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

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?”
    “We’re