Sick Read online

  I wipe my mouth. For a moment, I’m sort of proud of myself. Which makes me think Mom would be too. And Kenzie …

  “Okay, cool theory,” Jaime says. “But regardless, we—”

  He stops when a tan pickup truck careens along the deserted street beyond the parking lot. It must be going eighty miles an hour.

  Damon runs to the south edge of the auditorium roof, waving his arms.

  “Hey!” he shouts. “Up here! Over heeeeeere!”

  No good. The truck has come and gone before the driver would have ever had a chance of seeing Damon.

  Chad stares out at the street. “Lucky son of a—” he begins, but stops as a small red car follows the truck.

  Next thing I know, Scarlet Avenue is a racetrack. Cars fly past one after another, right through the intersection at the southeast end of the school. They’re all headed west on Scarlet. Fast.

  I turn the direction they’re headed and shield my eyes against the setting sun.

  “Uh, guys …,” I say.

  The guys turn to look in the same direction. I point. Like they could possibly miss it.

  Three, maybe four miles west of PMHS is a freeway, the 51. From up here, we can make out maybe a mile’s worth of its length. Traffic is backed up, bumper to bumper, not moving. Every few seconds a car jets out of line and attempts to take the shoulder, but it’s stopped by another driver who already had the same idea. Three lanes of northbound traffic have become four lanes of parking lot.

  And beyond the freeway, the fires have spread.

  The largest is farther west than the 51, sending great plumes of black smoke into the crisp November air. I remember reading once that black smoke means the fire department hasn’t contained the fire yet; only when it turns gray or white has it been doused.

  “That’s a lot of people,” Damon whispers, still looking at the freeway. A moment later, we hear what can only be gunshots coming from that direction.

  We instinctively duck, all of us but Chad. He only stands there, fists clenched.

  “They’re evacuatin’,” he says. “That means it’s gettin’ worse. Musta been some kinda announcement.”

  “Maybe it’s just rush hour traffic?” Travis suggests.

  We all glance at him. Travis looks hopeful for just one second, then snorts. He knows the truth; we all do: even in rush hour, cars move. Some insane part of me wants to shout at the truck, the little red car, the others whipping past our school, “Turn around! Don’t go that way! The freeway’s clogged all to hell!”

  The sound of tires screeching makes us all whirl east. A military truck of some kind, painted desert camouflage, barrels down Scarlet. Twice it smashes up onto the sidewalk to get past other vehicles. Probably headed for the freeway, for all I know.

  “It’s the Army!” Damon shouts, and races for the south edge of the roof. He waves his arms again at the cars rushing by on the street. “Hey!” he screams. “Up here! Help! Help us! Help uuuuuus!”

  We join him at the edge and wait. It’s too late for the military truck to have seen us—but a brown van slows down near the gate.

  Seeing this, the rest of us start shouting with Damon. The wails of the diseased kids below croon with us, like we’re dinner scraps on a table and they’re dogs waiting for us to fall.

  The van stops, earning honks from other cars behind it. I hate the other drivers with useless, white-hot intensity.

  A white guy, his hair styled in an honest-to-god mullet, hops out of the driver’s side and comes around to the front of the car. We scream ourselves hoarse.

  That’s when a flood of people on foot and on bicycles crosses the intersection of Scarlet and Twenty-Eighth, also headed west along Scarlet, straight for the dude with the mullet. They run full tilt, holding backpacks, duffel bags, suitcases, cardboard boxes.

  “Oh, my god,” Damon whispers, squinting through his specs. “That’s Tara’s dad.”

  “What?” Jaime says.

  “The guy with the hockey hair, by the van,” Damon says. “I’ve met him. Tara called him before the line went down, right?”

  “Maybe he saw the news and came after her,” Chad says.

  “Doesn’t matter. He’s got a van,” I say. “Between that and the station wagon, maybe …”

  The driver of the van—Tara’s dad, and now that I know this, I can see even from this distance that he has the same shade hair color as hers—turns to see the flood of people coming at him, and hesitates.

