Winner of the Westchester Fiction Award and the Grand Canyon Reader Award!
Brian and his friends are not part of the cool crowd. They’re the misfits and the troublemakers—the ones who regularly jump their high school’s fence to skip class. So when a deadly virus breaks out, they’re the only ones with a chance of surviving.
The virus turns Brian’s classmates and teachers into bloodthirsty attackers who don’t die easily. The whole school goes on lockdown, but Brian and his best friend, Chad, are safe (and stuck) in the theater department—far from Brian’s sister, Kenzie, and Laura, his ex-girlfriend with a panic disorder. Brian and Chad, along with some of the theater kids Brian had never given the time of day before, decide to find the girls and bring them to the safety of the theater. But it won’t be easy, and it will test everything they thought they knew about themselves and their classmates.
Praise for SICK
“The gore and action will leave enthralled readers thrilled and then sated with each kill on either side.”
—Booklist
“Readers who love zombies will devour it, right up to the abrupt end.”
—Kirkus Reviews
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SICK TRIVIA
~ The ditching scene that opens the book was written 10+ years before the story of Sick was ever imagined.
~ The fence, the riot, systemic racism, and a locked-down campus are all factually true parts of Tom’s high school experience.
~ Many more characters didn’t make it to safety in the first draft…
~ The idea for the novel came from several conversations between Tom and his friends, during which they tried to guess who would have lived or died during a zombie apocalypse while in their high school drama department.
~ A graphic novel adaptation is still underway, as well as a potential prequel showing how the disease got its start. Sick may or may not anchor a much longer series Tom has been toying with since 1993 or earlier.