Germ

'Julia Matheson,' she called over her shoulder.

Allen threw Stephen an exasperated look and hustled after her.

forty-seven

All the rooms at the motel faced busy Broadway Avenue, so Julia insisted on keeping the curtains closed. Even with the lamps on, the room, decorated in brown hues, appeared murky. It was the sort of room for illicit rendezvous, drunken binges, suicide. Allen was sure it had seen its share of each; the stark ugliness of it alone could drive someone to self-destruction. As Julia fiddled with the zipper of her gym bag, he plopped onto the bed and pulled a pillow over his face.

'Did Goody say anything else?' she asked.

He lifted the pillow up to look at her.

'You said he mentioned Ebola, that it was man-made, coming here . . . Anything else?'

He thought. 'He said something-pora. I didn't catch all of it. I thought maybe purpura, a rash of purple spots caused by internal bleeding. It fits. He mentioned some names. Karl Litt.'

'Lit? L-i-t?'

'I guess. I Googled Karl L-i-t and L-i-t-t. Nothing. He said to tell Jodi and Brice and Brett—'

'Barrett.'

'Barrett. He said to tell them he loved them.'

'His wife and sons,' Julia said, dropping down on the bed, the laptop forgotten in her hands.

'And you.'

'Huh?'

'After 'Barrett,' he said 'Julia.''

'He did?'

''Tell them I love them. Jodi, Brice, Barrett, Julia.''

Stephen's hearty thumps resounded through the door. Allen rose with a groan to admit him.

'Check the peephole,' Julia said, turning away, wiping her eyes as if she were scratching an itch on her eyebrow.

'I am, I am,' Allen said, though he wouldn't have without her warning.

Even through the peephole's fish-eye lens, there was no mistaking the hulking figure outside the door. Allen pulled it open. With the sun at his back, Stephen looked truly haggard. His hair and beard stood out in all directions; a tuft of fur protruded from a place just above his belly where his shirt had lost a button; blood, road dirt, and concrete dust scuffed his clothes; the lines on his face were deeper than they'd been the night before. Clutching the crumpled bag from the drugstore, he was a poster child for the homeless and destitute. He sauntered in, lowered himself into an armchair nearly as tattered as he. He stretched out his long legs and planted his feet on the bed.

'I'm feeling my age,' he moaned.

Allen took the bag from him and said, 'Take off your shirt.'

'I'm all right.' He raised his arm in protest and stopped short, skewing his face in pain.

'Yeah, right. Take it off.' Allen began lining the supplies up along the bottom edge of the bed. 'Needle and thread. Did you get needle and thread?'

'It's in there.' He tossed the shirt into a wastebasket by Julia. She moved it into the bathroom.

'Get me some hot water while you're in there,' Allen called. He found the small travel packet of thread and needles at the bottom of the bag and opened it. He knelt beside Stephen and started examining the worst of his wounds. 'So where'd you learn that 'dang you too' stuff?'

'Tang soo do. One of my parishioners runs a dojang. He thought it would help with my coordination and keep me in shape.'

'It worked,' Julia said, setting down an ice bucket of steaming water and two washcloths next to Allen.

'I attend his class twice a week and perform katas every day.' He glanced under his arm at Allen, seeming to assess his interest.

'Katas?'

'Formal exercises against imaginary opponents. They teach you how to control your breathing rhythm and eye focus; they develop balance, gracefulness, strength . . . stuff like that.'

'What level are you?'

'Second dan black—ahhhhh!'

'Sorry,' Allen said, dabbing at a particularly dark clump of blood. 'Black belt? That's how you took down those guys at your cabin?'

He glanced at Julia, heading into the bathroom. She looked back and winked. If she realized he was trying to distract Stephen from the repairs he was making to his flesh, then Stephen probably realized it too; he was allowing himself to be distracted.

Stephen frowned. 'The first one caught me off guard, the assailant, I mean. I just gave him an elbow in the face, pretty sloppy. My sa bom nim would have a fit.'

'And the other?'

'I was getting into form with him. I gave him a hammerfist strike to the temple.' He laughed. 'I'd never seen it for real. Incredible.'

Allen threaded a needle, prodded a spot on Stephen's side, and poised the needle over it.

'You still into meditation?'

'Keeps me sane.'

Julia stepped from the bathroom as she brushed her teeth. Allen could tell she didn't want to miss the conversation.

He flashed a big smile at her. 'He used to disappear inside himself so deeply, he wouldn't hear us yelling at him.'

'I heard you.'

'We used to say he was heavily meditated.'

Julia laughed, a nice sound.

Allen said, 'You know, being a toothbrush is the worst job in the world.'

Stephen blurted, 'Tell that to the toilet paper!'

Julia laughed again, spraying tiny droplets of toothpaste.

'Hey,' Allen said, 'you stole my joke,' and Julia laughed harder.

After a few moments, she spoke around the toothbrush. 'I thought meditation was something Buddhists and New Agers did.'

'Depends on where your mind's at. I meditate on the ways of Jesus.'

'But he got into it before all that Jesus stuff,' Allen said, unable to keep a measure of disdain out of his voice.

'All right,' Stephen said. Soothing, placating.

'This is going to hurt,' Allen said.

'Just do it.'

Allen looped the thread through a dozen times, cinching each stitch to close the wound. He remembered a joke about a new doc trying to suture a man with palsy. He turned to tell it, but Julia had disappeared back into the bathroom. A few minutes later she came out, but he wasn't in the mood anymore. Instead, he asked Stephen, 'Having a black belt, what do you think of the Warrior?'

Warrior. With all the labels that described him—enemy, pursuer, assailant, killer, assassin—the three of them seemed to have settled on warrior. The title was disturbingly appropriate.

'One bad dude.'

'I mean in skill, fighting skill.'

'Allen, were you watching? He had me, would have killed me if Julia hadn't chased him off. He is faster, smarter, stronger than any man I've sparred with. He moved like he knew everything I was going to do and responded to it as though he'd had weeks to think it over.'