Wormwood by Stacey Doss (classic books to read .txt) 📕

as each country around the world was dealing with the massive deaths and sickness.
Mom and Dad were sick, also, but they hid it well for about a week, until Dad ended up in the hospital for dehydration. The doctors fought against the poison, and it seemed he was making progress when Mom had to be admitted. I began the nightmare of hospital visits while trying to keep myself going. The only reason I hadn't got sick yet is because I hate seafood and I only drank bottled water.
My skin, though, was becoming gross. The burns were turning into open sores, and strips of flesh were peeling. I tried to reduce the showers, sponge-bathing with my bottled water in between, but bottled water was becoming scarce, and I had no other choice. I hated looking into the mirror; my hair was thinning and brittle, my skin looked like I fell into toxic waste.
Mom cried whenever she saw me, and I hated going to see her because of that, but I couldn't stay away. Both Mom and Dad were getting worse, and the doctors couldn't keep up with all the patients. On August 31, just 15 days after my brother died, I lost both of my parents within hours of each other. I was now alone.
My flesh was rotting off my bones, and the pain was unbearable. I cried myself to sleep most nights, sometimes screaming for my mom, sometimes falling into dark thoughts of ending it all. I tried to keep going, eating, caring for myself, keeping the house somewhat clean, but it was getting harder. Store shelves were bare. People were starving. Friends were dying. In just over a month after a seemingly innocent meteor entered our world, the world was in chaos. Television stations were off the air, and phone lines were dead. I had no communication with the outside world, and it seemed that there was no outside world to communicate with.
My aunt and uncle found me unconscious and dehydrated where I had collapsed on the floor. I had been there probably three days. They carried me to the car and drove me back to Illinois, where the poisoned water had not reached. They had become worried when they could not get through to find out how Mom was, and they were devastated when I told them that she was gone. They had jumped in the car and drove hours and hours, for almost twice the normal commute because of the detours that they had to make to avoid accident scenes and other horrors.
It took two long years for the water to get back to normal. By that time, they estimated that almost 2.5 billion people had died around the world, not counting animals and plants that suffered from the poisoned water. Of those of us who survived, countless were scarred like me, walking frankensteins of healed-over rotted flesh. The world looked like a massive nuclear and biological holocaust, with pockets of normalcy deep in the larger countries, far from the coastlines. Our world was destroyed by a meteor we named Wormwood.
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Publication Date: 06-07-2011

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