The Faculty Club

27

When I limped into the motel room, Sarah was sitting on the bed. She had just showered; her hair was wet, and her body was wrapped in a towel. Her eyes were red. When she saw me, she said, “Oh thank God,” and ran to hug me. I squeezed her hard and buried my nose in her hair. I breathed in deep. She stepped back and looked me over.

“I thought something happened to you.”

“I’m okay.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t know. My leg, maybe. I think it’s all right.” I looked around the room. “Where’s Miles?”

“We wrote everything down while you were gone. Just in case you didn’t…” A guilty look crossed her face. “It was Miles’s idea…” She let the subject die, but I still felt a shiver. “He went to make copies. Come over here. Let me see.”

She led me to the bed. Without a word, she sat me down and unbuckled my belt. She slid my pants down and pulled them off. She moved with the precision of a doctor, and it wasn’t awkward or embarrassing. She sat down on the bed next to me.

“Lean back,” she said.

She examined my leg, pressing her fingers along different lines and spots that seemed to have meaning to her. Each time, she asked if it hurt, and when I said yes or no, she’d nod. It was somewhere between professional and delicate-each mechanical touch ended with a slight linger; once or twice, almost a caress. I closed my eyes and focused on her fingers moving up and down my leg, bending it, tracing on the inside of my thigh.

She paused, leaving the tips of her fingers just over my hip.

“It’s bruised,” she said quietly. “Nothing’s broken or sprained.”

“Oh. Good.”

“Good,” she whispered.

My lack of pants suddenly seemed more awkward. They were sitting on the other side of the bed, behind her. I reached for them, but I think she thought I was reaching for her. She took my hand and put it on the towel over her breast. She put her other hand in my hair and pulled me in and kissed me. Her lips were soft, still damp from the shower. They opened and I felt the soft hint of her tongue. She pulled back and looked at me.

“I was worried about you,” she said.

I tried to say something, something that had been bothering me, but I couldn’t get it out. Her eyes moved over my face, reading it. I put my hand on her chin and held her gaze right at me.

“Sarah, when I was in the tunnels, I realized something.”

“What?”

I told her that tonight, for the first time in my life, I understood what it meant to be afraid of death. I’d lost people I loved before, but all that did was let me understand loss. Death had still been a concept, nothing more. It was impossible to feel that it had anything to do with me. Once, a year ago, I was looking in the mirror and saw my first gray hair. I pulled it out and examined it. It wasn’t fear exactly, what I’d felt then. It was like someone had plucked a string deep in my abdomen, an unsteady vibration in my body. But this, tonight-this was a million times stronger. Now, I understood what my dad had tried to tell me about being fifty: I’d had an acute blast of the dull, chronic terror of real age.

And as a result, for the first time I understood the situation we were in. What we represented to the white-haired members of the V &D, waiting in line for their chance to live on. We represented death.

“Sarah, they’re never going to stop hunting us.”

She gave me a stern look.

“Yes they will. We’re going to stop them.”

“We are?”

“We are.”

She took my face in her hands.

“Do you know why? Because I know what I want. And they’re in my way.”

There was real power, a force in her words. She stood and took the bottom of my shirt in her hands. She pulled it over my head and dropped it on the floor. Then she reached to the corner of her towel tucked above her breast and tugged, letting it fall in one fluid movement. She stood a foot away. I looked at her full curves. I felt the heat coming off her skin. She pressed my face into her stomach.

I looked up at her.

“I’ve never done this before,” I said.

She arched an eyebrow. I started to explain, but she put a finger over my mouth.

“I know, I know. You lived with your parents in college.” She grinned. “You’re a smart guy. You’ll figure it out.”

• • •

Later, she smiled at me with her head propped on her hand.

“Do you think it’s possible?” she asked me.

“What?”

“Possession. Stealing someone’s body.”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

She shrugged.

“I had this patient once. A nice old man. He had a stroke. Every morning, I’d walk into his room and have a totally normal conversation with him. Then I’d point at his right hand and say, ‘Whose hand is that?’ And he’d say, in a completely casual voice, ‘I don’t know.’

“‘Well,’ I’d ask him, ‘it’s connected to this wrist, isn’t it?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘And that wrist is connected to this arm, right?’

“‘Right.’

“‘And this arm is connected to your shoulder, isn’t it?’

“‘Uh-huh.’

“‘So whose arm is it?’

“‘I don’t know,’ he’d say. ‘Is it yours?’”

“You’re kidding,” I said.

“I’ve seen patients with multiple personalities. People who smell colors and taste sounds. What I’m trying to say is, we don’t know anything about the brain. Not really. All our technology, all our research, we’re just scratching the surface. It’s still basically a black box. So, yes, I think it’s possible. But I’ve been thinking, lying here.”

“About what?”

“Jeremy, if we’re right, then they’re killing people. Strip away all the bullshit and chanting and superstition, that’s all they’re doing. It’s human sacrifice. We can’t let that go. If we do…” Her smile was completely gone now. “Then we deserve whatever they’ve got planned for us.”