“Oh, right,” his dad replied. “You on your way to St. Anthony’s?”
“Yes,” Ali said impatiently. “Where are you?”
“Heading to Jannie’s track meet.”
“I’d rather do that than go to church,” Ali said.
“You weren’t listening this morning. Stations of the Cross are over by now. You’re coming to the track meet with Nana Mama.”
“Oh,” Ali said, sort of remembering that his father had said something about that at breakfast. “Okay. Nana will be there?”
“Probably inside.”
“When’s Damon getting home?”
“In time for dinner. Got to go.”
“Gotta move!”
He and his dad were laughing as they hung up.
Most of the kids had already cleared the playground. Heading out through the gate in the fence onto Franklin Street, Ali turned away from home and had soon crossed the intersection and headed north on the east side of Twelfth Street toward St. Anthony’s, some eight blocks away.
He’d crossed Hamlin Street and was walking by a funeral home when a panel van came roaring up alongside him. “Hey, kid! You Ali Cross?”
Ali stopped, looked over, saw through the open window of the van that his great-grandmother was slumped in the front seat, out cold. The guy in the sunglasses driving looked worried.
“I was bringing her from church to find you and she passed out,” he yelled. “Get in, we got to get her to the hospital!”
Ali didn’t think. He bolted for the van, opened the side door, and jumped in, seeing computers and electrical gear bolted onto shelves. The van was moving the second he closed it.
“What happened to her?” Ali said fearfully. He was crouched on his knees now between and behind the front seats.
“Heart,” the driver said. “I don’t know.”
“Nana!” Ali said, shaking his great-grandmother’s shoulder. “Nana, wake up.”
But she didn’t move. “Oh, no,” he moaned. “Is she dead?”
“No,” the driver said. “She’s breathing. I think. Check.”
Ali struggled to stand, to lean over the seat to see if that was true. That was when the boy smelled the zombie at the wheel. The look of shock on Ali’s face was so deep that Sunday caught it. Cross’s younger son tried to push himself backward and opened his mouth to scream. Sunday was ready.
Quick as a whip, he raised an aerosol can and sprayed the boy in the face with vaporized chloroform. The boy staggered backward, smashed off one of the shelves, and collapsed on the floor of the van.
Sunday opened a window and kept an eye on Ali in the rearview mirror as he drove toward St. Anthony’s Church. The chloroform would not last long.
He pulled in and parked in the small lot behind the church. Within three minutes he’d injected Ali with about the same amount of Rohypnol as he’d given his great-grandmother, enough to keep them both out a good twelve hours.
Before he drove on, he texted Acadia: Got two. Your play.
Chapter
94
Jannie was all warmed up, stripped down out of her sweats, and making little sprints to get her muscles firing. My daughter was as tall as or taller than the other girls warming up for the quarter-mile. But she was easily the thinnest girl out there, as well as the youngest athlete in the entire event, the first meet of the year, a prestige invitational on Benjamin Banneker High’s home track.
Sitting in the stands, I checked my watch, said, “Ali and Nana are going to miss this if they don’t get here soon.”