Spore (2 page)

Chapter Two

Twenty minutes later, Sean leaned in the archway between his kitchen and living room, glancing often to the trees. They’d picked up a couple more strangers before a deputy arrived to herd them all inside for interviews.

Sean frowned at his kitchen phone, lying disconnected on the counter. He wanted to call Mare, but anything less than a life-or-death emergency would get her into trouble with her asshat boss. And if he did plug the phone back in and call her, the strangers would be clamoring for their chance to suck up his long distance minutes again. According to their small town phone co-op, almost anywhere worth calling was long distance from Pinell, Iowa, and he’d already had to pry three of them off the phone.

Across the room, Sean’s lifelong buddy, Todd Anderson, sat with a pad of paper on the kitchen table and his Boone County Sheriff’s hat on his knee as he talked with the wild-haired woman. Sweat dripped down his cheeks; not surprising, since Todd had probably put on fifty pounds since high school and July temperatures in Iowa hovered between scalding and Hades. Todd smiled thankfully at Nicole as she freshened his iced tea, then returned to interviewing the woman.

The rest of the strangers waited in the living room, wrapped in sheets, like a surreal, multi-generational toga party. They watched SpongeBob tittering on the TV because Sean had grown tired of their squabbling and had taken the remote. The guy with the mole stared sullenly ahead, but at least he had stopped arguing about the house.

As Nicole brushed past Sean with the pitcher of tea and a stack of plastic cups, she nodded her head toward the wild-haired woman talking to the deputy. She whispered, “I think I know her.”

Sean winced. In all the craziness, he’d forgotten to ask anyone their name. “You do?”

“Yeah. No. I mean, I can’t place her face, but I’ve seen her before. I know I have. Maybe she’s an adult student or something?”

“Maybe,” he whispered, nodding. Nic worked at the college and students on a psychedelic bender made at least some sense. “I got that familiar feeling too, about her and the guy with the mole. It’s like I should know him from somewhere.” He met the man’s glowering gaze.
Whoever he is, he definitely gives me the creeps.

Nic looked over her shoulder and forced a smile. “Yeah. Hard to forget a charmer like that.”

Sean nodded. “That other lady says she knows my mom.”

Nicole mouthed, “Weird,” then continued on to the guests.

Sean glanced out at the trees lined up just past his property line—no new arrivals—then smiled at Steffie and her little brother coloring on the laundry room floor. Hot-press illustration panels and markers were scattered around them. Pip, not quite three, had decided he wanted purple fingers. Steffie held up her picture, a house and a pony, and Sean gave her a thumbs up. They were being quiet and good, the illustration board and markers a small price to pay to keep them entertained and safe from the nudists in his living room.

“I wanna know why I get some pizza joint when I call home!” the woman with Todd said, drawing Sean’s attention as she burst to her feet. “And don’t you tell me I misdialed. I called twice!”

Sean didn’t hear Todd’s reply, but the woman crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s not at the bank, either. I called and it’s closed, but today is
supposed
to be the day after Thanksgiving! Instead, it’s summertime! What the hell’s going on?”

The adults in the living room glanced at each other, mumbling about what day it was. None seemed to agree. The old man covered his eyes and turned away, his hands shaking.

The woman’s voice rose with each syllable. “What are you not telling me? Where’s Jeff? Why can’t I call my husband? He’s a very important man and you do not want to piss him off!”

Todd tried to get her to sit again. “Mrs. Howard, please.”

In the living room, Nicole clenched the pitcher to her chest and turned to blink at Sean. “No way,” she managed. “It
can’t
be her. It isn’t possible.”

Howard?
Sean thought, scowling at Todd and the woman.
Jeff Howard? Wasn’t he a bank manager in Boone?

