Broken Angels by Harambee K. Grey-Sun Read Free Book Online

Davin; becoming a pariah to all but a couple of his remaining friends; and getting kicked off the high school wrestling team and expelled from school. Hell, by the time his ex-girlfriend’s dad had tried to put buckshot through his skull, Robert was about ready to end it all; he’d fall in a bloody, delirious fit of laughter. But something compelled him to save himself that day—for the even worse episodes that were to come.
    It had all seemed so unrelenting until that clear, sunny day when he saw Darryl…
    His right hand was trembling. Robert looked at it. His nails were turning blue. The hairs on the back of his hand were stiffening, sticking straight out. His finger joints popped—painfully—when he bent them. On the periphery of his vision, he saw the phantom gnats, the indigo and crimson dots that couldn’t be seen straight on but only existed to taunt, to act as a signal. Shit . Speaking of fits…This wasn’t going to stop on its own. It was actually about a minute away from getting worse. He kept only his left hand on the steering wheel, but it would soon follow suit. He wouldn’t be able to steer at all. And he couldn’t count on a crash to put him out of his misery.
    Robert stepped on the gas. He’d been driving through a residential neighborhood, a linked set of one-way streets that, in times of heavy traffic on the primary route, Robert knew as a shortcut to the hospital. There was nowhere to pull over, and he couldn’t just stop. All of the driveways were full, except the one he’d spotted a bit farther down.
    He slowed at the first stop sign, didn’t bother for the second. Robert swung into the open driveway and put his foot down hard on the brake. His left hand couldn’t reach the stick to shift the car into park; his right hand was useless; so his foot stayed pressed on the brake pedal while his left hand fumbled with his inside jacket pocket for his pill bottle.
    He twisted the cap off with his teeth and poured two pills into his mouth. He let them sit on the middle of his tongue while the back of it worked to get enough saliva in his mouth in order to smooth the pills’ passage down his throat.
    Robert had to swallow twice to get them all the way down. He then closed his eyes and waited for the illusion of normality to retake his body.
    This shouldn’t have happened. He’d just taken his damned medication less than fifteen minutes ago. Looked like from now on he’d have to start taking twice as many pills every few hours, and remember to ask Sam when he saw her if any of the government’s medical geniuses have yet come up with anything stronger to keep the parasites tame.
    What a charmed life he led. If anything, he should be the one lying in a hospital bed.
    Robert had known what alleged “sin” he’d committed, how he’d opened the door for the Virus to enter his body. What he didn’t know—what no one knew—is where those translucent flies had come from in the first place. They’d appeared in random areas on the planet one early spring, and then they disappeared on the eve of summer, long before they could be classified or properly studied. Left in the wake of their biting and blood-feeding spree were the millions of parasitic microorganisms they’d injected into the skins of thousands of people. The human immune system defeated many of the parasites almost immediately. But in a few unlucky people, once they hit the bloodstream, the parasites thrived. They multiplied and took up residence in their hosts’ red blood, skin, and brain cells, introducing the human species to the White Fire Virus.
    Robert hadn’t been among those bitten eight years ago. But when the parasites began to use their new hosts to propagate themselves in manners other than biting, well…Robert eventually got caught up in the waves of victims that came after, all of them struck with something that started like malaria and rapidly evolved into something more like HIV. But what had the victims done—what