Contaminated

by Em Garner

  Opal lets out a squeak, and they both look at her. The one on the right mutters a curse. “Get this…” he trips on the word, but changes it “… guy out of here. There’s a kid, man. Get him out of here.”

  Jean’s already pushing a button and calling for someone named Carlos to get up front right away, it’s an emergency. Everything’s happening very fast. I duck behind the cops, well out of reach of the Connie on the floor, and put my arms around Opal. We cling to each other as Carlos, a huge guy with arms like a professional wrestler’s, comes out of the back and stops at the sight of the man on the floor.

  “Take him, please,” Jean says. “Officers, there’s paperwork to fill out.”

  The one on the right lifts his visor as Carlos yanks the man to his feet and drags him away. The door closes behind him, and it’s like the room suddenly fills again with air we didn’t know we weren’t breathing. Opal’s shaking against me, but not crying. Jean’s eyes glisten with tears.

  She takes a long, deep breath. “Officers, paperwork.”

  The one on the right takes off his helmet and steps up to her. “At least that never changes.”

  He takes the clipboard she hands him, and the pen. His partner looks at us. His face without the visor is young and tired-looking. He moves toward us and winces when we both shrink away.

  “Hey.” His voice is quieter when he doesn’t have to talk through the visor. “Sorry about that. Hey, little girl, don’t cry. It’s okay.”

  He looks at me. “Sorry, I used to carry lollipops, but I don’t have any now.”

  “She doesn’t need a lollipop.”

  Opal peeks around the shelter of my arms. “Yes, I do!” The cop laughs. “Sorry, kid.”

  From behind him, his partner’s talking to Jean, and his voice raises just enough for me to hear him say, “He was in the grocery store.”

  I look over Opal’s head. Jean’s not looking at me. I say to the cop in front of me, “The grocery store?”

  “Yeah.” He looks uncomfortable, like he shouldn’t say anything.

  Opal, denied a lollipop, goes back to her magazine. “Just… there?” Looking at him, I realize he’s not so much older than me. Sort of like the soldiers who came to our house that first time. Not much older than me at all.

  “Yeah,” he says again. “Just went bat sh—uh—nuts right there in the frozen foods aisle. Took out a couple of shopping carts, broke open all the glass. We thought maybe he was drunk and disorderly, but we don’t take chances anymore with stuff like that.”

  Before he can say anything else, a woman, who looks almost as wild eyed as the man did, bursts through the front doors. “Is my husband here?”

  The cop turns from me. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to identify yourself.”

  There’s a huge kerfuffle then, with the woman wailing, Jean trying to calm her, the cops trying to get some information. I guess in times past, the guy would’ve been taken to jail. Now they bring them straight to the kennels.

  The cops go with the woman into the back, and Jean’s staring at me. She looks pretty shocked, which is the way I feel. She clears her throat and messes with some folders on the desk.

  “Do you think he’s…,” I start to say, but it’s a day for interruptions, because Dillon and my mom come out of the other door, the one leading to the cages.

  “Mama!” Opal cries.

  And my mother, seeing us, opens her arms and runs to hug and hold us. Pressed against her, I close my eyes and try to forget this is different from what it used to be. She doesn’t smell the same, and I open my eyes.

  She’s hugging us tight, not saying anything. Her hand strokes my hair. I can feel her heart beating against my cheek. I don’t want her to let go.

  “Wow,” Jean says in a hushed voice. “I’ve never seen any of them do that before.”

  I hold on to my mom as tight as I can.

  NINETEEN

  “IT’S JUST AMAZING,” JEAN SAYS.

  My mom’s smiling and patting both me and Opal on the cheeks. Opal giggles and hugs her. I move away, just a little.

  “They’re not supposed to be able to come back, right?” I say this quietly, so my mom and Opal don’t hear.

  Jean nods. “That’s right. That’s what they say.”

  I smile, head spinning but feeling good about everything that’s happened. “I guess ‘they’ don’t know it all, huh? C’mon, Mom. Opal. Let’s get home. Oh, shoot. The bike.”

