Walking Ghost Phase

Walking Ghost Phase

Copyright © 2011 by DC Daugherty

Cover Designed by UVUDU ? Imaging

Edited by Judith C. Reveal

This book is a work of fiction. Incidents, names, characters, and places are products of the author
's imagination or have been used fictitiously. Resemblances to actual locales or events or persons living or dead is coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

Also by DC Daugherty

Spectral Relapse (Walking Ghost Phase, Book Two)

Destiny’s Dwellers

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Kerry McCall, Brenda Gideon and Jasmine Florencio for their many thoughtful insights.

Walking Ghost Phase (n.):
The latent period of severe radiation poisoning in which the affected person experiences a feeling of normal well-being. Afterward, bodily systems begin to fail and death is inevitable.

Emily Heath walked north along 17th street, having just turned from Pennsylvania Avenue, leaving the White House behind her. At least she took a picture of the famous home, an unwritten rule for anyone on vacation in Washington. Still, the crowd of tourists near the front gate didn't seem to appreciate her desire to fulfill the once-in-a-lifetime photo-op. No fewer than six disapproving stares focused on her when she stuck out her tongue and snapped the unlevel picture of herself. Now a block up 17th, Emily tried to shake the nagging tone of her mother's voice from her mind.
Why did you go if you knew you'd be miserable?

“
Oh, I knew,” Emily said under her breath.

Her bare shoulders had darkened three shades beyond crimson, and now her skin begged for the hotel room, where she could bask in the solace of air-conditioning and false lighting. Also enduring the ninety-five degree temperature, tourists roamed the streets, filling the sidewalks in an impassable congregation. Emily tried to walk faster, but she could only stare ahead at the milk-white calves, ankle socks and penny loafers of an elderly man. She sighed and looked at the images of her friends on her digital camera.

On the LCD screen, a girl with waist-length black hair posed in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The picture caught the moment when the right half of her upper lip curled and pupils disappeared behind the slits of her half-shut eyelids. “Not smiling,” Emily said to no one in particular. She forwarded the camera to the next picture, that of a young man who stood at the base of the Washington Monument. “Not smiling.” She advanced the camera memory again, now to a picture of a different girl kneeling down and dipping her fingers in the Reflecting Pool waters. “And not smiling. Whose idea was it to take this trip?” She glanced over her shoulder.

No one answered.

A high-pitched whistle pierced the air. The penny-loafer man tugged his wife's arm as he stepped toward the curb and waved his free hand above his head. Before the taxicab stopped, the couple disappeared in the crowd. With Emily's pacesetters gone, she walked faster, cutting off tourists and preventing anyone from claiming the patches of empty sidewalk ahead of her. She checked the cross-street signs.
Seven blocks to the hotel
.
Maybe we'll find a rat in the room this time, and I can convince them to go home early
.

After she crossed over to the next block, the pedestrian traffic dwindled to a few families whose kids seemed uninterested in the retail shops: a jewelry store, a men
's clothing boutique and a souvenir stand, which sold miniature Washington Monuments. Two parents argued about whether to visit The International Spy Museum or The Smithsonian, while their children, a blond-haired boy and girl, appeared hypnotized by an ice cream truck rattling down the street. The vehicle, belonging to the
D.C. is for Delicious Creamsicles
company, played an out-of-tune melody that echoed against the granite buildings. It stopped at the curb, and a line immediately formed at the window.

Four blocks ahead, the green awning of her hotel jutted over the sidewalk. It was almost time for her to lay it out there, the speech she had mentally rehearsed.
No one's having fun. We've seen everything worth seeing. Let's save our money. We didn't come to Washington to get sunburned. That's why we have beaches. We can always stop there on our way back, even if we need to take a detour. Let's enjoy ourselves before summer ends, before we go our separate ways, to different colleges, to new lives.

