Resonance by J. B. Everett (free ebook reader for pc .TXT) 📕

to her more as vibrations than sounds while she tried to find the will to get up.

 

“Jilly? You do need to get up now.” In dim light she saw him check his watch, though she hadn’t been aware that she had opened her eyes. “Landerly will be here in about an hour.”

 

Cold water could not have been more effective. And the insulting remark to ask why he had not woken her sooner was barely stopped in its tracks by her brain. By force of will she pushed out the words she really meant. “Thank you for letting me sleep in this morning.”

 

“It’s the least I could do after playing hostile takeover in my sleep last night.” She glanced back at him and held her tongue again, but only because he had the decency to look sheepish. She was in the bathroom before she called back to him, “Did Hann get the pipes all fixed?”

 

“No. They still squeal but they work.”

 

“Well, it’ll wake me all the way up at least.” She started to close the door but his voice stayed her hand.

“I got a call about fifteen minutes ago. Gemma McKnight went down this morning.”

 

She stepped back out of the bathroom, concern on her face as her arms folded across her chest. “Dead?”

 

“Only comatose.” He looked away, sadness painted on his features. They both only knew of one way out of this coma.

 

She breathed in deep of air that felt fresher than almost anything she’d inhaled in her life but was probably deadly. “Gemma was only borderline on her labs.” She turned to go back into the bathroom, stopping just short and turning back to Jordan, excitement bringing her back to the living.

 

“Unless, of course they were wrong.”

 

He just shook his head. And didn’t look like he was going to say much more, just planned to stand there with the borrowed coffee mug complete with roostertail handle. She waited him out while he sipped at it, until he finally conceded to her stare and explained. “Mike faxed the results in this morning. Number for number they are dead on to ours.”

 

“Nice choice of words.”

 

The shower was less than refreshing, and she found herself on the edge of being flat out angry. There was nothing in this godforsaken house that was comfortable. And every time she encountered another person in this town of the damned, things went awry. They got sick. They delivered the news that someone else was ‘down’. Seven people had died and fourteen more were comatose.

 

Wrapping herself in a towel, Jillian peeked out to find the room vacant and closed the door tightly before dressing. She hadn’t worn jeans this often since she was an undergrad. Leaving her hair hanging wet down her back, she padded out into the kitchen to find Jordan at the small round table eating a bowl of frosted flakes.

 

Giving in to the urge to make only the most minimal effort, she grabbed a bowl and spoon. Then she lined up a row of eight pills of varying sizes and shapes, and one by one washed each one back trying to ignore what they meant.

 

They ate quietly and she was sure that his thoughts mirrored her own. Landerly was coming. And they had nothing good to tell him. No leads. Every road a dead end. And townspeople dying. One by one. Her thoughts strayed to the CDC vans that might even now be turning off the interstate and she prayed they had the wherewithal to arrive in differing unmarked cars. And at different times. Even just that many normal cars headed into McCann could raise someone’s suspicions, but a white CDC caravan would have the press on them like flies on dead meat.

 

She started at the sound of a car pulling into the driveway then bouncing the long distance to the house.

 

Jordan’s gaze caught hers but they still didn’t speak.

 

Landerly was here.

 

Jillian abandoned her half finished cereal and hit the front door, coming to a dead stop when she spotted the yellow space suit climbing out of the van and approaching her. What had she been thinking? Of course they were in full suits. They had no idea what this was. She might have been showering in it. Or sleeping in it.

 

Or inhaling it. If not simply getting it from touching, and being near those who had it or had already died from it.

 

She stood in the open doorway, feeling Jordan just behind her, only he didn’t give off the waves of shock she was sure she emanated. “Landerly.” His voice was strong and she could feel the heat from the coffee mug he again cradled.

 

“Abellard. Brookwood.” Landerly’s voice from inside the bubble hood was distorted. As though it had been yelled through a pair of paper cups and a string. “We have a full DeCon tent set up at the perimeter.”

 

“Are we clearing the town sir?” Jillian upped her volume, even though she knew he had a microphone to collect sounds from outside the muffled interior.

 

“Not yet.” His head shook even though the bubble-faced suit did not. “We talked with Drs. Carter and Sorenson on the way in today and we have them running a full magnetic check of the town. Then we’ll clear anyone we can out of the reversal area.”

 

Jordan’s voice carried from over her shoulder. “Do you think it will do any good?”

 

Landerly held back a sad smile. “No. But we need to do it anyway.”

 

Jillian fought the urge to defend their work. But she wished suddenly that she hadn’t found the excitement that she had come to the CDC searching for. “Do we need to go through DeCon? Get suits?”

 

“No suits.”

 

She should have known it. They’d already been exposed to the point where Landerly didn’t see the need to waste money on them.

 

But he kept talking, interrupting the morbid river of her thoughts. He was looking at the house. “Damn, this thing is ugly.”

