Curse on the Land

by Faith Hunter

  All in all, the landscape gave off no evil-castle vibes. The place had the look of a moderately profitable small business. I sat down on the dying grass and got as comfortable as possible without the blanket that was still in Occam’s car. I took a calming breath and looked up, into the plantings. And stopped. Still as death.

  There was a slimy film on the underside of the nandina leaves. Black as tar. Oily. Just like the slime on the plants at one of the victims’ houses. Just like what I’d thought I was seeing at the surface of the water at the pond. I got up, went to my truck, and trundled around until I found the evidence bag with the scraping inside. Carrying it away from the Chevy, I knelt on the concrete parking area. Carefully I opened the envelope. Inside were scaly, dried strips. Nothing oily. But it had nothing to grow on either. I thought about dropping them onto the ground, but that sounded dangerous, and so I resealed the envelope and put it in a plastic zippered bag, to be on the safe side. I tucked it into the passenger-side pocket of the C10, and I instantly assigned it as the evidence collection area. I needed a car with a trunk.

  Back in LuseCo’s yard, I pulled off my uni’s glove, wrenching my wrist trying it get the rigid, plasticized, and spelled fabric off. Next time I’d just cut the glove. I put a single finger on the ground, as I had recently for reads. I let a wisp of myself coil down, slowly, beneath the starved and dying grass roots. Into the soil. I didn’t go deep, but stayed near the surface, close to my body. Beneath me, I could feel the corners of the triangle. The movement of . . . something along the vertices and angles of the triangle, pooling at the angle points. Apexes? The “8”-shaped infinity loop no longer danced, but raced along the circle, its energies tighter, no shadow between the pinpoints of light now. And this time I was certain that all of the energies were tied to the facility in front of me. The glow beneath the building was brighter, sending out sparkles of sun yellow to the loop as it traveled.

  “Nell?”

  I recognized T. Laine’s voice, and I pulled myself back to the surface. Blinked. Remembered to breathe again. I stood and pulled the uni’s glove back on, which involved much twisting and discomfort.

  “You okay?” she asked me. She looked tired, her eyes ringed with mascara that she had rubbed off. Black hair plastered to her head from the moisture that collected in the 3PE suit. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said.

  “I’m okay.” I didn’t mention that no one had relieved me of my responsibilities. “Have you done psy-meter readings of all the employees?”

  “About half so far. Nothing’s redlining and nothing is above human normal.”

  “What about talking to the techs involved with the testing? The nonwitch techs. And what about the witches themselves?”

  “Yes to the techs and clerical staff. All human so far. All willing to talk about lasers and how they work and how the tests went. Up to two weeks ago. Then they stopped being so involved for reasons I haven’t discovered yet. Of the employees on-site, not away on vacation or leave, all fall within normal parameters for species. There’s no background psysitopes on the premises. No psysitope-active employees.”

  I pulled the baggie out of my pocket and said, “Would you read this?”

  T. Laine shrugged, pulled a handheld unit from her own pocket, and read the baggie. “Nada. Nothing. Why are we doing this?”

  “Before I answer, will you read this plant?” I walked to the too-tall nandinas.

  T. Laine looked annoyed, but she took a reading. “What the hell?” she said.

  I leaned over and saw the results. Total psysitopes were at nearly fifty percent. “Occam drove off with my handheld psy-meter in his car,” I said. “May I borrow yours? I want to take some new readings at the houses of the people who were contaminated.”

  T. Laine put the small unit in my gloved hand. Her face was pulled down in worry, but she didn’t explain, saying, “Whatever. It’s been a long day. I need to take off this stinky suit, eat a shower—a donut—and take some downtime.”

  Behind her, through the windows, the lights flickered and came back on. I frowned and T. Laine turned to see what had my attention, but the lights inside were back on. “What?”

