djinn wars 01 - chosen (2 page)

The camera panned back to the reporter, who was wearing what he probably thought was a look of measured concern…but to me, he just looked scared. I wonder what the nurse had said to the doctor.

Whatever it had been, the reporter didn’t mention it. He only said, “That’s the latest from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Again, as Dr. Leviton stated, seek medical assistance immediately if you have a fever in excess of — ”

My mother turned off the TV. I arched an eyebrow at her, and she shook her head. “It’s always something,” she said. “I shouldn’t even have turned it on, I suppose, but I was hoping to catch some weather.”

“You’re not worried?”

“No.” She had her own glass of iced tea sitting on the counter, and she sipped from it as she watched me take the English muffin from the toaster oven and start spreading some butter on it. “Cable news always needs something to feed the monster. And unexplained diseases are a great way to keep people watching for updates.”

That was something I loved about my mother — she wasn’t afraid to call a spade a spade. Critical thinking was very important to her, which made sense, since she taught advanced composition and AP English at the same high school I’d attended. She made my father look like a starry-eyed dreamer.

“True,” I said, munching away at my English muffin. My abused stomach was all too glad of the carbs, which should help to soak up the remnants of the tequila I’d downed the night before. Good thing I only indulged like that every once in a great while. Most of the time I was more a mixed-drink kind of girl.

“They’ll play it up, and then it’ll quietly disappear, just like everything else they try to make a big deal of.” My mother finished the last of her tea and set the glass down on the counter. “Anyway, I’m about to go to the store. Anything you need?”

Mouth full of English muffin, I shook my head.

“Make sure you wipe down the counter when you’re done,” she admonished me, then picked up her purse and went out, apparently not concerned at all by what we’d just watched.

If only she’d been right. But it turned out that the worry of the doctor — and the scared-looking reporter — was not misplaced.

The next morning, the news was full of reports of people getting sick up and down both coasts, and cases had been reported in the Midwest as well…Chicago…Detroit…St. Louis. And the disease, whatever it was, hadn’t confined itself to the borders of the U.S. People were sick in London and Munich and Moscow and Singapore. Hospitals were filling up.

My father sat in his wing chair in the family room and watched the news with narrowed eyes. My mother seemed to be doing her best to ignore the television, and was instead trying to worm the latest details about his football practice schedule out of my brother Devin, who was far more interested in texting with his girlfriend than watching TV or explaining why he would have practice four days this week but five the next. A senior in high school, he was hoping his record as running back for the school’s team might help him to eke out a scholarship or two when he went to college next year. We were doing okay, but college was expensive — as I knew only too well, with loans piling up every semester, loans I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to pay back. Supposedly having a master’s would put me on a higher rung of the salary ladder when I did have to go out into the real world, but jobs were scarcer than the college counselors wanted us poor schmucks stuck in loan limbo to believe.

“Have you seen any sick people yet?” I asked my father. I was sitting at the game table in the corner of the family room, attempting to give my paper on gender representation in gothic novels a final read-through in hard copy to catch any typos. Unfortunately, my brain was jittering this way and that, worried about the reports on the news, praying they were exaggerating and fearing they were not. I couldn’t even say why I was so worried, since most of the time I ignored these sorts of reports, knowing the diseases they discussed rarely touched us here in our little corner of the Southwest. Something about the speed with which this one had spread bothered me, though. It bothered me a lot.

My father pointed the remote at the TV and turned down the volume, then shook his head. “Not with this thing. I’ve seen meth heads puking in back alleys and heroin addicts with the shakes because they couldn’t get a fix, but this one? I don’t think it’s here.”

The word “yet” hung in the air, unspoken, but no less ominous for that. More and more people were getting sick, and the first deaths had been reported on the East Coast. Not a lot, not yet, but although the news was trying to sugarcoat things, rumors had already begun to swirl across the Internet that no one who contracted this new disease survived. Which was crazy. Even Ebola — hell, even pneumonic plague, which had an insane mortality rate when not treated — wasn’t one-hundred-percent fatal. That just wasn’t possible.

“Maybe it won’t,” I said, although I knew even as I said them that the words were mere wishful thinking. “Maybe it’ll just…blow around us, or burn out before it gets here.”

“Maybe,” he agreed. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine, though, and I knew what he must be thinking.

I knew, because it was the same thing I was thinking. This wasn’t a matter of if, but rather when.

On Monday when I arrived at school, I noticed the parking lot was noticeably less full than a university lot had any right to be this close to the beginning of the semester. And as I got out of my car and locked it, I saw that at least half the students walking around on campus wore surgical masks, the white disposable kind the news reports showed people in China wearing on days when the smog was particularly bad.

Apparently, I hadn’t gotten the memo. Nothing I could do about it now…except hope that a lot of the students in the Writing 1A class I was teaching that semester had decided to bail completely.