  Sick kids in the parking lot storm the fence and reach through the bars, trying to grab him, but he’s too far away. Runners spot the sick students stampeding for the fence, and change course, dodging speeding cars to get to the opposite side of the street. One runner gets clipped by a blue pickup, sending him into the air and crashing to the street, where two other cars run him over. He doesn’t move. The following cars merely swerve to avoid his body. No one stops.

  “Look out!” Chad bellows.

  We all jerk in every direction, assuming he’s shouting at us. But he’s not. He’s pointing off to one side.

  We follow the gesture and see another white guy, on foot, charging up to Tara’s father, who looks like he’s still trying to figure out how to get to us. The second guy shoves him to the pavement and kicks him in the face before running to the van door and getting in behind the wheel.

  “Son of a bitch!” Chad screams at him. He turns and stomps the roof.

  Tara’s father gets to his hands and feet. By then his attacker has revved the van and driven into the fleeing traffic. No one tries to help Tara’s dad up.

  “Oh, no,” Damon grunts. “Oh, god.”

  Tara’s dad leaps to get out of the way of his own van. But the leap puts him too close to the school fence.

  A dozen sick students reach through the white bars, and two get ahold of him. He gets jerked up and against the fence, hard. Somehow they manage to pull both arms, then both legs, through the spaces between the bars. The guy’s head falls backward as he screams for help.

  The group of sick kids tears into him, his clothes rapidly disintegrating beneath their hands and teeth seeking skin and bone.

  We watch until we hear the first bone snap. Even from this distance, even over the shouts of the runners, even over the sounds of the cars rushing past … we hear it.

  “Jesus,” Damon says, his voice dry. “We’re gonna die.”

  “COME ON,” I SAY. “NOW’S OUR CHANCE. MAYBE with all the people running past, those guys’ll be kept busy.”

  “Which guys?” Travis says, like he’s trying not to puke.

  “The monsters.”

  I lead the way to the north edge of the roof. My sister’s down there, and not far away. Just have to get to the library and back. That’s all. Just there and back. There and back. That’s all.

  And Laura—

  I wish I hadn’t broken up with her. Maybe it was the right thing to do, maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know. But if she’s still alive …

  No, I think. Not now. Laura, I’m coming. I’ll find you, I swear to god, but I can’t go there now. Please be okay.

  Chad comes up beside me as Jaime and Travis tie one end of an extension cord to an air-conditioning unit, then toss the slack over the edge of the roof. Jaime’s hands shake as he ties the knot.

  “Hey, Bri,” Chad says. His voice is quiet.

  “Yeah.”

  “I got the keys to the wagon,” he says. “After we get Kenzie, if we see a place to get outta here … a hole in the fence, or someplace those sickos aren’t around … you wanna go for it?”

  “Without Laura?”

  “Hey, you know I got nothin’ against her,” Chad says. “Matter of fact, you’re a fuckin’ jackass for breaking up with her, you want my opinion. But I’m just sayin’. If there’s a way off, do you wanna take it or not? Your call, man.”

  Temptation drives a cold steel spike into my belly. Get out of here? God, yes. Grab Kenzie, make a break for it, get to the familiar safety of the Draggin’ Wagon
, maybe make it back to Chad’s, or to my house. Sacred ground.

  Without Laura.

  I see her vividly alive, crouching in some classroom, shaking wildly. Moaning softly, trying not to get sick with fear, or popping pill after pill after pill.

  Leave her behind?

  “No,” I say. “Can’t do it. I mean, I want—”

  “Loud and clear, boss,” Chad says. “It’s off the table till we find her.”

  I punch his shoulder. Not very hard. Chad manages a pale grin and socks me back. Not very hard.

  “Ready,” Jaime says.

  One by one, we scale down the makeshift rope. This puts us on the roof over the central sidewalk. The roof slopes down both ways, with a narrow I-beam in the center.

  “Stay in the middle,” Jaime whispers. “I don’t trust this aluminum roofing.”

  We nod. The roof is made mostly of thin metal, designed only to block infrequent rain and more frequent sunlight. One heavy step onto it and you’d risk punching right through to the ground.

