Infestation Read online

  Brenda shot me a glance. Oh no, I thought. Are we to go there again?

  “Our saviors,” Andi cried in dopey ecstasy. “Lights, transcendent minds to show us the way!”

  “Looks like they’re back,” Brenda whispered to me.

  I held my peace though I could feel my face flushing. Our last trip to Florida was a bitter memory. We wasted hours, days, investigating smelly piles of dead birds and fish, and whatever the real cause of the mass die-offs, Andi, Brenda, and Tank—aided by Daniel, of course—were too distracted by madness and delusion for us to ever find it. Rather than a scientific explanation, they opted for strange lights in the sky, illusory alien beings, invisible evil. I discounted any notion of extraterrestrials and demons then, and I most certainly did not entertain such theories now. I even found it affirming that new claims of such things as “orbs” and global saviors were originating exactly where one should expect to find them: in the ravings of a lunatic.

  I sighed, hands over my face. Our lunatic. Our dear Andi. If not the beings or spirits or flying saucers Brenda was referring to, the old delusions had returned, and to a tragic degree. I questioned the doctor. “And what are you doing about this?”

  “The blood tests came out negative,” he said. “No hallucinogenic drugs as far as we could tell. But the MRI and brain scan did indicate an abnormal stimulation of the central nervous system. We’ll be doing some more tests to track that down.”

  “Why aren’t you doing them now?”

  “Professor—” Brenda cautioned.

  “What are you waiting for, another day’s rent for this jail cell?”

  An orderly knocked, then opened the door. Another visitor entered and I winced at the timing.

  Bjorn Christiansen. Out of place, unexpected, uninvited, perhaps the last person I wanted to see at a time like this. Enormous and muscular, he was a could-have-been football star who gave it up to be a part of our “team.” What a dreadful mistake that was.

  “Hi, team!” he said quietly. At least he knew he was in a hospital.

  “Hi, Cowboy,” said Brenda.

  If he calls us a team again . . . I thought, but said, “Hi, Tank.”

  He approached, his eyes on Andi and more dismayed with each step, until he sank onto the edge of the bed, plainly bewildered and saddened.

  “It must fill the earth,” said Andi, looking into space. “Fill and subdue it. The lord of the mind, the heart, the body . . .” She began to tap and scratch nervously on the arm of the chair, a weird, nervous tic.

  I looked at the doctor. He watched her hand. He brought up his clipboard and made a note of it.

  “Andi?” Tank said.

  Her eyes followed an invisible someone as if they had come in through the ceiling and stood by the window. She smiled at them.

  “Wow,” Tank said softly to the rest of us. “Kind of like Daniel does when that angel’s with him.”

  All right. I admit I’m not an agreeable person sometimes. Today, at this time, not at all. “Tank . . .” I tried to keep my voice down. “She is out of her mind. She has been inflicted with delusions for which we have neither cause nor remedy. Kindly update yourself before lapsing into such stupidity!”

  Brenda put her hand on Tank’s arm. “Things are kind of tense right now.”

  He seemed to understand.

  “Just what are you doing here, anyway?” I asked. “I don’t recall inviting you.”

  He nodded toward Brenda. She acknowledged her culpability by arching her eyebrows at me.

  I glared back at her; I did not welcome him.

  “I gotta be here,” Tank said. “We’re a team.”

  There it was, the flame to my fuse. I had to get out of there. I got up to leave. That meant leaving Andi. I paced back, glared at him.

  “Professor . . .” Brenda cautioned me, again.

  “A team? How did you ever get such a ludicrous impression?”

  His gaze went from me to Brenda and back again. “Well, all the stuff we’ve been through together, the note, the scroll—”

  “The scroll!”

  The doctor got into it. “Mr., uh . . .” He had to look at his clipboard.

  “McKinney.”

  “Mr. McKinney—”

  “Doctor to you . . . Doctor!”

  “Dr. McKinney, pipe down right now or you’re out of here.”

  I had to admire his spine. Well done.

