by Greg Dragon
His mouth dropped open. “I wasn’t notified.”
“Daddy drove her to Huntsville. He didn’t want gossip.”
His hands balled into fists. “Do you know what he’s done! Oh, never mind! If you had called me, Michael Thomas wouldn’t be a Swarmer. His death is on you.”
His cruel words punched and her stomach cramped. She leaned over and rocked to lessen the pain. “Can we take them to a hospital in Birmingham or even the Mayo Clinic for tests?”
He kicked off his shoes. “One look at someone with Swarm disease or even their blood, and Cloudland residents would never be free again. We’d be hunted down and caged for research study. Some might want to weaponize our curse. Understand?”
“But Swarm occurs naturally, like rabies.”
“Swarm 2 isn’t natural, lass. Told you, your mother incubated a viral mutation. Look away while I change.”
“You’re stripping in the front yard?”
“Yup.”
“Are we doing this alone?” she asked.
“No, lass. My men are on the way.” A few minutes later, he said, “All done.”
She turned. He wore a protective neoprene uniform and boots. He checked his phone and then leaned over to tie the boots.
He pulled a small case from under the driver’s seat and withdrew some tools. He slid them into leg pockets. Last, he pulled a rifle out of the backseat. Granddad checked to make sure it was loaded and noticed her expression. “Insurance.”
She gulped. “Don’t you think it’s time to ask for outside help?”
The ground rippled and the truck moved side to side. Granddad grabbed the door to steady his feet. “Lass, I’ve lost control, but I’m trying to save Cloudland.”
“I’m talking about saving people, not a place.”
“Then save some,” he said, and pointed at the front door.
Eddie Jean climbed out. Long ago, she quit counting ground swarms, but today was a record setter. She stared at her modern brick home, with its high windows to capture natural light, and tried to memorize every detail. Home could be quarantined.
Violet and yellow pansies lined their sidewalk from the street to the front steps. Her gaze lingered on the bright Halloween wreath on the door and then to the storm-damaged homemade goblins hanging from a small dogwood tree. A swirling breeze lifted the soggy and tangled goblins dangling from fishing line. They spun around and the bells inside their plastic bodies jingled. She remembered making them with her mother and Kimmy two years ago at the kitchen table. A lump rose in her throat.
“Keeping secrets has rotted Cloudland from the inside out,” she said.
He pushed her forward. “Pretending God has anything to do with your healing gloss made you stupid. You were born to heal Swarm disease. You’re nature’s answer to it.”
Her mother stumbled out the front door half-clothed, with rumpled bed-head hair, covered in dried blood. Eddie Jean relived the horror of fighting her off and the excruciating pain of her bites as she staggered down the sidewalk. The turquoise necklace she made Jenna for Mother’s Day hung around her blotched neck. Tears flooded Eddie Jean’s eyes.
Jenna stopped. “What’s she doing here?”
“Helping me.”
Jenna bit her fingernails. She didn’t notice her unbuttoned blouse exposed her bare breasts. Beige sweat pants were on backward, and her feet were bare. Eddie Jean untied her school sweater from her waist to drape around her mother’s shoulders. A strange sensation exploded from her chest. Her heart leaked all her love and compassion out in painful spurts.
Granddad jerked her backward and ripped the sweater from her hands. “Don’t ever approach anybody with blue-shaded lips or icteric eyes, Eddie Jean. Where’s your common sense? Those are the first signs of infection.” He tossed heavy work gloves to Jenna. “Where is he?”
Her mother pulled on gloves and didn’t look at Eddie Jean. “I locked him in the boy’s bedroom. We were in there when I bit him. I tried to stop, but…” She dropped her eyes to the ground and hung her head.
Eddie Jean turned her back.
“How long before he had symptoms?” Granddad asked.
“He choked like Kimmy, and I thought he’d died. Then his skin and face—”
“How much time was he down?”
“Ten or fifteen minutes? Then the other things happened.”
He grabbed Eddie Jean’s arm and spun her around. “Never turn your back on someone with suspected Swarm, even if it’s your mother.”
She bit her lip and nodded.
