Sick Read online

  Out of nowhere, I piece together what the voice probably shouted at my mom: not oughta have none, but gotta live one.

  “She said I need to find my sister and get home, lock the doors. I—I think. I don’t know, the signal was bad. I’ve got to go, you guys—I’ve got to find my little—”

  Someone pounds on the Black Box door, startling us all. A drama kid in the hall shrieks.

  Kenzie. Laura. They’re out there, in the school somewhere. Out there in all that … carnage.

  “I have to call my dad,” Tara says suddenly, still seated at Golab’s desk. “I have to tell him—”

  Jaime points at her. “Keep dialing 911.”

  “But my dad—”

  “Tara, for real. We need help first. Okay?”

  Tara huffs but dials again. She’s a bit of a whiner, I’ve noticed. Jesus, I get so sick of people who won’t do the simplest work. It’s a phone call.

  “Don’t you all have Internet in here?” I ask Jaime, nodding at Golab’s computer, which looks about fifty years outdated. The monitor isn’t even a flat-screen. “We could send an e-mail or check the news.”

  “The drama department?” Travis says. “Yeah, right. We don’t get anything from the school. No money, nothing. Golab has to check her e-mail in the teachers’ lounge.”

  Had to, I correct him mentally. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to scrub the memory of her death from my mental archives.

  We all jump again as someone beats on the other side of the Black Box door and groans. I wonder if it’s Hollis. It sounds like someone swinging a sandbag into the door, heavy and dead.

  “They’re sick,” I hear myself say. “Remember Hollis this morning? He looked like shit. It’s some kind of infection, Mom said.”

  Travis and Jaime take a step back, away from me and Chad.

  Chad rolls his eyes. “Oh, for shit’s sake. If we were gonna get sick, wouldn’t we be already?”

  “I don’t know,” Jaime says sharply. “We don’t know what the hell we’re dealing with.”

  “All right, fine. I start slobbering over any of you queers, go ahead and put me down.”

  “Cool, happy to do that,” Travis promises.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I say, stepping away. “I have to find my sister.”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Jaime says. “We just boarded those doors up. You’re not going anywhere.”

  “I’ll go through the box office then,” I say, and turn for the backstage auditorium doors. The box office doors have crash bar handles, the kind that are unlocked from the inside but locked from the outside. “I’ll go around the front of the building.”

  “That’s a bad idea, man,” Jaime says, moving to intercept me.

  “Shut up!” I shout in his face. I push past him and fling open the auditorium doors.

  I hear someone cuss, and footsteps thundering behind me as I run across the stage and down into the auditorium seats. I run as fast as I can toward the box office.

  Like the orange doors, the box office double doors are flanked by windows. We can see into the parking lot perfectly. I can even see Whitey still parked in a far corner of the lot.

  I get to the doors and slide to a stop. I peek through one of the windows, and the other guys crowd around behind me.

  “Holy …,” Travis whispers.

  The parking lot is a killing field.

  WE’RE A SCHOOL OF ABOUT NINETEEN HUNDRED, give or take. Pretty big, probably too big, but our numbers swelled when South High shut down. I can’t be sure, but I’d guess at least two hundred kids are out in that lot.

  And many of them are on all fours. The wintry November sun catches in the multifaceted growths on their arms, the skin of their faces sliding away from the bone. All like Hollis.

  At the closed gate, two cars have collided before either could try to slam through the bars. They form a V right at the center of the gate. Steam or smoke rises from their hoods. Bill’s golf cart is nearby, and we can see Bill draped over the trunk of one car, pouring blood from both arms. He’s not moving.

  At a quick count, there are no less than thirty students, probably more, moving fast on their toes and knuckles, backs hunched, flesh sagging down their faces, arms engorged and glittering. They work solo, taking down kids trying to climb that goddam tall wrought iron fence, clubbing, ripping, tearing. Other bodies are strewn across cars or lying on the blacktop as if a sniper had dropped them in their tracks.

  Twenty, maybe thirty feet away from the box office doors are two more bodies. Students. Blood spills from ragged wounds on their arms and lower legs, and flows down concrete steps toward the parking lot.

