Bad Taste in Boys

by Carrie Harris

  Dad looked at me like I was insane. And really, I doubted Mom would notice if I dug up the living room and installed a swimming pool, even if she wasn’t overseas. There was a reason we had a cleaning lady come once a week.

  “Well, if it means that much to you, I’m not going to discourage you from performing your chores,” he said, but he was watching me now. My erratic behavior had definitely gotten his attention. At this rate, I’d be lucky if he didn’t decide to get me drug-tested.

  I chuckled. It sounded so fakey stupid, but Dad was already back at the keyboard poundage and didn’t seem to notice. I stooped down to reach under the desk and extract the zombie part from our dog’s mouth. Once I got my hands on that foot, I was going to brush Armstrong’s teeth about twenty times. He was a face licker, and I couldn’t even think about that without wanting to throw up.

  Armstrong was curled around his treat. I’d have to drag him out from under the desk to get the foot. I grabbed his foreleg and tugged, and he growled at me.

  “Hey, Army,” I cooed. “You want a walk? You can have your treat after we come back in.”

  He went back to chewing.

  “I think he wants to be left alone, Kate,” Dad said.

  “Yeah, but I need to take him out.”

  “In your robe?” He arched a brow. “You’re not making any sense, Kate.”

  “Well, I’ll get dressed again,” I replied somewhat desperately.

  This wasn’t going well. I pulled the periodic-table robe more tightly around myself, grabbed the dog, and tugged. He bit me. Not really hard, because he wasn’t that kind of dog, but enough of a nip that it drew some blood. I yelped and withdrew my hand.

  “Armstrong, bad!” Dad exclaimed, rolling up a piece of paper and tapping the dog on the hind end with it. I was surprised when he reached across the desk and biffed me on the head too. I put my hand to my scalp like the paper might have damaged me. “And you should know better, Kate. I told you he didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “Sorry,” I said, but my attention was on Armstrong. He picked up a huge piece of rawhide shaped like an egg roll, gave me a reproachful glance, and walked out into the hall. I gaped at him for a minute before stooping to look under the desk. There was no sign of the foot. Just a couple of scattered bits of dog chew.

  After a quick meltdown in the bathroom, I went downstairs. When I turned the corner at the bottom of the basement steps, Jonah leapt at me, waving a plastic bag in my face.

  I’d never been so happy to see a Country Market bag in my life.

  “It’s a foot! A foot!” He kept waving the bag around like he was the newest member of the flag corp. My unnatural fraternal tolerance quickly wore off. I snatched the bag away and barely restrained myself from hitting him with it.

  “Enough! It’s a foot. I get it. Now give it to me so I can hide it in my underwear drawer before we get arrested for possession of dismembered body parts.”

  “You’re no fun.” He sulked.

  “I don’t have time for fun. I’ve got to prove there’s a communicable disease that makes people act like zombies and figure out how it’s spreading before everyone’s infected. So you’ll have to excuse me for not capering around like an idiot, okay?”

  “Okay.” He sat down in his computer chair, looking up at me from under a fringe of overlong hair. I would have been more inclined to take him seriously if he didn’t look like such a wimpy emo-geek hybrid. And the fifteen empty cans of Mountain Dew that ringed his keyboard didn’t exactly contribute to an air of responsibility. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing, Jonah.”

  “That’s no fair! You never let me have any fun, and I saved your butt today. Twice! I deserve—”

  “Wait a minute.” I held up a hand. “There is something you can do. If you’re interested.”

  “What? I’ll do anything.” He was so excited he practically panted.

  “Say I wanted to hack into a teacher’s computer. Could you do that?”

  “Are you kidding? I hacked into the duct-tape guy’s Roargan Kross account and stole his Ring of Righteous Kills out from under his nose. I can get into anything. Are you talking a remote hack, or do you have physical access to the hard drive?”

  “Well, I don’t exactly have it in my pocket. I guess we could wait until tomorrow morning if we had to, but I’d rather not. Could you do it from here?”

  “If it was important enough.”

