by Greg Dragon
Ava grinned and led the way to decontamination. “Like an underground city, isn’t it? I’m guessing you’ll want to miss your return flight.”
“I must get back to UVA tonight.”
She ignored him and pointed to a door marked “Male.”
The male changing rooms were swanky: plasma television, personal computers, plus an assistant ready to help him undress and follow procedure. Louis stepped into a refreshing shower and dried in the next room under comfortable blowers. The last room held personal care products, clean scrubs, a lab coat, and other essentials. Crocs and socks were provided for his feet. Last, a somber assistant pushed his hair into a cap and tied it.
Strangely, Louis felt he was being prepped for surgery. The idea sent chill bumps clawing up his spine. He decided his presence in Cloudland was living proof of the power of sex. Not a soul in Virginia knew his exact location.
Eddie Jean
Eddie Jean’s bladder almost let go and her right leg jerked back and forth. Rage radiated off Quitman Delaney in heat waves. Plus, he smelled like the old wino that turned his empty bottles into elegant candelabras and sold them on the corner of Rally and Gunn Streets.
“I’m tired,” he said, “of you fighting me.”
She couldn’t answer with his fingers digging into her throat. “Truth.” Eddie Jean could barely utter the word.
He released his chokehold, but his face remained clenched in a snarl.
Eddie Jean leaned against the wall and tried to swallow spit without choking.
Eyes smoldering like a madman, he hovered over her with a raised fist. His thread-sized lips blanched a pallid color as he prepared to strike. A diamond cross centered on a stainless steel band gleamed on his ring finger. It offended her that he wore the Christian symbol, but he acted like a fiend. Snot ran from her nose as she glared back, refusing to duck and cower.
Women laughed as they walked fast up the hallway, heels clicking in tandem, to catch the elevator. They were giggling and sharing private jokes about someone named Beau.
Granddad lowered his fist and exhaled. Quickly, a calm expression spread over his face. It was scary the way he could change in an instant. Older Delaney relatives whispered Quitman could induce stroke or freeze heartbeats. He couldn’t, but acted as if he could.
The women arrived as a bell rang and the elevator doors opened. Apologizing for the interruption, they stepped inside and the doors closed.
“What do you want?” Eddie Jean clenched her fists until fingernails dug into her palms.
“To train you.”
“I don’t want to be like you.”
“You already are.”
Time to be assertive. “Stop hurting me, Granddad. It doesn’t work.”
“Shall I bring the twins to my lab?”
His pitiless words seared. “I can’t stand to breathe the same air as you!”
He threw back his head and laughed. “That’s better, lass. I’ve held Cloudland together almost my entire life. Before that my grandfather did the same. But instead of getting another boy to carry on the legacy, I have you. Freedom’s up, I’ve made a mistake.”
She couldn’t believe her ears and her hands relaxed.
He sighed and waved a long arm out. “I’ve searched for a treatment for so long.” His voice faded a beat. “I’ve rushed things. I prematurely inoculated volunteers in March.” He shrugged. “My treatment made a bad disease worse.”
Eddie Jean licked her lips, unsure how to respond. “What disease?”
He frowned. “I need your help, lass.”
She had never expected to hear those words in her lifetime. Overhead the operator paged a doctor to a phone, and she heard crowd laughter as a full elevator passed without stopping on their floor. “My help?”
“You’ve got the Delaney gloss in spades. You’re strong. The nurse manager called the hospital administrator out of our meeting. She reported two teenagers snuck into her unit and healed a kid with Guillain-Barré syndrome. Scot bragged he could convince you to try. Kid has you eating out of his hand, doesn’t he?”
Heat scorched her cheeks. “I owed him a favor.”
“Jenna called me out of the same meeting. She thinks Michael Thomas is sick with a disease I call Swarm disease. I have to get back to help her. Come with?”
“Swarm disease? I thought it was a joke pulled out every Halloween to scare kids. Is he dizzy or did a swarm cause him to fall?”
