by Tracy Korn
I could tell that not even she thought that was remotely probable, so she clearly was out of guesses about the fluid. I needed to stop thinking about it because there was literally nothing else that could be done to fix it other than what I was currently doing: sitting here in this illegal medical office getting illegal medical treatment from an unauthorized, illegal doctor. Now that the pain had subsided, the fear was starting to set in.
"Jen, the person who bit her was—" Max started. "This is going to sound crazy, but she turned into this… I don't even know how to describe it." He looked at the floor and shook his head. "Like she was halfway to becoming a grasshopper or something. She just crouched down on the table with her arms and legs bent in the wrong direction." He shook his head and closed his eyes, apparently to dismiss the image.
"Sorry?" Jen tilted her head to the side. "Her legs and arms were hyperextended on purpose?" She turned to me. "Is that when she bit you?"
"No, it was before she…changed," I answered, trying to be careful with my words so I didn't sound deranged. "I didn't see her, but Max turned ghost white when he did."
Jen gave us both a dubious, but curious look and grabbed an empty syringe and what looked like a fat rubber band. She turned back to me and took my wrist so my inner forearm was exposed.
"I'm going to take a blood sample and run some tests for pathogens. Then, I'm going to re-bandage that bite wound. Come back tomorrow and I'll know more," she said, tying the band around my upper arm, then drawing the blood from the bend in my elbow. I winced, surprised I even felt anything with the pain I had been feeling,
"Thanks, Jen," Max said, pulling out his wallet.
"No, I'll—" I started to protest.
"Don't worry about it yet," Jen said, waving away the cash he pulled out." We'll settle up when we find out what's wrong."
***
Max insisted on walking me all the way back to my aunt and uncle's house just in case the guy with the little vials reappeared. My arm had started to hurt a little again, but it wasn't nearly as bad as before.
"What do you think happened to Lauren?" I asked once we were far enough away from the people in town. "How did her arms and legs do what you said without her screaming in pain?"
Max shook his head. "I don't know. That's what I was wondering. She didn't walk in like that," he added. "She got up on the table though, and—I just don't know…" He trailed off, still seeming to be in a state of disbelief about what he saw. We stopped at my front gate, and Max darted a glance at my arm. "Do you know how you're going to explain that?" he asked.
"Nope. Not to mention where I've been all afternoon if someone from the school has already called."
"Tell them you decided to hand out extra résumés to the businesses that hadn't come to the school today," Max suggested, which wasn't a bad idea, but if it were up to my aunt or uncle, I'd just apprentice at the water treatment plant where they both worked. Let's see, fielding customer requests all day like my Aunt Alice, or adding sludge-eating microbes to the waste water like my Uncle Ray? Neither, thanks.
I shrugged, suddenly too exhausted to care what either of them had to say. I pulled my sleeve down over the bandage and half-heartedly counted on them not even noticing.
"Thanks for walking me home," I said through an unexpected yawn. "But now you have to walk all the way back to work."
Max shrugged. "I like walking. You look like you're about to fall asleep on your feet."
"I don't know why I'm so tired," I said with another yawn. "Maybe it's the antibiotics."
"Maybe." Max looked me up and down, his brows darting together. "I'm off tomorrow, so I'll go with you back to Jen's."
I nodded. "Thanks for all your help today," I said, fighting another yawn. It was almost getting too hard to keep my eyes open.
"Halsey!" My aunt's disembodied voice hit my ears so sharply I felt it in my teeth. She came bounding into the front room from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. "Care to explain why your name came over the Sweeper reports today?" she asked, her wiry, gray hair sticking out of her braid. I would have rolled my eyes at the knowledge that she was listening to the police radio chatter again, but I didn't have the energy.
"Why do you even listen in on that thing?" I managed, too tired and dizzy to worry about how I must have sounded after the incensed look she gave me.
