Sick

by Tom Leveen

  I remember the way she didn’t hesitate to belt me in the stomach when I opened the classroom door. How she acted to help Jaime.

  “A lot better,” I say. “You were really brave.”

  “And you came looking for me. Thank you.” Laura smiles through fresh tears and wraps her arms around me.

  Mom comes back with more bottles of water. They’re a little warm from being in the trunk of her car, but I don’t care. I open a new bottle and slosh half of it down. I taste less blood and dirt. But it’s still there. Maybe I’m imagining it.

  “Mom?” I say. “There’s no cure, right?”

  Mom touches my arm. “No, sweetie,” she says. “Not yet. We might find one, or at least a treatment, but it’ll be a long time coming.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?” Mom repeats. “How could you say something like that?”

  “Chad.”

  Mom looks around at the crowd of kids and finally pieces together that Chad’s not among them. Her forehead wrinkles.

  “He didn’t—”

  “Mom,” Kenzie says. “It’s okay. We’ll tell you everything later. Okay? Can we go home now?”

  “Soon,” Mom says, wiping her face. I realize then that tears have been trickling down her cheeks since I made it over the fence. “The deputies have called for a SWAT team. When they get here, the deputies will escort us back to the house if the area’s been cleared. I think it has been. We’ll be safe. I promise.”

  Her phone rings. Mom cries out as if exasperated. “Lord, what now?”

  She plucks her phone out of her pocket. I notice the screen is cracked, but the phone’s still working. Mom goes to her car.

  Kenzie wraps an arm around me, hugging me on the side opposite Laura, who hasn’t let me go.

  “How do you feel?” Kenzie asks.

  I can see she’s trying to get me to look into her eyes, but I can’t because I can’t stop staring at Chad, getting cold in the November night. At the others who still swarm around the parking lot, hungry for someone to cross the fence and into their disfigured hands. At Hollis.

  I look at my hands, lumps of numb flesh. Just a few minutes ago, they were washed red from my elbows to my fingertips.

  “Like a monster,” I say.

  From the corner of my eye, I see Kenzie frown. She rests her head on my shoulder and gives me another squeeze.

  “It’ll pass,” she says.

  I turn my head toward Travis and Cammy, seated near the patrol car. One of the cops has given them a fresh thermos, and steam rises from a Styrofoam cup they pass between them, distorting their faces, their clothes stained.

  As I begin trembling uncontrollably, I look at the bodies of kids piled up in the parking lot. Black, brown, white, and all bleeding red. I wonder, suddenly, about their families, where they are, if they’re safe. Jaime’s little brother. Damon’s mother. Travis’s dad. All of them. Yesterday—god, not even twelve hours ago—I didn’t care if they even had families.

  My eyes wander along the infected students lining the fence. The ones I know, and the ones I don’t. The ones I didn’t want to. I shift my gaze over my shoulder and watch Mom cleaning people off while Dave passes around water bottles to the stagecraft kids. Even now, I don’t know all their names.

  Still studying them, I say to Kenzie, “Who are we? I mean, who are we now?”

  My sister doesn’t answer for a minute. Finally, she just whispers, “I love you.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and try to stop shaking.

  “I love you too.”

  We sit silently on the pavement. I want to keep my eyes closed until the sun rises. Better to imagine that for the moment, rising warm and clear over the school, over the city. Burning away the smoke and the fumes. Starting over.

  Maybe someday life will somehow get back to normal. Maybe someday they can save Hollis. Maybe me and Kenzie and Laura and Cammy … and Travis and Serena and even John, all of them, every last one of them, we’ll all head out together. Sit on a roof like at Chad’s this morning. No—no, on the ground. We’ll sit together on the ground and eat cookies and microwave pizzas together.

  Maybe someday … I’ll be human.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tom Leveen is the author of Party, Zero, and manicpixiedreamgirl. Zero was named to YALSA’s list of Best Fiction for Young Adults. Sick is his first foray into the horror genre. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

  This book was designed by Robyn Ng and art directed by Chad W. Beckerman.