Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

The fire cast flickering orange light on the yellow bear totem, making it shimmer, and on drab stone walls. Welcome heat poured from the blazing pile of wood. The natural flue worked as Christine had hoped, drawing the smoke up into higher cavems, leaving their air untainted. In fact, the drying action of the fire took some of the dampness out of the air and eliminated most of the vaguely unpleasant, musty odor that had been in the dank chamber since she had first entered.

For a while they just basked in the warmth, doing nothing, saying nothing, even trying not to think.

In time Christine took off her gloves, lowered the hood of her jacket, then finally took off the jacket itself. The cave wasn't exactly toasty, and drafts circulated through it from adjacent caverns, but her flannel shirt and long insulated underwear were now sufficient. She helped Charlie and Joey out of their jackets, too.

She gave Charlie more lylenol. She lifted his bandage, dusted in more powdered antibiotics and more of the anaesthetic as well.

He said he wasn't in much pain.

She knew he was lying.

The hives that afflicted Joey began, at last, to recede. The swelling subsided, and his misshapen face slowly regained its proper proportions.

His nostrils opened, and he no longer needed to breathe through his mouth, although he continued to wheeze slightly, as if there was some congestion in his lungs.

Please, God, not pneumonia, Christine thought.

His eyes opened wider, but they were still frighteningly empty.

She smiled at him, made a couple of funny faces, trying to get a reaction out of him, all to no avail. As far as she could tell he didn't even see her.

Charlie didn't think he was hungry until Christine began to heat beans and Vienna sausages in the aluminum pot that was part of their compact mess kit. The aroma made his mouth water and his stomach growl, and suddenly be was shaking with hunger.

Once he began to eat, however, he filled up fast. His stomach bloated, and he found it increasingly difficult to swallow. The very act of chewing exacerbated the pain in his head, which doubled back along the lines of pain in his neck and all the way into the shoulder wound, making that ache worse, too. Finally the food lost its flavor, then seemed bitter. He ate about a fourth of what he first thought he could put away, and even the meager meal didn't rest well in his belly.

"You can't get more of it down?" Christine asked.

"I'll have more later."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Do you feel nauseous?"

"No, no. I'm okay. Just tired."

She studied him in silence for a moment, and he forced a smile for her sake, and she said, "Well whenever you're ready for more, I'll reheat it."

As the fluttering fire made shadows leap and cavort on the walls, Charlie watched her feed Joey. The boy was willing to eat and able to swallow, but she had to mash up the sausages and beans, and spoon the stuff into his mouth as if she were feeding an infant instead of a six-year-old.

A grim sense of failure settled over Charlie once more.

The boy had fled from an intolerable situation, from a world of pure hostility, into a fantasy that he found more congenial.

How far had he retreated into that inner world of his? Too far ever to come back?

Joey would take no more food. His mother was unhappy about how little he had eaten, but she couldn't force him to swallow even one more mouthful.

She fed the dog, too, and he had a better appetite than his master.

Charlie wanted to tell her that they couldn't waste food on Chewbacca.

If this storm was followed by another, if the weather didn't clear for a few days, they would have to ration what little provisions they had left, and they would regret every morsel that had been given to the dog. But he knew she admired the animal's courage and perseverance, and she felt its presence helped prevent Joey from slipping all the way down into deep catatonia. He didn't have the heart to tell her to stop feeding it.

Not now. Not yet. Wait until morning. Maybe the weather would have changed by then, and maybe they would head southwest to the lake.

Joey's breathing worsened for a moment; his wheezing grew alarmingly loud and ragged.

Christine quickly changed the child's position, used her folded jacket to prop up his head. It worked. The wheezing softened.

Watching the boy, Charlie thought: Are you hurting as bad as I am, little one? God, I hope not. You don't deserve this. What you do deserve is a better bodyguard than I've been, and that's for damned sure.

Charlie's own pain was far worse than he let Christine know.

The new dose of Tylenol and powdered anesthetic helped, but not quite as much as the first dose. The pain in his shoulder and arm no longer felt like a live thing trying to chew its way out of him. Now it felt as if little men from another planet were inside him, breaking his bones into smaller and smaller splinters, popping open his tendons, slicing his muscles, and pouring sulfuric acid over everything. What they wanted to do was gradually hollow him out, use acid to burn away everything inside him, until only his skin remained, and then they would inflate the limp and empty sack of skin and put him on exhibit in a museum back on their own world. That's how it felt, anyway. Not good.

Not good at all.

Later, Christine went out to the mouth of the cave to get some snow to melt for drinking water, and discovered that night had fallen. They hadn't been able to hear the wind from within the cave, but it was still raging. Snow slanted down from the darkness, and the frigid, turbulent air hammered the valley wall with arctic fury.

She returned to the cave, put the pan of snow by the fire to melt, and talked with Charlie for a while. His voice was weak.

He was in more pain than he wanted her to know, but she allowed him to think he was deceiving her because there wasn't anything she could do to make him more comfortable. In less than an hour, in spite of his pain, he was asleep, as were Joey and Chewbacca.

She sat between her son and the man she loved, with her back to the fire, looking toward the front of the cave, watching the shadows and the reflections of the flames as they danced a frantic gavotte upon the walls. With one part of her mind she listened for unusual sounds, and with another part she monitored the respiration of the man and the boy, afraid that one of them might suddenly cease breathing.

The loaded revolver was at her side. To her dismay, she had learned that Charlie had no more spare cartridges in his jacket pockets. The box of ammo was in his backpack, which they had abandoned at the rocky overhang where she had patched his shoulder. She was furious with herself for having forgotten it.

The rifle and shotgun were gone. The handgun was their only protection, and she had only the six shells that were in it.

The totem bear glowed on the wall.

At 8:10, as Christine finished adding fuel to the fire, Charlie began to groan in his sleep and toss his head on the pillow she had made from his folded jacket. He had broken out in a greasy sweat.

A hand against his forehead was enough to tell her that he had a fever.

She watched him for a while, hoping he would quiet down, but he only got worse. His groans became soft cries, then less soft. He began to babble. Sometimes it was wordless nonsense. Sometimes he spat out words and disjointed, meaningless sentences.

At last he became so agitated that she got two more Tylenol tablets from the bottle, poured a cupful of water, and attempted to wake him.

Although sleep seemed to be providing no comfort for him, he wouldn't come around at first, and when he finally did open his eyes they were bleary and unfocused. He was delirious and didn't seem to know who she was.