Inside Andi’s mind, and through her eyes, I saw the light flashing her direction and Brenda’s grim, determined expression, like that of a gallant warrior—but on the enemy’s side. NO!
“NO!” Andi screamed, covering her eyes.
Tank spoke to her as a friend. “Look into the light, Andi! Look at it!”
I could feel the warmth of trust rising in her as the light hit her eyes. Trust! Like a nagging, undefeatable truth so far away.
The light did its work. Like an extinguished lamp, my vision through Andi’s eyes winked out. She was free.
“Brenda? What are you doing here? Tank, what are you doing with the professor?”
In anger and frustration that weren’t mine, I growled, “You belong to us, Andrea Goldstein!”
She smiled her disarming smile and said, “Oh, you bet I do!”
I didn’t mean it that way.
“Safta! Sabba! What’s, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”
Sadie could not stay away from her granddaughter. She rushed forward, held the girl in her arms.
Brenda, Tank, and his unwilling, under-arm prisoner advanced and stationed themselves between the innocents and Fornby, the two escaped patients, a pack of dogs and yowling, eyeless cats. Brenda raised the broken orb, aimed it at Fornby. I kicked the air, reached and groped for that orb to stop her.
But . . . no need. The orb’s power pack went dead. Its blue light dimmed, blinked, went out. Brenda jiggled the orb, pressed the test button inside, but to no avail.
AH! Through the dog, through Fornby, I watched a pall of helplessness fall over Brenda Barnick’s face. Now this was going to be perfect. Perfect!
But Brenda’s resolve didn’t waver. Instead of that look of helplessness, a fire rose in her eyes. She dropped the orb, Tank tossed her the bat, and the two—with me in their company—planted their feet and stood their ground.
Oh, and now, what was this? Andi, though frightened and trembling, came down the stairs and stood with us, feet planted. We were a wall. We would die there before we would move.
“Unhand me!” I screamed at that huge ape of iron.
“I’m gonna do like you said,” said Tank. “I’m gonna think football. We’re not giving up another yard.” Then he looked me right in the eye and asked, “You gonna help?”
I could hear the thoughts of the fungal Mind like hundreds of little voices coming through a wire—The breeze is right, we’re in last stage, they are yours, take them, live in them! But I could not turn my eyes from Tank’s face, for I now beheld what I had never seen before: A man. Not a youthful, bungling football jock, but a man. A warrior. Here, in Tank, in Brenda, in Andi, was valor, and part of me, buried deep within, felt something.
Felt something?
Yes. The fire, the same as I saw in Brenda’s eyes, in Tank’s strength, even in Andi’s fear.
And where was I? Where was Dr. James McKinney? Where should I be?
Against all the poisonous voices within me I knew it: with them.
“At your service,” I said.
Tank released me. “If we can just push ’em back, buy some distance and some time . . .” was all he could say before I let out a war cry and charged. I was infested, anyway. Why not strike the first blow?
I collided full speed with the shell of Matilda Fornby, and rather than experiencing a bone-breaking impact, the clothing and skin collapsed, I felt a muffled blast, and my entire awareness was enveloped in a green cloud.
Wump! Brenda took the bat to the chocolate lab, and it exploded.
Tank grabbed up the two dazed patients, one in each arm, and got them into clear air.
To one side, Andi stood in the path of the cats. They leaped and burst upon her, splashing her with green powder.
Everywhere, there was green, green, green. The stench of the fungus filled my nose and mouth. I was gagging. I heard screams and chaos as my ears rumbled and the earth seemed to quake. But through orbs above, I saw the green cloud expending its explosive power in the middle of the Center’s grounds, away from the building where the good folks were watching, screaming, running inside. We’d spared them, at least for the time being. But we, covered in the fungus, were doomed.
The rumbling in my ears grew louder. It must be the next stage beginning. I felt for my eyes—still there. No pain yet. I could still see. . . .
Wait!
Blue light! Like a blue sunrise. And immediately—
Horror. Pain. Death. Intense, everywhere. I could hear a million shrieks as the light penetrated through the green cloud and myriads of minuscule, green globes shriveled to dead, brown particles. I screamed, clamping my hands to my head. This, it occurred to me, must be how it felt to be shot—a million times.
And yet . . .