“Yes, dizziness due to the swarms is called Swarm Sickness. I’m talking about Swarm disease. It’s brand new.”
“Oh, but you made a vaccine for it?”
His fingers dug into her shoulders. “What have you heard about Swarm disease? Tell me!”
“Nothing. Kids swap urban legends about wild people living rabid in the woods.”
He released her with a sneer etched on his face. “People talk too much, but it’s worse than rabies, lass. Much worse. My vaccine failed.”
His words refused to sink in. “What are you saying?” Panic boiled up her spine, making her flinch. “Momma bit Mr. Thomas?”
“Guess so. I suspect the vaccine I gave your mother produced a carrier state. She has a form of Swarm disease easily passed from bites or scratches.”
She heard rumbling in her ears. Then she snapped out of the daze and punched his chest. “You tested a rabies vaccine on my mother!”
His eyebrows fluttered up and down.
“You sent her home to expose the rest of us? You sick—”
He grabbed her arm. “Quiet!”
Her body went slack as his touch anesthetized her. Dead for any purpose other than grieving. Tears flooded her eyes. He injected rabies virus into my mother, and Scot’s father is sick.
“I don’t have time to explain, lass. Either you want to use your healing to help people or you don’t. Well?”
She jerked her arm back and rubbed it. “You speak in riddles and expect me to understand. I help people I can heal, and I can’t heal Momma. I’ve tried and failed.”
Rage turned his features blood-orange in color. “Your mother’s immune system short-circuited. Afterward, she passed Swarm disease to Kimmy. I didn’t suspect anything odd until then. I swear it!”
Her vision narrowed and the light in the hallway darkened. His lips moved but she couldn’t hear him speak. Kimmy died of rabies? Her legs began to wobble, and he slapped her.
A group of nurses in lilac-colored scrubs walked past them and most scurried inside the nearby GI lab. One stopped and stared. She pointed a finger and shouted, “I saw you slap her, and I’m calling the police.” The other nurses pulled her behind the door and closed it.
“It’s always the nurses causing me grief,” he muttered and shook her. “Get a grip, lass. You’ve never pushed your healing like you did today. You’ve expanded your range. Maybe you can help your mother now. Don’t you want to try?”
Eddie Jean licked her lips and burst into tears.
Quitman stroked her hair. “Now lass, I should’ve been more careful, but Kimmy is dead. Why does it matter how she died?”
Eddie Jean tried to pull away but he held tight. He said, “There is so much I can teach you if you’ll let me.”
A man in suit and tie came around the corner carrying a briefcase. Spying Quitman, he grinned like a Jack-o’-lantern. “I’ve never seen you outside of Cloudland Memorial, Doctor Delaney. Are you here for the administrator’s meeting?”
Granddad glared at him without answering. The man retreated around the corner.
Eddie Jean pushed away from her grandfather, trying not to feel the knife-like pain stabbing into her heart. “It matters how Kimmy died because you experimented and killed her!”
On the wall over his head was a white-faced clock with a thick black hour hand. She could hear the ticking sound as the red second hand scored passing time. Jenna’s affair afternoon had concluded early due to rabies. Surely he didn’t expect her to go where they—no, she should go back to school. Eddie Jean already kne
w her healing wouldn’t work on Jenna. “I don’t want to see them together.”
He grasped her by the shoulders and shook. “Did you hear a word I’ve said?”
“Yes! You killed Kimmy!” Her body ached with pain. She wrapped her arms in front of her chest for comfort and bowed her head.
He leaned in and his stench smelled like cat urine—strong and acrid. “At least I’m trying to correct my error. Not very Christian of you to turn your back on your mother, is it?”
She couldn’t…no, she wouldn’t allow herself to see her mother with another man. He asked too much because prayers could never wipe that image from her mind. “Shouldn’t you take a specialist with you?”
“If you come with me, I’ll explain Swarm disease to you, how it happens, and why I’m fighting to save Cloudland from a non-curable disease.”