  I piped down, if only for Andi. “Mr. Teammate—” I didn’t pinch his cheeks, but my tone did as much. “Since we’re to be a team, perhaps you can establish that by making yourself useful.” I paused for effect, then nodded toward Andi. “Heal her.”

  That threw him back a little. He looked at Andi—she was still talking a flurry of numbers, vague philosophy, and ridiculous fantasy names—and then he looked at me, still unbalanced by my forwardness.

  “Well?” I said. “Come on now, you think you’re so gifted. You healed her dog, heal her. She’s your teammate, isn’t she?”

  He nodded.

  “So?”

  He sighed, then closed his eyes as if praying.

  For a fleeting moment it occurred to me that Tank was over 250 pounds of pure muscle, that he’d broken bodies and limbs on the football field, that I might be pushing a dangerous threshold, and that if he did put me in my place with an arm, an ear, a finger elsewhere, I deserved it. But I was compelled, deeply soured by bitterness even as I knew I should be ashamed. “Is this part of the ritual, or are you stalling for time?”

  He didn’t tear my arm off or break me in half; he just looked at me with a gentleness I was glad for. “I was praying for you.”

  I refused to be impressed or softened. I simply nodded toward Andi. “And now her. If you please.”

  He gave another sigh, and extended his hand toward her.

  Her reaction jolted all of us. One touch, and she recoiled. Leaping from her chair, her arms tightly about her, babbling in a high octave. “NO! No, not your kind, not ever, not ever! Stay away!”

  Now this hurt him. He extended his hands pleadingly. “Andi . . .”

  She locked eyes with him—the first time she’d met eyes with anyone—and just kept screaming, her back against the wall.

  “Okay,” said Dr. Lawrence, “everybody out.” He began to wave us out with his clipboard as he shouted to the orderly in the hall, “Roberto, we need the restraints.”

  We backed away from her, at a loss, me especially. Andi just wasn’t there. We hadn’t reached her; she didn’t know us.

  “Come on,” said the doctor. “Out.”

  Suddenly, inexplicably, Andi calmed and fell silent. Her face relaxed as she looked toward the doorway. We turned, and there in the doorway was—now where had I seen him before? Here in Florida for certain. Oh, yes! The marine biologist at the big aquarium that had the dolphin show. We’d asked him about any findings, any explanations for the dead birds and fish, and as I recalled, he never came up with a sound explanation for anything.

  The name came to me. “Dr. . . . Mathis, is it?”

  He smiled. “Yes. And you’re Dr. McKinney! And . . . Brenda, is it? Oh, and Tank! I remember you!”

  And then his gaze went to the pitiful creature Roberto and another orderly were strapping into her bed. As Andi seemed to look his way, he was at a loss. “What on earth . . .”

  Dr. Lawrence observed, “She seems to know you.”

  Mathis looked into Andi’s eyes and she looked back, calmly letting the orderlies bind her. “I do remember her,” he said. “She and her friends were investigating the mass bird and fish die-offs we had a while ago.”

  Andi lay back on her pillow and resumed her conversation with orbs and entities, peaceful and happy, though I did note that she was tapping and scratching with her fingers again, soundlessly upon the sheets.

  Now we were all standing around her bed like spectators. If only to break the spell and spare her dignity, I cleared my throat and asked Mathis, “So, what brings you here?”

&
nbsp; “I just dropped by to say hello to some of the staff. When I saw Andi’s name on the patient roster I thought it sounded familiar.”

  “Well, thank you for dropping by. We were just on our way out.” I flashed a glance at the doctor, who nodded.

  “Listen, if there’s anything I can do, just let me know,” said Mathis.

  I couldn’t imagine what he could do, but I thanked him.

  With Andi at peace for whatever reason, we left, signing ourselves out at the front desk and thanking P.A. Fornby for accommodating us.

  “So may I confirm, please,” I ventured, “that we are on the list of authorized visitors now? May we visit again, say this evening, without having to repeat the paperwork?”

  “Well, let’s just make sure,” she said, gently shooing a large calico cat off the list so she could check. “Yes, just show some ID to the attendant on duty and you’ll have no problem.”

