Tommy Nightmare(91)

“Oh, is this the boy you were telling me about?” Allegra asked. Her eyes flicked up and down Wooly’s body.

“No, Seth’s over here.” Darcy tugged Allegra past Wooly, closer to Seth. She lay a hand on Seth’s arm. “Isn’t he way foxy?”

“Oh, yes.” Allegra’s dark eyes looked into Seth’s. “Yes, he is.”

Seth felt something like a surge of heat and light in his chest, which spread like molten gold through his body, filling up his head. The incredibly beautiful Allegra seemed to sparkle and glow in front of his eyes. She was everything to him. The past and the future, any other thoughts or concerns, all fell away before her. Every cell in his body cried out with an aching need for her.

“Allegra,” Seth whispered, his voice full of awe.

“Yes,” she whispered back. Her eyes were locked onto his, and their bodies seemed to drift together, until her hand rested on the back of his neck, and he was embracing her around the hips, drawing her close.

They kissed, and the air around them seemed to ignite. Seth was lost in her smell, her taste, the warm shape of her body against him. He was barely even aware of Darcy’s hand still gripping his upper arm.

After a long time, they came back up from the kiss, and their faces parted enough so Seth could admire her eyes, and nose, and cheeks…and those perfect lips…

“Come on, lovebirds,” Darcy said. She took one of Seth’s hands, and one of Allegra’s, and led them away like slow, stubborn horses. They couldn’t stop looking at each other.

“Go on, get it on, S-dog!” Wooly shouted behind them, and the two other guys gave drunken cheers. “Daaaaamn, that pregnant chick is a tang magnet. Hey, pregnant chick, come back and hang!”

Darcy looked back over her shoulder and winked.





Chapter Forty-One


Heather drove toward the airport, where the CDC’s leased plane was waiting. It would ferry her, Schwartzman and a group of first responders. Homeland Security was sending in a flood of people, too, and coordinating with South Carolina state police, Charleston police, and it was rumored that the National Guard had been put on alert. Someone had decided, thankfully, that this was a full-scale emergency in need of strong prevention.

It looked like Darcy Metcalf was going to get her army, after all. Heather just hoped they had biohazard gear.

The situation was volatile and chaotic, which was good, because it meant things were unfolding fast. Heather had been worried that she wouldn’t be able to summon a strong enough response, but apparently the picture of Jenny Morton infected with the unknown pathogen, the results of Heather’s extremely unorthodox lab tests, and the as-yet-unexplained huge body count in Fallen Oak had made their way to the right decision-makers, despite the rush to cover up the event.

She’d heard that state police had been dispatched to Jenny Morton’s house, but they found nobody home, which wasn’t exactly reassuring. Heather had called Darcy Metcalf’s house, and Darcy’s parents said she had gone to the beach.

Heather couldn’t help imagining the city of Charleston with thousands of bodies in the street, diseased and contorted like those in Fallen Oak. She shook the image away, but it kept creeping back.

She stepped on the gas.





Tommy looked out at the crowd of people five stories below. From the balcony, he could see the bandstand, which had been temporarily expanded to accommodate the bands and their walls of speakers.

He'd arrived about twenty minutes ago and stashed his motorcycle inside the tall picket-fence dumpster enclosure behind the hotel. He'd rolled the bike behind the dumpster itself, in case any hotel staff took the garbage out. Getting the bike out would be a little trouble if he had to leave in a hurry, but the nearest parking spot was blocks away, and you couldn’t make a quick exit when you had to hoof it half a mile and then wind your way out of a parking garage.

He looked back inside the hotel room, where Esmeralda lay on the bed, watching music videos on TV. She had a drugged, detached look to her face that bothered him.

“Esmeralda,” he said.

Her gaze drifted in his direction.

“What do you think of all this?” Tommy asked.

“All of what?”

“Ashleigh.” Tommy stepped back into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. He looked at the piece of bone hanging on the gold chain around Esmeralda's neck. “I'm not sure about this thing she's asking me to do.”

“You've been practicing,” Esmeralda said. “You'll do fine.”

“No, I mean I'm wondering whether I should do it at all. Ashleigh tells us that this Jenny girl is so evil—”

“She is,” Esmeralda said. “She killed all those people.”