Bad Taste in Boys (16 page)

I looked up at Hawaii. “Well?”

“Ray’s the only one who used it.” He shuffled from foot to foot. “I don’t like needles.”

“Ray?” I asked, turning to the black T‑shirt guy. “Have you been puking?”

He shook his head. Now he was starting to look scared.

“Good.” I kept my voice low and soothing. “I’m going to find some medicine that will take care of things, and I’ll make sure you get some. Can I have all the doses you’ve got left? We need to make sure no one else uses them.”

Ray rummaged in his pocket and handed me a plastic bag full of vials. “Here,” he said. “Coach isn’t here today. Guess he called in sick or something.”

I blinked. “Yeah. Well. Can you make sure none of the other JV guys have any of this stuff? It really is dangerous.”

Hawaii nodded. I was about to leave when curiosity got the better of me.

“So what’s with the bugs?” I asked.

“JV homecoming week prank,” Hawaii said. “We let a thousand hissing cockroaches loose in the kitchen. Ray’s uncle owns a pet store.” I rolled my eyes, and he shrugged uncomfortably. “Hey, it’s a tradition.”

“Yeah, but couldn’t you come up with anything better than bugs in the cafeteria? That’s weak, guys. Very weak.”

“We also duct-taped Mr. Gnepper in his office,” Ray said proudly.

Well, that explained the lack of hall-monitor response to the screaming.

“Wow. Impressive,” I said, shaking my head.

Hawaii blushed and shuffled his feet. “Not really. Listen, can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

I expected a zombie-related inquiry. I did not expect him to pull me to the far end of the cafeteria and say, “Would you … I mean, will you go to homecoming with me?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Is that a no?” The poor kid looked so miserable that I felt kind of guilty. He seemed like an okay guy, even if his pectorals were scary and he hung with a bunch of football jocks.

“No. I mean, yes.” I smacked myself on the forehead. “No, what I mean is that it’s nice of you to ask, but I already have a date.”

“Man, that sucks,” he muttered. “Who?”

“Aaron Kingsman.”

Now he backed away from me, his hands flying up like Aaron’s name had generated some kind of invisible force field. I was now untouchable. I patted him on the shoulder awkwardly and said, “Listen, I’d better go if I’m going to get that medicine.” And then I tripped over his foot.

Hawaii caught me by the elbow and held on until he was sure I wasn’t going to run face-first into the wall. Then he released me. I smiled at him, and he went scarlet. I didn’t know how I’d suddenly morphed into a guy magnet, but I kind of liked it.

I grinned all the way out the door and back down the hall toward Mrs. Rooney’s office. I was feeling pretty good until I had another seizure.

This time, at least no one witnessed it. The hall monitors were off inflicting demerits somewhere else today, with the exception of Mr. Gnepper, who was taped to a chair. No one noticed the girl against locker 1276 doing the neurological watusi. When it was over, I pushed myself into a sitting position against the wall and frowned at my knees like they’d done something to offend me. The whole seizure thing was really ticking me off. And I didn’t get why being bitten turned everyone else into undead wannabes, but all I got was complete epileptic relapse.

On top of everything else, I’d forgotten to inject my seizure meds this morning. Good thing I had an emergency supply in Mrs. Rooney’s office. I picked myself up off the floor and went back into her office. Her chair was still empty; I would have been offended at her lack of concern for my safety, but it was kind of flattering that she didn’t feel the need to hover over my shoulder.

The med cabinet was locked, but I knew where she kept the spare key. Her trust in me must have been misplaced, because I opened the door and administered my meds without supervision, which was totally against school rules. I didn’t even know why I bothered, since the meds were obviously useless. If anything, my seizures were worse than ever.

That was when it hit me.

My meds
were
still working. The injections were keeping me
from turning into a zombie. It was the only logical explanation. If I was right, I could cure the virus. I wouldn’t need to waste time convincing Mrs. Rooney, and then convincing the people at the health department, and so on. I could cure it and then let them take their time making up their minds whether to believe me. Because by the time they decided to take action, half the student body would be missing half their bodies. I could develop the cure myself and then take it, along with all the evidence implicating Swannie, to the health department. Things would go much more quickly that way.

I snatched all four of the doses left in Mrs. Rooney’s stock. I figured it should be enough to test the cure; I could stop at home for more if it worked. Now all I needed was to administer it. Sure, I could try one of the guys on the team, but it wouldn’t look good if I blasted into a classroom and started randomly injecting people. And I wanted to make sure it was safe before I tried it on Jonah.

