Alexander Death (The Paranormals, Book 3) (6 page)

“Why's everybody so interested in my hands?” Radiance asked. “Do I have some freaky disease or what?”

“Let me have a look, and then we might know something.” Heather gently unwrapped the bandaging and removed the padding underneath.

The girl's fingers were covered in thick, leaking blisters, swollen pustules, and dark, knotted tumors at her knuckles. The combination of symptoms did indicate Fallen Oak syndrome.

“Do you have any other infected areas?” Heather asked.

“Just my hands.”

“Did you touch anything unusual? Come into contact with any strange people or animals?”

“I was at the big show last night,” Radiance said. “You know, the festival? I must have touched a lot of people. Made out with one dude. And then the riot, that was a lot of people running into each other.”

“Does anything in particular stand out?”

Radiance looked at the floor. “I don't remember much, man. I was pretty much wasted last night. Like everybody else, you know what I mean?”

“Were you drinking?”

“Yeah...stuff like that.”

“We're trying to track the spread of a certain pathogen,” Heather said. “So any information you can give me would be a big help.”

“Is it serious?” Radiance looked at her hands. “Am I gonna die from this? Seriously, you have to tell me.”

“It looks like you'll be fine,” Heather said. “But I need some samples.” She opened her field kit and took out a cotton swab. “Can you hold still for me?”

“Whatever,” Radiance said.

Heather took swabs from the running infections on each of the girl's hands, dropping the Q-tips into test tubes for later study.

“I have to ask whether you encountered a particular person,” Heather said. “An eighteen-year-old girl. Very skinny. Long black hair. Blue eyes. Named Jenny. Does that bring up any memories for you.”

“Oh. Her.”

“You remember her?”

“Yeah...” Radiance looked around nervously, fidgeting in the hospital bed. “I do.”

“How did you come into contact with her?”

“She's the one with the disease?”

“Possibly.”

“Well, it was crazy,” Radiance said. She looked Heather in the eyes. “You know, I'm totally nonviolent. I really am. I don't even eat meat.”

“Okay. But...?”

“But this girl—it's like we all went crazy.”

“Could you be more specific?”

“This girl was at the middle of everything. That's how the riot really started, you know? Everybody attacking her.”

“Why did everybody attack her?”

“Because....” Radiance was looking at the floor again. “Because somebody told us to.”

“Who? And why?”

“I don't know
why,
man. It was just like a voice from above. A voice from the heavens. Saying this girl, you know, you have to stop this girl.”

“Jenny?”

“If that’s her name, yeah.”

“Stop her from what?”

“Stop her from, like, evil. It's hard to explain.”

“And then what happened?”

“Then everybody went after her.”

“Just like that?” Heather asked. “A voice from somewhere told you to attack her, and everybody listened?”

“You don't understand. Everybody was scared shitless, man, and it all like focused on this one girl.”

“You're right, I don't understand that.”

“It's like she was the
problem
, man. And stopping her was the
solution
.”

“The solution to what?”

Radiance shook her head, setting several dreadlocks swinging. “It doesn't make sense now. But it did then.”

“Did you attack her?”

“Everyone did.”

“With your hands?”

Radiance looked down at her infected, swollen hands, and she said nothing.

“Then what happened?” Heather asked.

“It was just craziness. Everybody attacking everybody. One big, violent clusterfuck. For no reason at all.”

“But you say the riot started with everybody attacking her?”

“Yeah. Then it spread into just total insanity. Does any of that make sense to you?”

“I can't say it does,” Heather said.

“It's so not like me,” Radiance said. “Really. I don't believe in violence, ever. You have to use visualization and stuff if you want to make the world better.”

“Were you trying to make the world better by attacking her?”

“In a weird way that totally doesn't make sense when I try to explain it,” Radiance said. “Yeah. It seemed like she was the evil, and everything would be so much better if we just got rid of her.”

“What happened to the girl after you hit her?”

“I don't know. Lost her in the crowd, everybody trying to attack her. Then people were attacking me and I fought back. That's all I really remember. Then I woke up with this shit this morning—” Radiance held up her hands. “So I came to the hospital.”

“You didn't have these symptoms last night?”

“Maybe I did. I was pretty out there, you know? I'm just saying, I really noticed them this morning.”

“Okay. We're going to keep monitoring you, Radiance. The doctors here will keep treating your hands, and we'll see how it goes.”

“The doctors here? What do you mean? Where are you from?”

“The Centers for Disease Control.”

“Oh, fuck.” Radiance touched her hand to her forehead, then looked at her hand, shuddered, and pulled it away from her face. “I'm totally fucked, aren't I?” she whispered.

“There's no reason to think that at this point,” Heather said. “I think if the infection had been fatal, you would have died by now. You look to be in good health, based on your chart here. Hopefully these will heal up soon.” Heather closed her kit and picked it up.

“And what if they don't?” Radiance asked.

“Then we'll treat it more aggressively,” Heather said. “We're monitoring this closely, Radiance. You're in good hands.” Heather wanted to bite back those words the moment she said them.

“Oh, very funny.” The hippie girl looked down at her diseased hands.

“We'll talk again soon,” Heather said. “I'll keep you updated as we learn more information.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Radiance said. She continued staring at her hands while Heather left.

The other patients who'd been isolated in this room fit similar patterns. They were mostly students who'd been caught up in the riot. They had symptoms of Fallen Oak syndrome, almost exclusively on their hands and arms. When pressed, a few of them admitted to attacking a girl meeting Jenny's description. The rest of them fell silent and refused to give Heather solid answers about it, clearly ashamed of themselves.

