throwing stones — chapter six

Ron woke up and panicked. She was lying on something soft and
sticky, with other people lying on both sides of her and even on top
of her, and she was naked. She struggled to get free, but she was
weighed down by whoever was on top of her, and it seemed she was stuck to
whatever she was lying on. The people lying around her were naked
also, as far as she could tell, and they didn’t react to her squirming
and shoving. Maybe they were dead. Lying in bed with dead
bodies–

She finally managed to get free and she ran to a far corner of the
room, her heart pounding. She looked around, trying to catch
her breath. It looked like a bedroom. There was a dresser beside
her, with a little space next to it, between it and the wall. She
slipped into that space, hiding her nakedness as much as she could. After
a minute, her breathing somewhat under control, she leaned over and
peeked out. It was a room in the hotel, by the look of it. The
curtains and the bed looked like the ones in other rooms.

There were definitely naked bodies on the bed, but the room was so
dark that she couldn’t tell much. The shades were drawn (thank
goodness for that), but it looked like it was still dark
out anyway.

It was at this point that she realized that her arms and legs all
seemed to be working properly. She couldn’t lean over to touch her
legs in the tight space where she was hidden, but she did wriggle her
left leg and foot around. Everything worked fine. She flexed the
fingers of her left hand as well. All okay.

As the Golden had said.

Now it came back to her. They had come in after the meeting was
over and asked how she was. When everybody else had gone out, they
had brought over three chairs to sit with her. They had told her that
Mr. Bostwick was dead.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ron said. She barely knew Mr. Bostwick,
but she knew that was what you were supposed to say.

“With Mr. Bostwick dead, you are really our only friend–”

“Hey,” she said quietly, “belay that kind of talk.” She had read
that in a book in her Literature class and had always wanted to say
it.

“We want to help you,” Will said.

“What, like carry me around? That’s silly.”

“No.” His voice got quieter and they leaned forward. “We can heal
you, your leg and your wrist, too.”

“My leg is fucking broken. My mom said so, and she’s always
right.”

They nodded. “She’s right,” Craig said.

“It’s broken in two places.”

“But we can fix it.”

“It will be very difficult.”

“And we will be very tired when it’s done.”

“We’ll probably sleep for a long time.”

“But there’s an emergency going on.”

“And we’re sure people need you to help.”

Ron frowned. On one hand, this sounded like nonsense. On the other
hand, she reminded herself, her grandmother had made the pain go away
by touching her cheek, and Vicki had lifted a truck off of her. And,
as far as anybody knew, the Golden never lied.

“You’d better be telling me the truth,” Ron said, making a fist.

“We are,” Sharon said.

Ron shrugged. “What do I have to do?”

The Golden hesitated.

“This is the difficult part,” Will said.

“Fucking tell me!” Ron said, raising her fist.

The Golden sat up straighter.

“You can’t have clothes on,” Sharon said.

“We all have to take our clothes off.”

“Cloth is organic–”

“What? No fucking way!” Ron folded her arms and glared.

The Golden waited in silence for a moment, then Will said, “We
will… nobody will be there. Nobody will see. We will never tell
anybody.”

Ron thought. She had no doubt they were telling the truth. She had
always thought that there was nothing worse than being naked. She
never took her clothes off – ever – except to take a bath,
when she really had to, always with the bathroom door locked.

But maybe there was something worse. Lying here on this sofa for
day after day, while people got hurt and killed and nobody even knew
what was going on. That was worse. If her leg was fixed, she could go
out on one of those teams Ray had talked about. She could be useful.

She was sure there weren’t going to be mail deliveries, so she had
to do something else to be useful. And she damn sure couldn’t be
useful if she was lying here with people bringing her food like she
was a baby.

“Okay,” she said. “And no funny business!”

They nodded seriously.

“Where can we do it?” she asked. “Not in here, they’ll be coming
back for another meeting.”

“We found a room,” Sharon said.

“At the end of this hall.”

