Sealed In Part 5

But in actuality, Del couldn't hold a candle to Andy.

The song was slow, but not so much a ballad as an inspirational tune. At the first note, the first word, Emma stumbled back.

There was Andy. Tall, fit, rough around the edges, yet the smooth, tenor voice with emotions just blew her away. An occasional rasp crept in as he sang, but Andy didn't look at the words on the screen, he just sang.

More than anything, Emma wanted to take a picture of Del's reaction. Obviously, Andy was a better singer. Hands down. But she didn't look at Del; she couldn't take her eyes off of Andy.

'Good Lord,' her father whispered beside her. "Is that our Andy singing?"

All she kept saying was 'Oh my G.o.d.' It got to the point that she moved closer to the stage and then just sat down. Emma was proud and awestruck. She wanted to scream 'again' and 'more' when he finished. But he wouldn't have heard her through the screams and cheers.

Everyone that knew Andy hadn't a clue that he sung like a pro.

She swore at that moment that any crush she had on Andy magnified, because she just saw a new side.

He didn't need to deck Del physically, because he knocked him out in another way.

When Andy walked toward Emma, she threw her arms around him and shrieked, "That was unbelievable. Holy s.h.i.+t."

"Son," Stew extended a hand. "Who would have known?"

"Th ... thanks." Andy nodded. "I ... know the DJ from H...Hartworth."

"Will you sing again, please?" Emma asked. "Please, I'll sign you up."

"M .. ma ... maybe." He then pointed to the pool table.

Del never bothered them the rest of the night, never said a word about Andy's singing or approached them.

But that wasn't the end of the night even, though they left the bar just before midnight.

Andy asked her if she wanted to hang out a bit, and he would make them some food.

When he said, "I saw yours, now you can see mine," Emma thought the wrong way. She had no idea he was talking about houses, until after she told him. "I like you and all, Andy, but there's just some things a girl has to do to herself to be playing-the-field ready. Plus, I'm not wearing bedroom-friendly underwear."

He laughed, like he always did. Andy always laughed, but somehow Emma wasn't seeing a smiling man who didn't know better; she saw a different man who just knew how to take things in stride.

When Andy extended the invitation to Emma, he was hoping he wasn't being too forward. In fact, he worried about that after she made the bedroom-friendly underwear comment. But he conveyed that it was just to hang out. After all, the night felt different. A part of him didn't feel like a creep anymore for having such a crush on her, considering she liked him, too.

Andy had been to Emma's home a thousand times. He worked for her father and he'd go to Emma's under the guise that he was fixing things, when actually he was helping her with something in 'the hole'.

Andy saw no problem with her Yellowstone obsession; it was based in both reality and science. Andy's only concern was that if they were so close, the ventilation pipe could be buried beneath rubble and ash.

Andy fixed that and was impressed with his creation. The ventilation pipe retracted, and the top that 'popped' open was actually close to a drill bit used to drill for oil and pipes, a smaller version. Emma only needed to retract the pipe until the debris had fallen and then drill it to the surface. If nothing was there, she only had to raise the pipe a little bit, but if need be, the pipe extended close to seven feet above the ground. Andy's idea.

Emma had never been to his place. She was at his house when he lived with his parents, but when they died, Andy sold the house and got the apartment above Bonnie's Diner.

It was a great deal for Andy, because Bonnie always sent up leftover daily specials from the day instead of throwing them out.

In fact, he had some beef stew, and his plan was to make some biscuits and have some stew while watching a movie.

He wasn't thinking about being physical; he was just happy to spend time with Emma. And it was still early.

Emma's comment of 'oh, wow, this is so cute', when she walked in, made Andy smile.

Andy wouldn't call his apartment 'cute', more so basic, small, clean, and plain. The entrance led into the living room which had a dinette area and an open kitchen defined by a counter.

Andy could see Emma in his living room as he pulled items from the fridge.

"Dr . ... Drink?" he asked.

"Um, yes, please, anything you have will work." Emma stared at the tall, wall-length bookshelf. "This is amazing, you must like books."

Andy handed her a beer. "Yes."

Her fingers trailed across the spines. "None of these are fiction. They're all ...." She stopped. "Wait a second." She pulled a hard back, coffee-table-style book from the shelf. "Bog World, by Andrew Jenkins?" She spun to Andy. "Is that you?"

Andy nodded. He didn't think for a second that Emma would look at the names of the books he had.

"You wrote a book?"

Andy held up his hand.

"Five?" Emma gasped. "Are they all about ... what the h.e.l.l is a Bog person?" She flipped through the book. "Oh my G.o.d. They're like mummies."

Andy pursed his lips and swallowed and, like singing, he recited the words he had spoken to himself out loud. "They are a form of mummy. Naturally mummified. They are found mainly in Ireland and have quite the story. Most died violent deaths, unlike the Ice Age mummies." He reached for another book and handed it to her.

Emma didn't take it. She just stared. "I'm sorry ... you .. you didn't stutter."

