Read Dead Earth: The Green Dawn for Free Online

you mean?”
    The man sighed. “You been on the highway
lately?”
    “No.” Jubal had spent the past couple of days
in town, not wanting to be too far from his mother or the office. He
hadn’t been on the county back roads.
    “When you get a chance, you ought take a
look. Head up toward Carlsbad, if you like. Now I’m sorry for your
troubles and I’m sorry for the way I acted when I first talked to
you. I was raised better than that. But I’ve been drinkin’ some.
That’s not an excuse. I’m just tellin’ you how it is. I hope things
work out for you, but I suspect they won’t.”
    The voice was gone.
    Jubal got out of the cruiser, thankful for
the small breeze. The air smelled funny, though. It might have been
his imagination, but the back of his throat burned and his sinuses
felt raw. He thought about plague germs, manufactured in some
secret government laboratory in Nevada, now drifting down to
Serenity.
    No. This was not the time for that kind of
thinking.
    “Blankets.”
    It took Jubal a moment to realize that
someone had spoken to him.
    “Jubal, I need blankets.” Fiona was next to
him. She looked calm but serious.
    “Why do you need—”
    “I don’t know what’s going on, but everybody
saw you close the door, and I can see your face. I’ve known you a
long time, Jubal Slate. It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”
    He nodded.
    “Okay.” She ran a hand over her mouth. Jubal
had seen her father make the same gesture many times. “Okay. You
can tell me later. Right now I want the blankets in your
trunk.”
    “Why?”
    “Because that’s the sickest person I’ve ever
seen and she’s laying on dusty blacktop while half the town—the
half that isn’t sick—gets to stand around and watch. I have
to do something.”
    “Fiona, no. What she has, it’s catching.”
    Fiona handed him a pair of surgical gloves.
He saw that she wore a pair herself.
    “We’re not the kind of people who stand
around and watch. I shouldn’t have to tell you that.”
    He swallowed. “I’m marrying one tough broad,”
he said.
    “You bet your ass. Now open your trunk.” She
turned to the dozen or so people who were still milling around.
“Taylor, Red. Get over here.”
    Two middle-aged men shuffled over to
Fiona.
    Jubal dug the blankets out of the trunk. “We
carrying her to the drug store?”
    “And do what? Take her off the street and lay
her on linoleum? Uh-uh. Put her on those blankets and put her in
your car. We’ll take her to my house.”
    “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
    She tossed him the box of surgical gloves and
walked back to Rite-Aid.
    “Here,” he said. He handed the box to Taylor
and Red.
    “Jubal, I got a bad back,” Red said.
    “And she looks mighty bad,” Taylor said.
    “Put on the gloves,” Jubal Slate said, “or as
God is my witness, I’ll shoot your dicks off.” To press home his
point, he rested his hand on his holster.
    The two men slipped on the thin gloves in
record time.
    “The rest of you people, go about your
business.”
    They stared back at him; some with tears
rolling down their cheeks.
    “Are we all going to die, Jubal?” Billy said,
barely able to get the words out through his constricted
throat.
    “What? No! We aren’t going to die. People get
sick all the time, sometimes lots of them all at once. That doesn’t
mean they’re going to die. Or that you’re going to get sick. Or you
other people here.”
    I just handed that boy a fine line of major
bullshit; I’m going to Hell now, for sure.
    “Now everybody just...go about your business
while we take care of this sick woman.”
    No one moved.
    Red and Taylor, standing next to the cruiser,
held the woman stretched out between them. Red had her arms and
Taylor had her legs. They looked at Jubal pleadingly for help with
the door.
    “C’mon! Let’s go.” Jubal clapped his hands at
the milling people, who finally walked away with many a backward
glance at Jubal and the sick woman. Some of them