Side Effect ● Open Novella Contest Entry 2019

6 • Lack of a Plan

My phone began to chime incessantly at 5 in the morning. At first, I thought it was my alarms but after squinting against the bright screen, I saw it was from my news app. Right before I clicked on the notification, the text from my school came through: School canceled for district 60.

"Nice!" I said. I rolled out of bed and looked out the window. It must've snowed a lot to get school canceled here. We never get out of school. One time at school, it snowed so much we had to wait for people with snowmobiles to take students home. Definitely my favorite memory from school. But looking out the window, there was no more snow than there was yesterday. It even looked like it was melting!

I fell back onto my bed and looked at phone.My heart hiccuped when I saw what the news article was titled: New York City Under Quarantine.

Within two seconds, I got texts from Max, Levi and several of my friends.

I ignored all of them except Levi's.

Levi: NYC is in quarantine. Don't tell Mom.

Me: I think she got the text from the news

Levi: Crap, you're probably right. Take her phone. Clear the notification.

I grabbed my crutches and limped out of the room and down the hall. Of course, my room was the farthest from my parents' room. The crutches squeaked on the tile so I ditched them against the table. I crawled as fast as I could to the room.

The phones hadn't woken up my sleeping parents. Getting my mom's phone was easy. I army crawled to her side table and grabbed the phone, nearly knocking over a glass of water. I cleared all her notifications, except for the one from the school. I erased her News App, just for good measure. I crawled over to the other side of the room. I grabbed my dad's phone. It chimed with a text from one of his employees. I nearly threw the phone. Dad snorted awake and then jumped when he saw his daughter crouched on the floor.

"Jen, what are you doing?" he whispered, eyes wide in the darkness.

I held up his phone. I had quickly cleared his notification before and the only thing on his screen was the text from his employee and the school district. "I heard that there was no school so I just checking," I said.

"There's no school?"

"Nope! I'll go sleep in now. And by the way, your worker Andy, his wife just had a baby. Sent you a text. Night night!" I crawled out of the room, letting my foot drag behind me. I looked back and saw my dad's curious gaze. I waved and then hobbled back to my room, snatching my crutches, to figure out what the heck I had just protected my parents from.

Me: Mom's going to find out soon

Levi: They will. They have to.

Me: What's going on there?

Levi: It's the drug. That one guy attacked several nurses and escaped. The nurses went mad a few hours later and escaped. And they attacked people and they got infected. It's turned into an epidemic in a day and a half. We're holed up in the apartment but Warren's missing.

Me: what?! Is this from the Hiipe? What about everyone else taking it there?

Levi: They must have dispersed around the country and the world. Remember all the languages we were hearing?

Me: Have any other countries said anything?

Levi: I don't know. We don't have any information.