DEAD IN BED By Bailey Simms: The Complete Second Book

PART 13, SECTION 10

Whatever Ian had wanted to tell me by the river bank, I didn't have a chance to ask him. Because as we walked back to the park together, Chris stood up from a picnic bench where he'd set up his microscope and was already approaching us.

Everything was quiet. Weirdly quiet. The party atmosphere had completely died down. Everyone seemed, in fact, to have fallen asleep. Peggy Shroep leaned against Tuck. Mr. Lawrence was resting his head in his arms on the picnic table. The smoldering barbeques were surrounded by paper plates and beer bottles, the remnants of a long day of eating and drinking. Pretty much everyone had a faint smile on their face. The citizens of Muldoon hadn't looked this content for a very long time.

"Sit down," Chris said. His tone sounded unexpectedly somber, and yet he was speaking between bites from the double burger he held in his hand. "I have to talk to you."

Ian sat at an empty picnic bench.

"Okay," he said. "Let's hear it. Is it TGVx? Has it spread?"

Chris shook his head with a distant look in his eye. "Nope," he said. "TGVy."

"What is TGVy?" I asked, sitting down beside Ian.

Chris took another bite of his hamburger and smiled at it warmly. "These are so freaking good," he said. "I guess . . ." His voice trailed off and his smile disappeared.

"Chris," Ian said firmly. "You have to cut back on the pot. Seriously, man. Focus. What is TGVy?"

Chris chewed and swallowed.

"Remember the nuns?"

"Of course we do," I snapped, losing my patience a little. "What about them?"

"They had TGVy," he said quietly. "And not because they were getting any out-of-the-cloister action. It's airborne, guys. TGV is in the air."

"Wait." Ian shook his head. "How can you be sure? You just woke up a few hours ago, for God's sake. How can you know this?"

"You can look for yourself, if you want." Chris gestured at the microscope at the far picnic table. "Something happened when we introduced the TGVx strain to the original TGV strain. The TGVx didn't wipe out the TGV. It bred with it. And somewhere along the biological line, TGVy popped up. This parasite is so small, I can barely see them in the scope. And their eggs are thousands of times smaller. So small, in fact, that when anyone who's infected dies, the eggs cling to the molecules in the gasses that are released naturally during the decay of organic matter. As soon as anyone breathes in just one of these itty-bitty eggs,"—Chris slapped his hand down on the table— "Bang. That's it. You're infected."

The TGVy parasite, Chris explained as we sat there trying to make sense of the implications of what he was saying, had evolved beyond relying on human sexual transmission. Because it had found a way to pass from host to host through the air, it no longer needed to make people crave sex in order to reproduce. Now, Chris said, all TGVy needed to do was to make sure that its host had enough calories in its system before killing it off and laying new eggs, starting the cycle all over again.

"Basically," Chris explained, "as soon as you're infected with TGVy, the eggs hatch in your blood, the parasites multiply like mad, and instead of psychotropically raising your libido, they make you really hungry, really sociable, and really euphoric. Essentially, they prime their hosts' consciousness to crave not just food but also to gather socially—to throw a big freaking party where there's likely to be tons of food. As soon as the host has eaten enough calories for the parasites to live on, the parasite kills it off. They stimulate your dopamine production so you're less likely to put up a fight or seek medical treatment. You just drift happily away into a very pleasant sleep. Then, you die. But this time there's no waking up."

I looked around at everyone collapsed on picnic tables and under trees. They were all still faintly smiling, just like the nuns in the bus. Suddenly, Tuck Schroep tilted over and fell onto the ground. Mrs. Whipple, her plump belly rising and falling until now, suddenly stopped breathing.

"What the hell are you saying, Chris? ...What's going on?" 

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