by Seth Fishman
We walk single file, carefully, trying to minimize noise. The pace is excruciatingly slow, and my bad toes start to hurt pretty fast. I can feel one of them, my big toe on my left foot, squish against the front of my boot, like a blister giving way. I try not to think about it, but every step’s a reminder. Jo glances at me with concern, but I wave her on. We push through the hills, deeper into the woods, pausing occasionally to listen for any soldiers, but there’s nothing. Every once in a while, we get a glimpse of the town below through the woods. The lights still blaze from all the streetlights and from the occasional house. There’s St. Anthony’s Cathedral, its spire marking the center of town, Palmer Square, the two streets off Main that are rowed with tiny shops and the post office. I’ve never been here, in the woods, not like this. But I’ve been down there hundreds of times, have looked up this way and have never wondered how empty the forest might be.
It’s impressive how unerringly Jimmy leads us in the dark. The baseball bat in my hand has long since turned into a walking stick, and I find, after an hour or so, a desire to swing at low-lying snow-covered branches. The air is cold entering my lungs, but feels good. And as the night deepens, I somehow grow warmer. My toes stop hurting, which, honestly, I think is a very bad sign. I wiggle them around experimentally, but I’m not sure they move in my shoe. Nothing for it but to keep going. My pace settles into the even beat of swimming laps in the pool. We all unconsciously step in time. Jo grabs and breaks as many low-lying sticks as she can find, snapping them with her gloved hands. We’re all covered, our faces blocked by heavy caps, some pulled low. I can’t tell what they’re thinking. I can’t tell how they’re feeling. Whether Jo’s eyes are glazed, lost in memories of her father, or whether she’s focused on her feet. Without faces, we’re just parts of a whole, and if not for Brayden’s occasional glances back at me, I’d think I was on an escalator or something. We’re tired, our breaths heavy. And we shouldn’t speak anyways. So we trudge. And I admit there’s a comfort in it all.
• • •
Two hours in, we take a break. About halfway there. Two miles in two hours. Coach would be disgusted, hills, safety, snow be damned.
We’re out of Gatorade, so we’re eating the snow for water. “Not too much,” cautions Rob. “It’s not so good for you.”
“Is that true?” Odessa asks, her mouth full. She spits some out, and Jo hisses, “Don’t do that!”
“Don’t do what?” Odessa replies. She digs into her jacket pocket, pulls out a cigarette and lights up.
“You could spread the virus,” she says.
“What,” Odessa says, incredulous, “a deer sniffs this tuft of snow and contracts it? And don’t scare me like that. I don’t have the virus. My hair isn’t growing, and it’s not turning gray.” At this she takes off her blue cap and shakes her curls. Fair enough; they seem just as bouncy and out of control as usual.
“We should keep moving,” Brayden says from his perch up ahead. He pats Jimmy on the shoulder, and like a dog doing his bidding, Jimmy stands, pulling up his scarf to cover his chapped lips. He hefts a big piece of wood to use as a staff and then begins pushing through the snow. It’s about a foot and a half deep here and hard going, though, frankly, we are lucky it’s even this thin. I didn’t think, until now, about how tired Jimmy must be, being the snow breaker. We walk in the wreck of his footsteps.
I find myself at the end of the train, Odessa directly in front of me; she tosses her cigarette still lit into the snow. You can hear the hiss. She’s wearing tighter, formfitting ski clothes, of course. Trying to be sexy even here.
“You know,” she says over her shoulder in a hushed voice, “I miss my Berkins.”
“Your what?”
“My stuffed bear. Dumb, I know. Berkins is his name. I have a stupid stuffed animal, and I wish I could just go get him.”
I can’t see her face, but I can tell by the hitch in her breath that she’s tearing up.
“I hear you. And I guess that’s the point of all this, isn’t it?”
“What, my bear?”
“No,” I say, trying to sound reassuring. “Getting back home, safe and sound.”
She turns to me and stares for a moment, her eyes glistening, and I think I see the corner of her lips turn, almost a smile. But only for an instant. Then those eyes squint, suspicious and confused.
“What the—”
I turn and follow her gaze and freeze up, slinking into a ball on my knees. I motion for her to do the same, but she ignores me. Jo, who was ahead of her, has just rounded a slope, and I don’t dare shout or make any noise.
About five yards away, there is a pair of feet. White feet, hazmatted, sticking out from behind a trunk. Odessa glances back at me, then she tiptoes forward as much as she can. Each toe landing is a huge crunch, louder than anything I’ve ever heard. I twist the bat tight in my hand. Odessa only has a kitchen knife, courtesy of Brayden’s foraging.
I’m about to move forward to take the lead when she whispers, “Hello?”
I freeze again, search frantically for another soldier. Odessa is right up to the feet now, and she’s bending over, seemingly at ease. I step closer, joining her, my breath sending white puffs into the air fast now.
