Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) (6 page)

The screen door squeak meant someone was
coming inside, and they hadn’t bothered knocking or announcing
themselves.

Footsteps approached her through the dark
dining room. Adelia couldn’t see anything through the folded wooden
dressing screen that served as divider between kitchen and dining
room.

“Who’s there?” she called.

The wooden screen clattered as it folded
aside, and the intruder smiled as he stepped into Adelia’s kitchen.
He was a young white man, with black hair and strange gray eyes the
color of rainclouds. He had a couple days’ stubble on his face. She
didn’t recognize him, so he wasn’t from around town. He wore a wide
grin that unsettled her.

“Get out of my house!” Adelia pushed herself
to her feet.

“I will,” he said. “But I’m hungry.” He
crossed to the kitchen window, sniffing. “That’s sweet potato pie,
isn’t it?” He leaned over the orange pie and took a deep sniff,
closing his eyes. “It’s got cinnamon, doesn’t it? And brown sugar.
I can smell it. They didn’t serve nothing like this in Bent
River.”

Adelia eased over to the fridge and picked up
her broom. It was old but solid, cut from hickory. If she could
crack him across the back of the head, he’d be out. Or, at least,
he’d be slowed down enough that she could hit him a few more
times.

She stepped toward him and raised the broom
handle above her head.

He opened his eyes.

“Oh, no,” he said. He jumped toward her. She
swung the broom, but he caught it easily in his hand and snatched
it away. He hurled it like a spear into the dining room. Adelia
backed away, but he grabbed both her hands.

That was when Adelia saw he was the
Devil.

When she was a little girl in Grand Coteau,
long before she moved down to this little village in East Baton
Rouge parish, her idea of the Devil came from two places. One was
the fiery Sunday sermons of Reverend Desmarais, since her parents
took her to Opelousas every week for church. The other was Mr.
Grosvenor, an old white man who lived across town. She wasn’t too
sure what he did for a living, but he had a big house behind a
tall, spiked iron fence, and behind that fence lived a huge albino
canine with pink eyes and long teeth that it bared at everyone who
passed. It was rumored to have a particular taste for children.

Sometimes you could see Mr. Grosvenor walking
the dog, Loki, around town, or driving his big black Cadillac with
the dog growling at pedestrians from the back seat. Mr. Grosvenor
usually wore a white hat and white suit, with sunglasses, and
sometimes carried a gold-handled cane. Everyone was afraid of him.
Eventually, Adelia understood people feared him because he was the
biggest landlord in town, and most people were behind on their
rents. When she was little, though—three or four years old—she
thought Mr. Grosvenor really was the Devil.

When this young man grabbed her hands, Adelia
immediately saw his true nature. He was like Mr. Grosvenor, the
boogeyman of her childhood. In her mind, she could sense the big
white dog circling her house, waiting to leap in her window. She
could almost hear its heavy footsteps and its snarls through the
thin walls.

“I need a couple of things,” the Devil
said.

“You can’t have my soul,” Adelia said. “That
belongs to Jesus Almighty, Praise His Name.”

“I want the keys to that Chrysler out front,”
the Devil said. “And I want that sweet potato pie. I don’t give a
damn about your soul. People don’t have souls.”

“The Devil is deceptive,” Adelia said. “He
knows his time upon this Earth is short, that the powers vested in
him are temporary, and the New Coming of Almighty Jesus will
cleanse us of the Devil’s foul works—”

“Shut up!” the Devil yelled. For a moment,
Adelia could almost see the great craggy horns sprout from his
forehead and the scaly red skin of his true face. “Don’t you talk
Bible to me, or I’ll leave you dead instead of just robbed. You
hear me?”

Adelia closed her mouth and nodded her head.
The fear was taking over, filling her veins like cold water. She
had always been a bold, outspoken woman, but now she was as quiet
as a mouse in a tiger cage.

His face appeared normal now, no horns or
scales waiting to burst out, but Adelia understood his diabolical
nature.

He opened her kitchen drawers until he found
a fork. Then he began shoveling the sweet potato pie into his
mouth, not even bothering to cut it into slices. “This is really
good,” he said through a mushy orange mouthful. “Really
amazing.”