I, the real I, knew this was salvation, as light coming from heaven. At first it was only a murky glow through the cloud, just enough to call to my soul in its prison, but as the cloud fell away like fog under a warming sun, the light grew brighter, dazzling, healing. I looked directly into it, held my gaze right there as I felt the voices, the thoughts, the chains of lies and confusion fall away. I had a thought of my own: “My! The destruction of the fungus is quite rapid!”
My next thought came as a declaration of freedom: “I am Dr. James McKinney—and that’s all I am!”
The rumble was deafening, and even more so as I returned to this singular planet and my own situation within my own skin. Everything around me was awash in blue. The steps, the walkway, the senior citizens, the lawn, all blue. Dead powder, looking blue, was settling like fine snow on the ground all around me, and only now did I become aware that my body was not standing, but lying feebly within a web of arms. With my own eyes, still there and still working, I found myself safely held and steadied by Brenda Barnick, Bjorn Christensen, and Andi Goldstein.
“Am I . . . am I back?” I asked them.
Andi’s jubilant smile was the first I saw. “It sure looks that way!”
I got my feet under me and put my weight on them, still steadied by my friends. With arms free and eyes focused, I dusted the brown powder from my sleeves, shoulders, and pant legs as I looked around. “Did we get it all?”
I could see the two patients from the BHU were back to . . . well, normal for them. They were lightly dusted in brown, but surrounded by senior friends and making their way up the steps to sample some punch.
“I think we got it all,” said Tank, and it was only then I realized how we were shouting to hear each other. Where was all that noise coming from?
When the noise moved from directly above us to out over the Senior Center grounds, I recovered my senses enough to recognize a helicopter settling on the lawn. On the nose of the chopper was a sizable black cylinder still emitting a powerful beam of blue light.
I looked at Brenda, astonished. “They mounted it to a helicopter?”
“The chopper belongs to Jacob,” she said. “All I had to do was ask.”
The brilliant blue light switched off as the chopper’s engine and rotors wound down. The door opened, and there in the passenger seat, his hand on the spotlight controls, was . . .
Daniel Petrovski, smiling like a cherub.
What a feeling. That kid of questionable allegiance just saved my life. Our lives. Countless lives, as a matter of fact. I turned an icy eye toward Brenda. “And just how did he get involved in this?”
Brenda smiled. “I had him come along—separately, just in case. He stayed with some friends of Sadie and Jacob. Turns out we needed someone to show the chopper pilot where we’d be—and to work the light.”
“But how did he know where we’d be?”
She shrugged. “He has . . . friends that you don’t like.”
Daniel looked up at an invisible someone sitting in the chopper with him.
Oh, the things I had to accept with this bunch! “And to think I trusted you.”
She put a fist on her hip, cocked her head, and up went those eyebrows. “Yeah, to think you did.”<
br />
Well, where would I be if I had not? And where would any of us be if not all five had been here? I put my arm around her and gave her a nod. “Well done. And thank you.”
That left one last debt to settle. I took Tank aside. “You asked me what I was so mad at.”
“Well, we don’t have to talk about that if—”
“And I said I didn’t share such things with people I didn’t trust.”
Now he just listened.
“Her name was Autumn,” I said. “We were in love, but I was a Catholic priest. Because of my vows, I lost her; because of our love, I was defrocked. End of—well, beginning of story, actually. But now you know—and I’m still just as angry.”
He nodded. “Got it” was all he said.
Brenda and Andi joined us. I think it was supposed to be a group hug, but nobody organized it and it looked more like a collision. Well, we’d get better organized with time.
“Hey,” said Tank, looking at Daniel, “one thing I still wonder about: he had his face right next to Abby’s, but he never caught any of the fungus.”
“He’s prepubescent,” I surmised. “Remember how Mathis said the fungus piggybacks on testosterone to infiltrate the neuro-receivers? In our young man, the fungal toxins lacked a sufficient handle, and the fungus died isolated.”
I could tell Tank was impressed. “For real?”
I smiled. I shrugged. “Well, suffice it to say, the powers-that-be, whatever they are, wanted him fit to tackle his role in this little project.” I said to everyone, “Come on. Let’s help him down out of that chopper . . . and shake his hand.”
Selected Books by Frank Peretti
Illusion: A Novel
This Present Darkness
Piercing the Darkness
The Oath
Prophet
Tilly
The Visitation
Monster
www.frankperetti.com
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Infestation Page 7