Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) (35 page)

“Fuck if I know,” Seth said, and he pushed
past him.

Seth pressed forward through the crowd, but
every few feet saw somebody with a broken finger or deep cuts
across their face, and he had to reach out and touch them briefly
to give them a little healing help—without them noticing,
hopefully.

He slowly advanced through the dense,
terrified, angry mob. Seth began to fear he might never find Jenny
again.

The crowd crushed in around Jenny, and they
kept slapping at her head, so she knew she was infecting some
people. She lay with her eyes closed and waited to die.

She couldn’t understand why everyone had
turned on her, but it seemed natural that they would. She was a
killer. She didn’t belong among good people.

Then the hands jabbing at her turned icy and
cold. And these freezing hands weren’t punching and slapping,
either, but just brushing across her face. Fingers that felt like
popsicles jabbed under the wrist of her sleeve and the collar of
her shirt, as if specifically seeking out her flesh.

Jenny opened her eyes and found herself
looking up at woman in a pantsuit with a partially crushed head.
Jenny could actually see fragments of the woman’s skull and brain.
The young man next to her had a huge red stain on the front of his
shirt, and a bullethole.

She was surrounded by cold, gray-skinned
people who all looked very dead, and very intent on getting under
her clothes and at her flesh.

Jenny screamed.

All of the dead-looking people turned their
backs on her, forming a jumbled ring that kept out the attacking
mob, though some people could still reach in to give Jenny a poke
or a slap.

Each of the walking corpses—Jenny didn’t know
how else to think of them, without using the word “zombies,” which
seemed too freaky to contemplate—each one of them dragged what
looked like a full-size black body bag in one hand, as if they’d
all just unzipped and marched out of a morgue somewhere, but held
on to their bags just in case. It was surreal.

A young man who looked a couple years older
than Jenny passed through the wall of zombies, who shuffled back
and forth to let him pass. He had shaggy brown hair and dark eyes
that seemed to glow. A smile twitched his lips.

“Poor girl,” he said. “Look what they’ve done
to you.” He dropped to a knee beside her, and reached a hand toward
her face.

“Don’t touch me,” Jenny whispered. “I’m
poisonous.”

“Not to me.” He lay his fingers on her
bruised, bleeding cheek.

All around them, the slouching zombies
straightened up. Each one reached inside its body bag and withdrew
a long, slender object. Some of them had wooden mop or broom
handles, some had strips of metal, one or two of which had lamps
attached at the end, as if they’d been ripped from some operating
room ceiling. Some simply had two by four boards.

“What’s happening?” Jenny asked.

“Phalanx,” he said. “Old Greek formation.
Still pretty effective, huh?’

The zombies draped the ends of the body bags
over their left arms and grasped the bags’ side handles with their
left hands. Then they raised the body bags in front of themselves,
creating a thick plastic barrier as wide and tall as a person. They
weren’t exactly bulletproof shields, but they deflected most of the
fists and debris thrown by the crowd.

Through the narrow gaps between the body bag
shields, the zombies swung their blunt objects, batting back the
crowd. They swung in unison, and stepped forward, pushing the crowd
back.

All the while, the strange young man was
simply looking into Jenny’s eyes and lightly brushing her cheek
with his fingers. His eyes looked familiar to her.

“Are you doing that?” she whispered.

“Doing what?”

“You’re controlling them.”

He looked around at the expanding ring of
zombies, who were pushing their way into a square formation. “I
certainly hope so. I’d hate to see what would happen if they ran
wild. They might eat your brain!” He rubbed her forehead and
temples with his fingertips. “Kidding. Are you remembering me yet?
I know you woke up a few weeks ago. I could feel it like an
earthquake, and I was thousands of miles away. Those fuckers in
that little town, they tried to kill you, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” Jenny said. “They did.”

He laughed. “Stupid rednecks! Come on, let’s
get moving.” He stood up and held out his hands to her.

Jenny kept looking at his eyes, trying to
figure out how she knew him. Every inch of her body was screaming
in pain, and she felt like she would collapse any moment.

