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  SICK 253

  Brett Battles—Final Post Copy Edit

  SICK

  by

  Brett Battles

  Introduction by Blake Crouch

  • • • • •

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Brett Battles on Smashwords

  Copyright 2011 by Brett Battles

  Cover art copyright 2011 by Jeroen ten Berge

  Introduction copyright 2011 by Blake Crouch

  All rights reserved.

  SICK is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information about the author, please visit www.brettbattles.com.

  For more information about the artist, please visit www.jeroentenberge.com.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  • • • • •

  FORWARD

  The first jolt of interest was the cover...

  Ominous gas mask, and the silhouette of a man running across a desert.

  Then the title...SICK...one word, powerful, provocative, intriguing...

  But it was those first pages that hooked me.

  A man roused from sleep in the middle of the night by the cry of one of his children. What parent hasn’t experienced that? And, while stumbling toward their child’s room in that confused bleariness between consciousness and dreams, who hasn’t had that secret fear in the back of their mind, that maybe something is wrong? That maybe their son or daughter isn’t merely coming down with a cold, or in the wake of a nightmare. But something much, much worse...

  SICK didn’t just hook me. It hit me with a devastating uppercut on every primal level as a parent, a father, and a human being.

  Brett Battles has fashioned a blistering page turner that is destined to become a classic. This is a novel of paranoia, of fear, of a family blown apart by circumstances none of us could imagine, and ultimately, hope.

  This is exactly the kind of novel I love to read, and it reminded me in the very best way of David Morrell’s iconic TESTAMENT.

  Trust me, you will love it, too.

  SICK is absolutely unmissable

  -Blake Crouch, April 2011

  • • • • •

  1

  A cry woke him from his sleep.

  A young cry.

  A girl’s cry.

  Daniel Ash pushed himself up on his elbow. “Josie?”

  It was more a question for himself than anything. His daughter’s room was down the hall, making it hard for her to hear his sleep-filled voice in the best of circumstances. And if she was crying, not a chance.

  He glanced at the other side of the bed, thinking his wife might already be up checking on their daughter. But Ellen was still asleep, her back to him. He’d all but forgotten about the headache she’d had, and the two sleeping pills she’d taken before turning in. Chances were, she wouldn’t even open her eyes until after the kids left for school.

  Ash rubbed a hand across his face then slipped out of bed.

  The old hardwood floor was cool on his feet but not unbearable. He grabbed his T-shirt off the chair in the corner and pulled it on as he walked into the hallway.

  A cry again. Definitely coming from his daughter’s room.

  “Josie, it’s okay. I’m coming.” This time he raised his voice to make sure she would hear him.

  As he passed his son’s room, he pulled the door closed so Brandon wouldn’t wake, too.

  Josie’s room was at the other end of the hall, closest to the living room. She was the oldest, so she got to pick which room she wanted when they’d moved in. It wasn’t any bigger than her brother’s but Ash knew she liked the fact that she was as far away from Mom and Dad as possible. Made her feel independent.

  Her door was covered with pictures of boy bands and cartoons. She was in that transitional stage between kid and teenager that was both cute and annoying. As he pushed the door open, he expected to find her sitting on her bed, upset about some nightmare she’d had. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

  “Josie, what’s—”

  His words caught in his mouth.

  She wasn’t lying in the bed. She was on the floor, the bedspread hanging down just enough to touch her back. Ash rushed over, thinking that she’d fallen and hurt herself. But the moment his hand touched her he knew he was wrong.

  She was so hot. Burning up.

  He had no idea a person could get that hot.

  The most scared he’d ever been before had been when he’d taken Brandon to a boat show in Texas and the boy had wandered off. It took Ash less than a minute to find him again, but he thought nothing would ever top the panic and fear he’d felt then.

  Seeing his daughter like that, feeling her skin burning, he realized he’d been wrong.

  He scooped Josie off the floor and ran into the hallway.

  “Ellen!” he yelled. “Ellen, I need you!”

  He knew his voice was probably going to wake Brandon but, at this point, he didn’t care. Josie was sick. Very sick. He needed Ellen to call an ambulance while he tried to bring their daughter’s temperature down.

  “Ellen!” he yelled again as he ducked into the bathroom.

  Using an elbow, he flipped on the light then laid Josie in the tub. He wasted several seconds searching for the rubber plug, then jammed it into the drain and turned on the water, full cold. To help speed up the process, he pulled the shower knob and aimed the showerhead so that it would stream down on her and cool her faster.

  Where the hell was Ellen?

  He put the back of his hand on Josie’s forehead. She was still on fire.

  “Ellen!”

