One Ghost Per Serving (36 page)

“Wait, taking it out on – what are you talking about?” Eric said.

“What are
you
talking about?” Willa said.

“Uh, stopping someone else’s plan and helping the people in the airport.”

“Is that what you think it is? Helping people? Oh, Loris.” She had used her pet name for him.

“Hang on,” Eric said. “Are you thinking that I’m going to –”

“Unleash some kind of bioattack in the local airport?” Willa said. “Kinda looks that way.”

Eric laughed, then wondered how the hell he was going to actually explain enough to get her to do it. He should have written a proposal first.

“You think it’s
funny
?”

“Have we met?” he said, rhetorically. “Because you seem to think I’m a totally different person.”

“What am I
supposed
to think?”

Eric glanced back to where Nathan and the others were sitting around a table.

“I don’t know, that I’m the same person?” Then he thought about it. Was he the same person? “Never mind,” he said. “I’m not doing anything like that. If you turn on KWTA, you’ll see Larson Hark –”

“The same guy who wrote those articles about you?” Willa asked.

“Yes. You’ll see him reporting live from the regional airport, which is basically in lockdown because everyone there is acting crazy. I know exactly why they’re acting crazy, and we can fix it.”

“We?”

“Taffy and I. And, I hope, you. That’s why I asked you about the HVAC in the airport.”

Eric switched over to Taffy when the chat beeped, then set up 3-way communication.

“Dad, we did it. Hi Mom. Are you going to help us distribute this through the air conditioning system?” Taffy asked, and Eric knew they had Willa on their side.

After a moment of hesitation, Willa nodded. “I have no idea what either of you are talking about, but yes.”

Taffy pumped her fist then ran out of the frame, popping back in to say, “We’ll have it ready in a few minutes.”

“Can you meet us in front of the airport?” Eric asked Willa.

“Sure.”

At the Jamesville Regional Airport, Eric, Willa, and Taffy watched Larson Hark struggle to avoid getting trampled as he narrated what was happening around him.

“What’s Mr. Chicken doing?” Willa said.

“Mr. Chicken?” Eric had an unwanted flashback to the law firm partner.

“You know, Don Knotts in
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken
?” Willa made a karate chop move with both arms then looked at him expectantly.

He shook his head, having no idea what she was doing.

“I don’t do it justice.” She waved it off. “I know it’s from a thousand years ago, but he’s hilarious.”

“We should watch it,” Eric said, almost afraid to suggest it.

Taffy handed Willa the box. “It’s dry, like dust.”

“Can you do it?” Eric said.

Willa took the box. “I can probably access the mechanical room. We worked on a series-counterflow arrangement for them just a few days ago.”

Eric and Taffy cocked their heads and squinted.

“To minimize energy use?” Willa said.

Eric and Taffy feigned understanding of Willa’s ‘clarification’ through mostly unintelligible murmurs.

“Let’s sync our watches,” Eric said.

Taffy rolled her eyes.

“Do it, Taffy!” Eric said.

They checked their respective watches. Willa left for the mechanical room. Rex phased inside the airport and opened a side stairwell door for Eric and Taffy.

“Where’s Nathan?” Eric said.

“He stayed at the school,” Rex said. “They started a group therapy session for him.”

All of the concessions and stores had lowered their metal security doors, most of which were severely dented from the infected people pounding or jumping into them in their attempt to get back in.
Those who weren’t slamming against the metal security doors were mobbing the ticket desks or fighting over scraps of the snack boxes like crows. The halls and gates were strewn with abandoned bags, luggage, and strollers. The infected looked feral, pale. They sweated to the point where the fronts of their shirts were wet. The whites of their eyes were red with burst capillaries. They were either standing still, mouths open in a long, drawn-out, and low-pitched howl, or bursting into disconcertingly fast sprints.

Eric had tied Josh to a bar behind a reservation desk, but Josh seemed to react to the yogurt by sleeping, so Eric doubted if he even noticed. Josh looked terrible: his skin was clammy, his breathing hoarse and labored, and when Eric opened one of Josh’s eyelids, his pupils were dilated, like the eye doctor had given him drops for an exam.

Larson Hark was curled up into a fetal position in front of Jamesville News & Books. His camera operator was nowhere to be seen. Taffy headed toward a small alcove that used to house the pay phones, crouched on top of a work desk, and watched. Eric ran to Hark, tossed him over his back, and ran him back to the wall where Taffy was. Hark lashed out in a series of ineffectual punches until Eric pinned his arms back and Taffy slapped him.

“Listen, Hark!” She sighed at what she just said, then almost reluctantly added, “We have information for you.”

