Ghost Key

by Trish J. MacGregor

  “Okay, so let’s say you’re right, Mr. Small. Then how come four of your people tried to run me off the road the other day? How do you know your own people haven’t been taken?”

  Kate heard the hostility in Rocky’s voice, but was glad he’d asked the question.

  “I know them four. They weren’t part of our camp. But they’d been taken, all right, and they stole a cart from us. We got it back and sent them on their way.”

  “How?” Kate asked. “They could’ve taken you, right?”

  “Only if they leaped out of the bodies they were using. But they weren’t about to do that.” He gave a small, wicked laugh. “We were carrying torches. They’re scared shitless of fire. And we had AK-47s. A shot from one of them suckers is going to send you to the other world right quick. And the way I think it works for these demons is if the human host dies before the demon escapes, the demon is obliterated.”

  “But how can something that’s already dead be annihilated, Zee?” she asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  He looked suddenly and totally miserable. “I know. I sound like a fuckin’ fruitcake. Fritz and Diane, they’ve just about had it with my theories. But everything I’ve told you is what I’ve learned, observed, pieced together.”

  “You’re basically suggesting that we run out to an uninhabited island and hide,” Kate said.

  “Just to keep you safe from being taken until we’ve got our army together.”

  “Your army?” Rocky balked. “Why not report this to the feds? Or to the state police? Let them handle it.”

  “Because we don’t know how widespread this invasion is, son. It’s possible these ghosts have infiltrated the feds and the state police.” He tapped the weapon, the bag of grenades. “Now put these someplace safe. If you need more weapons, come by the camp. My advice to you is to get your supplies and food as soon as the market opens. Make sure you buy extra gasoline and an extra tank of propane. Then you should hightail it out to Snake Key or Sea Horse Key. Both of them have plenty of mangroves and coves where you can drop anchor and not be seen.” He pushed to his feet, shrugged on the backpack, carefully fixed the strap of the Stradivarius case over his shoulder. “Son, don’t give your ma a lot of grief about this.”

  “Hey, I still have to go to school, to my job, to—”

  “And I still have my job at Annie’s Café,” Kate said. “Just because we’re moving doesn’t mean life stops, Rocky.”

  “That’s not what it sounds like.”

  “Reckon school is okay,” Zee said. “Least for a while. As far as we can tell, no teachers have been taken yet. Don’t know about the rescue center. Just keep a close watch, son.”

  “What the hell am I watching for, exactly?”

  Zee brought his finger to the corner of his right eye. “The black eyes. That doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s incredibly strange. Then the twitching…” He twitched, a perfect imitation of how Rich had twitched last night. “And sometimes their mouths move out of synch with their words.”

  Rocky shrugged. He obviously thought Zee was as nutty as his mother. “Well, I gotta go shower. Nice seeing you, Mr. Small.”

  “You, too, Rocky.”

  Kate walked out to the front of the houseboat with Zee, the dog trotting along behind them. “He’s going to give you trouble about this, Kate.”

  “I know.”

  “This evil, what’s happening here, is hard to accept till you experience it yourself.” He hugged her quickly. “You take care. Keep in touch. You got my cell number.”

  As Kate watched him cross the parking lot, she wondered who he had lost to this evil.

  “Mom, you know this is total bullshit, right?” Rocky came up behind her, swung an arm around her shoulders. “I mean, Zee’s been planning for Armageddon since Y2K. He’s an incredible musician, but he may be crazy.”

  “We’re moving, Rocky.”

  His arm slipped away from her, and his voice lost its softness. “I’m not moving anywhere. I’ll stay with Amy. This is completely insane.”

  “Nope, you’re not staying with Amy. I’ll call her parents if you persist with this, Rocky. We’ll stay out on Sea Horse. We’ve got a couple of Zodiac rafts and a skiff with electric motors, and we can keep the cart and the VW somewhere close to wherever we come to shore. I’ll need to return to Rich’s to get the car and the cart and would appreciate it if you would drive one of them. Then I’m going shopping for food and supplies. I’ll meet you back here by noon.”

