Absence of Faith (44 page)

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!" Chantress
screamed, and fell flat on the rocks, landing on her hands. Her
shin scrapped against the edge of jagged rock and the sharp pain
ran up her leg. The rock scrapped the skin off like a fine chisel.
Blood oozed out of her leg, her left forearm, elbow and palm. The
roar of the boat engine loomed in the darkness, increasing in
volume as it sped closer to the end of the inlet. She dragged
herself up and stood shakily on the black jetty like a drunk. She
moved closer to the water, stepping carefully onto the slimy,
slippery rocks making sure she had a foothold. The engine roared on
and she could see a dark mass moving rapidly towards her. She
raised the gun, took aim, and put her finger on the trigger.
Suddenly, her left foot gave out and she fell backward.

"Boom!" the gun went off sending
the bullet harmlessly into the air. The boat roared past, creating
a bow wave that washed up on the first two rows of rocks. Chantress
hit the jetty hard and everything began to swirl around. Ignoring
her pain, she turned over onto her belly and took aim at the boat,
which was nearly clear of the jetty. The boat seemed to move
sideways and she felt like the jetty was one big carousel going
round and round.

"Boom! Click! Click! Click!" The
boat turned right at the end of the jetty and roared out into the
quiet inlet.

"No! No!" she screamed.

She stood up still dizzy, her body
on fire with pain and her eyes filled with tears. She sat down on
the jetty hoping the dizziness would go away. Suddenly, there was a
flash of orange light followed by a loud explosion. She turned
quickly and saw an orange ball of fire rise up out of the water.
The fireball died down seconds later and drifted out to sea slowly
vanishing under the calm water.

"Now you can go where you belong,"
she said as she watched the flames slowly burn away all of her hate
and anger.

"We'll never find that boat,"
Vandergarde told the balding, overweight prosecutor. "The Coast
Guard said there are strong currents and it was an extremely high
tide because of the full moon. The remains of that boat could be in
Europe by now and the body, too."

He sat down at a small brown desk
that bore decades of coffee rings on its dulled and marred surface.
The desk was in the middle of an equally worn and messy office. The
prosecutor moved a gray metal chair near Chantress and stared at
her menacingly. His large, overweight body ballooned off the sides
of the chair.

"Now Miss O'Connell, tell me one
more time why you followed Kyle Mabus with a loaded gun?" the
interrogator asked her a fifth time.

"I told you a thousand times. He
tried to kill me; he was going to kill everybody. I didn't kill
him. He was the third Anti-Christ that was predicted to appear in
this century by Nostradamus. Nostradamus said he would be the evil
man of blood. He was obsessed with blood. Nostradamus said the man
would be from the Middle East. Kyle was born in Vietnam.
Nostradamus called him Mabus...that was Kyle's last name!
Nostradamus said the Anti-Christ would be at home in Europe. Kyle
longed to return to France, where he grew up. Nostradamus said the
Anti-Christ would help with the fall of the church. Didn't he
almost do that by leading all those people to follow Satan and give
up Christianity?"

"Miss O'Connell. We're not buying
that. You've been watching too many horror flicks," he said moving
his hand over the skin of his head in frustration.

"You will when he shows up
somewhere causing more trouble," she said.

"You're saying he's alive?"
Vandergarde asked.

"I don't know," Chantress said. "I
saw the boat blow up, but I'm not sure he blew up with
it."

"It's a possibility," Vandergarde
added. "We don't have a body and we don’t know one way or another.
If he is alive, he’s wanted for murder and a laundry list of
felonies. And we have no evidence linking her to a
crime."

"I fired at the boat, but I missed.
I fell and the gun went off into the air. I don't know why the boat
blew up," Chantress explained.

"Where is the gun now?"

"It’s home; it's my father’s.
Please don’t get him involved. He didn’t do anything. He didn’t
know I took the gun."

"Is it registered?" the prosecutor
said looking at Vandergarde.

"Perfectly legal. I know her
father. I competed with him at several ranges. He’s quite a
marksman. Besides, the marina is out of city limits so it’s
perfectly legal to fire a weapon there. I think you’ve wasted
enough of her time. I'm sorry we had to put you through this. It's
our job. You're free to go, now."

"Just a minute. I'm not through
yet!" the prosecutor said.

"You have nothing to hold her on
and she doesn’t have to answer your questions. Let her go,
Scalapino!" Vandergarde said.

The prosecutor tapped his fingers
on the table. He was silent and his face was drawn in a tight
smirk. Chantress didn't smile as she got up to leave.

"I hope you're going to look for
him. He's out there and he's dangerous."

"We have warrants out for his
arrest and we’ll do what we can," Vandergarde added. "Thanks for
your cooperation. Wait. I'll walk you out."

Chantress hesitated and then nodded
slightly. Vandergarde joined her and the two walked out of the tiny
conference room.

"I hope you catch him," Chantress
said.

"Why do you want him
caught?"

"Because he's dangerous," she
replied. "You saw what he did, kidnapping the doctor's wife, and
one of your own detectives!"

Vandergarde bowed his head as they
walked.

"How is he?" she asked.

"Nick?"

"Yeah."

"He died this morning,"
Vandergarde's voice trailed off to a whisper.

"I'm sorry," Chantress said and
touched his arm.

"I think he wanted that all along.
He was just never the same after he lost his family in a car
accident years back. He really missed them. He didn't believe in
anything anymore. I think he's happy now."

"Our house never looked so good,"
Linda told Carson as they pulled into their driveway. "I couldn't
wait to get out of the hospital."

"You can say that again," Carson
said. "The house is probably a mess since we haven't been here in
two weeks."