  I looked with gratitude at Jacob and Sadie, and we went on our way.

  CHAPTER

  4

  Divided

  Regrouping, depressurizing in the beachfront home of Andi’s grandparents, Brenda, Tank, and I rested with Jacob and Sadie in their living room, trying to enjoy the coffees Sadie had brewed for us. There were short conversations, mostly dealing with how we wanted our coffee, but between those, periods of somber silence as we withdrew into our thoughts and coffee cups. We were bleeding for Andi.

  Jacob, sitting in his favorite chair, finally eyed us over his mug. “So here you are again, like it or not.”

  “To be clear,” I said, swirling the cafè mocha remaining in my cup, “I am here for Andi. I have no interests beyond that.”

  “Then you’re not gonna help her,” said Brenda, looking toward the ocean.

  I had no desire for another heated exchange, but if it had to be, it had to be. “Assuming, of course, that only your perspective is viable.”

  Finally she looked at me. “I’m just seein’ what’s there, and I’m sayin’, if you don’t want to see what’s there you ain’t gonna get very far helpin’ Andi or helpin’ anybody.”

  “As if we got anywhere last time?”

  She half raised her hands, a sort of surrender. “Hey, I’ll take my blame, but Jacob’s right and now you’ve said it yourself: We’re here again because last time we didn’t finish what we came for.”

  I had to regroup a moment. “Where, oh where, does this come from, this sense of mission, this whole idea that this has something to do with the fate of the world and we are the chosen ones—”

  “We’re a team,” Tank said—again. “Don’t you get it?”

  He’d already lit my fuse, and since we were not in the hospital I raised my voice as much as I pleased. “No, young man, you are the one who doesn’t get it! In order to get it, you have to be rational, you have to be logical.”

  He’d been wounded ever since Andi’s screaming rejection of his healing hand, and now I could see his forbearance was wearing thin. “I am logical. I can think. I can see what’s right in front of me!”

  “Okay, guys . . .” Brenda cautioned.

  I mimed a wide-eyed look of wonder. “Ohhh. Logical. Yes. So you see sense and logic in five people who couldn’t be more mismatched being a ‘team,’ and based on what? Feelings? Hapless adventures and missteps? Oh, excuse me, I forgot: we received a note from an unnamed, unknown child on a bicycle for no particular reason, signed by none other than ‘Ezekiel.’ Well, of course it would be rational to believe that! Not to mention the high point of discovery, a scroll delivered by . . . what? Beings from another universe?”

  “But you said there could be alternate universes.”

  “But does an alternate universe guarantee inhabitants that are benevolent and trustworthy?”

  I gave him time to think, and he finally answered, “No. But your friend, Cardinal Hartmann, he called us a team and he translated that scroll, and the scroll said we were chosen to be a team.”

  Brenda hid her face as she muttered, “Oh, lord, here we go.”

  I’d been dying to spring the question. “But who wrote that scroll, Tank? Seeing as you’re so logical, have you ever wondered about that?”

  “Sure. I guess.”

  “So? Who, Tank? Who took pen in hand and wrote that scroll? Do you have a name?”

  I could tell he hadn’t thought that much about it.

  “Then, if you don’t know who wrote it, how do you know that person knew us, or even knew of us?”

  “But Littlefoot brought it.”

  I nodded as if to a three-year-old. “Ah, yes, little Helsa. And who was the meticulous planner who sent her into a strange universe all alone to walk barefoot in the snow and be frightened by strangers and attacked by a wild beast? Do you have a name?”

  “No.”

  “Ohhh. Well then, maybe you can tell me why a scroll, supposedly a message for us, was not written in a language any of us can speak or read? Maybe you can tell me why the same beings who concocted that scroll created a phony hologram of my dearest, oldest friend and pretended to translate a scroll they wrote in the first place? Maybe you can tell me why we should think we are a team just because a pack of liars and deceivers from another universe say so.”

  I’d lost him. “What? What are you talking about?”

