It was around that point that Sam stopped dropping by. Nathan took that as a sign that the Goo Flu had wiped the planet clean, and that we should plan on hanging out in the dungeon until the power failed and we died of thirst.
“Or starved,” I said. “We could always starve.”
Nathan shook his head, then whooped as his avatar on the wallscreen popped out from behind a pile of rubble and wasted me.
“Nah,” he said. “Starvation takes forever, even if we don’t go cannibal.”
I turned to look at him.
“Cannibal?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, that’s what would happen eventually, right? We’d start seeing each other as giant roasted turkeys or something, and sooner or later one of us would snap.”
I stared at him. After a few seconds, he blinked and looked away.
“Anyway,” he said, “it wouldn’t come to that, because you die of thirst in like three days.”
We went back to the game. He shot me a few more times. I got him once. He shot me again.
“You know,” he said, “we should probably fill up our bathtubs.”
“Because . . .”
“Well, you know. Just in case?”
I turned to look at him.
“Didn’t you just say that if we didn’t die of thirst, we’d wind up eating each other?”
He blinked once, slowly.
“Well,” he said. “Honestly? It would probably be you eating me.”
I nodded.
“Damn skippy.”
Later, when I got back to my room, I filled my bathtub with cold water, right up to the rim.
27. In which Jordan witnesses a slow-motion train wreck.
The apocalypse turned out to be a lot more boring than I expected, at least at first. I came home from Marta’s to an empty house. Mom was in Brazil. Dad was in Davos. I ate leftover pizza. I messaged Micah for a while. I did some homework. I brushed my teeth. I went to bed.
I pretty much expected to get out of bed the next morning to find the power out, the countryside in flames, and Mom’s magnolias covered in swarms of flame-resistant locusts. I woke up early, my room still half dark. My heart was pounding. I’d been dreaming that someone was in the house. I could hear him moving around, searching for me—but I was paralyzed, helpless, trapped in my bed. I snapped awake just as he was tapping at my door. And there it was, even though I was wide awake. Tap . . . tap . . . tap . . .
It took me a terrified five seconds to figure out that the tapping wasn’t coming from an axe murderer who’d snuck into my house while I was sleeping. It was coming from a big-ass black bird tapping at my bedroom window. Behind it, the sun was just a vague glow below the horizon, but I could see that it was going to rise into a clear blue sky. I checked my phone. The only news alert I had was about the Jets game coming up on Thursday night. Apparently, the world hadn’t quite ended yet. I took a shower. I ate breakfast. I brushed my teeth. I went to school.
Classes that day were, to put it lightly, a challenge. It was impossible to focus on The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock when I was expecting the doomsday sirens to start blaring at any minute. I had an open block on Wednesdays at eleven, and between that and lunch I was free until almost one. As soon as Am Lit was over, I went to find Micah. He was waiting for me in the hall, near the main entrance.
“Hey,” I said. “IHOP?”
“Oh, honey,” he said. “You know me so well.”
“So,” Micah said. “How’s the apocalypse treating you?”
I shrugged.
“Well enough, I guess. Seems to be a little slow getting started, honestly.”
He nodded, and shoveled half a Swedish pancake into his mouth.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought. Nothing on the news yet. Think maybe Dr. Strangelove decided to abort Project Kill Jordan after all?”
I shook my head.
“Didn’t sound like that was really an option, did it? I was kind of hoping that his engineers might have screwed the pooch, though. Creating a brand-new tailored virus can’t be easy. Maybe he tried to launch, and it didn’t work? Maybe the people he shot it with aren’t getting sick?”
Just then, my phone pinged. I looked down. It was a news alert.
“Huh,” I said. “Major influenza outbreak in Southern California.”
We finished our pancakes in silence.
On my way to practice that afternoon, I ran into Tara outside the locker rooms.
“Hey,” she said. “You’re here.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Where else would I be?”
She shrugged.
“I kind of assumed that the same guys who grabbed Hannah would have grabbed you and your friends too.”
I stared at her.
“Grabbed Hannah?”
“Yeah,” she said. “CorpSec guys. They tried to snatch her at practice, then caught her at a charging station on Route 27.”
“Did they say where they were taking her, or why?”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t ask. I was just glad they didn’t haul me in as an accessory.”
“Accessory to what?”
Tara rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know. Whatever they were hauling her in for, I guess. So—they didn’t come after you, huh?”
“Actually,” I said, “they kind of did.”
“Uh-huh. How’d you get away?”
I clapped her on the shoulder.
“Come on, Tara. You know me. I’m sneaky.”
So that was how I found out that Hannah was MIA. I spent most of the seven-mile progression we ran that afternoon pondering the question of why CorpSec would have grabbed Hannah, when it was her house we were violating, it was her dad’s system we were trying to crack, and she wasn’t even there when Officer Mike walked in on us. Even if they knew somehow that she let us into the house, it made no sense. However you cut it, we were the actual perpetrators here, and as far as I could tell, Bioteka hadn’t made any effort at all to come and round us up.
I talked it over with Micah that night over takeout Chinese.
