The Infection

That, and Sheena X, the high school chick who worked the register at the store and usually sat with her feet up on the counter, chewing gum and reading comic books. Sometimes, she even participated in the gaming on Friday nights. She would typically show up wearing red skinny jeans, Converse All-Stars, and a black T-shirt with screamo or some band name scrawled on it. Often, she wore a matching studded belt and wristband. On colder days, she wore a tight sweater vest. Her hair, dyed black, fell over one eye. She would show up at the store with an obsession of the week. One week, it was getting suicide scars tattooed on her wrists. Another week, making a movie based on the songs of Island Def Jam and Joy Division and Garbage. For the next three weeks, Johnny Depp, Johnny Depp, Johnny Depp. Todd usually communicated with her in an overexcited, virtually shouted stream of consciousness, but instead of rolling her eyes at him and mouthing freak, Sheena X simply stared and nodded sagely.

They accepted him, more or less, as he was. They were his port in the unending storm that was his adolescence.

The club played several tabletop miniature wargames but usually Warhammer 40,000, set in a space fantasy universe where the Imperium of Man, far flung across the Milky Way galaxy, was in constant conflict with powerful alien species. For many teenagers, music and fashion were their outlets. For Todd, it was gaming. He had painstakingly collected and painted a company of a hundred Space Marines, war machines and bosses, allowing him to participate in smaller games as well as big games, three thousand points and up, that played out over days. The Lycans had just gotten a new codex for urban warfare and had been trying it out with a game between Space Marines and massive swarms of Tyranids. The table presented the ruins of an ancient city in the middle. The Space Marines’ mission was to secure the city within several turns and set up a defense in time for a massive Tyranid counterattack. Todd and Alan had just taken the city before the Screaming, and now that school was canceled, he was itching to get back to the game. Alan had fallen down but his opponents were okay, and so the game could continue.

Lycan Hobbies, however, remained closed three days after the Screaming. Finally, in a state of panic, Todd called Sheena X at home. She explained to him that the owner’s wife had fallen down, and that he was out of his wits trying to find his brother, who was missing.

“Wow,” said Todd. “So do you know when he’s going to open the store again?”

“I don’t know, dude. What are you doing up this early? You’re never up this early.”

“Sirens woke me up. It’s like non-stop sirens out there. Some kind of fire or something.”

“I can hear them here, too.”

Fires were a common occurrence since the Screaming. A lot of heating devices—ovens, irons and so on—were left on when the screamers fell down. Natural gas systems were not being properly maintained. Power lines were still falling.

“So anyway, do you think he would just let us in so we could finish up our game?”

“Todd, what the fuck?”

He launched into a recap of the first night’s gaming. She had not been there that night. Surely, if she knew how great it was, she would understand his impatience at continuing the contest. He’d had a simple strategy, he said. He and Alan had sent armor—two Venerable Dreadnoughts with plasma and auto cannons, flanked by Land Speeders armed with missile launchers and heavy bolters—pushing hard through the city, securing it. When the infantry caught up, he sent about half to mop up the remaining resistance and the other half to establish a defensive perimeter in a horseshoe shape. Then the Tyranid counterattack suddenly appeared, a real party made up of Tyrannofex, Termagants, Tervigons and Hive Guard led by a Swarmlord with three Tyrant Guard—

“Enough, Todd,” Sheena said tersely.

He felt his stomach fall into his feet. “I’m sorry,” he said tentatively, his mind racing to figure out what he had done wrong.

“I don’t give a shit about Warhammer right now. My dad fell down, Todd.”

“Now he won’t bug you anymore,” he offered.

“I know I don’t like my dad very much,” Sheena X said, her voice strained. “I know he can be a real asshole when he wants to be. But I didn’t want this to happen to him. I didn’t want him to go into a fucking coma. I didn’t want half his foot to get chopped off by the fucking lawnmower he was pushing when he fell down.” Her voice became shrill. “Okay?”

“Okay, Sheena,” he said, feeling chastened and more than a little shocked by her language. “I get it. You know, my mom fell down, too.”

“I know, Todd. Maybe you should be thinking about her instead of that stupid game.”