  The windows flanking the doors here are thick glass. I can’t hear anything, and that’s a small blessing; but I can see the screaming. Groups of students have bunched together to try to fend off attacks, but they’re outclassed by whatever these infected kids have become. A lot of the defenders are obviously from gangs, guys and girls used to street fights. They last only seconds longer than the geeky kids trying to paw their way over the fence.

  One diseased kid punches through a closed car window to get at a student inside. I know in the movies tough guys do that all the time, but in real life it’s pretty goddam hard to do. Not for this kid. The car rocks painfully as he reaches through the broken window and tears into the girl behind the wheel. The girl floors the gas blindly, slamming into two normal kids, who get flung into the air and crash to the blacktop like scarecrows. The car slams into the iron fence, denting it but not creating a hole. The sick kid pulls the squirming driver from the window and falls upon her.

  “… shit,” Travis finishes.

  “You’re gonna need a bigger boat,” Chad whispers. I’m so scared, I actually snicker. We watched Jaws at a pool party once in seventh grade, and I haven’t been able to swim at night ever since. Frankly, I don’t think Chad has, either. After what I’ve seen so far today, I’ll never be afraid of something as dumb as a dark swimming pool ever again.

  “Platforms,” Jaime says, eyes unblinking as he watches the carnage unfold. “More platforms. Two-by-fours, plywood, whatever we got. We gotta board this place up. Now.”

  But none of us move when, through the windows, we see this Latina chick in a short, bright pink skirt running panicked toward our doors. She’s pursued by this enormous gorilla of a guy wearing a Phoenix Metro football jersey. He must’ve been at the assembly.

  The pep rally.

  Kenzie. Laura. Cammy, in her cheerleader uniform, rallying our pep or pepping our rally …

  Travis’s hand falls on the crash bar that will open one of the doors, but he doesn’t push the bar down. Instead he watches—we all watch—as the gorilla takes the girl’s feet out from underneath her. Her face crashes to the cement, splitting a gash on her forehead. A tooth skitters across the concrete toward us, and I hear it tap against one door. A second later the dude tears a chunk of skin off the girl’s shin. Even through the blood, I can see her bone. Her leg looks like a barbecued rib picked clean on a sunny summer picnic.

  She screams. It’s close enough to hear this time, and it makes my sack shrivel up. She tries to fight the monster off. No good. He grips her leg in both mangled, crystalline hands and smashes it down across a concrete step. Once, twice, three times, over and over. Even inside we can hear the final snap of her shin giving way.

  Tibia, I think stupidly. Your shinbone is the tibia, right?

  Kenzie. Laura. Where are you?

  I can’t get out this way. The Black Box is blocked off, the double doors out of the arts department are screwed shut, and to go out this door would mean …

  We’re trapped, and I don’t know if my little sister or Laura is even alive.

  The four of us turn away from the window. Travis takes his hand off the crash bar and looks it at like he’s disgusted with his own skin. At how close he probably came to letting that freaked-out football player in here with us.

  “Jaime! Nobody has—”

  “Jeezus!” Chad s
hrieks, and Travis lunges toward Kat, who’s walked in and scared the piss out of us. Travis hugs her to his body, putting a hand over her mouth.

  Behind us, something thumps into the doors. We back off and stare at the windows as the gorilla kid throws his shoulder into one of the doors, rattling it. We don’t make a sound.

  Thump. Thump. THUMP.

  “Better hurry with that lumber,” Jaime whispers.

  Travis lets go of Kat. Her mouth hangs open as she surveys the wreckage in the parking lot.

  “No,” she whispers. “Oh my god. No. What’s happening?”

  “Kat, we need every scrap of wood, everything we can get, out of the shop and in here to board up these windows,” Jaime says. “Get me?”

  Kat gives herself a shake and nods. The five of us run through the dark auditorium to the scene shop. There are only a couple of platforms left, and maneuvering them around the seating in the auditorium is a bitch. We’re finally able to get them and some scrap plywood mounted over the box office lobby doors and windows. The gorilla has moved on to easier prey, one of the kids hit by the car. He feasts on the kid’s throat, tearing great ghastly holes.

