by Cach, Lisa
Dr. Velazquez frowned. “If I did, I would not speak about it until I had FDA approval to begin clinical trials. There are several drug companies that would be eager to steal my ideas. If they did, the jungles of Costa Rica would suffer. Money from such a drug could save not just the jungles of Costa Rica, but potentially all of Central and South America.”
The screen switched back to Bethany Williams. “Big dreams from a doctor who just might save the world. If you’d like to contribute to Dr. Velazquez’s conservation efforts, go to his website…”
Angelica licked her spoon. “He looks even better on TV than he does in person.” It was true, though Dr. Velazquez’s handsomeness had lost some of its allure for her. Compared to Tom’s messy charm, Velazquez looked unpleasantly polished and over-groomed. Her heart gave a sad ker-thump as she thought of Tom and what might have been.
It was right of her not to see him during his remaining days in L.A., wasn’t it? All seeing him could do was increase her hurt—and his—when he left. She had to be cruel to be kind, for them both.
“Is there any more ice cream?” Karen asked.
“No.”
“Want to go get some?”
Angelica’s taste buds said yes, but her creeping fear that her sweet tooth had grown abnormally large, not to mention the inertia caused by her paralytic laziness, said no. It was almost eight p.m., and they’d both been in their pajamas all day. “We’d have to get dressed.”
“Just put on a sweatshirt. Everyone goes to the grocery store in PJs.”
She couldn’t argue with that. She got up, stretched, and rolled her shoulders, which were tingling. The realization sent a cold splash of alarm down her spine, but she tried to reassure herself that they were probably stiff from her having being motionless on the couch all day. All week, she’d found herself being a lump during the day and only showing signs of life well after nightfall. The news report hadn’t said anything about becoming nocturnal; surely it wasn’t a symptom of something being wrong? “Do you want to drive?”
Karen shook her head. “I feel crappy.”
Angelica did too, but she seemed to be in slightly better shape than Karen, who was moving like she was underwater. Angelica grabbed a sweatshirt and her purse, slipped on a pair of thongs, and the two of them headed to the store.
* * *
“I think thassss one of Dr. Velazzzquezzzs clientssss,” Karen slurred as they waited in line at the checkout, idly perusing the magazine rack. She was pointing to a driver’s license photo of a smiling, middle-aged woman on the cover of one of the more tawdry tabloids.
“Are you okay?” Angelica asked, as she shifted their heavy handbasket full of Ben & Jerry’s, Junior Mints, and hot fudge sauce to her left hand; her right one felt like it was going numb.
“My moush doessshn’t sheem to be working,” Karen said, putting her hand to her lips. “Hungry. Gimmee Junior Mintsss.”
“Wait a moment; we’re next in line. Which photo is of one of Dr. Velazquez’s clients?”
“Her,” Karen said, pointing again.
The photo was under a banner headline: What’s Happening to the Women of Los Angeles? Two sub-heads marked out the stories the tabloid was tying together as a plague on L.A. women. The first story was about the implant crisis, and promised readers dozens of photos of stars who might or might not be at risk of implant rejection, and who had recently gone on suspiciously timed ‘spa retreats’ according to their publicists. The second story was about the spate of disappearances amongst upper-middle class women; a serial killer was suspected, although no bodies had yet been recovered. It was a woman from this second story that had caught Karen’s eye.
“What type of plastic surgery did she have done?” Angelica asked.
“Thighssss lipossssuctioned,” Karen said slowly. “Tummy tuck.”
An idea that had been tickling at the back of Angelica’s mind crawled to the front. “She didn’t have Phi-Tox injections, did she?”
Karen met her gaze, her voice strained, obviously understanding where Angelica was going. “Don’t know. Givesss to lotsss of pashhhients, free. You don’t think—”
“I don’t know,” Angelica whispered, her heart starting to thud as she realized how possible it was that Phi-Tox could be the common denominator in what really was happening to the women of Los Angeles. She put the tabloid, and two others like it, in their basket.
The checker, an older woman with grey hair and the vertical mouth wrinkles of a smoker, started to ring up their purchases and chortled. “I think the backlash has finally started,” the checker said gleefully, hefting the jar of fudge sauce.
