The Before (6 page)

But how did Mel know anything? She listened more than I did. Paid attention. Noticed things. All the minutiae the rest of us filtered out, she panned through for nuggets of gold. So maybe she did know where his school was.

Crap.

I took an involuntary step closer to the TV screen and stared at the spot she’d pointed to. It was so close to that point of origin.

If Mel was right and that was where Carter’s school was, then he must be in danger. Or already dead.

The hurricane had just made landfall. A chill skittered down my arms.

Mel’s Slinky went suddenly silent and she turned to look at me.

“Jesus, it’s cold in here,” I muttered, turning on my heel. “I’m going to bump up the air conditioner.”

The wall thermostat was right outside Mom’s bedroom door. I tapped the up button until the air conditioner clicked off, then stood there for a minute, back pressed to the hallway wall, as I stared blankly ahead.

Until now, I’d been trying really hard not to think too much about the Ticks. About the actual monsters out there hunting humans. Hunting teenagers. It was easy not to think of them. The very idea of them, the idea that humans might mutate into these creatures, was so far-fetched it seemed like the plot of a bad Syfy movie. Like
Sharknado
or
Dinocroc
.

It was all too easy to let myself pretend it wasn’t really happening. That no one I knew was actually in danger from anything other than the overreacting government. Okay, so the police didn’t seem to be able to fight the Ticks. Then the National Guard would. Or the army. Someone.

Five minutes ago, there seemed to be about twenty layers of defense between us here, north of Dallas, and the Ticks.

But now? Now, with the point of her finger and a few bars of Rachmaninoff, Mel had told me that someone we knew was probably already dead. Or worse.

I thought of the footage I’d seen online yesterday morning when I’d crept out of bed early and borrowed Mom’s laptop. The stuff they couldn’t show on network or even cable TV and that Mom didn’t want Mel to see. The real footage of the Ticks.

I thought of the wild look in the eyes of the infected. The swollen jaw, the bulging around their mouths, like their teeth no longer fit in their mouths. And worst of all, the way they just kept coming, even when the police officers unloaded countless rounds right into the things’ chests.

Some tiny percentage of the people exposed to the virus turned into that. Had Carter? Or was he dead now?

I thought of the Carter I’d known, with his electric blue eyes and his smirky half smile. I thought of the way he used to mutter smart-ass comments under his breath about Coach Ballard, our biology teacher. I’d sat beside him—breathless—for two whole weeks trying to work up the courage to actually speak to him. If Coach Ballard hadn’t been such an idiot, I might never have worked up the nerve. But Coach was easy to make fun of and Carter’s near-silent chuckles made my stomach quiver.

Carter had been my first crush. And now . . .

Jesus, how was this possible? How had this thing—this virus—affected so many people? How was it possible that someone I knew, someone I’d sat beside in class for most of a year, someone I’d crushed on and yearned for, might be dead?

Sudden panic clutched at my heart. This couldn’t be happening, but it was. The danger was very, very real. And it was coming closer.

I crept back into the bedroom to where my mom stood, frowning down at the two suitcases. She’d zipped one shut, but the other one, Mel’s, was bulging in the middle, a pink backpack strap poking out the side.

“Mom—”

“I think I’m going to have to take the books out of your bag to make room for Mel’s backpack. You don’t mind, do you? If you only have room for one, which do you want to take? I’m not making promises. There might not be room even for one.”

For once, I didn’t argue about having to make a sacrifice for Mel. “I don’t care. Mom, I have a bad feeling about this.”

She looked up at me then, frowning. “Honey—”

“I don’t think we should go.”

“You know—”

I grabbed her arm, strangely desperate all of a sudden. “No. Listen to me. Let’s just grab whatever we have in the car and go to Uncle Rodney’s.”

“Honey,” my mom began, shaking her head. “You know we can’t do that.”

“We could. Uncle Rodney—”

“We barely made it out of our neighborhood the last time we tried.”

“But we have to try again! This time we have an excuse for all being in the car together. That cop can’t hassle us.”

My mom sighed and shook her head. “Don’t you get it? We’d never get out of Texas. They’ve set up roadblocks on every state border, trying to control the spread of the virus.”

“They can’t be on every road out of Texas. I know we could find a way. Let’s go!” I couldn’t explain this urge to run. Yeah, I’d been arguing to head to Uncle Rodney’s, but this was different. This was crushing panic. This was mindless fleeing.

“You want me to break the law? Defy the government? Put more people at risk?”

“I—” But I broke off. I didn’t know what I wanted other than not to go to this stupid Farm. “I’m just . . .”

Instead of being mad, Mom tilted her head to the side and just shook it. “Oh, honey . . .”

“Never mind. I know.” I turned away from her.

My mom must have seen right through me, because she gently pulled me down on the bed and sat beside me, cradling my hands in hers, like I was a child.

“This is temporary. Whatever you’re worried about going to the Farm facility, it’s temporary. I’ve already filed the exemption paperwork with the NPDCO. I’m sure you’ll be out again in no time.”

Right. Like I was going to trust the National Pandemic Disease Control Organization.

“The paperwork for Mel—”

“For
both
of you. I worked all afternoon contacting people. I have letters from her caseworker, her occupational therapist and her neurologist all saying that she can’t function without you. When her exemption comes through, yours will, too.”

“But—”

“Lily, this is what I do. I argue for a living. I fight the injustices. I trust that the government will keep you safe until I can get you out. Let me do my job. Trust me.”

