In addition to the personal information provided by her family, we also have the forensic evidence later gathered by Dr. Susan Perry. From the combination of those sources, we can presume essentially what transpired on the same afternoon that Katie McLane and Darren Green were worried in the town square.
Mrs. Wells had gone on one of her “expeditions,” as she called them. She had traipsed through the rural area bordering her farm, and when she came out through a particular stand of trees, she would have stopped short. Looking ahead, she would likely have blinked through her white-framed bifocals partly because of the bright sunlight and partly because of the astonishing sight she beheld.
It was the spectacular area that had grown up magnificently around Lisa McLane and Charley Flinn’s swimming hole.
Mrs. Wells certainly would have marveled at the look of plants she recognized, but which had grown in such a fabulous way, to such a burgeoning size, and with such verdant profusion, as she had never seen in her life. She would’ve felt as though she had wandered onto a different planet. Or the Garden of Eden.
She would have walked slowly into the huge magical garden, touching some of the extraordinary plants, smelling the sweet fragrance of others. With the eye of a master gardener, she would doubtlessly have noticed that while the strong, hearty, clearly superior plants had prospered majestically, they had also choked out those which had somehow not been blessed with the newfound life force that drove the potently predominant layers of vegetation.
At one point Mrs. Wells would certainly have drawn to a stop once again in amazement. Because she had confronted the huge and proliferating wild strawberries.
We know that she picked one of the ripe, inviting strawberries that was larger than her hand. She likely smelled it and smiled with delight. She did not taste it, however, and never would, but put it into her large basket and then continued picking considerably more of the unprecedented fruit.
11
REVELATION
Katie McLane. . .
As I came in the back door to our kitchen, my head was spinning. I was still trying to sort through all the strange and violent incidents. Lisa was taking something out of the freezer. She turned around sharply, like somebody might if they wouldn’t want to be caught doing something. A freezer bag spilled onto the floor.
Lisa laughed at herself. “Oh, good one, Lise.”
I stooped to help her pick up the small, scattered frozen items, then I frowned, very curious. “Shrimp?”
“Guess they’re Mom’s. I was looking for a juice bar,” Lisa explained. “Been really pigging out lately.” She continued picking up the shrimp. I looked at Lisa, with the definite feeling that I was being lied to. Lisa must have noticed my expression. “What?”
I decided to go for it. “Are you okay, Lise?”
Lisa screwed up her face like I was crazy. “What do you mean?” I could only stare at her for a moment, then sorta shrugged. Lisa smirked, “Well, that’s very articulate, but yes. I am great, little sister. Best I’ve ever been.” She poked my shoulder. As she stood up and left the kitchen, she flashed a grin back at me. But it was as cold as the frozen shrimp.
Eric Tenzer. . .
It was right after lunch. I ran into the school parking lot, and a knot of students jumped out of the way when the paramedic van came screeching in with its siren screaming. I shouted to the medics as they bailed out, “In here! Quickly! She can’t breathe!”
I hurriedly led them into the gym, where the science fair was in progress, and the final oral session had been about to start. The medics rushed through the students’ homemade exhibits to where Stephanie Lingebach lay gasping and writhing on the floor, her eyes rolled back to the whites. She looked demonic and possessed. Shelly Navarro, the science teacher, was bending over her as worried students crowded in.
“Everybody back,” I said. “Give them room!”
As the paramedics kneeled by her, Shelly told them, “I think it’s either grand mal or anaphylactic shock.”
One paramedic checked Steph’s trachea, and nodded in agreement as he clamped on an oxygen inhaler. “Anaphylaxis. Pharynx is swollen closed.” He glanced at his partner. “Thirty-three ccs of sub-q-epi. Stat. Throw on the pulse oximeter and get a Benadryl IV fifty. I’ll do a trake.” She was already on the case as he snapped on latex gloves and spoke commandingly to me about the students, “Back them up, please.” With practiced precision, the first paramedic sterilized Stephanie’s throat with Betadine, peeled open a sterile scalpel, and then cut deeply into her throat. Blood flowed out around the incision. Several students who were watching from nearby gasped; one boy gagged and ran toward the restroom.
