“It was a gift, something to help cheer up the patients.”
“From whom?”
“A friend of Matilda’s. Uh, Dr. Mathis, that scientist from the aquarium.”
CHAPTER
11
Mathis
I was too stressed, too preoccupied to drive. I rode shotgun while Brenda did the driving. We were heading for the aquarium for an unannounced visit with Dr. Mathis.
“Help me,” I said. “We’ve got to get this sorted. We have to have something, anything, before we get there. Brenda. Any pictures, images?”
“You mean, you’re gonna trust me?” she asked with her typical raised eyebrow.
This time I cursed. Only Brenda—only Brenda—could bring that out of me. “Must we get into that now?”
“A flashlight,” she said, her eyes on the road. “Well, not a flashlight. A big flashlight. A spotlight kind of thing.”
“That’s it?”
She rolled her eyes with impatience. “Well, it was a blue light, okay? But Aunt Edna talked about the orbs usin’ blue light and then we saw that orb use a blue light and maybe that’s makin’ me see things, I dunno.”
“Tank? Anything?”
“‘Turned to powder,’” he said from the back seat. “What Aunt Edna said. She’s got it right. This fungus takes over until fungus is all there is.”
I nodded, sickened by the conclusion. “The fungus consumes the victim: the nephew’s dog, the nephew, Aloysius the cat . . .”
Andi. I couldn’t say it. I covered my face. “Oh God . . .”
“Yeah,” said Tank. “Don’t worry, He’s in the loop.”
I wanted to lash out at his simple faith, his pat answer, but in that instant the thought of Andi brought another thought. “Do either of you know Morse code?”
Brenda shook her head.
“I do,” said Tank. “I learned it in the Boy Scouts.”
“The other night Andi tapped out a pattern. Maybe it was Morse code.”
“That’d be Andi,” said Brenda. “Her head’s full of stuff like that.”
By now I had the pattern memorized. “Four dots and a dash. Four dashes and a dot. Five dashes.”
Tank winced, searching his memory. “Oh man . . .”
“Tank, remember!”
“Uh, uh, uh, it’s uh, numbers. Um . . . OH! Dit-dit-dit-dit-dah, that’s the number 4. And dah-dah-dah-dah-dit, that’s 9. And five dashes is zero. Four Nine Zero.”
I sighed in exasperation. “Oh, Andi. You and your numbers!”
“Prof,” said Brenda, “they always mean somethin’.”
“Well,” said Tank, “what was happening when she did it?”
I replayed it in my mind. “You’d just left with Abby . . . the orbs appeared outside the window . . . Oh my God!”
“Yep, it’s Him again.”
“Blue light!”
“Keep goin’,” said Brenda.
“Blue light. The orbs use a blue light.” A lightning bolt hit me. “OH! Fungus. Light. The fungus was discovered in caves, in the dark.”
“And Andi always wanted the room dark.”
“And light, blue light, is known to kill some species of fungus.”
“Hey,” said Tank, seeing some light of his own, “those orbs weren’t searching around Aunt Edna’s house with blue lights. They were cleaning up, killing the leftover fungus!”
I turned and looked at him. Brenda looked at him through the rearview mirror.
“Tank . . .” I said, a little ashamed to be so shocked. “That’s brilliant—no pun intended.”
Tank’s countenance lifted several degrees, and he kept going. “Boris the dog brings the fungus in, he pops open, spilling fungus everywhere—gross!—the fungus infests the nephew. The orb shines blue light through the window and kills the leftover fungus. It turns brown, the nephew tracks it around the house on his shoes. Then . . . oh brother . . .”
Brenda picked it up. “The nephew bursts.” She winced. “The fungus spills all over his room and, you know, finishes up the nephew. The orbs go through the house killin’ the fungus so it doesn’t spread. We find dead fungus all over his room, but not him.”
“Same thing at the hospital!” said Tank. “The cat had the fungus, it infested Fornby, then it . . .”
“Yes, yes,” I said, “go on.”
“And that’s why we saw the fungus and a little bit of the cat in the cat’s bed. Gross.”
