Steal the Lightning: A Field Ops Novel (Field Ops #3)(34)

Chapter 30

The Empty Square




“So there’s this thing called div . . .”

We drove back into town. Silverman had his camera, catching little, thirty-second shots out of the window—“milestones,” he called them: an old house, a group of bikers resting by the roadside; a billboard, looming like a skyscraper, a huge and muscular attorney grinning down (“In a wreck? Need a check?”).

And in between, he’d talk.

“Div—divinity, divine, I guess. I never saw it. It was gone before I got there, but people were still talking. I thought it was some new kind of crack or meth, but . . .”

“Where’s this?”

“Well, I interviewed some guys in Baltimore. New York. Kentucky. I’ve got a plan. It’s like, the next great Silverman unfinished documentary: Homeless in America. But I never linked it up with you guys. Not then.”

“You still don’t know that there’s a link.”

“The old lady. That night. You said she swallowed—”

“Yeah.”

He trained the camera on a chain-link fence where dogs prowled, sniffing at the air.

“So,” he said, “there is a drug that kills people. Or makes them better. And maybe it’s a kind of god.”

“I’ve only seen it kill.”

“My AIDS guy . . .”

“Could be crazy.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I’d considered that. Which is kind of interesting in itself . . .”

“You didn’t follow up on this?”

“I wanted to! Believe me. Tricky, though. Anything with drugs. Back when I was starting out, I was going to do a piece on meth, how it was taking over all these small towns, changing the economy, the social structure, and—well. I got warned off. Pretty badly warned off, too.”

I turned for the town center. There was no traffic. We slipped downhill towards the square and I could see the tents, peeping up over the trees. We’d been gone for just a few hours, but the place had changed. There was a stillness there. Abandonment. The rows of cars were gone. The kitchen, the barbecue, the Bible quiz. The crowds of people . . .

I slowed, looking around.

A cop stepped out and flagged me down.

“Got business here, sir?”

“We’re trying to find a place to eat,” I said.

I have been told never to lie to cops, but sometimes it’s just easier than telling the truth.

“Keep going, sir. You can’t stop here.”

“OK.” I smiled, engagingly, I hoped. “What’s happening with the meeting there? I heard it’s quite a thing?”

The temperature went down perceptibly.

“ID,” said the cop.

I handed him my passport. He flicked to the picture page, glanced from it to me and back again.

“Your car?”

“Company car. I have the papers—” I went to open the glove compartment, then stopped myself. “Is it OK . . . ?”

He nodded. I showed him the papers and he waved them around a little. “Meeting’s closed tonight,” he said. “Weekend, too. Maybe longer. You need to stay away. Clear?”

“Has something happened here? What’s going on?”

“Drive straight through. Do not stop.” He handed me the papers, then said, “You want a diner, there’s Millie’s on the highway. Exit 21.”

He waved us off.

Angel said, “Meeting’s closed?”

We circled round towards the park. Now we could see it: cop cars everywhere. There can’t have been this many cops in the whole county, never mind the town. And there were no crowds. No onlookers, no congregation. Like they’d all just vanished into thin air.

I started to pull over.

Angel said, “Don’t do that!”

“I was only going to ask—”

“Guy told you not to stop, Chris. So don’t stop.”

I drove on.





Chapter 31

Options




Silverman, we left at his van.

It was the desk clerk at the Gemini who told us what was happening. She glanced quickly left and right, then, sotto voce, like a gossip spreading scandal, she said, “We got a outbreak.”

“Outbreak . . . ?”

“TB. What they used to call ‘consumption.’ Four or five of ’em, up at St. Luke’s, I hear. New guests gotta register with the Sheriff’s office.”

She was a small, round woman, and like any good gossip, she managed to sound thrilled and horrified, both at the same time.

“It’s all them crowds. That preacher feller . . .”

I looked at Angel.

The desk clerk said, “It was on the news. Local news. I always listen. You sneeze or blow your nose, you should always check the tissue. That’s what they said.” She opened her hand and stared at it. “See any flecks of blood—you get straight to that hospital, OK?” She eyed us warily. “You don’t got flecks of blood, do you?”

“Our tissues are just fine,” I told her. “Honestly.”



How do you shut down a whole town?

Eddie would say, simple: with money.