Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3) (13 page)

“Don't be cute.”

“I can't help it.”

“Asshole!” Dr. Reynard stood up and paced along the dark paneled wall of the dining room. “I have more than two hundred corpses we're holding in deep freeze. I have some minor cases of the same disease—we picked those up in Charleston, so I know she was there Saturday night. So were you. We found the hotel on your credit card history.”

“I was just there for college orientation. You can probably find that out, too, since apparently nothing's private anymore.”

“And I have a couple dozen walking corpses. Want to explain that to me?”

“Walking corpses?” Seth asked.

“I'm getting tired of the stupid act, Seth.” Dr. Reynard tapped at her laptop, then turned it to face him.

On the screen, Seth watched a security camera video—black and white, date-stamped, the movements jerky because the camera clearly only took a couple of frames per second.

It was a wide corridor, probably in a hospital, judging by the beds stored against one wall. A longhaired young man in black sunglasses, a white T-shirt and jeans led a group of assorted other people. Something was wrong with how the rest of the group moved—sluggish, dragging their feet. Some of them had huge and obvious wounds in their heads or torsos, which looked like they should have been fatal. They each dragged a black body bag in one hand and held some kind of blunt object—broom handles, broken lighting fixtures—in the other.

“Here's something else you need to explain,” Dr. Reynard said. “Some guy walks into a morgue. He somehow animates a group of dead bodies, and they march out into the street. Later we find the bodies in a heap in an upper-class neighborhood in downtown Charleston. They didn't even bother climbing into their body bags for us.”

“That's pretty crazy,” Seth said. As he watched the looped footage of the dead bodies shuffling through the corridor, his blood turned icy and a knot formed in his guts.

He'd heard once before of somebody who could animate the dead—Seth's own great-grandfather, who had used zombie labor to work his more remote fields. Seth had only recently learned this from his father.

“You know something,” Dr. Reynard said.

Seth just gaped and shook his head.

“Say something,” Dr. Reynard said. “Who is this guy, Seth?”

He used to be one of my ancestors
, Seth thought.
Now he's back in a new body, with a new name.

“I've never seen him before,” Seth told her.

“Bullshit.”

“Who is he?” Seth asked.

“I want you to tell me everything,” she said.

“About what?”

“Here's what I think, Seth. I think Jenny was planning to see how much damage she could really do, how many people she could wipe out at once. And when the heavy Homeland Security presence showed up, you people somehow started this riot as a smokescreen to help her escape. And she slipped away—if not with you, then with him.” She tapped the young man on the screen.

“With him?” Seth asked, feeling alarmed. If this guy really was the reincarnation of the first Jonathan Seth Barrett, then he might be very dangerous. Seth's great-grandfather had been a tyrannical man, feared by his own children and grandchildren.

“Do I have things right so far?” Dr. Reynard asked.

“Definitely not. Jenny would never want to hurt anybody.”

“Except your neighbors here in town. The mayor, the police...a lot of kids from your school. Guys you used to play sports with.” Her eyes narrowed. “She's a mass murderer, Seth. You seem like a decent kid. I can't believe you'd protect someone with so much innocent blood on their hands.”

“Innocent?” Seth snapped. “How would you know? What if it was a lynch mob screaming about witchcraft? What if they tried to kill her, and she was just defending herself?”

“Is that what happened? A lynch mob?” Dr. Reynard drummed her fingers on the table for a minute. “So that's why nobody in town wanted to talk. They didn't want to tell us about their relatives trying to kill a teenage girl. Is that it?”

“It was just an example.” Seth tried to make himself calm down, but the things she'd said about Jenny were getting under his skin.

“A pretty specific example. So your view is that Jenny acted in self-defense?”

Seth took a deep breath to calm himself. He needed to be smart about this. “Jenny didn't do anything.”

“Aren't we a little past that now, Seth?” she asked. “I know Jenny has something deadly. I watched her blood cells destroy healthy cells under a microscope. Honestly, I'm getting sick of all this horror-movie crap. Diseases with no vector. Zombies marching through the streets of Charleston. I want a straight story from you.”

“You wouldn't believe a straight story from me.”

“I'm all ears.” She stared at him, waiting.

After a minute, Seth shrugged. “There's nothing to tell.”

“Fine. You can get charged with two hundred counts of murder along with your girlfriend. I'm pretty sure they have the death penalty in this state.”

“She's not even my girlfriend. She broke up with me last week.”

“Did she?” Dr. Reynard rolled her eyes.

“Seriously. She was mad at me because I'm leaving for college. And that was it.”

“Why doesn't she infect you, Seth? Are you immune? Or can she decide when she's contagious and when she isn't?”

“Infect me with what?”

“The Jenny pox.”

Seth flinched a little at that. How did Heather know those words?

“Talk to me, Seth.”

“You want me to talk?” Seth asked. “I'll talk. You people just ripped through our house for no reason. You come in here and talk to me about zombies? Zombies? And accusing my ex-girlfriend of murder, when everybody knows it was some crazy chemical leak?”

“Come on, Seth—”

“Maybe you didn't check into my family,” Seth said. He leaned forward, pressing his counterattack. “My great-uncle Junius Mayfield is a sitting United States senator. He's not going to like hearing how his niece and her son were attacked in their own home for no reason. If I were you, I'd stop harassing people with your crazy ideas. We can bring the hammer down on you. We can destroy you. Who are you to go to war with my family? You're a nobody.”