“Okay,” he said. “I get it. Guy shows up with
a band of zombies swinging brooms. You don’t know what to think.
But you should know two things. First, this mob will eventually
tear my deceased friends apart, and there goes your security team.
Second, there is an army of state police and
federales
on
their way to collect you, and I can get you out of here.”

Jenny took his hands and stood, but she was
wobbly on her feet from her beating. Every part of her ached.

“So, what’s your choice?” he asked. “Live or
die?”

Jenny looked at him. “Are you Archidamus?”
she asked.

“You do remember me.” He pulled the glove
from her left hand and took it in his own, skin to skin. It was a
strange, dangerous feeling to Jenny, touching anybody like that,
except for Seth.

“What about Seth?” she asked.

“The healer? He’s safe. You’re in danger.
Come on, we have to hike a few blocks.” A wall of flashing blue
lights approached from the far end of the street. “Not that
way.”

He supported her with one arm as they walked,
and the phalanx of zombies moved with them, walling them in from
the mob.

Those at the front of the square alternating
between knocking on people who approached and jabbing their long
weapons forward to push people back out of the way.

The zombies on Jenny’s left and right simply
held up their body-bag shields and only struck people who tried to
reach inside. Behind Jenny, zombies walked backwards, holding up
the body bags and ready to strike if necessary.

“This is so fucked up,” Jenny whispered.

“You get used to it. I’m Alexander in this
life, by the way. But you can call me whatever you want. Do you
like Euanthe better?”

“Call me Jenny,” she whispered.

“We have to move faster, Jenny.”

“I can’t.” Jenny’s legs wobbled beneath
her.

“That’s fine.” He picked her up in his arms
and began to jog. The zombies sped up with him, and the front line
fell into a wedge to pry apart the crowd. The rioting mob seemed to
be losing their focus on Jenny, now that the person with the
megaphone had shut up, and Jenny had gained a dozen or more
scary-looking, somewhat armed protectors. The people who’d been
intent on attacking Jenny started attacking each other instead, or
bashing in car windows.

“Why's everybody going crazy?” Jenny
asked.

“Tommy. The fear-giver. He can make a crowd
panic.”

“Ashleigh's opposite,” Jenny said.

“He wanted you to hit them all with a
plague,” Alexander said. “It was a trap, but we've wrecked his
plans. He didn't have any idea I would show up.”

Jenny slid an arm around Alexander's
shoulders. It was such a strange feeling to be carried like this,
and the strangest part was how comforted and protected she felt.
She remembered from her dreams how she had felt in his presence,
knowing she'd finally found her place in the world.

She was starting to feel that way again. And
it didn't really hurt that he was handsome and strong and had just
saved her life.

Jenny laid her head on his shoulder, her face
close to his sun-darkened cheek and neck. He wore only a T-shirt
and jeans, but the jeans seemed perfectly tailored to fit him, and
the black shirt was as soft as cashmere.

He carried her up a side street, into a
neighborhood of huge old houses. The crowd didn't follow, and this
street was relatively peaceful, with just a band of teenagers
throwing rocks at the streetlights. The zombies spread out a
little, giving them some breathing room.

Alexander brought them to the driveway of a
big Greek Revival-style house, with a black SUV parked in the
driveway, nose out as if someone were planning a quick getaway.

“Is this your house?” Jenny asked.

“This house belongs to Wells Fargo bank,” he
said. “It's for sale. Nobody lives here. So I borrowed the driveway
for a couple of hours.” He opened the passenger door of the SUV and
set her down in the seat. He even buckled her seatbelt before
closing her door.

He climbed into the driver's seat and started
the engine.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“Somewhere no one will be looking for you.”
He pulled out of the driveway.

“I have to get back to my dad. He's pretty
messed up right now.”

“What happened to him?”

“Ashleigh's opposite—Tommy?—hit my dad pretty
hard with that fear thing.”

“He’ll be fine,” Alexander said. “The fear
wears off after a few hours.”

Jenny thought about the time Tommy had
attacked her and Seth. They'd had a night of confused terror, but
they'd eventually been fine the next day.

