*****
Dressed in his civilian clothes, Colonel Abrahms had just finished dropping off a check to the owner of the Pig's Pride supermarket in Pinson. It had been a big check.
No one had thought about spoiled meat in the butcher department while the quarantine had been effect. When the manager unlocked the store the reek of spoiled meat poured out through the doors like an invisible tidal wave.
If the check had just been an amount to cover the ruined meat and milk products it would have been much smaller, but every item in the store stank so badly Abrahms had been told by his superiors not to dicker around and just cut the check for everything. The owner had even managed to budget in the cost of repainting the whole building since the stench could linger on the ceiling and walls.
Abrahms smiled as he walked to the plain white ford pickup truck and saw civilians filling the parking lot slowly getting back to their normal lives. He glanced over by the drug store where the research trailer had imploded and saw a group of children climbing out of a minivan nearby.
They were laughing and having fun.
He shuddered and held his breath, watching as they crossed the point where an apparent black hole had been about eight hours earlier. He finally exhaled when they went into the store followed by their tired looking mother.
Things looked unusual to him as he drove down the highway. He'd become so accustomed to seeing troops and researchers going about their duties that the sight of kids at the football field seemed oddly out of place.
An army Hummer was passing by him and he noted the glares of residents as they watched it go. Again, he was glad someone suggested he use an unmarked vehicle while he went about his assignments.
The quarantine zone wasn't gone. It had only been drastically reduced in size.
There was a line of cars trying unsuccessfully to get past a newly established checkpoint and he wondered if things would ever be really normal here again.
He saw his military police units waving the cars away from the only road that lead to the blast zone and mentally noted there were about twenty homes that were still officially off limits. Parking by one of the Hummers, he could hear the residents yelling and wanted desperately to avoid more trouble if at all possible.
After quickly talking to one his captains it was decided if they had proper identification proving they lived inside the blast zone, one person could go in escorted by two soldiers to remove any personal items they needed to get out. It would take a while but should keep things from boiling over, Abrahms hoped.
*****
“If he's well, why can't I take him home?” Jim Carver asked in frustration, looking down at the petite Dr. Irvins sitting behind her office desk.
“You don't understand, Mr. Carver. With the injuries he suffered there's absolutely no way he should be completely healed that soon. It's unheard of except for a few cases where claims of religious miracles were involved. And if you look here at the pictures made yesterday,” she said, pointing to an x-ray of his son's skull, “you can clearly see the crack where he hit his head.
Yet the MRI tests from this morning shows nothing amiss. We even redid the x-rays, just as they were done yesterday, and again there's no sign of injury. There is something weird going on and I want to know what it is.”
“Maybe yesterday's x-rays were messed up,” he suggested. “Maybe they were done wrong or got mixed up with someone else? I don't know and frankly I don't really care.
My son's healthy and I want to take him home. He's been through enough.”
She looked at the exhausted man with his tired eyes and tapped the blood work tests on her desk in front of her. “May I call you, Jim?”
“Okay by me.”
“Jim, your son's been diagnosed as diabetic since he was four years old, right?”
He nodded.
“According to this morning's blood work his insulin levels are normal and that's without him taking any of his medication since early yesterday morning. His blood sugar is normal too, even after eating those cheeseburgers and fries you brought in. They were slightly elevated but still well within acceptable levels.”
He looked confused and asked, “So?”
“I'm not sure what happened to your son, Jim. It looks as if somehow he's been completely healed not just of his injuries, but I suspect his diabetes is gone too. If we could have just one more day to check him over maybe we can find out why.”
“Doctor, I appreciate everything you and the hospital have done for my boy, but all your tests will do is keep him imprisoned here longer than necessary.
I haven't always been a good Christian. Hell, I've broken several of the commandments through the years, but I've always believed in God. Last night I prayed harder than any time in my whole life for my son to be healed.
I believe if what you're saying is true all the tests in the world wouldn't show a thing. God healed my son, Dr. Irvins, and I'm taking him home, today.”
Playing absently with her long ponytail, she stared at him for several seconds. “I'll sign the release papers for this afternoon if, and only if you promise to let me know if anything changes about his condition. I'll also want to have him come back in a week for a follow up. Agreed?”
“Yes ma'am,” he said smiling broadly. “Just between us, doctor, do you think it was a miracle?”
She released her ponytail and leaned forward. “I've never seen anything like it before. And if miraculous isn't the word for it I have no idea what to call it.”
*****
Flipping channels, Jake yawned and wondered why he bothered to look.
Television was dumb. All it offered were shows about auctions, pawn shops, shopping channels, news to snooze to, weather, and dozens more equally boring or stupid shows.
He found a football game and watched even though it was almost over.
Unfortunately, it was a couple of teams he didn't care about and quickly grew bored. He flipped over to a local station and saw a funeral in progress.