  But I don’t see the girl he attacked. Anywhere. Not sure anyone else notices. There’s a bright pool of blood where she fell, but no body. Maybe she made it to cover.

  We give the wood a shake and decide it’s as strong as we can make it. We retreat into the auditorium and sink down in the middle aisle in a cluster. The only light we have spills from bare-bulb work lights high over the stage. The orchestra pit is like a yawning black maw. I turn away from it.

  Everyone’s breathing hard, wiping sweat off their foreheads.

  “Okay,” Jaime says after a few seconds, retying his ponytail behind him. “The shop should be secure. I don’t think anything can bust through that loading dock door. We got the hallway doors and the door to the Black Box covered. We should be as safe as we’re going to get. I think we should bring some more lumber up to the grid. If worst comes to worst, we can run up there and block off the stairs.”

  The grid is a series of long metal beams sixty feet above the stage where the counterweight system attaches to the curtains. It’s only accessible by a narrow spiral staircase backstage, next to the auditorium doors that open to the hallway. If we were being chased, and could get up there fast enough and block the stairs, we might be safe if anything followed us.

  Safe …

  I pull my phone back out and check the screen. Laura’s text message from the beginning of class is still waiting.

  Big-time fight at rally.

  “Oh, god,” I whisper. She hasn’t tried to contact me since the end of class. Since the attack began.

  “What?” Chad grunts beside me.

  My stomach turns in on itself. “Kenzie and Laura. I still have to find them, man. Somehow.”

  “You don’t have to do anything,” Travis says.

  “Dude, my sister and my girlfriend are out there someplace, and they might be hurt!” I punch in Kenzie’s number. It goes directly to voice mail. Like her phone’s been turned off. Some detached fragment of my brain points out that I’ve just called Laura my girlfriend rather than my ex.

  “Bri,” Travis says, “that’s real noble and whatever, but you’re not going out there.”

  “The hell I’m not.”

  “He’s right,” Jaime says. “None of us is leaving here till someone comes and gets us out.”

  “Somebody must’ve called the cops,” Kat adds. “A teacher or someone. They’ve got to be on their way right now, okay?”

  “Right,” Travis says. “We were in lockdown. That means the office had to have called the police.”

  I get to my feet. “Screw that. If they had, they’d have been here by now. Kenzie is my sister, man, and Laura’s my girlfriend. I have to see if they’re okay!”

  “Did you not see what’s going on out there?” Travis demands. “Think, Brian.”

  Chad, my good buddy Chad, stands up beside me. “I don’t give one squirt what a bunch of drama queers think,” he spits. “If Bri wants out, he’s gettin’ out, and I’m goin’ with him.”

  Jaime’s face goes deadly calm. He and Travis and Kat stand up, opposite me and Chad.

  I wait for Jaime or Travis to swing at Chad, and Chad looks like he’s hoping they will. He needs a fight now, after all this; he wants something he can tackle.

  Instead, Jaime just says, “That’s fine. Us drama queers will be happy to toss your sorry asses outside and you can show those things what a tough guy you are.”

  Chad tenses. But the thing about Chad—he’s a loudmouth hardcore punk, but he’s not an idiot. Not stupid. A total dick at times. But not dumb.

  Jaime’s right. I know it; Chad knows it. We’re not getting out of here till the cops come get us.

  But I can’t let that stop me. Other than my friends—one of whom is now dead outside the orange doors and another of whom is clearly sick as hell—all I’ve got is Mom and Kenzie. Dad divorced Mom when I was ten, and after what happened to Kenzie, I’ll be damned if I’m letting anything else hurt my kid sister. Not so long as I’m breathing. And Laura, my god—last year she panicked in a theater during a PG-13 movie. What must she have seen this afternoon, and how badly is that scrambling her brain? Even if she’s unhurt, could she recover from witnessing even half of what we have so far today?