“We brought a cart from the kitchen.”

“And some garbage bags.”

“Garbage bags?” Ron demanded, but the Golden were already going out
into the hall. They came back a moment later, wheeling in a metal
cart. The top shelf was empty, and the bottom shelf held some plastic
garbage bags, a big roll of tape, and two candles. With some effort, the three of
them lifted Ron onto the top of the cart. She was sitting up, and she
held onto the sides of the cart as they wheeled her out into the hall.

“Ah, excuse me,” came a voice from behind them.

“Oh, crap,” Ron said.

Marshall came up to them. “May I ask where you’re taking my
daughter? I’m sure we’re not that desperate for food yet, and she’s
really only slightly damaged.”

“It’s okay, Dad,” Ron said. “We’re just going down there. To that
room down there. For a while.”

“I see,” Marshall said slowly.

“I’ll tell you about it later. Okay?”

Marshall looked at the Golden, who were motionless, their faces
blank. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll look forward to that explanation later.
Yell if you need me.”

She nodded. “I will.” They both smiled. Ron didn’t smile very
often, but she was happy that her father trusted her and that he
wasn’t going to ask any more questions right then. And she did know
that if she needed his help she could shout and he’d come running.

In the room, Will put the two candles on the desk and lit them.
Meanwhile, Craig and Sharon took the garbage bags and spread them out
on the bed, taping them together so they made a solid covering. Then
they wheeled Ron’s cart over next to the bed, and, with Will’s help,
they placed her in the center of the plastic covering.

She lay down and Will stood with his hand over her eyes as the
others untied the splints from her leg and then started to undress
her. She was really trying not to shiver as her clothes came off. She
wanted to take Will’s hand in hers, but the others would have seen.
The room was very dark, lit only by the candles on the desk, but she
knew there was enough light for them to see her.

She didn’t remember much else, until she woke up and panicked.

Well, she could come out of her hiding space. The Golden were
asleep and they had told her they wouldn’t wake up for a while. Still,
somebody might come in. She reached around in front of the dresser and
pulled out one drawer. Empty. She tried another. Empty.

In the bottom drawer, she found a blanket. She pulled it out and
wrapped it around her. It was rough and scratchy, but she didn’t care
about that. Feeling somewhat better, she stepped out into the room.
Now, where were her clothes?

When she found them, she smiled again. There was a little shelf at
the foot of the bed, probably for a suitcase, and on it were four
piles of clothes, all neatly folded, underwear on top. She took her
clothes and went into the bathroom to get dressed.

Coming back out (and dressing had been rather challenging
because the bathroom had been entirely dark), she wrapped herself in
the blanket again and went to sit in the armchair. The Golden were
apparently asleep. Naked. She tried not to look at them. They had
moved a little when she’d escaped from their clutches, or she would
have been worried that they were dead.

If she’d had a cigarette she would have smoked it, though her
father had told her she was too young.

She suddenly had another panicky thought. The Golden had done
something to her body. Nothing sexual, she was sure of that, but what
if they’d turned her into one of them? Wasn’t that what happened in
movies? She picked up one of the candles and carried it over to the
dresser. She couldn’t see the mirrror very well in the gloom, but she
looked the same as she always had. Bushy brown hair, not like the
sleek blonde hair of the Golden. Regular brown eyes, not weird gray
ones. Someone had once said she had a pug nose, whatever that meant.
She hated her freckles, because old people thought they were cute, but
she was glad to see them now.

As she turned from the dresser, she saw the Golden’s knapsacks,
leaning against the wall in a neat row. She went over and lifted one.
There was something in it. She unzipped it, since that’s what a
detective would have done, and looked in. It was too dark to see
anything, so she reached in and felt around.

The pack was mostly empty, but there were a few items in the bottom
which turned out to be cheese sandwiches, each one carefully wrapped
in paper.

