“I’m not much of a fighter.”
He coughed one of those fake coughs, like a lie was caught in his throat. “Yeah, I think you’re a lot more of a fighter than you let on.”
“Not me,” I said. “I’m just a skinny kid from Littleham.”
He raised his eyebrows and stared at me until I had to look away.
“I bet there are other immune people out there, too,” he said. “Not immune like everyone who’s still breathing, but immune like you and me.”
“Maybe,” I shrugged. “That still doesn’t fix anything. Who would we fight? They’re too big and we’re too little. We can’t do anything to them.”
Charlie chuckled. “Did you ever hear of David and Goliath?” he asked me.
“Seriously?” I said. “Are you like a minister or something? If it’s all the same to you, I’m not much interested in my Bible studies these days.”
Charlie cleared his throat and looked down at his clasped hands. “As a matter of fact, I am a minister.”
My face turned completely red. “Shut the front door.”
“It’s true. Maybe that’s why I believe in you. David was little, and Goliath was big, and David won in the end.”
“I’m no David.”
Charlie only sat there with his fingers laced together. He didn’t say anything. Frankly, there wasn’t much he could say. Diana’s people were Goliath, and we were David, except that this time around, the story was going to end up differently for everyone.
“Tripp,” Prianka whispered. She slowly walked out of the shadows. She was holding one of the lanterns with her good arm and the other one had a bandage wrapped around it.
“Hey,” I said as I jumped to my feet. “Survey says?”
“I’m dying,” she told me. “Maybe not today or tomorrow, but in seventy or eighty years I’m as good as dust.”
“That’s not funny.”
“No,” she said and she rose on her toes and kissed me on the cheek. “It’s just the truth.” Then she turned to Charlie. “Everyone’s getting up. I met your mom and dad. They seem nice.”
“They’re scared,” he said. “I’m scared, too.”
Prianka handed me the lantern then took my free hand. “I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. Your dad told me to rest, so that’s what I’m going to do. He said we’ll all talk when we get up.”
That was good enough for me. Without another word I nodded a goodbye to Charlie Buckman, the minister from Hadley, and left him sitting on the floor. Then Prianka and I headed off to the garden department where our friends were fast asleep.
I think my eyes shut before I even got there.
41
I CRASHED AGAINST the back wall of the garden department, nestled in the comforting embrace of a bean bag chair that I took from a row full of school supplies that must have been left over from when students went back to the University.
It was purple, but I didn’t care. At least the color was an upgrade from my pink umbrella.
Prianka had a bean bag that was striped like a zebra. I put hers next to mine, and we fell asleep holding hands.
When I woke up, it was still dark outside. For a moment I thought I didn’t get any sleep at all. The truth is, all of us slept straight through the day.
Newfie was up close and personal when I opened my eyes. He bent down and licked my face, sliming me with doggie drool.
“You’re gross,” I said.
“Not as gross as him and Whitby taking a crap in the corner by the mulch bags,” said my sister as she flopped down in the bean bag chair with me.
“Hey,” I yelped. “Personal space.”
“Whatever,” she muttered and rolled over into Prianka’s zebra-striped chair. It was empty.
“Where’s Pri?” I asked a little too quickly.
“Chill,” she said. “She’s with everyone else back in camping supplies except for a few of us stragglers.”
I looked around. Jimmy was gone, but Manny and Niki were still fast asleep on blankets. They lay quietly next to each other with just the right amount of closeness that I sort of got that they were a thing, like me and Prianka or Jimmy and Trina.
Sanjay and Bullseye were gone, too. So were Whitby and Andrew.
Suddenly, a loud grumble poured out of my mouth. I didn’t know I was starving until my stomach decided to remind me.
“Yeah—me, too,” said Trina as she pulled herself up from the bean bag chair. “Dinner will be ready soon. Aunt Ella and Trudy are cooking.”
As the last remnants of sleep left me, the events of yesterday came crashing back. Crap. Couldn’t I even get one minute of peace?
“Hey,” I said. “Did you, um, talk to Mom and Dad?”
“If by talk, do you mean, did I get lectured by Mom and Dad? Yeah. For like a half-hour. Then Mom cried and Dad hugged me and made me promise that I wouldn’t pull a stunt like that again.”
“Did you?”
“Promise?” she asked. “I told them I would try really hard, but I couldn’t vouch for you because you’re supposed to be something called a badirchand, whatever that is.”
That was so worthy of an eye roll. “Love you, too, sis.”
I got up and stretched with my arms way above my head. My back cracked because I had just slept for a dozen hours curled inside the plushy embrace of a furry, purple monster. Then Trina and I both went over to Manny and Niki and woke them up.
After a quick stop in the bathrooms at the back of the breakroom, where we all brushed our teeth with real toothpaste and real toothbrushes, I took a deep breath and decided it was time to face the music.
I smelled food before we even got to the camping supplies department, and my stomach rumbled again.
Everyone was there but no one acted like I was a total loose cannon with the potential to go after Diana again, if given half a chance.
Maybe I was. Maybe I would. Who knew, least of all me?
