I swung at him, wanting him to lose his balance. I tried to get his mask off. I grabbed his hair and pulled. I bit my brother on the arm and drew blood.
I saw red, like people say they do. A sheet of blood red was over my eyes and I couldn’t think. Just pummel. Pound, tear, destroy.
We reached the bottom of the staircase and Alex tried to squirm away from me. I launched myself at him.
Jake tackled me.
I hit the cold cement and I cursed him and raked at his face.
“Jesus Christ!” Jake cursed. “What happened up there?”
I roared at him. I had no words.
“What happened to your brother?” Jake demanded of Alex.
Alex was crying. I had made him cry.
“He’s an animal!” Jake said, pinning me to the ground with his knee in my stomach. My arms were behind my back, somehow. In addition to football, Jake had also been on the wrestling team. And he had maybe fifty pounds on me—I was pinned.
We didn’t hear Niko until he was standing right beside us.
“I sealed it,” he said. “It’s done. But we’re gonna need to cover the hatch with plastic sheeting and the loading-bay doors back here, too. I’ll get the staple guns if you guys get the—”
I must have growled or barked or something.
He gestured to me.
“What’s wrong with Dean?”
I swear to God, I wanted to rip his throat out.
CHAPTER SIX
THE GATE RATTLER
Jake strained to keep me pinned. Rage hammered in my heart. I wanted up!
I heard this weird whine. A panicky whine.
It was coming from Brayden.
“What is he?” Brayden said. His upper lip was curled back in an expression of disgust. “What is he? What is he made of?”
“What are you talking about?” Jake said, still struggling to keep me pinned.
Jake must have weighed two hundred pounds. I was flattened against the cold cement floor.
“Look at him!” Brayden cried. “There’s smoke coming off him. He’s straight from hell!”
“What are you talking about?” Alex said. He sounded scared. He sounded like he was crying but I couldn’t see him from where I was pinned.
Brayden was pulling at his hair, looking all around.
“It’s everywhere!” he cried. “Smoke from hell.”
He backed away from us and huddled against a stack of giant boxes.
“Brayden, there’s no smoke,” Niko said. “Everything’s okay.”
“There is evil everywhere!” Brayden wailed.
“Dude, you’re flipping out,” Jake said.
Niko went over to Brayden.
“Don’t touch me!” Brayden screamed.
“Look,” Niko said to Jake. “His pupils are completely dilated.”
“Get away from me,” Brayden said.
“It must be the air.” Niko came over to look at me. “The air went all green. We must have been breathing in the chemicals. Some kind of psychotic agent in the air.”
Niko looked funny, too, though I wasn’t quite up to saying so.
He had blisters around his eyes, like a raccoon mask. And his hands, when he touched me, were covered with tiny blood blisters, like he was wearing red lace gloves.
He started to cough. It sounded wet in there.
He coughed into his hand and came up with a blob of red phlegm. Then he caught sight of his hands and he looked at them with this expression of puzzlement so exaggerated I started to laugh.
Not a cool, ironic laugh but kind of a mad cackle.
I’m telling it like it happened, okay?
Brayden was seated on the floor, curled in a little ball, sobbing hard, jagged sobs.
Good.
I closed my eyes and listened to my heart beating. It was loud, like I had the heart of a gorilla.
All I could say was “Agghrr…”
I was trying to say Alex. But it didn’t come out.
“We’ve got to get cleaned up,” Niko said. He had his shirt off and was examining his skin. A tapestry of blisters was developing over his skin. It followed the underlying veins. He was starting to look like a biology class illustration of the circulatory system.
I tried again. “Agghhrr…” I wanted to say I was sorry.
“We need soap and water,” Niko said. “And I think I should take some Benadryl.”
“I’ll get it,” Alex offered.
“Sahalia, you should change, too,” Niko said. Sahalia looked freaked out. Her makeup was running down her cheeks. She headed toward the doors back into the store, giving Brayden a wide berth.
“Hey, would you mind getting us some clothes, too?” Niko asked.
She looked back at all of us.
“Sure,” she said. “Whatever.”
I tried to say, Let me up, I’m fine. But what came out was grrrrag. I strained against Jake’s bulk.
“Chill out, Dean!” Jake shouted in my face.
