by JL Bryan
Tommy parked in front of the house, next to a big rusty pick-up truck, and he looked up to the tiny window on the second floor. Then he knew he had the right place. That window had been his eye on the world for nearly three years.
The lights in the house were already on. Mr. Tanner liked everyone to be up by sunrise, to get started on chores around the farm.
Tommy stepped off his bike, hung his helmet on it, and walked past the chickens scraping and pecking in the yard. The front door opened as he approached it—someone must have heard his engine.
Mrs. Tanner stood behind the screen door, a few years fatter and grayer. A boy of about ten stood beside her, his eyes bulging with fear.
“Howdy,” Tommy said with a wide smile. He wondered how he looked to them, with the oozing infections leaking down his face.
“Who are you?” Mrs. Tanner asked. “What do you mean making all this noise so early in the morning?”
“Don’t you remember me?” Tommy took off his sunglasses and stared at her with his gray eyes.
“Thomas?” she whispered.
“Fuck yeah.” Tommy pulled open the screen door and stepped inside, forcing Mrs. Tanner to take a step back. The little boy stared up at him. “What’s your name?” Tommy asked.
“Paul,” the boy whispered.
“Did Mr. Tanner baptize you when you got here, Paul?” Tommy asked.
“Yes,” Paul whispered. “He baptizes me all the time.”
Tommy scowled and looked past the boy and Mrs. Tanner. Two more kids ate breakfast at the kitchen table, staring at Tommy over spoonfuls of shredded wheat (not the frosted kind, as the Tanners believed that would spoil children). The boy looked about fourteen or fifteen, while the girl looked twelve or thirteen.
“Oh, look.” Tommy nodded at the girl. “It’s the future Mrs. Tanner.”
“That is disgusting!” Mrs. Tanner snarled.
“You’re getting a little ripe, aren’t you?” Tommy poked Mrs. Tanner’s doughy arm. His touch made her gasp and back away. “A little old for Mr. Tanner.”
“He was right,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “You do have the devil in you.”
“True.” Tommy picked up a bowl of unsweetened shredded wheat from the table and ate a spoonful. “This stuff is nasty. You kids like this?”
The two kids at the table shook their heads.
“What in the Lord’s name is happening down here?” Mr. Tanner tromped down the staircase, dressed in overalls and boots. He glared at Tommy. “Who are you?”
“You forgot me already, Mr. Tanner?” Tommy asked.
“This is Thomas,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “He ran away. Remember?”
“I don’t care who he is,” Mr. Tanner said. He jabbed a finger into Tommy’s chest. “You gonna get out this house right now, less you want me to grab my shotgun and plow a trench through your skull.”
Tommy seized Mr. Tanner’s hand.
“Get the shotgun if you want, old man,” Tommy said. “It’ll end with your brains splattered on the ceiling. I promise.”
He squeezed tight, giving Mr. Tanner a good dose of fear, then released the man’s hand. Mr. Tanner just gaped at him.
“Mrs. Tanner,” Tommy said. She jumped at her name, but he had her attention. “When the old man died, you brought a couple of witches here to talk to his corpse. To find some missing money.”
“You did what?” Mr. Tanner stalked toward his wife. “Witches? I’m gonna whup you so bad. Get upstairs and take them britches off.”
Tommy grabbed Mr. Tanner’s throat and slammed him back against the kitchen wall. Pots and pans hung overhead crashed to the scuffed linoleum floor. The little girl at the table started crying.
“You stay put there,” Tommy hissed to Mr. Tanner. “Or I’ll kill you like I killed your daddy.”
Mr. Tanner’s face looked fishlike, big cold eyes and lips gulping at the air, reminding Tommy of Pap-pap on his way into death. Tommy could feel the darkness flowing out in a river now, washing away any doubts Mr. Tanner might have had about Tommy’s devilish nature.
Tommy turned back to Mrs. Tanner.