The paramedic inserted a guide tube into the wound and leaned closer as he slid a narrower tube down inside it. “Okay, I’m in,” he said, pleased to hear that air was wheezing into Steph’s lungs through the incision. He helped his partner with the IV rig as he glanced up at me. “It’s a histaminic—allergic reaction. What’s she been eating?”
Jenna Mahoney leaned in over a boy’s shoulder, worried. “Just a tuna sandwich at lunch, but she’s eaten lots of those. Is she gonna be okay?”
The paramedic pressed Jenna. “Any other known allergies?”
“Uh, uh . . . bees. And mold, I think.” Jenna was trying to remember. “Yeah, that and some seafood. Not tuna, but, like crabs, lobster. Shellfish, y’know?”
Katie McLane. . .
I was standing at the edge of the crowd. My eyes snapped up to Jenna, startled. Then I scanned quickly across the other students and spotted Lisa. She wasn’t like all the others watching. They were concerned and worried. Lisa’s face had almost zero expression. But her eyes were hard. Cold.
Later that afternoon I came home angry. Our dining table was covered with clippings that Mom was using for reference while designing an ad on her laptop. I told her the story and my suspicions about Lisa. Mom was shocked. “What? Do you actually think your sister would poison her best friend?!”
Yes. I was convinced. I felt like a lawyer with a clear-cut case. “Lisa wanted to beat Steph at the science fair, Mom. And now she has.”
“And you should be proud of her,” Mom said, returning distractedly to her work in progress, “not saying things like—” She was interrupted by the phone ringing. “Oh, I can’t talk to anybody right now.”
I walked off hotly to the kitchen, muttering, “Gee, what else is new.” I grabbed the ringing phone. “She can’t talk to anybody!” Then I slammed it back down and stood there, fuming. After a moment I picked up the phone again and punched in a number.
After four rings, which I knew meant it was going to voice mail, a man’s voice answered, “Hi, this is Jason McLane. I can’t take your call right now . . .”
I nodded bitterly. “What a surprise.” I waited for the beep, then said gently, “Hi, it’s me, Daddy. Call me when you get back to Atlanta. Bye.” I hung the phone up, but stood there looking at it, whispering, “. . . I miss you.”
Dr. R.W. Hutcherson. . .
The beams from our pair of flashlights cut through the gloom in a dark CDC storage room in one of the outbuildings. Susan and I had closed the door behind us and were snooping. I was nervous, felt even more out of my depth than usual, whispering, “I know I’m new in these parts and not that familiar with protocol, but it took me a long time to get this job, Suse. Isn’t Levering likely to cut us outta the herd if we get caught in here without authorization? How’d you get the keys anyway?”
“Borrowed them from Joseph,” she said. “Made copies.” Her determination to ferret out the truth was clear. “There it is.”
“That doesn’t answer my first question.”
She didn’t respond, but led me down a row of file cabinets to a particular one. I pulled at the drawers. They were locked. “Okay,” I said, feeling relief. “At least we tried, but now let’s—”
Susan expertly tucked the flashlight under her arm so that its beam lit up the lock as she took out a small cloth pouch and
unrolled it, revealing a set of lock picks. I stared in wonderment. “Uh . . . where exactly did you . . . ?”
“My uncle was a locksmith.” She worked her way skillfully into the lock. “I used to practice in case college didn’t work out,” she said with a tight grin.
I chuckled, unconvinced. “Come on, you don’t really think that you’re gonna—” The lock clicked open.
Susan’s blue eyes twinkled at me.
I acknowledged her expertise with a nod. She pulled out the drawer. It was empty.
Dr. Susan Perry. . .
A few minutes later the two of us were walking across the darkened CDC grounds. I was frustrated, questioning myself. “Okay, maybe I’m just getting as paranoid as Prashant was, but damn it, I feel like Lauren’s stonewalling me, too. About that comet impact information.”
