Maximilian hated ice cream with a passion. There was something about the cold, creamy substance that made him cringe, and it was full of enough sugar to bring up his breakfast. Even now, as he forced himself to swallow a lump of the rainbow-colored cream, he wondered whether it would be worth it to simply toss it behind one of the bushes at the park nearby. But before he could move, Margot was pulling at his arm again, pointing and laughing and shouting over the loud music and just being as cheerful as ever.

Max wasn't sure why he'd agreed to this. And then he remembered: oh yeah, I'm gay.

Pride was exactly what Max thought it would be— screaming, suffocating, electrified crowds, cold and disgusting ice cream, and the sun murdering everyone with its heat— but he continued to suffer through the mobs and the louder-than-shit music because of his sister. She'd been the one to yank him out of the house, even though they were both supposed to be laying on the couch and doing something unproductive while their dad was at work.

"Pride would be amazing," she'd told him in that oh-so-excited-voice of hers, and he'd listened. "We'd meet new people and make friends, and there'll be music, and dancing, and parading, and so much love and acceptance in the air. Even if you aren't part of the LGBT community, you can still be there to support, Max. it'll be the best thing, I swear on Aunt Pihu's sixth daughter's life."

Max had forced a laugh at that last part. He couldn't blame Margot for automatically assuming he wasn't part of the LGBTQ+ community (he preferred to call it that, as he didn't like the way his sister just excluded the queers, intersex people, asexuals, and everyone else in the community by saying LGBT)— he did a damn good job at pretending he didn't like boys or anything feminine in the slightest. That was what his sister thought a gay dude was, after all: a guy who talked nonstop about boys the way girls did and painted his nails and created YouTube videos on how to be excessively flamboyant. The stereotype had been embedded into her and the rest of the people he knew, which was probably why it was so hard for even him to believe he could be gay.

"You know I hate crowds, Margot," Max replied coolly, as if that was the only reason he didn't want to go. He didn't mention the fact that being around other gay people made him nervous, like they could see him for the true homosexual he was— as if that were a bad thing. It made him insanely uncomfortable, too, to know that he had something in common with someone, and they had no idea what it was. He felt like he was keeping two secrets then, each one equally as suffocating.

"'You know I hate crowds, Margot.'" Her voice was an octave lower than his as she mimicked him, which impressed him slightly. "C'mon, live a little! You can't just sit here all day! Pride's a waiting, for you and me!"

And then she happily stomped up the stairs, two by two, and disappeared into her room to paint her face with rainbow glitter. Max had stared after her; humored, curious, and itching to get out of the house. Before he knew it, he was bounding up the steps, throwing on a rainbow tye dye shirt, stepping out of the house with Margot's hand in his, racing into the crowds at Pride, eating sickly sweet ice cream.

And wondering why the hell he'd let his sister pull him into this.

See, being closeted to everyone you know is hard, but being closeted at Pride with a bunch of out people around you— a bunch of people who aren't afraid to be themselves, who aren't cowards like you, and you want to scream the fact that you're here and you're queer just like them at the top of your lungs, but you just can't— that's a whole new level of self-loathing. And Max no longer felt like dishing out hot bowls of hatred to himself.

Margot was still gripping Max's arm as she cheered and screeched at the drag queen float, laughing like she was drunk. And, Max realized, she sort of was. She was intoxicated by the scent of all the food and sweat and love in the air, high on the buzz of the crowd. Max didn't think she could possibly get any giddier until he spotted Hadley, Margot's secret girlfriend, moving towards the two.

"Gogo!" Hadley shouted, squeezing through the bodies of two hugging guys and giggling awkwardly with them before turning to hug Max's sister.

"Hads! You made it! You found us!" Margot's eyes were sparkling like a glass of champagne.

Max could remember the day Margot had told him about Hadley as clear as day. His sister had walked into his room and closed the door, like she was going to sell him a secret that was worth its weight in diamonds. Then she actually did. She sat right next to him, thigh-touching close, and explained how she felt about her friend. How she felt about girls. And right then and there, Max realized he felt the same way about other boys, and he'd cried once Margot left the room. He must have been twelve or thirteen then.

The way his sister had talked about homosexuality made it seem like secret that could kill, a sin that would send him to Hell in a heartbeat. And with his overly religious mother, it'd probably sent him to shock therapy in a heartbeat, too. But now here they were at Pride, with rainbow flags raised everywhere, and people celebrating being part of a community of people similar to them. Being gay was not a sin to any of them, and there were thousands more Prides going on around the world where everyone would accept both Margot and Hadley and Max. A smile danced across his lips at that thought, even with an ice cream cone dripping and melting in his hand and the closet looming over his head like a noose.

The crowd began to grow a bit rowdy with the upcoming floats, and Max decided he'd had enough of the loud-crowds-and-music side of Pride for the day. He reached for Margot's shoulder, telling her he'd be at the park if she needed him, and disappeared into the masses.

"Wait, we'll come, too," Hadley responded, tugging Margot after him. "The more, the merrier."

The three slowly made their way through the crowds, asking people to make room and shoving those who couldn't hear them. Their progression was slow and hot with sticky limbs and clothing all attempting to create the damp friction infamously known as Floridan humidity. Luckily, Max lost his ice cream somewhere along the way, and the tightly packed mobs started to thin out the farther they went. Margot began complaining that her legs were killing her, and Hadley made some joke about how the sun would cook her into a french fry that ended with, "Haha, get it? Because I'm a salty potato." Margot giggled like an idiot. With a dramatic eye roll, Max led the giddy couple into a restaurant a block away from the parade.

