T. Laine gripped her service weapon in a two-hand grip, her finger off the trigger at the slide, the weapon by her thigh as she walked, moving into the edge of the trees. I forced down the desire to feed the land, hard, as if shoving the need into a dark crevice, and followed, but kept my weapon holstered. As far as I had been able to tell, nothing and no one was alive for acres and acres in any direction. Stepping carefully, silently, we moved toward the pond. The trees fell behind as the road opened out into the clearing. More parked cars appeared. Tents in all the colors of the rainbow. A car seat. Bicycles. A keg in a big aluminum bucket full of water. Fires that no longer smoked, but still smelled and felt warm when we passed by. A ladder on the ground. Beach blankets and those webby-seated aluminum chairs, several on their sides.
The pond came into sight. We both stopped.
Bodies floated in the still water. Bodies littered the shore; some on land showed signs of violence, bullet holes in heads, chests, a few with blunt force trauma. I gripped both fists tightly, letting my nails cut into the newly healed flesh, the pain grounding me to the real world, holding off the bloodlust. The yearning to feed the earth with the bodies of the dead grew, the lust stimulated by the death everywhere.
We stepped slowly up to two bodies the farthest from the shore. Two men. One with a death grip on a shotgun. One holding a tire iron. A semiautomatic, the slide locked back, was on the ground, empty, between them. From the looks of things, they had fired through the weapons’ ammo at the people in the pool of water and at each other, and then beaten each other to death with the tools once the bullets ran out.
I didn’t spend any time looking at them, instead staring at the water. “Look. Look at the bodies. They were swimming in a circle. Idiots went for a swim in the pond. T. Laine?”
She had lowered her weapon so it pointed at the ground, held in the lax fingers of one hand. She took a step toward the pool of water.
“T. Laine?” I said again. She took another step. And another. I called her name, louder. When she didn’t turn, training took over. I rushed her. Dropped. Tackled her at the hips. One hand ripping the gun away from her. And to my feet.
She came up swearing, fists swinging, and she shouted, “What the holy hell do you think you’re doing? Gimme my gun!”
I held the weapon at her, centered on her chest.
T. Laine’s face underwent a series of changes. “What the holy hell. Nell?”
“Are you back in your right mind?”
“Huh?”
“Who is president of the US? Who is the leader of Unit Eighteen?”
She answered both questions, her expression shifting from anger to bewilderment. “What happened?”
I lowered the weapon. Uncurled my finger from the trigger and placed it along the slide. Dropped my shoulders, which had hunched up at the stress of watching T. Laine fall under some weird kind of compulsion from the pond. “You were walking to the water. Just like the other people. So now we are walking away, back to the main road, to warn the local LEOs answering your call that there is an MED here. A big one. Directed or not, it’s not disintegrating, but spreading. And people are dying. Do you understand?” She glanced over her shoulder and I shouted, “Do you understand?”
She flinched and ducked. “Yes.” She started back down the curved road, away from the pond. “I got it. I hear you. And more, I feel the pull beneath my feet. There’s a come-hither spell going, or something like it.” She brushed off her clothing, where the dust from the ground had mussed her. “I never thought I’d say this on the job, but thank you for tackling me.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You okay? About”—her hand waved back behind us—“all that?”
My eyes followed her waving hand to take in the pond and the dead. There were dead humans . . . adults and teenagers . . . children. In the water. Faces just below the surface. Or floating on their backs, arms out, hair out in spirals. Dead. Dead all around me. I had worked so hard, given up so much, to protect and save children at the church. And here other adults—not churchmen, but regular people—had brought children into a situation and made a party of it. And children had died. And I wasn’t feeling a thing that I thought I should. Not a hint of fear. No remorse. Nothing. Except fury that it had happened at all. Anger. A boiling rage that I swallowed back down, acidic and burning.
I released a breath. “No. I’m not. I’m not okay about anything.”
T. Laine reached over slowly and took her weapon from my hands, removed the magazine and the round from the chamber, replaced the mag, set the safety, and holstered the weapon, the tiny snap telling us both it was seated in the Kydex holster. The sound of sirens coming down the road made her pull her cell and tap on a call. “Rick? Problem. Big-assed major problem.”
I shifted my jacket so my badge was showing and got out my ID. I moved ahead of the moon witch and her report to our boss. I signaled to the sheriff deputies as they pulled up, to gather with me, and when I had all three out of their cars, I told them what had happened, all except the holding-a-gun-on-my-partner bit. I kept that to myself. I ended my report with, “We need to make sure all the roads and trails into and out of this entire area are covered. No one in or out. Not even law enforcement.”
“Not a problem, in theory,” one of the deputies said. “How do we keep the buzzards and rats out? And how do we recover the bodies and how do we ID the bodies? Huh? You got an answer to that?”
