The Before (2 page)

And it was.

Chapter Two

Mel

Too many people think quiet means dumb, as if saying a lot of thoughts is the same as thinking them. People are always talking at me, trying to make me understand their point of view or their agenda. No one ever understands that their words are all just noise to me. And that their
sounds
tell me more about them than their words ever could. I’ve stopped trying to explain it.

That’s okay. I understand. Understand that I’m different from everyone else.
Different, not less,
my mother always says, trying to make me feel better about being on the spectrum.
Different, not better,
my father used to whisper, before he left, because he understood—like no one else has—just how different I’ve always been. It’s called the autism spectrum because we spectrum kids are like a many-colored rainbow. Some people only see the rainbow. Others don’t even see us at all. Like their humanity hasn’t equipped them with the light-fracturing prism that will let them see people different from themselves. And even people who see the rainbow don’t think about all the spectrums of light no ordinary human can see.

I think of Dad now, reminded again of how right he is, because I get now what he meant. Yes, I’m different. I see and I understand better and faster than everyone else—even my twin, my match. My Lily can’t keep up with the way my mind works. My brain is wicked fast. Like Road Runner.

And here’s the
not better
part: I see it. Almost immediately, I understand how bad this is. How bad it’s going to get. I see it.

That’s how fast my Road Runner brain moves. But even though my brain can see the thousand rickety steps between here and there, my tongue can’t keep up. So fast I lose my words. I have no way to describe this slippery slope humanity will slide down.

My Road Runner’s brain can only
Meep, meep
.

Chapter Three

Lily

A week later, I still didn’t really believe it was happening. It just seemed too bizarre. Too much like science fiction to be real. Besides, the drama at home kept me occupied.

Mel hadn’t spoken in a full sentence since the first day. Uncle Rodney called three or four times a day. Though he always started with his request that we just get in the car and drive up to his place, he also included helpful tips about how to survive the coming apocalypse. Like I really needed to know how many drops of bleach it took to purify a gallon of water or how to make a candle out of a can of Crisco. But me not wanting to know this crap didn’t keep him from telling me.

Maybe I could have handled Mel’s silence and Uncle Rodney’s weirdness if Mom had reacted differently. My mom. My tough, balls to the wall, cynical, smart mom. This was a woman who pushed us and fought for us and drove us crazy, but who never ever backed down from a fight. From the second she saw the news about the outbreak, she lost it. I don’t mean she lost her temper, I mean she lost herself. All that fire and determination got buried under an avalanche of fear and doubt. She spent hours in front of the TV. I guess we all did.

Strangely, that freaked me out the most. Mom had always been fierce about limiting Mel’s “screen time.” No more than an hour a day. Ever. But after the outbreak of Microbe EN731, the news was on 24/7. No one left the house. I took over cooking. Mom didn’t even notice.

Four days after we first heard the news, I stood in the kitchen pantry staring at the contents. Mel sat on the kitchen table, swinging her legs back and forth and chewing bubble gum, her head tilted at an odd angle as she watched me in the birdlike way she had. She didn’t say anything, but I knew she was hungry, just like I knew she was upset.

I think her reversion to nursery rhymes freaked her out also, because she’d barely spoken since saying the British were coming. In the best of times, no one in our house was a great cook. I’d been making due with the pantry basics, but we were down to a can of pumpkin and a box of oatmeal, and Mel’s huge tub of Dubble Bubble.

I shut the pantry and went to find Mom. I found her in her bedroom, sitting on the window seat, her cell phone pressed to her ear.

I wasn’t above using her distraction against her. I gave a small wave and whispered, “I’m going to the store for food. I’ll be back soon.”

She leapt to her feet. “You can’t go out there.”

I stopped in the doorway. So much for the quiet getaway.

She muttered something into the phone and then lowered it as she stalked across the room. “You can’t go out.”

“Mom—”

“You’ve seen the reports. Those things are targeting teenagers.”

Of course I’d seen the reports. Once an hour for the past four days, I’d heard that. “Mom, the virus hasn’t spread this far north yet.”

“There’ve been sightings in Waco and a hundred and fifty-three new cases confirmed in New Orleans, Phoenix, and Atlanta. It was on the news this morning.”

“We still have to eat.”

“We’ll eat the MREs that Uncle Rodney sent us for Christmas.”

For as long as I could remember, Uncle Rodney had been sending us meals ready to eat for Christmas presents. Mom always just shook her head and laughed about crazy Uncle Rodney. Now I guess he wasn’t the only crazy one in the family.

“Fine then. Let’s bail.” I hurled the suggestion at her, desperate to say something that would snap her out of her stupor. “Let’s pack up all the MREs and go to Uncle Rodney’s. But, Mom, this isn’t rational to just hide in the house and starve.”

“I’m not going to argue about this!” Her voice rose sharply and she thrust the phone at me. “Discuss it with your father.”

“My . . . what?”

She pressed the phone into my hand.

My father?

My father, who had left when Mel and I were ten? Without a word of warning or explanation? My father, who I’d barely seen in the past seven years? That father?

My hand trembled as I raised the phone to my ear. “Dad?”

“Hey, pumpkin. How are you?” His voice washed over me. A deep baritone of soothing charm. It was the voice of
Goodnight Moon
and
Winnie the Pooh
. The voice that had coddled me and coaxed me through the first decade of my life. Before disappearing completely.

“Dad?” I asked again stupidly.

“I don’t want you to worry, sweetheart.”

Worry? He didn’t want me to worry? The world was falling apart and Mom was unraveling faster than Mel. And he didn’t want me to worry? And apparently things were bad enough that Mom had called Dad for backup.

