"I read about someone taking twenty once..."
"How many are there here?"
"I don't know."
Beads of perspiration appeared on his brow, and he cast the blankets aside. "Get me a glass of water," he said, bending forward and hugging his knees.
"All right."
She took the glass to the bathroom and refilled it. She placed it on the table beside the bed. She picked up the bottle, which had fallen among the blankets.
"Let's do it," he said.
"You sure?"
"I'm sure," he said. "It'll just be like going to sleep, won't it?"
"That's what they say."
"It seems like a better way out."
"Yes."
"Then count me out twenty pills."
She handed him the glass of water, and he held it in his right hand. Then he extended his left hand, palm upward.
She placed the pills within it.
He put two in his mouth and swallowed them with a gulp of water.
He made a face. "I always have a rough time swallowing pills," he said.
Then he took two more, and two more, and two more. "That's eight," he said.
He took them two at a time, five more times. "There were only eighteen," he said.
"I know."
"You said twenty."
"That's all there were, though."
"Christ! You mean I didn't leave any for you?"
"That's all right. I'll find another way. Don't worry."
"Oh, Evvie!" and he wrapped his arms about her waist, and she could feel his moist cheek against her belly. "I'm sorry, Evvie!" he said. "I didn't mean to! Honest!"
"I know. Don't worry. It'll be all right real soon. It should be real nice, just like going to sleep. I'm glad I had them for you. I love you, Fred!"
"I love you, Evvie! I'm sorry! Oh..."
"Why don't you just lie back and rest now?"
"I've got to go to the john first. All that water..." He climbed to his feet, one hand on the wall, and made his way out of the bedroom and into the hallway. He crossed into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.
She heard the water running, and she heard the toilet flush. She held her hands out before her and stared at her fingernails. Her lower lip was moist and tasted salty.
The water kept running, from bellnote through bellnote, and she thought of her parents, but she was still afraid to go and see.
Albany to Boston. A couple hundred miles. He'd managed the worst of it. The terrors of Damnation Alley lay largely at his back now. Night. It flowed about him. The stars seemed brighter than usual. He'd make it, the night seemed to say.
He passed between hills. The road wasn't too bad. It wound between trees and high grasses. He passed a truck coming in his direction and dimmed his lights as it approached. It did the same.
It must have been around midnight that he came to the crossroads, and the lights suddenly nailed him from two directions.
He was bathed in perhaps thirty beams from the left and as many from the right.
He pushed the accelerator to the floor, and he heard engine after engine coming to life somewhere at his back. And he recognized the sounds.
They were all of them bikes.
They swung onto the road behind him.
He could have opened fire. He could have braked and laid down a cloud of flame. It was obvious that they didn't know what they were chasing. He could have launched grenades. He refrained, however.
It could have been him on the lead bike, he decided, all hot on hijack. He felt a certain sad kinship as his hand hovered above the fire control.
Try to outrun them, first.
His engine was open wide and roaring, but he couldn't take the bikes.
When they began to fire, he knew that he'd have to retaliate. He couldn't risk their hitting a gas tank or blowing out his tires.
Their first few shots had been in the nature of a warning. He couldn't risk another barrage. If only they knew..."
The speaker!
He cut it in and mashed the button and spoke: "Listen, cats," he said. "All I got's medicine for the sick citizens in Boston. Let me through or you'll hear the noise."
A shot followed immediately, so he opened fire with the fifty-calibers to the rear.
He saw them fall, but they kept firing. So he launched grenades.
The firing lessened but didn't cease.