Sam was quiet as she drove from Rev. Norman’s house back to the animal hospital. She was anxious to check on E.J. They’d worked out shifts among the six of them — Sam, Charlie, Malachi, Judd Perkins, his daughter Doreen Jaggers and Raylynn — to sit with him because Sam didn’t want him to be alone, not even for a minute. They had a long list of other volunteers they could tap into if the need arose. They hadn’t yet needed the others because of Raylynn. She was omnipresent, in all the cracks, taking up all the slack. There’s no way they could have pulled it off without Raylynn’s help, not with all the other assorted catastrophes she and Charlie and Malachi had to attend to.
There’d been quite a few medical semi-emergencies. Becky Sue Potter still hadn’t had that baby. It was more than a week overdue now and what would Sam do if …? Asa Morgan, the little boy Sam’d treated for poison ivy on Friday had come back Monday. He’d kept scratching it and now had a yellow pus-y infection on his calf. There’d been gashed fingers and kids with ear infections along with gall bladder attacks and kidney stones — which Sam couldn’t do anything about but people came in for help anyway.
At least they did at first. But the numbers had tapered off — dramatically. Sam wanted to believe, said she believed, that was because folks were concerned about using up what little gasoline they had left, were taking care of their own issues at home.
She did not want to believe that fewer people used the clinic now because there were fewer people to need it. Fewer people period.
People vanishing.
“Is it just because everybody’s scared, is that it?” Charlie said and Sam drew her thoughts back away from the abyss. “Is that what all the … violence is about?”
Sam didn’t know where Charlie was going with the remark.
“I mean everybody cooped up together like this, a pressure cooker. Is that why … how many violent deaths have there been, in just this two-week period?”
There’d been Martha Whittiker. Somebody’d bashed in her head and then dumped her body in her grandson’s apartment to blame it on him. That’s what Liam thought, anyway. But Liam was murdered before he could prove it. And there was no doubt in Sam’s mind who had shot him down in cold blood. The same person who’d hanged Dylan Shaw the next day when she had no proof he’d committed a crime. Viola Tackett wanted to demonstrate her authority and Dylan was the sacrificial goat on the altar of her dreams of conquest.
Howie Witherspoon had killed his wife and tried to kill his son, would have if Malachi hadn’t stopped him. Shot him. And now Hayley Norman.
“Half a dozen people — Nower County’s a more dangerous place than the east side of Chicago!” When Charlie spoke again, the bravado had drained out of her voice. “And when Viola Tackett finds out Malachi didn’t stand down like she told him to … we’ll be adding my name to the list of—”
“That’s not going to happen!” Sam hoped there was more confidence in her voice than she felt. In truth, she was terrified that at any minute Viola Tackett would come charging into her house — where Charlie was staying — with guns blazing. “We’re going to figure this out. We’re going to get out of here!”
She saw Charlie look at her watch and shake her head. Maybe Charlie had noticed the same thing Sam had noticed, but Sam didn’t ask … because she flat-out didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to be right … that time was no longer moving too fast in the world of the Jabberwock. Now, it was moving too slow.