Quaranteen: The Loners

by Lex Thomas

  “Listen up, hungry people!” Will shouted. “All of Varsity’s fighters are here. No one is guarding the food!” The gaunt faces in the crowd turned in the direction of the gym.

  “The food belongs to all of us!”

  The crowd barked and whistled and hollered in agreement.

  Will could feel the tension bristling all around him.

  “GO GET IT!”

  It was a stampede. The Freaks, the Nerds, the Sluts, the Skaters, and the Geeks, all dashed toward the gym at once, like they were trying to catch the last train out of hell. Varsity tried to block them, but the momentum was too great.

  Varsity’s formation was smashed apart. The two Varsity guys holding David cast him aside to go protect the gym.

  Sam got to his feet, holding his crotch. For a second he looked at Will like he was about to kill him. But he stumbled backward, suddenly scared. Will was peripherally aware of someone behind him. He turned to see the Loners standing in a semicircle, staring Sam down. Sam yelled out of frustration and ran after the riotous mob.

  The generator finally gave out, and all the lights died. The quad was overtaken by darkness.

  David was a lump on the ground twenty feet away. He was faced away from Will and wasn’t moving. Will limped over to David as fast as he could. He dropped to his knees and turned David over tenderly. He cradled David’s head in his hands.

  His face looked like a misshapen tomato.

  “Dave? Are you okay?”

  David smiled.

  “I think I’m hallucinating . . . ,” David said. “I thought I just saw you kick Sam Howard’s ass.”

  Will laughed so hard it made him cry.

  39

  Lucy and Violent walked toward the

  ruins by the light of Violent’s torch. Violent had retrieved it from one of the many lockers full of weapons that she maintained throughout the school. A vicious stench hit Lucy’s nose.

  “Teachers,” Violent said. She handed Lucy the torch. She unhooked a shiv from her necklace of hanging silverware.

  Using Lucy’s shoulder for leverage, Violent reached down and grabbed the hem of Lucy’s dress. She stabbed it with the shiv.

  “Hey, what are you doing?”

  “We need something to cover our noses. That smell’s only gonna get worse.”

  With a solid yank, Violent ripped off the bottom six inches of Lucy’s dress.

  “You could’ve used your shirt or something,” Lucy said.

  “Yeah, we coulda.”

  Violent tore the resulting strip of fabric in two, handing one piece to Lucy and tying the other around her nose and mouth. Lucy did the same. Violent put her arm around Lucy.

  Violent limped. and Lucy carried half her weight.

  “How do you think the fight turned out?” Violent said.

  Lucy thought back to the announcement they’d heard over the loudspeaker. She didn’t understand it, but she had to trust Will had a plan. It was blind faith, but it was the only thing keeping her going. David had to be alive, and there had to be a way out of the school, there simply had to be.

  “I think Will beat Sam, and we’ll see them soon,” Lucy said.

  “Want to make it interesting?”

  “Ew, like a bet? No, you’re talking about my friends’ lives.”

  “Just trying to make conversation.”

  “Well, try harder.”

  “You make a good crutch,” Violent said.

  “Thanks.” Lucy laughed.

  “No, seriously. You’re not in my gang. You didn’t have to help me like this.”

  Lucy nodded with a secret smile. Finally, she’d done something right in Violent’s eyes.

  With every step into the depths of the ruins, Lucy felt more unsettled. The flickering torchlight cast mad shadows down the hall. The ruins were like a memorial to the day everything

  changed. She could almost hear the rumble of the explosion and the bloodcurdling shrieks that followed, echoing down the halls.

  “Have you ever been here before?” Lucy asked.

  Violent was quiet for a moment and then, “Yeah. A long time ago. Only bad shit happens here.”

  They came to the remains of a staircase. One whole side of it was gone. All that remained were broken stairs no more than a foot wide, jutting out from the wall. At the top landing, where the stairs should have been, was a mess of bent rebar.

  “1206 is on the second floor,” Violent said. “We gotta go up.”