Her granddad pulled on gloves and then protective goggles. He tied Jenna’s arms behind her back with a plastic flex cuff. Last, he removed a full-face helmet from the truck and snapped it over her head so she couldn’t bite. Behind them a black truck pulled in and went down the driveway to the back door. “Jenna, wait in the truck.”
“You can’t put Michael down!” Jenna’s voice sounded hollow behind the helmet, and then she flicked her tongue like a serpent and licked the clear part of the face plate.
Eddie Jean gagged and covered her mouth.
“He has to be examined,” Granddad said.
Defiance drained from her mother’s posture. Jenna stumbled down the sidewalk and to the back of the house without looking back. How could she not look back at me?
Two men clad in dark protective clothes joined them. One carried a rifle, and Eddie Jean watched him drop a dart with a red plume into the chamber. The men had on oxygen helmets and carried compact green tanks at the small of their backs.
“Why are y’all wearing oxygen?” she asked.
“We’re not healers, lass.”
“You’re XO.”
“I can’t take chances. I’m Cloudland’s sole defense.”
Eddie Jean didn’t recognize either man. Both were young, in their late twenties, and fit. Each wore a buzz cut and dark shades. Granddad went in the front door, the men followed him, and Eddie Jean brought up the rear.
Magnificent red roses in a blue and white Spode vase sat on the dinner table. The room smelled heavenly as they passed by family pictures in the bookcase. Scot’s father must have brought flowers for Jenna. Her mother’s affair made her think the happy memories in the picture frames were fakes, like the pictures found in store-bought frames. Tears ran down her cheeks. Home was filled with good memories, and she didn’t want to forget them. Eddie Jean loved how the rooms were filled with nooks and crannies, sunny window seats, and a heaven-made mountain view from the back deck.
Banging and kicking sounds erupted, followed by weird snuffling noises.
Eddie Jean tried to process what was happening, but her brain got stuck on her mother and Michael Thomas having sex in the twin’s bedroom. Probably on her bed, too. The affair had been going on for three years. It had never crossed her mind her mother’s affair took place every Thursday afternoon inside their home. The urge to puke almost made her run out the door.
“He’s almost broken out,” one man shouted. They advanced like trained policemen. She heard a low growling sound, deeper than any dog.
Eddie Jean heard pounding noises and saw white door splinters fall to the floor, followed by a hairy arm covered by softball-sized blisters. A rotting flesh odor diffused down the hallway. She put her hand over her nose.
The second man glanced back at her and said, “Stay back. Body fluids are contagious.”
Licking her lips, she nodded. A third man walked past her and tossed something bloody to her granddad.
“Michael,” Granddad yelled. “Michael Thomas!”
Snorting followed. Granddad removed a bloody dead rabbit from brown butcher paper and flung it into the room. She heard Scot’s dad scurrying across the oak floors. The man with the dart gun fired.
Eddie Jean heard a high-pitched yelp and a crashing noise. The man reloaded and shot him again. While the shooter inserted a third dart, a shorter man stepped forward with a monitoring device. “Movement,” he said in a muffled voice.
Another s
hot exploded.
A few anxious seconds later someone said, “He’s down.”
The men knocked out the splintered door with equipment a fourth man carried in. All of the men entered the room. Eddie Jean hesitated. She had never seen a case of Swarm disease and didn’t want her first case to be Scot’s father. Curiosity won out. She passed her room, decorated in lavender and green. The last five feet to the boy’s room felt like a mile. She peeped inside.
Their room was painted light yellow, with colorful air balloons floating among puffy white clouds on the ceiling. Michael Thomas had fallen on the sailboat blanket from Teddy’s bed. Two men rolled Scot’s father off the bed and onto the floor on his back.
She recognized familiar blond hair, but his facial color was a hideous purple bruise. Frothy, yellow-green fluid, like melting lime Popsicles, drained from his pustules, blisters, and large boils. The stench could not be endured but no one opened a window. Mr. Thomas’s eyes were open. His left eyeball had disappeared, while the blue iris in the right one dissolved before she could blink. Black goop seeped from his eyes and resembled smeared mascara. Eddie Jean gagged and ran into a wall trying to leave.