Hutch was mulling it over. “Maybe I can figure some way to bypass her.”
“That’d be great.”
“And I do like being in dark rooms with you.”
He gave me a shy, affectionate look, and I smiled back, genuinely acknowledging it. “Yeah. I like that, too.”
But then he frowned about something ahead and caught my sleeve to stop me from rounding the building’s corner. I looked at him questioningly as he whispered, “Paranoia time.”
I peered around the corner, looking toward the tree-lined staff parking lot. I saw Lauren and Mitchell chatting amiably as they walked to Mitchell’s dark limo. Two gray-suited clones were nearby, being casually protective. Just behind the limo was a large black SUV with its engine idling. Hutch seemed nervous, but followed reluctantly as I slipped up behind a parked CDC van to observe them more closely. Hutch whispered, “He’s added more security-types?”
Then someone else caught my eye. Joseph Hartman had come out of the lab building and was hovering deferentially nearby Lauren and Mitchell. “What the hell is he doing there?” I whispered. We watched as Joseph exchanged a few words with Lauren. He handed a file packet to Mitchell, then moved off. As Mitchell stepped toward his limo, Lauren grasped his arm. We could just barely make out her words.
“I’m jealous that the capitol building sees more of you than I do,” Lauren said to the hawkeyed man.
“Well, I’m jealous of the CDC,” he responded with a slight softness out of keeping with his stern, militaristic demeanor. “You’re extraordinary. And your work has been amazing.”
“It’s only the beginning,” Lauren said, somewhat coquettishly.
“Yes . . . it is.” Their eyes held with a powerful connection. Even from across the parking lot, their intimacy was evident.
I traded a glance with Hutch as we ducked back to avoid the sweeping lights of Mitchell’s departing limousine and the black SUV.
Charley Flinn. . .
When Caruso saw my finger that Tim had busted, he made Tim quarterback again. I played fullback. The game was about three minutes into the first quarter. Tim dropped back to throw a pass, but the rival team from the nearby town of Beaumount steamrolled me and the other linebackers. They sacked Tim decisively, slamming him so hard onto the ground that he musta seen stars. Part of me enjoyed seeing him get crunched. But there was something else going on.
A couple Warriors helped Tim up and into our huddle. He was pissed. “Where the hell were you guys?” We all shook our heads. We were playing just as hard, strong, and smart as we had the last couple games.
“Yeah, what the hell’s up?” I said, nursing my bandaged fingers. “Why aren’t we rollin’ over these wimps?!”
“All right, all right. We will,” Tim urged, determined to pull the pack together. “Red dog on three.” We all clapped, sounding our war whoop, broke the huddle, and went to the line. Tim glanced at the rival team’s defensive line. Then I saw him look more closely at those guys. I did, too.
That harsh, dominant glint all us Warriors had was also in the eyes of the Beaumount guys. I drew a breath, wondering how that was possible. Then Tim bent down to business. “Down. Set. Hut. Hut. Hut.”
As Tim took the snap, those Beaumount bastards crashed onto us like an avalanche. Tim got sacked again really hard. One of the tacklers stabbed his stiff fingers into Tim’s throat, another dug his cleats into my leg. I realized that these guys were just as hard-assed, cruel, and ferocious as we were. They were roaring like a pack o’lions, popping fists all around for how they’d snowplowed right through us and stomped Tim.
The hometown crowd was startled, too. They’d got used to cheering play after play from our supervictorious team. Ashton wasn’t used to their boys getting so totally, painfully whupped.
Darren Green. . .
In our locker room after the game, I was passing out towels to the Warriors, who were like really depressed. They were growling at each other, angry they hadn’t won. They just couldn’t believe it. Charley slammed a locker. “How did they fucking tie us! Damn! Those bastards must’ve found some strawberries, too! Shit! We could lose the goddamn championship!”
All the other guys were grumbling agreement just as Tim entered with this big grin. “Nothing to worry about, guys. That won’t be happening.” He snagged a towel from me, and I saw him wipe some black, greasy stuff off his hand.