Most of them had, except for a couple of the over-achievers. Well, at least the kind of over-achievers I’d get in a Writing 1A class, which wasn’t exactly packed full with people who’d gotten 5s on their AP English exams.

I scanned the empty seats and tried not to frown, reminding myself that I’d get my T.A. stipend no matter how many butts were in those chairs on a particular day. “Okay,” I said, surprised at the slight tremor in my voice, “on Friday we were just starting to get into the difference between a topic sentence and a thesis statement….”

Taylor Ortiz, who was sitting in the front row, blinked at me in apparent incomprehension. For the first time, I noticed the beads of sweat standing out on her forehead, the way she seemed to be swaying in her seat. Beneath her warm-toned skin, she looked dead pale.

“Taylor, are you all right?” I asked.

She blinked again. “Um….”

Next to her, Troy Lenz lurched to his feet. “Holy shit! She’s got it!”

“Troy — ” I began, maybe meaning to reprimand him for swearing in class, possibly intending to tell him to sit down, but I was fairly certain neither of those admonishments would have had any effect. All around the class, those few students who’d been brave enough to show up shot straight out of their seats, looking at Taylor as if she’d just started vomiting pea soup or something. Never mind that vomiting was not one of the symptoms of “the Heat” — the street nickname given to the disease because of the extreme fevers it caused.

“Oh, God, get away from her,” a girl in the back of the class said, and before I could even open my mouth to speak again, they were all bolting for the door, a couple of them even overturning their desks in their haste.

A few seconds later, I was alone in the classroom with Taylor, who continued to look around blankly, seeming unaware that she’d managed to clear the space in about five seconds flat.

A cowardly part of me wanted to take off as well, but I told myself I couldn’t do that — I was the teacher (okay, the T.A.), and I had some sort of responsibility to make sure she was all right. Besides, if she really did have the Heat, then I’d already been exposed, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it now.

I approached her and put a hand on her forehead. Jesus Christ. She felt as if she was on fire from within. No wonder she was having a hard time focusing on anything. She was so hot that her brain must be cooking right inside her skull.

The university hospital was all the way across campus. I was stronger than I looked, thanks to a childhood spent hiking and walking and going to the shooting range with my father, but I knew there was no way I could get Taylor all that distance by myself.

Shaking, I went to my desk and pulled my purse out of the drawer where I always stowed it. My fingers trembled as well while I got out my phone. Thank God it wasn’t too much work to dial 911.

It rang…and rang…and rang. Panic started to set in. I could feel my heart beginning to pound and my own nervous sweats starting, although I didn’t think I was running a fever. Not yet, anyway.

Then, at last: “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

I cleared my throat. “Hi, my name is Jessica Monroe, and I’m in Building 81 on the UNM campus. One of my students is very sick and unable to walk. I’m pretty sure she needs to go to the hospital.”

“Symptoms?”

“A very high fever.”

I could have sworn I heard a muttered “shit” at the other end of the line, followed by a long pause. “Ms. Monroe, we are experiencing longer-than-normal response times for ambulances due to heavy volume. We will get someone out to you, but it may be a while.”

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what that meant. Maybe it was lagging behind, but the Heat had finally come to Albuquerque.

I sat with Taylor, since I didn’t know what else to do. She held on to the edge of her desk as if it was the only thing keeping her anchored to reality, her head first lolling this way and then that, her glassy dark eyes staring off into the distance, as if fixed on some object only she could see. It was frightening enough just being close to someone who was that sick, but even more frightening was how detached from reality she seemed to be. We Monroes were a healthy lot, and so I didn’t have a lot of experience being around sick people. Devin got a horrible stomach flu one year, and we had colds and coughs from time to time, but nothing like this.

Sweat was dripping down Taylor’s forehead and staining the tight T-shirt she wore. More rivulets of perspiration ran down into her cleavage, but I doubted anyone would have found the sight particularly sexy. For myself, I could only think of the millions of microbes she must be spreading in every direction each time she shifted in her seat. One time she shook like a dog, and little droplets of sweat sprayed everywhere, a few hitting me right in the face.

It took every ounce of willpower I had not to swear out loud. Belatedly, I realized that I had a partially drunk bottle of water in my purse. I doubted that would do much to help her, but at least it was something. And I had a feeling she was far past worrying about any germs I might have left behind on the bottle.

“Taylor?” I asked. No recognition in those strained dark eyes, which were still staring out at something only visible to her. “How about some water?”

She blinked. Maybe it was the only way she could answer, or maybe it was simply an involuntary reflex. Either way, it gave me an excuse to get up from the desk next to hers, to go to my purse and fetch the bottle of water. As I approached her, I could almost feel the heat emanating from her, impossibly, inhumanly warm.