  “You’ve seen what’s at stake.” I paused. I was pretty sure he’d do it, but I couldn’t resist adding a little extra incentive. “If Kiki isn’t infected yet, she probably will be soon. It’s spreading fast.”

  The thought of a footless Kiki was too much for Jonah to bear. “You can count on me,” he said. His voice cracked midsentence. It actually made me feel better. He sounded like a total computer geek, and that was exactly what I needed.

  “Good,” I said. “Coach gave some of the varsity players injections from a bunch of unmarked vials, and I think that’s how the infection started. I need to know where he got those vials. I’m trying to put a packet of information together to send to Dr. Ho tomorrow, and this is a really important piece of the puzzle. Get what I mean?”

  “Gotcha. So this information is stored on his computer at school?”

  “I hope so. But I don’t know for sure.”

  “Well, we’ll never know until we look, will we?” He cracked his knuckles one by one; the sound made me wince. I hated it when he did that.

  “Anything I can do to help?” I asked.

  “Dew me. I’m going to need a serious caffeine buzz if I’m going to stay awake, and I don’t know how long this’ll take.”

  “I think there’s a six-pack in the fridge. I’ll get it. And if you want, I’ll stay up with you,” I offered, heading for the stairs.

  “Don’t bother. You’ll only distract me.” He looked up from the computer screen and grinned. “Besides, you need to rest your zombie-kicking butt. If this thing is spreading as fast as you say it is, we might have an interesting trip to school tomorrow.”

  After that comment, it took me forever to fall asleep. I spent hours lying in bed awake, trying to mathematically predict the spread of a zombie epidemic. It didn’t bode well for the human race or for my sleep schedule.

  forgot to set my alarm, but I was such an overachiever that I woke myself up without it. I knew I should brush my teeth first, but I couldn’t restrain my curiosity. I went down the hall and tapped on Jonah’s door. No answer. The bed was empty when I opened the door. I told myself firmly that there was no need to panic, because geekboy had fallen asleep at the computer before, but my stomach still twisted with nerves as I went downstairs.

  He was snoozing on the keyboard. It was tempting to snap a picture, but I was too tired to go upstairs for the camera.

  “Jonah, wake up,” I said, shaking his shoulder.

  “Wha—?” He lifted his head and looked at me with bleary eyes.

  “Did you find anything?”

  He rubbed his eyes and said something that might have been English.

  “We don’t have time for this. Go take a shower. I’ll put some coffee on. You can brief me at the bus stop.” I glanced at the clock hanging near the stairs. “I don’t want to be late.”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  I made it outside first. It was cold, drizzly, and still dark, which did wonders for my nerves. I huddled next to the garage door, because it was the best chance I had of not freezing my butt off, and as an added bonus it was a good way to keep zombies from sneaking up on me. The neighborhood seemed abnormally quiet this morning. Usually I could hear dogs barking and kids on their way to school and stuff. I kept telling myself it was just because of the icy rain, but I didn’t really believe myself because I was a crappy liar.

  Jonah walked out with his sword.

  “There’s no way the driver’s going to let you on the bus with that thing.”

  “Yeah, I thought of that,” he said. “I’m telling he
r it’s—”

  He broke off abruptly, dropped the sword, and dashed to the bushes alongside the garage. I heard the unmistakable sound of puking. I was becoming quite the expert on it.

  When he straightened up and wiped black, ropy smears of saliva from his chin, it shook me so badly I forgot to breathe. I had assumed he was out of danger since everyone else I knew who’d been exposed was already exhibiting symptoms. Maybe it took longer if you contracted the disease by puke instead of by bite. As if that made it okay that my little brother was infected.

  From the horrified look on his face, Jonah knew what this meant. I was glad I wouldn’t have to tell him. I didn’t think I could.

  “Maybe you should go back inside,” I whispered.

  “No.” He picked up the sword and brandished it defiantly, like maybe the virus would manifest in midair so he could whack it.

  “But—” I reached a hand out to him.

