Read The Before for Free Online Page A

screen.
    I listened to the interview again. There was a new guy on the screen. Some guy I thought I’d seen on PBS doing science specials.
    “Before now,” he was saying, “scientists had only suspected that evolutionary changes might happen this fast.”
    The newscaster blinked, her professional demeanor slipping for an instant. “Are you saying the Ticks are the next link in the evolutionary chain?”
    “Well, first off, I’d argue with your use of the slang term Ticks—”
    I stopped listening again when I noticed Mel was humming loudly enough that she probably wasn’t listening to the news coverage. Besides, she’d walked right up to the screen and was pointing at the map of the southwestern United States projected in the corner of the screen. A bright red biohazard emblem marked Alps, Texas, where the Genexome Corporation’s research facility was located. Where the outbreak had started. There were five other, smaller symbols that marked the cancer hospitals where test samples had been sent. Each point of origin was outlined in concentric circles in shades of orange and gold. The lines marked the rate of contamination. Houston was the worst. By far.
    The newly bred monsters seemed to be avoiding the sparsely populated areas of west and south Texas, heading north and east toward the centers of population.
    The orange creeping up toward Dallas terrified me. And yet, I still felt strangely disconnected from the Tick outbreak. All these other concerns seemed so much closer to home. Dallas under martial law. The cop haunting our block. The internment camp awaiting Mel and me.
    The actual monsters that had caused all this still seemed distant. It was like watching a hurricane in the gulf, watching the Weather Channel as the swirling mass creeps closer and closer to land.
    Then Mel tapped the TV screen again and I realized she wasn’t pointing at the orange circle nearing Dallas. She was pointing to a dot on the map one orange ring away from Alps, Texas.
    I squinted at the screen, frowning. “We don’t know anyone in Fort Stockton.”
    She made a face that clearly said I’d missed the point.
    “Okay, then. Just tell me.”
    Finally, she blew out a breath and I could tell she wasn’t the only one frustrated by her growing silence. “Double bubble, boil and trouble.”
    Great. Now she was quoting Shakespeare. Or was that Chaucer? I didn’t ask because she’d gone back to humming.
    “That’s really annoying, you know. Always humming Beethoven like that so I can’t hear.” I knew it wasn’t Beethoven. I just said that to piss her off. I grabbed the remote so I could turn up the volume, but she slapped the remote from my hand.
    “Rachmaninoff makes geometry easier.”
    Which I was sure meant something to her, but I didn’t have time for her riddles today. “Whatever.”
    But she grabbed my arm. Briefly, but still. Mel wasn’t a toucher. When I looked at her, she bobbed her head. On anyone else, the gesture might have read as indifference, but she looked fretful. “I’m worried about him.”
    “Who? Dad?” That was the only him I could think of. Certainly the only him I knew in central Texas.
    She angled her head back to me, looking at me from under her bangs again in a way that made her look exasperated. “Carter.”
    “Carter?” I repeated dumbly.
    I frowned, staring from the screen to her and back again.
    She didn’t say anything more, but she didn’t have to. We’d only ever known one Carter. Carter Olson had gone to our school for part of the ninth grade. He’d been my first crush. That perfect unattainable guy. Popular, rich, and so friggin’ hot I could hardly breathe when he was near. But it was his sarcastic, biting sense of humor that had sealed the deal for me. I’d made an ass out of myself mooning over him for months.
    The truth was, I’d never felt about anyone else the way I’d felt about Carter. Which was pathetic, since we’d never even hooked up. I doubted even my best