The Before (4 page)

Mom bristled. “I am not—”

“Thank you, Officer!” I said loudly.

He glared at Mom before backing away from the car. I reached past Mom to jab the window button on her door. Once the window was rolled up, we all let out a sigh of relief.

“That asshole!” Mom snarled.

“Asshole, asshole, asshole,” Mel chanted from the backseat.

I huffed nervously. Mom rarely cussed. Mel never cussed. I mean, never.

“I can’t believe that asshole thinks he can get away with this. I’ll have his job. I’ll fu—”

“Mom!” I glanced back at Mel, but she just rocked, now muttering asshole under her breath. Behind us, the cop inched his car forward until his high beams and the flashing lights flooded the car. “Let’s just go home.”

“No!” She slapped her hand against the steering wheel. Her voice blazed with indignation. She was her old self again. The crusader. The fighter. Joan of Arc. But her transformation from comatose to crusader had come at the worst time and in the worst possible way. “He can’t get away with this! We’re driving straight to the police station! I’m reporting him. I’m going to—”

“No, we have to be reasonable.” I ran a hand down Mom’s arm, trying to bank the fire of her anger. The last thing we needed right now was for her to go toe to toe with this police officer. “We have to think this through. If the governor really did declare martial law, reporting him won’t matter. We have to prioritize. We have to focus on getting out of here.”

Slowly, Mom turned to look at me. Her eyes were wide and glazed with a mixture of anger and hatred, seeped in fear. “Getting out of here?” she asked, and for a second I was afraid she’d gotten so wrapped up in the conflict with the cop that she’d completely forgotten what we were doing. But then she shook her head and said, “Yes. We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got to get you to Uncle Rodney’s.”

She reached with shaking fingers for the ignition and turned on the car.

“Yes,” I murmured. “We have to get out of here.” The whole state seemed to be going bat-shit crazy. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Chapter Six

Lily

I snuck out early the next morning and did a test run. I had checked online on the NPDCO’s website and gotten the latest information about the curfew, so I knew not to leave the house earlier than eight. At ten after eight I strolled out to the car like this was any other morning. Like I hadn’t been traumatized by all the latest news when I’d gone online this morning.

Of course, the truth was, I was freaked out. And it wasn’t just the victims of Microbe EN731 that had me worried. The virus hadn’t reached Dallas yet, but they were evacuating Houston. A mere four or five hours south of here, things were bad enough that they were evacuating the city. Not just any city, either. Houston was
huge
. It would take three days, at least, to get everyone out. If they could convince everyone to go. The last time they’d evacuated for a hurricane, there’d been cars stranded on the highways for days.

The fear and paranoia were spreading faster than the virus. Homicide rates in Dallas were more than twenty times higher than they’d been just a week ago. Every time, the explanation was the same: the shooter thought the victim showed signs of infection.

The media didn’t help things. At first they’d called the infected
zombies
, but the government had stopped that. One of the first actions the NPDCO had taken was to ban the use of the term, claiming it only spread fear. Instead, the media had started using the term “Tick.” By the time the new term caught on, the NPDCO was too busy trying to get the outbreak under control to worry about slang.

The police weren’t doing any better controlling things than the NPDCO. In the past twenty-four hours, more than forty officers had “discharged their weapons to subdue aggressive combatants.” Which I figured was a pretty fancy way of saying the police were shooting anyone who looked anything like a Tick or anyone who just plain pissed them off.

How close had we come last night to being classified as “aggressive combatants”? Were the police overreacting? Or was the entire population this ramped up on fear? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was we were lucky to be alive.

And we couldn’t risk going out again—not with Mel in the car for sure—until we knew if we could make it out of Dallas at least.

So even though I played casual as I strolled out to the car, inside I was freaking out. It didn’t help that the street was eerily quiet. We didn’t live in a super-social neighborhood, but on a normal day by eight there should have been parents leaving for work. The sounds of kids playing in backyards. This morning, the street was as empty as a ghost town. Of course, none of us in our family had left the house in days—except for the disastrous attempt last night. Probably everyone else on our block was the same. We were all glued to the TV. Too afraid to step outside.

Except for a lone cop car parked four houses down. I didn’t even see it until I’d almost reached my mom’s sedan. About the time I opened the driver’s door, he flicked on the lights for just a second and inched his car up until he was right on my bumper.

I knew before he even climbed out that it was the same guy. He’d been terrifying last night as his temper slowly unraveled, but as he unfolded his body from the cop car, I realized he was creepy even in the bright light of day. He was only an inch or so taller than I was, but he had the sort of dense muscular physique fed by weight training, donuts and middle age. My body tensed as he ambled down the sidewalk to me, the swagger in his step as obvious as the malicious gleam in his gaze.

There was absolutely no way I could defend myself against this guy. In a fight, he’d win, hands down.

In a fight? With a cop?

What the hell was I thinking?

Jesus, I’d been watching too much news.

I wasn’t going to fight a cop. I’d been a rule follower all my life. Like my mother, I didn’t buck the system, I worked within it. I’d never had a referral written. Not in eleven years of schooling. Hell, I’d never even gotten detention. I believed in logical arguments and peaceful organized protest. I believed in Amnesty International and Change.org. I didn’t lose my temper. I didn’t
fight
. Certainly not a
cop
.

I blew out a tension-filled breath and forced the muscles in my shoulders to relax as I twisted my mouth into my most compliant, honor-roll-student smile. “Good morning, Officer. Can I help you?”

He stopped less than a foot away from me—which was about eighteen inches too close for my comfort. “I thought I might have trouble from you again.”

“No. No trouble.” I blinked innocently. “Curfew ended at eight this morning. I checked online.”

He leaned in close to me, forcing me to crank my neck to look up at him. “You being a smart-ass?”