Her voice got quiet and menacing. "One of these days people in The Grind will get fed up enough with those pompous asses behind the wall and start rioting. Do you think the politicians who control the newsfeeds are just going to allow reports about what's really happening on the streets then?" she said defensively.
Normally, I would have at least attempted a few rounds of arguing about her paranoia that everything would fall into anarchy sooner rather than later, and that only the people like us who could live off the grid, independent of the Citadel-controlled water pipelines, grocery stores, and electrical services in The Grind, would have a chance of surviving. But not this time.
This time, things just started going black, slowly at first, then quickly. I barely had time to glance at Max before I nearly fell through my bedroom door, promptly passing out three seconds after it abruptly closed behind me.
Chapter 7
The fermented smell of cabbage and what could only be hot garbage filled my lungs even before I opened my eyes, and I coughed at the shock of it. What actual demon was my aunt trying to summon in the kitchen?
I hopped out of bed, thoroughly motivated by the idea of opening my window, and was a little surprised at how much energy I had. My arm didn't hurt at all anymore, and when I checked the bandage with a wince at what I was sure would be the gruesome state of the bite Lauren gave me, I had to sit back down. The bite mark was totally gone. There wasn't even an outline.
I double checked the bandage, which was still stained with blood and other discolorations I didn't even want to know about, but my skin was perfectly smooth. It didn't make sense. What kind of antibiotics had Jen given me yesterday?
I took a quick shower and got dressed, hiding the bandage in my jeans pocket since I figured it would be better to throw it away somewhere else rather than risk my aunt discovering it in the trash. I touched my temple to queue Max.
"Hey, I'm on my way," he said, the 3-D image of him appearing a few feet from my face. He was walking, but he didn't have his surround vision connected, so I could only see a white background behind him.
"I dreamed I was being swallowed by a garbage monster," I said, leaning on my window sill. "Then I woke up and realized my aunt was just making her cabbage stew. Or she's trying to reanimate corpses because I promise you, Max, not even dead people could be around this smell. I'm about to throw myself out the window."
Max laughed. "Well, it sounds like you're feeling better at least."
I nodded. "About that…" I said, holding up my arm to the 3-D screen projection in front of me. "The bite is totally gone."
Max's brows crashed together. "Gone?"
"I don't understand it either," I added. "It's like nothing ever happened. And I feel like I slept for a week. What kind of antibiotics did Jen give me?"
"Standard issue, I guess?" Max shrugged.
"How's your gash?"
"It's fine. Barely know it's there," he smiled. "I'm about to knock on your door. Just come down so I don't have to come inside—I can smell the zombie juice from here, ugh."
I tapped my temple again to close the comm queue and took one last, deep breath of fresh air before shutting my window and heading into the foyer.
"I'm going to check up on my internship applications from yesterday, Aunt Alice!" I lied so I wouldn't have to answer a thousand questions as I was trying not to breathe. Max knocked on the door in the time it took me to walk to it, and I'd never been so grateful for his fantastic timing. I swung the door open and took in another deep breath.
"Oh my god…" Max said, his expression crumpling. "It's the smell of actual death," he added, pulling the front of his s
hirt over his nose and mouth.
"I told you. Come on." I took a step out the door, but stopped in my tracks when my Uncle Ray bellowed my name.
"Halsey! Come in here!"
"Please no." Max shook his head. "No, Halsey."
I rolled my eyes and grabbed his shirt, dragging him into the house with me, despite his pleading and whimpering.
"Alice is digging up some potatoes for the stew out back. Gonna need to double down on the immunity this winter against that wasting sickness that's on the rise again, and now they're saying those Ferals in the valley have an actual disease. Calling it Red Fever." My uncle rolled his eyes. "Just people fed up with oppression is all that is. Just people starting to lose their minds and take to violence. This whole place is going to hell, but do you think they care behind that wall?" he added, his already narrow eyes nearly disappearing under his bushy, gray brows as he glared at me. "You lost your mind now too, did you?"