On the television, a line of cars were pulling into a cemetery as the announcer said in a whispered somber tone. “You're watching live coverage of the funeral of Candace Rogers. Police investigators speaking on the condition of anonymity say a freak form of ball lightning was responsible for her and two other deaths at the scene of last night's horrible accident in Ragland.
As you can see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mourners have come out today to send her off.
Candace joined WBIR television in the spring of 1999 and station management has established a memorial fund for her family as well as her crew who also died while providing Birmingham viewers the best news coverage in town. If you care to donate please send a check to the address on the screen or call the station tomorrow during regular business hours for details.”
Jake wondered if someone had uploaded the video of the ball lightning to the internet and muted the TV as he reached for his laptop.
*****
Agent Shannon Mendez leaned against the wooden partition that ran alongside the steps to the RV's side door. She'd been thinking hard about what her next move should be.
Going the official route and reporting everything she knew to her superiors and letting them deal with it was risky. If they reacted stupidly the machine that looked like a little girl might decide to release the proven lethal virus. The only other option was to play it by ear and see how things went. Thus far she'd chosen the latter, wait and see approach, but felt a growing uneasiness.
Betty was explaining to the others that over twelve thousand colonies had already been established throughout the planet.
There was a general muttering of disbelief from the professor and Alice. When they asked where they were located Betty chose not to say. Instead, she told them the colonists were very pleased thus far with their new home.
Mendez tried to recall what Betty had said in the car on the way into town. Did she say there were seven hundred billion or million of them? Either way it's certainly a consid
erable number even if they are tiny.
She shook her head and looked out the door's window at the police car that had been parked at the corner half a block away for the last thirty minutes. It was hard to tell with the sun's glare on the windshield, but she thought the driver had been looking at the RV most of that time.
As she watched, a black sedan pulled up behind the police car and a man of average size wearing a dark overcoat and hat got out. A little alarm in the back of her head began to ring while the tiny hairs on the back of neck rose up when he walked over to the police car and started talking to the cop.
It's nothing. I'm just getting paranoid. He's probably just lost and asking for directions or something, she hoped.
A knock on the RV door, right next to her, made her gasp and jerk back in surprise. She looked out as the others fell silent and saw her partner Agent Simon Hicks staring back at her wearing a jogging suit with a jacket that had a dragon logo on the front.
Opening the door, she smiled down and said, “Hi Simon. What's up?”
“What’s up?” He repeated in disbelief. “What are you doing? I had to track you down by your cell phone signal. Why don't you try answering it when someone calls? Amalia was royally pissed at you last time I saw her.”
Blocking the narrow staircase so he couldn't see inside, she said, “I'm fine. I was just following up on that little girl from yesterday. She's quite a girl. Um, I'll be wrapping things up here soon. So you can go tell Amalia I'll be calling her shortly. Okay?”
Looking past Hicks, she saw the man hand the driver of the police car something and a second later it drove off. The man was staring at the RV and, though not certain, she suspected he was smiling at her.
Hicks had been saying something about proper procedure when his new phone began to ring. He'd had some difficulty with a clerk in the communications division when he went by headquarters to requisition it.
The lady wanted a police report on his stolen phone from the Orlando affair, before issuing another one. He'd have been there an hour earlier if he hadn't been waiting on the fax from the Ragland police department to confirm his story. But eventually she issued him a new one and warned him not to be so careless with taxpayers money in the future.
He answered his new phone while Shannon tried to remember if she reloaded her gun from the night before.
The man in the coat and hat began walking toward the corner and still seemed to be smiling at her as he did so.
“She's fine Amalia. Okay, we'll be up there in thirty minutes. Why the code words though, think we've got an earache?” He asked, using the predetermined code word they'd agreed on for possible eavesdropping or bugs.
“Alright, we'll see you there,” Simon said, finishing his brief call. He turned back to Shannon, but she was speaking rapidly to someone inside he couldn't see.
“Betty, take a look at the guy in the coat and hat coming down the sidewalk. I've got a very bad feeling about him. Could he be one of those Ziffel pig guys?”
The little girl walked quickly to the steps and looked down the sidewalk. “I do not know, but I am going to find out,” she said, squeezing between the two federal agents and quickly walking down the sidewalk.
“What the heck is-” Hicks started to say as Shannon grabbed him and yanked him inside the RV. “What the hell is going on?” He asked staring at the two old men and the woman who looked like she'd been crying.
Ignoring her partner, Shannon turned to Trevor. “If my partner found me those pig things might have too.”
Trevor nodded and turned back to the front and buckled his seat belt.
Hicks saw him pull a machine gun out from between his legs and set it on the console between the two front seats. “Shannon, I'm starting to think you fibbed a minute ago when you said everything was fine,” Hicks said, watching as the driver started the RV's engine while staring at the little girl walking down the sidewalk.
Mendez pulled out her pistol and loaded a new clip.
Outside, Betty moved quickly around an old man puttering along on a battery operated scooter. A second later she dodged around a little girl about six years old and her mother who were tossing popcorn to a small congregation of pigeons in the garden that ran alongside the road.
