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

lights we use for a few hours at night. The police come through every so often, scouting for trouble, but they know who we are and they leave us alone, even though Spring Lake Commons was evacuated, and technically, we aren’t supposed to be living here. The soldiers are the ones we have to watch out for, because they’re mostly young, with lots of time and not a whole lot to do except ride around looking for reasons to make people miserable.
    “I bet it’s the lady with all the pets.” I point ahead to the rising road. The house I mean is just beyond the old bus stop where once I’d waited with my backpack and books and my friends in a life I’d been stupid to think was lame. “Remember her?”
    “She was mean.” Opal frowns as she puts her feet on the pedals and starts up the hill.
    I haven’t been down this part of the street since before the Contamination, but I’m clearly in much better shape than I was back then, because the hill that used to make me huff and puff is easy to ride up now. Even for Opal, and I was sure she’d complain about it. At the top, I look back toward our driveway. I feel a little bad about leaving Mom and Mrs. Holly alone in a way I don’t when Opal’s there. Dumb, I know, since she’s a kid and they’re adults,but … Mom isn’t herself and Mrs. Holly is old and not as “spry,” as she calls it.
    “Come on, Velvet!” Opal’s impatient. She waves a hand toward the long, curving street lined with trees and driveways.
    This part of the street is flat enough that we can see almost the whole length to where it makes a T at the back end of the neighborhood. And I stop, grabbing at Opal’s shirt to keep her from pedaling away from me. There are two cars in the middle of the street, about half a mile from us. Two wrecked cars.
    The pet lady’s house is only two driveways ahead of us, with still half the distance beyond that before we’d even get close enough to see anything inside those cars, but they
are
between us and the next intersection. Still, I gesture at Opal to hush. I don’t know why. Just that the sight of those cars makes my stomach churn.
    Opal puts a hand on her cocked hip and gives me an exasperated look. “Chickens? Hello?”
    “Right.” I push off on my bike, heading for the driveway of the house all the neighborhood kids had been fascinated by, even as they’d learned to stay clear.
    The pet lady had loved animals. Kids, not so much. The school even had to move the official bus stop because of how many times she complained about kids standing on the edge of her property while waiting for the bus. Not that any of us ever so much as put a toe on her lawn, because she’dcome hurtling out the front door, yelling at anyone who did. We never stopped there during magazine sales fundraising time, nor for Girl Scout cookies, nor for Christmas caroling, nor for trick-or-treating. Rumor had it that she owned a potbellied pig she kept in the fenced backyard, and although that exotic pet seemed worth at least a peek, nobody had been brave enough to try it.
    “She has a pit bull trained to bite you in the butt,” Opal says solemnly as we pause at the foot of the drive.
    “Mom said that’s not true.”
    She gives me a dark look. “Peter Miller said he saw it once.”
    “Peter Miller never saw anything,” I tell her, hoping that was true.
    Closer to the house, we both hesitate again. The yard’s overgrown with the same weeds and brush as ours, but there’s something about this house that feels empty. I listen for the sound of a growling pit bull or anything else, but there’s nothing but the rustle of leaves and the far-off chirping of birds.
    I ring the bell, anyway. We wait for a minute or so. Opal presses her ear to the door, listening. She rings the bell again and again before I can stop her.
    “Nobody’s home,” she says confidently, and twists the door handle.
    “Wait! You can’t just …”
    But she can just, can’t she? Nobody’s lived in this