I knew it was time for dinner when an amazing smell wafted out of the kitchen and into the living room where I’d been reading. I poked my head in. “Is it ready yet?”

My dad turned around to reveal an apron that said MR. GOOD LOOKIN’ IS COOKIN’. He had an abnormally large collection of cheesy aprons. He’d bought one for himself once, and that opened a floodgate for other people to buy him more. My mom, grandparents, neighbors—everyone got him funny aprons, and now it was forever a thing. But that was okay because he used them all and he was an amazing cook.

“Just pulling the lasagna out now,” he said with the excitement of a kid opening a present.

I set the table and slid into my usual seat as my mom came out of her office. She had her typical flustered look going on—frizzy hair pointing in all directions, glasses on the top of her head, phone two inches from her eyes. She ran her own online personalized jewelry business from our house, which was nice because she was always home but tough because she was never away from work.

“Catching up on email?” I asked as she sat across from me.

She looked up from her phone as if she hadn’t even realized I was there. “Oh! Bexley! Um, no emails, just . . .”

Her voice trailed away as her attention returned to her phone. She pounded on the screen with her finger a few times, then flicked. I knew exactly what she was doing.

I crossed my arms. “I thought the rule was no gaming at the table.” At least, that had always been the rule—until this month when my parents, of all people, got hooked on a mobile game.

Mom put her phone facedown on the table. “You’re right, sweetie.” She blew out a breath. “I have a new appreciation for the willpower it must have taken you to stop playing some games. This one really has me.”

What my parents didn’t know was that the main reason I’d quit the two popular games I’d been addicted to was that they’d both unleashed disasters on the town. But, hey, let’s go with willpower.

Zombie Town was Veratrum’s biggest hit yet. It seemed like everyone in town was hooked, even people who’d never played a game before. But a promise was a promise, and the Gamer Squad had made a pact to never play it. So I wouldn’t. No matter how cool it looked. We’d also promised to keep our eyes peeled for video game zombies escaping into the real world, but so far the game seemed normal.

Dad placed the lasagna in the center of the table and served the three of us. But Mom still wasn’t ready to move on to food. She lifted her phone up and waved it in my direction. “Are you sure you don’t want to try it? It’s one of those augmented reality games you like, so the game uses your phone’s camera to put the zombies on the real background. You can see a zombie right here in the kitchen!”

I smiled weakly and stabbed my fork into the lasagna. “I know, Mom. But I have another computer game I’m enjoying lately. I don’t want to get involved in a new mobile game.”

“You know what I love the most about it?” she said, her eyes almost glassy. “It’s a zombie game, sure, but it’s not violent. You throw cures at the zombies to save them. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Yep. I’ve heard.” Boy, had I heard. Every kid at school was talking about it. The teachers. The cafeteria ladies. My favorite librarian. Even our mailman stopped in mid-route to throw a cure at a zombie in our front yard.

Dad looked at me strangely, his fork paused in midair. “I don’t get it.”

“Don’t get what?” I asked.

“You always want to play the latest games and talk about them. This one is so popular. But you don’t want to even try it. I think that’s weird.”

“Yeah,” my mom piled on. “Try it. It’s just an innocent game.”

After you bring a herd of monsters and then an army of aliens to town by accident through “innocent games” you feel a little . . . personally responsible. If anyone was going to bring a plague of zombies to town, it wasn’t going to be me. I would not play that game. I wouldn’t touch it. I wouldn’t even look at it.

I searched my mind for a plausible reason. “It’s too popular,” I blurted.

“What?” Dad asked, confused.

“I’m sick of playing the same games as everyone else. I’m interested in more obscure games.” The classic hipster gamer excuse. Brilliant. If I could have reached around and patted myself on the back without looking suspicious, I would have done it.

But I might have made them suspicious anyway. Both of my parents were suddenly looking at me with strange expressions. I watched as their faces turned a concerning shade of green. Then my mother clapped her hand over her mouth and ran from the table.

“Oh, no!” I said. “Do you have that flu that’s going through the school?”

Dad gazed at the cheesy smear of pasta on his plate, and his mouth turned down. “Excuse me,” he muttered, then dashed away.

Wonderful. Both my parents were sick. It was only a matter of time before I would have it, too.

I ate my lasagna and cleared off the table. Then I went upstairs to finish my homework. Before bed, I sent off a quick group text.

Everyone still healthy?

Charlie: So far, yeah, but Jason’s stream of vomit just contaminated my science experiment.

I giggled, totally able to picture that. Charlie did science experiments in his basement for fun, and this wasn’t the first one his older brother Jason had ruined. Jason wanted Charlie to focus on football, but thankfully Charlie wasn’t letting his new involvement in sports interfere with his love of science. He’d even incorporated it into an experiment—testing the speed and velocity of footballs inflated to various psi. My best friend was essentially the king of the nerds—and I loved him for it.

The others chimed in quickly after Charlie.

Marcus: I’m good, but my parents both have it.

Willa: My dance class got canceled because Chloe barfed mid-pirouette. She was like a human lawn sprinkler.

I started laughing so hard, my cheeks hurt. I loved my friends. After some rocky starts, the Gamer Squad meant everything to me. We’d been through so much we were practically family.

Meanwhile, my actual family started to ramp it up, taking turns destroying the toilet. My eyes felt heavy, so I shut my phone down for the night and plugged it in to recharge.

I closed my bedroom door rather than fall asleep to the sweet lullaby of my parents ralphing all over the bathroom.

I was surprised when my alarm went off in the morning. I’d thought for sure school would be canceled. But the phone never rang with that beautiful no-school robocall. It must have been one of those quick flus, and enough teachers felt well enough to go to work. Oh, well.

I got dressed in jeans and a white sweater and pulled my giant mess of brown hair up into a ponytail. Yawning, I strolled into the kitchen and got my second surprise. It was empty. In fact, the whole house was eerily quiet.

“Mom? Dad?” I glanced at the time on my phone. Dad was usually in the shower by now. And Mom would be at the kitchen table, eating breakfast and checking her email.

Their bedroom and bathroom had been empty when I walked by to head downstairs. I checked my mom’s office, but that, too, was empty. How could my parents be nowhere?

“You guys?” My voice echoed as I approached the front of the house. I heard a low whistling sound, like a rustling breeze. A window in the living room was open, but it was more than that. I walked to the front door and found it ajar. What in the world?

I poked my head outside. My parents were nowhere in sight. This made no sense. I marched back into the kitchen to see if they’d left me a note, then stopped, squinting my eyes.

The little whiteboard where we left messages for each other had only one word: RUN.