I needed a test zombie.

And I knew just where to find one.

felt pretty guilty rifling through Mrs. Rooney’s desk
again
, but not guilty enough to stop. I had a good reason. Heck, I had identified a potential cure while the rest of the medical world didn’t even know there was a virus. That excused just about anything.

I flipped through a few files before I found the right section. Every student with a prescription medication needed to provide authorization paperwork, and I was betting Mike had an EpiPen in Mrs. Rooney’s office as well as in Coach’s. I hoped his home address was somewhere in that paperwork.

I’d been to his house a few times. He lived on a farm way outside the city limits; his mom had let the school use her barn for the
annual haunted house fund-raiser. Too bad I couldn’t remember where it was.

Bingo. There was his address. I used Mrs. Rooney’s computer to get directions.

On my way out the door again, I ran into Mrs. Rooney.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “I’m sorry to leave you alone so long. I think the flu’s going around again.”

“I’m fine,” I said, barely slowing down. “Gotta get to class in time to take that quiz!”

I was lying, of course. I really had to find Rocky and convince her to skip class with me.

She wasn’t at her locker, but I saw her going into the girls’ room down the hall. I slipped into the bathroom and up to the first stall door.

“Rocky? It’s me. Kate. I have to talk to you.”

“Um, Kate?” Rocky’s voice came from the stall at the end. “I’m down here.”

I walked over just as she flounced out.

“Hey!” she said. “What’s up?”

“You have to come with me to Mike’s,” I told her. “I have to inject him with my seizure medicine.”

Rocky stared at me. “Kate, I know you don’t like him, but—”

I shook my head. “You don’t understand.” I whispered a sixty-second summary of events into her ear.

“So you need to do it right now? I’ve got my solo audition for the Holiday Showcase next period,” she said, slathering on lip
gloss. “So let me put it this way. If I go with you, I’m going to have to explain to Juilliard why I wasn’t featured in the winter show. Do you need me that badly, or could you just take my car?”

“Rocky, if I seize and drive it off the road—”

“Then don’t seize. I trust you.” The bell rang, and she detached her key ring from her backpack and tossed it at me. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be sending you good injecting vibes, though.”

I felt pretty bad for having forgotten about her audition, not to mention nervous about having to go to Mike’s alone. I couldn’t really blame her for not coming with me—but then again, if my cure didn’t work, Rocky would probably have to explain to Juilliard why our entire school had turned into zombies.

Sneaking out of the building was easy. But it took me a good forty minutes to get to Mike’s house, because I drove like an old lady. When I got there, I pulled Rocky’s car into the driveway, which was basically at the bottom of a ravine, and parked.

Shaking like a leaf, I got out of the car and climbed the rickety porch steps.

“How the hell am I going to inject Mike Luzier without getting killed?” I whispered to myself, swallowing a huge lump of fear. Going alone to the home of my zombified linebacker ex was not the smartest thing I’d ever done. It didn’t take a genius to realize he wasn’t going to roll over and offer me his arm for injection.

“He’s probably going to try and bite my lips off again,” I added under my breath, attempting to prepare for the worst.

But Jonah needed the cure. And that was why I was standing on Mike’s porch ringing his bell.

No answer. I checked the door, but it was locked. No movement as far as I could see inside the house, and there weren’t any cars in the drive. Either Mike’s mom had finally gotten over her fear of doctors and taken him to one, or she had left him alone and now he was dead.

I banged on the door and stabbed the bell so hard that my finger hurt. If he was dead, I was determined to pester him back to life. It didn’t work, though. I looked around for a rock to throw through a window, but the door opened before I found one. It was very horror-film cliché of me, but I could only do one thing.

I screamed.

ike Luzier stood in the doorway. A piece of his scalp had ripped loose and was dangling to his shoulder. Blood dribbled from his mouth, and I wasn’t sure whose it was. He wore his football uniform; his body looked totally misshapen underneath it. He moved toward me with an uncoordinated lurch.

I stumbled backward off his front porch, twisting my ankle and sprawling in the mud. My little zipper bag of syringes and medication vials fell from under my arm and plopped into a puddle. I grabbed it and held it to my chest like it might have secret zombie-repellent properties. That was when I realized I was still screaming.

Some detached part of my mind took stock of Mike’s various injuries, but the rest of me was in flight mode. I scrambled for the
car, but it wasn’t parked in front of the garage where I’d left it. I hadn’t put on the emergency brake, so it had slid back down the muddy slope of the driveway. No way was I running down into that mud pit with a zombie at my heels.