The Mice Will Play - Part 2: Viral

Zack was always quick to get ready for bed, running his toothbrush around his mouth a few times, spitting grandly in the sink, and calling it done while Cody took his time and even flossed. So while Cody was following his dentist's orders to the letter, Zack was quietly moving the video of his brother dancing to the little USB card he was supposed to use to bring homework assignments to and from school. He snickered as the transfer was complete and shut the laptop down.

He shoved the card into his shoe and was just getting into bed when Cody walked into the room. "Good night, Cody," he said as he snuggled deep under the blankets, curling himself into a little ball beneath the layers of cloth.

"'Night, Zack," Cody replied as he flicked the light off and crawled into his own bed. He lay almost completely straight beneath his sheets and both brothers were asleep a scant few minutes before their mother returned.

Carey arrived much later than usual this particular night. Her set was delayed for a few minutes by technical difficulties and then two encores pushed the end of her show closer to midnight than eleven. "Those boys had better be in bed and asleep," she said to herself as she gave one last bow to the crowd and waved. She ducked backstage and gathered her things as the attendees filed out. She spent a few moments mingling with some well-wishers before she finally made her way to the door.

Carey rode the elevator to the suite by herself, the majority of the crowd either leaving for the evening or retiring to the Tipton's bar for a few more drinks. She stepped onto their floor and slowly walked to their suite. Carey was tired, almost exhausted, after her fifth show in four nights so she trailed a hand along the wall as she neared their door. The key slid home in the lock and she stepped inside, one hand immediately going for the light switch nearby on the wall.

"What the?" She said as she flipped the switch a few times. She grunted and turned toward the kitchen to turn on a light that hopefully worked. Flick. She gazed around the room and nodded as she saw everything was still in one piece. Her foot grazed the garbage can as she passed it and she froze as she heard the jingle and jangle of what could only be broken glass. She might have been tired but her mind still instantly put two and two together and she glanced at the non-working light in the living room.

"Tomorrow," she said as sheturned the light off, "this can wait until tomorrow." She peaked into her boys' room just to make sure that they were indeed in there before retiring to her own. Zack was in his usual fetal position beneath the sheets and Cody had somehow managed to turn himself so that his head was near the foot board. Some dream she thought and that was quickly followed by how can they look like such angels while they sleep but be absolute demons sometimes when they're awake? She leaned against the door jam and watched them for a moment before pulling their door to and set about getting herself to bed.

Any morning in the Martin household could be called hectic by most anyone's standards but they always made it work. Zack overslept despite Cody's constant nagging so he wasn't ready when breakfast hit the table, Cody's left shoe magically disappeared sometime overnight, Zack's backpack suddenly acquired a hole in the bottom...and so on and so on. Somehow they managed to get out the door with just enough time to hassle Moseby before they caught the bus.

"You still have them on, right?" Zack asked his brother as they took their seat, referring to the Spiderman underwear his brother was supposed to wear to school as the final part of their dares from the previous night.

"Of course I do. You?" Zack pulled the waistband of his shorts back a bit to show that he did indeed have them on. "Good."

The bus ride was as slow and boring as usual and the boys spent it catching up with their friends on all the events of the previous day. All too soon they arrived and everyone spilled out and flooded into the building and made their way to lockers and homerooms. Attendance was taken and announcements were made but no one was really paying attention.

"See you in gym class, Cody," Zack said as they parted ways after the bell rang.

"Gym class?"

"Yeah, third period? Like always on Tuesdays and Thursdays?"

Cody looked at his brother with wide eyes and then glanced down at his pants. He looked back up at Zack's face and saw a reflection of his inner terror. He gulped. "We have to change for gym class."

Zack leaned against the nearest locker and smacked the back of his head against the metal with a bang. He pushed his hand back through his hair and exhaled. "Great. Just great."

"I don't want to go to gym, Zack."

"Yeah, I can't say I blame you. I'm not too wild about the idea myself."

Cody went down one hallway and Zack the other, each boy pondering exactly how they could possibly get out of this. Sure, it wouldn't be the worst thing ever but it was still pretty early in the year and that left plenty of time for potential humiliation. Middle schoolers didn't wear Power Ranger or Spiderman anything.