  “You think you can—”

  “Ssh,” Violent said suddenly, dropping to a whisper. “Did you hear that?”

  All Lucy heard was the crackle of the torch in her hand. She shook her head. “What did you hear?”

  “Nothing, let’s hurry up.”

  Lucy and Violent hurried to the stairs. Lucy climbed the broken lengths of stair carefully, one hand on the wall and one holding the torch. Violent was always one step behind her, using the wall for support. Each step felt treacherous. It took her a minute to get half of the way up. The last two stairs were missing.

  “Gonna have to jump it,” Violent said, peering past Lucy at the gap.

  Lucy looked over the edge to the sharp rubble fifteen feet

  below. She noticed something etched on the wall below in charcoal letters: R.I.P. SMUDGE. A narrow mound of rubble stood out above the rest. She had the feeling Will had been where she stood. She mustered the strength to go for the jump.

  She tossed the torch onto the second floor ahead, then took a deep breath and jumped. She landed on the second floor and tumbled forward. She whipped around with a big smile.

  “I made it!”

  “Uh, yeah, that’s great,” Violent said dryly. “Can you move?”

  “Oh. Yeah, sorry.”

  Lucy heard footsteps coming from the hallway behind her.

  She spun around. From out of the darkness came a ghoulish boy. He wore a Pretty One dress tucked into black jeans. His face reminded her of a lizard’s, dry and pointed, his eyes black and his skin bluish white, like he’d been drained of blood. His hair was long, fragile, and white like an old crazy woman.

  The boy stuttered to a stop. He looked nearly as shocked as Lucy was. He lunged forward and snatched her necklace off her neck. He dashed back into the dark hallway.

  “Hey! Give me that!” Lucy yelled.

  She sprinted into the hall, after the boy. The torch in her hand purred and dimmed as its flame dragged behind. She heard movement in the classroom ahead. Lucy poked her head through the doorway and extended the torch to get a sense of the room. It was a chemistry lab. Large, six-station islands with soapstone counters hunched in the darkness

  like sleeping beasts. Broken equipment and dirty papers littered the floor.

  A hand clamped down on her arm and flung her to the ground. She lost the torch. The boy sat on her. He pinned her arms and thrust his face into hers.

  “Stay away!” the boy said, the stink of his breath invaded her nostrils.

  The torch had set fire to a cluster of papers, and in the fire-light Lucy could see the boy was scared.

  “I want that necklace back!” Lucy dared to scream.

  “It don’t belong to you,” the boy said. His accent was strange.

  It was thick, southern. “Just leave me alone.” Light flared behind the boy. Violent was behind him, holding the torch. She jabbed it into his back.

  “Gahh!” he screamed.

  Violent stuck him with it again, and he scurried into the corner and crumpled up into a ball near the growing fire.

  “You want to hurt girls? Huh?” Violent said, pushing the torch near his face. “Is that your thing, junkie?”

  “I want the necklace,” Lucy said.

  “It’s mine!” the boy said. “It belongs to me!”

  “Hand it over, creep!” Violent said.

  “It belonged to my momma! It’s all I got left of her. Please, don’t make me. Please don’t.”

  Violent pulled the torch away from him. He pressed his b
ack to the wall like a frightened animal. Lucy ran to the paper fire

  and stomped it out.

  “What are you talking about?” Lucy said, spinning back around to face him.

  “He’s high. He’s been huffing,” Violent said, kicking at rags by a dirty, half-empty jug. “Look at this crap.”

  “No, leave my zip alone!” the boy said, lunging for the jug.

  Violent got to it first, holding it out of reach suggestively. He looked down, then thrashed around in anger. He moaned, then threw the necklace at Lucy. It skidded to her feet, and she picked it up. Violent tossed the jug into the boy’s lap, and he dumped some of the liquid onto a rag. He clasped the wet rag to his face and breathed in deeply. He exhaled with a sob.

  “Let’s go,” Violent said.

  Lucy looked at the necklace in her hand, then to the huffing kid. He rocked as he cried and punched at the floor.