This calmed him somewhat, but he still flailed. “Who are you!” he said in a voice that suggested he was minutes from a nervous breakdown. Taffy slapped him again.

“That’s enough, Taffy,” Eric said, holding up a hand to her. He looked at Hark. “We have information for you to give your viewers.”

Hark breathed in short, hitching breaths.

“My … viewers?” Eric thought that if Larson Hark was reduced to a primordial ooze, he would still react to the word ‘viewers.’

“That’s right,” Eric said, with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Your viewers. They’re watching you, just like they’ll be reading you tomorrow. And you have to tell them that there was an outbreak of a food-borne pathogen –” Eric glanced at Taffy, who nodded, “– but that it’s under control.”

Hark gazed with horror at a woman hopping great distances down the hall.

Eric shook Hark’s shoulders. “Never mind them! We’re going to fix this.”

“Tell them –” Hark started, looking back to Eric.

“Good. Tell your viewers that they should not, under any circumstances, eat Quantal Organic Yogurt, in single containers or in Quantal snack boxes. Now, what are you going to tell your viewers?”

Hark shuddered. “That, um … there was an outbreak?”

“Of a food-borne pathogen,” Taffy spurred him.

“Of a food-borne pathogen,” Hark watched Taffy like he was a student. “But it’s under control. And … and …”

Eric shook him again.

“Oh!” Hark started. “And that people should not eat Quantal Organic Yogurt, whether in a single container or in a Quantal-branded snack box.”

“Perfect,” Eric said.

“Hey, you’re Eric Snackerge,” Hark said, becoming a little more lucid.

“Yeah.”

“I – did my article – did that – I’m sorry if it caused you any trouble. I was just –”

“It turned out to be helpful,” Eric said, being nice, even though Hark’s articles were full of misinformation.

Larson Hark straightened his tie, smoothed his hair, and pinched his cheeks. He stood and tucked in his shirttail, smoothed out the front of his pants and shirt, and did a vocal warm-up.

“I’m ready.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t stand in the middle of the hall this time,” Taffy suggested.

Hark looked side to side and in the distance as though he had lost something. “Where’s Vanessa?”

‘Who’s Vanessa?” Eric thought it was Hark’s dog so he looked low to the floor.

“My camera operator!” Hark’s face turned red.

Taffy hopped down. “I’ll do it.”

“Taffy –”

“We’ll record over there.” She pointed to an empty corner in a nearby gate. “I don’t want him to stroke out or anything.”

After Hark finished his “special urgent message to the loyal and good-looking KWTA viewers of Jamesville,” Eric called Willa.

“Now,” he said.

The air started to blow through the vents. Eric could barely make out the particle dust, but he could see it from a different angle with the light behind it. After a few minutes, the infected crowd began to slow down.

Some of the people sat on the floor with a thud, and every one of them was soon surrounded with a corona of white particle dust that rose to the ceiling then filled the airport as far as Eric could see. The particles vibrated with a crackling sound, expanded to white orbs the size of softballs, then exploded in a shower of spores, coating everyone and everything with a material similar to dandelion pollen or vacuum cleaner dust, only white.

“Eric Snackerge,” the intercom said, in a calm and accentless female voice. “Eric Snackerge, please report to a nearby courtesy phone. Eric Snackerge.”

Eric searched for Taffy and found her just behind the door to the electrical room. She was the only one not coated in spores, thanks to her prescient decision to hide there. She brushed lint off her shoulder.

“Show off,” Eric said, wiping the spores from his eyelashes and off his face.

“Dad, pick up the courtesy phone already.”

He picked up the phone on the wall.

“What are you wearing?” Willa said.

“Commerce spirit,” Eric said. “You?”

A few minutes later, Willa exited an unmarked door and waded through a foot of spores on the floor. Eric marveled how his wife and daughter were totally untouched, so he took Willa by the waist and wrestled her to the floor until her hair was covered in it. He pinned her wrists.

“Why are you going to Indonesia?”

She furrowed her brow. “How do you know that?”

He didn’t say anything. He was enjoying being on top of her and wished they were alone.

“You went through my desk!”

“I was looking for something about the sale of the house,” Eric said. After a moment, he asked, “Who was the buyer, by the way?”

She sighed. “Uh … Anemochore? An LLC.”

Eric placed it in his memory. “Ah.”

“You know what that is?”

“The promotional company that started this mess, they’re a wholly-owned subsidiary of Anemochore, which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nidus Monolothics.”

At her expression, which didn’t show recognition, Eric clarified: “The douchenozzle who sent us the mailers?”