“Well,” he said. “First off, we need to rescue her, right?”
I picked a hunk of garlic beef from his plate. He tried to snatch it back, but I got it to my mouth before he had the chance.
“In principle,” I said, “yes, I fully support rescuing Hannah.”
“Uh-huh,” Micah said. “Sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming.”
I chewed, swallowed, and washed it down with a tiny porcelain cup of lukewarm green tea.
“There is, in fact, a ‘but’ coming, and you know what it is as well as I do, Micah. We don’t have any idea where Hannah is—and even if we did, we are not ninjas. You and I are not the sort of people who break into dungeons and rescue princesses. Anyway, I’m sure they’ll let her go once they figure out that she wasn’t in any way responsible for their systems getting violated.”
“Okay,” Micah said. “Say they do figure that out. What, exactly, do you think happens then?”
I shrugged.
“I guess then Hannah can come and rescue us.”
Tara didn’t show up to practice on Thursday. When Doyle asked if anyone knew where she was, Sarah Miller raised her hand and said that Tara’s mom was sick, and Tara didn’t want to leave her home alone. I glanced over at Micah. He didn’t look happy. That day was the first time any of us had heard the term “Goo Flu,” and we’d also heard that it wasn’t just a California thing. There were cases popping up in dozens of places around the world. One of them was Western New York. A half dozen teachers had called in sick that morning. Micah mouthed something to me. It took me a few seconds to realize what he’d said: “Shit is getting real.”
Tara never came back to school. The next week was like one of those monster movies where people keep disappearing one by one but everyone pretends like they don’t notice. Doyle called in sick that Friday, along with about half the faculty. I’m pretty sure that was the fi
rst time Doyle had ever missed a day in season. Didn’t seem like any kids had come down with the Goo Flu yet, but a lot of them were staying home anyway. Most of the runners showed up, though. Early October is a really critical time in the cross-country season. You’ve got your distance base in place, you’ve been doing speed work for at least a few weeks, and you’re just coming to the peak of the workout cycle before tapering down for Sectionals and States. Nobody wanted to lose their chance at making the travel team for the end of the season just because of some stupid apocalypse.
When we got out to the field, everyone was looking at me. It took me a minute to realize that I was basically the senior surviving officer. We had no coach, and I was the only captain who’d made it in to school. I tried to remember what we’d done the past few days, but my mind was a blank.
“So?” Miranda said. “What’s the program, Coach?”
I looked around the circle of runners. Their expressions ranged from mildly worried to crap-your-pants terrified.
“Huh,” I said. “Eight miles, at tempo?”
That got me a chorus of groans. I appreciated that, because under the circumstances, I didn’t much feel like a hard eight either.
“Or,” I said, “I guess we could talk about what’s going on out there?”
“I vote for that one,” Sarah said. “Is this the End Times?”
I turned to look at her.
“Um . . . what?”
“The End Times,” she said. “Like in the Bible?”
“No,” I said. “I’m pretty sure this has nothing to do with anything in the Bible.”
Jared Michaels raised one hand.
“What about The Stand?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t know what that is.”
“It’s a book,” he said. “It’s got a flu in it. Just about everybody dies. Is this that?”
I stared at him.
“You know what?” I said finally. “I changed my mind. We’re going with Plan A. Eight miles, tempo. Go.”
I woke up on Saturday to find a news alert on my phone. I tapped to expand.
Mob Lynches “Outbreak Monkey”
(Los Angeles, via NewsBug): Late Friday evening in Santa Monica, a group of ten to fifteen masked vigilantes dragged Dr. Meghan Cardiff from her apartment and into the street, where according to witnesses she was strangled with what appeared to be a length of nylon rope, doused in a flammable liquid, and set aflame. Her assailants dispersed before police arrived, and no arrests have been made. Dr. Cardiff, who was a principal scientist with the genetic engineering firm Bioteka, was identified by several news organizations earlier in the day as Patient Zero in the ongoing west coast outbreak of the so-called “Goo Flu.” Witnesses stated that the masked men repeatedly shouted, “No more Hagerstowns,” during the course of the attack, leading to speculation that they may have been associated with the banned UnAltered Movement, whose leaders have hinted that the Goo Flu may be a deliberately released engineered virus, rather than a naturally evolved variant on common influenza. A spokesperson for NatSec tells NewsBug that an investigation into this aspect of the attack is ongoing.
My phone pinged. I tapped to minimize the article. I had a message from Micah.
JustMicah: Shit. Is. Getting. Real.
Jordasaurus: Yeah. No shit, my friend.
JustMicah: That room in my basement is still open.
Jordasaurus: Thanks, homie. I may wind up taking you up on that.
When Micah didn’t respond, I sent a group message to the team list telling everyone to get in at least six easy on Saturday, and to try to do some speed work on Sunday. I rolled out of bed, drank some juice and a yogurt smoothie, and got geared up to run.
The strangest thing about that morning was how not-strange it was. The sun was shining. Birds were singing. I even saw some people out and about—mostly in cars, but a few on foot like me. We were twelve days into the apocalypse, and outside of the occasional spooky news report and a whole lot of absenteeism at school, nothing much seemed to be happening.