  He was torn. He wanted to stay with Josie, but the pills Ellen had taken must have really knocked her out, so that meant it was up to him to get help.

  “Hang on, baby,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  He raced into the hall and back to the master bedroom. The nearest phone was on Ellen’s nightstand, next to their bed.

  “Ellen. Wake up.”

  He shook her once, then picked up the phone and dialed 911. As he waited for it to ring, he glanced back at the bed.

  Ellen hadn’t moved.

  “Nine one one. What is your emergency?” a female voice said.

  He reached down and rolled Ellen onto her back, thinking that might jar her awake. But her eyes were already open, staring blankly at nothing.

  He flipped on the light. The skin around her mouth and eyes was turning black, and there were dark drying streaks running across her face from her eye sockets where blood had flowed.

  “Nine one one. What is your emergency?”

  “Oh, God. Help,” he managed to say.

  “Are you hurt, sir?”

  He touched Ellen’s face. It was as cold as Josie’s had been hot, and instantly he knew no breath would ever pass her lips again.

  “Send help! Send help, please!”

  He dropped the phone, not bothering to hang it up. It didn’t even dawn on him that he hadn’t given the operator an address. He was barely holding on to his sanity.

  Back in the hallway, he tried to shove the image of Ellen’s cold and lifeless body into the back of his mind. He looked into the bathroom. Josie
was still propped up in the tub, the water now several inches deep. He knew he should go see if she was cooling off, but he had to check Brandon first.

  He threw open his son’s door and flipped on the light. Brandon had one of those beds that were raised in the air like a bunk, but instead of a second mattress underneath there was a desk.

  Ash rushed over to the bed. His son was a long lump covered by a Spider-Man comforter. As was the boy’s habit, even his head was buried beneath the blanket.

  Ash could feel the muscles around his heart tightening. With the yelling and the running and now the light on in the room, he was sure his son should have woken, but Brandon hadn’t moved at all.

  He grabbed the comforter and pulled it back.

  His son was lying on his side, his back to him.

  Just like Ellen. Oh, God. Please, no.

  Holding his breath, he put a hand on Brandon’s shoulder and pulled him onto his back.

  His son’s eyes fluttered. “Dad?”

  For the first time since Josie’s cries had awakened him, Ash was unable to move.

  “Dad, are you okay?”

  Maybe this was the dream part. Maybe this was the final blow. Maybe in a few seconds he’d realize that Brandon’s voice was only in his head, and his son was as cold and dead as his wife.

  He touched Brandon’s forehead.

  Warm.

  Normal warm.

  “Brandon?”

  “You’re scaring me, Dad,” his son said, inching back a little. “What’s going on?”

  Ash quickly pulled Brandon off the bed and held him tight against his chest as he ran out of the room.

  “What’s going on?” Brandon asked again.

  “No questions right now, okay, buddy?” Ash told him, trying to keep his voice calm. “You’re going to be fine.”

  It was a lie, of course. How would either of them ever be fine again?

  He carried his son into the bathroom and sat him on the closed toilet lid.

  “What’s Josie doing in the tub?” Brandon asked.

  “Not now.”

  The water was nearing the halfway point and was covering Josie’s waist and legs. Ash touched the side of her face, hoping her temperature had come down a few degrees.

  Not only had it come down, it had plummeted.

  No! No, no, no!

  He yanked her out of the tub without turning off the water, and began stripping off her drenched nightgown.

  “Brandon, get some towels!” he yelled.

  “Dad, what’s going on? What’s wrong with her?”

  “Just get the towels!”

  By the time Ash had her clothes off, Brandon had retrieved three towels from the cupboard under the sink. Ash used the first to quickly wipe off what water he could, then wrapped the other two around her. Though she was dangerously cold, unlike her mother she was still breathing.

  “Get behind her,” he told his son as he laid her on the floor. “Hug your body to hers. We need to help her get warm.”

  Brandon surprised him by not arguing. He stretched out behind his sister and hugged her tight. Ash did the same in front, creating a cocoon of warmth with Josie in the middle. It was the only thing he could think of doing.

  “She’s so cold,” Brandon said.

  “I know.”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Where’s Mom? Does she know?”

  “I let her sleep.” Brandon would find out the truth soon enough, but at the moment Ash needed him to focus on helping his sister.

  Though Josie’s breathing was shallow, he could still feel her chest move up and down.

  “It’s okay, baby,” he whispered over and over. “It’s okay.”

  “She’s not getting any warmer,” Brandon said after a few minutes.

  “Just keep hugging her.”

  They were still holding her like that when the front door of their house smashed open. Ash could hear people running into their living room.

  “Who is it?” Brandon asked, fear in his voice.