He’d heard of no other Jeff Howard.
But something happened a couple of years ago. A scandal. All over the news. He’d built a house. A new wife and a brand new house, with the insurance—

Sean backed a step toward the kids, shaking his head. Jeff’s first wife—
Cindy? No… Mindy. Wasn’t her name Mindy?
—had had a car accident. She’d totaled the car. And she’d died. Mindy Howard had
died
.

But there she stood, wrapped in his sheet, in his kitchen, arguing with Todd Anderson while two kids colored quietly on his laundry room floor.

Sean sat on a lawn chair and watched a helicopter fly over the trees. He had a piss-warm bottle of hard lemonade in his hand and three empties beside the pile of sheets at his feet. It was maybe ten thirty. On a Sunday morning, no less.

They’re dead,
he thought, taking a sip.
Or they’re batshit crazy. And here comes another one.

The forty-something woman claimed to be Evelyn Fischer. As a teenager, Evelyn had babysat his mother; she’d died thirty years ago, when he was two. The kid almost eaten by Peaches said he was Tobey Dunders, hit by a car about five years ago. And Sean had overheard the deputies mention the skinny teenage girl getting wasted at a barn party in 1974 and suffocating on her own puke.

He didn’t know about the rest. Wasn’t sure he wanted to.
That’s what I get for eavesdropping on the deputies. I find out there are nine…no, ten, dead people in my house who don’t even know they died,
he thought. He took another drink and sighed.
Only two bottles left. Gonna have to run out for more.

Todd had called for additional officers, and Nicole had taken the kids to her sister’s. Sean polished off the bottle and tossed it aside.
Probably the best thing for Nic to do. Wouldn’t want Steffie and Pip hanging out with dead people.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. The whole mess would be easier to accept as a nightmare.

The door opened behind him and someone came out. Sean glanced back to see Todd and two other deputies approaching. He stood, steady, and wondered if it was too hot to get drunk. “So, what’s the deal? What’s next?”

“They all come from that Christmas tree farm?” the tallest deputy asked. Six foot four if he was an inch, he had the sheared-hair and hard-eyed, ass-kicking look that Todd, even on his best days, could never approach. The shiny nameplate above his badge said Hendrix.

“Yes, sir,” Sean said. “Just like that one, there.”

Hendrix nodded toward the trees and the other deputy splashed out to intercept the newest arrival, a dazed nude man who might have been thirty, might have been forty, or anywhere between.

“We’re taking them all to the hospital,” Todd said. “The van’s out front. You’ll get your house back before you know it.”

“Glad I could help,” Sean said, nodding a silent greeting to the nude man as he was led past. “But I’d like to know where they’re coming from and why they’re wandering into my yard.”

“We think they—“ Todd started, but Hendrix cut him off.

“That is none of your concern, Mr. Casey,” Hendrix said, glaring down at Sean.

Sean stretched a little and glared back. At a hair’s breadth shy of six feet, he didn’t like feeling short. “It’s my house, my yard. They’re wearing my sheets for chrissake. I think that qualifies as my concern.”

“They’re wearing paper scrubs now,” Hendrix said. “And, speaking of your house, I have some questions.” He opened a leather-covered notebook and clicked a pen. “There are some rather disturbing images hanging on your walls, Mr. Casey. Torture. Maiming. Desecration of graves. Would you care to explain them?”

You should see the ones in my portfolio,
Sean thought, his smile hardening. “They’re art.”

“I told you, John, he’s a—“ Todd started, but a warning glare from Hendrix silenced him.

“Art? Corpses eating naked women?”

“Actually, that’s a ghoul. Ghouls eat, corpses don’t.”

“You getting smart with me, Mr. Casey?”

“Nope. I’m telling you I’m an illustrator. Black Pawn comics and graphic novels, mostly, but every now and then I do a book or album cover. Did a movie poster once.” Sean shrugged. “I do horror. It keeps food in the fridge.”

Hendrix just stared. “Interesting. Any idea why these…individuals chose to invade your yard, Mr. Casey?”