We got a fair amount of smiles and head nods then most continued eating whatever feast Trudy and Aunt Ella had concocted.
Randy Stephens was sitting with Professor Billings, Nedra Stein, and Felice LeFleur at one table. I didn’t care if it was mean or not, I couldn’t stop thinking of Felice as Freaky Big Bird and I couldn’t stop stewing over the fact that someone like her was given the gift of total immunity.
She didn’t deserve it.
Then I caught myself.
Being deserving of immunity wasn’t something for me or anyone else to decide. She was lucky, is all.
My mom and dad were at another table with Aunt Ella, Trudy, and little Krystal sitting on Trudy’s ample lap. The four-year-old waved at me when she saw me, then popped something gross and processed into her mouth. I think it may have been a fish stick. She might as well eat them now. Frozen fish sticks were fast becoming extinct. Who knew if she was ever going to make a meal of them again.
Prianka, Jimmy, Sanjay and Bullseye had spread out a picnic blanket on the floor. Whitby was with them. When she saw us, she started wagging her thin tail. Then she ran up to Newfie and smelled his butt, because I guess that’s how dogs say hi when they haven’t seen each other for longer than thirty seconds.
I didn’t spy Andrew anywhere. Then I looked up and saw him sitting on a metal girder in the rafters with his head tucked into his wings. He was directly above Freaky Big Bird which made a little smile cross my face.
At least there were still a few things in life that could lift the corners of my mouth.
Finally, there was an older couple that I didn’t recognize sitting with Charlie Buckman, who I still couldn’t believe was a minister. I guess they were his parents. I should have introduced myself, but I didn’t. Instead, Trina, Niki, Manny and I took paper plates and filled them with food that Aunt Ella and T
rudy had laid out on one of the tables.
I’m not sure I even noticed what I was taking. It was hot and it smelled good. I guess that’s all that mattered.
As I sat down on the floor with the rest of my friends, my mind slowly drifted back to the Peace Pagoda and the enormous revelation I had there about never letting Diana know she had potentially developed immunity to the bite of a poxer.
I shoved my plastic fork into the food, lifted it, stuck some into my mouth, chewed and repeated. I didn’t look at anyone, especially my parents. Once, I lifted my head and caught Prianka’s eyes. She just smiled at me and continued eating, too.
Halfway through my plate, Aunt Ella stood up and cleared her throat.
“Everyone,” she said. “Can I have your attention please?” I looked up. There she was, my crazy aunt still dressed all in purple. Her clothes were new from the racks, but she still managed to look exactly the same. Her hair was still in a long braid down her back and she still wore goggle glasses.
“Who’s that?” whispered Manny.
“Ella Light,” Jimmy whispered back. He was sprawled out on the floor next to Manny and Niki. “Tripp and Trina’s aunt.”
“Cool,” Manny whispered. “Their whole family’s immune.”
I wanted to say ‘Not quite,’ because Uncle Don wasn’t with us anymore, but what was the point? We all lost people.
“Everyone,” Aunt Ella said again. “Settle down, please. We have some business to discuss.”
Perfect, I thought. This was when my friends and I were going to get punished for skipping out of Walmart. I didn’t have to contend with just my parents anymore. There was a whole host of adults who probably had their own versions of how we should be chastised.
Maybe they would decide that we had to clean the linoleum floors with a mop and a bucket, or worse, scrub the bathrooms with toothbrushes.
“Everyone, please,” my aunt said a third time but the chatter didn’t stop, although it did quiet down a bit. Suddenly, a shrill whistle cut through the evening. It was Dorcas. I hadn’t even noticed she wasn’t there before. She came walking up one of the aisles, the remnants of a cigarette still smoldering between her fingertips of one hand, while the other was stuck in her mouth.
She whistled again then shouted, “Can it, people. My girl, Ella, here has something to say.”
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
Gotta love her.
42
WHY WASN’T I THE least bit surprised when Aunt Ella held up a giant piece of poster board and turned it around for all of us to see?
I remembered the words written on it like it was yesterday.
Hey—it was yesterday.
‘Dear Everybody. It’s obvious to us that Diana has perfected super immunity to Necropoxy but is unaware because we stopped her from completing her experiment. We are leaving to find her and tell her she doesn’t need Tripp and Trina anymore. Only then will she stop hunting all of us. We WILL be back.’
Thankfully, that was one oversized poster that I had nothing to do with. Prianka’s face turned deep red. Jimmy, who was still lying down on the picnic blanket with the rest of us, started picking lint out of his belly button, trying really hard to concentrate on whatever was or wasn’t there.
“Well,” said Aunt Ella, “All I can say is that we are damn lucky to have such smart young people with us.”
Wait, what?
“Absolutely,” said Nedra Stein. She was actually drinking tea and she was drinking it out of a piece of china she probably picked up in housewares.
Randy Stephens untangled himself from the table he was sitting at. He was all gangly legs and arms because he was so tall. When he finally stood he slowly started clapping his hands together. Nedra put her tea down and stood, too. Then most everybody else did the same thing, except for Freaky Big Bird and my mom and dad, who, understandably, were so pissed at me and Trina that I could see the anger rolling off of them.
