Dead Quarantine (2 page)

“Ah come on, don't.”

She was still pulling to get free. There was
not much strength behind the pulls. She was a strong girl; it must
have been the bug that weakened her. She really should rest. He
grabbed and turned her around. All play left him; concern shadowed
his brow.

“Sis, please go back to bed. You're not
well.”

“You don't have to worry about me. Mom said
it is just a cold.”

“Still, humor me and get some rest. Tomorrow
we'll play again.”

She nodded and hopped back into bed.

From below, he heard his mother yelling for
him to come down. Breakfast was ready. Before he left, Ginny
grabbed his hand.

“Thank you.”

He looked at her. He knew why she was
thanking him, but he just couldn't say it again.

“See you later, sis.”

He left without telling her one last time
that he loved her.

CHAPTER TWO

Her
mother's car had been repossessed. Envious, Sarah watched as the
other teenagers got into their parents’ cars. The luxury to be
taken to school was one that many took for granted. Not her. She
knew better. Her walking shoes fit snugly, the right support for
the long hike she had ahead of her. She wore tight-fitting jeans
and a red, long sleeve turtleneck blouse. It showed her figure
nicely. Fashionable and practical. To protect herself against the
cold autumn winds, she had a short, black leather jacket on.
Really, she didn't mind the walk. It kept her in shape and the hour
and half it took gave her time to think. And she had a lot to think
about. Everything seemed to change her senior year.

The sun barely broke away from the horizon,
and the morning dew was cool. She wouldn't be doing a lot of
sweating as long she took it easy and didn't try to make it to her
destination within an hour. It was nice weather for walking, but
not so much for jogging.

Sarah had asked her mother if she could stay
and take care of her baby brother while she went to look for a job.
Things had been hard since her mother got laid off from her job in
administration at an accounting firm. Every bill that came went
directly into the shredder. Her mother didn't like to be confronted
with the fact she couldn't pay them. Sarah feared the day when the
collectors would come to collect, and they would take the house and
kick them to the curb.

Would Jake still like her if she was
homeless, eating out of trashcans whenever her stomach ached for
food? She giggled. He would have a fit. How would he be able to be
seen with a beggar for a girlfriend? She wondered, not for the
first time, if he really loved her. He had told her he did not so
long ago when they had skipped class together to go to a motel room
just outside the city.

It had been different since then. He stopped
making an effort to be nice to her, and it was difficult to keep
the peace between him and Lilly, her best friend. He behaved like
he owned her. She didn't like that feeling. She hated it. She hated
it when her mom's boyfriends, who thought she should be grateful
that there was finally a man in home, did it. It didn’t matter how
short their stay was. Just because they felt they were the man,
didn't mean she had to respect them.

It was also why she would never again ask
Jake to drive her to school. The one time she did, he sat, all
puffed up, behind the steering wheel and was all over her that day
at school like he was her provider. The big shot jock, who had the
prettiest girl in town. She smiled. Sure, he could say things about
her beauty. Overtly exaggerated in her opinion, but she didn't mind
the flattery at all. She liked the attention she got being with
him. At school, at least, she was someone. She was as complacent to
his behavior as he was.

No, it was not him who had changed after
they had sex; it was her. She had been thinking a little too much
about it all. Nothing really changed after they did it. He was
still the same guy, and she... her thoughts trailed off as she saw
a line of yellow buses pass by. It kept going for about a minute.
She had never seen so many at the same time. All were old school
buses like the one she rode in elementary school. She used to take
one to school every day, before she outgrew buses.

As far she knew there were no events in
town. Although, she had not been keeping tabs on things. In between
babysitting her brother while her mom was out on a date with her
new boyfriend and studying for her history test, she had done
little more this weekend. Her mom had come back late Sunday with
the sniffles and kissed her and her brother before going to sleep.
It was gross; sick people were gross, spreading their germs and
infecting people. Her mother must have caught it from her
boyfriend. Too much lip-locking must have gone on that day and too
little staying away from that creep. They were always creeps. Her
mother always picked the worst, as if she did her best not to pick
a guy like her father. It was as if she didn’t want to be reminded
what a good man he was. He wasn't the best father, but he tried,
honestly tried, and he was taken away before he had the chance to
get it right. What he lacked in social skills, he made up for with
an abundance of goodwill. Goodwill cut short in a car crash.

The crash didn't kill him; it was his
goodwill that did. He died, all for some woman he didn't know. A
woman he failed to save anyway. He wasted his life for nothing and
left his family behind without support. The woman had run a red
light and hit his car from the side. Her car rolled and ended up on
its side. He tried to get her out. Gasoline had leaked out, a spark
must have lit a fire, and an explosion followed. And now, her
mother dated outgoing, selfish pricks. Yesterday, it was a prick
that gave her a bug that she passed on to little Benny with a
well-intended goodnight kiss. And what about her following in her
mother's footsteps dating Jake?

Sarah sighed. Too much trouble. She would
have rather stayed home. Her heart had broken when she heard Benny
cough and hack. His whole chest heaved and his body twisted with
each cough. A baby shouldn't be ill. He should enjoy life, be
spoiled. Benny was the only good that came from her mother's life
after the death of her father. And Benny was the only thing that
made her home life bearable.

St. Mark's wasn't far now. Glancing back in
the direction she had come from, she contemplated turning around
and forgoing her history test, Jake, and school. She just wanted to
spend time with her mother and brother. How often did she have a
chance to really spend time with them together? Life lately was
either her with Benny or her mother with Benny. There was always
something else going on.