“But!” I completed the thought. “The orb was there to kill that fungus with a blue light, and we saw it dying.” My heart was quickening. “So there’s definitely a purpose, a mind, a technology behind all this. The orbs must be like drones—remote eyes, remote tools. They observe the infestation and control any spillovers with blue light. AND! Getting back to Andi’s number, 490. That would be a wavelength in the blue range of the spectrum. It could be the specific wavelength of the blue light: 490 nanometers.”
That appeared to boggle Tank’s mind. “Really?”
“That’s Andi,” said Brenda with a wag of her head.
“Brenda,” I said, spotting a line of cabs waiting in front of a hotel, “pull over.”
“What?”
“Pull over, grab one of those cabs, get to the University of Tampa, show them your picture.”
“But I haven’t—”
“Draw it when you get there. Find someone, anyone, who might know what it is.”
Brenda pulled into the hotel parking lot. “Well, then what?”
I don’t know where I got the conviction; faith, perhaps. “It’s there. You never draw anything that doesn’t exist somewhere. Search around, find it, get it.” She climbed out. “Oh! It must be set for 490 nanometers! 490!”
“Four-ninety, right,” she said, running for a cab.
I ran around the car, got behind the wheel, and looked at Tank in the back seat. “Let’s go see Dr. Mathis, shall we?”
“Come in, come right in.”
I looked at Tank. We hardly expected so jovial a response to my knock. Then again, Mathis could still be ignorant of our discoveries and suspicions. I opened the door and we stepped into his lab.
Mathis sat at a bench on the far side of the room, peering into a microscope. “That’s a very perceptive dog you have,” he said good-naturedly.
We made our way through lab benches, tables with fish, squids, and crustaceans in jars of formaldehyde, lab machines, and instruments. The room was dimly lit, just as it was the last time we were here. This time we noticed.
“She barks from experience,” I said. “She had a run-in with the fungus herself. Just like the dolphin you and I encountered. Just like Andi. Just like Aunt Edna’s nephew.” Then came my coup de grace. “Just like the cat you brought to the behavioral health unit.”
“Just like the masses of dead birds and fish,” Mathis added, unruffled.
“Do tell.”
We stood behind him, resting against the worktables. Rather than turn to engage us, he reached for another slide, placed it under the microscope, and continued viewing. “It’s all for the best, to bring peace to the world. The fungus expands the mind and opens up pathways to the spirit world. That’s why a benevolent global organization genetically engineered their own version of it, something they could propagate, control, and use to promote universal bliss and brotherhood; to unite all minds into one.”
Uh-oh. This kind of talk sounded all too familiar.
“Wait a minute,” said Tank. “A benevolent global organization? That wouldn’t be The Gate, would it?”
“Oh, you’ve heard of them! Well, well. They’ll soon be known all over the world, we assure you! The fungus will see to that. But you can understand the problem they encountered: They had a mutation of the fungus they could use to control minds and bodies, but no effective way to deliver it. You know how people are; they aren’t going to just swallow the stuff. The Gate had to get around that. They had to find a suitable delivery vehicle.
“They experimented with fish
and birds, but because the fungus was engineered to thrive inside people, fish and birds didn’t work; the fungus matured only as far as eating out the eyes, and then the fish and birds would die, and the fungus would die with them, leaving a big mess to draw attention. Warm-blooded animals whose temperature was close to that of humans, that was the answer, and it worked, with an extra benefit: what better way to spread the fungus to unsuspecting human beings than through their pets—dogs, cats, or even dolphins?”
“So they used Abby?” Tank asked.
“She was an early experiment using a warm-blooded mammal as a delivery vehicle, except that you, Tank, interfered with the process, so they couldn’t be sure the fungus had taken hold—which it did, but far too slowly. What should have taken days took months. When they tried it with Aunt Edna’s nephew using his dog, Boris, it worked perfectly. The fungus went through all four stages of its life cycle unhampered: infestation producing altered states and madness; destruction of the eyes; displacement of tissue; and then what we call the burst stage.”