  I haven’t thought about how I’m going to get my mom home. She can’t ride the bike, she’s not coordinated enough to balance on the crossbar, and there’s no way she’ll be able to fit in the carrier. It’s a long, long walk home. Maybe I can leave my bike here and we can take the bus, at least to the Foodland parking lot.…

  “I’ll give you a ride,” Dillon says. “I have my dad’s pickup truck. Your bike can go in the back. You live all the way out of town, right?”

  I shoot a glance at Jean, wondering if she’s been talking to Dillon about me as much as she’s been talking to me about him. “Yeah, could you? That would be awesome.”

  He gives me a grin so bright, so shiny, so cute that I’m smacked into another totally embarrassing blush. “Sure.”

  Jean laughs. “Okay, you two, why don’t you take Opal and Malinda out of here. I have work to do.”

  From the back we hear the faint shout of raised voices, and Jean frowns with a look toward the door where Carlos took that guy and the cops followed. When she looks back at us, her smile looks a lot like her son’s, only not as bright. Not as shiny. Jean looks worried.

  Dillon lifts the bike and cart into the back of his dad’s truck, and, okay, I’m a total girl about the way he’s so strong. I don’t say anything, of course. It wasn’t long ago I had a boyfriend I luuuurved. I’m not exactly in the place to be scoping out a new dude.

  Dillon, on the other hand, isn’t shy about giving me the eye while Opal helps my mom get into the truck’s backseat with her. He’s not gross about it or anything, but I notice. And I like it.

  “Everyone okay back there?” He twists in the driver’s seat to check on Opal and my mom. “Seat belts?”

  I find the fact he’s eighteen and cares about seat belts unbearably cute. I look into the backseat to see Opal helping my mom. She sits back and buckles herself. I put my own on, too.

  Dillon grins and starts the truck. “Just give me directions. Spring Lake Commons, right?”

  “Your mom must’ve told you a lot.” I stick my feet under the heater with a wiggle of relief when hot air starts blowing out. It feels like I’ve been some version of cold for weeks now.

  Dillon shrugs as he pulls up to the stop sign. He looks carefully both ways before pulling into the intersection. “She’s talked about you, yeah. She likes your mom.”

  I have to look out the window when he says this, because who could like my mom now, the way she is? I love her because she’s my mother, and I know Opal does. But do we like her? How can we?

  There’s something else I like about Dillon. He doesn’t fill the silence with lame jokes or talk just for the sake of having something to say. He turns on the radio and hums along under his breath to songs I don’t really recognize. Static hisses and the station wavers in and out until he tunes it, and then a voice breaks in. It’s not the local station, and doesn’t sound like a DJ. It’s a young kid who identifies himself as “the Voice,” and the station as “Telling the truth they don’t want you to know.”

  Dillon makes a face. “Oh, this guy.” He moves to change the station, but I stop him.

  “What guy?”

  “Ham radio,” he says. “Conspiracy theories. Stuff like that.”

  “Wait. I want to hear this.”

  “Sure.” He gives me another look from the corner of his eye.

  We’ve reached the light in front of the Foodland parking lot, and it turns red, so he stops. The Voice has a low, rumbly voice. He sounds rushed but not crazy.

  “Police and localized mili
tary units are asking citizens to remember that curfews are still in effect and that suspicious activity should be reported immediately. In other words, guys, stay off the streets after dark, or you might end up in a shock collar. And this just in from sources in the know, a man who lost control of himself in a local grocery store has been taken for questioning. Witnesses say the man, who has been identified but whose name is not yet being released, did not appear to be ill until he was unable to find the brand of frozen peas he was looking for. At that point, witnesses claim he shoved a grocery cart through the glass freezer case, then proceeded to break the others. Nobody was injured during the incident, but the suspect was taken into protective custody at once. No word has been released on whether this was a new case of Contamination, or something else. It’s out there, ladies and gents. It’s still out there.”

  With a glance in the rearview mirror at Opal, Dillon clicks off the radio. As soon as the light turns green, a car hurtles through the intersection. Tires and brakes squeal. It doesn’t hit us, but it hits the car in front of us, which had started to go. Both spin out of control, off to the side.

