Greg Cox: A Touch of Fever

CENTRAL PARK

Myka faced Worrall across a field of sick and dying people. The grassy meadow resembled a battlefield after the shooting was over. The Civil War had finally come to Central Park, only a century or so late. She advanced carefully to avoid stepping on any of Worrall’s unconscious victims. They moaned and whimpered all around her, dazed and thoroughly out of it. Nobody appeared to be dead yet, but Myka couldn’t be sure of that. There were far too many casualties to check on right away. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen this many innocent bystanders affected by a single artifact at the same time. Maybe that night with Lucrezia Borgia’s comb, or the riot at the prison? But this was no time for a trip down memory lane. Her keen eyes instantly took in the scene. Calvin Worrall, now in possession of both gloves and looking much stronger and spryer than she remembered. Nadia down on the ground, her right hand bare. Her boyfriend out cold several feet away, bleeding from what looked like a nasty head wound. Hundreds of plague victims strewn about the meadow.

The weather freaking out like it was the end of the world. Close enough, she thought. If only I’d gotten here a few minutes earlier!

But maybe there was still a chance to save all these innocent people.

And Pete. “Give me those gloves, Worrall.” She had the human epidemic in the sights of her Tesla. Its glass chamber glowed threateningly.

Its batteries were fully charged. “Both of them.” “You know me?” He was taken aback by her use of his name, but quickly recovered. His patrician tones dripped with sarcasm. “Sorry. Can’t oblige.” He glared at her with undisguised contempt. “I have other plans.” “Tough.” Myka wasn’t taking no for an answer. According to Artie, Worrall had been sick his whole life and perhaps worthy of their pity, but right now she wasn’t feeling particularly sympathetic to his plight. He had already hurt too many people. And the fact that he also appeared to be a smug, pompous son of a bitch only made her trigger finger that much itchier. “Last chance, Calvin. Hand them over before I prescribe a hefty dose of shock treatment.” He clasped his gloved hands together.

Tangential energy crackled between his intertwined digits. He didn’t look worried. “Give me your best shot.” “If you insist.” She squeezed the trigger, unleashing a devastating bolt of electrical kick-ass. The blast should have been enough to knock Worrall flat on his butt, but he merely staggered backward a few steps, like he’d been thunked in the chest by a large swinging pillow. Traceries of purple energy crackled across his body before dissipating harmlessly into the stormy atmosphere. Worrall laughed out loud. “Is that all you’ve got?” He straightened up, shrugging off the blast. “I’ve lived with pain my entire life. You think a little tickle like that is going to stop me?”

It should have been more than a tickle, she thought. Clearly, she had underestimated the effect of bringing the two gloves back together.

Worrall was supercharged now, and more than a little out of his mind.

So what was it going to take to stop him? She tried to reason with him. “Listen to me, Calvin. What you’re doing is dangerous. We have no idea how those gloves might be affecting you. They might even be messing with your mind.” She adopted a concerned tone. “Trust me. I’ve seen it before.” “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” He cracked his knuckles inside the white kid gloves. “This is the answer to my prayers. I’ve never felt better in my life!” “And what about all these innocent people?” She nodded at the comatose civilians while keeping the Tesla aimed at Worrall. The meadow looked like the site of a nerve gas attack. “They look like they’re feeling better now?” “Not my problem,” he said coldly. “I’ve paid my dues. It’s their turn to suffer.” Okay, that cinched it. Unlike Nadia, Calvin Worrall was not a nice person. Myka just wished she had a better idea of how to wipe the smirk from his face. To think that those same gloves had once tended gently to the sick, wounded, and dying. Clara Barton must be rolling over in her grave. “You do not want to mess with the Secret Service,” she warned, switching from good cop to bad cop all on her own. She used the same steely gaze and manner she had once employed to disarm presidential assassins. “Hand over the gloves. That’s an order.” “Your badge doesn’t impress me, Agent.” He snickered. “As your partner found out back in Fairfield.” A cruel grin taunted Myka. He shaded his eyes with one hand and made a show of looking for someone. “So where is he anyway?” “Right behind you, buster!” Pete could barely stand, let alone walk. Sneaking up on Worrall from behind had taken pretty much the last of his willpower. His head was spinning and he could hardly breathe. Every time he coughed, his mouth tasted of blood. Darkness encroached on his field of vision. His gut felt like a ferret was trying to dig its way out of his stomach. His legs wobbled like those licorice sticks Myka was always nibbling on. Sweat bathed his face and soaked through his clothes. Alternating hot and cold flashes washed over him, so that he was burning up one moment and chilled to the marrow the next. A metal pole was thrust into the ground nearby, next to a flapping canvas backdrop. He held on to the pole to support himself. His right fist gripped the hickory cane. “Yeah, you heard me, bub. Ready for a rematch?” Startled, Worrall spun around to face Pete.

The creep was looking distinctly less cadaverous than he had the last time around, but there was no mistaking his ugly mug. Pete had been seeing it in his fever dreams ever since Worrall had blindsided him outside the gym. More than once, he had fantasized about blasting the scumbag’s head off his shoulders, then using P. T. Barnum’s top to grow Calvin a new head so he could do it all over again. Hey, it beat counting sheep… “You!” Worrall snarled, recognizing Pete as well. He looked shocked to see Pete up and about, not to mention alive. His eyes bulged. “You shouldn’t be here. I already disposed of you.” “Sorry to disappoint you, Infectious Lad.” Pete doubted that the other guy would get the comic-book reference, but what the hey. He needed to use up all his good material before he kicked the bucket-which felt like it could be any minute now. “I don’t dispose easily.” “And yet you came back for a second dose?” Worrall got over his surprise. His snotty attitude reasserted itself. “Perhaps you should have your head examined, Secret Service Man? Sounds to me like there’s something seriously wrong with you.” Pete shrugged. “Says the guy wearing ladies’ gloves.” Worrall scowled; he didn’t like being the butt of a joke. “You think that’s funny?” He started to raise his left hand. Clara’s Barton’s glove glowed ominously. An icky gray miasma seeped from his fingers. “Let me remind you what this ‘ladies’s glove’ can do.” Uh-uh, Pete thought. Two can play at that game. Digging deep, he stomped the cane upon the ground. An incandescent pulse of energy radiated from the cane’s steel-shod tip before vanishing beneath the surface of the lawn, which rippled unexpectedly like a carpet being shaken. A seismic tremor shook the earth. Clouds of sediment puffed upward where the cane had struck. Nearby booths and stands toppled over, crashing onto the grass. Trembling trees shook loose their last leaves, leaving their branches completely denuded. The strewn bodies of Worrall’s victims bounced atop the shaking earth. “Take that, Creepy Cal,” Pete crowed. “Bet you didn’t see that coming.” The elephant-head walking stick had once belonged to an eccentric British military man named Brigadier General Laverlong. An inveterate world traveler, he had constructed the cane using rare elements from the four corners of the earth. It had resided in a museum in Lakefield, Illinois, before Pete and Myka had retrieved it for the Warehouse a while back, and with good reason. Funny thing about the cane: it caused earthquakes… The tremor knocked Worrall off his feet, breaking his concentration. The toxic miasma around his glove faded and he landed upon the grass not far from Nadia. Myka lost her balance as well. She toppled backward into a tangle of groaning bodies. The quake jolted many of Worrall’s victims from their stupor and they scrambled to their feet. Confused and disoriented, they stampeded from the park. Dazed by the dueling gloves and shaken by the earthquake, they’d probably have only foggy memories of what had happened to them.