The Plague Doctor. E. Joan Sims
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Since I was not positive of all my facts, I decided to keep the information to myself for a while.
From my vantage point behind the big desk in the library, I could watch Cassie and Mother as they crisscrossed over the back yard. After a while, Cassie went down to the carriage house and brought up the John Deere tractor with the wagon attached to the back. Cassie drove the tractor around to each big pile of leaves in turn and stopped while Mother scooped up the debris and loaded it in the wagon. After only a half turn around the yard the wagon was full. Mother climbed in back and hitched a ride down to the dry pond bed where we built our bonfires. They stopped, emptied the wagonload of leaves, and started all over again, with Aggie running round and round the moving tractor and barking maniacally the whole time. I decided the puppy would sleep well tonight also. It looked like I’d be the only night crawler. I was restless and could not get back to work for the life of me.
I shivered and realized that the room had grown a little chilly. My father had grown tired of emptying out ashes and installed some wonderful gas logs in the big open fireplace the year before he died. I pushed the magic plunger and a big beautiful fire appeared.
It was the first fire of the season. Usually we all gathered together for such an occasion, but everybody else was already having too much fun. I had to enjoy something.
I sat on the wide brick hearth for a few moment to warm my rear end, then took up my position behind the desk again. Ethan’s computer was still on, and the screen saver—which I had not seen before—slowly moved across the monitor. Big red letters on a hideous purple background repeated over and over again, “ABORTION BUG.”
I shivered again, but not from the cold. For the first time, I realized that there was something really malevolent going on here—something that I did not have a clue about. It was some “thing” that even Ethan did not really understand, yet feared nonetheless. He had managed to transfer that uneasiness to me this afternoon. He had never spoken the words, but I knew he was afraid that I might find what he had been looking for when he came to town. He knew that I would not be prepared. I had never been in a cave in Kinshasa. I would not know a vector if it bit me. And it just might.
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