One Ghost Per Serving (32 page)

“Good. Okay. I’ll be outside.”

“Is this really a good time to relive your youth on the jungle gym?” Rex said, following.

“As good a time as any.” Eric pushed up the window, climbed out, then closed it behind him. He jogged to an open Nidus delivery truck, which housed dozens of pallets of snack boxes. He found the manifest in the cab up front. There weren’t just snack boxes, but pudding, too.

“Nidus Pudding,” Eric read from the manifest. “
The only pudding clinically proven to stop diarrhea
,” he said in a quote tone, remembering the slogan. He opened one of the pudding pallets.

There was a swath of product brochures on top of the pallet. The brochures folded out into three sections: testimonials from doctors and from customers, nutritional information and recipes, and on the last flap, a vintage ad – in the way a DeLorean or a Tab ad was vintage. It featured a boy, maybe eight, with thick hair in a bowl cut and a suit that looked custom made for him. He held a pint of pudding. The text read,
I Suffer from Diarrhea, And the Only Thing That Stops It Is Nidus Pudding!

DZ had spun and jumped onto a merry-go-round in the playground, and Angry Guy kept trying to grab a bar to stop it. Eric strode up, reached out as he stepped forward, grabbed one of the rails, then pulled the thing to a complete stop. DZ stumbled. Eric yanked him off the merry-go-round by the shirt and guided him in the direction he was already going until DZ hit the ground. Eric put his knee on DZ’s chest.

“I should kill you right now.” Eric pressed his hand into DZ’s windpipe. “And who the hell are
you
?” he said to Angry Guy.

“Nathan Watling.” He put out his hand for Eric to shake, which didn’t happen.

“You work with him, Watling?” Angry Guy’s last name sounded like a bird to Eric, spoken by an announcer in hushed golf commentator tones: ‘The National Audubon Society’s Christmas Watling count is underway, with volunteers following specific routes in search of the elusive blue-throated Watling, last spotted here in 1968.’

Nathan cleared his throat. “I’m the VP of operations for –”

“Cynosure,” Eric said.

“Yeah.” Nathan winced, like he was ashamed.

“Do you know who I am?” Eric said from his kneeling position.

Nathan nodded and looked at the ground. “Eric Snackerge.”

Eric took DZ’s aviators from his front shirt pocket, stood, then crushed the glasses under his heel. It felt petty, but it felt good, too.

“You feel nervous?” Eric said to DZ. “Or maybe you feel like you ingested some kind of microbe. Either way, you could be in danger of watery, non-bloody diarrhea.”

DZ grimaced. “Don’t talk to me about diarrhea!”

“Why,” Eric said, “because your family forced you to be the face of Nidus anti-diarrheal pudding in their ads?”

DZ sucked in a breath and retreated, like the words physically hurt him. “How do you know that?”

Eric had actually just guessed that the kid in the Nidus ad was DZ. He remembered that DZ, before he knew who DZ was, had mentioned that Nidus was a family company. And Nidus was the parent company of Quantal Foods.

“Nidus Monolithics is your family’s company,” Eric said. When DZ didn’t answer immediately, Eric pressed harder. “Isn’t it?”

“Yes. YES!”

Eric lowered and softened his voice. “You must have had a hard time at school.”

DZ’s eyes glistened. He turned his head all the way to one side. “My father made me star in their TV ads from age six to twelve. Everyone called me
Davinrrhea
. For years.”

Eric nodded. “That’s why you go by DZ.”

“I was tormented every day, but did my father care? Did he even listen? I was good for sales, so he kept using me in the ads.” DZ’s nose was running but he didn’t wipe it off. “It didn’t matter how miserable I was.”

“The only thing that mattered was sales,” Eric said, suddenly feeling like He Who Cleans House from group, and wondered, when did he start calling it ‘group’ like it was a familiar thing?

“I can’t get away from them!” DZ screamed, spit flying. Eric and Nathan jumped an inch. DZ reached across his lower back and pulled out a stubby flashlight-looking object. With a jerk of his wrist, the object extended out to a glowing sword. DZ hit it flat against his own leg and it made a recorded clanging sound. Then he held it out to Eric.

“Look,” Nathan said to DZ while pointing at the sky. “A flying robot!”

DZ looked. Eric grabbed the sword and threw it behind him.

“He
loves
robots,” Nathan said.

Eric reached into his pocket and took out the length of rope. He dragged DZ to a sitting position against the merry-go-round and pinned his legs. DZ yanked up his shirt sleeve, revealing a fingerless glove with built-in hand claws. He swiped out and skinned Eric’s shoulder. Eric pulled his arms and twisted DZ’s wrist to the side until he yelped. Then Eric ripped off the Velcro glove and threw it off to the side. He forced DZ’s arms behind him and tied his hands to one of the rails.

“You’re rich,” Eric said.

“Very.”

“But it’s their money.
His
money.”

DZ clenched his jaw. “I spend it and I spend it and I
spend
it –”

Nathan interrupted. “He does. He spends the hell out of it.”

“ – But there’s always more,” DZ said. “It just keeps coming. I can’t get rid of it.”

“That’s horrible,” Eric said. “I’m so sorry.”

DZ either didn’t get the heavy sarcasm or chose to ignore it.

“You got your group of enchanters to embed the commerce spirits in the Quantal Organic Yogurt so you could still be rich, but from your own money,” Eric said. “Am I close?”

