DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 13, SECTION 2

Ever since leaving New York, we'd been hoping to see signs that TGVx was spreading. Unable to fly outside of North America while the airports were still inoperable, we'd made stops in Philadelphia and Atlanta. Bartenders everywhere had already heard of us, and they were happy to help distribute the TGVx solution. We even got a ton of volunteers to help us spread containers to smaller cities all over the place.

Eventually, though, we ran out of solution except for a couple gallon milk containers we'd set aside for Muldoon.

It was only me, Chris, and Ian now. Lindsay still had the apartment she'd once shared with Bryce in Nashville; she had no interest in returning to Muldoon with Jake, and, when she asked us to drop her off on our way through Tennessee, Shawn had decided to stay with her and Jake. I was really sad to see Lindsay go. We both cried when we said goodbye. I parted amiably with Shawn, gave him a big hug, and wished him luck in his new life in Tennessee.

By then I was too homesick to linger long. Ian and Chris were also eager to get back to the dwellings. We all wanted to find out how the refugees were faring after having been treated with TGVx longer than anyone else in the country. We weren't quite sure yet how we'd get back into the quarantine zone, but we were all keeping our fingers crossed that if TGVx had spread, the quarantine zones would be shut down and the barricades would be opened up for passage.

The farther we got out of the cities, though, the fewer people—healthy or infected—we saw at all. Ian reasoned that the treatment would take a long time to spread to the less populated areas, but I could tell Chris was disappointed not to see any evidence yet that our attempt to save the world from TGV was working.

The last three towns we'd passed through before coming across the nuns' bus didn't seem to have a single living inhabitant. The streets smelled so badly of decay that we did little more than search convenient stores for food before hurrying on our way.

Now, Chris was obviously perturbed by what we'd discovered in the bus. He collected a small sample of the dead nun's pale blood, unclasped the butterfly needle from her stiff forearm, and we hurried away from the unholy scene.

Chris had been smoking a lot of weed to try to quell his anxiety, and he had a practically endless stash ever since we hadn't needed to use Ruben's weed to bribe our way out of the quarantine zone. Inside the camper trailer, he dragged on a joint, slipped a few more of the Doritos he couldn't stop eating into his mouth, and finally dabbed the nun's pale blood onto a microscope. It was as if he were stalling, afraid of what he'd see. Ian and I waited uneasily at Chris's shoulder as he peered into the microscope.

He focused the lens, adjusted the slide, and stared at the sample for much longer than I'd ever seen him examine a slide.

Finally, he sat back in the camper seat and rubbed his eyes. He took another long drag from his joint.

"Well?" I prodded him. "What did you see?"

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