“I have no idea,” Sean said, shrugging again. “Just my lucky spin on the surreal-o-meter, I guess.” He clenched his fingernails into his palm again until the pain made him unclench. He said calmly, “I don’t know why they came here. This is a
Twilight Zone
episode. Or a nightmare. “

Hendrix showed a ghost of a smile. “Have many nightmares, Mr. Casey?”

Every night, asshole. And today’s gonna be great fodder.
“You my shrink?”

Hendrix’s eyes narrowed, then his radio squawked. He snapped his notebook closed. “We’ll talk again, Mr. Casey.” Hendrix plucked the radio from his belt and walked away, listening.

“Sorry, man,” Todd said, giving Hendrix a furtive glance. “He’s usually not this pissy. I heard he’s having money problems and was gonna do a favor for cash, but instead he’s working OT that’ll mostly get taken by taxes.”

We all have money trouble, I think.
“It’s okay. Any idea why they all wandered into my yard?”

Hendrix had taken his radio around the side of the house, but Todd craned his neck, looking about, before he spoke. “Nothing I can say, not really,” he whispered, “but don’t let Hendrix get to you. It’s been a crazy morning. You’re not the only one to call about naked people wandering around.”

They turned to watch the helicopter bank hard and fly east.

“We’re heading out,” a deputy called from the door.

Todd waved him off. “One last thing,” he said to Sean. “That guy, the one who keeps insisting this is his house…”

“Yeah?”

“He says his name’s Paul Casey. Your dad’s brother.”

“Oh frickin’ great. My dad always said his brother was a shit,” Sean muttered as worry slammed in his gut.
Thought I recognized him from somewhere. Does this mean the dead really did come back?
Uncle Paul had died in a hit and run accident when Sean was a kid, and he barely remembered the guy. His father and Paul had parted ways long before, but his dad still inherited the house after Paul’s death. He had rented out Paul’s place then sold it to Sean after college for next to nothing.

“Then it is his house. Or was. There’s no way he can take it from me, is there?” He unclenched his fists.
Be just my luck he’d boot us out.
“Mare and I can’t afford to lose it right now.”

“Sean…” Todd said, shaking his head.

“I know I draw some weird shit, but I never thought dead people could come back and walk around.”

“They can’t,” Todd said. “Dead’s dead. These folks are impersonators. It’s just a twisted scheme or hoax, or they’ve been taking some weird new psychotic drug.” He took a cleansing breath and resumed his deputy posture. “We’re taking all of them to the hospital to be checked out for drugs, and we’ll run their prints and background checks, warn the families to watch for scams, that sort of thing. Now that we’ve gathered them up, everything will be fine.”

He paused, then said, “You might want to warn your mom, though, that someone’s pretending to be her dead brother-in-law.”

Sean nodded, unconvinced. Mindy Howard didn’t seem like she wanted to trick anyone. She just seemed scared. And a little kid like Tobey surely wasn’t a grifter. “Yeah. Thanks,” Sean said, shaking Todd’s hand. “I’ll tell her. Good to see you. Give Hailey a hug from us.”

“I will. Wish I’d bumped into you under saner circumstances.” His radio squawked and he released Sean’s hand. “Gotta go. It’s been too long. We should get together later, maybe grab a beer or something.”

Sean nodded and followed Todd into the house. Other than a pile of rumpled sheets, dirty foam plates and plastic cups, and a pair of deputies lingering in the living room, the place looked almost normal. It smelled musty though, like a shower desperate for a cleaning.
From all the sweat?
Sean thought as he thanked the deputies and told them goodbye.
Or something else?

Sean frowned out the kitchen window and decided the answers waited out there, in the rows of trees. Or the cemetery beyond the far side of the farm.

Dead people walking from a cemetery. Maybe Hendrix was right. Nightmare or not, this IS the kind of thing I illustrate.

He sighed and went to find his shoes.