She ate one sandwich as she carried the packs and left them next to the
bed. The Golden would probably be hungry when they woke up. Finishing
the sandwich, she took another one and folded it over so she could
stick it in her back pocket.

Well, it was time to get moving. The problem was her jeans. Vicki
had ripped them halfway up her thigh to Jan could examine her leg. Ron
wasn’t going to go around with her leg showing, she had to get back to
her room to get another pair. But the stairs were on the other side of
the lobby, and she’d heard that the lobby was full of people.

The solution to that was speed. She got up and took off the
blanket, spreading it over the Golden. She opened the door and peeked
out. The short hall between her and the lobby was clear.

Thinking like a detective, though, Ron had one
question, and she wanted an answer. If the lobby was full of people
(and she could see some of them from where she was, and she could hear
more), then how had the soldiers made it to the meeting room without
anybody noticing them?

The short, gloomy hall had six doors, three on each side. They were
all either meeting rooms or sleeping rooms, and she didn’t think any
of them had doors to the outside. She walked to the end of the hall
and saw a little alcove off to the right. She’d never noticed it
before because she’d never had any reason to go to the end of the
hall. At the end of the alcove was a door to the alley next to the
hotel. It had a bar across it that would open if it was pressed, but
the lock was broken. She opened it and leaned out to look at the lock
from the outside. It looked like it had been forced, and recently.

One mystery solved. There was a a narrow table against the wall
with a vase on it, and she dragged it over so that it blocked the
door. She figured that if anybody opened the door, the table would go
over, and the vase would break and make a noise. Then she realized
that the door opened outward.

She shook her head. She’d have to figure this out later. She turned
back toward the lobby. She took a deep breath. This was it.

Bang. She was down the hall at top speed, jumping the four steps
down to the lobby floor, dodging around a couple of people and through
the swinging doors into the stairwell. The best part had been when
she’d whizzed past Fifteen. His look of amazement had made her day. As
his eyes had widened, she’d straight-armed him in the center of his
chest and he’d fallen backwards, his arms waving around.

Feeling more like herself, she came out of the stairwell on the
fourth floor and walked to her room.

As she came down the stairs again, properly clothed now, Ron heard
engines way off in the distance. Fuck, nobody in U-town had cars. Was this
an invasion? The Jinx had motorcycles, but whenever they rode around
there was that weird wailing noise that went with them. She didn’t
hear that. Just engines.

She ran into the lobby, and Fifteen said, “Your parents are
outside. Please don’t hurt me again.”

It was still dark outside, the air was still bad, and she heard the
engines getting closer. Her parents were there on the front steps of
the hotel, along with Ray, Pat, and Sam. Ray was now wearing jeans and
a T-shirt. Ron wondered how long she’d been unconscious.

Ron went and stood next to Marshall. He looked down.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” She waited for some acknowledgement of her miraculous recovery,
but he didn’t say anything more. Everybody was looking down the block.
Ron looked also, but she didn’t see anything in the darkness and
smoke.

“What’s going on?” she demanded.

“We heard the Jinx were leaving. Vicki ran to head them off at the
bridge and try to convince them to stay.”

Ron waited a minute, then she punched her father lightly in the
arm. He smiled and leaned over. “Fifteen warned us,” he whispered,
trying not to grin. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

She pointed, and the first group of motorcycles appeared at the end
of the block. They were moving in formation, slowly.

Ron didn’t know much about the Jinx. They were some sort of
motorcycle gang. There were a lot of them, maybe hundreds. They all
dressed alike and they weren’t very friendly.
The only Jinx she knew at all well was Christy. Christy had red
hair and was very pretty. She was friends with Ron’s father, or really
with Jan and Marshall, though Ron could tell that her real attachment
was with Marshall. She was their security when they traveled outside
U-town.

Ron was sure, absolutely certain, that nothing was going on with
her father and Christy. If there was, Jan Sleet the great detective
would have figured it out. But Ron knew from experience where this
would go, sooner or later.