  Dillon doesn’t panic. He swerves to the right and passes the crunched cars without even letting out a curse. Traffic’s snarled up, but we shoot past the wreck and pull over to the side of the road. All of us except my mom turn around to look out the back window.

  “Wow,” Opal says. “That was close.”

  “Yeah.” Dillon sounds a little tense, and no wonder. If the car had hit us, it would’ve smooshed him.

  It takes us only a couple of seconds to see that this isn’t an ordinary car wreck when the driver’s-side door of the car that ran the light opens and a woman staggers out. She’s wearing a bathrobe and pink fuzzy slippers. Her hair’s up in a bun, and when the bathrobe swings open, I catch a glimpse of pajamas with flowers on them. Her arms are already swinging, her mouth open with screams we have no trouble hearing from here.

  “Oh, no,” Dillon says in a low, sick voice.

  Opal hides her eyes, but I can’t look away. I can’t stop staring at the fuzzy slippers. They’re not right. She should be wearing them at home to make a cup of cocoa, sitting with them propped up on an ottoman, reading a book. Pink fuzzy slippers aren’t meant to scuff along through broken glass and bits of twisted metal; they’re not made for the street.

  The driver of the other car isn’t getting out. The cars behind the wreck are stopped, but some are backing up, turning around. A few people standing in the parking lot are on their phones, calling the police, I guess. Or just watching. Nobody’s running to help, that’s for sure, even though the driver in the car that got hit must be hurt.

  The woman in the bathrobe screams louder. Then she rips open the door to the other car, reaches inside, and hauls out the driver. All I can see are flailing arms and kicking legs. The woman in the bathrobe is tossing the other person around like a rag doll.

  “Drive away,” I hear myself say. “Dillon. Please. Drive away now.”

  “Yeah.” Dillon puts the car in gear. “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”

  We pass two cop cars and an ambulance coming the opposite way. The sirens wail, the lights flash. Dillon once again pulls over to let them pass, even though he’s on the other side of the street, and when he moves on, neither of us says anything for a few minutes.

  I tense as we pass the field with the memorial, but my mom doesn’t get upset. In another minute after that, we’re pulling through the open gate at the entrance to the development. Dillon glances at me. He’s not smiling anymore.

  “Tell me where to turn.”

  “Just ahead here, take this first street.” I point.

  By the time we get to the driveway, Opal’s started chattering in the back to our mom. She’s not really saying anything that makes sense, more of a running commentary on the scenery and stuff outside. I think she’s just nervous, and I’m more glad than ever that Dillon doesn’t seem to need to talk when there’s really nothing to say.

  As soon as Dillon stops at the bottom of the driveway, Opal gets out and then goes around to the other door to open it and help my mom get out. “C’mon, Mama. We’re home.”

  My mom stands in the driveway and stares up at the house without expression, but when Opal takes her hand and pulls her along, she goes without protest. This leaves me and Dillon alone, standing by the truck, both of us not looking at the other.

  Well, at least I think so until I risk a glance at him and see him looking at me. It doesn’t matter then how cold the winter air is; I feel warm inside. I haven’t felt that way for a really long time.

  “Thanks for the ride, Dillon.”

  “You’re welcome.” He tips his chin toward the house. “You guys gonna be okay?”

  I think of the car crash and shiver, but nod. “Yeah. I think so. I just… everything… is so…”

  Before I realize it, I’m not shivering from cold but with all the emotions I’ve been trying hard to hold in tight against me all day long. I put my hand on the hood of Dillon’s dad’s truck, not caring if the metal’s hot enough to burn my palm. I need to hold on to something solid now. I need to keep myself stuck to something so I don’t spin out of control.

  “Hey, hey,” Dillon says softly. “It’s going to be okay. Right? You have your house and your mom back. Right?”

  “Right.” I take a long, slow, and deep breath. “Do you want to come in? I mean, we don’t have much, and the place is a wreck, but you could if you want to.”

  “Yeah, might save me from hitting a traffic jam on the way back.”