  “How do I know this belonged to your mother?” Lucy said.

  “It’s all she ever had,” the boy said, through a chemical haze.

  “They tried to take it from me at the labs, but I hid it from

  ’em. Them metal bedposts were hollow. Them doctors didn’t know that. That’s the only reason I’m alive, that necklace. I went back for it when I shoulda run. That’s how I got lucky.

  Ev’rbody else got snagged. I got out . . . lucky. . . .” At first Lucy tried to make sense of his rambling. It sounded like crazy talk. Labs. Doctors.

  “You’re the one,” Violent said. “You’re the infected kid they were trying to catch.”

  “Lucky,” he said again, his face pinched with pain. “They shoulda left us in the mountains. They shoulda left us alone.” He scrambled to dampen his rag with the jug. Violent ripped it from his hands and threw it across the room.

  “Give it back! Give ’em back to me!”

  Violent threw the torch aside. She dropped to her knees and grasped him by his soiled dress.

  “You made this happen. You ran into this school when you knew what could happen?”

  “They was gonna kill me,” he said. It was barely a whisper.

  “You brought all this on us?” Violent said, spitting her words like bullets.

  The boy shook his head, moaning, frothing, crying.

  “YOU DID THIS?”

  “Violent . . . ,” Lucy said.

  “YOU SHOULD HAVE DIED!” Violent screamed. She punched him in his mouth. His eyes fluttered back, and his lip split. She punched again. And again. Long, arcing punches that cut his face, and puffed his eyes, and bent his nose.

  “Stop it!” Lucy shouted. “Stop it!”

  Lucy pulled at Violent. She wouldn’t stop. She was a jack-hammer. She was going to kill him. Lucy hiked up what was left of her skirt and kicked Violent in the head. Violent yelped and fell over on her side, holding her ear.

  “That’s enough,” Lucy said.

  Lucy turned to the boy and crouched. His face was mulch.

  Lucy winced at the sight of him. His breaths were labored, like he was breathing through a snorkel. But he was alive, and he was lucid.

  Lucy took his hand and placed the necklace in it. She couldn’t imagine the guilt he carried. The deaths, the murders, the brutality, the hopelessness; he’d created all of it. It wasn’t his fault, he was just trying to survive. But she still hated him for it. She wished he had died that day.

  Lucy stood, and walked over to Violent. Violent still stared at the boy. Lucy helped her up. The two of them walked out the door without another word.

  Lucy counted off the room signs when she saw them.

  1242 . . . 1238 . . . 1231 . . .

  David was so close.

  1210 . . .

  Lucy and Violent slid into a water-soaked corridor.

  Huge chunks of plaster from the ceiling and the walls lay scattered on the floor. Water rained down in waterfalls and then flowed toward a wall of rubble that blocked the end of the hallway. The Loners were there, clustered in the hall; a group of Sluts too. They waited in silence. It was unsettling.

  “What’s going on?” Violent asked one of her girls.

  “Don’t know if that dude’s gonna make it,” one Slut said.

  Lucy looked to Violent in a panic.

  “Go,” Violent said. “Hurry.”

  Lucy let go of Violent and splashed through the wet hall to room 1206. The room had no floor. There was a flash of light from the room below.

  “David?” she called out. “Will?”

  “Lucy?” Will said.

  “Oh, Will, thank God.”

  Will reached his hands up to her. He helped her lower herself into the ruined room below.

  “You made it,” he said.

  She hugged him and held him tight. She could feel his face turn toward hers. She thought she felt the slightest kiss on her cheek, but she couldn’t have been sure. She laid eyes on David.

  He was hunched over against a wall, just beyond another thin waterfall. She could only see the white of his eye patch undulating behind the wall of water. She could make out the shape of his arms. They were spattered with dried blood.

  Lucy let go of Will and moved toward David. Will stopped her.

  “Don’t—” he said.

  Lucy looked to Will. She had to go to David. She had to.

  “Get back,” David said with heavy sigh.

