After learning that their little brother had been last seen headed for Traitor during the storm the night before, Chad’s brothers had started to worry. The phones were still out and no one they spoke to had any idea what had happened to him. And although a second storm was due to hit, they decided to drive up over the old mountain road in a pickup loaded with chainsaws and extra gas.
Chad hadn’t drifted far out into the bay before deciding he wasn’t going to leave Ann behind. When he got back to shore Ann and the sheriff were nowhere to be found. He’d discovered blood on the ground and tracked it from the boat ramp up to the highway. He was limping down the middle of the highway when his brothers found him, shivering and barely able to speak.
Ann was discovered by the side of the highway-semi-consciousness, talking deliriously about a hobo who was trying to kill her. She was wrapped in a blanket and taken to her aunt’s house where she was set next to a blazing fire. A doctor who happened to be down visiting relatives had come over and treated the infected wound in Ann’s leg. He insisted that she still needed to get to a hospital as soon as possible. If the highway was not passable by morning, some locals planned to take her to the hospital in Buoy City by boat. The sheriff was still missing.
Ann recalled only fragments of what happened after Cyclops left her lying on Raven Point. She remembered how cold she was, of the persistent howling of dogs on the trail above her. The skin of her throat felt as if it had been burned and she probed it with the tips of her fingers, expecting bandages but not finding any. When she looked up she saw Aunt Kate beaming down at her.
“How do you feel now, Ann?”
“Better…I’m really thirsty.”
“I think your fever has finally broken. And they say the highway is going to open up.”
Ann heard some shuffling and pulled back the blanket from her face. Chad and his brothers were sitting around a table playing a quiet game of cards. Chad’s left eye was swollen shut but he looked up and smiled when he saw her face. She recognized his shorter blond hair.
“Hey.”
“Hey Chad."
“Where did you go?” she asked Kate. “Chad said he visited you earlier, then went by again later and you weren’t home. I thought something had happened to you.”
“Mrs. Nathan came by the check on me early in the morning. She’s got a generator, you know, and insisted I go stay at her house for a few hours. Some people went out looking for you. I was worried sick. What happened?”
“You must let her rest,” the doctor said, rising from his chair. He was very tired himself and anxious to go back to bed.