  We both stare. I clear my throat. “Yeah. That was… weird.”

  “The guy on the radio. Was he talking about what happened at the kennel? The guy they brought in? I saw a glimpse of him when I was helping your mom get ready.”

  Together, we get the bike and cart from the back of the truck. “I think so. The cop said he went nuts in the grocery store. Broke some glass. Do you think…?”

  But it’s too awful to say out loud. That the world as we know it is getting ready to change again, that no matter what the government and doctors have said, the Contamination isn’t gone. And this time it will somehow be worse because those who didn’t become Contaminated have lived for over a year thinking they’re safe.

  Dillon doesn’t have a problem with honesty. “I don’t have to tell you what I think, I’ll tell you what I know. The number of Contaminated being brought into the kennel was slacking off for about six months. I mean, we were operating at full capacity, no real room for overflow, you know? Even when people knew they could start coming to claim their families… well, a lot of them didn’t.”

  “Maybe some of them couldn’t. Or… you know, maybe some of them don’t have families left.” I don’t know why I’m defending strangers.

  Dillon shrugs. “Maybe.”

  There are lots of reasons why people wouldn’t claim their relatives. I can understand them all. “So then what happened? You said it was slacking off, and then what?”

  Our breaths puff out between us, silver clouds. My fingers are cold, even when I tuck them under my armpits. The house will be a little warmer, especially if I light a fire, but I don’t want Opal overhearing this.

  “Then we started getting more wild roundups. You know, people like your mom, they came from the research facilities.”

  I nod. Will my heart ever stop hurting? Will this ever stop making my stomach twist and turn?

  “Yeah. I know.” I sound bitter and expect Dillon to flinch, but he only nods like he understands, too.

  “Well, in the past six months or so, we started getting more pickups from the wild. Sure, we still had the cops bringing in the ones they got from raids and stuff, but there were more random ones than there’d been in a long time.”

  We’re both silent for half a minute, thinking of this. I’m not sure what’s worse: knowing my mom was picked up in the early days of her Contamination and kept in a research facility, where they did tests on her
, trying to figure out the reason for the disease, or if I’d found out the police had found her in someone’s basement, chained to the floor and used for something worse than experiments.

  “So why all of a sudden, do you think?”

  “More sweeps, maybe? Cleaning out neighborhoods.”

  Dillon shrugs. “The point is, a few of them looked… newer.”

  I know what he means by that. “Like the guy today. Like he’d just turned. Like the woman in the bathrobe.”

  “Yeah.” Dillon blows into his closed fists and dances a little in place. “Like them.”

  “Come in the house. I’ll light a fire and maybe I can find some hot tea or something.” He helps me push the bike and cart up the driveway.

  Opal’s chattering away at Mom, telling some sort of story that involves a lot of hand gestures. Mom’s eyes follow her every move, and though her face is still neutral, I can see a glimmer of something in her gaze. Maybe it’s my imagination.

  “Let me get a fire started. Then we can see what’s left in the pantry,” I tell Dillon.

  “You’ve only been back here for a few days?” Dillon watches me settle the wood into the fireplace.

  I shrug, and twist together some pages from an old magazine. I’m glad the match case that holds the long fireplace matches is waterproof. I can’t imagine trying to light a fire the old-fashioned way, like Boy Scouts do. I’d never be able to manage. The fire catches and glows, heat spreading out quickly, so I hold out my hands with a grateful sigh.

  “Velvet, I’m hungry.” Opal’s left off her story. Now she dances in front of me.

  “And apparently you have to pee,” I remark.

  She looks at Dillon. “Well… yeah.”

  “So, go! Jeez.” I look at him, too, but he’s just laughing.

  “Hungry!” Opal cries.

  “I’ll see what I can make. Go before you wet your pants.” I stand, my knees creaking. My neck hurts, too, I’ve just noticed. Actually, I’m not sure there isn’t a part of me that doesn’t ache or sting somehow. And even though I’m cold, my cheeks still feel hot. To Dillon, I say, “Want to help me in the kitchen?”