The Before Read Online Free Page B

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