Suddenly the fear of the past few days washed over me and I threw myself into my mother’s arms. She stilled for a second, then slowly wrapped her arms around me and held me so tight I almost couldn’t breathe, but it felt perfect, because for that one brief moment it felt like I had my mom back. Not the nervous, strung-out mom who had haunted the house for the past few days, but my real mom. The fighter. The tough one. The one who would do anything to protect her children.

What could I do except trust her? She’d been fighting for Mel all Mel’s life. Now it was her turn to fight for me too. And she would win. She would get us back, because there was no one better at her job than she was.

Funny, I had fought so long and hard for what little freedom I had, but now that I was faced with going off on my own to some facility until the government could get the Tick virus under control, I couldn’t shake the sick twist in my belly that told me this was all going to go horribly wrong.

And I just wanted the simple comfort of knowing Mom was here fighting for us and that soon we would all be together again. That together, we could get through anything.

Except when I pulled myself out of Mom’s arms, Mel was gone.

Chapter Nine

Mel

We are all barreling toward the edge of a cliff and my Road Runner brain sees no way to stop us. All the
meep meeping
in the world isn’t getting through to Mom and Lily. I hum and hum, everything from Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” to Darth Vader’s theme. But nothing can convey the crushing doom I see ahead.

It’s not myself I fear, it’s them. When Road Runner dashes off the cliff, she’s fast enough to make it to the other side, it’s the other characters who plummet. My whole life is a Looney Tunes cast of characters I don’t want to lose. But maybe life is loss anyway and maybe living is really just coping.

But coping has never been my strong suit. I shut down. Or I run. I retreat to my world of music, where the sweet rhythm of rhyming words calms my senses. Music has always made so much more sense to me than people. I can predict the crescendo of a symphony in a way I’ve never predicted human behavior.

Those suitcases Mom is packing are proof of that. I never would have seen that coming.  And now we must be going. Lily and I adrift on our own. Without Mom. Without Safety. Without consent.

There is no music in the world that will make this make sense. Without my music to retreat to, panic drives me. I do what I’ve done before. I run.

Chapter Ten

Lily

Mom and I both panicked. We ran through the house calling for her. Checking every bedroom. Every closet. Every nook. Even though we had no immediate reason to think she’d bolted, we just both knew.

When Mel got upset, she ran away.

When Dad left, she wandered off during one of Dallas’s rare ice storms. We found her five miles away, halfway between our house and Dad’s old office, with no coat on. She had to spend the night in the hospital for observation because they thought she might have hypothermia.

When Nanna died, she did it again. That time in Nebraska. Luckily a neighbor found her and called us that time.

This time, who knew what could happen. Was the cop still there? Would he harass her? How would she react? There was no scenario in which this would end well.

Mom and I met back up by the front door, both of us breathing hard, our voices already hoarse from the screaming.

We stood there panting for a second. Mom looked as freaked out as I felt.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“Did you see any sign of her?”

I shook my head.

Mom frowned, sucking in her lower lip to gnaw on it. “We’ll have to call the police. Ask them to look for her.”

“Are you kidding? They can’t look for her! That will freak her out for sure! She’ll bolt or scream or something. Then she’ll be in serious trouble.”

Or dead. But I couldn’t say that aloud. Mom didn’t need to hear that and I . . . I just couldn’t even . . .

“Where do you think she went?” Mom asked.

“I don’t know. Anywhere. She just freaked. She bolted. She—”

But I cut myself off. I couldn’t afford to think that way. If she’d just bolted, she could be anywhere. There was no way I’d find her before the police. Not when they were out there patrolling the streets to enforce curfew.

No. I had to assume she was heading somewhere specific. I had to assume she had something in mind.

I blew out a breath. “Okay, where would she have gone? Do you have any ideas?”

“I don’t know. You’ve spent more time with her this summer than I have. You know her better than I do.” Mom looked like admitting this made her feel sick. “When Nanna died she was just wandering.”

“As far as we know. We never asked, did we?”

“When your father left, she was obviously going to his office.”

They’d been so close. He rarely brought her with him on days when he had classes, but on days when he only had office hours he’d let her tag along. She’d loved the peace and quiet of his office on campus.

“Right,” I said. “She liked his office because she was comfortable there. Because it made her feel at peace. And it was quiet.”

“So where else is she comfortable? The library? The rec center?”

“No,” I said with sudden certainty. “She’d go to the high school.”

She’d hated elementary school and middle school, but she’d loved the organized seriousness of her advanced placement classes.

“I’ll go look for her. If I don’t find her at the school, the library isn’t too far beyond that. She can’t have gone far. She’s only had a few minutes’ lead.”

“You can’t go out there! It’s past curfew.”

I yanked my phone out of my back pocket and checked the time. Shit. Eight forty.

“I don’t care. I have to go look for her. It has to be me or you. You know that! If someone else finds her—”

Mom sucked in a deep breath. Clearly that thing I couldn’t even think had already occurred to her. “Okay. But I’ll go. I’m not sending you out there after curfew.”

“No! It can’t be you.” As I spoke, I grabbed my sneakers from by the front door and started to pull them on. “If she gets picked up by the police they’ll bring her back here. You have to be here to talk to them if they do.”

Mom watched me, her expression grim. Neither of us stated the obvious. If Mel was seen by one of the police patrols, we’d be lucky if they brought her back here. We’d be lucky if she could even talk to them enough to tell them where she lived. Luckier still if they gave her the chance to. I thought of that cop from the other night and how freaked out he’d been by Mel’s keening vocalizations. Even with us there to explain, he’d thought she might be infected with the Tick virus.