  “No!” He shoved me away and threw the sword. It spun through the air, hitting the side of the garage about two inches from my head. By the time I regained my balance, he was already halfway across the yard.

  “Jonah, wait!”

  “I’m dangerous,” he panted. “Stay … away.”

  He leapt the hedge and sprinted around the side of the house. I heard the crash of his footsteps through the overgrown vegetable garden and the roar of the bus as it shifted gears at the bottom of the hill. It would be here in a minute.

  I started to follow him automatically, because when had I ever done anything Jonah told me to? I was his older sister, which pretty much meant that when he gave me an order, I was contractually obligated to do the exact opposite. But I stopped after only a few steps.

  He was right. Sure, I could take him in a fight if he lost control; I had about five inches and fifteen pounds on him. But that didn’t mean I should chase him. The best thing I could do for him and all the other infected was prove the existence of a virus, and that meant going to school and checking my lab results.

  The bus hissed to a stop at the end of our driveway. I grabbed Jonah’s backpack off the ground and jogged toward the street, scanning the bushes the entire way.

  The sound of some obnoxious eighties tune blared out the open bus door. I climbed the steps and looked for an empty seat. I was the only upperclassman who still rode the stupid thing, so you would have thought I’d have the right to claim a good spot. But in the skewed world of our suburban high school, brain-dead freshman jock outranked senior biology goddess. I just hoped that the whole brain-dead part wasn’t literal, because the only empty spot was directly across from one of the JV linebackers. If he was infected, I was in trouble. His pectoral muscles were about the size of Hawaii.

  I sat down, watching Hawaii carefully in case he decided to attack. He smiled at me, but I’d learned my lesson. One minute they were sitting pretty; the next they were trying to bite your kneecaps off.

  Jonah didn’t like it when I went through his things, but under these circumstances he’d just have to deal. I was hoping to find some evidence, and I wasn’t disappointed: inside his backpack were a few papers with my name scrawled across them.

  It was a short stack of email printouts. The first one said:

  To: hbrzeszczak@bayview.k12.oh.edu

  From: sswan@bayview.k12.oh.edu

  Hank,

  I saw the game last night against Lakeway. Sorry you’re having such a tough time! Think you’d be interested in the new performance enhancer I’ve been developing? I’m calling it Playwell, and it’s made to solve problems like yours. In lab tests on mice, Playwell significantly increased endurance and pain tolerance, which could give you the edge you need to win a game this season. I’ve noted some slight increases in aggression as well. What do you have to lose … other than another season’s worth of games and the respect of your fellow coaches? Let me know.

  Best, Siobhan Swan

  I felt like I’d been gut-punched. All those mice I’d worked on for her so-called government project … Had those been test subjects for this performance enhancer? The symptoms—aggression, endurance, pain tolerance—those things described the victims of the zombie virus. Had I helped infect all those people?

  I flipped the page with shaking hands.

  To: sswan@bayview.k12.oh.edu

  From: hbrzeszczak@bayview.k12.oh.edu

  Definitely interested. Mentioned it to a buddy of mine who coaches rugby at the military base. Do you have enough for him too?

  Hank

  A couple of brief emails arranged and confirmed a delivery time, nothing very interesting. But then Coach balked.

  To: sswan@bayview.k12.oh.edu

  From: hbrzeszczak@bayview.k12.oh.edu

  Swannie, not sure I should be giving my boys this stuff without testing it first. Took a dose this morning. If I don’t notice any side effects by tomorrow, I’ll do the linebackers before homecoming. I’ll need a replacement vial for the one I used. Drop it in my mailbox?

  Hank

  And then there was another email from Coach. Based on the date, he could have sent it while we were at the bonfire. By that time, he knew something was wrong. I was willing to bet that was when he tore up his office, although I didn’t know for sure. The email read:

  To: sswan@bayview.k12.oh.edu

  From: hbrzeszczak@bayview.k12.oh.edu

  Swannie, got to talk. There’s a problem.

  Call me.