Finally, my mother took a deep breath, stood up and started clapping, too. After a moment, she realized my dad wasn’t joining her, so she smacked him in the arm like how Prianka would probably smack me, and his shoulders drooped. Eventually, he started clapping, too, but he didn’t stand up.
I guess his sitting applause was better than nothing.
The rest of us sat there in stunned silence with our faces growing as red as Prianka’s. Eventually, the clapping died down and everyone took their seats again.
“Alright,” said Aunt Ella as she put the poster aside. “Now that our little show of appreciation is over, and mind you, we are all very appreciative of your pluck and initiative . . . WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?”
Yikes. What just happened? And why was everyone staring at me?
I wasn’t the leader of our little gang of teen survivors. I wasn’t even the leader of me and my twin. Trina was the one who always did the heavy lifting. I was just, I don’t know, comic relief.
Prianka slowly got to her feet.
“I wrote that poster,” she said. “Actually, everything was sort of my idea.”
Her idea? Girlfriend or not, Prianka Patel was trying to hog the limelight again?
In retrospect, I’m totally convinced she played me, but at that moment, every little instinct I had to keep Prianka from getting the gold star or the A plus, or whatever they were giving out in the zombie apocalypse, boiled out of me and I jumped to my feet.
“Well . . .” I said, with my hands in my back pockets. “It was sort of our idea. I mean, Prianka made the poster and kudos to her, but going after Diana, that was sort of a group effort.”
“Then you’re all idiots,” my father growled. “What if something happened to you? What if . . . what if . . .” He was steaming. I knew it. Everyone knew it. For some reason, I actually thought he was going to grow five feet taller and turn green.
“Doug,” my mother whispered as she put her hand on my dad’s bulging arm.
Prianka took a step forward. “But we were right,” she said. “At least we thought we were right. It made sense that if Diana knew that she didn’t need Tripp and Trina anymore for a cure then she would leave us alone. We thought we were saving everyone. We didn’t know that was exactly the wrong thing to do.”
Professor Billings cleared her throat. “You saved me,” she said.
“And me,” growled Dorcas.
Manny and Niki just nodded their heads in approval.
I took Prianka’s hand and gently squeezed it. She immediately stepped back and sat down. I guess she knew all along that it was going to come down to me and my mouth, anyway.
“Listen,” I began. I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to say. I scanned expectant faces, all waiting for me to explain myself. My gaze finally fell on Charlie Buckman and I remembered what he said this morning when we sat in a dark aisle, confessing our sins to each other. “Maybe what we did yesterday wasn’t the best idea, but we’re not sorry for it.” I said. “If we hadn’t left, we would never have found Dorcas, or come across Professor Billings or Niki and Manny. We would still be here, wondering what our next move was going to be in order to survive.” I licked my lips and waited for a moment to let my thoughts catch up to my big fat mouth. Finally, they came. “I know what our next move is,” I said. “We have to destroy the cure to total immunity. If we don’t, people like Diana will be able to choose who gets it and who doesn’t. No one has that right.”
Someone grumbled. I didn’t even have to guess who it was. I knew who it was and the blood boiled in my veins.
“Ms. LeFleur?” I said to Freaky Big Bird. “Do you have something to say?”
Felice crumpled up her napkin and threw it down on her plate. I could still see the bandage underneath her blouse where she had gotten bitten. I’m sure those teeth marks still throbbed, but you k
now what? They didn’t kill her. She was alive. She was alive because my Aunt Ella and Trina had driven a bus into the back of the McDuffy Estate and saved her.
“Yes, I have something to say,” she spat out.
“Felice, stop,” both Randy and Nedra said at the same time. Professor Billings, who was sitting next to her, didn’t know her well enough yet to form the same sour opinion that the rest of us already had.
“What?” she snapped. “Are we listening to children, now? Impertinent, impetuous, children?”
Aunt Ella crossed her arms over her chest and glared at Freaky Big Bird. “Those impertinent, impetuous children happened to have saved your life, Felice,” she said. “The least you could do is listen to them.”
“They almost got me killed,” she shrieked, but her shriek was so shrill it sounded like the Freaky Big Bird mating call, which no potential mate in its right mind would ever answer.
“That’s just it,” I said to her. “You almost got killed, but you didn’t. You’re immune. You’re immune to everything. So am I. So is Trina.”
“Me, too,” said Charlie Buckman, the good-looking minister with the white teeth who just happened to be a product of two immune parents just like me and my sister.
Randy Stephens raised his gangly hand. “Eddie bit me and I survived, so I guess you can count me in, too.”
That made five super-immune people—me, Trina, Charlie, Randy and Freaky Big Bird.
“So?” spat Felice.
“So?” echoed Charlie Buckman. He sounded a little angry, or as angry as a minister can get with his parents sitting right next to him. “So? You now have a responsibility.” He stood. “Do you see these good people around you? These people aren’t immune to the monsters out there. They can get bit anytime, and if they do, they can die, or turn into one of them. No one knows for sure. But you? All that can happen to you is a nasty bite.”
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