I couldn’t even fathom how that had come about.

“I’m going to come and get you,” my father was saying in the phone.

“You’re going to come?” I asked stupidly.

“Well, I’m sending a car.”

“A car?” My damn brain couldn’t keep up with the conversation.

“Yes. I’m arranging it now. It should be there by tomorrow. The driver will pick the three of you up and bring you to me down here at the Ranch.”

“Huh?” It wasn’t a question so much as a mumble of confusion. When he left, Dad had taken a job at some think tank in BFE Texas. Far as I could tell, the place was about fifty miles west of No-one’s-heard-of-it and due north of Exactly-Nowhere. But those weren’t precise coordinates. Dad had never brought us out for a visit because the place was so top secret it wasn’t even on any maps.

“We’ll all be together again,” Dad murmured in that soothing voice of his. “And—”

“Wait a second. You’re sending a car to pick us up? To brings us to the Ranch?” I could hear the panic and anger in my voice. I could feel the hysteria edging through my veins. I didn’t do anything to stop it. I didn’t even try to calm down. I didn’t want to.

“Now, pumpkin—” my father crooned.

“Lily, don’t talk to your father like—” my mom said at the same time.

I ignored them both. I held the phone out in front of me, yelling at it. “The whole world is falling apart around us. There are genetic mutants eating their way to Houston. Mel is borderline catatonic and you want to send a
car
to come get us?” I wasn’t sure what pissed me off more. The fact that after all this time he finally wanted to bring us to the Ranch—that he seemed to finally want to be part of our lives—or the fact that he still didn’t care enough to actually come himself. That he was sending a car to get us. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

I pounded the
end call
button and threw the phone onto Mom’s bed. It skittered across the surface and fell off the other side.

Somehow this seemed to snap Mom out of it. She blinked at me, almost looking surprised to see me standing there. Then she scowled. “Lily, you shouldn’t talk to your father that way.”

“I shouldn’t—” I sputtered, unable to put together a coherent thought. “I haven’t talked to my father in five years. Five, Mom. He hasn’t called. He hasn’t emailed or texted. He hasn’t sent a freakin’ birthday card, let alone a child support payment. In five years. He has no right to—” Again my thoughts tripped over my words. “He has no rights. As far as I’m concerned, in this family, he has no rights.”

But my mother still stood before me, twisting her fingers into knots, my arguments barely even registering. For the first time in days I looked at her. Really looked at her. She was dressed in a ratty pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt for a carnival at the elementary school Mel and I had attended. She obviously hadn’t brushed her hair in days. She didn’t have on any makeup, except for the dark smudges of mascara under her eyes. How was this my mother?

My mother was no-nonsense and practical, but she always, always looked her best. A year ago she’d had the flu and couldn’t get out of bed for a week and she’d still looked better than this.

Somehow, in the past few days, I’d been so focused on keeping Mel distracted and keeping us fed that I hadn’t even noticed how unhinged my mother had gotten.

I forced a few deep breaths and then took her hands in mine. I wracked my brain for a logical argument to convince her. Something other than my bone-deep certainty that trusting Dad was a mistake. “Mom, let’s think about this. Whatever else is going on, going somewhere with Dad isn’t the solution. He abandoned us. We can’t trust him. Besides, that think tank of his is south of here. It’s closer to the point of origin for the outbreak. Why would we move closer to the danger?”

She met my eyes, her expression vague. “But it’s such a good idea.”

“Why? Why is it a good idea?”

“It’s what your father wants,” she protested weakly.

I was ready to throw up my hands in frustration. “Mom, think about this. Haven’t you always said that you lost yourself when you were with Dad? That he could talk you into anything? That you couldn’t trust yourself around him? That when you were with him you made more bad decisions than at any other time in your life?”

She blinked, like she was surprised by my words. Like the idea was completely unexpected rather than something she’d said more times than I could count. “Well, yes, I suppose I have said that. But that was rather harsh of me. I should never have been so hard on him. I’m sure—”

Finally, I just stood up straight, dropping her hands. “No.”

“What?”

“The answer is no. No, we’re not going with him. I’m sure Mel agrees.” After all, when Dad left, it hurt Mel most of all. They had been so close. One day she was the center of his universe, the next he was gone. I knew without even asking her that she wouldn’t want to go with Dad either. “I’m not even going to discuss this anymore.”

That was a phrase Mom always used to end a conversation, but my voice trembled as I said it. What would I do if she called my bluff? I had no backup plan, but I knew running off with Dad was a bad idea.

Dad had left when Mel and I were ten and the truth was, sometimes it felt like I barely remembered that part of my life. Yeah, it was only seven years ago, but those peaceful childhood years passed in a blur of familial bliss. When Dad left—with almost no warning at all—everything had changed. I didn’t know what went wrong or why Dad left. Mom never talked about that. But I did know this: She was an entirely different person after he was gone. Not embittered or cynical, but tough, focused. The mom I’d known for the past seven years didn’t do anything just because someone else thought it was a good idea.

The fact that Mom caved to Dad’s wishes scared me as much as the bloodsucking monsters I’d seen on the TV news footage, because it meant she was so afraid she didn’t know what to do. Yeah, my mom was sometimes a pain in the ass, but she wasn’t afraid of anything. Not normally.

I hated her fear even more than I hated my own.

“Mel and I aren’t going off to Dad’s and that’s final,” I said.

Normally, that kind of attitude would get my butt grounded for weeks, but today tears sprung up in her eyes and she said, “But, Lily, if you don’t go to your father’s, then I’m going to have to send you off to one of those camps.”