Feast of Weeds (Books 1--4) Read online

  Feast of Weeds Books 1 - 4

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  A GROUP OF RUNAWAYS.

  A HORRIFYING VIRUS.

  A post-apocalyptic Young Adult series where the runaways are the heroes, the zombies aren't really zombies, and you can't trust your memories....

  ...even if they're all you have left.

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  Contents

  GERMINATION (Book 1): A Novella

  CONTAMINATION (Book 2)

  INFESTATION (Book 3)

  ERADICATION (Book 4)

  Starter Library Details

  About the Author

  Table of Contents (by chapter)

  Copyright

  Feast of Weeds Book 1: A Novella

  GERMINATION

  A GROUP OF RUNAWAYS. A HORRIFYING VIRUS.

  Mary knows how to thrive on the street. She makes it her mission to keep other kids away from everyday monsters. But when she’s attacked by a crazed man clutching a bloody heart she realizes—there’s a new kind of monster in town.

  A single drop of blood, and now Mary’s one of the infected. Unless she can stop the virus and save her friends, the new monster in town might just be her.

  To all the readers who also ran to their family

  “Should I Run Away?”

  Posted August 10th at 5:36PM on Do More Than Survive: How to THRIVE as a Runaway

  If you are asking that question and wonder what the answer is—the answer is no. It’s not bad enough. Stick it out, whatever you’re going through. It’s more dangerous on the street.

  If it doesn’t matter what I say, you’re going to run away—then read on.

  Pros:

  » Lots of freedom and travel

  » You will become very skilled at living outside

  » You will meet lots of interesting people

  Cons:

  » If it’s cold, you’re going to be cold, if it’s wet, even worse. If it’s hot—you get the idea.

  » If you are traveling between cities, sometimes you will go without food for several days.

  » Lots of the interesting people you meet will want to steal from you, hurt you, or sell you something that will hurt you.

  » If you look under sixteen it’s going to be really hard for you to make money without getting into serious trouble.

  » If there’s anybody at home who still cares, like a little sister or a grandpa, you will seriously hurt them.

  If you’re actually trying to thrive as a runaway, I don’t recommend:

  Stealing—if you get caught you go to jail which is worse than whatever home you left, but sometimes you need something, just don’t expect to get away with it forever.

  Drug dealing—you’re likely to get hooked and become a tweeker, or get caught and go to jail. I’m not saying street kids don’t deal drugs. It’s fast money, but it’s risky. If it’s really about money for you, then why did you run away in the first place?

  Prostitution—this is disgusting. People do it, but not me. Not ever. But sometimes you have to trade favors because you want a hot shower or a bed to sleep in and that’s okay. Just don’t make it a habit.

  Believing in monsters—people will tell you so many rumors about monsters while you’re on the street. Sometimes it even makes the news, like right now. It’s true, there are monsters on the street. There have always been monsters on the street, but not like what the news is talking about. Don’t let the stories scare you too bad—only just enough to find some others who will watch your back.

  I’m not saying I haven’t done any of the above. I’m saying I wish I hadn’t. So it’s better if you try to avoid it from the beginning. I hope you don’t have to learn the hard way like I did. But if you do, I won’t judge.

  If you can endure it for a little longer, the older you are before you run away the better your chances at making money without resorting to sex, stealing, or other stuff that might hurt you or make you sick. I ran away when I was thirteen. I did a lot of stuff I wish I could take back. I’m almost seventeen now and thinking maybe I don’t want to live on the street for the rest of my life.

  Also, if you think you’re going to find happiness by running away, you’re dead wrong. Happiness comes from within.

  If you run away, all your demons go with you.

  Just saying this because I know. But I’m not telling you not to run. I did it after all, which is why I’m writing about it—to maybe help those like me who are going to run no matter what.

  If you’re still fed up and it’s time to go, then this blog is for you.

  Chapter 1

  The guy, middle-aged, wearing business casual, probably walking home from work, held out a dollar like it stank.

  The cell phone lay in plain sight between me and Gabbi on the hot sidewalk. Seconds before Mr. Casual had shown up, I’d hit submit on two posts scheduled to go live an hour apart—my readers expected constant updates. And anyways, if someone were thinking right then about running away, they couldn’t exactly wait a week to read my next one, could they?

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.” Gabbi actually said it without any sarcasm in her voice, which was more than I’d have bet she could manage with his holier-than-thou attitude.

  Their hands hovered in mid-air—hers, dirt-streaked, with half-moon lines under the nails. She grabbed for the green bill.

  His pale, clean hand didn’t let go.

  I looked up. His gaze was locked on a spot near Gabbi’s knee.

  On the phone.

  “What are you two playing at here?”

  Gabbi folded her hands in her lap, her back straight, her round face and brown eyes expressionless.

  The phone had been free, someone’s discard. We loaded it when there was extra cash. I liked posting more than the public library allowed, plus it kept us in touch with the rest of the group. But he wouldn’t understand. None of them ever did. “We’re good people. We just need some help,” I said.

  “You stole that.”