“I’m looking for them witches,” Tommy said. As always, his deep-country accent grew thicker when he was angry, or scared, or just excited. He was a little of each right now. “You tell me how to find ‘em.”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “It’s been years—”
“Tell me!” Tommy snapped, and she cringed.
“I have the phone number upstairs,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “I’ll go get it.”
“Don’t try to pull any tricks on me,” Tommy said. He was still pinning Mr. Tanner against the wall. “I can kill him. All I got to do is think about it.”
“Do what he says,” Mr. Tanner whispered. “Do anything he says.”
Mrs. Tanner whimpered and scurried from the room.
The ten-year-old, Paul, was crying louder than the girl now. He knelt on the kitchen floor, weeping.
Tommy pulled Mr. Tanner off the wall and turned him so his back faced the doorway where Mrs. Tanner had gone. If Mrs. Tanner tried to pull anything—if she came back with that shotgun, for instance—she would have to go through her husband first.
Fortunately, Mrs. Tanner was timid. How could she be otherwise, Tommy thought, after a lifetime with Mr. Tanner? When she returned to the kitchen, she was holding nothing but a scrap of yellowed paper in her shaking hand.
“What’s that?” Tommy asked.
“Her phone number,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “It’s all I have. I’m sorry.”
“Bring it.” Tommy tightened his grasp on Mr. Tanner’s throat. He reached out his other hand to Mrs. Tanner.
She approached Tommy with small, trembling footsteps. When she was close enough, Tommy snatched the paper from her hand, and she gasped and darted away.
The scrap of paper was a grocery store receipt.
“On back,” Mrs. Tanner whispered.
Tommy turned it over. GUADALUPE RIOS was hand-written on the back, along with a phone number.
“What area code is this?” Tommy asked.
“Texas,” Mrs. Tanner said. Her voice was almost too quiet to hear. “Fort Worth.”
“Okay. Perfect.” Tommy folded the paper and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.
“It won’t do you any good,” Mrs. Tanner added. “They’re scam artists. They never did come up with any money.”
Tommy smiled. He looked at Mr. Tanner, who was downright terrified from being in Tommy’s grasp so long. He could let the man go now. Then Tommy looked at the three frightened children. He remembered his own childhood, how often Mr. Tanner’s twisted, insane ideas about religion seemed to involve stripping and beating the children.
“You were right,” Tommy said to Mr. Tanner. “I do have the Devil in me. And today, the Devil wants you.”
Tommy let the black lightning rip out of him, filling Mr. Tanner. Mr. Tanner’s shuddered hard in Tommy’s hand, and a trickle of blood leaked from Mr. Tanner’s nose. Then the man slouched, and Tommy let him fall to the floor.
Tommy kicked him, but Mr. Tanner didn’t respond. His eyes stared into empty space. Heart attack, stroke or seizure—one way or another, Mr. Tanner had died of fright.
Mrs. Tanner screamed and dropped to the floor to embrace her husband’s corpse. “Oh, Jesus!” she cried. “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus…”
Tommy ignored her. He grabbed a box of long kitchen matches and walked outside.
In the biggest barn, where the horse trailer and the ancient canvas-sheathed Buick were parked, there were also large plastic jugs of gasoline for the tractor. Tommy picked up two of them.
The three children trickled out of the farmhouse to look at him. They trailed him, at a great distance, as he walked to the old barn Mr. Tanner had converted into a church for his weird little personal cult.
Tommy pulled open the barn door. He splashed gasoline on the handmade pews, the wooden dais, the willow cross. He splattered more along each of the four walls.<
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The children stood outside, several feet from the open door, and watched him with open mouths.
When he’d emptied both containers, he walked to the door, and the children ran back ten or twenty feet. Then they turned to watch him again.
Tommy gave them a grin as he struck a kitchen match. Then he flicked it into the barn. The burning matchstick tumbled end over end, until it landed in a gasoline puddle in the middle of the dirt floor. For a moment, he thought the match had simply gone out.