  “But—” she said, and didn’t know what to say next. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

  “We’re killing him, even this close. We’re toxic to him,” Will said.

  “No,” Lucy said with a whimper.

  “David, you have to go now,” Will said.

  “But . . . right away?” Lucy asked.

  Will gently tossed David his phone. David barely caught it.

  “Use the phone’s light. Follow the blood trail,” Will said to him.

  Lucy noticed bloody paw prints on the floor’s rubble. They pointed toward a triangular hole in the wall of rubble, where David stood.

  “We’ll wait an hour, then follow,” Will said. “That should give you time to get far enough away.”

  ”Listen,” David said. “We don’t know what’s out there.” David stopped to cough. It took him a good ten seconds to get his voice back.

  “When you leave,” David continued, “you gotta stay hidden.

  I’ll tie . . . something red to the back door, okay? That’ll tell you Dad’s not in the house, and it’s safe to go in. Just be careful. Take Lucy and go to the basement. Hide there. I’ll call.”

  “Okay,” Will said.

  “And keep her safe. Promise me you’ll keep her safe.”

  “I promise.”

  “Please, I won’t come near. I just want to see you,” Lucy said.

  David didn’t move. He kept his face hidden.

  “Please—”

  “I can’t. Lucy, this isn’t the end. I just need a head start.” Lucy was close to breaking down. It was the end.

  “I’ll—I’ll see you soon,” she said.

  Tears clouded her eyes. She wiped them away as fast as she could. She wouldn’t miss a single moment. The white of his eye patch quivered behind the rushing water, then was swallowed by the dark when David turned away. He cast the phone light on the hole in the wall and climbed through. A small hunk of plaster fell as he brushed up against it, and it landed in a puddle. A moment later, the light of David’s phone faded away and he was gone.

  She stayed there, staring. Will touched her arm.

  “You should sit down. Rest,” Will said. “We’re gonna need our energy, and we can’t go in there for another hour.” The tears still flowed, as heavily as the water from the ceiling.

  “You wouldn’t believe whose ass I had to kick to get David here,” Will said.

  Lucy couldn’t wait an hour. It felt impossible. She ran to the hole in the wall and peered through. She just had to see him one last time. It was a labyrinth of wreckage inside. The plink-plink of dripping water resonated through the tunnel. It wasn�
��t a tunnel as much as it was the empty space left between the piled chunks of wall, ceiling, and floor. The chunks rested precariously on one another like a stack of dominoes. She caught the glow of David’s phone, then she saw his silhouette.

  “David!”

  He turned. The glow of the phone illuminated his face. It

  was swollen and bloodied, but his good eye sparkled. Was that a smile?

  A second later, a chunk of ceiling in front of him fell, pulling an avalanche of rubble down with it.

  She screamed. Her legs buckled beneath her; she collapsed into a puddle.

  Will ran to her.

  The tunnel was gone.

  40

  David was shaking from adrenaline.

  He’d almost been crushed. Pain throbbed, everywhere. He cast the light of his phone back at the passage he had just crawled through. It wasn’t there. Dust and dirt, kicked up by the collapse, still spun in the air. He pressed his full weight against the blockage in several places. Nothing gave. It was solid, through and through.

  “Lucy!” he shouted. “Will!”

  He pressed his ear to the wall of rock. He could hear faint shouts on the other side, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  He heard a whimper behind him. David turned and faced the path ahead. He held up his phone. It was littered with dogs.

  Doberman pinschers with broken backs lay limp over jagged hunks of debris in front of him. They dangled out of holes

  and crannies. They were sandwiched between blocks of wall.

  David knew they were a manifestation of his fear, but that didn’t mean he had to like it.

  This school had taken everything from him. His bones felt hollow. His muscles felt like they were slipping off his bones.

  He didn’t want to leave Will and Lucy behind. He wanted to bash against the obstruction behind him until it was dust. It wasn’t fair. These fallen rocks had made a liar out of him. He told them that he would get them all out, and now they were trapped again. They would all die of starvation.