  I prodded Brenda. “Explain it to him, will you?” I was tired of going through it, and I wanted to test where she was on the matter.

  She recounted the whole Vatican and Spear of Destiny mess quite well, except for . . .

  “You left out the part about Daniel,” I said.

  She gave me a chilled look. “I ain’t passin’ that on ’cause I don’t believe it.”

  I acquiesced. “We’ll leave it there.”

  “What?” Tank asked.

  “Suffice it to say, Daniel will not be participating in . . . whatever this is. I wasn’t even planning on your participation, but here you are.”

  “Yeah, here I am.” He was offended, of course, but brooded about the whole thing while we waited. Finally, he said, “So if these guys from the other universe brought us all together to fool us, doesn’t that still lump us together? Why didn’t they try to fool somebody else, or just you, or just Brenda? Why did they set this whole thing up for us five? We must fit together somehow.”

  Hmm. He could be logical.

  “Like our being together here again,” said Brenda, “just like Jacob said. I don’t know why we keep fallin’ into things together. Seems like last time, we were somethin’ like a team, at least then, and maybe we could have done somethin’, maybe we were supposed to do somethin’, but we didn’t. Me, I just left it here, just gave up and went home.” She looked toward the ocean, heavy with sorrow. “Well it’s payday now. We didn’t go after it and now it’s coming after us, and that’s what I’m sayin’. Whatever’s doin’ this, it’s still out there . . . and now it’s got Andi, and if you don’t get that, you’re nowhere near helping her.”

  “A madness has her,” I objected. “Not spirits, not extraterrestrials, not—”

  “So where’d that come from?” Tank asked.

  “That’s what I’m here to find out, and in rational terms.”

  Brenda rose from her chair, still looking out the front windows. “Abby knows.”

  The others rose to look, and only then did I. Abby, the chocolate lab, was up to her old behavior, sitting by the sliding glass door with eyes and ears fixed on the ocean, listening, watching, whining as if something evil was out there. As if. That was the thing to remember—if only I could convince the others. “If I may,” I said, talking to their backs as they gawked out the windows. “This is the same behavior, the same prelude to the madness that deceived us last time.”

  “If only she could talk,” said Sadie as if I’d said nothing.

  “If only Daniel were here,” said Tank.

  “Oh, please!” I said, and I had to be firm. “Let us not go down that sorry path again!”

  Jacob spoke up. “That
path may be the only one you have.”

  “This is where we left off,” said Brenda.

  “And we need to finish it this time!” said Tank.

  Now they were all facing me with one accord, leaving me the only sane person in the room. I could see all was lost. I felt I was speaking to the tides, trying to hold them back. “Then do as you wish. Be a team, wallow in fanciful theories.” I grabbed up my coat. “I’m going to go see Andi—alone!”

  Perhaps Tank was using his scrimmaging skills. I had only taken a few steps when there he was, right in front of me. “What are you so mad at?”

  I was astounded at the man’s density. “You haven’t been listening all this time?”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about,” he said, his finger in my face. “I mean, what are you mad at really?”

  That crossed the line. It invaded. It dug deep. “I do not share these things with people I don’t trust!”

  I maneuvered around him and went out the door.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Orbs

  The hospital room was illumined by a single night-light. I reached for the window curtain and pulled it open only an inch. Andi, free of her restraints and sitting up in her bed, showed alarm until she saw it was dark outside, then calmed and gave no protest as I pulled the curtains the rest of the way open. She was immediately fascinated with the city lights outside. She rose from the bed, went to the window, and spoke with them as they apparently spoke with her. The stoplight at a nearby intersection, winking from green to yellow to red and back again, amused her the most, as if the lights were playfully teasing her.

  I sat in the padded chair and observed, trying to gather pieces of the puzzle. Lights. Though ambient light, such as daylight or a lit room, seemed to bother her, she was fascinated by isolated points of light. Though morose and muttery that afternoon, she was rather animated now with so many friends outside the window.

  So I could guess there was something here, a pattern, a larger fact we could only see in scattered pieces, and certainly not all of those, not yet.