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Jack took a small step forward, trying to catch a peek at Jill. She was still unconscious, her face small and gray. Mom and Dad seemed to have eight hands each as they cleaned and swabbed and dabbed. The worst wound was the one on her forearm. It was ugly, and it wasn’t just one of those bites when someone squeezes their teeth on you; no, there was actual skin missing. Someone had taken a bite out of Jill, and that was a whole other thing. Jack could see that the edges of the ragged flesh were stained with something dark and gooey.
“What’s all that black stuff?” asked Mom as she probed the bite. “Is that oil?”
“No,” barked Dad, “it’s coming out of her like pus. Christ, I don’t know what it is. Some kind of infection. Don’t get it on you. Give me the alcohol.”
Jack kept staring at the black goo, and he thought he could see something move inside it. Like tiny threadlike worms.
Uncle Roger kept talking, his voice level and detached. “We saw her teacher, Mrs. Grayson, lying on the ground, and two kids were kneeling over her. I—I thought they were praying. Or . . . something. They had their heads bowed, but when I pulled one back to try to see if the teacher was okay . . .”
Roger stopped talking. He raised his injured left hand and stared at it as if it didn’t belong to him, as if the memory of that injury couldn’t belong to his experience. The bandage was red with blood, but Jack could see some of the black stuff on him, too. On the bandages and on his skin.
“Somebody bit you?” asked Jack, and Roger twitched and turned toward him. He stared down with huge eyes. “Is that what happened?”
Roger slowly nodded. “It was that girl who wears all that makeup. Maddy Simpson. She bared her teeth at me like she was some kind of animal, and she just . . . she just . . .”
He shook his head.
“Maddy?” murmured Jack. “What did you do?”
Roger’s eyes slid away. “I . . . um . . . I made her let go. You know? She was acting all crazy and I had to make her let go. I had to . . .”
Jack did not ask what exactly Uncle Roger had done to free himself of Maddy Simpson’s white teeth. His clothes and face were splashed with blood, and the truth of it was in his eyes. It made Jack want to run and hide.
But he couldn’t leave.
He had to know.
And he had to be there when Jill woke up.
Roger stumbled his way back into his story. “It wasn’t just her. It was everybody. Everybody was going crazy. People kept rushing at us. Nobody was making any sense, and the rain would not stop battering us. You couldn’t see, couldn’t even think. We—we—we had to find Jill, you know?”
“But what is it?” asked Jack. “Is it rabies?”
Dad, Mom, and Roger all looked at him, then at one another.
“Rabies don’t come on that fast,” said Dad. “This was happening right away. I saw some people go down really hurt. Throat wounds and such. Thought they were dead, but then they got back up again and started attacking people. That’s how fast this works.” He shook his head. “Not any damn rabies.”
“Maybe it’s one of them terrorist things,” said Roger.
Mom and Dad stiffened and stared at him, and Jack could see new doubt and fear blossom in their eyes.
“What kind of thing?” asked Dad.
Roger licked his lips. “Some kind of nerve gas, maybe? One of those—whaddya call ’em?—weaponized things. Like in the movies. Anthrax or Ebola or something. Something that drive
s people nuts.”
“It’s not Ebola,” snapped Mom.
“Maybe it’s a toxic spill or something,” Roger ventured. It was clear to Jack that Roger really needed to have this be something ordinary enough to have a name.
So did Jack. If it had a name, then maybe Jill would be okay.
Roger said, “Or maybe it’s—”
Mom cut him off. “Put on the TV. Maybe there’s something.”
“I got it,” said Jack, happy to have something to do. He snatched the remote off the coffee table and pressed the button. The TV had been on local news when they’d turned it off, but when the picture came on, all it showed was a stationary text page that read:
