Tommy Nightmare(11)
Heather continued along Esther Bridge Road, which wound sharply through dense woods. She crossed a bridge over a creek, and then saw an old wooden sign:
WELCOME TO FALLEN OAK, it said. “THE LORD HAS BROUGHT FORTH A BOUNTIFUL HARVEST.”
The little patch of downtown was surrounded by government workers—more National Guard, black Homeland Security vehicles, mobile CDC units. South Carolina Highway Patrol seemed to be lingering around the fringes, too.
Heather parked on the side of the road and checked in at the next National Guard blockade. As she walked into the scene, she dialed Schwartzman on her cell phone.
“I’m here,” she said.
“Suit up and come meet me. I’m on my way there now.”
“Where?”
“You’ll find it.” He hung up.
Heather found the CDC truck with the hazmat equipment. A young technician sitting inside the open rear door of the truck jumped to his feet.
“Dr. Reynard?” he asked. He grabbed one of the yellow hazmat suits from a hanging rack.
“That’s me.”
“You need to suit up,” the technician said. “Schwartzman’s waiting.”
“What’s going on here?” Heather asked. “I just flew hundreds of miles and I have no clue why.”
“I’m not supposed to say. I’m just supposed to help you suit up.” He held open the bulky yellow suit for her to step inside it. The suit would cover her from head to toe, keeping her protected from…whatever was going on in Fallen Oak.
“You must have seen something,” Heather said. “Or heard something?”
“I haven’t seen anything. I can’t get close enough. Because I’m not wearing a suit.” He gave the suit a shake and raised his eyebrows.
“But what are people saying?”
“Dr. Schwartzman is saying for you to hurry. But you can’t do that until you put on this—”
“Okay, okay, give me the suit.”
Heather let the young man help her into the heavy yellow suit. She fixed the radio speaker into her ear, and then he pulled the hood over her head. She smiled at him through the face shield. “How do I look?”
“Like an alien.” He sealed the hood.
Heather followed the bustle of official activity toward the town square. She rounded an eighteen-wheeler truck, and then she saw the town green.
It seemed like a once-charming little town that had fallen on hard times, like thousands of little towns around the country. A nineteenth-century brick courthouse dominated the scene, with fat white columns and a sculpted frieze on the pediment. The sculptured scene depicted the goddess Justice, blindfolded and wielding scales and a sword.
There was a little white building with a sign identifying it as Fallen Oak Baptist Church, and there was a Merchants and Farmers Bank of Fallen Oak. The rest of the downtown was mostly empty brick buildings, the vacant shop windows whitewashed.
Immediately, Heather saw why Schwartzman had flown her up from Haiti in a rush.
The town green was covered in bodies. CDC workers in yellow suits like hers were sealing them in airtight plastic cadaver pouches and loading them onto two refrigerated box trucks. There were still at least a hundred bodies left scattered in front of the courthouse, the front doors of which were marked with a big splash of dried red. Heather guessed it wasn’t ketchup.
She found Schwartzman supervising the collecting and sealing of bodies.
“What the hell happened here?” she asked him.
“Heather. Finally.” His voice crackled over the radio, heavy with static, though he only stood a few feet away. She could hear other conversations fading in and out of the channel, from the other CDC workers.
“Yes, me, finally.” Heather looked around at the carnage. The bodies were badly contorted, rife with huge blisters, open sores, broken pustules, and dark tumors. She couldn’t think of any known pathogen that would cause such a broad range of symptoms. Whatever biological agent had caused this was extremely nasty and needed to be killed immediately.
“Bioterrorism?” Heather asked.
“Possibly. But this town is about as far from a valuable national target as you can get.”
“What are the local authorities saying?”
“We haven’t found any,” Schwartzman said. He nodded at the courthouse. “Mayor’s office is empty. The little police department’s empty. If I had to guess…” He gestured at all the dead bodies.
Heather shook her head. “My God.”
“Don’t say that,” Schwartzman snapped. “The locals are already talking Biblical plague. Don’t encourage.”
“Maybe they’re right.” Heather knelt by one of the bodies. He was a heavyset man—obese by any measure—in a white dress shirt polka-dotted with his own blood. His face had peeled away into wide, curling strips. The muscles underneath were knotted with tumors. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It looks like leprosy, bubonic plague and cancer all wrapped together. How many cases?”