  I told her what I had seen and added, “I thought all these labs and research and development companies were part of the TVA grid administration, on multiple power sources. No electrical outages for them, thanks to the overlapping energy sources.” More than any city in the nation except DC, I thought. I remembered the itchy, irritated feeling of the ground when I scanned it at one point, though the readings all had run together by now.

  “Yeah. I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. I’m too tired to give a rat’s ass right now.” T. Laine walked away from me, pulling her plastic face shield back in place. I wasn’t sure what rats had to do with the case, but I shrugged and got back in my truck, stowing the borrowed handheld psy-meter 1.0 in the driver door’s side pocket. Sitting in the lot, engine running, I opened up the latest case reports on my tablet and discovered a note to the PsyLED team from someone named Lieutenant Colonel Leann Rettell, which I opened. The e-mail had a .gov address and was purported to be from an assistant to General David Schlumberger, asking someone from PsyLED to read the patients at UTMC with a psy-meter.

  Since Rettell didn’t specifically request the P 2.0. I notified JoJo that I could go by the hospital and provide readings shortly. But would I send them to JoJo and let her send them to the VIPs. I’d rather let a senior investigator handle talks with the military.

  In another report, I found that KEMA had ordered a more widespread evacuation of the residential area so they could spray a black mold that started growing there. They would spray around each infected house at the north triangle site with a virulent fungicide. I had to see how bad things were there.

  * * *

  I eased the truck up to two sheriff cars, blocking the way in to the neighborhood where the strange “virus” had struck three families, and up to the armed guards, both wearing white unis, gun holsters belted across the outside and automatic rifles close to hand. I slowed, lowered the windows, and held out my ID. “Hi, guys. Can you update me on what’s happened here?” I asked.

  “Regular law enforcement to whacko law enforcement?” the older deputy asked. “Sure.” His partner winced, letting me know that whacko law enforcement was said as a joke but wasn’t amusing even to him. The older guy, clearly a self-appointed spokesperson, said, “We got weird tar growing up from the ground. You got any ghosts or goblins who can make that happen, send ’em here. I’ll shoot ’em for you.”

  I didn’t bother telling him I was fully capable of shooting my own goblins, should they actually exist, nor that ghosts couldn’t be wounded by gunfire. It was a waste of breath to attempt to educate a man whose main professional goal seemed to be being persistently annoying. At which he was clearly successful.

  Though he was chiefly a snark, he did know that all the occupants of every house had been evacuated, some by force, to hotels, to shelters, to other family members. “The National Guard brought in lights and chemicals to get rid of the growths. They treated one house and yard so far,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of lights or treatments, but I can guess that the tree huggers would complain it’s bad for the environment.” Which he clearly thought was amusing, not knowing or caring that I was a tree hugger. Of sorts. Though not a particularly pacific one.

  A chemical stink wafted in through the window and the heater vents, strong and cloying, sticking to the back of my throat like acid glue. I had to agree with the cop’s imaginary tree huggers, that whoever ordered the spraying were idiots, contaminating the ground with poison that would harm the residents when they returned. There were other ways to kill mold and plants than poison. But that wasn’t my decision or my job.

  Which started something tickling at the back of my mind—something important that I should do and know, something scampering across my brain on sticky feet,
not alighting long enough for me to identify it. So for now I ignored the sensation of tiny lizard feet and did my job.

  I said, “I’d like to enter the area that was evacuated and cordoned off.”

  “Suit yourself. You have to sign in.” He indicated a traditional clipboard with a paper. “I’d suggest you stay on the street,” he added. “And when you get back, you’ll have to leave your uni here.” He pointed to a red biohazard container with an orange stripe across each side and a hinged top.

  I left the truck, dressed in a clean uni, and walked down the street alone.

  The crime scene tape at the three houses still fluttered, but the tents were gone. The occupants were gone. And the people who should have been in the other houses were gone too. The neighborhood had no cars, no pets, no people beyond the talkative deputy and his silent partner at the entrance, no nothing. Except the dots of black slime that climbed the trees and coated the leaves of grass. I called Rick as I walked, but it went to voice mail. I tried JoJo, and she answered, but only long enough for me to hear her talking to a military person she called Colonel, probably at the DoD, before she hung up.