"Not ... w.... when I ....s ...s...talk about things I n ...know."

"Holy cow." Emma flipped open the book. "You're an anthropologist? What the heck? Why are you being the town handyman and stable guy when you have a degree in Anthropology and ... you write books?"

"I d ... d... did for years. Museum. Went ... went abroad. It's too d ... d... difficult."

"I'm p.i.s.sed at you, Andy." She looked at the shelf and pulled down another book. "All these years and I asked you what you went to school for and you said digging and studying dead people."

Andy actually told her more than that, but he never used the word anthropology, because it was too difficult to say. "Sorry."

"Here I thought you went to school to be a mortician and grave digger and didn't have it in you to embalm ... Jesus." She shook her head. "You need to tell people this. You deserve much more credit than people give you."

"N ... nah. I ... like when p ...p ...people think I'm d -dumb. I lis ... listen to th ... th ... them and n ... n... know they are the ones who are dumb."

"Did you sell a million copies?"

Andy laughed; he wanted to tell her he was lucky he sold a hundred and barely made his small advance back on the Bog People book. "No."

She spun quickly to him. "I want to buy one. Where can I get one?" Emma asked excitedly.

Andy held up his finger and walked to a closet. He reached to the stop shelf and pulled down a box, carrying it to her and dropping it at her feet.

"Oh, wow," Emma said. "Look how many. I'll buy them all, thank you."

"W ... What? No." Andy laughed. "No."

"Please. This will be my Christmas present to everyone. I was gonna go to Wal-Mart and have a portrait taken in a bad sweater and give it out, but this is much better and cooler."

Andy shook his head.

"Think about it?"

"I ...th ... th ... think about it."

"Cool." She quickly kissed him on the cheek and took a book from the box. "This is so awesome. I am so proud of you, Andy. I am. You write books and sing like you should be on a talent TV show. Plus, on top of all this, you're this really great guy." She embraced the book like it was a treasure. "The worst mistake you made was showing me this."

"I ... d-didn't show. You ... you .. . found it."

"I did. I did." Emma nodded with a smile. "And I'm telling everyone."

Andy exhaled with a shake of his head, and then looked back when the timer went off on the stove. He walked to the kitchen, leaving Emma in the living room.

"Seriously, Andy, this is just the beginning."

Andy looked at her from the kitchen.

"Just the beginning."

And it was. The beginning of a turn in their friends.h.i.+p and the beginning of a new life for Andy. He just didn't know it yet.

FLASH FORWARD.

Ground Zero 3

December 23rd

Hartworth, Montana

Nature had frozen Vivian Morris, and she barely decomposed. She was one of three bodies Edward's team had retrieved from the fire station. There was a whole town outside his lab, a whole town that was dead, and the three bodies were just the start. Before they did accountability, called for reserve units, and collected bodies, Edward had to find answers.

Something vicious had wiped out the town of Hartworth.

He believed it wouldn't take long to find out what it was.

But the temperatures were cold, and he had to wait until Vivian thawed some.

He knew she had been dead only for a few days. The circ.u.mstances of the town told him that, not the frozen body.

While he waited on her to thaw, he learned who she was. She was wearing a paper wrist band, handmade and stapled together. It had her name and age. Someone took care to make sure that when the bodies were discovered, so were their ident.i.ties.

But Vivian's purse was next to her; in it was her bi-fold. The thirty-seven-year-old woman appeared to have two children and a husband. There was a dated wallet-sized photo of her and her family.

It wasn't taken long ago. Her children were young.

Edward thought of his own children, and sadness. .h.i.t him. He had to dismiss it quickly, for the time being, anyway.

Vivian was beautiful in the picture, nothing like the decimated corpse before him. She was, like the other bodies, black.

It reminded him of pictures of Bog People he saw, completely black, mouths open, screaming in pain, frozen in the last moment of death.

It appeared as if she were missing a lot of her skin, like a burn victim. But she wasn't burnt. Her body was so dark it masked any hypostasis that could be present.

As she became workable, he lifted her eyelids. The sclera and gums were black, as well; there was no pink on her body.

Edward hated even the thought of cutting her open, but he had to.

Taking a blood sample from her was difficult; he chalked it up to the blood still being cold. He was able to retrieve some, enough to view in a microscope, but it, like Vivian, was black.

He began audibly speaking his autopsy. "Not much epithelia remains on the body ..." He sliced into her forearm, lifting a section of skin. He choked on a gag when he lifted and everything underneath pulled like a gluey dark substance.

But that wasn't the worst. That was when Edward cut into her torso, needing only to make a single lateral incision across her abdomen to know he was dealing with something new.

Edward had to stop, just for a little bit, a moment to catch his bearings after seeing her internal organs.

It was frightening. In all his years, he had never encountered anything like it.

Whatever struck Hartworth hit fast and to an unusual extent, so fast that they told no one and the town was wiped out.

Someone in town knew what it was. Someone in town knew it was coming enough to set up an aid station.