"I don't care what it looks like,
I'm just glad to be here," Linda smiled. "I'm glad you stayed with
me at the hospital the whole time."

"Of course. I wouldn't have it any
other way. I wanted to be with you as much as possible and working
the night shift was perfect. I don't think I'll eat there again.
I'm sick of that awful stuff they call food."

"You should have eaten what they
gave me," she replied.

He helped Linda up the porch steps.
She was still weak from malnutrition and walked slowly. He placed
the key in the door and opened it.

"Surprise!" A chorus of voices
struck them like a crashing wave.

"Welcome home," Frank said reaching
for Linda's hand and shaking it.

"I can’t believe this!"

"You're crazy, Frank!" Carson
added.

"Not at all," he said.

Multi-colored balloons danced along
the ceiling and the dining room table was covered with hors
d'oeuvres, lunchmeats, rolls, salads, and heated foil pans. Someone
turned on the stereo and music mixed in with the cornucopia of
conversation and laughter. Everyone waited their turn to greet
Linda and Carson.

"Come on in. Here Linda, sit here,"
Frank said leading them to the sofa. Frank sat on the love seat
with his wife, Lori.

"I haven't seen you in ages. It's
really good to see you!" Linda said to Lori.

"I wouldn't miss this for the
world," she said. "I'm glad you're back and well."

"Thanks for coming," Linda
said.

Lori nodded and smiled.

"We found it," Frank said to
Carson.

"What?"

"The cause of the Hellfire
Syndrome," Frank said his face beaming.

"YOU DID!" Carson said his eyes
wide and mouth open.

"It's a retrovirus, a variant of
the Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, and similar to Mad Cow
disease."

"I knew it! I knew it all
along!"

"HFS is very similar to the
Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease, which affects men and woman 55 to 75
years old. It's rare - about one case per million in most
metropolitan areas. The symptoms begin with a progressive mental
deterioration - memory loss, mood changes, errors in judgment,
dizziness, and headaches. The patient may also experience
hallucinations, confusion, and see distortions in the shapes of
objects," Frank explained.

"That's exactly HFS!" Carson
said.

"Yes and no," Frank added. "HFS
seems to be a mutant of the Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease and affects
any age. Both are retroviruses, but Creutzfeldt-Jacobs runs its
course in about eight to ten months, HFS in several weeks. Like
Creutzfeldt-Jacob, HFS was transmitted by an agent, and we found
that agent in the jam in your basement!"

"What! The jam in my basement was
infected?"

"Sort of. Something in the jam
entered the body and stayed dormant. By itself, it was harmless,
but after someone ate the jam and then was exposed to certain
levels of ultraviolet radiation from the sun, the reaction
occurred. We found that the agent infiltrated only skin cells, the
coatings of certain organs and the nervous system. When the
reaction starts, it puts the nervous system on overload and causes
the skin cells to burn. We believe the agent is a mutant strain.
Mrs. Hibbins may have had a virus and contaminated the jam when she
made it. Over the years sealed in a perfect environment, the virus
flourished. Somewhere along the line, it mutated."

"And Linda sold that stuff at the
Englishtown Auction and the town fair, plus we gave quite a bit of
it away at one of the hospital fund raisers," Carson
added.

"That's how we found it. We asked
all the patients if they had eaten anything different in the past
few weeks. We found the agent in the liver, kidney and spleen -
that's how we knew it came from something they ate," Frank
explained.

"And all that craziness about going
to hell was caused by the virus?" Carson said.

"Yeah, that’s why you passed out
and drove off the bridge. The same thing happened to Mrs. Whitehead
- she might have hallucinated while driving. After she passed out,
her nervous system overloaded, and then shut down - that's why she
appeared dead. HFS has the characteristics of two virus types. It
behaves like a lentivirus or slow virus, which slowly attacks the
nervous system and it acts like an oncornvirus, which causes
malignant symptoms - the burnt skin," Frank explained. "The UV
light accelerated the symptoms to unprecedented levels."

"But I found the jam after I had
the symptoms!" Carson said.

"Perhaps, you caught an airborne
version. There were several jars that had broken open,
right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"You may find some things in the
house out of place. The CDC quarantined the house and had it
fumigated, sterilized and whatever else they do to make sure every
living germ in the house is annihilated," Frank explained. "They
wanted to condemn the house, but I convinced them otherwise citing
its historical importance, the cost of replicating the exact house,
and a possible lawsuit that the owners might file. After that they
decided to sterilize the entire house."

"Thanks for saving our house!"
Carson said. "I owe you one."

Carson got up and went into his
bedroom. Frank looked at Linda questionably. Carson returned
carrying a thick, dog-eared folder.

"Check this out," he said and
opened the folder. "Remember, that guy I was looking for who died
of HFS during the eighties? Well, I found him. His name was William
Hibbins, and his address was fifty six Cherry Blossom
Boulevard."

"That's our address!" Linda
said.

"That's right. His wife was Martha
Hibbins, and he was probably the first HFS victim," Carson
explained.

"Well, now we even have a case
history," Frank said.

"Does Stokes know? Where is
Stokes?" Carson asked looking around at the clusters of
people.

"He's at the Great Auditorium
giving the speech of his life. We didn't think you would be
clear-headed with all that has happened and with Linda just getting
out of the hospital and all, so I'm filling in for you. We did get
Rev. Graham to make an appearance and speak about the Hellfire
Syndrome. I have to leave in a few minutes and present my speech
right after Stokes."

"That is great!" Carson
said.

"And there will be plenty of media
there. All four networks in New York requested to cover it. It
should make the evening news tonight and all the newspapers
tomorrow."