  I remembered one report I had skimmed. According to the feds, the media had been told that the mold was simply an unidentified fungi and was probably normal, but global weather changes, altered rainfall, and acid rain had stimulated it to take over. It was a lot of government nonsense-speak meant to calm the public without telling them anything about the source of the psysitope-active leak. And not tying the mold into the “viral illness” of the homeowners. Which could be wise, as the source hadn’t been identified and most people panicked easily. I stopped at the first house and studied the lawn, which was green, blanketed with a black slime, slick looking, with colorful little things like buds or antennae sticking up from the tarry mess. Black also coated the trees.

  It was probably stupid, but I needed to read what was happening in and under the ground. I’d made enough waves in Spook School with my nonhuman self. There was no point in drawing attention my way again, so soon after getting free, but . . . I couldn’t help myself. I knelt on the street, one knee down, one up. I peeled back the glove portion of the uni and placed a single finger on the ground, no more than a foot inside the grassy area of Point B, Alisha Henri’s two-story home, Dougie’s daughter’s yard. I slid my consciousness into the earth and back out fast. The land was full of shadows that pulsed with shifting red and blue lights. It didn’t feel like my land. It didn’t feel like any land I had ever touched. The energies were odd and . . . humming, for lack of a better word. In my experience, land usually breathed, silent and aware, or slept, like a winter hibernation. This felt sick. Contaminated. Full of pain. This was . . . wounded.

  I looked out over the lawn again, studying the black, tarry slime, and wiped my fingertip on my uni pants. This was bad, and I had no idea what to do about it. Worse, I had a feeling that the bad things weren’t finished for the day.

  I walked back to the barricade and stripped off the uni, depositing it into the biohazard container. Back inside my truck, I cleaned my finger with a wet wipe and rolled the dirty wipe back into the foil package, thinking.

  I didn’t know who to call. Didn’t know who to trust to help me think through this problem. I remembered what Occam had said, the odd quote-sounding thing. “The urge to shift and to hunt waxes strong three days out, abides the three days of, and wanes three days after. Nine nights of pleasure and nine days of hell.” So I couldn’t talk to Rick, Occam, or Paka, who had been odd for three days and would be useless starting about now. Not JoJo, who was busy with research and being lead agent during the three days of the full moon. Not T. Laine, who was dealing with the people at LuseCo. That left Tandy. Or someone higher up. LaLa, at Spook School? Or . . . Soul?

  As I sat in the cooling C10, the engine tinging, my cell rang again and the number was JoJo’s. “Ingram,” I said.

  “How fast can you get to UTMC?” she asked. “They’ve begun advanced life support on two patients, and there’s something wrong with them.”

  Wrong? Other than needing advanced life support? CPR? I thought. But I didn’t say that. It might come out as sarcasm and levity, which seemed offensive in the face of a catastrophe I couldn’t understand or explain. I didn’t ask what was wrong with the patients. In a single set of well-choreographed moves, I pulled onto the road and gunned the engine, putting my emergency light in the windshield and flipping the switch on the siren. “God willing and the creek don’t rise, ETA of twenty.”

  “Be safe.” The call ended.

  * * *

  I parked in front of the paranormal unit at UTMC and pulled on a clean uni from the pack I had taken from the supply closet at HQ, clipping my badge and ID to the front. I hadn’t been wearing a gun for long, but I suddenly felt naked without it. I crossed the parking area, heading straight to the press, all camped out outside, cameras, mics, foldable chairs, and bodies that tried to block my way with all of the above as I tried to get up the steps to the doors. They shouted questions I couldn’t answer. I had been taught not to engage, not to react.

  “What’s going on? Can you tell us what’s happening inside?”