I looked at him for the first time and I laughed. The sound was a little shaky and frantic to my own ears, and it must have sounded odd to him too because he backed up two steps before he caught himself. “How?” I repeated his question. “PsyLED has protocols on the books. All kinds of protocols on the books. Someone will figure out what to do.” I blinked, and on the lightless flesh of my lids I saw the bodies in the pond. Bodies all in a circle. And only in retrospect did I see the geese. All dead. As if they had swum and swum and swum until they’d died. Okay, maybe I was more shocky than I had thought, but at least the bloodlust was gone. Voice steady now, I said, “Someone will make sure we get the proper paranormal personal protective equipment. Then we can do our jobs.”
I stopped and my forehead crinkled at a new thought. T. Laine had felt the pull of the pond. I hadn’t. Not even a little. The bloodlust might keep other compulsions at bay. Or maybe my species didn’t feel come-hither spells. And . . . there was a wildlife camera back at the pond. A camera with all the footage of the last two days on it. “Keep people out,” I said, and I turned and headed back along the curved drive, dialing Occam as I went. I passed T. Laine still on the phone. She didn’t look up at me.
“Occam,” he answered.
“We have a full category-four MED at the pond with multiple casualties. T. Laine was caught in the working, or whatever the heck it was, and I tackled her. Local LEOs are making sure all entrances and exits are covered. I’m going back in to get the camera.”
“Nell, what? No.”
“Yes. And I need you to talk to me through the whole thing. Keep me centered. I’m putting you on speaker and the phone in my shirt pocket. Talk to me.” I dropped the cell into the flannel plaid shirt’s chest pocket.
“Nell, do not do this.”
“Yeah. Like that.”
“No. I mean it. Do not enter an MED alone.”
“I may be the only one who can enter.” I remembered T. Laine’s slack face, her eyes wandering to the pond, latching on to the sight. And me? The plants had tried to claim me, but the pond had no effect. “You should’ve seen her. Her face went slack and she headed straight to the pond like she wanted to climb in among the bodies and go for a swim. But I seem to be immune to the spell trap, whatever it is.”
“You’re doing it, aren’t you?”
“Pretty much.”
“How many bodies?”
I set my legs into a slow jog and rounded the curve. Death and her dead were spread out all around me. I took a stranglehold on my desire to kill and feed the earth. And though it struggled, it didn’t fight free.
“Nell?”
“Counting those I can see on land . . .” I counted aloud as I ran. I reached the ladder I remembered seeing, and said, “That makes twelve total, all on shore. All adults. All dead from gunfire or blunt force trauma. In the water, lemme count.” I hefted the ladder up and over a shoulder and returned to jogging, keeping my heart rate high, my mind centered. The ladder was only about six feet long; I hoped it would be enough. “I count ten kids, teens. Two may be younger, all in the water. No sign of physical injury. No blood in the water. Three adults in the water. Ditto on the lack of visible injury. Twelve plus thirteen equals twenty-five victims.”
I grunted as I set the ladder against the tree with the camera. Started climbing. It helped that I faced away from the death scene.
“How do you think they died?”
“The ones on land killed each other. The ones in the water? I think they swam to death. Drowned. Just like the geese that are still in the water with them.”
“Jesus,” Occam breathed.
“I don’t think he was here,” I said. “The camera looks easy to remove. It’s mounted to the tree with a strap, a thumb clip, and a small metal brace to keep it pointed in the right direction. I’ll have it down in a jiffy.” And I did, narrating my actions to Occam, listening to his angry replies. I climbed down the ladder and put the cell onto video to record the scene as I jogged across the grass, keeping my back to the dead. “I have the camera out and I’m taking video of the scene with my cell as I walk. I’m taking the direct route back to the drive.” Which was the only reason I heard the small cry. I stopped. I stopped midsentence, whatever I was saying instantly lost. “Did you hear that?”
Occam said, “Nell? What? What’s happening?”
“I think . . .” I turned and jogged to my right, to the baby car seat we had seen on the way in. “There’s a baby,” I whispered. “I didn’t feel it on my scan. Maybe because it’s in a car seat on a heavy rubberized frame.”
“Don’t touch it, Nell. Do not touch it. The baby will be contaminated.”
“I know.” But that might not matter. I dropped to a squat at the baby’s car seat, both knees up, off the ground, touching the dirt and grass with only my rubberized field boots. The little girl was dressed in pink, and she smelled of dirty diaper and sour milk and tears. She was sunburned, dark-haired, with green-brown eyes. My bloodlust withered and died at the sight of the child. I managed a deep, filling breath and blew it out.
The baby saw me and started squalling. “Can’t leave now. She’s thirsty. Hungry. Needs changing.” I looked around and saw a box of diapers and plastic-bottled formula, and everything I needed. “I can’t leave her here alone. And I can’t take her with me to contaminate the others. So it looks like I’m staying.”