"What? No!" I answered, not sure what he was talking about until I remembered that my aunt had been listening to the police scanner yesterday.
"So you weren't put in custody by Sweeper droids at the school?" My uncle's jowls wrinkled back like a hound dog's when he pressed his lips together into a tight line, waiting for my answer.
I shook my head and made a concerted effort to keep my voice steady. "That was nothing. Lauren Stover tried to start a fight with me in the cafeteria," I said, which wasn't a lie. "They just wanted to get both our sides of the story." I nodded casually, hoping my uncle wouldn't be able to see the holes I was leaving in that explanation.
He gave me a hard look for several seconds. "Alice!" he shouted toward the back door. "You said that girl went to the hospital?"
"Uncle Ray," I said quickly, my heart jumping into my throat. "We really have to go. Like, right now. Internship follow-ups," I stammered.
Ray narrowed his eyes at Max. "Mr. Barrett… You still working for that cog in the machine, Burke?"
Max swallowed hard. "Uh, yes, sir."
"You know he's just part of the problem, conditioning everyone to be dependent sheep instead of growing their own goods. Selling that cheap, cloned produce. Probably what's giving everyone The Wasting sickness around here. No damn nutrients. That's why nobody gets it from being sneezed on."
I felt compelled to roll my eyes and call out the lunacy of this logic, but that would mean we'd have to stand here under threat of my aunt coming back at any second, not to mention breathing in more of the radioactive sewage she was simmering in the kitchen.
"I think I have some internship leads you'll approve of, Uncle Ray, but we have to go right now before they're inundated with the other people who applied," I babbled.
"Nothing in the valley, I hope," Ray mumbled. "Nothing by the—"
"OK, bye!" I added before he could say anything else, then grabbed Max's arm and rushed out the door. Both Max and I sucked in a huge breath and jogged out of the noxious cloud surrounding the house.
"What does she put in that stew?" Max scrubbed his hands over his face as if to wash the smell away.
"It's never smelled that bad," I answered. "They've been getting creative with food now that my uncle has decided Mr. Burke is part of some big government conspiracy to further oppress the people in The Grind. I tried to tell him prices just go up sometimes."
Max sighed. "So, what's with your arm?" he asked, dismissing the other conversation. I rolled up my sleeve to show him as we made our way through the woods back to town.
"It had to be whatever Jen did I guess," I added. "I just woke up today and the bite mark was gone."
"That doesn't make sense. Antibiotics don't just do that overnight," Max said, darting glances from left to right as we approached the eye of the forest. "You haven't seen that guy who tried to sell you the vials again, right?"
"Not since yesterday." I shook my head. "And you've been with me every time I've passed through here since then. Lauren had been talking to him just before everything went sideways, though," I added.
"Are you thinking she took one of the vials?"
"I don't know. But people don't just change like that—her arms and legs bent like you said. They'd know what was wrong with her at the hospital, right?"
"If anyone would…" Max nodded, and we made our way to St. Agnes's before following up with Jen. Whatever we'd maybe learn after talking with Lauren might be something Jen could use to figure out how the bite wound healed so quickly.
It was early enough on a Saturday morning that most of the shops hadn't opened yet, which meant that most of the people who would otherwise harass us weren't loitering outside the doorways begging for cash from people walking in and out. I paid more attention now that I knew there had been more Feral attacks within the last few weeks. I tried to stay away from the newsfeeds because they never had anything good to say, and the fact that The Citadel wasn't even really acknowledging that anything was happening just made it all worse. I sighed and pushed the thought out of my head. We had other things to deal with right now.
We made it to St. Agnes's in record time and walked right up to the reception desk. An older woman with a tight, gray bun flashed a big smile as we approached.
"We're here to see Lauren Stover," I said, smiling back at the woman. She nodded and tapped the holographic display in front of her. After several scrolling swipes, her brows started to pinch together.
"Stover, you said?"
"Yes," Max answered. "She was brought in yesterday after a fight at Portland Prep."