The man in the overcoat was staring intently at the RV and walked faster when the engine started. He pushed past an athletic looking young man with short blond hair, knocking his Auburn University hat to the ground in the process.
The Auburn fan grabbed the man by the shoulder and shouted, “Hey asshole, what’s your problem?”
Without slowing, he reached back and grabbed the young man's hand. A sound of breaking sticks was followed immediately by a loud scream of pain as the athletic man fell to his knees cradling the bloody remains of his ruined hand.
It happened so quickly, the other pedestrians couldn't understand what had happened. But, not wanting to stick around and discover what was going on, the mother picked up her little girl and carried her quickly across the street.
The girl was yelling that she'd dropped her bag of popcorn, but her mother was not inclined to stop and retrieve it as the man in the coat and hat was walking much faster in their direction.
A young teenage girl stood in the strange man's way and smiled up at him. “Hello, my name is Betty White. What is your name?”
He raised his hand and swung back to slap her out of the way. On his down stroke she reached up and deftly grabbed his fist and squeezed.
People for three blocks around heard his screams as his fist became a gob of unrecognizable bloody goo and bones clasped in her small hand. Several people later described the sound of his screams as an eerie combination of squeals and grunts.
Inside the RV, everyone watched in silence except for Hicks who swore softly and turned back to the door intending to go help the girl that appeared to be in some kind of fight with the strange man.
Shannon reached up and blocked him from leaving, holding her hand on his chest. “Trust me, you don't want to go out there.”
“That guy looks like he could rip her to little pieces.”
“That is something I would sincerely love to see,” Professor Anniston said and laughed.
“You're sick. All of you are just sick,” Hicks said, trying to push past Shannon again.
Trevor put the RV in reverse and tried to maneuver out of the parking space. Shannon's car was behind them and someone else had parked too close in front effectively trapping them.
“Hang on, let's see how it plays out. But if it goes bad just floor it and ram your way out,” Shannon called out to Trevor as she pushed Hicks away from the door again.
The sidewalk was quickly nearly deserted. The only ones still there were Betty, the stranger, and the old man that had turned his scooter around and began to roll slowly back the way he'd come from.
Still squeezing the bloody remains of the man's hand, Betty leaned forward and flipped his fedora hat to the ground. The olive colored skin of his face, his short curly black hair and frightened eyes were lit up by a beam of bright orange light that was coming out of the little girl's eyes.
The man half grunted, half squealed through his clenched teeth, “What are you?”
“I told you, my name is Betty White. Now you tell me who and what are you?”
Instead of answering, he swung his free arm and punched her in the stomach while at the same time kicking her in the knee.
She stumbled back a few steps and started forward again as the man yanked a glass rod out of his coat pocket and pointed it at her. It flashed a bright blue color and Betty staggered forward in a jerking spasmodic way. Several yards behind her, the old man in the scooter disappeared in a brief flash of flame and smoke as his empty scooter continued to leisurely roll down the sidewalk.
From inside the RV, almost all of them thought it looked like Betty was drunk.
The strange man seemed genuinely shocked that she hadn't collapsed into a pile of dust and didn't wait to see what would happ
en next. He grabbed her arm and slung her around until slamming her into a steel light pole.
She fell on the sidewalk with her head cocked sharply to the right and twisted nearly halfway around.
Trevor had seen enough. Stomping on the gas pedal caused the RV to ram the Volvo parked in front of it.
Hicks was shouting not to hit his car, but the sound of crunching metal combined with the car's blaring anti theft alarm and the RV's engine effectively drowned him out.
The man was bending over looking at the girl when the commotion got his attention. He started to stand, pointing the glass rod at the front of the RV, when his eyes blinked twice before rolling up in his head.
Standing directly behind him, still holding the three foot long tree branch tightly in both hands, Allison yelled down at the man on the ground she'd just hit in the head.
The strange man was laying motionless covering Betty from the waist down.
“That's what ya get for going around actin da fool! Ain't no reason to go round hurting little girls you, nasty, mother fucking, son of a bitch!” With every other word, she kicked him in the butt. Each kick seemed to build in strength as she yelled until Shannon pulled her away.
Shannon tossed her set of handcuffs to Hicks and told him to lock up the man and drag him to the RV.
Bewildered by the last few minutes events, he couldn't think of anything better to do and quickly did as she said.
Allison bent down and moved the long blonde hair out of the girl's face. “She ain't breathing. And look at her neck, for mercy sake. I think she's dead. Poor sweet child.”
“She may be broken but probably not dead,” Shannon said, trying to lift her.
The little girl was immensely heavy and Allison tried to help lift her, but after a few seconds of straining they realized they couldn't move her.
Trevor honked the horn and gestured at his wristwatch as the sound of approaching sirens could be heard in the distance.
“This girl needs to go on a diet, if she lives,” Allison said.
Shannon laughed and waved Hicks over to help her move the girl.