She lowered her head and kept plodding on.
It would only cause an argument if she skipped school, and she
needed good grades to get a scholarship and make something of her
life. Not that she knew what that something would be. Sarah had
looked into economics, but with the recession, it seemed all these
great economic minds knew was how to throw more money into a
bottomless pit. It really made her question if that was a viable
career path. She liked history, but didn't think there were that
many job opportunities. Only a few got the great jobs, but most
historians ended up being history teachers, and teaching was not
her thing. Her last option would be to join the Army. Maybe she
would find some order living a disciplined life.

What would Jake think about that? She
laughed, drawing a weird look from an older man hobbling by. Her
wearing combat fatigues. Imagine that. So not how Jake pictured
her. All he wanted was for her to be a high school version of a
Stepford wife. Guns, dirt, and blood were not part of that picture.
She imagined how he would lecture her about how it wasn’t a woman's
job to defend the country. Men should do it. Boys, he meant, for
the only old soldiers she met were veterans or the recruiters going
from school to school. Those she saw parading around were young
ones, not much older than her. Boys in men’s clothing. Why
shouldn't a woman defend her country if she wanted to?

She sighed. Her mother would not agree and
she wouldn’t turn eighteen until way after graduation. She was
expected to choose a profession by then and commit to it. No
adventure for her anytime soon; maybe it was for the best. What did
babes know about war anyway? Politics never interested her, but she
knew that it was the politicians who sent young people war. Maybe,
just maybe, it was best she waited to make such a decision and kept
it as a backup plan if everything else failed.

St. Mark's High School rose up above the
roofs ahead of her. A two-story building with a flat roof. The
building was cross shaped. It must have been a convent or some
something. She had been going there forever and never bothered to
learn its history. All she needed to know about that building was
that it contained adults whose job was to put ideas in their heads
for them to learn like they were facts. Then, you had the teens
with their raging hormones having difficulty swallowing the stuff
being taught, while dealing with the many social issues in their
lives. Very frustrating. A mess, a real mess, she was glad it would
soon be over. The only good things she had going at school were
dating Jake and the popularity that came with that and her best
friend, Lilly. Too bad those two didn't mesh well.

Entering the yard, she noticed two yellow
buses parked in front of the entrance. Men in hazmat suits were
unloading boxes and carrying them inside the school. As she went up
the steps, she took a passing glance at the boxes. It had
Army
stamped all over. What was going on? In the main hall,
she looked up. In front of the principal's office—up the main
stairs and in the right wing of the building—the principal was
talking to a hazmat guy, clearly agitated.

Sarah signaled a junior descending the
stairs. “What's going on here?”

“Haven't you heard?” the boy said.

She hadn’t heard anything out of the
ordinary—not that if something had happened she would have noticed
with the kind of weekend she had. She relied on her mother to pass
her information. After all, it was she who had spent the weekend
outside in the world while Sarah babysat and studied. Had something
really big happened, her mom would have told her. But apparently
mom had something else keeping her occupied last weekend. That and
the sniffles.

“No, I haven’t heard anything.”

The teen pulled his fist in front of his
mouth and coughed. “I...I...need to go to the head nurse. It's what
they told us to do; any signs of the cold we need to report
in.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “Something about the flu; I
don't really know.”

Sarah watched him bounce away. He was pretty
energetic for a sick boy. Her first class started within an hour.
She had ample time to hang around before she had to go up to the
classroom. Monday was the day she agreed with Lilly that they would
come early to chat about their weekend. Girls alone having girl
time. However, Jake found out about it and now sometimes he would
show up uninvited. So far, Lilly tolerated it, though there had
been talk about choosing another day.

Going through the open twin doors to her
left, she walked past the school nurse’s office. The junior stood
in a long line waiting to see the Mrs. Evergreen. Another teen
joined the line behind him and more were coming. She turned to the
left and kept walking until she reached the tiny break room.

Last year, an eager class president made a
petition for a bigger break room. Many thought it was a great idea
and signed the petition. The principal, however, did not share the
enthusiasm and answered along the lines of,
School is to study.
not to loiter in free time.
Sarah was happy with the decision,
which was the first time she had ever agreed with the principal,
sort of. She didn't mind the room being less than spacious. Because
it was small, it was not often used. She enjoyed having it to
herself most of the time. The few times Jake had been with her, he
had chased away the underclassmen. That one wasn’t big on sharing;
it was a dick move really, but she wasn’t complaining. What did
that make her? A female dick? A cunt? Or simply an asshole
enabler.

Tommy, a fat kid in her class, sat in the
corner reading a book. Well too bad, they would not have the room
to themselves. Lilly sat in the other corner fiddling with her
fingers in her lap. She looked up as she heard Sarah enter. Her
already big eyes widened slightly as she ran up to her.

“Have you heard?” Lilly asked. There had
been a lot of gossip going around school. Sarah shook her head.
“They are gathering everyone who is sick and sending them home,
keeping them quarantined inside their houses.”

“Why?”

“Don't you know? It's been all over the
news. The flu. My dad, my sisters, my neighbors, almost everyone
has it.”

No wonder fewer students had been coming in.
Instead, it had been busy with men covered from head to toe in
white suits, walking in and out carrying boxes.

“Yes, but why a quarantine?”

“They're trying to stop it from
spreading.”

“But it's just the flu; it happens every
year.”

“I watched the news this morning. Some guy
was being interviewed who said it was some kind of super flu that
will infect everybody and probably bring society crashing
down.”

“Like they said would happen with the piggy
flu? Come on, how bad can it be? They yell and scream doom every
year, yet we are still here, breathing and well, at school.”

Lilly sat down, her hands folded in her lap.
“I...I...guess I'm overreacting again.”

“Yes you are, but you'll soon see that
everything will turn out fine.” Sarah sat beside her friend. “So
how was your weekend?”

They shared their weekends. Lilly had a more
engaging one, making Sarah wonder if she had time to study for the
history exam. It was fun just passing time together, taking their
mind off today's test, boys, and the flu.