Chapter 48
“Who?” I fall to the floor by her side. “Who’s gone crazy?”
When I put my hands on her shoulders, I can feel that she’s shaking.
“Belinda,” she manages to choke out. “She’s gone insane. I don’t know what got into her. Did you see her? Did you—did she get to you?”
“No.” I shake my head, my heart beating painfully fast in my chest. “What did she do? What did she say?”
“She destroyed the generator.” Anna is whispering through cold blue lips. “She tried to—I think she drugged the tea. I feel woozy.”
The tea.
My eyes are drawn to Clara, on the bed.
Fuck.
“Anna.” I draw her up into a sitting position. “What did she say to you?”
Anna is shaking, sobbing so hard her whole chest is heaving, snot and tears and rain running down her face.
“She wasn’t making any sense. I ran away from her. I ran and I was trying to find you, to find—find the doctor. I thought maybe she could talk some sense into her, but…” She looks up at Dr. Martina, big blue eyes glistening.
“I think … I think she was trying to kill me.” Her voice is flat with shock, her cheeks burning red with cold.
“That’s … no.” Martina closes her eyes tightly. “Belinda isn’t—you must have misinterpreted things.”
Anna is hugging herself. She doesn’t seem like she’s listening.
“Anna, where is she now?” I ask her, throwing a fleeting glance at the door, my whole body tensing at the thought. “Was she chasing you?”
She shakes her head.
“I hit her.” There is both shock and wonder in her voice. “She was behind me, and I hit her. I hit her really hard.”
“Where?” I ask her.
“Down by the pond.” Anna’s voice is faint as falling snow. “By the main building. She…” The words die in her mouth.
I swallow. My mouth tastes like ash.
“If she drugged the tea,” I say slowly, without looking at the others, “we won’t be able to get everyone to the car. Not if they’re all passed out.”
Anna is swaying gently where she is sitting. When she turns to me, her pupils are pinpricks.
“I left her there. She wasn’t … she didn’t get back up. I just ran. I just turned around and ran away.” She sounds barely older than a child, her voice high and lilting.
“That was good, Anna,” I try to reassure her. “You did really good, okay?”
Leyla is the one who says it.
“We have to go find her.” Her voice is raspy. “If Anna managed to hit her, then maybe we can … together, I mean.”
She doesn’t sound certain, but I hear the truth in what she’s saying.
“Find her,” I finish her thought. “Incapacitate her, to make sure she can’t hurt anyone else. And then someone takes the car and drives to get help.”
Leyla is nodding; Martina has turned to the window, looking out through it again.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Armin sounds hesitant. “If she’s already killed someone…” He turns to Anna.
“Was she armed?”
This is, it seems, the first time Anna has noticed Armin in here, because when she looks at him and frowns she seems back to normal for a moment, and she sounds like herself when she asks:
“Who are you?”
“He’s my friend,” I explain. “Don’t worry about him. He’s going to help us.”
Anna turns back to me.
“We can’t drive away,” she insists. “Not with the gates closed and the power down.”
“Armin has a car outside the gates,” I tell her. “We’ve got a plan for how to get out.”
“Oh” is all Anna says, and she looks down at her lap, at her own pale fingers, threaded together. The big sweater she is wearing is drooping off her shoulders, heavy and darkened with rain.
“This is absurd.” Martina turns back around, and her voice is high and tight. “I’m not going to go chasing a murderer through the storm.”
“Armin and I will go,” I say. “Anna can show us where she left Belinda.”
Leyla speaks up.
“What about Clara?”
She’s still standing, tense and rigid, by the bed.
“You can stay with her. It’s better that way.” I look over at Martina. “The good doctor can lock the door, in case … well, just to make sure that no one can get in.”
“But she is coming with us, right?” Anna interjects, looking from me to Martina.
Martina is shaking her head.
“No.” I can hear how dry her mouth is from the way her tongue is clicking. “No. I absolutely will not. I will stay here with Clara. It’s my duty to her as my patient.”
“Jesus.” I’m about to protest that she didn’t much care about her patients when she wanted to just take off without them half an hour ago, but to my surprise Anna interrupts me.
She looks up at Martina, standing by the window, and says, eyes brimming with tears:
“Please, Doctor, you have to come. You might be able to—if she’s gotten back up, you might be able to talk her down. She might listen to you. You’re the only person she might listen to. She looks up to you. She thinks you’re a genius, I know she does.”
Martina doesn’t say anything.
“Please, Doctor,” Anna pleads. “You have to come. You have to.”
Something about the raw desperation in her voice seems to get through to Martina.
“Okay.” The sound of her voice is pure defeat. “Okay.”
“Let’s go, then.” I rise to my feet, pulling Anna up with me.
When I open the door, my stomach cramps, and I swallow to keep from throwing up out of sheer fear.
“Show us where she is. Show us where you left her.”