A bell tinkled as Max opened the glass door, and the woman at the counter looked up from wiping an already clean glass with a white rag. Once Marot and Hadley realized the restaurant was basically empty, they rushed inside, eager to have a moment to themselves. Margot was the type of person to snog in public, tongue and all; Hadley didn't care whether Max was watching while the two made out, so that's exactly what they did. The lady smiled at them and continued along with her busywork, making Max even more uncomfortable. He'd been looking for a little space and quiet, and the thump of the bass was still loud enough to rattle the salt and pepper shakers on the table. He couldn't even hear the supposed breaking news playing on the television bolted on the pale wall above the counter, but he doubted it was breaking enough to stop everyone outside from having a good time.

He decided he would give his sister a moment before suggesting they go somewhere else (preferably somewhere where she and Hadley weren't sucking each other's faces off in the corner), but he didn't have anytime to speak before the screaming started. Just like that.

"What's going on?" Max asked, his heart suddenly skipping a beat in his chest. Screams always scared the crap out of him, even the most obviously cheerful and unfrightened ones.

"It's probably just a few people getting all excited over another float," Counter Lady said, still wiping her glass. "I remember my first Pride. It was over in San Francisco, and boy, was it loud. I thought someone was dying people were screaming so loud."

Hadley detached herself from Margot and pressed through the glass store front. "I think someone's actually dead over there, though. Look! That whole group of one...two..three..four...at least five people are on the ground!"

Margot, Hadley, Counter Lady, and Max craned their necks to look at the parade through the store window. Sure enough, a group of people were on the floor, and more were beginning to seemingly pass out. It was as if everyone was contracting heat stroke all at once, and they were falling like dominos. And then, just as quick as they'd fallen, they were all screaming and tangled and trying to stand up, now like pieces of string when you bunch them up. The fact that it was almost ninety degrees out there made everything ninety times as worse.

"Oh my gods," Counter Lady murmured. "You kids stay here, okay? This looks bad."

The teens watched as Counter Lady left the store and locked the door behind her, forcing them to remain in the restaurant anyway. Margot started complaining immediately, and Hadley went on about how this constituted as harassment, Margot instantly agreeing even though that didn't sound right to Max. Instead of correcting his sister's girlfriend, he went over and stepped on the countertop, turning the volume on the television up higher.

They'd better be explaining what the hell is going on right now, he thought anxiously as he looked up at the news anchors.

"...explosion at the Johnsonville branch of Getter Corporation. The entire building seemed to implode, bringing the buildings next to it down with it. Just before the blast, this phone call was made to the police."

"Is this serious?" Hadley asked, as if she didn't recognize the local news anchors. Then again, she probably didn't watch local news, so Max just nodded silently.

An anxious woman's voice came over the speakers. "Um, yes, hello? 911? We believe something's happened in our testing labs, and there's been a bit of an outbreak."

"Outbreak how?" The operator sounded as confused as Max felt.

"We were working on a classified type of drug, and in order to make this drug, we had to create a virus and—"

"Ma'am, please slow down. What is your emergency?"

The woman sighed and began again, her words just as quick and tangled up as before. "The virus has gotten out, and people are getting sick. It's an airborne disease that causes people who catch it to repeatedly pass out for several days after catching it before eventually succumbing to death. And it affects the brain's pain receptors, bringing awful pain to anyone who—" The woman cut off abruptly, and there was a loud thump. She had passed out.

The news anchors didn't manage to cut the rest of the phone call off quick enough, and the woman's screeches were audible for a long second right before the screen changed. Margot muttered something about how gruesome it was, but Max could hardly believe it. An explosion? At Getter Corp, a building less twenty miles away? And he hadn't heard it?

As if to prove him wrong, the bass dropped in one of the songs booming from the now panicking parade. And yet this time, the thumping didn't rattle the salt shakers. Had the explosion done that before? And the virus, had that traveled all the way over to Pride? Was that even possible?

"We need to get that waitress and tell her about whatever the hell this thing is," Hadley said. "If this is legit, she could be in trouble."

But before any of the teenagers could even move to get up, something slammed against the door of the store. Max jumped out of his chair, but the skin on the bottom of his thighs didn't come with him. Margot walked towards her brother instinctively, and Hadley looked prepared to use her chair to defend her girlfriend until her last breath.

"What the hell—?" Margot started.

"Holy crap! It's Counter Lady!"

It was true: the waitress had thrown herself at the glass door, her entire body pressed against it like she couldn't stand without the support. Her nose squished against the rest of her flat face, her eyes wild, her knees scraped, and her uniform disheveled. It looked as though she had fallen somewhere. No, not fallen. She had passed out.

She had gotten infected.

"Help me!" she shouted, her breath fogging up the glass. "Help me! Help me please! It hurts!"

Her hands clawed at the glass fiercely, and she began throwing herself at the door repeatedly. Even when her nose bent out of shape and her lip started to bleed, she just kept going until Margot started sobbing and Max began inwardly freaking out. The glass started cracking, specifically the place where her rugged knees continued to beat on the door. She was going to get into the restaurant and infect them all.

It was the first day of the Epidemic and Maximilian, his sister, and her secret girlfriend were all going to be Infected.

A/N: Hey, reader! I decided to publish the second chapter! Comment and tell me what you like and hate about it. Any type of feedback— negative, positive, or constructive— is appreciated! See you next week!