  “What the hell are we going to do out there all day? Forget it. I’m not going. I’ll help you with the car and the cart, but I’m not going out there. Besides, I’ve got to work from noon to four.”

  “Then I’ll meet you back here around then.”

  “You’re not hearing me.” He was practically shouting now. “I’m. Not. Going. Period.”

  Kate was now so livid that she fought to keep her voice quiet, even. “Yeah, you are. End of discussion.”

  She moved past him, certain that if she didn’t get away from him quickly, she would say something she could never take back, that would damage their relationship irreparably. She hurried through the houseboat to pick up the weapons and grenades on the deck. She went into her bedroom, slammed the door, dropped everything on the bed. She sank to the edge of the mattress, hands gripping her thighs, forcing herself to take deep breaths, then exhaling slowly. Tears welled in her eyes, and she felt like throwing herself against the bed and sobbing. Yeah, like pulling a Scarlett O’Hara would solve anything.

  Then she remembered something her father had said to her one afternoon years ago, when they’d gone fishing. Trust what you feel even if you don’t have facts to back it up, even if the people around you are saying you’re crazy. It might just save your life.

  And just that fast, every doubt she’d entertained for the last six weeks disappeared.

  * * *

  Just outside of Gainesville, Sanchez pulled into Devil’s Millhopper State Geological Park. He resented the stop; he simply wanted to get to Cedar Key and locate the redhead. He craved the opportunity to see her in person, to feast on the sight of her. That telepathic connection they’d shared, however brief, had ignited something between them. Sanchez had never experienced anything quite like it. It was as if they had stepped inside each other’s skins, felt what the other felt in the most intimate, immediate way. Or, at any rate, that was how it had been for him.

  Delaney had called him yesterday afternoon when he was on the road and told him to stay overnight somewhere and meet here at the park in the morning. He didn’t want Sanchez to head into Cedar Key until they’d both met the FBI agent who had requested ISIS help. Irritating, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  He and Jessie got out, he put his suitcase in the trunk, locked the car, and they headed for the half-mile trail where he was supposed to meet the two men. The park was actually a bowl-shaped sinkhole 120 feet deep that led to a miniature rain forest, a biological and ecological wonderland. No dusty paths here. A complex network of wooden boardwalks and stairs switched back and forth along the steep limestone slopes, past streams and lush vegetation. A sign announced that the half-mile nature trail where he was supposed to meet up with the two men only meandered along the top of the sinkhole. A second sign said that dogs on leashes were welcome.

  Jessie had never been leashed. Sanchez didn’t own a leash. “What the hell, girl. Just stay close, okay?”

  She barked and immediately bounded ahead of him, racing along the boardwalk with her nose to the ground. So much for obedience. But in all fairness to her, she’d been in the car since they’d left Cocoa Beach more than two hours ago. They had stayed overnight with a former ISIS remote viewer who had left six months ago for a job with NASA. His friend’s job with NASA was to remote-view Mars—for landing spots, sources of water, life-forms. It beats looking for terrorists, he’d remarked.

  Unless they looked like Red, Sanchez thought. Except that Sanchez no longer
believed she was a terrorist. He no longer believed they were dealing with a terrorist organization in the traditional sense of the word. He hadn’t yet told Delaney about what had happened the night before last, when he was in his father’s yard and Red had communicated with him. But he had given Delaney the location of this alleged terrorist cell and Delaney had sent him northward the next morning.

  The one good thing about all this was that the events he’d seen through his sister had now changed. In that vision, Delaney had told Nicole he was flying to Cedar Key “tomorrow” and Sanchez was already there. In actuality, Delaney had flown his Cessna to the area first to meet with the agents investigating the bleed-outs and Sanchez hadn’t gotten to Cedar Key yet. Free will prevailed always. What a viewer saw at any given moment was only the most probable version of events. And since the version he’d seen hadn’t happened, perhaps the events that would prompt Nicole to demand answers from Delaney wouldn’t happen, either.

  His BlackBerry jingled as a text message came through. From Nicole.

  Hermano, you said you’d stay in touch. What’s going on? I haven’t heard from you.