Cody sat in math class paying a bare minimum of attention to the teacher while mentally counting down the minutes until the class was over. Forty six...forty five... Three classes over and a floor above him, Zack was doing the same thing, all the while cursing Cody just a bit for making this dare. He did agree to it, after all, but that didn't mean he couldn't grouse a little about it.

Both boys exhaled a groan when the bell rang. Cody jammed his books into his pack and tore from the room like the hounds of hell themselves were after him. He'd come to the conclusion that if he raced down there, he could very likely at least get his shorts changed before the locker room filled up. He hoped.

Zack wasn't far behind Cody as they hit the locker room. Cody kicked his shoes off and shucked his shorts almost immediately and yanked the gym shorts up as the din of the room began to rise. Zack took his time after he realized that his shirt fell low enough to cover anything that might resemble a Red Power Ranger. Cody shot him an evil eye, almost accusing him of cheating, but Zack only shrugged it off. How was it his fault if he happened to wear a long t-shirt today? Cheating? Surely not. He wasn't coherent enough in the mornings to ever think of something like that.

The gym teacher worked them like dogs that day, running them a mile and doing a ton of calisthenics, so as the rest of the kids took their time heading back to change the twins stepped ahead of the line and were already nearly done when the majority of the others arrived.

"Never again, Cody," Zack huffed, "will you be giving any dare that includes school." He was sitting on the bench and tying his shoes and staring up at his brother.

"I...I didn't think about us having gym today, you know."

"Uh huh..." Zack's voice came out with more sarcasm than he had planned.

Cody looked at him blankly for a second before his eyes lit up. "Yeah, Zack, you're right. That's exactly what I did. I planned weeks in advance we'd wear these today and then have to change in front of everyone else. You saw through my subterfuge like it was glass. What the hell, Zack? Do you want your gold star now or later?" He shook his head and turned his back on his brother while he pulled a shirt on, fuming silently.

Zack cocked an eyebrow at his brother in question and then turned back to his shoes. He'd only meant it in a joking way but Cody had pretty much flipped out. The corner of his mouth curled into a frown as he laced up his other shoe. With a grunt he got to his feet and grabbed his shirt and backpack, figuring he'd finish dressing somewhere a little less near Cody.

Usually the two of them walked to lunch together but today Zack didn't feel like walking with his brother to the cafeteria. The more he thought about it the more irritated it made him and he thought it best if they walked their separate ways today. They arrived, picked up what the school passed off as lunch, and went to their respective tables and ate in relative peace.

The word viral is usually reserved for describing an infection caused by a virus or to explain transmission of something from person to person. Ebola, for one example. The flu for another. Or Zack's video of Cody dancing for a third.

He'd started off by showing his friend Rudy at the lunch table under the promise not to tell anyone, not out of being mean since he was already nearly over Cody's little fit, but because he thought Rudy would find it funny and was a good kid. Well, Rudy did and then Alan happened to catch the tail end of it and wanted to see the whole thing. Alan called Tommy over and within a few minutes the table was full of people all crowded around Rudy's laptop.

By the end of lunch Zack was over his brother's little explosion and apparently Cody was as well because they walked to their next class together for as long as they could. Cody had even apologized shortly after they'd left the lunch room.

"Zack, sorry I blew up like that in the locker room. I...I guess I was a little stressed out and embarrassed."

"It's okay, I guess," Zack told him as they passed a chemistry classroom. "Just don't do it again or else I'll strip you down to them and parade you around the school." Both boys snickered and split up, Zack up a flight of steps and Cody around a corner.

Zack sat in his English classroom and tried to read the assigned chapter of some dry play or other by Shakespeare, his fight with Cody and the showing of the private video already forgotten. He rolled his eyes and fought sleep as he read countless thee's and thou's and all sorts of other archaic words.

Viral. The video, stealthily copied to Rudy's computer while Zack was telling Alan that he couldn't tell anyone about it or he'd pound him, had begun making its rounds though the school. It had been shared by Rudy to Alex and Alex, thanks to the school's wi-fi network, forwarded it to his friends while sitting in history class. It passed from person to person to person much like the common cold. By the time the next block of classes were over Cody began getting amused glances from the occasional student in the hallway.

After the next round of classes the occasional glance had turned into laughs and giggles aimed at Cody. One girl in his social studies class kept looking over at him and smirking, always looking away when he looked in her direction. What is going on? he wondered to himself more than a few times. He looked down at his shirt to see if there was a stain on it and ran his tongue over his teeth to remove any possible stuck food. Nothing as far as he could tell. He frowned.