I shot Max a quick side eye, a twinge of guilt pulling across my chest. But Lauren had started the fight by shoving me into the pillar in the cafeteria.
The woman suddenly covered her mouth with her hand, then cleared her throat and looked up at us.
"What's wrong?" I asked, noticing the sudden chill in the air between us.
"I'm afraid Lauren Stover is no longer here," she said. "But I'm sorry, that's all I can tell you if you're not immediate family members."
"She went home?" Max asked, sounding as confused as I felt about why that would be a confidential kind of thing.
"I'm sorry," she continued. "That's really all I can say."
We thanked her after another few seconds and went out the way we'd come in.
"Should we go to her house?" I asked Max, since we weren't far from the school, and if she lived in the same house she'd been in since we were in elementary school, it wasn't far.
Max narrowed his eyes at me. "And walk up to the door to say what? Hi, I'm Halsey, the one who kicked Lauren's ass so hard she turned into a grasshopper?"
I laughed and rolled my eyes, but instantly felt guilty about it. I didn't see Lauren in that state the way Max did, but I imagine it wasn't painless. "Who do we know who hangs out with her? Is there anyone we can get on the queue?"
Max shook his head. "I guess let's just walk by her house. Maybe a little sister or a neighbor will be outside and we can just ask as we pass by."
"Good idea."
We were in her neighborhood about ten minutes later, and I was momentarily grateful that I lived up on the hill on the other side of the woods. The street was full of trash, and loud, bratty kids were throwing pieces of broken pipes or rocks at each other while screaming at the tops of their lungs. If this was a game, I'd hate to see what fights looked like. No wonder Lauren was the way she was.
"Does she still live in that yellow house?" Max asked as we turned a corner. Several junky cars were parked in front of the house, and a fairly large group of people were going in an out. "Oh shit, is that Brian?" he said, quickly darting behind a tree in the next door neighbor's yard so we wouldn't be seen.
"Yeah, and Mr. Warren! Look on the porch," I said. "I think he's talking to her mom…"
"She's crying?" Max asked more than stated, but it was obvious she was crying when she turned to greet someone coming up the porch steps.
"I have a bad feeling about this," I said as a chill ran through me.
"Who are you?" a
n abrupt voice said behind us, which made me nearly jump out of my skin. Max and I both turned around to find a little girl standing indignantly with her hands on her hips, her messy ponytail full of leaves and twigs like she'd just fallen out of a tree or something.
"Do you know Lauren Stover?" Max asked, not missing a beat. The little girl wiped her dirty face with the back of her dirty hand.
"She caught on fire," she said casually, and all the blood in my veins turned to ice.
"What did you say?" I whispered, only because my voice had completely left me.
"She caught on fire at the hospital yesterday."
I blinked at the girl. "How? How does that happen?"
The little girl shrugged. "Dunno. Her mama said the para-somebodies didn't check her right before they took her out of the ambulance."
"What does that mean?" Max asked. "How would she catch on fire?"
The girl shrugged again, this time, annoyed. "Do I look like a para-somebody to you? The oxygen blowing all over from her mask maybe. Like maybe they were smoking or something and blew everything up. Duh." She rolled her eyes at us like we were the stupidest people she'd ever met, then wiped her nose again with the back of her other dirty hand and yelled at the top of her lungs to the people in Lauren's front yard. "Hey! Lauren blew up because the para-somebodies were smoking, right?"
"Oh my god," I gasped as Max and I both took off in the other direction, running like the whole world was about to start chasing us.
Chapter 8
Max and I were only a few blocks from Jen's practice before we finally slowed down to catch our breath. Only when we stopped, I wasn't out of breath.
Max was a sprinter on the school track team, and while running what had to be a quarter of a mile may have been pushing his limits, I couldn't understand why he was bent over his knees heaving and sucking in air while I wasn't. From the incredulous look he gave me, neither could he.