“Backlash?” Angelica asked.
“Against vego-, lacto-, organo-, gluten-free sprouted whatever-ya-call-it diets. Stores have been selling so much candy and ice cream, the local distributors are running out of stock. I knew it would happen!”
“That’s weird,” Angelica said, swiping her debit card.
“Drinking wheatgrass juice is weird,” the checker said. “What are we, cows? People don’t eat grass. Nothing weird in people eating ice cream.”
Angelica smiled uneasily. It wasn’t a taste for ice cream that she’d meant was weird.
As she and Karen walked back to the car, she voiced her real concern. “Even if it’s the Phi-Tox that’s causing these problems and making people crave sweets, how could so many women have been affected that the city is running low on candy? How many injections of the stuff could Dr. Velazquez have done?”
“Mintsssh!” Karen demanded, pawing at the bag.
Angelica got the mints for her and opened the box. Karen grabbed it and poured the candies into her mouth, standing still with her eyes blissfully closed as she chewed. A happy growling sound came from her throat.
When Karen opened her eyes again, they were slightly brighter, and her speech was clearer, although still slow. “He’s only been doing them for about a month, as far as I know. I don’t see how more than a few hundred people could be affected.”
“But there’s some connection, isn’t there?” Angelica insisted. They got into the car, and Angelica took the tabloids out of the grocery bag and handed one to Karen. “Do you see anyone else in there who is a client of Dr. Velazquez?”
Karen took another mouthful of Junior Mints and thumbed slowly through the pages, leaning near the window so the parking lot lights could illuminate the photos. Angelica started the car and backed out of their spot, then drove towards the end of the row. She rolled her shoulders; they were still stiff. Her whole body felt stiff, actually.
Exactly how far had the Phi-Tox migrated?
A Cadillac Escalade suddenly backed out of a parking space, its giant rear end barreling right towards the side of Angelica’s little white Lexus IS. Alarm shot through her and she jerked the wheel, but her action came too slowly, her arms not responding to the demands of her panicked brain. There was a sickening crunch of metal and the muffled explosion of airbags deploying all around her, the inflated surfaces striking her from all sides. The Escalade kept going, shoving the Lexus across the aisle and into the Suburban parked opposite, sandwiching the smaller car like a marshmallow in a s’more.
It had happened too quickly for either Angelica or Karen to scream, and then for several long moments the only sounds were the deflating airbags and the Suburban’s car alarm. Angelica’s heart was beating in her throat, her breath coming in shocked gasps. She looked wide-eyed at her friend. “You okay?”
Karen shoved the airbag off her and started pawing round her seat, looking for something. “I dropped my candy. Where are my Junior Mints? Where are my mintssssss?!”
Angelica giggled, the sound desperately close to hysteria. At the same moment her cell phone started to ring. She dug her purse out from behind her seat and answered, her voice a squeal. “Yeah?”
“Angelica?” Tom said.
“Yeah!” she said, and made a sound that was either a sob or a giggle.
“You okay?”
“I�
��ve just been in a car accident, and I think Karen is turning into a candy-fiend zombie. Yeah, I’m great!” She started to laugh, her vision going blurry. Was she crying? How funny!
“Angelica! Where are you? Tell me where you are!”
She told him, but then the driver of the Escalade was in front of her car, staring through the windshield at her, and Angelica’s laughter stopped on a gurgle. It was a 30-something woman with swollen cheekbones and suppurated sores under her eyes. She had a half-eaten Hostess fruit pie in one hand—cherry, by the looks of the red globules spilling over her hand.
“Oh god,” Angelica said into the phone, dread coming over her. “There’s another one.”
“Another what?”
“Zombie! They’re everywhere. What’s happening?” she cried.
“You stay right where you are! I’m coming to get you!”
The Escalade woman tilted her head, looking in at them. “You have fruit piesssss?”
“Hurry,” Angelica whispered into the phone, and then screamed as something white started to emerge from the sores beneath the woman’s eyes. “Hurry!”