  “A first generation iPhone?” I said, not being able to stop myself. “Please. I would have stolen something newer than that.”

  You could almost see him get madder even though he didn’t say a word. He stalked off a few steps, stopped. Looked down the street, started to come back.

  Damn.

  Between the window washing job I’d finished yesterday and today’s spanging money, we almost had enough for Jimmy’s birthday cake, some gas for the van, and this month’s gym membership. Clearly we weren’t getting any money out of Mr. Casual. The faster he left the better. This was a good spot, but only during rush hour.

  Plus, we both feared Norman would appear at any moment to take back his corner. Street rumors said someone or something had murdered him in a weirdly gruesome way.

  You had to figure people would exaggerate. But still.

  A red four-door drove through the intersection and then another handful of cars all in a row. The light turned yellow and the cars began to slow, but Mr. Casual blocked them from our view. He stepped closer into our space. His cologne was so thick I wondered if he secretly liked to suffocate people.

  “What do you want?” Gabbi said, all thankfulness gone now. I’d taught her that early on—be super nice when people help you out, otherwise get aggro.

  “You two, out on the street like this, begging. It’s disgusting. You think it’s funny, acting like you’re hard up?”
/>   “We ARE hard up,” I said, fiddling with the braided end of my hair. We got more money when I let my black hair down to offset my dark eyes and brows, but it was too hot for that.

  “You should be in school. I work hard for my money. What do you do? Beg like this?”

  “Don’t give us your money," I said, tugging on my braid until it hurt. "Go home to your wife and 2.3 kids and your TV and your mortgage. We don’t need your help. You don’t even know—”

  “Is this what you always wanted—to be homeless?”

  “We’re not homeless,” I said. “A homeless kid stays at a shelter and never leaves the neighborhood where they got left. We’re travelers. WE left. We’re out here, seeing the world and what it’s really like and all the cool people in it, and sometimes all the dicks in it like you.”

  He stopped listening to me and pointed at Gabbi as if somehow sensing he was getting to her. “Where are your parents? They should know you’re pretending, taking peoples’ money just for kicks. Your parents must be disappointed in you. They must have hoped you would become so much more than this.” He jabbed his finger into Gabbi’s face.

  She seemed to melt into the sidewalk. Each word made her head sink lower until her forehead was inches from the sidewalk, as if in an ashamed bow.

  Crashing waves of air filled my ears. I lost feeling in my toes and my hands began to shake.

  How dare he.

  How dare he put that look on her face.

  I jumped up and pushed him hard in the chest. My hands left dark imprints from sweat and dirt on his clean, pale blue shirt.

  The flush of his forehead deepened into a purplish-red. His blonde hair was stringy, in one of those styles where you could see the pink flesh of scalp underneath.

  “We were nice to you. We didn’t point any fingers. We didn’t harass you. You think you know her?” I pushed him again and he stumbled back a few inches. “You think you can talk to her like that because you were going to give us one stinking dollar?”

  “Young lady, you should be ashamed—”

  “You better stop right now.” I clenched my hands at my sides and dared him to say something else, anything.

  He opened his mouth, closed it. He backed up a step, then a second one. “I’m calling the police.” He left quickly, rounding the corner.

  The light turned. The cars, filled with people pretending not to look, disappeared in a thick cloud of exhaust.

  I tried to calm the roar in my ears.

  Gabbi hadn’t moved.

  “Gabbi.” I brushed my hair off my face and realized my hands now smelled like his cologne. I spit on them, rubbed in the spit, and then wiped the smell as best I could onto the newspaper. “He’s a jerk. He’s a 9-to-5 wage slave who knows nothing about you or me or anything. Forget him. Stand up for yourself next time. You’ll feel better about someone being a jerk if you’re a jerk back.”

  “I’m fine,” she said after a long second.

  “Come on.” I touched her shoulder. “We need to move.” No doubt Mr. Casual was already calling the cops. I decided I would find a way to make her laugh. God knows we both needed it.

  I gathered up the newspapers we used to keep our pants off the gum-pocked sidewalk. Gabbi slipped the phone into a zippered pants pocket. Both of us wore our spanging shirts—ratty, threadbare things we kept dirty. People gave more money to kids who really looked the part. The dirt I had sifted into Gabbi’s hair had caked into mud a while ago. My long dark hair washed out pretty easily. Gabbi’s light brown frizz was a different story. At least the newspapers grimed up our hands in an easy-to-wash-off way. We’d go by 24 Hour Fitness later and clean up.

  A couple of blocks away, I set down our jar and sign and we folded ourselves against the wall of a corner liquor store. Gabbi moved into the shade to keep herself from burning. I didn’t like the heat, but my skin never burned, it only turned a darker cinnamon.

  I sighed. Spanging was the crappiest job ever.

  We made sure to hide the phone when a green Ford sedan slowed. The driver’s side window hummed down, revealing a woman behind the wheel with a too-sunny smile even for summer.

  “Can you spare any change?” I said, returning her smile. You had to smile, you had to be nice no matter how horrible you felt, and Gabbi wasn’t that good at acting.

