Children of the Plague

Chapter Nineteen: Running into Trouble

Chapter Nineteen: Running Into Trouble

“Tiffany,” another voice said in hushed whisper.

Diane stopped in mid-stride, almost belying her natural grace with a stumble. People at a nearby cafeteria-style table stopped talking to watch her, but she didn’t notice. She was listening.

The common room still looked a lot like the cafeteria it had once been, but most of the tables and chairs had been folded up and hauled off to storage. The prison’s new occupants needed far fewer than the old.

Had she imagined it? She looked at the three small tables of people, each group engrossed in hushed conversations. A few seconds passed before she heard it again, this time from someone at a different table.

“Tiffany Hudson…”

The name opened a door in her mind, and the dream that had eluded her earlier flooded through.

She was walking through a house, murdering everyone she saw. It felt like she was killing her own family, but she kept going. It ended with a pretty girl’s tortured face, and the exquisite sense of loss that she felt when she first woke up.

The people at the tables watched her; some with the same puffy eyes that she knew adorned her face. They stared at her, or at least in her direction, waiting for her to say something. Did they think she had caused this? It was beyond her comprehension that they could have all had the same dream, but they clearly had. What was going on?

Once again, the only explanation that made any sense was that a host was nearby. If that was true, they would already be dead, not just having bad dreams. For the second time since waking up, her mental walls snapped into place. Scanning the area for other nanite activity, she sensed nothing unusual. She would have known if an exterminator, offspring, or even a host was using mental powers nearby… in theory.

In practice, someone would have to be using powers at or near her elbow for her to sense it, but she still tried. The results were predictably unenlightening. She kept her blocks up, taking comfort in the small sense of security they provided. The faces looking up at her were still heavy with worry. She was their shield, their giver of comfort.

They smiled and said their good mornings as she approached the nearest table. The other tables’ occupants casually stood and gathered around to join the conversation, even if it was only to be about the weather.

Dennis, the first to speak was a rough looking, skinny man in his mid-sixties. They said he looked like Grizzly Adams on a diet, and she pretended to understand. He was from her support group at the hospital before everything fell apart.

“Did you dream about her, too?” Dennis asked. Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for her answer.

She nodded. Her typical smile and a few easy going sayings weren’t going to work with these people. They were scared. They all started talking to each other at once.

“…told you…”

“What does it mean?”

“…even the exterminators…”

“Who is she?”

Diane let them talk for a moment, trying to think of something she could say to comfort them. With no solid plan in mind, she just started talking.

“Look, I’m not gonna stand here and pretend I know what it means or that I understand the ‘why’s’ and ‘how’s’ of it, ‘cause I don’t. But I promise I’ll talk with the others and get to the bottom of it as soon as I can, okay?”

The questions piled up again, and she spoke over them in her best no-nonsense tone. “Now hang on a minute. Is there a one of us that hasn’t seen ten stranger things than folks having the same dream? We still don’t know what caused the plague, or what it really is. This is brand new territory for us. Right? How do we know this isn’t a perfectly normal thing with all this crazy stuff going on?”