Then she was in town, where she saw JoAnn. Her friend was kneeling in front of a bonfire in her back yard, wearing a heavy coat and shivering as though she was freezing. Next to her on the ground was a pile of dead cats and dogs, neighbors’ pets that she had obviously killed, and every few minutes she would pick one up and throw it in the fire, holding her hands up, palms out, in order to absorb the extra heat generated by the burning animals.
Next, she found herself looking at Vern Hastings and Ben Stanard. The self-anointed preacher and the grocery store owner were locked inside Ben’s store, knives in hand, preparing to sacrifice a woman Lita didn’t recognize, on the butcher table behind the refrigerated meat display cases in the back.
Looking down on the town again, she thought she saw Ross in front of the bar across the street from the market. But then she was inside Anna Mae and Del Ford’s house. The old couple, now both suffering from something apparently far worse than Alzheimer’s, were naked and drooling, crawling like babies on their hands and knees over a floor covered with feces.
Then…
She was at Cameron Holt’s, standing in front of his house, staring at the spot where the smokehouse used to be. The small building was gone, only its foundation left, and on that foundation, the dead body of the monster was encased in a transparent egg-shaped shell twice as tall as a person. Within, the monster was no longer dead. Its red eye was wide awake and staring, and the coiled tension in its folded wings and scrunched-up legs made it clear that it was ready to emerge from its hibernation. She had never seen anything so awful, yet she knew that this partial look was nothing compared to the horror she would see once the creature was out in full view. She was filled with a feeling of complete and utter despair.
But she saw Ross again, in front of the bar, and Jackass was with him, and someone else. They hadn’t given up, and they not only looked like they had a plan, they appeared convinced that the plan would work. Feeling better, Lita drifted up and away, her view pulling back above the town, above the clouds, into the darkness beyond.
And, slowly, with a groan, she opened her eyes.
****
Lita awoke, and Dave was there when it happened. He was holding her hand, and it twitched in his, and he looked into her face and saw her eyes open. He was not by nature an overly emotional person, but he burst into tears when he saw that she was once again conscious, and he realized at that moment that despite what he had told Ross, despite what he had told the hospital staff, despite what he had told himself, he had been preparing himself for Lita never recovering.
Even as he leaned forward to kiss her, still sobbing, Dave was pushing the red button on the side of the bed to call for a nurse, pressing it over and over and over again. After what seemed like forever but might have only been minutes, a nurse arrived, and while she wasn’t in as much of a hurry as Dave would have liked, that changed instantly once she saw that Lita was awake. “Stay there,” she told him. “I’ll get a doctor.”
Stay there? Where was he going to go?
Moments later, the nurse returned with a young female doctor. Not one he recognized, but that didn’t mean anything. As far as he could tell, Lita hadn’t been visited by the same doctor twice in the last two days.
He was asked to move back, and the doctor examined Lita’s eyes, shining a penlight into her pupils, before checking her reflexes as she asked a series of formalized questions that were meant to test her memory and mental acuity. Several minutes of this resulted in the doctor patting Lita’s hand and smiling in his direction. “Things are looking good,” she said. “I’m going to schedule an MRI, we’re going to run a few more tests, but I think she’s going to be fine.”
“You don’t have to just tell him. You can talk to me,” Lita said. “I’m right here.”
The doctor chuckled. “You’re going to be fine.”
She left, and the nurse followed, after explaining that an orderly would be in shortly to take Lita down the hall for the MRI.
The two of them were left alone. Dave moved forward again and took both of her hands in his.
“I’ve been out for two days?” Lita asked incredulously. That had been one of the things the doctor revealed during questioning.
Wiping his eyes, Dave nodded.
“Did you tell anybody else?” She looked around as though expecting to see gifts and flowers.
He shook his head. “I was going to, but…I never got around to it. I’ve been camped out here almost the entire time. I did call Ross when it first happened.”
“But he’s not here. He went back to Magdalena.”