Chapter Forty-Six

Heather rode from the Charleston International Airport in a Homeland Security car. Red flags were already up all over the city. Some kind of riot had broken out at the Southeastern Funk Fest, and local and state police were working to calm things down. The National Guard, already on alert, had been activated and would be rolling into the downtown area momentarily.

Local police had also identified an incident that required CDC attention. A couple dozen bodies had just been found in a big pile in a neighborhood not far from the festival, cause of death unclear. Heather worried that Jenny might have already gotten started on her apparent plan to kill ten thousand people or more. If so, more clusters of bodies would turn up before long, if not a massive-fatality incident.

The Homeland Security vehicle arrived at the incident scene, where police, fire, EMS and a small crowd of onlookers had already gathered. Heather jumped out of the car and joined Schwartzman, who'd been driven by another Homeland Security officer.

“We need to get these people out of here,” Heather whispered as they approached the scene.

“Let's see what's happening first,” Schwartzman replied.

“It would be a pretty big coincidence if she wasn't involved.”

“Shit happens,” Schwartzman whispered.

A gray, balding man in a suit approached, looking tired. He glanced at their badges.

“Y'all the CDC folks?” he asked. “I'm Cordell Nolan, county medical examiner. Spoke to you on the phone, I think.” He reached a hand towards Schwartzman, who hesitated a moment before shaking it.

“This is Dr. Reynard,’ Schwartzman said. “She’s one of our best epidemiologists.”

“Well, we got us an epidemic of something, but I can't say what.” Nolan shook Heather's hand. “Whole damn city's going up in flames. Anybody with any sense knows you let a few thousand kids run loose in the streets, with music, everything's gonna get wrecked. Mayor was hell-bent this was going to mean money for the city. Now look how much it's gonna cost to fix it back.”

“We're a bit more concerned about these bodies,” Heather said. She looked at the pile of corpses in the street. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to their age, race, sex, socioeconomics, but they were all barefoot and wore toetags, which was more than a little odd. Body bags were scattered among them, along with random objects like mops and brooms, and what looked like the metal arms of overhead lights from a surgery bay.

None of them had the boils, tumors and pustules indicative of Fallen Oak syndrome.

“Are you bagging them already?” Heather asked.

“The bags were already here,” Nolan said. “Mine are still in the truck. We ain't touched nothing.”

“They came with their own cadaver pouches?” Schwartzman asked. “That's convenient.”

“We ought to take 'em into evidence, though,” Nolan said. “Still gonna use fresh ones to cart ‘em off. Looks like these bodies was already checked in at the MUSC morgue over the past week or so. They still got the toe tags.”

“I'm sorry?” Heather asked. “You're saying these came from the hospital morgue?”

“Yep.”

“How did they get here?” Schwartzman asked.

“Still trying to get somebody from the morgue on the phone,” Nolan said. “Ain't nobody answering down there tonight. Real strange.”

“So...these are stolen bodies,” Heather said. “Some kind of, what? College prank?”

“Take a lot of doing,” Nolan replied. “Need a lot of people to carry this many bodies. Somebody at the morgue had to see something, but like I said, nobody's picking up the horn. Hospital administration's supposed to get back to me any second.”

Heather squatted for a closer look at the bodies. It looked like an assortment of bodily injuries and disease, as well as a few elderly people who might have passed from natural causes. They were all barefoot and hung with toe tags.

“This doesn't make any sense,” Heather said. “You'd need a truck to carry all these. There must be witnesses.”

“There must be,” Nolan agreed. “But the police are spread a little thin tonight, with all the crazy hippies tearing up the city. Thank the Lord we have so many state and federal folks here. Almost like somebody knew a big mess was coming.”

Schwartzman looked at Heather with a slight smile at the corner of his mouth.

“Do we have any more incidents like this?” Heather asked.

“If we do, it'll come over the police band and we'll let you know directly,” Nolan said. “Now, seeing as how this is mostly a case of theft and vandalism, do y'all mind if we scoop these folks up and get them back in the fridge? There's a City Council member lives in this neighborhood, and it's best to keep things tidy.”

Schwartzman glanced at Heather, and she shrugged.

“It doesn't seem like we're needed here,” Heather said. “Do what you need to do.”

As they walked away, Schwartzman whispered to Heather, “I guess your ass is covered. Not the event you were expecting, but nobody's going to complain about the National Guard being put on alert now.”

“Who cares about my ass?” Heather asked. “This thing gets weirder and weirder. I still think we need to find Jenny Morton.”