  “Did one of the patients die?”

  “Who died?”

  “Why is PsyLED involved? Is there a magic attack on the city?”

  “Is it true that witch coven terrorist groups have attacked the city and planted bombs in the hospital and at city offices?”

  “Do we have a biological terrorist event in Knoxville?”

  That was a new one, and I almost reacted to it. Instead I said, “No comment. No comment. No comment. Excuse me. No comment.”

  The guards just inside the entrance were off-duty sheriff’s deputies, armed with guns and attitude. They stepped out and eased the media people aside, opening a pathway to the entrance for me, and suddenly I was on the other side of the doors and safe inside. “Thanks, y’all,” I said.

  “No problem, ma’am,” the man said.

  “I don’t guess you know, or will tell us, what’s going on?” the woman deputy said, making it a question.

  “Sorry. The call said to get over here, that something was wrong. I hope I’ll know more on the way out.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “No one tells the county people anything. We’uns are always totally outta the loop.”

  At the church-speak, my head swiveled around fast. The name on her badge was Hollar, an old church name. “Hollar? God’s Cloud?”

  Her eyes widened, and I took her in, freckled face, brown hair, short but built sturdy. “A generation back,” she said. “My mama, Carla, got away in the middle of the night. She was pregnant with me. May Ree Hollar,” she said, looking at my ID and offering her hand. “Good to meet you’un, Miz Ingram.”

  “Nell,” I said. “You too.” I shook hands with May Ree.

  “Chris Skeeter,” the man said. “No church affiliation. And people call me Skeeter.”

  “Thanks for getting me in here,” I said. “I’ll say what I can on the way out.”

  “Appreciate it,” May Ree said. “And any precautions . . . ?”

  “Unis have been helpful. You got any?”

  “Not a one,” May Ree said. I tossed her my keys, reciting the plate number, model, and make. “It’s my POV, an ugly C10 pickup. Open the door, but be careful as the side pockets are my evidence compartments. My backup weapon is locked in a case behind the driver’s seat, just so you know. Unis are behind the passenger seat. Take one each. Lock up when you’re done.”

  “Blessed be,” May Ree said.

  Which sounded Wiccan, but I said back, “Hospitality and safety.”

  She grinned at me and headed outside, into the dying sunset.

  * * *

  On the paranormal unit, things were hectic. There were flashing lights, beeping of machines, emergency carts, and people in unis everywhere. Rushing a
nd dodging one another. Ducking through doors before they swished shut. Shouting. The privacy curtains in the glassed-in rooms were pulled. I had no idea where I was going or who was dying. And then I remembered Dougie, and her daughters and their partner and husband. The first death had been the husband, Adam somebody. Fear caught me around me heart and squeezed, bruising and draining.

  I followed the noise down the short hallway to the room with the greatest concentration of medical people. On the beds in the room, side by side, were two women, both being administered CPR by uni-wearing hospital personnel. I dressed out in the 3PE and stepped inside, through a purplish blue light that lit me up oddly, and into the room.

  Standing at the foot of the beds was Dougie. Tears ran down her face, and she looked beyond exhausted. She was standing with her hands over her mouth, as if to keep in words that wouldn’t help. Or screams. Or curses. On the beds were two women. One looked like Dougie, with strawberry blond hair. On the other bed was a woman who . . . oddly reminded me of me, as I had been, with long hair and slender build. The red-haired woman’s arm was out. Bloodless and pale. As if she was dying, reaching toward the other woman.

  And I knew—I knew—the women had to be Kirsten Harrell and her partner, Sally Clements. I stepped to Dougie and tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to me, blinked tears from her eyes, and succeeded in focusing on me. “Nell,” she whispered. Over the noise, I didn’t hear her, but I saw her lips move. And she slid into my arms as if the shoulder tap had been an invitation. Surprised, I clasped her closer and noted that she towered over me. How had I missed that she was so tall?