Author's note: My first published story-and it only took me the better part of a year to convince myself to post it! Concrit is welcome, flames are not, and I'll count myself lucky if I get even one review.
I do not own The Adventures of Tom Sawyer outside of a copy on my nook. I do not know anything about medicine or diseases beyond what the internet can tell me, and even then I twist the facts to suit me. Therefore, whatever this story tells you is wildly inaccurate.
Enjoy!
PROLOGUE
They say that all good things must eventually come to an end. In the children's paradise of St. Petersburg, Missouri, that end came with brutal force.
It began with the elderly: old Mother Hopkins was found dead on her kitchen floor. Following close behind was Nat Parson, the aged and feeble postmaster. It was believed to be natural causes until there were too many dead for coincidence, and then it struck hard.
The most venerable merely died, passing on too quick for the pain to set in. The less aged suffered far longer, wracked with intense, bone-deep pain as their skeletons shifted and distorted until death released them, unrecognizable as even human beings.
Called "the Bone-Warp" by the townsfolk, the disease became omnipresent throughout St. Petersburg. White crosses signifying its presence appeared on door after door as more and more people fell victim to that plague.
The village doctors could do little against this new disease. Nothing in their arsenal of sulfates and pills could even dent its severity. All they could do was prescribe opiates and morphine to try and dull the pain—and then they too fell ill.
One particularly observant physician, though, noticed a heartening trend among his younger patients—contrary to most serious illnesses' habits, not one patient under thirteen died of the Bone-Warp. Unfortunately, the physician himself died before he could announce this near-miracle, looking more like a dog than a man.
Within eight months, there was no one left over the age of seventeen.
The children, the survivors, were on their own.
Chapter 1
Tom had never felt so useless in his entire life as he had when Aunt Polly had been sick with the Bone-Warp. Today was a close second—Huck was sick now, too. Since the widow had died, there was no one else who really gave a durn about him besides Tom and maybe Joe Harper.
So Tom took the bottle of morphine from the medicine cabinet, put on his hat and sole, patchy coat, and set out into the downpour.
Soaked to the bone and splattered with mud, Tom imagined that he looked at least as miserable as he felt—or like a drowned cat. Privately, he swore to never again toss Mary's gray cat out in the rain as he drew near his destination.
The Douglas mansion loomed like something out of a Gothic novel, the recent weeks of neglect giving it the raggedy and mournful air of a place haunted by restless spirits. Tom could even hear ghostly, keening cries of agony…
With a sudden jolt of guilt, Tom realized that the wailing wasn't his well-exercised imagination—it was Huck! Who knew how long he'd been in pain while Tom had stood around daydreaming like some brainless knucklehead?
"Hang on, Huck!"