Heather left with plenty of test tubes of infection samples. She would send them to the lab in Atlanta. If this was truly Fallen Oak syndrome, the lab would find no pathogen at all.

A deadly disease with no identifiable vector. The walking dead. A riot that seemed to have begun with people attacking Jenny Morton, under orders from an unknown person.

Heather was beginning to miss the days she'd spent tracing the cholera epidemic in Haiti. Though politics had forced them to obscure the results of that study, too, at least the basic facts had made sense to Heather and the other researchers.

These events in South Carolina were starting to look more and more like the supernatural, and Heather didn't like that at all.

Ashleigh and Tommy rode fast through the night, stopping only to refuel the bike and to eat at a Waffle House outside Greensboro, Georgia, since nothing else was open that late at night. They devoured plates of omelets, hash browns and biscuits with gravy, to the amazement of their waitress. Both of them were drained from the massive energy it had taken to incite the riot. They needed sleep, but Ashleigh insisted on putting hours between them and Charleston before they rested.

She clung to his bike as the interstate rolled away beneath them. The road was nearly deserted, except for occasional clusters of eighteen-wheeler trucks ferrying cargo through the early hours of the morning.

Ashleigh tried to imagine what must have happened to Jenny. The mob had closed in around Jenny, attacking her from every direction. Naturally, Jenny would do her thing and unleash a plague on the crowd in order to survive. This time, the CDC and Homeland Security and the National Guard would all be waiting, thanks to that epidemiologist Dr. Reynard, who Ashleigh had played like a mark at a carnival.

Maybe they would just kill Jenny, but maybe they would capture her and keep her locked up for testing. Ashleigh didn’t mind if Jenny was dead, but she really preferred her alive, imprisoned and suffering for a long, long time. If Jenny died, then she might reincarnate somewhere, and Ashleigh would have no idea where to find her.

Ashleigh felt the glow of victory even in her deep exhaustion. Now she was free to proceed with her own life.

They finally stopped riding at sunrise, and they checked into a “Heartache Motel” in Tupelo, Mississippi. Ashleigh supposed the motel’s name was as close as the owners could come to ripping off an Elvis song without getting sued.

Tommy led the way into the small motel room, which smelled like a hamster cage. The air conditioning unit chugged in the window, and a streak of putrid green color stained the wall and carpet underneath it. A couple of faded Elvis posters were framed on the wall.

“Nice place.” Ashleigh tossed Darcy Metcalf’s huge purse into one chair. “Reminds me of the Ritz-Carlton in Manhattan.”

“I’m running low on cash,” Tommy said. “I’ll have to rob somebody soon. Unless you have any?”

Ashleigh had a PayPal debit card worth just over two hundred thousand dollars, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. “I’m sure you’ll come up with some money,” she told him. She took his hand and gave him her best smile. Her touch didn’t have as much effect on him as it did on most people, which made him harder to control, but he was still useful to her.

“Just have to find a place without security cameras.” Tommy flopped back on the bed, and it let out a painful rusty squeak. “Maybe some ratbag gas station.”

“Or destroy the security tape before you leave,” Ashleigh said.

“Huh. Good idea.” He rubbed his head, watching her.

Ashleigh looked at herself in the mirror. She possessed Esmeralda’s body, which was a huge step up from inhabiting Darcy Metcalf’s pregnant, farting form. Esmeralda had long, attractive legs, a decent body, a very pretty face. With some makeup and new clothes, Ashleigh could really make this work.

“Hey, Ashleigh?” Tommy said.

“Yes?” She gave him another cheerful smile.

“I was wondering if…?”

“What? Spit it out, boy.”

“I was thinking maybe I could hang out with Esmeralda for a while?”

Ashleigh wanted to scowl at him, but she kept the smile frozen on her face. “Oh, you want to talk to her?”

“Yeah. Just check on her, you know?”

“Of course.” Ashleigh lay on the bed beside him. “Do we have to do it tonight?”

“Yeah, I want to.”

Ashleigh sighed. She could feel Esmeralda at the back of her mind, bound up by the golden threads of Ashleigh’s love. She had no intention of letting the girl out again, which could give Esmeralda a chance to change her mind about letting Ashleigh’s spirit ride around inside her.

Still, she needed to pacify Tommy. She might as well do it now, while he had deep purple patches under his eyes and would probably pass out anytime.

“Okay, Tommy. Just give me a minute.” Ashleigh closed her eyes and laid her head on the pillow. She needed to sleep, too.

After a few seconds, she opened her eyes and smiled. “Tommy!”

“Is that you?” Tommy cupped her chin in his hand.

“Yeah, Ashleigh’s asleep,” Ashleigh said.

“Are you okay with all of this?” Tommy asked. “Having her inside you?”

“Oh, yeah. I love Ashleigh.” She moved closer to him, so that their bellies and hips were pressed together. Then she slid her hand around the back of his neck. “And I love you, too. I missed you.”

“Me, too.” He kissed her, and she let herself enjoy it for a while. He cupped her breasts in his hands, and Ashleigh slid one hand under his shirt to feel his hard, warm stomach. Tommy was definitely hot, and she needed a little fun.

Ashleigh sat up and stripped off her shirt while he watched with low, drowsy eyelids. Then she hiked up his shirt to his armpits, meaning to undress him, but he didn’t raise his arms.

“Come on, Tommy,” she said. “Help me out here.”

He didn’t move. She looked at his face again, and his eyes were closed. She kissed his mouth again to see if that would wake him, but he didn’t stir.

“Tommy? Are you asleep?”

He didn’t answer.

“Loser,” she snorted. Then she climbed out of bed to grab a hot shower before sleep.