Free The Uninvited by Cat Winters

hall.
    “Down here. Someone’s calling for help.” Nela steered the stretcher toward the sound of the voice, in the rightmost section of the house, and Addie followed behind with the bouncing empty stretcher jerking her elbows.
    We came upon a room housing a man, a woman, and three children, including the girl who had called out to us, a pretty young thing with almond-shaped eyes who looked to be fifteen or sixteen. Her honey-blond hair, damp with fever, stuck to the sides of her face and trailed across a pair of cracked white lips, and she shuddered beneath a mountain of patchwork quilts, nuzzled between another girl and a boy.
    Nela lowered the stretcher to the ground and spoke with the girl in Polish, rubbing the child’s shoulder and nodding the whole time. She then turned to us and said, “She’s the first one sick in the house and wants to leave before the others get it. Help me lift her, Addie.”
    Addie took hold of the girl’s feet and assisted Nela in lifting her over her sister and onto the stretcher. The girl shivered and drew her scrawny knees to her chest, but I gave her my coat and helped the others get her laid out flat on her back to better distribute her weight.
    We carried our transport down the flight of stairs and slid her into the back of the truck, behind the wooden covering marked with the large Red Cross emblem that stood out like a blood-colored beacon in the dark. After leaping back into the driving compartment, we journeyed into the night—off to the warmth of Nela’s house—before setting right back out again.

 
    UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
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    The Buchanan Committee of Public Safety reports a continuing rise in the number of influenza cases within the city limits and in the surrounding farmlands. The disease, commonly referred to as “Spanish influenza,” resembles a highly contagious “cold” involving pain, fever, and an intense feeling of sickness. Most patients recover after three or four days; however, doctors state that some patients develop severe complications, such as pneumonia or meningitis, resulting in death.
    “Under these current circumstances, sneezing, spitting, and coughing have turned as dangerous as German poison gas,” said Buchanan Health Commissioner Elmer Tomlinson. “We are taking public hygiene highly seriously.” Mr. Tomlinson asked Buchanan police officers to stop and scold all coughers and sneezers who fail to use handkerchiefs. Furthermore, he instructed local businesses to monitor the use of handkerchiefs by customers and patrons within their establishments. Any owners who fail to comply with this regulation will find their businesses shut down.
    Schools, theaters, motion picture houses, restaurants, churches, and chapels remain open at present. Any ensuing quarantines will be noted in the Sentinel .
    —B U C H A N A N S E N T I N E L , October 6, 1918

 
    UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ....................................
    Chapter 6
    I arrived at May’s front path just as daybreak awakened in a blaze of bright-orange streaks in the eastern sky. A light drizzle cooled my flushed skin. I lifted my face to the tangerine clouds and bathed in the lush sprinkles for a moment of respite, before ducking beneath the covering of the Dovers’ front porch.
    In addition to Liliana and Benjie, the Red Cross volunteers and I had transported six influenza patients to Nela’s house throughout the night. Mrs. O’Conner kept the fireplace and the tea piping hot, and a bounty of blankets warmed the cold.
    Back inside the comfort of May’s house, I sank myself down on her stiff parlor armchair and leaned my head against its cushioned backing. The stench of death and sickness clung to the fibers of my hair, the same way Billy’s cigarette smoke always embedded itself inside my clothes and my hair after he took up the habit.
    “I don’t know what I’d do without