“Tell me here, right now.”
Sneering, he turned his back on her and stalked to the stairwell door. He yanked it open. She could hear his steps descending before the door closed with a click.
Trembling fingers sought the crucifix under the layers of her necklaces. Her father had given it to her on Confirmation day. It had been his mother’s Confirmation necklace. Her paternal grandmother, Jeanette Franklin, had died in a tornado when her daddy was a toddler. She ran from a shelter to save two kids left behind in the rush to safety at the supermarket. She got them to shelter and turned back when she heard another cry for help. They found her body five miles away in a field ablaze with sunflowers.
Eddie Jean had always liked that part of the sad story. She wanted to help people like her grandmother Franklin. She ran down the stairs after Quitman and caught up to him outside the hospital.
Eddie Jean
In the parking lot, Granddad ended his phone call and smirked at her.
Her change of heart didn’t surprise him.
He unlocked the doors to his red truck and said, “From this moment on, you’re my apprentice.”
“I don’t want to experiment on people. I want to help them feel better.”
He rolled his eyes. “What I’ll tell you is known to very few people in town, in the country, or in the world. We have to trust each other.”
“You lied to us about how Kimmy died, and you made mother lie. I don’t trust you, Granddad.”
He climbed inside and slammed the door. The driver’s side window rolled down. “Your mother is responsible for her own lying, plus she never fulfills her promises.”
“What promises?”
“Get in,” he said, and cranked the engine.
Eddie Jean hesitated. She didn’t want to be his apprentice, but she wanted to help her mother and Scot’s father if she could. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew anything he taught her would stunt her ability to heal. Healing involved feelings, and he didn’t have any left. Granddad had information about a new disease, and she needed to understand what went wrong.
The window rolled up.
Eddie Jean went around the back of the truck and opened the passenger door. She climbed in and buckled the seatbelt. The interior smelled like fresh rosemary, and he’d crammed the back seat with duffel bags and tools. “Did you make Swarm disease by vaccine error?” she asked as they exited the parking lot.
He grunted and stopped to wave at someone walking to their car. She searched for Scot’s Jeep, but he had left. Loneliness swept over her. She was back to doing her own thing without the XOs for company. She almost opened telep to ask for help, but resisted the urge.
They pulled into traffic. “I suspect half our family sprang from the Mounds Indians along the Black Warrior River, and they migrated to Cloudland.”
“They were outcasts?” she asked.
He shot her a sideways glance. “Don’t know, I’m not that old. Somewhere along the line they mingled with European invaders.”
She tried not to smile.
“We owned all of Cloudland, Mentone, and fields right here in Fort Payne. I tell you this so you understand we have a familial obligation to land stewardship. By my time, we were richer and we kept Cloudland. The best parcel—except for one thing.”
“The land swarms.” Eddie Jean fiddled with the radio for a country music station.
“Righto, the stories I’ve told you as a child were meant to erase any fears the ground swarms caused. I believe the swarms created us, and enhanced us with what my mother called the gloss. I go to families with other children like you and me. I offer to teach them about what’s happened, and I explain why the gloss must be kept secret. I call it a gift so the parents will think it’s a godly one.”
“Mine is.” She turned up the volume on a favorite song.
“Nonsense.” He frowned at her. “Religion is your father’s bad influence.”
She sighed. Catholicism grounded her and kept her out of his control. He couldn’t force her to act against her beliefs. “Has a family defied you?”
“More than once, but I put them in line. I’m not nice about it, either. We can’t have a whole town put at risk by one or two people. Even your dad agreed with me.”
“The only time in his life.”
Granddad nodded. “Only a very few founding families, know about the swarms’ dark side. They’re paid a stipend to stay quiet. I’ve made sure they’re safe.”
“Safe from what? Why is it hard to tell the truth?”
“Once you know the truth, you’ll work beside me from then on. Agreed?”