Adelia said nothing. Flattery was one of the
Devil’s tools, she knew. She couldn’t stop shaking, and she felt
like she might wet herself. In her mind, she prayed to Almighty
Jesus to surround her with a protective ring of angel fire. She
kept her eyes on her shoes, occasionally glancing up at him as he
wolfed down the pie.

When he’d eaten nearly the entire thing, he
dropped it on the floor, along with the fork.

“The car keys,” he said.

She pointed to her purse, sitting in one of
the kitchen table chairs. The Devil picked it up and dug through
it. He took out her car keys and cash.

“You only have twelve dollars?” he asked.

She nodded.

“That’s pathetic.” He threw the money down on
the table. “Keep it.”

“Thank you,” Adelia said, then immediately
chastised herself inside her mind. She should never show gratitude
to Satan. The Lord wouldn’t care for that.

He walked out her front door. She heard the
old brown Chrysler chug to life and wheeze its way out of her
gravel driveway, and then it drove off into the night.

Adelia sat down at the kitchen table, folded
her hands, and began praying out loud to the Almighty.

The Lowcountry Inn in Hampton, South Carolina
became the unofficial operations center for the Fallen Oak
investigation, since the Department of Homeland security leased the
entire one-story, two-strip building, and provided some of the
rooms to CDC investigators.

In her room, Heather dropped her suitcase on
the floor and sprawled out on the double bed, soaking up the air
conditioning. Heaven. She’d been sweating all night in tents down
in Haiti.

She closed her eyes and dozed off, but the
shrill telephone on her end table woke her an hour later. It was a
few minutes past midnight, she noticed on the room’s alarm
clock.

“Huh?” Heather whispered into the phone.

“Dr. Reynard.” It was Schwartzman. “Room 117.
Immediately.”

“What’s happening?” Heather yawned.

“Meeting. Urgent.” He hung up.

Heather sat on the edge of her bed and
stretched. She was groggy as hell, and her sandy hair was tousled
from lying on the pillow. At least she was still dressed. She badly
wanted to load up the room’s coffee maker, but it didn’t sound like
there was time.

She’d meant to call home before falling
asleep. Too late now—she would send a text to Liam’s cell phone
after the meeting.

Room 117 turned out to be a “corner suite,”
which was just two rooms with a connecting door propped open.
Nobody seemed to be sleeping here—young men and women in suits,
each wearing some form of federal ID card around their necks, sat
at desks, end tables, and dressers, punching furiously at
laptops.

Schwartzman was at a table with two other
men, and he rose to meet her.

“Dr. Reynard,” he said. “This is Keaton
Lansing, an assistant director of Homeland Security.” A wiry man
with glasses and a pinched-looking face nodded, and Heather shook
his hand.

“And this,” Schwartzman indicated the other
man, who was silver-haired, with a dark Brooks Brothers suit and
smooth manicured nails, “is Nelson Artleby, Special Advisor to the
President.”

Artleby smiled graciously as he took her
hand. “It’s nice to meet you, ma’am,” Artleby said, and there was a
hint of Texas twang somewhere at the back of his voice. After their
handshake, he wiped his hand on the side of his pants.

Heather sat down with them.

“Here’s our situation,” Artleby began.
“First, the White House has declared this whole sorry situation a
matter of national security. We’re keeping this thing more
classified than the aliens at Roswell.” Artleby chuckled, but
nobody joined him. “On a serious note, nobody says anything to
anybody about Fallen Oak. Not your friends, your family, and sure
as hell not the media.”

“We need to tell the public something,”
Heather said. “Lots of people are dead. They’ll have families…”
Heather trailed off. Schwartzman was cutting her a
shut the fuck
up
look.

“Absolutely, little lady,” Artleby said. “And
we have a whole team of experts to sort out the best approach to
that. So don’t scramble up that sweet little face with any more
worry lines.”

Heather scowled.

“Pressing on, if we may…” Artleby raised his
eyebrows at Heather, as if asking permission.

“Go ahead,” Heather said.

Schwartzman removed his glasses, pinched his
nose and squinted. That meant he was developing a migraine.