“Exactly!” DZ said, blinking fast.

“But you didn’t care who you hurt,” Eric said. “My life, for example, meant nothing to you.”

“I don’t even
know
you,” DZ said.

“Oh.” Eric laughed. “Then it’s okay.”

“Right!” DZ said brightly.

Eric headed back into the school to find Taffy. He hoped she was still safely ensconced in the lab. Nathan followed him.

“Hey, uh, Eric –”

“
Mister
Snackerge
to you, asshole.”

“I … Look, I know that you’re mad, and justifiably so –”

“You’re damn right, VP.”

“But see, that’s the thing. I don’t want to be VP anymore. At least, not with Cynosure.”

Eric glanced over his shoulder at Nathan but kept walking. He reached the window of the lab and pushed it up.

“Taffy!”

The room was empty. Eric cursed under his breath. He checked around the room just in case. After the cafeteria, he wouldn’t be surprised to see her hiding under something.

“Taffy!”

Nathan climbed in through the window. “I want to start my own promotional firm.”

Eric snorted. “Really? Cynosure not corrupt enough for you?”

“No, it’s the opposite. I –”

Eric went out into the hallway and immediately flattened himself against the wall so he wouldn’t be run over by the people pushing through the hall.

“I want to start a promotions company based on strict ethical controls,” Nathan yelled from three feet away where he stood plastered against the wall.

“I don’t care!” Eric yelled back.

Eric put up a knee to block a janitor who had yogurt all over his face and a bad rash on his neck, then tried moving down the wall toward the cafeteria. “Taffy!”

“Sweepstakes, contests, games – all meticulously audited and monitored,” Nathan yelled, and guarded his face against a female teacher who was grasping for him.

“So what?” Eric inched sideways. The floor of the hallway was littered with crushed snack boxes. Kids and adult staff trampled them and skidded on them and picked them up to eat them. They wiped the yogurt off the floor and licked their hands.

“I want you to work with me!” Nathan yelled, even louder.

“You must be joking.” Eric yelled.

“No!”

Eric reached the cafeteria and called out for Taffy again. She darted out the door into the hall and layered herself against the wall. “I think I found to a way to neutralize the spirits,” she said. “Who’s your friend?”

“He’s not my friend,” Eric said.

“His future business partner!” Nathan yelled.

The hall had cleared out and was quiet. Eric found this even more troubling.

“Why is he yelling?” Taffy said.

Eric shook his head.

“Anyway,” Taffy continued. “I need to get back to the lab. I can do one snack box at a time, but I think it’s too late. This infection, it’s not host-to-host, right?”

Eric squinted. “I don’t think so. It’s more like yogurt-to-host, or whatever you would call that. One person can’t spread it to another person, I don’t think. But
his
promotional company –” he pointed a finger at Nathan, “is deploying this infected yogurt to high-traffic locations.”

“I didn’t –” Nathan stammered.

“Stadiums, schools, any place with lots of people,” Eric continued, keeping focused on Nathan, “and this is just the first school. It doesn’t spread by interaction, but the source is getting deployed to more and more locations, so it’s spreading fast and we have to make sure it stops here.”

“Phase 3,” Nathan said, grim.

Taffy leaned against the wall. “I tested the yogurt from the boxes. Whatever is in there is resistant to high temperature and fire, freezing, chemical disinfectants, and desiccation. To do more, I would need stool cultures with acid-fast staining.”

“Taffy, no. It makes me nervous to –”

“I promise I’m careful,” she said.

He reached out and took her hand. It was small, and calloused on the pads. She was still so young, but he knew when she was ten years older, it would feel like she was twelve just a few days before – an accordion of time, squeezing and expanding. He didn’t want to keep snapping awake, heart racing, in a state of panic about time passing and how he was living his life. He wanted to be a better example for her, not a cautionary tale of what
not
to do.

He reluctantly let her hand go. “I have to go back outside. I left someone tied to a playground ride.”

Taffy widened her eyes. “Is he wearing a shirt with a guitar on it? If so, he’s been there,” she glanced at her gigantic watch, “for at least sixteen hours.”

Eric tilted his head at Taffy and narrowed his eyes at her. “No, it’s a different guy.”

She shrugged. “Good. Fine.”

“I’m coming with you,” Nathan said.

“Why do I have to have so many hop-ons?” Eric said.

Taffy heard him and said, “Your gastrointestinal tract has millions of –”

Eric narrowed his eyes.

“Right,” she said, with a brief smile.

Eric charged back to the playground and Nathan jogged to keep up with him.

“He’s untying the rope!” Nathan said. DZ was leaning over in a standing position, removing the last of the rope knots. Eric vowed to work on his knot-tying skills and started to run. A loud motor sound buzzed from the copse of trees just to the side of the playground. A tiny helmeted figure on an ATV roared up in front of DZ, who hopped on the back. They zipped away.

“That was Cyril, his intern and valet,” Nathan explained to Eric. “So, listen, I’d really like to sit down with you for a few minutes and talk about what –”

“I’m not going to discuss this with you,” Eric said.

“Discuss what?” Nathan said innocently.

“The job offer,” Eric said, distracted.

“You mean the job offer that comes with a competitive base salary and profit sharing?”

“Yeah, that. After what you guys did, I’d rather work for a warlord.”