Chapter Three

Mindy Howard clasped her hands between her thighs as the police panel van pulled away from the house. A metal bench ran along both sides of the van, and the Pine People, as the deputies were calling them, sat in two rows facing each other. They wore scrubs, paper shoes, and disoriented, confused expressions. An older woman near the back door sneezed.

Mindy wrinkled her nose at the weird, moldy reek. The house had stunk, too.

The old man to Mindy’s left leaned close and whispered, “I ain’t never been arrested in my life,” while the skinny teenage girl to her right merely wept.

“We’re not handcuffed,” Mindy whispered back. “So we’re surely not—“

“We’re in a paddy fucking wagon, you dumb bitch,” the guy across from them muttered.

Mindy stared at him, but held her tongue.

“Please don’t,” the teenage girl said, drawing her knees up to her chest and clenching them to her. “Don’t fight.”

The old man sat straighter and glared at the grumbly guy. “Mind your tongue around these ladies.”

“Any woman that walks around outside naked ain’t a lady,” he replied, sighing and resting the back of his head against the van wall. He closed his eyes. “We’re all headed to processing and a wait in a jail cell as they figure out what to charge us with. Indecent exposure, most likely.” He opened one eye and smiled. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I haven’t done anything else worth getting arrested for.”

“I was just coming home from church. Christmas service,” Evelyn, the older lady at the back, said. She blinked and looked at the others, her lower lip quivering. “This makes no sense.”

The occupants shifted uneasily, barely meeting one another’s gazes. The teenage girl peered over her knees. “I was at a party. Just a party. Now everything looks weird. Skinny TVs and curvy cars and, and…” She lowered her face to her knees again.

The little boy curled against a woman sitting next to him. “I was just riding my bike to the gas station for a pop. Next thing I knew, that guy told me the dog bites and sent me to his house.”

“Harvesting beans,” the old man beside Mindy said. “And then high summer with that little black girl screaming and pointing at me.” He snapped his fingers. “Yeah, just like that.”

“Tubing on the Des Moines River, then I’m drinking iced tea in that dude’s living room. The season’s right, but it’s still fucked up,” a young guy said, looking at Mindy. “You?”

Mindy blushed. “Coming home from shopping on Black Friday. Suddenly I’m naked in a strange man’s backyard.”

“What about you?” the old farmer asked the grumbly guy with the mole.

“Just walking my dog, then I’m back home, only it’s daytime instead of night.”

“It’s not your house,” Mindy said as the van eased to a stop. “The deputy said that guy Sean—“

The doors opened, and everyone turned to see a crew of medical personnel peer in. “Okay, folks,” the man in front said, reaching to help Evelyn out of the van. “Let’s get you checked out so we can figure out what’s going on.”

They’d made her change from scrubs to a hospital gown and Mindy had lost track of how many people had taken her vitals, looked down her throat, or poked and prodded her abdomen. She’d agreed to samples of her hair, fingernails, spit, and sweat. She’d refused a vaginal swab, informing them that last she knew it was still America and no one but her regular doc was looking at her girly bits without a court order. Even now, a nurse repeated her requests for a urine sample. Mindy refused that too, claiming she didn’t have to pee.

Mindy offered an apologetic smile but thought,
I peed at Sean’s, and that was enough, thank-you-very-much. If I told you what I saw, you’d put me in the psych ward and there’s no way you’re going to get me to drink anything, either.
The nurse shrugged and scribbled in a chart as the phlebotomist arrived.

Alone again, Mindy sat on the examination table and picked at the cheery Band-Aid taping down the cotton ball at her elbow. Her blood had been dark purple, not bricky red, she was sure of it, even though the phlebotomist had tried not to let her see.

She peeled off the Band-Aid—she’d always been a quick clotter—and, yep, a reddish purple speck. About the color of grape juice.

Mindy flinched.
Purple again?

Another nurse opened the door and bustled in. “How are we feeling?” she asked, reaching for the blood pressure cuff hanging on the wall beside the exam table.