  “Kat,” Jaime says into his headset. “Come in.”

  I hear the headset crackle.

  “We’re over the sidewalk now,” Jaime says. “Sit tight.”

  “Where is she?” Chad whispers.

  “The orange doors,” Jaime whispers back. “She and Dave got the screwguns ready for when we bolt back in.” He looks at me. “Ready?”

  I say nothing. I put my Starfire through one belt loop on my jeans, drop to my belly, and begin sliding my way along the I-beam. A second later, I hear the guys follow behind me.

  I can also hear the wails of the infected, but so far, I haven’t seen any since we looked straight down from the auditorium roof. The campus looks dead from this angle.

  We’re halfway to the library when we begin seeing the bodies.

  I don’t always see a full body, head to toe; mainly it’s arms or legs sticking out akimbo on the sidewalk, not moving. Smears of blood dot the concrete. I look for Laura’s forest-green hoodie, or the purple Vans she had on this morning. I helped her pick them out for her birthday a few months ago. She was in a good place that day, mentally speaking, as we walked around the mall and she tried stuff on. She’s a basics kind of girl, one of the things I loved about her. She’s not real big into makeup but still pulls off being a girl without being girlie, or going the other way and adding twelve Rs to grrrrrrrl the way Kenzie kind of does—

  A groan from the sidewalk surprises me and almost makes me scream. Damn it, I have got to get my head in the game or it’s going to get me killed.

  I stop, raising myself up on my elbows, and scan the area quickly. I see right away where the sound came from.

  The guys behind me stop too. We all gape at the sight.

  Twenty yards ahead on our left, the cafeteria doors hang from broken hinges. Nearby, one of the infected kids, a football player, crouches over a teacher. The teacher isn’t moving. The football player holds one of the teacher’s forearms in both disfigured hands, his teeth tearing into the flesh like it’s a chicken drumstick. Wet, slurping sounds spill from the kid’s mouth as he spits out the muscle to get to the bone. I get the distinct impression that the sick kid is making do with a corpse, that he’d really rather be chewing on living tissue.

  I hear a strangled choke and look behind me. Damon’s mouth is clamped shut, his ample stomach rolling. A second later, brown gunk spurts from between his lips. I turn away, feeling my own gorge rising.

  I continue creeping slowly along the beam, trying like hell not to let the football player hear me. We’re safe enough up here; there’s no way for him to reach us even if he does spot us. But I’m also pretty sure if he sees us he’ll follow us along the sidewalk, waiting for one of us to jump down. Or fall.

  I also figure—or rather, hope—that between the five of us, we could take him down if we had to. But the noise might attract others, and then we’d be overwhelmed.

  And besides … I mean, he’s just some kid. Up until a few hours ago, he wouldn’t have even registered on our radar—he’s a jock, we’re not, move along. Now, though … now he’s just some kid who was probably getting all jazzed up about the game tonight, right up until the infection hit. It’s almost ironic; me and the guys tended to think of the athletes as sort of inhuman or untouchable, as being above the rest of the world. Or thought that they thought they were, anyway. Now he’s sick, beyond sick, and probably killed that teacher and who knows how many others. What will we do if we do have to fight? Sure, he’s a threat, and we have every right to defend ourselves, but he’s still just like us. Just a student. Just human. More like us than I ever thought.

  Only … dangerous. Bloodthirsty, in the most literal sense of the word.

  So maybe not quite as much like us as I want to believe. Me and Chad and Hollis got in a fight last year with some top-shelf delta-bravo juice boxes in front of a movie theater. It didn’t go too far; security came and broke it up before anyone needed stitches or anything. I knew even as I was trying to talk our way out of it that it wasn’t going to work. Those assholes wanted a fight. Period. So I fought. Hated it. But did it. But I still had this compulsion to try not to, to believe that somehow reasoning would be enough.

  It wasn’t enough then, and watching that kid chew on the teacher’s body, I realize it won’t be enough now, either.

  We keep crawling across the roof.