Dr. Reynard was deep red and shaking with rage. “You're not going to get away with anything. And neither is Jenny.” She stood, slammed her laptop closed, and tucked it under her arm. “My job is to find and eliminate threats to public health, and that's what I'm going to do. I don't care who you are or who you know. The President has declared this a national security issue. Now go whine about that to your uncle.”

She pushed open one of the double doors and stormed out. “He's all yours,” she told the two guards, who had removed their gas masks. The two of them stepped into the dining room, weapons raised toward Seth. For a moment, he wondered if they were actually going to shoot him.

“Women are crazy, huh?” Seth asked. They didn't respond. “Hey, nice guns. What kind are they?”

The Homeland Security men just stared at him coldly.

***

Later, Seth and his mom watched from the wreckage of their foyer as the federal police vehicles pulled out of their driveway.

“Did they hurt you any more?” his mom asked.

“No.”

“They kept asking me questions about that Morton girl,” she said. “'Where is she? Where did she go? Where do we find her?' Just the same thing over and over.”

“Mine went pretty much the same way,” Seth said.

“I knew that girl was bad news, but I had no idea how terrible she was. What do you think she did, Seth?”

“I think they have the wrong person.”

“Your father and I keep telling you to stay away from her. You'd better listen now. God only knows what crazy things she must be doing to have Homeland Security after her like that.”

“They make mistakes, too,” Seth said. “Jenny's never done anything bad.”

“You're too trusting of people, Seth.” She looked around at the mess of toppled furniture, and she glowered. Then she took her cell phone from her purse.

“Who are you calling?” he asked.

“Silas,” she told him. Silas Deever was the family's personal attorney. “And then your father. And then, maybe Uncle Junius.”

“The guy said it was a national security letter,” Seth said. He didn't want his father—or his great uncle Senator Mayfield—digging into this and finding out exactly why the feds were after Jenny. “That means you can't tell anybody they were here.”

“Like hell I can't,” his mom said, and she started making phone calls.

Seth had a sinking feeling. He wished he could get in touch with Jenny to warn her about how seriously they were searching for her, and how they might kill her the moment they found her. But he still had no idea where she could be. He just hoped she was safe.

When Seth's dad came home, Seth just played dumb—he had no idea why Homeland Security would be searching for Jenny. He kept up the act on the conference call they had with Silas Deever, who advised them that there was little they could do to get compensation for the extensive damages to their house, but he would look into it.

Then Seth's mother took Seth to the hospital to get his nose checked out, though Seth assured her he wasn't hurt badly. By the time they reached the emergency room, his nose wasn't even swollen. Seth's healing powers had fixed him up quickly.

The next morning, Seth decided to call Darcy Metcalf again, since she was the only person who might have any information about Jenny. The girl had claimed to remember nothing, but that was in front of her parents. Maybe she could give Seth some idea of where Jenny had gone.

He'd lost Darcy's cell number along with his Blackberry, though, so he had to look up the Metcalfs' home number in the local phonebook. He dialed, and Darcy's dad answered.

“Can I speak to Darcy, please?” Seth asked.

“Who is this?” her dad barked over the phone.

“This is...” Seth almost gave his own name, then remembered how much Darcy's dad seemed to hate him. “This is...Hank.”

“Hank? Who the hell is Hank? Why are you calling my daughter?”

Seth remembered something Darcy's dad had said at the jail:
She's gonna take that job at the Taco Bell in Vernon Hill, she knows what's good for her.
“This is Hank from Taco Bell,” Seth said.

“Oh, the Taco Bell! Finally.” Then Seth heard him scream: “Darcy! Pick up the damned phone! It's the Taco Bell!”

Darcy picked up another extension. “Hello?”

“Don't screw this up, Darcy,” her dad said. “You need to get your ass a job.”

“
Daddy!
” Darcy said. “He can hear you!”

“Well, it's true, Hank from Taco Bell,” Darcy's dad said. “You hire her, she'll work hard, pregnant or not. She works hard around the house, worked hard in school, up til she got knocked up by that no-good boy—”

“Dad, please!” Darcy said. Her dad finally hung up.

“Darcy, it's Seth Barrett,” Seth said.

“Oh, jeepers,” Darcy said. “What do you want?”

“I need to talk to you.” Seth wondered if Homeland Security was listening to his phone calls. “Can you meet me somewhere?”

“I don't want any part of your witchcraft, Seth Barrett,” Darcy said.

“My what?”

“I know you and Jenny are in league with Satan.”

Seth was confused—Jenny and Darcy had become friends, even had sleepovers together. Now it was like someone had pushed rewind and loaded up an older version of Darcy.

“I want to talk about what happened in Charleston,” Seth said.

“Do you know how I even got there?” Darcy asked. “I can't remember a gosh-blamed thing. And my dad's all angry about it. He says I ran off with you, but I don't remember doing that.”

“We can talk about all that,” Seth said. “So can you meet me?”

“I guess,” Darcy said. “But it has to be somewhere public. And somewhere my dad won't see us together.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “For some reason, he thinks I've been having sex with you.”

“Oh,” Seth said. “Well, just name a place.”

Thirty minutes later, Seth sat in a plastic booth at the Taco Bell in Vernon Hill. He watched Darcy fill out a Taco Bell employment application.

“'Work experience,'” Darcy read. “My dad gives me a lot of work at home, and I've done tons of volunteering for church and things. You suppose that counts?”

“The church stuff might help,” Seth said. “So, what do you remember about this weekend, Darcy?”

“Nothing!” She looked up from the form. “You're supposed to tell me what happened. That's why I'm here. Well, and the job application.”

“I was going to Charleston for college orientation,” Seth said. “You told me you were going to the same college and you needed a ride to orientation.”