Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) (31 page)

Heather sighed and hurried into the kitchen,
where Liam had apparently left the toddler alone with a plate of
fish sticks. Fish sticks were scattered on the floor, and Tricia
clutched several in one hand. Tricia held the cordless phone next
to one ketchup-smeared cheek.

“My mommy’s name is Heather!” Tricia shouted
to whoever was on the phone. They must have been asking for her,
then. “I have fish sticks!”

“Tricia.” Heather took the phone from her,
and Tricia scowled with indignation. “If you answer the phone, you
have to give it to Daddy or me. Preferably Daddy.” Then she spoke
directly the phone. “Sorry about that. Hello?”

“Are you talking to me now?” a girl’s voice
asked.

“Yes, sorry, I was—”

“Fish sticks, fish sticks!” Tricia attempted
to place fish sticks into Heather’s mouth. Heather knelt beside
her, wiping away the ketchup smear on her cheek with a Wet One.

“I don’t want the fish stick, honey,” Heather
said. “Especially not up my nose.”

“Fish stick!”

“Everything okay?” the girl on the phone
asked.

“Yes, sorry, who is this?” Heather asked.

“It’s Darcy Metcalf. From Fallen Oak.”

“Oh…did I give you this number?” Heather
definitely hadn’t. Her cell phone, but not her home phone. Which
meant Darcy had done at least some light Internet stalking.

“I’m so sorry,” Darcy said. “But it’s a total
super-huge emergency. You know how Jenny killed all those
people?”

“Don’t worry, we’re looking into that,”
Heather said. In fact, the order had come down that a contingent of
Homeland Security officers would go to Fallen Oak on Monday to take
Jenny into custody for extensive testing. Heather was supposed to
go along. She thought it was a little heavy-handed—it might be best
just to reach out to the girl quietly, and only escalate to force
if necessary—but that wasn’t Heather’s call to make.

“There isn’t time to just look into it!”
Darcy said. “Jenny’s in Charleston now. There’s a music festival.
And she bet her boyfriend, Seth, she bet him that she could kill
ten thousand people this time.”

“Are you serious?”

“Honest to God! Everyone’s even taking bets
on how many people will die. It’s weird. It’s like some people are
actually looking forward to it, or at least they don’t care. I
didn’t know who else to call because most people wouldn’t know
enough to believe me.”

“Are you sure about this, Darcy?” Heather
felt a cold, sinking feeling in her gut. This was her worst-case
nightmare, Jenny going to a densely populated area. And it sounded
like the girl actually enjoyed infecting people.

“Yeah, it’s horrible!” Darcy said. “You have
to do something. The police, or the Army, or something! You can’t
let her get away with it again.”

“I can’t just call up the Army,” Heather
said.

“You’d better find an army somewhere,” Darcy
said. “Or Jenny is going to destroy that city, and it’s gonna be
worse than 9/11. I have to go now. Please bring help, okay? Nobody
else will.” Darcy hung up.

“Jesus Christ,” Heather said.

“Cheeses rice.” Tricia giggled.

“Don’t swear, Tricia.” Heather took the girl
under one arm, then carried her to the office. She needed to get in
touch with Schwartzman, and with somebody at Homeland Security who
had the power to mobilize.

Before long, Nelson Artleby would get wind of
the situation, and Heather wanted things moving well before that
happened. Her first concern was public health, but Nelson’s was
politics, and that could lead to some very poor decisions.

She called Schwartzman at home.

After Darcy walked away to answer her phone,
Wooly turned to Seth.

“Dude,” Wooly said, “What the hell?”

“What the hell what?” Seth forked a spicy
chunk of sausage into his mouth.

“Why is she with us? Why is she with
you
?”

“I told you, she’s my girlfriend’s friend,
she needed a ride to Orientation—”

“Okay, okay, that’s all good,” Wooly nodded.
“But listen, you can’t bring home a sweet slice of titty-tang with
the Goodyear blimp parked in your penthouse, know what I’m
saying?”

“What do you expect me to do, throw her
out?”

“Just park her ass at the Holiday Inn, S-dog.
That’ll clear your way for a taste of the tang.”

“I’m not trying to get laid this weekend,
anyway,” Seth said. “I just want to get drunk and see Willie
Nelson.”