“Still fine. Still confused,” Mindy said, hiding the Band-Aid in her fist while offering her arm for the umpteenth BP check of the day. “Getting tired of sitting here, though. What’s going on? Where’s Jeff? Have you found him?”
Will he even bother to come?

“I don’t know,” the nurse said, pumping up the cuff. “The sheriff is supposed to locate everyone’s relatives. I’m not sure who’s been found and who hasn’t. As for the rest, they’re still investigating. I’m sure someone will come to talk to you.” She finished checking blood pressure, looked in Mindy’s throat, then patted her knee and left.

Time dragged, interrupted by medical personnel wanting to poke, prod, and measure her over and over. No TV, no magazine, nothing but an exam room, a jar of Q-tips, another of tongue depressors, and a rack of ear-exam cones to entertain her.

Somewhere, out past the door, Mindy heard weeping.

She pushed herself off the exam table.
I’m tired of waiting for Jeff to decide to get me. We only live a few blocks away, I’ll just walk home.
She found another hospital gown in the cupboard over the sink and pulled it around her, covering her back half. Taking a breath, she opened the door and peered out.

Doctors and a couple of deputies stood together talking softly as nurses and technicians moved from one exam room to the next. One nurse immediately noticed Mindy.

“You need to wait inside,” she said, already continuing on.

“Finally have to pee,” Mindy replied with an embarrassed smile. “Is there a ladies room…”

The nurse pointed past the doctors and deputies. “Third door on the right. Write your name on one of the cups, please, and after you’ve given a sample, put it in the cubby behind the little door. Then you come right back, okay?”

Not likely,
Mindy thought, but nodded. “Sure.”

Mindy scooted toward the doctors and deputies, ready to claim a trip to the ladies room as an excuse for her presence, but none noticed her scurry past. A half-full laundry rack and an empty gurney stood in the hall a couple of doors past the restroom, but no other people. Inside the restroom and the door locked behind her, Mindy took a deep breath and tried to settle her hammering heart.
I’m out. I’m free,
she thought. Then she realized she really did have to pee.

She ignored the cups on the back of the toilet as she sat to relieve her bladder. Afterward, she noticed that her urine was a delicate pale pink.

At least it doesn’t stink this time. What’s going on? Are all of us like this?
she thought as she peeked into the cubby. The two cups inside held raspberry colored fluid. The cubby smelled like mold, not urine.

She flinched. Her urine at Sean’s had been a dark berry color and had left the same stink lingering in the air, despite her spraying air-freshener everywhere. She closed the door with a shaking hand and pressed down her panic as she took a single step to the sink and turned on the hot water.

Can’t be happening,
she thought as she squooged a third splurt of soap onto already sudsy hands.
My blood isn’t purple and I don’t pee pink. Jeff’s just busy at home and everything’s fine.

After rinsing and drying her hands, she flushed the toilet without looking at its contents, and settled herself before opening the restroom door. Two doctors walked past, and she heard the closer one ask, “How can they be alert and functional and in apparent good health? It’s in their blood, their urine, the space between their damned cells. This much fungus, they should all be dead.”

“I don’t know,” the other said, “but they need to be quarantined, just in case. CDC’s on the way.”

Oh shit, oh hell,
Mindy thought, easing the door closed again. She pressed her spine against it and took one deep breath after another.
Quarantine? For what? Some stupid fungal infection that turned my blood purple? I can’t let them lock me up, but what can I do? I’m in a hospital gown. No money, no ID, no anything. I don’t even have shoes!

She scrunched her eyes closed and allowed herself one moment of trembling panic before she set it aside.
I’m fine. Just fine. Screw these doctors, I have to GO.
She took a breath and opened the door again. Head held high, she strode into the hall as if she belonged there, snatched an armload of scrubs off the laundry cart, and kept walking until she found an unlocked room.