He gave her an in. "Is it because of all those bodies? I heard someone freaked out down there and there was a stampede."
So that was the story going around?
"I wish I'd gone."
"Why didn't you?" she asked.
"Something came up." As though worried she might take that to mean girlfriend trouble, he added quickly, "I had to pick up my brother from school. My mom's car broke down." "
So he was interested. And local.
That emboldened her.
"You're lucky you didn't go," she said. She looked at Derek, took a deep breath and told him everything. She wasn't sure he'd believe any of it, let alone all of it, but she needed to get it out. Derek's reaction was a far cry from Edna Wong's subdued acknowledgment. He didn't ask any questions while she spoke, but the look on his face said it all. He did believe it, and her story not only shocked but frightened him.
When she got to the part about the black mold on her bed and how Chrissie had touched it and undergone an instant personality change, Derek stopped her. "What did you do with the sheet and blanket? Did you take it in somewhere and have it analyzed?"
"I was going to," Angela admitted, "but I ... threw it all away."
"What!"
It had been a stupid move then and seemed even stupider now. She had no idea why she'd done such a
thing, and the only reason she could come up with was that she'd been contaminated, too, just like Chris-sie. The black stuff had been on her arm originally, and even though she'd scrubbed it off and it hadn't come back, maybe some trace memory remained and caused her to protect the mold rather than try to eradicate it.
Where was that bedding now? she wondered. Had the mold broken free of the garbage sack? Was it even now spreading around the city? A feeling of panic gripped her.
"It was on my sheet again this morning," she told Derek. "Even worse. Unless someone's been in my room, it's still there."
"We have to tell someone." She could hear the fear in his voice and it both terrified and reassured her. At last someone was having a normal reaction to what was going on. "I have an Intro to Microbiology class. The instructor might know what to do. If not, he'll probably know who does. Come on!"
Derek grabbed her hand and practically pulled her down the sidewalk through the light crowd of students.
Finally, she thought. And the two of them hurried across campus toward the science building.
Fifteen
Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia
Josh McFadden gulped the cold dregs from his cup while he tried to decide what to do, finishing off the vile liquid more so he would have something with which' to occupy himself than from any real desire for coffee.
The last thing he needed right now was more caffeine.
He was jittery enough as it was.
Josh stood in the doorway of his office looking out at the rolling lawn, Technicolor green in the fresh light of the new day. Where identical rows of white headstones, a man-made monument to order, a blatant refutation of the chaos of war, should have stood, disorder and confusion had reasserted themselves. Sometime during the night, the memorial park had been vandalized. Someone-or a group of someones- had dug up what appeared at first glance to be a considerable number of graves, disinterring the bodies. These corpses, in various states of decomposition, were not just strewn about the grounds but had been thrown deliberately over the white gravestones, their dark irregular shapes marring the perfect symmetry of the cemetery.
In the center of the park, cutting a jagged swath through the aligned rows of identical stone markers, digging deep into the grass and exposing the black soil underneath, were tracks from twin sets of narrow wheels, a heavy vehicle that had left destruction in its wake. From here, it looked like a bulldozer had smashed through the east gate and driven on a vaguely slanted course toward the older section of the cemetery.
No.
Not a bulldozer.
A train.
Josh didn't know how he knew it, but that seemed right. He wasn't an expert or anything, but the ruts in the ground looked like those that would be made by an engine that had gone off its tracks.
The thing was, the train seemed to have simply disappeared once it reached a certain point. Either that or it had retreated so perfectly, backtracking along the same path so precisely, that no evidence of its withdrawal was visible.
There was something eerie about that, eerie and unfathomable, and rather than think about it, Josh was spurred to action, going into the office and calling Tank, his supervisor. Let that overmuscled asshole earn his paycheck and deal with the problem. It was about time he did some work around here.
Meanwhile, Josh was the one alone in the graveyard.
Even though the train was gone and it was daytime.
He didn't think that made much difference, and he'd locked himself in the office, phone in hand, ready at a second's notice to dial 911, until the cavalry arrived.
The entire cemetery was soon overrun with Pentagon types, soldiers, FBI agents and even a few ordinary cops who wanted in on the action but were quickly turned away. Everyone had a job to do and everyone did it, and both Josh and Washington Carter, his job-share partner, were quizzed by an endless stream of investigators, asked the same questions over and over again until their brains were numb. Certainly no one suspected either of them of anything, but water flowed downhill, and Josh knew that the two of them would get the blame for what happened. He might as well start sending out resumes right now.
What he couldn't understand-what no one could understand-was how such destruction could have occurred without anyone hearing it. The fences and gates were also wired to the hilt with the most elaborate and up-to-date security systems known to man, yet none of the alarms had been triggered when that behemoth had crashed through the barrier into the cemetery.
It wasn't until later, much later, after all of the information on the affected graves had been recorded, that they learned that every one of the disinterred bodies had been a Civil War veteran.
There was probably a reason for that, Josh thought. It probably meant something.
But neither he nor anyone else could figure out what.
Sixteen
Canyonlands National Park, Utah
Henry stood on the sand, looking out over the water.. He was naked but unashamed. Proud, in fact, though he realized why only when his penis started to grow and he felt one tongue licking his balls, another sliding up and down the crack of his ass. He looked down to see the twins slavishly working on his nether regions, and as a family floated by in a sailboat, he hoped they could see these two gorgeous babes who so desperately desired him.
The old Henry wanted to tell the woman behind him that she was licking the spot where he shit, that she might even get some kind of disease from it, but . the new Henry reveled in this forbidden debauchery, and he experienced a strange triumphant sense of pleasure from the submissiveness of the Asian twin in back of him.
The one licking his scrotum began moving her head slightly as her tongue flicked faster against his testicles. The underside of his erect penis rubbed against the silky smooth hair on top of her head, the sensation building to a fever pitch, and then he was coming, then he was spurting, what felt like a cup, a quart, a gallon of sperm pumping into her straight black hair.
It didn't drip onto her ears or bare back but was absorbed into the hair, and as he watched, the blackness began to grow. It was no longer hair but a shadow of hair, of a head, of a body, of a person, a shadow that expanded to cover the sand, the water and finally the sky before engulfing him as well.