“Yes,” I acknowledged. “We’ve seen all four.”
“It’s how the fungus propagates itself. It reaches maturity and bursts from its host so it can spread to the next. It’s like a conquering army!”
“So why destruction of the eyes?” I dared to ask.
“Oh, survival, of course, something the fungus does on its own that The Gate wasn’t counting on. This is a cave fungus. It doesn’t like any kind of light, but The Gate engineered it to be vulnerable to a narrow frequency of light only they knew about, so only they could control it. Well, that works fine if the fungus is lying outside a host, but once the fungus is inside the body of a warm-blooded mammal—such as pets and humans—it can survive and complete its life cycle, untouched by any light, except . . .”
I could see where this was going. “Except through the eyes.”
With an affirmative nod, he finally turned.
I half expected it, but still it was horrible.
His eyes were gone. Nothing but empty sockets oozing green.
“Exactly,” he said. “We want The Gate to have some control, but not all.”
He rose from his chair. We backed away. We knew we weren’t really talking to Mathis, but another mind entirely, a mind that was cunning, cruel, arrogant. “Oh,” he said, “we never told you about the other dolphin, the one that infested the field researcher in the Indian River Lagoon. That researcher was Dr. Mathis. The dolphins ingested some of those infested fish from the earlier experiments and became carriers themselves.”
“And knew just where to swim to find us.”
He smiled, the flesh crinkling around the sockets. “Exactly where we wanted them to swim. The fungus has a mind. Our mind.”
“Then you must know where Andi is.”
“Something you’ll want to know, I’m sure, and the sooner the better.” Casually, and without a hint that he was blind, he removed his lab coat and hung it on a hall tree. “You could say she’s somewhere trying to restore her youth.” He looked at us with those empty sockets. “But you’d better hurry and find her. The fungus is well into the first stage now. Once she loses her eyes, there’ll be no getting her back.”
He slipped on some wraparound sunglasses and headed for the door. This monster, loose on the streets? We tried to stand in his way.
“We’re not here to play games,” I said—even as something hard collided with my cranium from behind. I went reeling into a lab table, shattering and scattering flasks and test tubes. Sinking to the floor, I caught sight of Tank in a fighting stance, blocking an attack from the culprit, an orb that kept lunging, bobbing, trying to knock him down. With just a few quick fighter’s moves, Tank had hold of the thing. It fought him with surprising power, like an angry fish, but that only riled Tank. As if he were spiking a football, he dashed the thing against the floor, where it cracked like an egg, spilling wires, fluids, and components. The blue light came on for a moment, then winked out.
The orb finally lay still, except for a faint electrical fizz.
The door to the lab clicked shut. The orb had done its work. Mathis was gone.
CHAPTER
12
The High School
Tank and I wasted no time bolting from the lab to find Mathis, dashing past the aquarium’s tanks and displays, going out the door to run past seal and tortoise pools, hide-and-seeking through the gardens and paths. The chase was useless, and I was on the verge of a coronary. Mathis could have gone anywhere.
We finally joined up outside the tropical bird aviary, Tank only mildly winded while I collapsed on a park bench wishing I had an oxygen tank.
“Maybe we should call the police,” he said.
“And tell them what?”
“But what can we do?”
“Get out your iPhone,” I said between gasps for air. “Find out where Ponce de Leon High School is.”
He got out his phone. “Ponce . . . ?”
“Ponce de Leon. The Spanish explorer who was looking for the fountain of youth. He discovered this crazy state.”
“Well . . . it wasn’t a state then, was it?”
“No. Thank you for that correction.”
“So they named a high school after him?”
“Mathis gave us a clue, something about Andi trying to restore her youth. She was singing the alma mater at the hospital.”
He was tapping away on the phone. “What a lousy name for a high school.”
“Wait’ll you hear the song.”
“Here it is.”
“Get the directions and let’s go.”
Just a few more taps and we had the route. Tank helped me along, and we got to the car as quickly as my rubbery legs would allow.