“Aw, come on,” Wooly said. “It’s Saturday
night, summertime, Funk Fest—
everybody’s
getting laid this
weekend. Am I right?” Wooly high-fived the other two guys, who
nodded and “Hell yeah”d along with him.

“Whatever.” Seth threw the empty Styrofoam
bowl into a big steel drum of a trash can. “You guys are gonna pass
out under one of these trees and wake up with a dog pissing in your
face in the morning.”

All of three of them laughed.

“Damn, S-dog, don’t hold back,” Wooly
said.

“Give me that vodka.” Seth took the thermos
and took a swig, probably two or three shots’ worth. It was good
vodka, too, very smooth.

They passed it around, while Wooly told a
very long and meticulously detailed story about the time he’d
almost hooked up with an Asian skater chick, except she barfed and
passed out.

“All right, last shot goes to my man S-dog.”
Wooly passed Seth the thermos, where the vodka was nearly depleted.
“I’m gonna make sure you have a good time tonight. Priority one…”
He looked past Seth and his eyes widened. “Hit the brakes.
New
priority one. Tap
that
shit.”

Darcy was returning, arm in arm with a girl
Seth didn’t know—for a moment, though, he could have sworn it was
Ashleigh. Tall, blond, same build, almost the same tits, even. As
if Darcy had specifically sought out someone that looked like
her.

“Hey guys,” Darcy said. “This is my new
friend Allegra. We just totally bonded over some Redheaded Sluts in
that bar.” She pointed vaguely behind her.

“We totally did!” the blond girl agreed. She
was smiling so wide her face was about to split. Closer up, she
didn’t look too much like Ashleigh at all. She looked kind of East
European or Russian, something like that. “I love Redheaded
Sluts!”

“Me, too!” Darcy said, and they burst into
drunken laughter.

Wooly stepped forward to introduce himself to
the blond girl.

“I’m Chris,” he said. “But everybody calls me
Wooly. Cause I’m mammoth.”

“Oh, is this the boy you were telling me
about?” Allegra asked. Her eyes flicked up and down Wooly’s
body.

“No, Seth’s over here.” Darcy tugged Allegra
past Wooly, closer to Seth. She lay a hand on Seth’s arm. “Isn’t he
way foxy?”

“Oh, yes.” Allegra’s dark eyes looked into
Seth’s. “Yes, he is.”

Seth felt something like a surge of heat and
light in his chest, which spread like molten gold through his body,
filling up his head. The incredibly beautiful Allegra seemed to
sparkle and glow in front of his eyes. She was everything to him.
The past and the future, any other thoughts or concerns, all fell
away before her. Every cell in his body cried out with an aching
need for her.

“Allegra,” Seth whispered, his voice full of
awe.

“Yes,” she whispered back. Her eyes were
locked onto his, and their bodies seemed to drift together, until
her hand rested on the back of his neck, and he was embracing her
around the hips, drawing her close.

They kissed, and the air around them seemed
to ignite. Seth was lost in her smell, her taste, the warm shape of
her body against him. He was barely even aware of Darcy’s hand
still gripping his upper arm.

After a long time, they came back up from the
kiss, and their faces parted enough so Seth could admire her eyes,
and nose, and cheeks…and those perfect lips…

“Come on, lovebirds,” Darcy said. She took
one of Seth’s hands, and one of Allegra’s, and led them away like
slow, stubborn horses. They couldn’t stop looking at each
other.

“Go on, get it on, S-dog!” Wooly shouted
behind them, and the two other guys gave drunken cheers. “Daaaaamn,
that pregnant chick is a tang
magnet
. Hey, pregnant chick,
come back and hang!”

Darcy looked back over her shoulder and
winked.

Heather drove toward the airport, where the
CDC’s leased plane was waiting. It would ferry her, Schwartzman and
a group of first responders. Homeland Security was sending in a
flood of people, too, and coordinating with South Carolina state
police, Charleston police, and it was rumored that the National
Guard had been put on alert. Someone had decided, thankfully, that
this was a full-scale emergency in need of strong prevention.

It looked like Darcy Metcalf was going to get
her army, after all. Heather just hoped they had biohazard
gear.