She had thought of killing Christy to protect her family, but even
if she could have done it, her mother would have known and things
would have got fucked up anyway.

In the lead was a motorcycle ridden by a tall, blond man. There
were about thirty or thirty-five other motorcycles behind him, all
coming fairly slowly, like some kind of parade or funeral. Ron
remembered that the blond man was named Neil.

At first they didn’t see Vicki, but then Pat pointed and they saw
small black-clad arms around the blond man’s middle, tiny hands
holding his jacket.

Neil and Vicki dismounted in front of the hospital, the other
riders pulling up behind them. Ron saw someone with a lot of red hair,
but she was too far away to tell if it was Christy.

“Where are the others?” Jan Sleet asked, “and where’s Dr. Lee?”
Dr. Lee was the leader of the Jinx. Ron knew that, though she’d never
see her.

“Gone,” Neil said simply, his face impassive. “We’re the ones who
Vicki convinced to stay.” He squeezed the shoulder of the tiny figure
next to him. “Dr. Lee and the rest left.”

Ray started to say something, but Neil said, “We can talk later.
Who’s handling the perimeter, the bridges?”

“Marshall.”

He looked at Vicki. “No disrespect, but any objections to my
taking over on that?”

She shook her head. “None.”

“Where is he based?”

“City bridge.”

Neil turned to the others, all of whom had stayed on their
motorcycles. “We going to the city bridge,” he said in a loud voice.
“We’ll deploy from there. Let’s go.” They rode off, more quickly this
time.

When they were gone, Sam said, “That was pretty abrupt.”

“We have to be happy for the help, for what they can do, but I’m
not happy about it,” Vicki said. “It’s like I broke up a marriage or
something. I was really hoping to convince them all to stay.”

Ray shrugged. “They each made their own decision, that’s the best
we could get.”

Ron tapped her father’s arm. “I want to go on one of those medical
teams.”

He frowned. “Let’s step inside,” he said. “I want to talk to you
for a moment.”

She sighed and followed him into the hotel, knowing this meant she
was in trouble. Again.

They went into a small empty office across the hall from the
meeting room. Marshall sat on a desk chair, so they could talk face
to face.

“I really don’t want you to go,” he said. “It could be dangerous.”

“Fuck! Everywhere is dangerous. And people need medicine and stuff,
and–”

He put his hand over her mouth. “You’re right. And that’s what I
was going to say. You’re needed, and you should go. Even though I
don’t want you to.”

“They why did you bring me in here? I thought you were going to
yell at me.”

He smiled. “No, I’m going to hug you. Come here.” They put their
arms around each other. “I’m very proud of you. And I know you hate to
be hugged in front of other people.”

“Oh, by the way,” he said casually as they got ready to leave, “are
you going to tell me how your leg got healed?”

“The Golden did it.”

“How, if I may ask?”

“I really don’t know. I was asleep when they did it.”

“Can they heal other people? We have a lot of wounded.”

She shrugged. “Maybe. We can ask them when they wake up, but I
think they’re gonna be asleep for a while. They said it was really
difficult.”

He nodded. “I imagine it would be.”

Ron went to the lobby. She was trying to be cool, but she
wanted to jump up and down with the excitement of being able to walk
again. She could actually go out and do something useful.

She walked up to Fifteen and said, “I want to be on one of those
medical teams.”

“Well, Ron, there isn’t anybody else available right now. The
teams are all out–”

“You’re fucking lying. I can tell.” She punched him in the
shoulder, using her left hand just because it was working again. “What
are you lying about, you little piss-ant?”

“Well, your father wouldn’t approve–”

“He also probably wouldn’t approve if I knock you out and do your
job better than you’re doing it. If I can’t go out on a team, I might
as well do that.”

“Alright. If something bad happens, I–”

She punched him again, with her right this time.

“Katherine wants to go out on a team, but nobody else wants to go
with her.” He smiled. “Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

Ron followed him, doing her best to hide the fact that, for the first time
today, she was scared.