Chapter Seven
Tom worked Mr. Toad’s shifter, forcing the little truck to strain its way up to fourth gear. The engine’s growl was overlaid with an ascending whine. “Come on, Toad,” he urged, “Don’t let me down now!”
Fortunately, he had only six blocks to cover. For the past week he’d been staying on his brother’s boat; he’d told Mike it was because he felt more at home sleeping on the water than on land, but that hadn’t fooled either him or Lucy. Their eyes had said they knew he wanted to be close to Angelica, in case she relented and agreed to see him.
An emergency wasn’t the reason he’d been hoping for, but he was grateful to be near enough to come to her aid. He couldn’t bear the thought of her being in distress, hysterical by the sound of it, and possibly injured. She’d said something incoherent about zombies; she must have hit her head, and was hallucinating.
A fresh bolt of adrenaline shot through him as he approached the grocery store parking lot just off Admiralty Way; a fire engine and paramedic unit were converging on the accident, red lights flashing and sirens crying. The sirens were cut off mid-screech as the vehicles pulled up to the scene. Tom parked Mr. Toad in the corner of the lot and ran towards the commotion. He could see three cars pushed together and some milling customers, but there was no sign of Angelica. The thought that she might have fallen unconscious due to her injuries sent a sword of terror slicing through his gut.
The firemen and paramedics jumped out of their vehicles and hurried toward the scene, but Tom beat them to it, instinct drawing him to the small white car sandwiched between the others, the SUVs preventing the car doors from being opened. He had to circle around a woman sitting on the asphalt, her blank face marred by open sores, to get to the front of the car. He threw his hands down on the hood and visually searched the compartment, seeking Angelica. Only white mounds of semi-deflated airbags met his urgent gaze.
“Angelica!” he shouted. “Angelica! Angel! Can you hear me?”
There was movement, and a tan hand batting down the driver’s side airbag. Angelica’s face appeared in the shadows of the car interior. Her voice came through the glass, muffled. “Tom?”
“Angelica! Are you hurt?”
“I don’t think so, but Karen’s acting weird. And stay away from that woman with the fruit pie; I thought she was going to attack us!”
Tom looked back at the woman sitting on the asphalt, motionless and moaning, an empty fruit pie wrapper in one hand. The paramedics got to her and went to work, but she barely seemed to register their presence, and started to crawl away from them, back toward the grocery store. “Fruit piesssssh…,” she moaned, as the paramedics tried to restrain her.
Tom looked back through the windshield at Angelica. “Did she try to hurt you?”
“No. She collapsed before she got to the car.”
A pair of firemen approached the Lexus, while two others got into and moved the Suburban and Escalade, freeing the smaller car. Tom dashed to Angelica’s door and yanked it open with a screech of metal, and then he was on his knees beside her, his hands tracing over her in search of any hint of injury. He heard her breath catch on a sob, and then her arms were around his neck, holding him tight to her. A hot rush of love, relief, and protectiveness drowned his senses, and it was several seconds before he was aware of the fireman’s hand on his shoulder, trying to pull him away. He reluctantly disengaged Angelica’s arms from around his neck and let the fireman do his exam before allowing her to exit the car.
“Tom,” she said weakly as soon as she was standing, her dark eyes imploring.
He started to swoop her up into his arms, determined to carry her away from all danger, but she pressed her hand against his chest, stopping him. “Something’s going on,” she whispered, “and I need your help to figure it out.”
“Anything!”
She led him a few feet away from the car. Another fireman was helping Karen. Tom heard the girl asking the fireman if he could retrieve her Junior Mints.
Angelica was shivering. He started to put his arm around her, but she gave a tight shake of her head and pulled away, wrapping her own arms around herself in lieu of his. Hurt stabbed him at the rejection. “I think Dr. Velazquez is doing something very bad to women with his Phi-Tox,” she said, distracting him from his hurt. “I think he might have caused that,” she said, nodding stiffly over her shoulder at the woman on the asphalt, “and every other case of implant rejection in the city.”
“Thank god you don’t have any implants yourself!”
“I need you to help me prove that the Phi-Tox is behind what’s happening.”
