Silenced Genes

School was dismissed just after 11 o'clock. Sirens were blaring as the students were boarding the buses; a fire truck and a couple of police cruisers pulled up to the high school with an ambulance close behind. Many of the students were craning to see out the grimy windows, but the bus pulled away as soon as the last student was on board. Ricky and Mack weren't concerned, they figured someone just set off a fire alarm smoking in a bathroom or something equally as stupid. Other students were panicking, some even crying, while many were posting updates on social media, texting wildly or even calling their parents. Ricky watched the commotion, he thought it was all over reacting nonsense. He and Mack made eye contact, Ricky shrugged. Mack looked back down at his phone slowly shaking his head in bewilderment.

Ricky was glad Mack was there; after being in school together for so long, it was strange to be the only one at the high school last year. Ricky and Mack are best friends, they do everything together – football, basketball, lacrosse. Ricky used to resent being held back a year in school. Mom pressed the school to make him repeat first grade. Ricky was furious with her at the time, but he got over it. Plus, it gave him an extra year to be in school with Mack, a bonus he didn't recognize until years later when they started playing sports. Ricky and Mack are the two oldest of seven children: their sisters, Alice and Mary are in eighth and seventh grade, and brothers Eddie, Joseph and Norman (who everyone calls Skippy) are in fifth, fourth and third respectively. Ricky realized he had been staring out the window without really looking at anything. He grabbed his phone to see if any of the other schools were being dismissed. By the time anything was loaded, the bus was at their stop.

Eight other students got off the bus with them. Living in city housing meant everyone knew who the poor families were. The boys didn't care so much, Dad had lost a good job quite a few years ago when Skippy was a toddler. The company Dad worked for just closed its doors one day. At that point, Mom was still home with them. With Dad being the only one employed, they lost almost everything. They'd had a decent house, if a bit small for the size of the family; but to be fair, it was just Ricky, Mack, and Alice when they first moved in. Mom had done so much to fix the place up, she was heartbroken to leave; but the job market was awful. Dad found a job at a gas station making half what he did before. Those were the hardest times. As soon as Skippy was old enough for school, Mom went back to school too. When Dad saw how well she was doing, he decided to go back the following year. Now, Dad works at a radio station doing a morning news show and Mom works with a non-profit. Things are finally starting to look up again. Maybe it won't be much longer living in subsidized housing. Moving out of city housing would be good for the family - it isn't an awful place - but it carries a stigma, especially in high school. Mom would want a big yard to have a garden again. As long as the new place has a basketball hoop, Ricky and Mack would be happy.

The boys walked in and called out for Cedric, the family's sweet old border collie, as they dropped their bags in the nearest chairs. Cedric wandered out of the living room, tail wagging. He huffed a few excited, old woofs at 'his boys' and followed them outside. They hardly had time to dribble the ball when the sirens started blaring again. Ricky and Mack turned to watch where the police were going as Cedric barked in their general direction. The emergency vehicles were headed towards the high school again. First two cruisers, then two more and another ambulance. Ricky and Mack exchanged concerned looks, “maybe it’s worse than we thought after all,” Ricky said.

“You think someone overdosed?” Mack wondered aloud.

Ricky shrugged, but this time not dismissively. They decided to go back inside and see what they could find out online. Ricky started going through his contacts on his phone messaging any and everyone to see who knew what while Mack got on the computer to look up local news. “Ricky,” Mack called his brother to the desk, “all the schools are being sent home early, several students and teachers were injured at the high school, and look at all of these.”

Mack started scrolling through pages of links to articles about similar incidents at other places around the country. He looked up at Ricky expecting a response, but Ricky didn’t know what to say. He was starting to feel ill. Mack looked back down at the screen, “I expect the middle school bus will be here soon, we should go outside and wait for Alice and Mary,” he said softly.