  Typical, Sanchez thought, that she contacted him at the moment he was thinking about her. He quickly replied:

  Sorry. Got caught up in stuff. Not on Cedar Key till later today. Promise to keep in touch.

  You’d better. Don’t want to punch Delaney. Luv u.

  He trotted after Jessie, surprised that the trail around the sinkhole was crowded with runners, hikers with dogs, couples with dogs, families with kids. But it was Sunday, after all, the weather crisp, the sky crystalline, and Gainesville was a college town. No one called him on breaking the leash law or gave him dirty looks. Live and let live.

  Near the end of the trail, he saw Delaney and another man leaning against the railing, peering down the chasm, talking earnestly. Delaney was hard to miss anywhere—a black man nearly seven feet tall. But next to him stood a short white guy with sandy blond hair graying at the temples. They looked like characters in a sitcom.

  Jessie reached them first, nudged Delaney’s leg with her snout, and he laughed and fussed over her. When Delaney introduced her to the fed and she raised her paw in greeting, the man didn’t react. The guy either didn’t like dogs or was humorless or both. It didn’t bode well for this meeting. Sanchez suspected he would end up, once again, defending his ability. The bureau boys he’d dealt with in the past regarded remote viewing as fringe science, a joke, and a waste of taxpayers’ money. But perhaps O’Donnell would be different because, as Delaney had said, he wanted results.

  Sanchez walked over to them and the fed glanced from Jessie to Sanchez, gave a kind of gritted-teeth smile and stuck out his hand. “Tom O’Donnell. Bob’s been extolling your abilities, Mr. Sanchez.”

  He didn’t want to grasp O’Donnell’s outstretched hand. But if he didn’t, he would be perceived as an unfriendly SOB. So before he gripped the man’s hand, he shut himself down psychically, the equivalent of hitting a circuit breaker. It hadn’t always been that easy, but it worked. He didn’t pick up squat. “My pleasure, Agent O’Donnell.”

  O’Donnell looked to be in his late forties. Although he was at least a foot shorter than Delaney, he appeared to be fit, a gym rat with muscles as hard as granite, a solid handshake, and piercing eye contact learned at Quantico. “So tell me about this terrorist cell, Mr. Sanchez.”

  They walked along the trail as Sanchez talked. He chose his words with great care, revealing enough so that O’Donnell didn’t interrupt with questions or clarifications. But when Sanchez finished, O’Donnell zeroed in on the one detail that mattered personally to Sanchez.

  “The redhead. Tell me more about her.”

  “There isn’t any more to tell.”

  “But you think she’s the head of this cell?”

  “We’re dealing with a nontraditional terrorist cell and she has been pulled into it inadvertently.”

  “What do you mean by that? What’s a nontraditional terrorist cell?”

  Prove yourself, Sanchez, he seemed to be saying. Show me you know what the hell you’re talking about. Sanchez felt like a bug under a microscope and it pissed him off. “It means, Agent O’Donnell, that whatever profile you bureau boys have cooked up about terrorists is wrong in this instance.”

  “Really. And you say she was pulled in inadvertently? How can that be? All terrorists have the same choices the rest of us do.”

  “Terrorists are recruited for a variety of reasons—poverty, despair, hatred, cultural biases, religious beliefs. None of those things apply here. The redhead didn’t have a choice. That’s what the viewing revealed.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “In his first viewing, Tom,” said Delaney, “he insisted this cell steals bodies, not identities. We aren’t sure what that means.”

  Thanks to the contact with Red the other night, Sanchez now knew what it meant. But he wasn’t about to enlighten either man yet. O’Donnell was silent for a few minutes, walking quickly, deliberately, like a man who knew that aerobic exercise might extend his life, but who resented every step, every deep lungful of air, every muscle that tightened. He followed Jessie down the boardwalk stairs, away from the sinkhole rim and into the sinkhole itself. Sanchez had the distinct impression that O’Donnell didn’t even realize they were descending, that he was so wrapped up in his mental arguments that the downward spiral didn’t register.