  The jock doesn’t notice us as we slide past the cafeteria. Farther ahead on the right is administration, but we can’t see into it because its windows are underneath the roof. Just beyond that, the library. When we finally make it parallel to the library roof, I realize Damon was right; there’s no way we can make it from here to the roof of the library. There are at least fifteen or twenty yards between us and the building.

  When I look down at the front of the library, my heart seizes.

  The windows have been shattered. Naked holes glare emptily at us. I can’t see anyone inside, but then again, from our elevated angle, someone would have to be standing right at the windows for us to see them.

  I look back at the guys. Jaime arches an eyebrow as if to say, You still want to do this?

  I nod and stupidly check to make sure my Starfire is still in place. It occurs to me we could have looked for armor of some kind too; Chad at least has his leather jacket on, but the rest of us are just in T-shirts. We could’ve found something in the costume closet or shop to protect our arms, since that’s where the zomb—where the infected students seemed to try to bite.

  Jaime jerks his head. We slide around on our stomachs till we form a strange huddle of prone bodies.

  “Chad should hold the rope,” Jaime whispers. “The rest of us can shimmy down.”

  “Bullshit,” Chad whispers back. “I’m going in.”

  “You’re the biggest guy here,” Jaime says. “If we got to climb back up, you’re our best bet to anchor the rope.”

  Chad scowls at him but eventually nods.

  “I thought we were going back to the orange doors,” Damon says, still looking a bit pale.

  “If we have to, yeah,” Jaime says. “But if we can climb up here without attracting attention, we do that.”

  I’m personally not sure Kenzie can make the climb, but I figure we’ll solve that when we come to it.

  “I’ll go first,” Jaime says, not looking thrilled with the idea. “Then Bri, then Travis. If it’s clear, Damon, you follow.”

  We all agree. Chad quietly takes a loop of electrical cord from Jaime and sits up, legs outstretched. Jaime’s tied knots in it for handholds. Chad grabs one end of the cord with his left hand, loops the cord behind his back, and grabs the cord with his right hand as well. Then he loops the cord once around his right leg. He nods grimly.

  Jaime slides his own Starfire through his belt, grips the cord with both hands, and tugs. Chad nods again. Jaime takes a deep, silent breath and slides over the edge of the roof.

  The aluminum crackles noisily and we all tighten. We hear Jaim
e hit the concrete softly and watch him race to the library doors. He slides in through the main entrance, where we lose sight of him.

  If there were any infected nearby enough to see him, chances are good they would have given chase, so Travis hurries to follow. I go next, and we run toward the library doors. I feel like a World War II Allied soldier crossing Omaha Beach, waiting for snipers to shoot my head off. Then I think of Kenzie.

  Please, God, just let her be okay, please …

  Travis and I make it to the library doors, panting. I start to tug on the handle, relieved we at least made it this far—

  “Look out!” Chad screams from the roof.

  Me and Travis spin, reaching for the swords tucked into our jeans.

  Three zombies are careening toward us on all fours, mouths open, eyes hungry.

  One of them is Hollis.

  “GO!” CHAD SHOUTS AT US.

  I pull my gaze away from the monsters bearing down on us from the A buildings. As I move, I see Damon sliding down the sloped aluminum roof, and I imagine his fat ass carrying him right through the thin material; but the roof holds, and Damon is able to sail off and land on his feet—for a second. His legs crumple beneath him as soon as he hits, and I think, Oh, god, his legs are broken, he’s screwed …

  Damon’s pipe clangs awfully against the concrete. The monsters see Damon hitting the sidewalk and collide with each other as they try to decide who to go after: us or Damon.

  Damon looks up at me and Travis as we struggle to pull our swords out. Damon swallows once and meets my eyes.

  “I’ll get the gun!” he says.

  “Damon, no!”

  Damon climbs to his feet, spins, and bolts down the sidewalk toward the drama department and the parking lot behind it.

  I don’t move to stop him.

  Hollis and another kid take the bait and sprint toward him like apes, galloping on their toes and knuckles, saliva dangling from their swollen lips. The third continues straight for me and Travis.