Resonance, J. B. Everett [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

earth will reverse, and if this is what happens when it does, then no, there’s no outrunning it.”

 

The thought passed briefly before it cleared enough for David to ask it. “Where’s Sorenson?”

 

Jordan snapped around at that, but before he could put in his pissed-off two cents, Peppersmith spoke up. “All the women were dropping. I tried to help, and I just finally laid her down on a gurney in one of the tents… . she’s alive.”

 

Abellard nodded, pulling one of the clear IV bags from the pile he had carefully hoarded for Jillian. He slapped it into Leon’s palm, surprising the giant, but following it with a sleek plastic sealed kit. “Take these back to her and find somebody to run a line.”

 

“I can.” Leon looked at the items now dwarfed in his thick hands, and disappeared from the tent on little cat’s feet. Far too quiet for the size he was forced to wield.

 

Abellard went back to doctoring his patient. As though he could help Jillian by taking her pulse and blood pressure. Like sticking her with a needle and sucking a vial of her blood would help her live through this shit.

 

David wanted to ignore the whole problem. Walking from the tent he felt the ground beneath his feet. Below the grass and dark soil were layers of limestone and shale with stories to tell. There were oil pockets here. Not the size of the ones in Texas or Alaska, but enough to put a pump in your back yard and food on your family’s table for all your years to come. David wanted to be under his own feet, down with the rocks and the strata.

 

So why was he here? Stuck with the CDC and sick people falling around him everywhere? Oh, and not just sick people, sick women. Just as a final insult, it was Abellard’s pretty mug he was stuck looking at.

 

He shook his head, trying to look beyond the tent city. The mountains pushed up around him on every side. Caves were back there. Exposed surfaces, waiting for a man with a pick, a plan, and something to prove.

 

Strip mining had ruined the beauty of the hills. But beauty was for crap, and the exposed layers and angles were far more interesting than any damn trees could be.

 

His fingers itched to pick at something, to clip himself to a rope and slide down a rock face stealing little pieces of it as he went. All this compass and magnetic field stuff was interesting, but he wanted to break something. Instead people were pushing by him, talking to him.

 

He didn’t answer. They looked sick, and he had had just about enough of this vomit-andfall-down-half-dead crap. Their faces looked uncomfortable, so he turned away. Only to be confronted by men, everywhere, coming out of tents, walking the straight lines between, all rubbing at their bellies, the sides of their faces, their ears.

 

Son of a bitch.

 

For the briefest of moments David wondered if he was getting it too, and just wasn’t medical enough to know it was happening. But when he checked his stomach the only thing he felt was hungry. Suddenly ravenous. He hadn’t eaten since before he and Jillian had tried that hike to the center of God’s green beyond.

 

And he’d had to haul her sick ass out of there, too.

 

He grabbed the arm of a passing physician, “Hey, where can I get food down here? Or do I have to go back into the school?”

 

The man’s facial expression questioned David’s intelligence even as his finger was pointing at the double doors at the bottom of the staircase. The doctor greened up another shade before turning away. But David ambled off toward the low building. Better get some before all the damn cafeteria staff fell ill.

 

“David!”

 

Shit.

 

It was Abellard. “I need you!”

 

With a sigh as heavy as granite, he turned to help out the doctor. There was a knot of people at the front of the tent. At least David was pretty sure it was the right tent - they were all identical: four poles, white canvas, the only differences being where the flaps were open and how.

 

 

Pushing through the men clustered at the door, he found Abellard inside, tending bar, and making the Day-Glo shots he had fed to Jillian and Sorenson. Peppersmith stood by his side, looking green around the gills, but his hands were full of whatever Jordan was handing him. Leon handed them out, one by one, then turned back to the makeshift counter, “My turn.” And he sucked down the next lime green mixer.

 

Men walked away from the tent flaps, slamming back the shots even as they pushed beyond the crowd.

Jordan turned around and pinned him with a glare. “So show me this immunity that got Jillian in trouble.”

 

David shook his head. “I’m fine.”

 

“Good.”

 

Some of the others looked at him in surprise, or awe. A few even glared, but it only took one, grabbing his arm and asking “Immunity?” to start the ripple of murmurs through the crowd. David shrugged him off.

 

Jordan, too, ignored it and sent David with a list and a box, bare except for empty bottles so David would know when he found the right stuff. He hit the supply tent and pillaged it, haphazardly piling in what looked like individual lunchbox applesauce containers. He added industrial sized bottles of Mylanta, and carefully read the vial labels searching for Donnatal.

 

With his box full, and his brain in pissed-off mode, he made his way back to the tent, still crowded with sick men. Hadn’t he gone to college and even grad school to avoid being a manual labor peon? With less than no ceremony he plopped the box on the counter beside Abellard who looked relieved at the quantities David had discovered.

 

He looked even more haggard than most of the men outside, and Peppersmith held one of the cups out to him, but Abellard waved it away. He motioned for it to be handed to one of those who were waiting, always the hero.