Granddad followed her and guided her back beside Scot’s father. “You have to get closer to heal, right?” She inched in, resisting the urge to bolt. “Breathe through your mouth, lass. His eyes are dissolving.”
“Shouldn’t she be wearing protection?” one man asked.
Granddad didn’t answer and squeezed her wrist. “Meet Swarm 2. If he’d gotten out, he’d bite a lot of neighbors before they wised up. The new version makes Swarmers move faster, but the more blood and flesh they gorge on the more grotesque they grow and slow down. Swarmers exist to infect. Remember that.”
Eddie Jean gasped as the truth sank in. Scot had lost his father and didn’t even know. He would never forgive that her mother was responsible. She processed the new knowledge down to its logical conclusion and gasped.
Granddad read her mind. “Yeah, Jenna will have to be put down.”
Her heart beat in a spasm and her vision blurred. Her head spun and then stilled.
Granddad jerked her down on her knees closer to Michael Thomas’s drugged and foul-smelling body. Snores interrupted his breaths. “Healers get close to our patients, don’t we?”
The men scrambled backward. “Careful, dude.”
Her stomach rolled like she was seasick. She turned her head away.
“Smell him. Deep breath.”
Terrorized by the sight, the stink, the room, Eddie Jean struggled to break free. “No, I can’t. Let me go!”
“She’s just a kid, sir,” a man pleaded from the hallway.
“I said smell him,” Granddad ordered, and pinched her arm.
Eddie Jean did, and her stomach went into dry-heave convulsions. Panting, she tried to get off her knees, but he wouldn’t let her stand.
“Be still and watch how I take samples.”
“I’m going to be sick.” A sour mass rocketed up her throat, and she swallowed it down. The foul taste spread in her mouth.
“Go ahead. Let it out.”
Her stomach soured and calmed and bubbled and churned, but the bile stayed down. Sweat dribbled down her neck.
Granddad withdrew a device from his pocket, popped a blister, and scooped up droplets of the frothy lime-green discharge with the spoon side. Eddie Jean began to shake with cold. One man with a spider tattoo on his neck extended a plastic cup with the lid off for Granddad to pour the icky fluid in. He popped several large blisters to collect the fluid. Without warning, Granddad tossed the stinky spume into her face.
The secretions splashed her eyes and some went up her nose. Choking, she yelled, “It burns!” Eddie Jean jabbed her elbow into her grandfather’s chest.
He grunted and wrestled her down to the floor. One of his helpers held her feet and another held her shoulders down. Granddad dropped his knee into her gut.
Blinded by the green acid, she yelled, “Stop! Oh, God. Please stop!” Her elbow brushed against Scot’s dad.
“Give me,” Granddad said, and motioned for more. A third man stooped over and retrieved more fluids. She heard someone barfing in the corner.
“Little more,” he said, and dribbled more onto her face. Goop was burning holes in her face! Stacking pain made her strong enough to sit up, but they shoved her back down. When she opened her mouth to scream, he poured more in and held her mouth closed. Ichor fizzed and burned as it slid down. Forced to swallow, she scrunched her eyes tight and tried to roll face down.
Her fear rocked out in telep and this time she let it fly out.
{Help me}
“She’s strong as a man,” the one at her feet grunted.
“What’s happening to her skin, boss?”
Granddad said, “She’s having an allergic response. Load him and call in the clean-up crew. Let’er go!” Granddad jumped back and stood.
Eddie Jean threw up. Her stomach convulsed in agony.
“Lass, I know you weren’t planning on helping me save the town, so I’ve drafted you to my team. Your blood will make antibodies and deliver a cure to the world, I hope. If you live through this test, I’ll put you down if you ever disobey me again.”
Rett
Rett Franklin was losing his self control.
His temper bobbed, he misconnected electrical wires, and maybe he had even lost his mind. Power crews had been on overtime to restore electricity to town, and time crept as he worked. What were the odds his last day in Cloudland would end on a Thursday? Thursdays were his bastard days. Joe Vickers, his partner, bore the weekly brunt of his bitterness and bad attitude in silence until today.
“Dude, I can’t take your malarkey another second,” Joe said. “You’re not the only person with problems, you know? How about a break? I’m making errors I haven’t made in years.”