“The only person in danger is you,” Alexander
said. “And I'm taking care of that right now.”

He accelerated down the street.

In the rearview, the zombies all fell down at
once, like a group of kids playing ring-around-the-rosy. Their pole
weapons and body bags littered the street around them.

“Ashes, ashes,” Jenny sang under her
breath.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.” On top of the deep calm he
inspired, Jenny was starting to feel something else—nervous,
embarrassed, giddy. She was a little afraid of those feelings...but
she liked them, too.

They took back streets through residential
neighborhoods, avoiding the swarm of police, Homeland Security and
federal agencies that were searching the city for Jenny.

Heather rode from the Charleston
International Airport in a Homeland Security car. Red flags were
already up all over the city. Some kind of riot had broken out at
the Southeastern Funk Fest, and local and state police were working
to calm things down. The National Guard, already on alert, had been
activated and would be rolling into the downtown area
momentarily.

Local police had also identified an incident
that required CDC attention. A couple dozen bodies had just been
found in a big pile in a neighborhood not far from the festival,
cause of death unclear. Heather worried that Jenny might have
already gotten started on her apparent plan to kill ten thousand
people or more. If so, more clusters of bodies would turn up before
long, if not a massive-fatality incident.

The Homeland Security vehicle arrived at the
incident scene, where police, fire, EMS and a small crowd of
onlookers had already gathered. Heather jumped out of the car and
joined Schwartzman, who'd been driven by another Homeland Security
officer.

“We need to get these people out of here,”
Heather whispered as they approached the scene.

“Let's see what's happening first,”
Schwartzman replied.

“It would be a pretty big coincidence if she
wasn't involved.”

“Shit happens,” Schwartzman whispered.

A gray, balding man in a suit approached,
looking tired. He glanced at their badges.

“Y'all the CDC folks?” he asked. “I'm Cordell
Nolan, county medical examiner. Spoke to you on the phone, I
think.” He reached a hand towards Schwartzman, who hesitated a
moment before shaking it.

“This is Dr. Reynard,’ Schwartzman said.
“She’s one of our best epidemiologists.”

“Well, we got us an epidemic of something,
but I can't say what.” Nolan shook Heather's hand. “Whole damn
city's going up in flames. Anybody with any sense knows you let a
few thousand kids run loose in the streets, with music,
everything's gonna get wrecked. Mayor was hell-bent this was going
to mean money for the city. Now look how much it's gonna cost to
fix it back.”

“We're a bit more concerned about these
bodies,” Heather said. She looked at the pile of corpses in the
street. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to their age, race,
sex, socioeconomics, but they were all barefoot and wore toetags,
which was more than a little odd. Body bags were scattered among
them, along with random objects like mops and brooms, and what
looked like the metal arms of overhead lights from a surgery
bay.

None of them had the boils, tumors and
pustules indicative of Fallen Oak syndrome.

“Are you bagging them already?” Heather
asked.

“The bags were already here,” Nolan said.
“Mine are still in the truck. We ain't touched nothing.”

“They came with their own cadaver pouches?”
Schwartzman asked. “That's convenient.”

“We ought to take 'em into evidence, though,”
Nolan said. “Still gonna use fresh ones to cart ‘em off. Looks like
these bodies was already checked in at the MUSC morgue over the
past week or so. They still got the toe tags.”

“I'm sorry?” Heather asked. “You're saying
these came from the hospital morgue?”

“Yep.”

“How did they get here?” Schwartzman
asked.

“Still trying to get somebody from the morgue
on the phone,” Nolan said. “Ain't nobody answering down there
tonight. Real strange.”

“So...these are stolen bodies,” Heather said.
“Some kind of, what? College prank?”

“Take a lot of doing,” Nolan replied. “Need a
lot of people to carry this many bodies. Somebody at the morgue had
to see something, but like I said, nobody's picking up the horn.
Hospital administration's supposed to get back to me any
second.”

Heather squatted for a closer look at the
bodies. It looked like an assortment of bodily injuries and
disease, as well as a few elderly people who might have passed from
natural causes. They were all barefoot and hung with toe tags.