 

“You should see the inside.” Jordan’s grin was evident in his tone, and Jillian wondered if he really thought it was funny or if it was a set-up on a cruel practical joke.

 

“All right, you two need to pack everything that’s personal. Leave the CDC set-up and gather all the paperwork. Do that first.” He turned and walked slowly and painfully to the van.

 

When it became clear that Landerly had explained everything he was going to, they simply headed back inside to begin their first assignment of packing up the files.

 

“What the hell is this-” Jordan pulled up short at the door to the ‘lab’ bedroom. A suit stood in the center and pretended not to hear them or actually didn’t. His back remained turned and he snapped photo after photo, inspecting each one on the small screen on his digital camera before turning his focus to the next thing.

 

Jillian pressed up on tiptoe to spy on the rendering of the most recent photo and was startled to see that it was of the wall charts, and clear enough to read every word. She grabbed a set of papers and when she turned she smacked into Jordan again.

 

“Hey.”

 

“Sorry.” But she didn’t look up, focused only on the pain in her nose and holding the tears at bay. Although if they were from the sting to her face or her pride she was unsure.

 

She felt her arm jerk in the socket before she realized Jordan had a death grip on her elbow.

 

“It’s not that.” He stayed still and silent until she acknowledged him with a clear gaze. “Don’t be sorry.

 

People are dying here. Just don’t go tripping and breaking a leg or getting an open wound. Now’s not the time to stress your immune system in the slightest.”

 

“Oh yeah. Landerly sending in the suits and giving us crazy orders that we don’t understand doesn’t stress my system at all.” Only to herself did she admit that her sarcasm masked a very real fear.

 

Jordan still didn’t loosen his hold on her arm. “I’ll get the rest of the papers and you start packing. You have more to pack than I do anyway.”

 

She resented the underlying sexism in the remark, until she admitted that it might not be biased but simply truthful. Her arm was free and so she didn’t look up but concentrated on the ground in front of her as she headed off.

 

Her hands and feet worked independently of her head, folding and rolling her clothing and stuffing it back into the duffle bag and she remained silent. Jordan appeared at her side with his own bag and together they went to the front door, encountering Landerly coming up the walk. His gait in the suit gave away his age, and Jillian wondered what it was about this case that got him out and about. Wasn’t that what she and Jordan had been hired to prevent?

 

“I was just getting ready to see what was holding you two up.”

 

Jillian opened her mouth to protest that it had been barely fifteen minutes since they had been ordered to clear out, but Jordan’s hand grasped at her wrist. Not that it mattered anyway, Landerly was talking again without paying the slightest bit of attention.

 

“We’ve got teams checking out the three cases you pulled as evidence - two of them appear to be the real deal. And there’re another two cases in Florida in that nursing home that I authorized you two to visit while I was in Hawaii. You’re going back.”

 

Jillian’s mouth hung slack, but she managed to keep it from gaping. Her eyes went wide with real fear.

 

None of the ideas she had had about Landerly’s packing them up had to do with the possibility of further outbreaks. She had almost forgotten the Florida cluster. The entire nursing home had been exposed. She shook her hand, loosing it of Jordan’s now tighter grip that had threatened her circulation.

 

Landerly kept talking as though neither of them could possibly need a second or two to assimilate the damage and possibilities he was laying at their feet. “You’ll pick up Dr. Carter en route. He’s already back at his hotel packing, as he’ll be going with you to check out the area. Dr. Sorenson is staying here and will be working for the CDC obtaining wildlife specimens. We need everything you can gather on the Deltona cluster.

 

See if we can crack this thing. It’s getting ugly.”

 

He turned away, finished.

 

Two suits emerged then from the back of the van, and from the looks of the gesturing all of the files had been duplicated. Jordan took her duffle bag from her nearly slack wrist and went to throw it in the back of the Rav4, only to be stopped by a suit. Jillian’s brain was working too fast to think about where she was going. So she set herself behind Jordan and followed like a little duck wherever he went.

 

The cluster in Florida was growing. That indicated either contagion or … continued toxin exposure or … or a bizarre vector or … or … long incubation period. And that was the worst, that would mean far-reaching spread.

 

The way AIDS was all over before anyone knew it even existed. Lentiviruses, or those that remained inactive long after infection, could be serious to society simply because the spread was undetected for so long that tracing the path from victim to victim was nigh unto impossible.

 

With a start from her morbid thoughts she realized the afternoon sky was a shade of blue you couldn’t see in the city, and the autumn trees were alive in reds and golds she hadn’t seen in a long long while.

 

“I’m sorry, you’re going to have to fill me in on what the fuck you two are babbling about.” David leaned forward, saying what he wished he’d said an hour ago.

 

The two of them had sat with their heads tucked together speaking English with enough Latin thrown in to be damned obnoxious. It was giving him a headache, and stress in his shoulders. And worse, it made him feel under-educated.

 

They looked up at