Pecking around her shoes, a flock of pigeons ate crumbs on the sidewalk. Every place she had visited in Washington, the unusual birds were the highlight of her trip; how they scurried
past the feet of pedestrians, unafraid, even seeking acceptance.

Then the flock cooed and flew off with uncanny synchronization. A stiff bump into Emily
's shoulder sent her stumbling toward the oncoming pedestrian traffic. Before she regained her balance, a blue-coverall-wearing man blindly sprinted past her, not once turning to apologize, seeming entranced by the cell phone he held to his ear. “Jerk,” Emily shouted.

The man slid to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk, and in that moment Emily expected—no, hoped—he would return the comment. An ugly incident with a local might strengthen her argument for an early departure.

He didn't even pretend to notice her.

She walked around him and brushed his shoulder, but the man still yelled into the phone.
“I'm not out of range. I need ten more minutes.” Now his eyes formed perfect circles as he gazed south, mesmerized by something in the distance. The phone slipped out of his hand and cracked on the sidewalk. “That son of a bitch.” The man ran to the curb, where he knocked down a young woman in a summer dress. The broken top of her miniature Washington Monument statue spilled out of her bag and rattled across the cement. The man barreled into the street and through traffic. Cars swerved. Horns blared. A bald cab driver stuck his head out the window and cursed. Soon the man disappeared between two office buildings.

Then the world went silent, the air stale. The reddening welts on Emily
's shoulders throbbed beneath the tug of her tank top. A memory surfaced from the depths of her mind. She saw herself at seven years old, standing on a stage as she prepared to sing for the audience. The theater spotlight popped to life and bathed her in a blinding glow. Heat stung her arms and face.

It was how she remembered the beginning of the Washington Event.

Before her seven-year-old self belted the first note, Emily returned to the real world. Down the street, pitch-black building shadows began to recede. A deafening pop echoed across the city. A hiss sounded in her ear, and a burning stench rose to her nostrils. The tips of her blond hair curled into tiny black globs. The sunburned ache crawled over the rest of her body.

Screams rang out. Children cried for their parents. Beside her, a father knelt down with his son tucked under his
chest. The ground rumbled, low at first but growing louder, closer, when a sudden gust of wind swung around the buildings, punched her in the face and knocked her to the sidewalk. The
Delicious Creamsicles
truck, which had come up the road for another stop, lifted off the ground and sailed into a granite office building on the other side of the street. A chunk of rock ripped from the bottom right corner. Windows shattered; glass clinked on the pavement. The father who shielded his son flew through the air, smacked a minivan and crumpled to his hands and knees.

A
sudden shadow darkened the sidewalk.

“
Move,” someone shouted. Fingers dug into Emily's underarms and pulled her toward the shadow's edge. The top of the brick condominium building crept over the sidewalk as if a knife had sliced lengthwise between the third and fourth floors, blotting out the sky. Before her, the little boy stood alone, crying, arms frozen to his sides, legs unmoving, while his father in the street tried to stand and regain his senses.

“
No,” Emily screamed. She lunged forward, breaking free of the hands of whoever had tried to pull her to safety. The father, now on his feet, raced for his child. Overhead, a balcony, with its ornate steel handrails still attached, swelled as it plummeted to the earth. Emily threw out her arms and planted her palms against the shoulders of the little boy. His head whipped back, and he shrieked as his tiny body sailed into the street.

Emily landed on her knees in the center of the shadow. The growing darkness gave her
only enough time to see the father carry his son to safety.

Then the building collapsed.

Darkness.

Emily dragged her palms across jagged rocks, attempting to pull herself free from the object—cold and metallic, she guessed the balcony rails—which pinned her shoulders and head to the grit. With each sliver forward, she gasped; the ground scraped her cheek like a sheet of sandpaper. Dizziness swam
in her mind, and heat radiated across her body. Just a few more inches.

Darkness.

The sound of muffled sirens penetrated the shrill ring in her ears. A beam of light shone through a puncture in the cement. She reached out and shoved her blood-soaked hand into the hole.