  She held out a fiver. A gold bracelet caught the light, flashing us.

  Gabbi jumped up, her shoulder-length hair frizzing like nobody’s business.

  “Thank you,” I called out when Gabbi said nothing. “God bless you.”

  Their fingers brushed. She pulled back her manicured hand like she feared an animal was about to bite her.

  The window rolled up and she drove off.

  Gabbi returned to a cross-legged position. I leaned over and brushed a leaf from her shoulder then tugged her hair. “There are worse ways to earn money.”

  I didn’t need to say it. I shouldn’t have said it. We didn’t need reminding about other ways we’d scrounged up cash in the past. But that was over. Things were going to be different now. “You know Jimmy’s hankering for that special dark chocolate cake,” I said, trying to change the subject.

  “It feels dumb getting money for cake,” Gabbi said. “Especially when we can get a whole box of day-old donuts for free.”

  “But he’s desperate for it. You can’t really hold it against him.”

  “Watch me.” She harrumphed in that way of hers that tried to cover up how young she still was deep down, how she wanted to belong to somebody, just like the rest of us. But she would die before letting anyone know it. Her parents did that to her. They didn’t throw her away like they did Leaf, but they drove her off all the same.

  “He’s still an oogle.” I smiled and showed my teeth. “Like you were—not so long ago.”

  “Over a year!”

  I realized I hadn’t made her laugh yet. I decided to take this as a personal insult. “Being a runaway isn’t so bad.” I talked in my deepest, most reflective, most professorial tone to match that woman who had stalked us for two weeks. She had wanted to do a college paper on how life was REALLY like for street kids. She kept asking about survival sex, and how often we did this drug or that drug, or how often we’d beaten somebody up, and how many murders we must have witnessed, and how much did we drink. She didn’t want to know anything we really cared about, like how cramped the van got sometimes, and how we wanted more public library hours, and what were our favorite Tumblr blogs, and how at the last park concert Leaf got invited to drum on stage during the band’s encore.

  “Being a street kid means you get the freedom to party whenever you want and you don’t have any college debt or responsibilities.” I pushed imaginary glasses up my nose. Like taking care of our food, shelter, clothing, safety, hygiene, not getting pregnant, it was no big deal, true freedom, living it up.

  Gabbi smiled—but I wanted her to LAUGH.

  “It’s not so bad, not if you’re smart and careful and stay out of the drug houses, shelters, pimp control, gang territory, rich people territory, poor people territory, middle people territory. You know, all the territory.” I leaned over and pantomimed opening a notepad while holding a pencil. “Now please tell me exactly how many blow jobs you gave in exchange for food this week.”

  Gabbi’s laughter rang out like a bell. That helpless kind of laugh that started from the belly and shook the chest and made you hiccup at the end.

  I toed the sidewalk and hid my smile. She’d be mad at me later for making her bust up like that, but it was worth it. She was fifteen, I was seventeen. But both of us liked to laugh as if we were little kids. I think it was partly because neither of us had laughed much when we were actually little.

  Minutes passed. Only one car drove by. An old man popped into the liquor store before I could ask for change. This corner was SLOW.

  The digital doorbell beeped again. The old man came out, his plastic bag boxy from a six-pack. He dropped some coins in the jar before I could say a wor
d.

  I tipped my head and smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

  He nodded. “I’ve been in your shoes once or twice. Good luck to you.”

  “Why can’t they all be like that?” Gabbi said after he left. She sighed. “What do you think Spencer will find tonight?”

  I leaned back against the wall, happy that at least someone didn’t see us as worse than dirt. “Ano said he was going to swing by the bakery on O Street and try to score some day-olds. That’s all I’m thinking about. And maybe buy some new toothbrushes.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s NOT all you’re thinking about when it comes to Ano.”

  “Very funny,” I said, but we both knew she was right, and mostly I didn’t care since he was hot and really nice and we both had a thing for each other.

  “Jimmy wants another disposable camera.” Gabbi shook the jar, the coins clanging together amongst the dollars.

  Jimmy was the newest to the group. I still hadn’t decided if he was a lifer yet, or if he would end up going back to his family after playing street kid with us. But I suspected he was going to stay. Sometimes you can just tell.

  “Heads-up,” Gabbi said.

  A man dirtier than us limped across the street. It looked like he’d come from the two-story office building that had been shut down for days—if the pile of newspapers at the door was any indication. His clothes were ragged, his shirt torn at the collar. His hair was cropped short but still somehow managed to look like a terrible case of bedhead.

  No one else was in sight. The old guy was long gone. I jumped up and wondered if we should go into the liquor store and hide until the owner called the cops on us for loitering.

  For all my jokes and lightheartedness, things could turn mean real fast. Thoughts of Norman came to mind. If he was back, he’d have already heard we’d been spanging on his corner. We’d be in for a beating for invading his territory. I didn’t totally believe in angels anymore, not like I used to when I was a kid, but I still believed that demons were pretty much real—and Norman was a homeless one in human form.