“Not one word about anything you see or do,”
Artleby said. “Official messages will be put out through official
channels.” Artleby looked at Heather expectantly, with an amused
curl to his lip. She stared back at him, trying to look cold.

“Dr. Reynard will adhere to the
President’s orders
,” Dr. Schwartzman said. “Like the rest of
us. Correct, Dr. Reynard?”

“Of course,” Heather said. “Sorry, I was
asleep. I’m just trying to catch up.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Artleby said.
“Why, this must be a whole blizzard of information coming at you
all at once. Would someone get the lady doctor a coffee?”

A twenty-something Homeland Security officer
in a blue uniform hurried to fetch it.

“That’s really not…” Heather began, though
she was secretly relieved to have coffee on the way. Maybe she
could fling it in Artleby’s face, if she got bored.

“Mr. Lansing here has flown with me from
Washington,” Artleby said. “He’s in charge of this situation. And
he’s my eyes and ears for the duration. You need anything, you hit
any rough patches, you just come to him.”

The pinch-faced man gave a small nod and
waved his hand a little, as if everyone might have forgotten that
the word “Lansing” referred to him.

“Now,” Artleby said, “What is our first
priority?”

“Identify the pathogen,” Heather said. “I’ll
need to pull the medical claims histories of all the victims. And
we’re still looking for any hint of a source.”

“No,” Artleby said. “Lansing?”

“Contain the situation,” Lansing said.

“Correct. You’ve collected all the bodies, is
that right?” Artleby asked Dr. Schwartzman. “They’re not laying
around exposed to the public somewhere, are they?”

“They’re in refrigerated transports,”
Schwartzman said. “Parked in an empty warehouse in Fallen Oak,
until we find a facility. We’ve started our initial laboratory
testing, but—”

“Good,” Artleby said. “Now, priority two. Who
else has the disease?”

“We haven’t identified any suspected cases,
yet,” Schwartzman said.

“Test everyone in town,” Artleby said.

“Test them for what?” Heather asked.
Intuitively, she suspected a highly mutated, even genetically
engineered, strain of bacteria, but there was no evidence for
anything yet. “We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”

“But we could perform a general screening,”
Schwartzman hurried to add. He cut Heather another sharp look. “The
population is only a few thousand. We could survey for symptoms
matching the known cases, or anything out of the ordinary.”

“Could, should and will,” Artleby said. “Make
sure nobody gets overlooked. Get blood and hair samples from every
yokel in that town. We won’t break the quarantine until then.”

Lansing nodded along, looking from
Schwartzman to Heather.

“If you want to test every person in town,
we’ll have to set up a testing center in Fallen Oak,” Heather said.
“And communicate that to the public. And then door-to-door outreach
to everyone who doesn’t come voluntarily.”

“And funding for that, and security for
that,” Schwartzman added, with a glance at Lansing. “I don’t want
my people getting shot as trespassers. You’ll run across a few who
don’t really care for the ‘feddle guvment’ poking around.”

Heather frowned. She hadn’t thought of
that.

“Sharp girl you got there, Schwartzman.”
Artleby winked at Heather. “Sounds like you’ve got everything
thought out. Just let Lansing here know what you need. His
decisions are final, and so is his approval for disbursement of
emergency funds.”

Lansing smiled a little at that.

“Not one word escapes this town,” Artleby
said. “And, while you’re doing all this, can you please find one
goddamn witness who can tell us what happened?”

“We’ll do our best,” Schwartzman said.

“Questions?” Artleby looked at Schwartzman,
then at Heather. “Are you following all this, Miss Reynard?”

“Oh, I think I’m keeping up, thank you.”
Heather narrowed her eyes just slightly.

“Good.” Artleby rapped his knuckles on the
table, as if hammering a gavel to call the meeting closed. He stood
up and shook hands all around. “I’m off to chat with the National
Guard commander. Then look up who governs this ratty little state.
Thank God for Wikipedia, am I right?”

Lansing and Schwartzman faked a little
laughter.

Later, Heather tried to text her husband, but
her cell phone got no reception.

She tried using her hotel room phone to call
him. She couldn’t get an outside line.

Jenny found the flyer stuffed in her mailbox
the next day. The words were bright red, and the seal of the
Department of Homeland Security was printed at the top.