Until I turned the corner onto Center Court Road, that is. That’s when I saw my first Goo Flu zombie.
I’ve always hated that term, by the way. I understand why people started using it, but it gives you a really poor impression of what the newly yellow were like. This particular GFZ was named Maria Bonomo. I knew her a bit, in the way that everyone who lives in an exclusive area like mine knows one another. She was four or five years older than me. Her parents weren’t involved with any of the gene eng companies, but they were rich as Croesus anyway. They owned the ten acres at the corner of Center Court and Nine Mile Point, and the mansion set in the middle of them, which was damn near as gaudy as mine. When I saw her, Maria was stuffing a package into the mailbox at the end of their driveway. She was wearing shorts and a tight-fit shirt. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
She was yellow.
Not yellow like a dandelion and not yellow like a jaundiced baby. Just . . . yellow. She saw me, smiled, and waved.
“Morning, Jordan.”
“Hey,” I said, and pulled up short in the middle of the road. “Morning, Maria. You, uh . . . are you feeling okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I’m feeling great. How about you?”
“Good,” I said. “I’m good.”
She took a step toward me.
“I’m sure. Great day for a run, right?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Sunny. Dry. Not too hot. Can’t ask for better.”
She took another step.
“How’s the season going? You’re a senior now, right? Gunning for the state championship this year?”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s the plan.”
She was almost close enough to touch by then. Her smile grew wider.
“Look,” she said. “This may sound weird, but do you want to come inside?”
And it was weird, because the fact was that I really, really did. She looked down at the front of my shorts and giggled.
“Oh, Jordan, that can’t be comfortable. Need a little help?”
She reached out for me. Her hand was steady, but mine were shaking. I took a step back from her, and I ran.
On Sunday, I decided to take care of my workout on the treadmill in our basement. The weather was fine, but that business with Maria on Saturday had me spooked. I pinged Micah when I was done to see if he wanted to hang out after lunch.
“Sorry,” he said when I finally got him on voice. “Dad wants me to stay close to home today. You could come here if you want?”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I think I’m gonna stick around the casa. Not really feeling like being out and about today. You going in to Briarwood tomorrow?”
“Dunno,” he said. “Depends on how things look in the morning, I guess. You?”
“Same,” I said. “I think we may all be playing things by ear for a while.”
“Truth,” he said. “Take care, brother. And don’t forget—you’re always welcome here.”
I spent the rest of that day surfing the newsfeeds. It was funny—I could pretty much see the moment when NatSec started to panic. Right around four in the afternoon, all the stories about Goo Flu zombies and mobs of UnAltered and quarantine zones and whatnot just vanished. Ten minutes later, stories started popping up from the same sites explaining that the virus wasn’t actually all that dangerous, that the death rate was minimal, and that the government had things well in hand. Every once in a while I saw a comment sneak through calling bullshit on one of those stories or another, but those all got deleted pretty quickly as well. By the time it got dark, I was thinking seriously about taking Micah up on his offer, at least until my parents made it back into the country.
I had creepy dreams again that night, a mishmash of UnAltered lynch mobs and CorpSec goons and Maria Bonomo’s naked yellow ass, until finally I snapped awake in the darkness, heart pounding and body drenched in sweat. The last bit of my dream had been the sound of a window breaking.
I held my breath and listened. Nothing. I was just about to relax and try to go back to sleep, when I heard it again—the unmistakable crash and tinkle of breaking glass. I sat up in bed, and called for the lights.
Smoke was seeping under my bedroom door.
28. In which Drew explores the limits of human kindness.
“Where the fuck is my daughter, Drew?”
Kara stood in the foyer, feet shoulder width, hands on her hips. Her eyes were narrowed to slits, her jaw muscles clenched and bulging.
“I don’t . . .” I trailed off. My belly twisted and a rising roar filled my ears. “Kara . . . I’ve been . . . Isn’t Hannah with you?”
She stared at me.
“No, Drew,” she said slowly. “Hannah is not with me. I’ve been with my mother. I haven’t seen Hannah since the day before I found you and that monster fucking on my living-room floor. Now, I’m going to ask you again: Where the fuck is my daughter?”
Sometimes in life, you get blindsided. You’re drifting along, happy as a goddamned clam, and the thing you never thought would happen to you smacks you down.
This was not one of those times.
No, this was the other kind of awful. This was when the thing that you always knew was going to happen finally does, and even as the gut punch doubles you over, there’s a little voice whispering in the back of your head.
See? I called it.
“You had her,” I said. I sat down slowly on the bench by the stairway. “I was in California. You took her to school. Then when Bree . . . when you saw us . . . I thought you took her with you?”
Kara pressed her fists to her eyes and gritted her teeth.
“Jesus, Drew! This is just like you! How could I have taken her to school? I wasn’t here! You didn’t even fucking notice that I wasn’t here!”
I dropped my head into my hands. She was right. I’d been so worked up about that bullshit with Meghan that I’d left my daughter in an empty house. How had she gotten to school?
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