Rett sighed. “Sorry, man. I’ll miss this view and the pine scent in the air when I leave Cloudland. Ranching in East Texas is on flat, dry land. I’ve bought four first-class tickets to Dallas from Atlanta. Today’s my last day.”
Joe was older with a red bulb nose, stumpy legs, and a freakishly long torso. He took off his safety helmet and ran his fingers through coarse hair. “What the hell, Franklin? No notice? Is this the way you say goodbye after sixteen years?”
They were both in the bucket twenty-five feet in the air, making line repairs. Rett said, “Can’t be helped. Look, Joe, could you give me directions to Quitman’s big cave?”
Joe put his helmet on and snapped. “Dude, you got a death wish?”
“What’s wrong?”
“Look in a mirror!”
“Hey, I’m asking for directions, not your PIN number.”
“You got no right to drag me into your personal problems. Quitman hates you.”
Rett shouted, “Screw Quitman Delaney, screw Jenna Franklin, and screw Joe Vickers. Where is Quitman’s damn cave!”
“I like you breathing, pardner.” Joe hit the button to lower the bucket even though they weren’t finished. When it reached the dock, Joe got out. He hit the button to send Rett back to complete the hook-up.
Rett cursed Joe. He threw his safety helmet at him and kicked the bucket. After his tantrum, he wiped his nose and focused on line repair.
Back on the ground an hour later, Joe shared a cup of coffee from his thermos. “We’re done. We’ll go to Thirsty’s after clocking out. I’ll set you straight and give you a friendly send-off.”
Rett nodded. He couldn’t leave without checking the cave. Jenna had slung more torments about Kimmy being alive this morning. His skin crawled at the thought. A father couldn’t leave his little girl’s grave behind unless he was sure she rested in peace. “You do know the location of his cave, don’t you?”
Joe sighed. “Yup.”
An hour later, Rett followed Joe to the bar. The shorter days meant twilight had fallen by the time they parked. Thirsty’s was a flat, ugly building crowded between a bakery and a thrift
store. The main attraction inside was the curved bar—a masterpiece. A working man’s saloon, Thirsty’s didn’t welcome white-collar types or ties. Wine wasn’t served to keep them away. Sports talk radio ran live daily and then nonstop on replay.
A giant Jack-o’-lantern sat on the bar. Rett had forgotten it was Halloween night. Men clapped and offered to buy them beers. People loved the power company after being cut off from their electronic toys. Rett’s agitation faded. He grinned as he listened to an Auburn fan calling in on the radio to diss the Tide’s last win. Patrons jeered. Alabama was on a winning streak—again.
Joe leaned over and asked the bartender if the Hut was available.
“All yours.” The Bear’s Hut provided privacy in a Crimson Tide sports-themed room.
“Two Mick drafts,” Joe ordered.
Rett shook hands with a few men he knew until he spied the bastard that hit on Jenna last month. He didn’t live in Cloudland, and his presence galled Rett every time he saw him. Just the sight of his crooked nose, the one Rett broke, made him angry.
He glared at the wife-poacher, hoping he’d take the hint. One of them had to leave. Tight-lipped, crook nose slid off his stool, threw a bill down, and left. Rett turned to watch his retreat right out the door. Good riddance.
The bartender pushed draft in two frosty mugs and a door key across the polished wood. “Your money’s no good today, fellas. Thanks for saving our ice.”
They tromped down the hall and unlocked the door. Rett smelled lemon-scented furniture polish. Swank, high-back leather chairs surrounded a scarred pine table. Paneled walls held Alabama Crimson Tide sports pictures from Bear Bryant’s coaching days to Nick Saban’s reign.
Joe said, “Too bad you can’t make Michael Thomas disappear with a look. How come he’s still walking around with a pretty face?”
He’d told Joe about Jenna’s affair to keep him from doing something stupid. Three months ago, he’d begun polishing his father’s pistol collection. Rett hated guns, but kept the weapons locked in the garage because he couldn’t sell them. He’d found himself thinking about the guns as Thursdays rolled around. He cleared his throat. “His son saved Eddie Jean from drowning. I owe his kid.”