  Halfway down O’Donnell seemed to emerge from his trance. “Here’s the deal, Nick.” He stopped, hands clutching the railing so hard that the tendons in the backs of his hands resembled the roots of small trees, pressing against the skin as though it were earth. “A couple of days ago, a dog uncovered a body in a landfill in Ocala. So we’ve got fourteen bodies now, all of them exhibiting the same virus. And this virus, see, is curious.

  “It apparently mutates, but we don’t know how. It’s like nothing the CDC has ever seen before. They aren’t sure how contagious it is, but are fairly certain it’s spread through body fluids, like AIDS. They also think it may be what caused these massive bleed-outs. One theory they’re looking at is that the virus is most dangerous when it mutates, and that’s probably when the bleed-outs occur. Frankly, all these highly paid scientists and outside consultants are clueless. So the CDC intends to quarantine the area. HDS, FEMA, the bureau all concur. Initially, we were going to ask you to be embedded, but it’s too dangerous. This virus is lethal and we don’t know enough about it to advise you on how to protect yourself. So we’d like you to do whatever the hell it is you do in our headquarters just outside the quarantine area.”

  What the fuck. He didn’t intend to be denied the opportunity to find Maddie. “Whatever I pick up outside the quarantine area won’t be nearly as accurate as what I can pick up in the town, Agent O’Donnell.”

  O’Donnell looked irritated. “RV means remote viewing, right? I thought the whole point with RV is that you don’t have to be on site, that you can do it anywhere.”

  “That’s true.” Delaney spoke up quickly. “But with some things, the closer to the target you are, the more accurate the information is.”

  That was bullshit, Sanchez knew, and read between the lines: Delaney wanted him to be on Cedar Key. “Especially with something like this. There’re just too many variables that can get screwed up at any point along the line.”

  O’Donnell kicked at a stone on the boardwalk and shook his head. “I can’t make the call on this one, guys. I have to ask my supervisor and he may have to go up the line to the CDC and DHS. In the meantime, you move into the headquarters and we’ll set you up in a comfortable spot and you do your thing, Sanchez.”

  “Then you’ll have to move me in, too,” Delaney said. “I’m his monitor. That’s how we work, like different halves of the same brain.”

  O’Donnell’s phone rang, he glanced at the number. “Excuse me, I need to take this call.”

  He walked off and Delaney touched Sanchez’s arm and tilted his head t
oward the stairs. “Let’s talk.” They moved quickly down another flight of stairs, Jessie leading the way farther down into the sinkhole. “I think we should head back to Homestead and do the RV from there. The idea of being stuck in some makeshift headquarters outside the quarantine zone with O’Donnell breathing down our necks doesn’t appeal to me in the least.”

  That explained why Delaney had supported Sanchez. It didn’t have anything to do with him thinking that Sanchez should head to Cedar Key. “I have to go to Cedar Key, Bob. The redhead contacted me the other night.”

  “What? How?”

  “Psychically.” He quickly told Delaney the rest of it, the truly weird stuff about Annie’s Café and the hungry ghosts who were the real terrorists. “My sense is that the ghost in her is so ancient we don’t have any context for understanding what’s really happening on the island.”

  Delaney looked horrified. “Jesus, Sanchez. Are you sure that’s what she said? Hungry fucking ghosts?”

  “I heard her as clearly as I hear you right now.”

  “A terrorist cell of hungry ghosts. Holy shit. There’s no precedent for this. Anywhere.”

  “Which is exactly why I’m going to Cedar Key.”

  “No way. Too dangerous. O’Donnell is right about that much.”

  Sanchez felt the rug being snatched out from under him. “I’m going, Bob, with or without your blessing.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Sanchez, don’t put me in this position.”

  “Hey, I’m the one going in, I’ll be at risk, not you.”

  “You’re going rogue, amigo.”

  “Tell O’Donnell I have to return to Gainesville to get our stuff. When will they impose the quarantine?”

  “Tonight at the earliest, tomorrow morning at the latest.”

  “Good. Then I’ll be on Cedar Key by the time the quarantine’s in place. When I don’t come back, you tell him I must’ve gone in on my own. That exonerates you.”

  “What’s to prevent you from being taken by one of these mutants?”