I tried not to flinch from the sour coffee stench of his breath. “No! Not at all. I followed your advice. From last night. You said we should read the details of the curfew on the NPDCO’s website and I wanted you to know that I had.”

He leaned a little closer, so that his face was inches from mine. The predatory gleam in his gaze sent shivers of dread down my spine. “I don’t have time to deal with smart-ass little punks like you.”

“I’m not—”

“I’m going to need to see that license again.” He spit out each word, like they were little darts that could actually bite into my skin.

The aggression radiating off the guy made my pulse quicken. Again, I fought against my fight-or-flight instincts. Against this guy, neither would do me any good and both would get a face full of concrete.

Moving slowly, I pulled my wallet from the back pocket of my shorts and handed him my driver’s license. He swaggered back to the patrol car, and for long, interminable minutes I stood there, fuming. Even though I wanted to, I didn’t ask why he needed to see my license again. We were right in front of my house. He knew that. What other information could he possibly need?

I should have called for my mom. I should have refused. I was under eighteen. Theoretically, that gave me some protection from this kind of thing, right? Theoretically, he shouldn’t even be talking to me without a parent around, right?

Yeah. I’m sure that’s what those other “aggressive combatants” told themselves too. Right before those other officers “discharged their weapons.”

Finally he returned with my license and thrust it back at me.

“You need to get your sweet ass back in that house and stay there until your transport orders come in, which I think you’ll find will be damn soon. I don’t want to see you again until then. If I do see you out wandering around, that would cause me to seriously question your judgment and your mental facilities. Now go.”

He didn’t need to tell me twice. Heart racing, I scrambled back to the house.

Chapter Seven

Lily

I eased the door closed, bolted it shut and just stood there for several long moments, my back pressed to the door, trembling. I wanted to kick something. Or hit something. Or at least slam the door over and over again, but I didn’t dare. I hadn’t told Mom I was going out and if she realized what I’d tried to do, she might freak. The fact that I’d failed was enough to make me freak, too.

What the hell?

What the hell was wrong with this guy?

What the hell was wrong with the world?

Was all of humanity really just one health crisis away from savagery? Was fear really this powerful? This uncontrollable?

I glanced out the peephole and saw the cop car slowly moving down the street. The fact that he’d left didn’t make me feel any better. I tried to see it from his point of view. In every city south of here—San Antonio, Houston, Austin—cops had been the first line of defense against the mutants. And the first to fall. He was probably just scared out of his mind. He was terrified. He was taking comfort in exerting what little control he had left—by terrorizing me. I shouldn’t take it personally.

But, yeah, that didn’t exactly make me feel any better. He was still an asshole. And he was still watching my door.

Finally, I pushed myself away and walked into the kitchen to find something for breakfast. We were down to stale granola bars, but it was better than breaking open the MREs.

I grabbed one and headed for the living room, where I found Mel and Mom sitting together on the sofa in front of the TV. I knew it was bad news because, well, for starters there hadn’t been any good news in a long time. Besides, Mom was holding Mel’s hand. If Mel needed that kind of comfort, something big had happened.

“What’s up?”

Mom barely glanced at me. Her eyes, red-rimmed and tear-glazed, were glued to the screen. “They’re fire—” Her voice broke and she paused before forcing out the rest of the words. “Firebombing Houston.”

“What?” Horrified, I turned to look at the images flickering across the screen. Aerial shots of downtown Houston showed a city ablaze, buildings crumbling. I felt my knees give out. I stumbled for the sofa but didn’t make it and instead just thudded to the ground.

Houston was the fourth largest city in the U.S. It was the home of banking and oil fortunes. And more than two million people. They couldn’t bomb Houston. There was just no way. No way.

“Wha . . .” I muttered, barely coherent as shock raced along my nerves. As I watched, the news helicopter swooped low over the sprawling city. An image filled the screen of one of Houston’s legendary mixmaster freeways. The graceful arc of highway lay crumbled and broken, like a child’s abandoned train tracks.

“How?” I swallowed. So much destruction. Then a burst of bile hit my throat and I swallowed again. My breath was coming in short bursts. “How? They can’t . . . When did . . .”

“I don’t know,” Mom murmured, her eyes glued to the TV screen. I couldn’t tell if it was shock or horror in her voice. Probably both. “They started in the night, I guess. It was just”—she gestured vaguely toward the screen—“on when I turned on the TV a few minutes ago.”

“But they only ordered Houston to evacuate two days ago.” Only two days. It had taken three days during the last hurricane. “There’s no way all those people made it out!”

“I know.”

“And that church!” I said, remembering something I’d seen just the previous night on TV. “There were all those people in that church who were refusing to leave! That was like two thousand people. What about them?”

“I know.” Mom’s voice broke over her words.

I looked over at Mom. Tears were streaming down her face. I hadn’t seen her cry. Not since our father left. Not once. Not even in sad movies. We’d watched
The Notebook
and she hadn’t shed a tear. But then, that was just a movie. This was real life. This was the lives of millions of people, over or changed forever.

I looked at Mel and she met my gaze, calm and thoughtful—scared, but in control. That’s when it hit me. Mom wasn’t comforting Mel. Mel was comforting Mom.

Mom and I were losing it. We were falling apart completely. And Mel was the one keeping it together. Somehow, staring into Mel’s eyes, I found the strength to fight my fear and panic. Not because I wanted to, but because I had no choice. We had to get our feet under us. The world was falling apart, but we had to get it together. We couldn’t be like those people in Houston who had refused to evacuate. We couldn’t just bury our heads in the sand, barricade ourselves in a church and pray for the best. This shit was bad, and we had to stick together. We had to fight for each other. We had to be smart.