Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode by Em Garner Read Free Book Online Page A

as I do. Maybe more, because while I have the luxury of my mom and sister beside me, his parents are both gone. I hug him hard, because even if I’m too young to be married, too young to know about forever, I’m not too young to know how it feels to miss someone so much, it makes you feel like you can’t make it another minute.
    “Have a good day.” It’s what my mom always said to my dad when he was on his way out the door.
    “You, too.” Dillon pauses, looking past me, though everyone else is in the kitchen. His troubled gaze meets mine. “Be careful today.”
    “You, too.” I think we both know that every time he goes out, there’s a chance he won’t come back. All it takes is being in the wrong place at the right time.
    I watch him walk down the driveway to get his truck, parked in the spot in the trees that we cleared to keep it hidden from the passing patrols. The big tree that fell across the driveway is still there—we thought about cutting it apart, even though it’s kind of a pain for Dillon to have to park his truck at the bottom instead of closer to the house. But that tree also makes it impossible for any other vehicles to get up the driveway, which means it’s just enough of a pain for the patrols that they’ve mostly left us alone. I wave. Behind me, Opal nudges me with the chicken in her arms. I look at mylittle sister and touch the chicken’s smooth beak. Her bright, dark eyes don’t blink as she tilts her head to stare at me.
    “We should find out if she has any sisters.”
    Opal beams up at me. “Oh, do you think she does?”
    I’m not sure, but I hope so.

FIVE
    I HAVE NO IDEA HOW FAR A CHICKEN CAN wander, but it can’t be that far. Can it? I have no idea how to judge anything about a chicken’s health any more than I know about its roaming range, but Bokky is fat and bright eyed and not skittish, so that makes me think she must’ve been taken care of pretty well, at least until recently. There are plenty of farms around, but I’m willing to bet this chicken came from someplace closer.
    Opal and I take our bikes. The streets are pitted and buckled, and the tenacious raspberry bushes have started encroaching on the asphalt. My foot still hurts this morning, even after I soaked it and tried to pull out all the tiny splinters, but with an adhesive bandage and an extra-thick pair of socks, it’s feeling better.
    At the bottom of our driveway, we pause. Opal’s grown so much taller that her bike, with its white-and-pink tassels hanging from the handlebars, is too small for her. Thehems of her jeans hit her a few inches above her ankles, something I notice just now. Her pants are too short, but her hair’s too long.
    “Take a picture; it’ll last longer,” Opal says smartly, and if it wouldn’t be weird and also sort of gross, since she hasn’t taken a bath in days, I’d hug her.
    “Which direction?” To the left is a big hill we’ll have to push our bikes up, but will be easier to coast down at the end, when we might be tired. To the right, the road goes down, which will be great to start, but much harder on the return trip.
    Opal doesn’t think about that. She jerks a thumb to the right. “Down.”
    “Up,” I tell her. “That’s toward the back of the neighborhood, and don’t you think if anyone was keeping chickens toward the front gate, I’d have noticed when I passed?”
    “Do you notice everything?” Opal can be a bit of a brat, and she’s too smart for her own good, but she has a point.
    “Of course not. But I’d probably notice if someone’s living in any of those houses, and I haven’t seen any signs of it.”
    “Maybe they’re hiding.” Opal shrugs and pushes her bike along with her feet, not pedaling. She heads left, though, so at least we don’t have to argue about it.
    “Maybe.”
    “
We
do,” she points out.
    We don’t hide, exactly. Not really. It’s more like we lay low. The generator makes enough noise to attract attention, as do the