Tank drove. I just breathed and hurt.
“Why would Mathis tell us where to find her?” Tank asked.
“To trap us, I imagine. It’s the old ‘tell them where, but say it in a riddle’ trick. Makes us think we figured it out ourselves when they were handing it to us. And if this whole thing is guided by a universal mind operating in the fungus, then Andi sang her alma mater and Mathis gave us the clue for the same reason: to trap us in the high school with Andi as the bait.”
“So, did I miss the part about why we’re purposely walking into a trap? I mean, I’ve never been in a trap before.”
“Sure you have. Just think football. Look for holes in the line, get around the blockers, nail the quarterback.”
He followed that metaphor just fine. “Yeah . . .”
My cell phone played Beethoven’s Fifth.
It was Brenda. “Got it! I mean, the guys in the School of Engineering have a light, 10,000 watts, and they can set it up for 490 nanometers. They know just how to modify it because I drew them a picture—and I didn’t even know what I was drawin’! Way cool.”
“We’re on our way to Ponce de Leon High School. Can you meet us there?”
“I’m on my way there now!”
“Wha—?”
“Remember that cabbie who picked us up in Rome?”
I was about to get angry. Was she toying with me? “Who appeared out of nowhere for no particular reason and knew just where to take us?”
“Yeah. Well, I’m in his cab, and he’s taking me to the high school. Same guy, ’cept now he talks Southern.”
I put my phone away. “Him again!” Yes, it was a trap, all right. We’d just have to deal with it when we got there.
Ponce de Leon High School turned out to be an empty, boarded-up shell from the past. I could have gone to high school there. Perfect. If The Gate and their lackeys wanted to eradicate us neatly, away from any watching eyes, this was the place to do it.
Brenda’s cab arrived with a screech only minutes after Tank and I got there. The cabbie didn’t stick around, but I took some quick steps to look at his face. Yes, same guy, all right. I think I heard him say “Bye, y’all,” as he gave me a little wave and drove off.
“So why’re we here?” Brenda a
sked.
She was empty-handed! “Where’s the light?”
“They’re working on it.”
“Without a blue light, what can we do?” I looked up at the imposing, brick building. Night was approaching. It was going to be dark in there. Even if we found Andi . . .
“Hey,” Brenda insisted, “don’t worry. When it’s ready they’ll get it to us. I took care of that.”
“We have to look for Andi,” I said. “In there.”
Now that got a curse out of her.
“And find her before the fungus reaches the second stage and it’s too late,” I added.
“But wouldn’t we need a blue light to help her, anyway?” Tank asked.
“We might find one we can use. Might.”
The main doors were chained shut, but we found a side door standing ajar like an invitation. We stepped gingerly into a long, dark hall. Years of trash, even dead leaves, littered the floor; the place echoed. Through broken windows, streetlights painted squares of light on the old, dented lockers.
As if on cue, we heard a far-off, echoing voice. “Abby . . . here, Abby . . .”
It was Andi.
We ventured a few more steps inside as our eyes adjusted to the dark.
Two classroom doors ahead, another hallway crossed the hall we were in. A golden glow appeared in that hall. We ducked into a doorway as an orb, and then another, floated through the intersection like watchmen on patrol, lenses sweeping back and forth. When they passed down the hall and their light winked out around a corner, we advanced like shadows to a niche between lockers and a drinking fountain and hid there, listening.
Somewhere, Andi was laughing playfully as she often laughed with Abby, suggesting she was not alone. All we could do was make our way in that direction. What we would find, we would find. The game was cat and mouse, sneak and hide, avoid orbs, follow sounds. From somewhere—around the corner, down a hall, perhaps in a library or cafeteria—came the clicking of animal claws on the tile floors and the panting of dogs. A cat let out a mournful cry.
“Ab-by!” the voice called once again. We were closer.
We didn’t know the layout of the building; we didn’t know what lay around any corner we came to. We made turns and decisions that could have been right but could have been wrong; we stole down halls, around corners, through deserted classrooms with the desks stacked helter-skelter.
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