“No, Granddad.” She ignored his sharp gasp. “You lured me to the hospital because you need me, or think you do. So don’t try to act like you’re giving me a choice. Tell me if you want my help or remain silent. I’ll know in seconds if I can help them.”
He sped up and tailgated a dark van. Pressing down on his horn, he cursed until the driver swerved off the road to let them pass. “Your mother should’ve raised you to respect me!” He coughed. “Cloudland’s secret is every once in a while, during a period of heavy swarms a yellow mist erupts from the ground on my fenced off land. Usually the mist comes in the fall, but not always. If you inhale it, you’ll get Swarm disease, a form of human rabies not seen anywhere else on earth.”
Eddie Jean turned off Carrie Underwood and watched her granddad run a red light. Goosebumps peppered her arms and spine. She expected him to laugh and retract, but he didn’t. “The mist carries a virus for rabies that doesn’t come from an animal?”
“Exactly.”
“It’s viral?” she asked.
“Righto, I think it’s an ancient virus the swarms bring up, or the swarms mutate a common virus like it’s tweaked our DNA.”
“You’ve studied the blood or the mist?”
“Too scared to collect a mist sample. Delaneys have studied Swarm disease for over a century. Once we kept our loved ones alive in a cave, hoping they would recover. We learned there is no cure and they don’t die. Over time we learned to shoot the ‘Swarmers’ in the right eye, which severs all brain connections. Their bites and scratches are infectious.”
“You’re serious? Swarmers? Are they like zombies or too sick to move?”
“I hate the word ‘zombies,’ lass. Swarmers are faster and cunning. I’m not trying to scare you. I want you to love Cloudland as much as I do. The town has a serious fault, but I’m working on getting rid of the threat.”
“Fault?”
“Swarmers exist to infect. Your ancestors, many of them, caught the disease because they reacted with love and concern. Swarmers can’t be trusted, and they have to be put down fast. My land is fenced and secured by armed guards. Law-abiding people stay away, others take risks and sometimes they get a surprise.”
Eddie Jean swallowed. “Does Daddy know?”
Granddad broke into laugher. “Hell no! I can’t get him to pick up a gun. He won’t even stop Michael Thomas from banging—”
“Stop!” Eddie Jean yelled, covering her ears. “Daddy loves her and so do I.” Her mother hadn’t always been heartless. Her hand reached for the d
oor handle. She had to escape.
Granddad said, “I’ve locked the doors. We have to come to an agreement. You can’t walk around knowing about Cloudland’s dark side if you’re not on my team. Clear?”
Tears rolled out of her eyes, and she heard him mutter about crybabies.
“The mist came so rarely people were born and died without seeing the infected. In the last five years, mist eruptions have increased. Last year scared me, so I pushed the vaccine schedule forward too fast. I made things worse. Now, I need your help to correct my mistakes.”
“What happened to the other vaccinated people?”
“They’re dead.” He passed another car.
Her heart somersaulted in her chest. “I don’t understand.”
“Your mother survived and the other six died. The others broke into symptoms within hours. I kept them alive hoping the vaccine would kick in. What I observed scared the hell out of me.”
“How much time did you have before you created the bad vaccine?”
“Used to be, we had a two-week leeway before someone who inhaled the mist developed Swarm disease symptoms. Family would take them to the hospital. I’d be alerted by a specific reaction in their blood work plus their symptoms. Normally, skin rashes and boils come first along with excessive thirst. I managed to contain secondary infections for years.”
“The time frame hasn’t ever changed?” she asked.
“Last year we dropped from two weeks to eight hours with original Swarm.”
Eddie Jean reached over and turned up the heat. Her body shook from shivers. “Where did you keep them alive?”
“Flameion. The main lab is just what it appears to be, but there is a secret section known only by a few. There’s a corridor connecting the hospital to my clinic in the back side lab. It’s known as the R& D side, but there we study Swarm. The public side is the making and packaging of pharmaceuticals. Specialized Flameion doctors and scientists have seen Swarm disease, and we’re working on the treatment. They’ve patented the virus.”