  But Swannie didn’t respond, or Jonah didn’t print it, or maybe she called like he asked. But I bet she didn’t. She was probably too busy carting all the evidence away in that big box I saw her taking out of the lab.

  “How stupid am I?” I muttered, staring out the bus window. I should have known something was up; she wouldn’t even let me touch the freaking thing. And I was so blinded by my whole scientist hero-worship thing that I didn’t even think twice.

  When the bus pulled to a stop in the loop outside the school, I launched myself out of the seat. Hawaii got up too. “Move!” I squeezed past him and stalked down the aisle.

  For the first time in the known history of the universe, everyone shrank back in their seats to let the geek go first.

  ur bus was always ungodly early, so the chem lab was dark and empty when I arrived. Sunbeams trickled in through the frosted glass windows, and the lab equipment made twisted shadows on the floor. I didn’t dare turn on the lights. I didn’t want to scare Swannie off if she was here.

  I was halfway through the main lab when Swannie’s door opened and I saw a huge backlit Afro before the light clicked off. She was standing with her back to me, fiddling around with the locks. “Going somewhere?” I said, like a character from a TV movie.

  She let out a little shriek and dropped something on her foot.

  “Kate!” She put a hand to her chest. “Oh my god. You scared me.”

  “Whoops.”

  “What’s up? I didn’t expect to see you this morning.”

  “I wanted to check on my cultures.” I looked from the brown paper bag on the floor to the guilty look on her face. She’d taken them. I knew it. “You haven’t seen them, have you?”

  “Um,” she said, her free hand reaching up to toy nervously with her necklace. “No, I didn’t notice any cultures. Are you sure you ran some?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. So what’s in the bag?”

  “Nothing! I mean, lunch. Nothing important.”

  “Ah.” I nodded. “Did you buy lunch using the money you made on Playwell?”

  “I’m not making any money on it!” She clapped a hand to her mouth, but it was too late. We both knew I had her.

  “It’s making people sick, Swannie. A lot of people.”

  “How do you know about Playwell?” she asked.

  “Did you make it infective on purpose, or was that just a happy coincidence?” I asked, ignoring her question.

  “In—infective?” she stammered. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, you know exactly what I mean. My brother’s infected
now, and it’s all because of you. And you made me a part of it. That’s the worst thing of all; part of this is my fault! All that mouse work you gave me was really a bunch of illegal drug testing!” I shouted. “I was so flattered that you’d let me help that I didn’t even stop to question why you have all this stuff in a high school lab. I didn’t think to ask what you were doing because I trusted you. How could you do that to me?”

  Swannie had grown very pale. “I’m sorry, Kate. I—”

  “Bull. If you really cared, you’d be trying to fix things instead of covering your butt. You took my cultures, didn’t you? You’d better give them back before I take them from you by force.”

  I wasn’t a violent person, but I meant what I said. I didn’t understand how she could do something like this. She had been my idol—and she’d totally let me down.

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said. “I just needed to make a little money. It’s hard to get by on a teacher’s salary. You’ve got to believe me, Kate. That’s why I took all those research materials home. I’ve been trying to find a cure.”

  “Didn’t you think maybe you should tell someone in the meantime? Even an anonymous tip is better than nothing. Because otherwise, it’s just going to spread. Everyone is going to turn into a zombie eventually if we don’t do something. But you’re too worried about yourself to think of anything else, aren’t you?”

  She flinched. “It was just supposed to be a performance enhancer. I wasn’t trying to hurt anybody.” Then she hesitated. “Kate … we could work together to find a cure. In fact, we could maybe write a paper on it. A real paper, in a real science journal. We could put your name on it if you wanted.”

  It was a desperate bribe from a desperate person. But still … it made me pause. Sure, I was smart. I had great grades. But brainiac physician wannabes are a dime a dozen. If you want to get into the best pre-med programs, you have to be able to play concertos while blindfolded or spend your summers teaching sustainable farming to kids in Africa. I was determined to get into med school but partly afraid that I couldn’t compete with people like that. But if I was the lead author on a scientific paper that described a new disease and its cure? I could choose any school I wanted.