Then a gout of fire belched up, and rivulets of flame rushed out to the four walls of the barn. The cross and the whole altar area went up in a bright red whoosh.
Tommy walked along the dirt-rut road. The children cleared off of it and ran up the slope to the stable, to watch him from a safe distance as he passed.
“Do yourselves a favor,” Tommy said to the three of them. “Run off. There’s nothing good here. You got to sort out your own life for yourself, sooner or later.”
Tommy walked past the gaping children, and on past the farmhouse, where he could hear Mrs. Tanner wailing over her dead husband.
Then he got on his bike and headed for Texas.
Chapter Fifteen
Almost three weeks after she’d been called to Fallen Oak, Heather sat on the edge of the bed in her room at the Lowcountry Inn, and she watched the local TV news with an open mouth.
South Carolina Governor Calhoun Henderson stood at the microphone, looking a bit solemn for his press conference.
“We’ve held off any public announcements until the situation was clear,” he said. “We did not want to feed into any speculation or false rumors—and there have been plenty of those. Let’s put ‘em to rest now, folks.
“Some of you have been asking my office for an explanation of the National Guard presence around the little town of Fallen Oak,” he continued. “As usual, the rumors are far wilder than the reality. There was a small dye factory in Fallen Oak, back when cotton was king, but it’s been closed since the nineteen-fifties. Apparently certain industrial chemicals were left behind and never properly disposed. The chemicals had a volatile reaction, in connection with a storm—lightning may have been involved. A deadly gas was generated, resulting in injuries and fatalities. Specific details on those harmed are being kept confidential for the sake of the families.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Heather yelled at the television. She was on her feet now.
“I want to commend the South Carolina Highway Patrol and other first responders, as well as the South Carolina National Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, the CDC and other federal agencies, for their rapid response and quick containment of the situation. Our state and federal officials acted with speed and professionalism in protecting the people of this great state. Homeland Security assures me that the situation has been cleaned up, and no further hazards exist.
“Thank you for your time.” The governor visibly grimaced as he left the podium, ignoring the shouted questions from the press. His press secretary moved into place, a clear sign that there would be no further information of significance.
Heather raced outside, down along the walkway under the flickering fluorescent light bars, and pounded on the door to Schwartzman’s room.
He opened the door looking tired and rumpled, as if he hadn’t slept much the night before. The TV news was jangling in his room, too.
“What was that?” Heather asked. “A chemical spill? That doesn’t even make sense—”
“Keep your voice down! You want to talk, do it indoors.” Schwartzman stepped back to let her in the room.
Heather glanced at his bed. His suitcase was open, and most of his clothes were already packed. A few more items, including his shaving kit, sat beside it.
“You’re leaving?” Heather asked.
“The White House pulled the emergency funding,” he said. “The quarantine’s over.” He rolled a pair of black socks and tossed them in the suitcase.
“That doesn’t make sense,” Heather said. “It’s only been a couple of weeks. We don’t even know what happened.”
“We don’t know why so many ships disappear in the Bermuda Triangle, either.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look, our resources are limited,” Schwartzman said. “We’re up against budget cuts.” He put his toiletry kit into the suitcase and zipped it.
“Two hundred people are dead, and you’re worried about budget cuts!”
“It’s not me,” Schwartzman said. “I’d like to keep looking until we find answers, even if it takes ten years. But then there’s reality. There have been no additional cases, not even suspected. There’s nowhere for the investigation to go. The labs have been running night and day, and there is no pathogen in those bodies. None, Heather.”
“But there must be something. It’s just very elusive—”
“We’re transferring them to frozen storage, for further study. But we can’t do more. We have to keep things calm.” Schwartzman double-checked each drawer in the hotel room’s dresser. They were empty. “Maybe after the election…”
“The election?”
“Forget it.” Schwartzman turned off the TV.
“Oh, my God. That Nelson Artleby guy from the White House. He did this.”
“The White House did this.”