  If it was Chad or Hollis or Jack out there—I mean, alive and trapped, that is—I’d try to get to them. If it was me instead of them, they’d do the same. So Laura has issues. So what? She was part of our group, absorbed by Chad, Hollis, Cammy, and Jack. And Kenzie—I mean, Jesus … we picked and poked at each other all the time like any other brother and sister, but not many siblings have looked death in the eye and come out the other side together.

  “Look,” I tell them, “Kenzie’s already been through enough life-and-death bullshit, and Laura’s … She needs help. So either you help me find another way out of here, or I swear to god, I’ll tear that lumber down myself. That’s a fact.”

  They stare at me. Jaime slowly lifts an eyebrow, and Kat folds her arms across her nonexistent chest.

  “Hate to break it to you, but it doesn’t get any more life-and-death than it is out there,” Travis says.

  “What the fuck do you know?” I shout. “You ever watch someone dying right in front of you? Huh?”

  “Whoa, what’re you talking about?” Jaime says.

  “Mackenzie,” Chad says. “She had cancer.”

  My shoulders drop when I hear the word. It’s something we don’t talk about at home anymore.

  Acute lymphocytic leukemia. I haven’t had to say or even think those bullshit words in years, but they’re burned into my brain, into my heart. She was eight when we found out. Mom nearly lost her mind. I think being a doctor herself, being able to detach somewhat, was the only thing that kept her focused.

  I shake my head to clear it. “If there’s a chance I can do something to get my sister out of here, I’m taking it. We didn’t go through a year of hell together just to lose each other now. I don’t know how, and I don’t care, but I’m going to find her and get her out of here. Laura too.”

  It’s quiet for a minute. First minute of silence we’ve had since that door crashed open in the Black Box.

  “Man, I’m sorry,” Jaime says finally. “I’m sorry she’s sick—”

  “She was. It’s in remission,” I say. “She beat it.”

  “Okay, she was. That’s great, but all hell’s breaking loose out there, and jumping into the middle of it might get you killed. Maybe them too. No offense. I’m just trying to help.”

  “I’m with you, Bri,” Chad states. “Whatever you wanna do.”

  I consider the options. I have no doubt Chad and I could bust our way out of here, drama kids be damned. But taking the time to think about it now, I also know Jaime’s right. I won’t do Kenzie or Laura any good running out of here with guns blazing just to get mowed down like Principal
Winsor. Or Jack.

  “All right, I get it,” I say to Jaime. “I get it. I’ll stay.” The words taste like rancid milk.

  “You sure?” Chad growls, keeping his eyes on Travis and Jaime.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Let’s just take care of the grid.”

  Everyone seems to take a breath, and we make our way back to the shop. While on the move, I send Laura and Kenzie texts, just in case.

  In auditorium. Where are you? I love you.

  And: Are you ok?

  I close my phone and pray for a response.

  “Brian,” Kat says, her voice soft, “I don’t want to make you mad, but … could I use your phone? I’d really like to call my mom.”

  I hand it to her. “God, yes, sorry. Go for it.”

  “Thanks.” Kat takes the phone and walks off a bit for privacy.

  I say to the guys, “If you want to call anyone …”

  Travis thumps me on the shoulder. “That’s cool, man. Thanks.”

  “Yeah,” Jaime says. “Thanks.”

  “Chad?”

  He nods. “Sure, I’ll give her a call,” he goes. “Don’t matter, though. We’re gettin’ outta here, one way or another. I plan on bein’ home by the end of the day, havin’ dinner with Mom like always.”

  No one responds.

  Kat stands with the phone in her hand, not up to her ear, gazing emptily at the stage floor.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  Kat doesn’t move. “I don’t know my mom’s number.”

  “How can you not know your mom’s phone number?”

  “It’s on my cell,” Kat says. “I haven’t dialed the number in over a year, when she got her new phone.” She shakes her head. “I have no idea,” she whispers.

  God, she has a point. How many phone numbers do people actually have memorized?

  I wonder how many other students would have the same issue. Without Internet, without their phones, without so much as a damn phone book, calling people may turn out to be one hell of a big problem.