A Touch of Fever

CHAPTER
12

TRENTON, NEW JERSEY

Worrall kept an eye on his speedometer as he drove north. The last thing he needed was to get caught by some local speed trap. That had been a close call back at the high school. Too close. As far as he knew, the police were not looking for his car, but why press his luck? He had come too far, and been traveling too long, to risk running afoul of the law now. Not when he was so close. How long had this endless quest been going on? For years, really. Born to wealth, his body had always been his enemy. Weak and sickly, he had spent much of his childhood in bed or at doctors’ offices. While the rest of the world went about its business, enjoying life, he had been lucky to be able to function at all. Migraines. Ulcers. Allergies.

Insomnia. His so-called life was a never-ending litany of discomfort and affliction. An intolerable situation, to say the least. He had even been too sick to attend his parents’ funeral after that car accident. Not that he had been too broken up about their untimely passing. It was their damn genes that were responsible for his misery.

A three-car pileup on the highway served them right. Besides, he had his own problems to worry about. Modern medicine had always let him down, so over time he had been forced to look elsewhere. Over the years, he had squandered much of his inheritance acquiring rare objects and talismans reputed to possess miraculous healing properties. Imported water from Lourdes. A silver grail that had supposedly once belonged to Prester John. Potions derived from bits and pieces of dozens of endangered species. Even a scrap from Florence Nightingale’s handkerchief. But nothing had worked. They had all been fakes or disappointments. Until one of his suppliers got a line on Clara Barton’s glove. It had cost him a fortune, but he still remembered the surge of excitement he had felt when he had first slipped the glove onto his left hand. A tingling sensation had raced like blood poisoning from his fingers to his brain. The smell of black powder had tantalized his nostrils while the echoes of bygone cannons had reverberated in his ears. He had known at once that it was the real thing. It was only later that he’d realized that it was the wrong glove. He had been searching for the good glove, the healing glove, ever since. It had been a long, exhausting search, but at last he knew where it was. That stupid girl had it. But not for long… His hand itched and he scratched at it irritably. He was stiff and sore from driving all day. A vein throbbed behind his ear. He could feel another sick headache coming on. Waylaying that federal agent at the high school had only eased his pain for a brief spell. If only there had been time to infect those other people as well. Maybe he should have tried to sicken the whole lot of them, cops and firefighters as well.

Or would that have been too risky? He frowned at the memory. Worry aggravated his ulcer, causing acid to eat away at his stomach lining.

He searched his pocket for some Tums. Where had those gun-toting agents come from anyway? Running into them outside the gymnasium, where they had apparently been trying to take custody of the glove, had been an unpleasant surprise. Who else was after Clara Barton’s glove? Granted, he had already taken care of the man, but that female agent was still out there, along with whomever she worked for. That complicated matters. He didn’t like having competition. The mounting pressure on his skull made it hard to think. Bile curdled at the back of his throat. He was already getting nauseous. Time for another rest stop. A community park offered the perfect solution. Dozens of people were crowded into the bleachers of an open-air football stadium, cheering on the local team. They rose to their feet, bellowing like baboons, as some disgustingly fit small-town hero scored another touchdown. Their full-throated cheers could be heard even through the rolled-up windows of the Lincoln. Worrall admired their spirit. Too bad it couldn’t last… WAREHOUSE 13 The shrunken head awoke with a ravenous hunger. The blood dripping down on it from Elizabeth Bathory’s tub was not enough. Beady crimson eyes fixed on an electrical cable affixed to one of the shelves’ sturdy vertical supports. Jaws snapping, it scooted across the shelf and started gnawing on the insulated cable. A warning label posted next to the cord read DANGER. HIGH VOLTAGE. Sadly, English was not the head’s native tongue. Razor-sharp fangs sliced through the rubber insulation.

Sparks erupted between the head’s clenched jaws. Its wild black mane stood up straight. Its red eyes rolled in their sockets. Smoke rose from its shriveled scalp. Its bloody lips sizzled and flaked off. An aroma not unlike fried bacon mixed with the smell of burnt hair. The shrunken head vibrated like a jumping bean. A final jolt of electricity flung the charred head across the room. It knocked over Groucho Marx’s honorary Oscar before crashing to the floor several shelves below. Blackened and smoking, it landed at the foot of a tall metal vault. The head twitched a few more times, then stopped moving.

It was scorched inside and out. All the blood in the world couldn’t reactivate it now. But the damage had already been done. The chewed-up wire sputtered and short-circuited. The aisle lights flickered on and off. A digital display on the steel vault blinked out and its locking mechanism disengaged. Rusty gears squeaked loudly as the vault door swung open, releasing a gust of stale air. Erratic lighting exposed the contents of the vault. A Native American totem pole faced the aisle. Over twenty feet tall, the pole consisted of three carved wooden beasts stacked on top of each other. A grizzly bear, poised upon its hind legs, formed the base of the pole. A mountain lion, with chiseled fangs and claws, rested atop the bear, while a fierce-looking thunderbird crowned the pole, which had been painted according to tradition. Large black eyes gazed out from the vault. Bright red mouths and a jagged beak added splashes of color to the weathered timber pole, as did the streaked black and red feathers on the thunderbird’s wings. The entire pole had been carved from a single huge log. At least two thousand pounds, it filled the entire vault. At first, the pole stood still and silent, like every other totem pole on display throughout the country. But then the flickering overhead lights seemed to create the illusion of animation, as though the timber limbs and jaws were gradually stirring. Any visitor observing the pole could be forgiven for assuming that its apparent movements were just a trick of the light. But they would be wrong. The bear growled. The lion gnashed its fangs. The thunderbird spread its wings…