When he was traveling between social studies and his last class things just got worse. People he hardly ever talked to, hell, people he didn't even know, were now opening laughing at him. Cody put his head down and trudged on to his English class. He sighed and tried to not show how upset all this was making him. He was an emotional kid and if he were to break down right here at school like he felt like doing, whatever they were laughing at now would be nothing in comparison to what would happen then.

While Cody had no idea of what was going on as he walked the halls his brother did. Zack had been stopped after a class and asked by a near stranger if he had any other videos of Cody dancing around in his underwear. His jaw dropped and he finally stammered out a n-n-no! and quickly walked on. He ducked into a nearby bathroom and leaned against the sink with his head on his chest and one hand gently rubbing his chin. "What did I do?" he asked the empty bathroom as a large ball of dread began to knot and churn deep in his belly.

Zack left the bathroom after splashing some water on his face and barely made it to his last class before the late bell rang. He didn't pay a lick of attention to the lesson this time; instead he was going over exactly how many ways Cody was going to kill him once he found out about all this. If he already hasn't, he said to himself with a groan. People usually only saw the quiet and kind side of his brother but Zack knew very well that he could be as fierce as a cornered wolverine when the situation warranted it. And if any situation warranted it, this was certainly it. He slouched lower in his seat and put his head in his hands.

The final bell rang and the students all exploded for the exits as yet another school day had passed. Cody took his time, hoping that whatever had come over all the people in the halls would have washed away by now. He slowly slid his book and folder in the backpack and tossed it over his shoulder and stepped out into the corridor.

A virus, especially one as virulent and catching as this, always spreads like wildfire through its population of hosts. One person passes it on to two more and each of those to two more, and so on. A chain letter that works, one might call it. A reverse-pyramid scheme that actually pays off.

No, things hadn't changed at all, Cody noticed. If anything, they'd only gotten weirder. He watched his feet and tried to make himself smaller as he made his way to his locker and tried to ignore all the catcalls and chatter that seemed to focus on him. It took Cody four tries to get his combination right because of shaky fingers. Maybe Zack would know, he thought as he swapped books. If anyone would know, it would be his brother. Zack always seemed to have his finger on the pulse of the school and knew just about anything anyone needed to know.

He was just about to close his locker when he saw Zack coming down the hallway toward him. He seemed to be hurrying more than normal so Cody leaned against the cool steel and bounced from foot to foot as he waited.

"Cody, we need to talk," Zack began to say to him when a group of upperclassmen came strolling down the hall singing and swinging their arms awkwardly.

"They see me rollin', they hatin', patrollin'..." Cody's face fell.

"Yeah, about that..." Zack said softly as the older students passed.

Cody wheeled on his brother, shoving him against the lockers. "What did you do?" He yelled, accenting each word with a jab in Zack's chest. "No, never mind, I already have a pretty good idea of what you did." Each of his hands were filled with a fistful of Zack's shirt when he was done with his outburst. He looked down at them and slowly forced himself to let his brother go.

"Why, Zack? Why?" Cody could feel his eyes getting wet. Any semblance of control he had earlier was nearly gone now.

"I...I'm sorry, Cody. I don't know what to say right now."

"I think this goes a long way beyond sorry, Zack," he said as he leaned against the locker next to his brother. They stood there for a few moments before Zack finally spoke up.

"We, uh, need to get to the bus before it leaves, Cody."

"The bus? Are you kidding me, Zack? Do you think I'm going to get on the bus now?"

"Well, you sorta have to, Cody. Unless you plan on walking all the way home."

"See you at home then, bro," Cody told him, the last word dripping with venom. He had taken a few steps away from his brother when Zack came up and put his hand on his shoulder.

"Wait, I'll walk with you."

"Don't you dare," Cody said softly as he brushed Zack's hand off his shoulder. He turned to Zack and Zack saw his brother's eyes wet with tears. He stepped back abruptly and watched as Cody walked off toward a back stairwell.

Okay, so Aragorn0789 kept at me until I started this up again and I'm glad he did. I hemmed and hawed for a while but once I started it I remembered how fun it was to write this particular story arc. So any praise should be directed to him and I'll take any criticism!