Something attracted his attention out there, in the courtyard. A group of children, sullen, despondent. Some adults moved among them. What were they doing here?

Then one of the children, the oldest, a girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen, looked up at his window, and waved. Waved as if she knew him. He waved back, and a moment later, half a dozen children were looking at him, waving excitedly, where just a moment ago they’d been subdued.

The adult with them, a Caucasian woman, looked up at him, frowned, and then herded the kids away. They went unhappily, stealing glances at him.

Kade sat down heavily on the floor. Those children knew him. He’d never seen them before, he couldn’t see their minds and they couldn’t see his. But somehow they knew who he was.

He had one guess why that was.

Sam.

Chapter 50: Detox

50

DETOX

Saturday October 27th

Holtzmann crawled into bed, terrified of what was to come.

He woke hours later to Anne shaking him. “I’m heading out, Martin. I’m going to see Claire. God help me, you’re both going crazy.”

Holtzmann just stared at her. He lay there in bed, miserable, nauseated, waiting for the full force of the withdrawal to strike, his mind spinning on how to free Shankari.

Anne came home with takeout. He tried to talk, but she turned on the news, responded in monosyllables. She went to bed after dinner. Martin went to his office, feeling ill, but not as terribly as he’d expected…

He was there, sitting in his office chair, thinking of how to free Shankari, when the aches came.

They started in the leg, intensifying, bit by bit, minute by minute, until they were pounding out from his femur where the compound fracture was still healing. They spread out from there, into the hip that had shattered, into his other leg, his ribs, his back, his neck, his arms, his head.

He arched his back and moaned. He writhed around in the chair searching for some relief. His skin was damp with sweat now. He was burning up. Snot was dripping from his nose.

Then the nausea was coursing through him. He dragged himself out of the office, stumbling around without his cane, his body contorted by the pain, made it into the hall bathroom just in time, and heaved up bile into the toilet.

Then his guts cramped. He made it onto the toilet before his bowels exploded filth into it.

When the episode was over, he collapsed onto the floor of the bathroom, wrapped himself in a towel, and waited to die.

Anne found him in the morning, still curled up on the floor, aching and feverish and a mess.

She took one look at him.

“My God, you really are sick.”

Holtzmann nodded weakly, then leaned over the toilet and vomited again.