Charley sneered at him. “Oh, you’re so fucking sure?”
“Just got a feeling.” Tim kept grinning slyly, in a way that gave me the creeps.
Eric Tenzer. . .
I was driving home after the game when I came upon the accident. Traffic on the country road had been stopped in both directions. There was quite a jam. Word had apparently gotten out quickly via cells and social media. A deputy sheriff’s car with its siren wailing sped past me on the shoulder toward the crash site. I walked up to investigate and saw Deputy Brice Patton get out of his squad car near the ugly accident. I’d had Brice in class for two years. It had been a struggle for both of us. In spite of my best efforts, he was one of those cocky kids who barely scraped by and just didn’t care about schoolwork. I’d worried for him then and was happy to hear that he’d at least finally found employment with the county sheriff.
The sheriff’s car was already at the accident site, along with a fire truck and several civilian cars whose occupants were standing along the shoulder of the dark road. The people’s faces were illuminated by the flashing emergency lights and the fire from the school bus, which was on its side in the gully that paralleled the road. It was engulfed in roaring flames.
Firemen were desperately trying to knock down the blaze and make their way in to seek survivors, but I could see that the outlook was definitely grim. So could Brice. Some adults were screaming, trying to get closer to find their sons who had been aboard the bus, but they were being held back by other parents.
I saw our kindly Sheriff Randolph, his round face smudged and burned, trudging upward from the gully. Brice reached down a hand to help pull him up as he said, “What the hell happened, Sheriff!”
“Bus with the Beaumount team we played tonight.” The sheriff was breathing hard. “Looks like the brakes failed. Lotta dead kids. Get down there and help pull ’em out.”
Brice swallowed. “Why don’t I stay up here and reroute traffic?”
“I said get your ass down there, boy! Who the hell’s in charge here?!” The sheriff stormed past. I noticed Brice watching him go for a moment. I saw the police and fire emergency lights reflected off the unusually cold glare that was in Brice’s eyes.
Darren Green. . .
The next morning I told Katie what I’d seen and heard in the locker room.
“Strawberries again?” She shook her head, trying to figure it out. She was convinced about her idea. “It has to be some new kind of drug. Something that really gets them hopped up. And mean. You know what those football games looked like.”
“Yeah.” I swallowed. “And how Tim and Charley got so nasty.”
Katie nodded. “And Lisa.”
Then I had a thought. “You think maybe it could be some kinda real strawberries?”
“C’mon, Darren, whoever heard of anything like that?” Katie said, like it was a totally stupid idea. “And where would they have—” She suddenly stopped dead.
“What?” I was confused. She just stood there. “What’re you thinking?”
She shook her head again. “Doesn’t make sense. And anyway, it’s the wrong time of year.”
I leaned closer. “Katie, what are you talking about?”
She kept standing there, thinking. “Sometimes in the summer Lisa would bring home wild strawberries that she and Charley had picked.”
“From where?”
She looked up at me. Her face was very frowny and tense.
Katie McLane. . .
We were blown away. Of course we’d heard fables about the Garden of Eden. I’d even read about the real Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the ancient seven wonders of the world. But not in a zillion years did I think I’d ever see anything like what we were looking at. And definitely not in the woods on the old McAlistair farm in Georgia.
But there it was: an area easily three times the size of our school gym had turned into the greenest, lushest place I’d ever seen. The woods around it were just ordinary, normal autumn woods. But it looked like the really rich, new, green vegetation had been working its way outward from the pond, which was practically hidden deep in the middle. Darren and I were stupefied. And a little scared. Neither of us said anything. We just walked real slowly and carefully into the area, like we were walking across a minefield. We kept glancing nervously at each other. It was like we’d wandered into a dreamscape. We were really hesitant about touching the large, beautiful plants as we slowly walked deeper in. Down toward the edge of the pond. We were moving so slowly, so quietly, I was really startled when Darren suddenly grabbed my arm.
The Darwin Variant Page 17