For a moment his blood surged with the thrill that she wanted his help, but rationality quickly intruded. “You don’t have to prove anything. Tell the paramedics. Tell the police.”
She shook her head. “It’s just a suspicion. They’ll never be allowed access to Velazquez’s records without a court order, and god knows if they’ll ever get that. But we don’t have to jump through legal hoops. We have Karen, and her keys to his office.”
Tom looked over at the Asian girl, presently fishing the last of her Junior Mints out of a box while ignoring the questions of the fireman. “You mean to break in?”
“It’s not breaking in if we have keys, is it? I want to get into his office and check his records. I want to see how many of the stars who are having implant rejections also have been clients of his Phi-Tox.”
“Can’t Karen check on Monday?”
Angelica laid her hand on his arm, her touch stealing so much of his attention that he barely heard her words. “Tom, I don’t think Karen’ll make it to Monday. Something bad is happening to her. It’s happening to me, too.”
That caught his attention. “What’s that slick jackass done to you?” he whispered urgently, gripping her upper arms.
Angelica lowered her voice, eyes slowly checking to right and left to see that no one could hear her. “I think we’re turning into a sort of zombie. Carb-scarfing zombies!”
“What?”
“We’re gradually becoming paralyzed. Like, like…like from that puffer fish that people eat in Japanese restaurants! Look at me; I can barely move my face or my neck. I can’t even move my eyes easily.” She demonstrated.
Fear for her made Tom’s heart skip a beat, and then that fear transformed to anger surging in his blood. Velazquez!
“I think sugary foods work like a temporary antidote to the Phi-Tox,” Angelica went on. “But that sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”
He fought back the anger so he could think for a moment, his mind picking through things he’d learned as a biologist. “Not necessarily. Sugar is quick energy for the cells; maybe a high enough dose of it gives you enough energy to fight the effects of the Phi-Tox.”
Angelica looked over at her friend. “Then we’re going to have to keep Karen in Junior Mints until we get into Dr.
Velazquez’s computer.”
One of the firemen examining Karen called out to Angelica. “Ma’am? Could I talk to you for a moment?”
Angelica and Tom came over to him, as Karen went back to the Lexus and started rooting around inside.
“Ma’am, is your friend on a prescription medication?” the fireman asked, his face studiously bland, although his shoulders were tight.
“No,” Angelica said.
He sucked his teeth for a moment, looking at her. “Did she take something non-prescription?” He raised his eyebrows suggestively.
“No! Karen doesn’t take—”
“Yeah,” Tom interrupted. “Yeah, she did. Kind of obvious with her munchies, isn’t it?”
Angelica slowly turned to look up at him, angry denial in her eyes. He widened his own at her. “She has an appointment to see her doctor about that problem of hers,” he said meaningfully, and saw comprehension clear the anger from Angelica’s eyes. If the paramedics took Karen to the hospital, he and Angelica might not be able to get into Dr. Velazquez’s files.
The fireman nodded, relaxing. “All right. Her reflexes are messed up, and I wanted to be sure it wasn’t from the accident. Keep an eye on her; if she doesn’t seem quite right when the drugs wear off, take her in to get checked out.”
“Yes, sir,” Angelica said.
Karen emerged from the back of the car with the pint of Ben & Jerry’s. She had the lid off, and was squeezing the carton to bring the ice cream up to mouth level, where she slurped it off in great gulps. Cream smeared like clown makeup around her mouth. “What?” she said as the three of them stared at her. “It’s going to melt!”
It was another hour before they could leave the scene, what with gathering information, talking to police—who gave Angelica the hairy eyeball because of her slow movements, but seemed to decide her behavior didn’t fit with intoxicants—and arranging for removal of the car. As they waited, Tom’s worry grew as he saw firsthand how Angelica’s physical stiffness gradually worsened. The Ben & Jerry’s was long gone, and she and Karen had already shared the jar of hot fudge sauce, eating it with their fingers. Even five minutes without sugar intake seemed to affect them adversely. At the rate they were declining, they’d hardly be able to walk by the time they got to Velazquez’s office.