Alex skirted by. He glanced at me, then looked away. He had welts across his face where I had clawed him and there was blood caked near his nose. His eyes were red.“Hey, little man, do me a favor,” Jake said to my brother. “Get me some rope so I can tie up the Hulk over here.”
* * *
There is something very wrong with being tied up with rope your own brother brings from the Sporting Goods section.
* * *
After they tied me up, Jake took Brayden back into the store. He and Niko thought maybe the air in the storeroom was still polluted.
Niko stripped off his clothes and threw them in a trash can. He told Alex to do the same. They took the antibacterial soap and spring water that Alex had brought, and stripped and washed down. They just stood there on the cement floor and scrubbed down together.
“Are you okay?” Niko asked Alex.
“I think so,” Alex said.
“That was pretty scary.”
“Yeah.”
* * *
I hated hearing that. I hated hearing Niko comforting him. He was my brother. I should be the one comforting him. Only I had attacked him, you see.
* * *
“Here!” came Sahalia’s voice, and some garments came flying through the door.
She had picked out pink tracksuits for us, complete with fluffy pink slippers.
I was starting to feel like myself again.
“Guys,” I croaked, my voice horse and scratchy. “Guys…”
Niko stopped dressing to cough into the trash can.
“Are you okay?” Alex asked Niko.
Ask me, I wanted to say.
Niko nodded, wiping spit from his chin.
“The blistering is going down. Washing was a good idea. I think if I’d been up there any longer it could have been really bad.”
Alex nodded sympathetically.
“Guys!” I said from the floor.
“Okay, Dean!” Alex snapped at me. “Just wait!”
Niko examined his chest. The blisters were fading away. Vanishing almost.
After they’d both dressed, they came over to look at me.
I saw Alex had my glasses sticking out of his shirt pocket. He must gave grabbed them during our scuffle. Pretty considerate, after I’d tried to tear his scalp off.
“You’re feeling better?” Niko asked me.
“Yeah,” I croaked. “Well, I feel like a buck fifty. But I feel like myself.”
“Who is the president? What day is it? What’s Mom’s favorite flavor of ice cream?” Alex asked me.
“Cory Booker. Wednesday. She’s lactose intolerant.”
They let me up.
* * *
When we came out of the storeroom and walked back to where the others were waiting, we must have looked really funny in our pink sweatsuits.
Astrid started to ask us if everything was all right, then she burst into laughter.
“Hey, kids, look, it’s the ladies’ track team!” Astrid announced with a flourish, and they all cracked up.
Jake and Brayden joined in laughing. Alex, too.
But I still had some weird stuff happening in my body.
What I wanted was Astrid. She looked so good to me I wanted to take her, in a dark and terrible way.
Pardon my bloodlust. It’s just a little something they whipped up over at NORAD.
I swallowed. Tried to get my breath back.
“We made you guys some pizza,” Max said.
“Then we ate it all so Astrid’s making you some more,” Chloe added.
* * *
While Jake, Niko, and Brayden filled Astrid in on what had happened, I took a look at my brother, who I had really done a number on. The shopping cart of medical supplies was still in the Pizza Shack area, so I poked around, but I didn’t see what I wanted.
“Alex, please, come with me,” I said. “So I can fix you up.”
I knew what I needed to do the job right: Bactine. Our mom swore by it. She never used anything else to clean scrapes or cuts or what have you. She even carried it, in a small travel bottle, in her purse.
So I motioned for Alex to follow me and we headed back toward the Pharmacy section.
I felt horrible.
I had clawed him across the face. So brotherly of me. And he had a huge bruise developing along his jaw. Such familial tenderness. His eyes were red from crying. Because of me.
I rummaged through the fallen merchandise until I found the good stuff. I also grabbed a bag of cotton puffs.
“It wasn’t me,” I said, swabbing the first of his many scrapes. “Something in the air made me go crazy. You know I’d never attack you like that.”
Alex nodded, looking at the floor.
“Please,” I begged. “Say you forgive me. I feel so horrible. I couldn’t feel any worse.”
Tears welled up in my little brother’s pale eyes.
“It’s just…,” he said, his voice getting thin. “It’s just that I wasn’t scared before…”
And now he was.
Thanks to me.
“I don’t understand what’s happening,” he said. “Why you acted like that. Why Niko got those blisters and Brayden started seeing things.”