“But we have to fight it,” Heather said. “This could be really important.”
Schwartzman sighed and sagged to the edge of his bed. “The President’s party is facing a very difficult midterm. They might get swept out of Congress. One big negative event like this—”
“But this doesn’t have anything to do with politics.”
“Everything has to do with politics.”
“So, the Governor’s announcement…”
“Calhoun Henderson’s running for the Senate,” Schwartzman said. “He’s desperate for the President’s endorsement.”
“So Artleby cut a deal to bury this story.”
Schwartzman nodded.
“And screw any actual concern for public health and safety. Am I right?” Heather sank down in the room’s easy chair. “This is crazy.”
“The National Guard’s leaving,” Schwartzman said. “Everybody’s leaving. We’ll continue to study what we’ve collected here. But the field investigation has been squashed. It’s time for you to pack your things, Heather.”
“What was the point of me coming here at all?” Heather could hear the bitterness in her own voice.
“No one expected it to go this way,” Schwartzman said. “You should take some time off. It’s been a while since you’ve seen your husband, hasn’t it? And your daughter? She’s, what, three years old now?”
“Four,” Heather said. “And when I leave, who takes over the investigation?”
Schwartzman just looked at her.
“Nobody?” she asked.
Schwartzman laid his hotel keycard on the table by the bed, along with a few dollars to tip the housekeeping staff. “You’ll need to check out today. Give my best to your family.”
He left the room, and the door closed behind him.
Heather stayed where she was for a few minutes, feeling like she’d been hit by a giant truck. A refrigerated truck, full of mysterious dead bodies, with no explanation for their demise.
Chapter Sixteen
Jenny suffered recurring nightmares after the events of Easter night—usually just a replay of what had happened, Ashleigh whipping up the mob, and then blasting away Seth’s chest with a shotgun. The mob closing in on Jenny, and Jenny killing all of them with her horrific pox.
A couple of weeks after Easter, she had a new nightmare, even more vivid.
Jenny wore some kind of rough cloth tunic that felt scratchy on her skin. Her long black hair was pulled into a simple braid. She walked across a battlefield littered with bodies, spears, plumed bronze helmets and circular shields. A horrific slaughter had occurred, and the iron tang of blood hung in the air like smoke.<
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She was accompanied by soldiers carrying tall, iron-tipped spears that extended high above their heads. Their round shields were slung over their left shoulders, and their helmets had bronze cheekplates to protect their faces. They wore stiff linen tunics with bits of bronze sewn into them. An old man on horseback accompanied the group, dressed not in armor but in robes dyed red, with golden rings on his fingers. Jenny knew he was some kind of priest.
The band of men surrounded Jenny, but they kept their distance from her. They were terrified of touching her.
They led her into an encampment with a few large fires and numerous tents, the largest of which was guarded by a pair of soldiers with spears. This largest tent was their destination.
As they approached, one of the guards leaned into the tent and spoke. Jenny didn’t know the language, yet in her dream she understood the meaning of his words. He was telling someone inside the tent they had arrived. The guard leaned back out and looked at them.
“The priest and the girl may enter,” he said, in his strange language.
The soldiers helped the old priest dismount, and one of the guards held open a tent flap for him to enter.
“Follow me,” the priest said to Jenny.
Inside the tent, two men sat on hard wooden folding stools with squarish seats and legs in an “X” shape. The bottoms of the stool legs were carved to resemble lion’s feet, pointed inward. They ate bread and roasted meat from a low, simple square table.
One of the men, the one who sat off to the side, wore a white linen tunic, trimmed with geometric green patterns. The other man was tall, with a thick beard, and wore a tunic of purple with intricate gold designs sewn into it. He had bracelets of gold in the same style.
The man in white and green stood to formally greet the priest. The man in purple remained seated. He glanced at the priest with little interest, but he studied Jenny intently. She felt uncomfortable in his gaze. He was a king, and she was a slave.
“This is the girl?” the king asked the priest.