Ricky nodded, “I’ll get Cedric back inside.” he called the dog and waited for him to come in, he was woofing more than usual. “Guess he knows something is up too,” Ricky said. He held the door open for Mack as they went to wait for the other buses to arrive

They walked to the corner where the bus would stop with the middle school students. Traffic was getting erratic; the bus showed up and barely let the last child step off before shutting the door and taking off. The crowd of middle school children slowly separated in different directions as Ricky and Mack approached looking for Alice and Mary. They noticed a man emerge from behind the post office across the street. He was screaming unintelligible nonsense and moving at an unreasonably fast pace. As he got closer to the edge of the parking lot, the boys could see he was covered in blood. Alice noticed the boys and grabbed Mary's arm to get her attention, “look, Mary, Ricky and Mack are home too,” she said.

Mary was looking behind them, “what’s wrong with him?” she asked, pointing at the screaming man. Alice turned to see what Mary was talking about. They all watched in shock as the man ran right into traffic. The squeal of brakes was followed by a heavy thud and crunching of bone as the blood-covered man flew into a nearby tree. Ricky, Mack, and a dozen or so middle school children watched in horror. Alice and Mary cried out almost simultaneously, and Mack grabbed them both, hugging them while trying to turn their eyes away from the scene. “Call 911, Ricky,” Mack advised.

The driver raced out of his car towards the man who was clearly still alive and struggling to rise. Ricky turned to Mack, “get the girls inside while I do that. I’ll see if I can help while I wait for the boys’ bus.”

Mack grabbed each sister by a hand and dragged them away while Ricky ran toward the disaster in the street. The driver reached the injured man first with Ricky not far behind. The 911 operator answered the phone as the injured man got up; his left arm was obviously broken and hanging limply at his side. He was even more covered in blood than before, but Ricky couldn't see where any of the blood was coming from. “Uh, a man was just hit by a car, we need an ambulance,” Ricky started to explain.

The driver tried to tell the man to stay down, that an ambulance was coming as Ricky stepped back to explain to the operator what was happening. Other vehicles were stopping to see what was going on. The injured man lunged at the driver, grabbing him by the throat with his usable arm and screaming as he lifted him off the ground. The driver started screaming as well, “please! Please put me down, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I hit you… you ran out in front of me…” he begged the injured man.

The injured man slammed the driver to the pavement, which seemed to knock the wind out of the driver as he stopped screaming but was still struggling to get away. The injured man crouched down and bit into the driver’s face just below the cheekbone tearing flesh away; when he stood up, Ricky saw he was chewing. The injured man stomped the driver's chest while pulling at one of his arms as the man laid there screaming. Ricky had no idea what to say to the 911 operator who could hear everything that was happening, “is the injured man aggressive? Did someone just get bit?” She was asking frantic questions. Ricky realized the questions were too specific, like it wasn’t the first time this 911 operator had to ask them

“He is aggressive, and he did just bite someone, what should I do?” Ricky asked, feeling even more ill than before. The driver started to convulse.

Other people that had gotten out of their cars were torn between trying to pull the injured man off of the driver or just getting back into their vehicles and getting away. Mostly they stood in terror and shock, watching. The convulsing stopped and the injured man let go of the driver's badly dislocated limb as he started to stand. Ricky noticed the teeth marks on the man's face were no longer bleeding and the injured man no longer seemed interested in the driver. Now they both turned at the crowd that had gathered. The driver came at Ricky, screaming wildly as the injured man grabbed a woman that had gotten too close. To their credit, several men leapt to her aid and she managed to break free, running to her car frantically. The injured man just jumped on another bystander, ripping into his flesh before anyone could stop him

Meanwhile, Ricky dodged the driver and ran. At this point, there were dozens of people gathered from the housing complex, cars that were stopped to help and those that were just looking which meant traffic was backed up. There were no police officers to control traffic and no ambulance. There was a crowd of people and Ricky was screaming for them to run too, but the driver had already grabbed someone and started tearing them apart. Ricky felt horrible, he wanted to help but this was like nothing he had ever seen. He had no idea what kind of drugs could cause this and certainly not anything that could be transferred by biting someone. He had seen all manner of zombie movies and TV shows – but that wasn't real. Either way, these people weren't dead. They were crazed, beyond feral, but they were not dead, were they? Ricky couldn't fully process what was happening; the more he thought about it, the less he understood. He started to run back towards home. He was terrified.

.....episode 2 coming soon.....

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