  “I called the paramedics before I woke you,” his father said. “Let’s just hold on to your sister until they tell us to move. Okay?”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  Ash expected the EMT crew to come into the bathroom at any moment. But when no one appeared, he yelled out, “We’re back here! In the bathroom! We need help!”

  Footsteps pounded in the hallway, but still no one came.

  “We need help! We have a sick girl here!”

  Finally, he could hear them approaching the bathroom door. He tilted his head back so he could see into the hallway.

  First one person appeared, then two.

  But the relief he should have felt was overshadowed by confusion. The people moving into the bathroom weren’t dressed in EMT uniforms. They were wearing biohazard suits.

  What happened after that was a blur of images.

  His daughter rolling out of the house on a gurney under a plastic tent.

  Ellen leaving, too, only the plastic that covered her was a black bag.

  And people, dozens of them, all dressed in the same biohazard outfits.

  He didn’t know how long he and Brandon had sat on the couch while all this was going on, but it seemed like hours.

  Three things he did clearly remember from after that point.

  He recalled being led with Brandon out to a truck that had some sort of isolation container on the back. As they crossed the front yard, he heard another cry, this one not of pain or fear, but anguish. Loud and uninhibited. Looking up, he realized theirs wasn’t the only house with an isolation truck out front. There was one parked in front of every home on their block.

  The second thing he remembered came several hours later, after he and Brandon had been separated and he’d been put in some kind of cell.

  “Captain Ash.” The voice came out of a speaker in the ceiling.

  “Where are my children?” Ash asked. “They need me!”

  “I’m sorry to inform you, Captain,” the voice said, still calm, “but your daughter died three minutes ago.”

  “Josie?” he whispered. “Take me to her! Please, let me see her.”

  There was no response.

  “I have to see my daughter!”

  When the voice next spoke several hours later, it was to inform him that Brandon had also died.

  That was the third thing he remembered.

  2

  Dr. Nathaniel Karp stood with his arms crossed, watching the center monitor. There were three other people in the room with him: two technicians and a guard, all of whom had the highest-level clearances within the project.

  The feed in the monitor came from cell number 57. Inside the cell, Captain Daniel Ash continued to pace back and forth, his temper seeming to swing from angry to desperate to devastated and back again with each crossing.

  Overlaid across the bottom third of the monitor were Captain Ash’s vital signs. Dr. Karp noted that the captain’s heart rate was elevated, and that his temperature had risen half a degree, but that was understandable given the circumstances. What interested the doctor more was that the captain seemed to be showing no signs of the illness.

  The doctor glanced at the other video screens. Seventeen additional cells were currently occupied by neighbors of the Ash family. When they’d first been brought in, they were all like the captain—agitated, but healthy. Now, though, every single one of them was displaying symptoms of infection.

  Dr. Karp looked back at Ash’s monitor.

  So what makes your family different, Captain?

  Ash had been as exposed as anyone else when the spray was released on the three streets that made up the Barker Flats Research Center housing area. But it had not affected him at all. Just like it had not affected his son.

  Brandon, was it?

  The immunity had obviously been passed down through Ash’s ancestors, and not his wife’s. Preliminary results indicated she was one of the first
to succumb. Unfortunately, whatever gene was in play within the Ash family, there was an apparent gender component to it. The fact that Captain Ash and his son had remained immune, while the captain’s daughter had not, was definitely something that needed to be investigated.

  In many ways, the girl, Josie Ash, was the most interesting. By all accounts, she had gone through the same stages of the infection as the other victims, but not long after she’d been brought in, she had started to show improvement. And now, seven hours later, her temperature was almost normal.

  Still, it bothered Dr. Karp. If the immunity affected the sexes differently, any vaccine they might be able to develop from the Ash family could potentially have the same drawbacks. He was sure the female population of the project would be far from excited if they had to go through the same hell the Ash girl had. There was also the very real possibility that, though the girl was now getting better, she might have suffered some internal damage to her organs while the disease had a hold of her. That would be unacceptable.

  No, the gender component would have to be identified and eliminated. If that turned out to be impossible, then KV-27a would not be the answer and further testing would have to take place.

  “Dr. Karp,” one of the technicians said.

  The doctor acknowledged the man with a look.

  “We’ve lost the patients in cells 18 and 31. Five other cells are trending toward termination in the next thirty minutes, and the remaining ten sometime over the following two hours.”

  Dr. Karp nodded once, then looked back at Captain Ash. He was sitting on his bunk now, his head in his hands. His heart rate had come down a bit, and despite the fact they had been pumping the virus directly into his cell since he arrived, there was still no sign he was getting sick.

  “Call me if anything changes,” the doctor said.