Tommy Nightmare (Jenny Pox #2) Read Online Free PDF

lay several hundred miles to
the east. Tommy started walking.

Chapter Five
    Dr. Heather Reynard raced down the country
highway at ninety miles an hour, while juggling her cell phone and
a box of Zaxby’s chicken nuggets. After two months of living on
canned beans and U.S. Army MRE’s, she thought the deep-fried
chicken lumps tasted better than caviar.
    “So, wait,” her husband, Liam, said on the
phone. “You’re back home?”
    “No,” Heather said. “I mean yes, I left
Haiti. No, I’m not on my way home.”
    “Then where are you?”
    “In America.”
    “That narrows it down.”
    “I’m not supposed to say where I’m going,
Liam.” Heather hesitated. “It’s somewhere in South Carolina,
though.”
    “That’s not far. Thank God you’re finally
back. You’ll never guess what Tricia did to the dining room
wall—”
    “I am not back, Liam. Officially I’m
still doing cholera in Haiti.”
    “And what are you unofficially doing?”
    “I don’t know!” Heather swerved around a
slowpoke farm truck loaded with hay. “I’m guessing it’s urgent,
because I just flew from Port-au-Prince to Augusta on a U.S. Postal
Service airplane, and this is my first chance to call.”
    “When did all this happen?”
    “This morning. Early. Dr. Schwartzman sent
for me. I don’t know why. Nobody’s telling me anything.”
    “I’m guessing it’s not another salmonella
outbreak, then.”
    “Why did you have to say that? I’m eating
chicken nuggets here.”
    “You’re probably safe. Like I was saying,
your daughter is a real artist now.”
    “That doesn’t sound good,” Heather said.
    “She painted a mural in the dining room. In
the medium of ketchup and mustard.”
    “Ugh. That’ll be a mess to clean up.”
    “Who’s cleaning?” Liam asked. “I’ll just slap
a frame around it and tell people it’s a Jackson Pollock.”
    “You’re so unbelievably hilarious,” Heather
said. Following the directions she’d scrawled on her notepad, she
turned off the main highway onto someplace called Esther Bridge
Road, saw the National Guard roadblock, and hit the brakes. “Wow,
this looks big. I have to go.”
    “I love—“ she heard Liam say as she clicked
the phone.
    A Guardsman, about nineteen years old, walked
towards Heather’s rental car, shaking his head. Heather lowered her
window.
    “Road’s closed, ma’am,” he said.
    “I’m Dr. Reynard.” Heather showed her ID
badge. “CDC. I’m supposed to be here.”
    The Guardsman inspected her ID card closely,
as if he were an expert in distinguishing between real and fake
Centers for Disease Control badges.
    “One sec. Wait here.” He walked away and
consulted with an older Guardsman, who consulted with someone else
via walkie-talkie, and then nodded.
    Soldiers moved aside the orange cones that
blocked the road, opening a lane for her between two big National
Guard trucks. They’d blocked off the left lane completely with
their trucks, as if more concerned about people getting out than
people getting in. Interesting.
    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