Down World by Rebecca Phelps (beach read TXT) 📗

“That’s what they tell us,” Sage said, still staring at my arm. Then, probably realizing she was being vague, she looked up at Brady. “It’s a tiny ball that releases a constant stream of vaccine. We have a lot of diseases here. But people from the other side often have a bad reaction. We don’t know why.”

Brady stood up and grabbed his upper arm, almost instinctively. “I feel fine.”

Sage looked up at him. “Did you get one too?”

Brady looked at his arm, flustered. “I mean . . . ,” he began. “They said we had to, so . . .”

“We should take yours out, too, just in case.” Sage sighed. “Then we’ll drop you back off at the high school.”

“I told them we could help them,” said the waitress.

“Well, you shouldn’t have said that, Caryn,” Sage said. “He’s a ticking time bomb and she’s already exploded.”

I shivered again. Why did she say that? What the hell did they put in me? I tried to close my eyes and will it away, as though DW was a bad dream you could wake up from. But this was no dream. The pain stabbing out of my arm was real, and it was probably already too late to do anything about it. Still, I had to try.

“Sage,” I said, and I could hear that my voice was barely a whisper, so I said it again. “Sage, please. Help us.”

Sage looked down at me and then back at Brady, who still stood by my side.

“Did you tell them my name?” she asked Caryn.

“Not exactly. I told them the password,” Caryn replied.

Sage sighed. “Well, it’s the same thing, isn’t it?”

“Your name is Sage,” I said, finding all my remaining strength to continue talking. “On the other side, you were a friend of my mother’s. You live in the hotel, on the top floor, with your husband, John. The bathroom is painted . . .”

I had to catch my breath and I could hear a wheezing sound when I inhaled. Whatever this infection was, it was spreading very quickly, and I could tell from the hot, dizzy feeling in my head that I was probably running a very high fever.

“ . . . fire-engine red,” I continued, feeling myself lose consciousness. Brady was there to catch me as I began to slump over, and then everything went black.

I woke up this time stretched out on a cot, in a darkened room. I couldn’t tell how much time had passed, but it seemed like only minutes. A cool washcloth was on my forehead and it was the only thing giving me any relief.

I became aware that Sage was by my side, and then felt a stinging sensation in the bicep of my noninfected arm. I looked down to see she was giving me an injection.

“It’s okay,” Sage said. “It’s an antibiotic. It should work quickly, and you’ll feel better soon.”

I nodded, realizing that the deep pain in my other arm had gone from a sharp pulsing to a dull thud. I looked down and saw that the entire sleeve had been ripped off my shirt and a bandage was wrapped tightly around the site where I had been given the shot.

“We took it out,” Sage explained. “It’s a good thing you were passed out, because it kills when it’s embedded like yours was.”

As she was saying it, I heard Brady grunt from a nearby corner of the room. His sleeve was rolled up, and Caryn the waitress was digging into his arm with a pair of tweezers.

“Sorry,” she said, her face contorting a bit with a sympathetic pain.

“It’s okay,” Brady said, trying to sound tougher than I imagined he actually felt in the moment. “Do you need more light or something?”

“No, I can see it,” she said. “I’ve almost got it. I’m sorry, I’ve only done this a few times before.”

“And it hurts like hell every time,” teased one of the boys from earlier, who was sitting at a table nearby playing cards with the others.

“You want to come over here and take over, Milo? I’ll get you a pair of gloves.”

“I’m no surgeon,” replied the boy.

“Neither is she,” said the other boy, and they all laughed at Caryn’s expense.

I sat up a bit to watch the scene, relieved that the fever seemed to have broken. I was already feeling better, though still a bit woozy.

“Got it!” Caryn cried, removing the tweezers from Brady’s arm. Whatever she’d taken out must have been almost microscopic in size, because the tweezers looked empty from where I was sitting.

“Run and flush it with the other,” said Sage, and Caryn did as she was told, beelining for a nearby bathroom. “Can’t have them finding those if they ever raid the place.”

Sage left my side and went to start wrapping fresh gauze around Brady’s injection site. “Keep this clean,” she instructed him. “And change the bandage once a day for three days, you got it?”

Brady nodded, looking back at me.

I offered him a weak smile, wanting to let him know I was feeling better.

“If you need the vaccines so much,” I began, turning to the boy at the table who was apparently named Milo, “why did you take yours out?”

Milo shrugged. “I had a reaction like yours. I think it’s because I’m part Otherlander.”

“Otherlander?” I asked, figuring he must have meant our plane.

“Oh, please,” said Caryn, returning from the bathroom. “You’re not Otherlander.” She then turned her attention to me. “People here sometimes refer to the other side like being part Cherokee or something. It sounds cool, but it’s probably not true.”

“Won’t you get busted if you don’t have the vaccine?” Brady asked.

“You sound like one of them,” said Milo. “You sure you’re not a spy?”

I felt a surge of panic take over me. We couldn’t lose the trust of these people. We needed them to get back to the lake. I started to stutter out a response, but I didn’t know how to prove our