DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 8, SECTION 9

It was Jason.

His eyes locked with mine.

I hadn't put my surgical mask back up, and he'd obviously recognized me. He gave me a furious glare. Then he slammed the window with a clammy palm and screamed something, but it came out as a hoarse whisper and I couldn't make out what it was.

I was about scuttle back even farther, but, suddenly, Jason's face disappeared from the window as quickly as it had appeared. I heard a faint, cracking thud.

I pulled the mask back over my face and cautiously peered into the shower room.

Jason must have spotted me at the window and climbed up onto a bank of lockers. But he must have lost his balance when he'd slammed the window, and he must have fallen. Because now he was on the tile floor, writhing in pain. There was a gash on his forehead, and blood was trickling into his eye. He pointed up at me and made another attempt to say something. But, this time, nothing came out of his mouth at all. He tried to stand. One of his shoulders jerked around backwards, his knee started rattling against the tile, and he toppled over again. For a moment, he just rolled around with his head in his hands. Then, as if in consolation, he reached into his pants and started absently stroking himself.

He was very, very obviously TGV-positive. At least late stage two, by the looks of it, if not full-blown stage three.

And I had done this to him. I'd infected him with the knitting needle I'd shoved deep into his bowels. I wasn't sure how I felt about that now. But, honestly, what I mostly regretted was that my parents had to be locked up with him like this.

The crowd in the locker room couldn't do much but move as far away from Jason as possible and do their best to look the other way. 

A banging came at the locker room door. I was pretty sure it was the ranger I'd seen smoking.

"Keep it down in there!"

My dad hugged my mom a little more tightly.

I didn't know why my parents had been imprisoned, or how their "sentence" would be "carried out" as the notice on the locker room door declared. I did my best not to imagine the worst. I hoped that they'd been convicted for some minor infraction. I hoped that they'd been sentenced to this makeshift prison for only a short period of time, and that eventually they'd be released. I couldn't help but remember, though, Chris's vague but ominous warning that the Home Guard's punishments were getting more severe. They didn't exactly have a track record of leniency, after all.

I had to figure out what was going on. I'd been away too long. I needed to find someone who I could trust to tell me what was in store for my parents. I hoped that Chris was having luck securing provisions today, because if my mom and dad's fate was dire—not to mention Ed's—I'd have to put all of my efforts into somehow rescuing them. . .

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