 

David hung back, then eventually began pulling cups off the end of the assembly line and passing them out to the crowd. He wasn’t human and he knew it. His helping was just a matter of not having all the doctors glare at him.

 

The clusterfuck at the door thinned and David looked beyond the canvas walls to see that they were falling where they stood. A lot of good the medicine was doing if you asked him.

 

“I have no idea, but the bastard does seem to be immune.” Jordan spoke to the wall, having finally lost his mind completely.

 

Or so David thought until he saw the cell phone propped open on the countertop, the name

“Landerly” in bold letters across the face.

 

When the last hand had snaked in for a dose of GI cocktail, Jordan downed one himself. His color had turned gray as steel and he worked his mouth without speaking. Finally, he produced sound. But it wasn’t for David, or even Leon Peppersmith, it was to the cell phone. “Bye Landerly. Thanks for the -.”

 

His eyes rolled and with his last shred of consciousness he made sure he fell forward, cradling his head even as all his limbs went perfectly slack.

 

“Oh, shit!” It was the only real surprise David had ever heard from the wrangler.

 

But Peppersmith acted. And from the looks of it, Jordan was just a big catch to him. He unceremoniously draped the doctor over his shoulder, turning until he spotted the empty gurney. He slapped Jordan down on it hard enough to make David think it was a good thing the doc wasn’t awake to experience the humiliation of being hauled around by another man like a sack of flour.

 

“Abellard!” It was just a sound through some static.

 

David looked around for the source. But since it wasn’t Leon, and it was inside the tent-

 

“Dr. Landerly?” Picking up the cell phone he got a good look at the face plate. The time read 20:24. That was a long call. “It’s Dr. David Carter.”

 

“I know. Abellard’s down?”

 

“Yup.” He held the phone at a distance, eyeing it as though it might bite him.

 

“Is Peppersmith still standing?”

 

“Yup. He’s fine, too.”

 

Leon Peppersmith nodded and gave David the thumbs up, just before his eyes rolled into his head and he dropped like a stone. He went over straight backward, cracking his head on the gurney railing and jostling Jillian, loosening one of her arms so it slipped over the edge of the bed and hung like dead weight.

 

“Let me take that back, we just lost him.”

 

Landerly’s voice growled through the line at him. “Just like that? No warning?”

 

“Yup.”

 

With a quick glance down at Leon he turned back to the phone to concentrate on something Landerly was saying. But even as he turned away from the downed giant his brain processed what he had seen.

 

A crimson pool was spreading in the grass beneath Leon’s head.

 

“Shit!”

 

“What?” Landerly’s voice crackled from the ground where David had automatically tossed the phone.

 

“He cracked his head!” He knelt beside the big man, thinking that he should touch the wound to know what to do. His hand pressed through the blond hair, and as he did he could feel the tiny fluctuations in pressure signaling that something important had been hit. Using his fingers to follow the flow backward, David was shocked to find the cut wide and gaping.

 

Jerking his hand back and not even noting the blood, he leaned into the shove, rolling the big man over. As he did it he suffered a thought about spinal cord injuries and paralysis. Leaving bloody handprints as he went, he checked the hair, and felt the inward dent in the skull.

 

With an unconscious jerk, David sprang back, landing on his butt, watching in fear as the wound fountained and fell, fountained and fell. Peppersmith lay unconscious, still as rock, while both the timing and size of the rhythm slid off to nothing.

 

With dry blinking eyes, David stood, leaving the fallen giant facedown on the ground inside the tent.

 

Unaware of where he was stepping, he crushed the phone beneath the heel of his shoe as he left, silencing Landerly’s voice while it hissed through the bad connection.

 

He needed a sink to wash his hands. It was just beyond the cafeteria. He was still hungry. David didn’t worry about the stains on his shirt. Just washed up and headed up the long flight of stairs to change into something clean.

 

He found his doorway in the eerie stillness; the lack of noise breaking through his protective denial. He looked around, and nothing moved.

 

A laugh almost bubbled out of him. Of course nothing moved. He was in a hallway in an empty high school.

 

But there was something else. A lack of any human sound that was far more powerful than any lie his brain could concoct. And for the first time, his stomach rolled over in fear.

 

He unbuttoned his shirt, avoiding the bloody smears and prints, and threw it in the trash. He climbed into fresh everything. Boxers, socks, pants, t-shirt.

 

But his stomach rolled again.

 

And he was tired. With a hand in his hair he decided that the cot was the way to go. The food would still be there when he woke up. Then he’d pack up and get the hell out of town.

 

He stretched out, not comfortable even though the cot was long enough.

 

All the energy left his limbs.

 

Only at the last minute did he understand what was happening.

 

He tried to open his eyes, and wasn’t sure if he accomplished it.

 

The black was bringing the sparkles with it at the borders of his vision. It crept in, closer and closer. Taking over his brain.

 

Oh shit.