“The cops already have an APB for her,” Schwartzman said. “And the Guardsmen are rolling in. This city will be locked up tight. We'll find her.”

“I hope you're right,” Heather said. “The idea of Jenny running wild out there scares the hell out of me.”

Darcy dozed on the nice comfy bed, waiting for the angels to return, until she heard the sudden pounding on the door. Her eyes drifted open, and she turned her head toward the racket.

“I’m sleepin’,” she whispered.

A keycard thunked into the lock and the door popped open. A man with a pencil-thin mustache, wearing a seersucker suit with a brass name plate at the lapel, stepped into the room, accompanied by a large black man in gray coveralls and a work belt full of tools.

“Excuse me,” the mustached man said. “Are you the only one here?”

“Me?” Darcy asked.

“Yes, you, thank you.”

“It’s just me. Until the angels come back.”

The two men shared a worried look.

“Ma’am,” the man said. “I am Pervical Daughtrey, the manager of The Mandrake House.”

“Hi,” Darcy said. She gave him a warm smile. She was still feeling so good from when the angel touched her.

“Yes,” he said. “This is extremely unfortunate news, but it seems this room has been charged to a stolen credit card.”

“Oh,” Darcy said. “Really?”

“Yes,” the manager said. “Really, ma’am. It was recently reported stolen by its owner, whose credit card provider then forwarded the information to us, as you can imagine. Now, if you would be so kind as to surrender Mr. Morris Metcalf’s credit card to me, and then I will need you to vacate this room immediately, I’m afraid.”

“Morris Metcalf’s my dad,” Darcy said.

“Oh, I see.” His forehead wrinkled briefly. “Would you mind showing me some identification?”

“It’s in my purse.” Darcy sat up and pointed at the empty chair. “Wait. It was right there.”

The hotel manager looked at the empty chair. “Where, ma’am?”

“Oh. Shoot.” Darcy looked around the room, but she didn’t see it anywhere. “I think that Mexican angel might have taken it.”

“A Mexican angel took your purse?” the maintenance guy asked.

“Yeah. But they’re coming back. They’ve only been gone a minute. Or maybe an hour. I forget. They’ll be back, though.”

“Ma’am, if you cannot provide identification, I’m very sorry to say that you must come down to my office, where you can wait for the police,” the hotel manager said.

“Police?” Darcy was getting worried now. This sounded serious. The golden fog over her mind began to lift. “Wait. My purse has to be somewhere.” Darcy heaved herself to her feet and looked around the room. She checked under the bed, and in the bathroom. “It has to be.”

“There is also the matter of the quite sizable bill you’ve accumulated,” the hotel manager said. “Upwards of nineteen hundred dollars. Given the circumstances, I am afraid my employers would require me to accept only cash.”

“I don’t have money like that!”

“Then perhaps you should not have chosen The Mandrake House for accommodations in Charleston. I must insist you come now and wait for the police.”

Darcy moved to gather her things, but she didn’t seem to have any. No purse, no suitcase. And how had she ended up in Charleston, anywho? Where were those people who claimed to be angels?

Darcy didn’t understand what was going on, but clearly she was in big bunches of trouble.

Ashleigh held tight to Tommy as his bike roared up I-26, the fastest route out of Charleston and away from the whole mess. A convoy of green trucks, the National Guard, flowed into the city on the inbound lanes of the interstate.

She felt exhilarated. Seth had escaped a bit faster than she’d wanted, but besides that, the night had gone extremely well. She knew how Jenny would react once she got cornered. Ashleigh just hoped the scientists got her captured before the soldiers caught up with her. They could keep Jenny locked up and out of Ashleigh’s way for years and years, maybe for the rest of this lifetime, if she was lucky.

And poor little Seth would be all alone, too. Ashleigh wished she really had killed him, but it just hadn’t been in the cards tonight.

Best of all, any trouble would stick to Darcy Metcalf, not to her. She was just Esmeralda Medina Rios, the lovely girl from California who’d stayed in the background and kept her hands clean of everything.

And Tommy wasn’t so bad. He was very acceptably attractive, and she understood how to use him. He was frustrating because he could resist her power. But he wasn’t the brightest bulb, and she had fragments of several lifetimes of memories over him. She could press buttons he didn’t even know he had.

His power made him extremely useful, and it even amplified her own. They had conquered empires together, here and there across space and time.

She held him tighter. It was good to be alive again, without all the hassle of gestation and birth and infancy. She had a nice new body she actually enjoyed, a new identity, and the whole future ahead of her.

Ashleigh began to think over her options.