if they're after us, they've followed us up here. And if they've followed us up here, they know where we're staying. And that means Skyler's in danger."
Twenty minutes later, they pulled into the Best Western parking lot and swung around the back. Before the car stopped, they spotted the door of Skyler's room, open and swinging slightly in the breeze. Tizzie gasped.
By the time Jude had turned off the ignition, she was already out of the car, bounding up the metal steps, using the banister to take the steps two at a time. She stopped suddenly halfway up and looked at her hand, holding it up to the light to get a better look at the thick red substance that was on it.
Then she continued. She got to the door just as Jude reached the bottom of the staircase, and she rushed in, flicking on the light switch. She disappeared from view, but Jude knew that she had made some kind of horrible discovery. He knew it from the long, loud cry.
He raced up after her and saw her standing there, in the middle of the room, stricken, her mouth still open. She lifted one hand and pointed vaguely in the air, a gesture that took in the entire room — the tousled bed, the clothes lying about and the pale yellow walls, smeared with blood.
Skyler awoke in a haze to a strange, sterile room, all in white, and felt as if he were floating somewhere close to the ceiling. Although he was in fact drifting toward consciousness, he had the opposite sensation — he believed he was falling asleep. Not just asleep but dreaming, and not just dreaming but having a nightmare.
He looked out through a filter of white gauze; everything was blurry and unconnected to him. Sounds were muffled. People moved slowly, as if they were underwater, and talked gobbledygook. They were adorned in sparkling white uniforms, which caught the light and seemed to shimmer. A woman gliding soundlessly around the room had a halo of light brown hair underneath a little white cap. That particular detail arrested his attention, and he tried to marshal his strength and to focus.
For a dreadful thought had formed itself, it was so frightening that he wanted to abandon the nightmare right away, but the more he began to feel he was awake, the more terrifying the whole situation became. He did not want to come to and discover that the room was really there, that everything was really happening. Because the nightmare was that he was back on the island — in the basement of the Big House, in the operating room.
Why else would he be lying in bed like that with doctors around him?
Doctors! The mere thought was enough to send a jolt of fear up his spine.
He told himself to move a foot as a test. He did, and he felt the ankle joint bend, the curl of the toes, the movement of the sheets. He was not asleep. This is really happening to me!
The haze was slowly lifting now. He was beginning to see more clearly. Above him were ceiling tiles. He could see their joints and dots. A long white curtain hung down and cut the room in half. There in a corner was a blabbering television set, hanging from the ceiling.
Where am I?
A nurse had her back to him; her elbow was moving as if she was writing, and now he could see the bottom of a clipboard. She lowered it and turned toward him — so he quickly closed his eyes and froze, feigning sleep.
He could feel her bending over him — he could smell her breath, like almonds.
"Are you awake? Are you awake? Can you hear me?"
Her voice had a strange accent, one he had never heard before.
"Can you hear me? If you can hear me, open your eyes. Do you speak English?"
He played possum.
"Habla inglés? Español?"
He didn't move a muscle. He kept his eyes closed, trying not to squeeze them too tightly, and he made an effort to keep his breathing steady. It was hard to do — he wasn't sure he could stay perfectly still much longer — because he had an overwhelming desire to pull back and protect himself.
What is she doing?
Luckily, she moved away; he heard her footsteps retreating toward the foot of the bed, and he risked opening one eye. Her back was turned again. Her skin was light brown, and she was wearing a crisp white uniform.
Another blurry figure entered. A man, it seemed.
Skyler closed his eyes and wanted to leap out of bed and to cry out: Who are you? Where am I?
"He didn't come to yet?" It is a man.
"No." That strange accent again. "His signs are improving, but he's unresponsive."
"Damnedest thing I've ever seen. Ambulance brings him in, no idea who he is, no ID. And on top of that, he's acting crazy."
Now Skyler began to feel things, a constriction on his chest, a weight on his right arm, which was lying on the bed out of his field of vision. In the distance he could hear other sounds, the canned laughter of a television show, the murmur of voices, and something else — something he had never heard before. It sounded like a series of blips and beeps.