The situation was volatile and chaotic, which
was good, because it meant things were unfolding fast. Heather had
been worried that she wouldn’t be able to summon a strong enough
response, but apparently the picture of Jenny Morton infected with
the unknown pathogen, the results of Heather’s extremely unorthodox
lab tests, and the as-yet-unexplained huge body count in Fallen Oak
had made their way to the right decision-makers, despite the rush
to cover up the event.

She’d heard that state police had been
dispatched to Jenny Morton’s house, but they found nobody home,
which wasn’t exactly reassuring. Heather had called Darcy Metcalf’s
house, and Darcy’s parents said she had gone to the beach.

Heather couldn’t help imagining the city of
Charleston with thousands of bodies in the street, diseased and
contorted like those in Fallen Oak. She shook the image away, but
it kept creeping back.

She stepped on the gas.

Tommy looked out at the crowd of people five
stories below. From the balcony, he could see the bandstand, which
had been temporarily expanded to accommodate the bands and their
walls of speakers.

He'd arrived about twenty minutes ago and
stashed his motorcycle inside the tall picket-fence dumpster
enclosure behind the hotel. He'd rolled the bike behind the
dumpster itself, in case any hotel staff took the garbage out.
Getting the bike out would be a little trouble if he had to leave
in a hurry, but the nearest parking spot was blocks away, and you
couldn’t make a quick exit when you had to hoof it half a mile and
then wind your way out of a parking garage.

He looked back inside the hotel room, where
Esmeralda lay on the bed, watching music videos on TV. She had a
drugged, detached look to her face that bothered him.

“Esmeralda,” he said.

Her gaze drifted in his direction.

“What do you think of all this?” Tommy
asked.

“All of what?”

“Ashleigh.” Tommy stepped back into the room
and sat on the edge of the bed. He looked at the piece of bone
hanging on the gold chain around Esmeralda's neck. “I'm not sure
about this thing she's asking me to do.”

“You've been practicing,” Esmeralda said.
“You'll do fine.”

“No, I mean I'm wondering whether I should do
it at all. Ashleigh tells us that this Jenny girl is so evil—”

“She is,” Esmeralda said. “She killed all
those people.”

“But more could die tonight,” Tommy said.
“All to capture one girl? And bringing in all the cops and feds
makes me nervous.”

“Ashleigh knows what she's doing,” Esmeralda
said. “That's what you kept telling me. We had to bring her back
because she understands us, and what we are. You said that. You
were obsessed with it.”

“I still think that, but she's not honest.
Watch how she manipulates everyone else. How do we know she's not
manipulating us?”

“Because we're her soul family. She told me.
We always help each other in all our lifetimes. The three of us
belong together.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in
reincarnation. What if she’s lying about—”

“She is not lying to us!” Esmeralda sat up
and hugged a pillow. “Ashleigh loves us. I know it. And I love her,
too.”

“Making people feel love is her power. She
only has to touch you.”

“But it doesn't work on us,” Esmeralda
said.

“It doesn't work on me,” Tommy said. “But I
think she cast a spell on you. Has she been touching you a lot, or
in any unusual way?”

Esmeralda blushed and turned her head.

“She has, hasn't she?” Tommy asked.

“We have fun together. We both enjoy it.”

“You didn't even like her at first,” Tommy
said.

“I just didn't know her.” Esmeralda
scowled.

“I know her better now, too,” Tommy said.
“And maybe I'm wrong, but...”

“You are wrong.”

“So…if I wanted to duck out of this whole
thing, and hit the road...would you come with me?”

“What are you talking about?”

Tommy took her hand. Fear leaked into her,
but he tried to hold it in as much as he could. “I've never been
happier than that moment when you first got on my bike. And then
riding through the desert with your arms around me. You don't know
what that meant to me. Didn't it seem like something good was about
to happen?”

“Good things have happened.” She squeezed his
hand. “We found Ashleigh. She has brought so much into our
lives.”

“She’s using us, I think,” Tommy said. “She
has her own agenda, and she's using us—”

“
We
are her agenda!” Esmeralda said.
“We're only getting rid of this Jenny person so she doesn't kill
us. So the world will be safe for the three of us. We can all be
together after that, with nothing to fear. Ashleigh is really smart
and she knows what needs to happen.”

“And what if you had to choose between her
and me?”

“I would choose her.”

He took her words like a sharp belt lash
across the face. Tommy let go of her hand and walked back to the
open balcony. “Then the only way I can be with you, is to be with
her.”