The Burning

comes up, but until then if you could monitor what goes on, without subjecting yourself to any uncomfortable situations ...' The housing administrator's voice trailed off.

Angela nodded, though the thought of returning to Babbitt House created knots in her stomach. In her mind, she saw black mold spreading from apartment to apartment as each of the residents waited in the hall to call her a stupid brown bitch.

The nod turned into a shake. 'No,' she said, and it felt weird putting her foot down like this with someone so much older than she, someone in a position of authority. 'I can't.'

Edna smiled sympathetically. 'I understand, dear. I understand completely. And I would never make you do something that you didn't feel confident about.' She swiveled in her seat, punched a key on her computer. 'What I can do is try to arrange a swap. It's been a few weeks-there are bound to be complaints in here, people who don't get along with their roommates. Maybe I can find one who'll be willing to switch with you.'

Angela felt even weirder about that. She couldn't justify putting someone else into her situation. After all, the mold was still there, spreading, infecting people.

She was living in a goddamn science fiction story.

'Shouldn't we ... call somebody?' she suggested. 'Something's going on there. Maybe the police are already working on it-I don't know-but there have to be some professors here, microbiologists or something, who would be interested in studying my bed-sheets, who might be able to do something about it.'

'They can't do anything,' Edna said, and the certainty in her voice once again made Angela think that the old woman knew more than she was telling. She felt cold, and thought that perhaps she ought not to have been as open as she had been.

The housing administrator's phone rang, and Angela took the opportunity to leave. 'I have to go,' she said, standing, grabbing her books.

'Wait a moment,' Edna said.

But Angela didn't wait. She gave a quick wave, then was out the door and hurrying down the corridor. She strode past the front desk and out of the housing office, grateful to be out in the open air. Back in California, it was still summer, but here in Flagstaff the air was tart and tangy, something she found refreshing.

She needed to call her parents, e-mail her friends back in California. She needed some grounding. Part of her was thinking it might be time to just pull up stakes and head home, forfeit her scholarship money, find a part-time job for the next three months, then transfer to East Los Angeles Community College for the spring semester. But she'd worked too long and too hard to get where she was, and she'd never been a quitter. Just getting out of her neighborhood and going off to college had been a battle-a battle most of her peers had lost-and she wasn't about to let a few horror-show special effects send her scurrying back to the safety of the familiar.

Was this the way people in monster movies rationalized their behavior? Was this why they always acted so stupidly?

She wasn't acting stupidly, Angela told herself. She was being brave.

Outside of the building, she saw the student who had asked whether she was going on the field trip to the tunnel, the one who hadn't shown up. He'd been in class today, but she'd been distracted and hadn't paid much attention to him. Although now that she thought about it, he was one of the few who hadn't seemed dazed or scared or completely out of it. He and the other students who hadn't come.

'Hey!' he called, catching sight of her. 'Wait up!'

She did. Out of curiosity more than anything else.

'What was with that class today?' he asked as he reached her.

She looked at him. She still didn't know his name, and she doubted that he knew hers. There was something irritating about his assumed intimacy, yet at the same time she was grateful for it, thankful to have human contact that was not ... weird.

'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I don't believe I know your name.'

He grinned. 'Derek,' he said. 'Derek Scott. And you're ... ?'

'Angela Ramos.'

'So, Angela, what was with that class today?'

He was still smiling, which meant that he was curious but not worried, and she wasn't sure how much to tell him. She was acutely conscious of how crazy the whole thing sounded.

He gave her an in. 'Is it because of all those bodies? I heard someone freaked out down there and there was a stampede.'

So that was the story going around?

'I wish I'd gone.'

'Why didn't you?' she asked.

'Something came up.' As though worried she might take that to mean girlfriend trouble, he added quickly, 'I had to pick up my brother from school. My mom's car broke down.' '

So he was interested. And local.

That emboldened her.

'You're lucky you didn't go,' she said. She looked at Derek, took a deep breath and told him everything. She wasn't sure he'd believe any of it, let alone all of it, but she needed to get it out. Derek's reaction was a far cry from Edna Wong's subdued acknowledgment. He didn't ask any questions while she spoke, but the look on his face said it all. He did believe it, and her story not only shocked but frightened him.

When she got to the part about the black mold on her bed and how Chrissie had touched it and undergone an instant personality change, Derek stopped her. 'What did you do with the sheet and blanket? Did you take it in somewhere and have it analyzed?'

'I was going to,' Angela admitted, 'but I ... threw it all away.'

'What!'

It had been a stupid move then and seemed even stupider now. She had no idea why she'd done such a

thing, and the only reason she could come up with was that she'd been contaminated, too, just like Chris-sie. The black stuff had been on her arm originally, and even though she'd scrubbed it off and it hadn't come back, maybe some trace memory remained and caused her to protect the mold rather than try to eradicate it.

Where was that bedding now? she wondered. Had the mold broken free of the garbage sack? Was it even now spreading around the city? A feeling of panic gripped her.

'It was on my sheet again this morning,' she told Derek. 'Even worse. Unless someone's been in my room, it's still there.'

'We have to tell someone.' She could hear the fear in his voice and it both terrified and reassured her. At last someone was having a normal reaction to what was going on. 'I have an Intro to Microbiology class. The instructor might know what to do. If not, he'll probably know who does. Come on!'

Derek grabbed her hand and practically pulled her down the sidewalk through the light crowd of students.

Finally, she thought. And the two of them hurried across campus toward the science building.

Fifteen

Arlington National Cemetery, Virginia

Josh McFadden gulped the cold dregs from his cup while he tried to decide what to do, finishing off the vile liquid more so he would have something with which' to occupy himself than from any real desire for coffee.

The last thing he needed right now was more caffeine.

He was jittery enough as it was.

Josh stood in the doorway of his office looking out at the rolling lawn, Technicolor green in the fresh light of the new day. Where identical rows of white headstones, a man-made monument to order, a blatant refutation of the chaos of war, should have stood, disorder and confusion had reasserted themselves. Sometime during the night, the memorial park had been vandalized. Someone-or a group of someones- had dug up what appeared at first glance to be a considerable number of graves, disinterring the bodies. These corpses, in various states of decomposition, were not just strewn about the grounds but had been thrown deliberately over the white gravestones, their dark irregular shapes marring the perfect symmetry of the cemetery.