Slumped against a tree, helmet tilted to the side, is a figure in a hazmat suit. I can’t see into the suit at all, the glass is dark and glossy. It might as well be empty. It’s holding a handgun in a dangled grip, and its square helmet is slumped at an odd angle. There’s a triangular badge on the suit, and closer inspection reveals a cloud and a lightning bolt and the words DARKSTORM SECURITY. These soldiers aren’t US Army at all! They’re hired men, like Blackwater in Iraq. Sutton’s army.
My lungs tighten, and I fight for breath. This is a man who might have shot at Devin. Who is probably out here searching for us.
“Odessa!” I hiss. “Let’s go!”
She bends forward. “Hello?”
The body jerks up and grabs her by the jacket, pulling her in.
“Why aren’t you sick?” it demands, its voice gravelly and weak. Odessa screams, shrill and high, sending snow toppling. I dash forward and grab her hand and tug. I kick the arm holding her, again and again, until it finally lets go.
Odessa turns to run, but there’s a loud crack and she’s spun, twisting in what would be a perfect dive off a board, and then she’s down, blood spraying from her leg into the snow. The soldier doesn’t stand up, doesn’t even try, though I’m not sure he could. But he’s pointing the gun lazily at her, then over to me, then back to her.
“WHY AREN’T YOU SICK?”
Odessa closes her eyes, and for the briefest moment, I wonder what she’s thinking about. Her family home in Fenton? Her richie friends? Regret for being here? Or is she dying, the shock setting in, knocking her out? Her eyelashes flutter; she doesn’t move.
There are fast crunching footsteps, but I don’t dare look; I don’t want to scare the soldier. And then Brayden leaps past me, snatching up the Louisville Slugger from my hand, and in the next motion, he smashes it into the hazmat suit’s face. The gun discharges again, wildly, hitting nothing, but sending an echo around the woods. Odessa moans, and Jimmy rushes to her side. The visor is red now, covered in blood from the inside. Brayden raises his bat again anyway, and I open my mouth to scream to shout to tell him to stop smashing his face in please don’t kill someone in front of me—
“Put the bat down!”
The voice is muffled, and I turn to see Rob and Jo with their hands up, now fully surrounded by five more of these guns for hire, all in the same hazmat suits, surrounding us with machine guns and bright flashlights.
For a moment, the only noise is the deep, adrenaline-fueled breathing of Brayden. He’s holding the bat up, as if in a batter’s box, and his eyes flick from one to the other. Put the bat down, Brayden. I can see him size up the odds, his chest heaving, tallying in his mind
. Somehow, he’s actually considering taking them on. His foot moves gently toward the gun in the injured hazmat’s hand.
“Put the bat down, Brayden,” I say, shaking my head. I try not to look at the broken body at our feet. A part of me thinks Brayden can pull it off—disarming the entire group of soldiers. But I don’t want him hurt. More than anything right now, I guess even more than getting to my dad, I don’t want him hurt. Odessa starts coughing, and her lips are blue. Jimmy’s got his hand pressing hard against her thigh, and there’s blood dripping through his fingers. His eyes are wild, and his hair is sticking to his sweaty forehead. Brayden watches her for a moment, his jaw set so tight I can make out the bone through his skin. Odessa passes out. “Put the bat down, Brayden.” Rob’s lips are tight, but he’s the one who said it, not me. His glasses are fogged from all the exertion, and he’s resting his hands on the top of his head, breathing hard through the nose. He repeats what I said again, slowly. Brayden swallows and drops the bat deep into the snow.
• • •
It’s only while riding on the back of a snowmobile, holding tight to the plastic body of the soldier who is driving, that I really think about Brayden’s fingers going slack. About the bat falling. About how easily he crushed the face of the fallen soldier. I get it, he was protecting Odessa. And he was protecting me, but the intensity of his swing, like bringing an ax down on a piece of firewood, determined and deadly . . . I have never seen anything like it. I have never seen someone so ready to kill. And with his bare hands too.
The wind burns my face and makes my eyes tear. We’re riding in a single-file line—like before, only this time in custody—at an easy pace, up and down the hills and through the woods. The snowmobiles came after we surrendered. Enough for each of us to have our own escort, and two more to make sure we wouldn’t jump off the back and flee. Not sure we’d bother trying anyway.
Involuntarily, I squeeze the soldier in front of me tighter. It’s like squeezing a sleeping bag.
After Brayden dropped the bat, a soldier came up and, using his foot, pried the mask off the man on the ground. He was alive, wheezing bloody bubbles past his lips. There was no mistaking his long gray hair and his wrinkled skin, despite the smashed face.
I felt a cold come over me, my brain working slowly, but terrified at the implications, and a quick look around the group revealed a similar response. Not only had the virus spread, but it was somehow infecting men in hazmat suits. Jo probably thought of her dad, because she vomited immediately, heaving into the snow, and the men shouted “STAY PUT” when Rob and I tried to move toward her.
One of the hired goons checked the dying man’s dog tags and reported back, “It’s Brenner, sir.”
The commander, whatever his rank in the security company was, shook his plastic head. “Brenner was first response, right?”
“Yes, sir. He was on patrol at Westbrook when we got news of their escape. Squad three.”
“He’s pretty far out.”
“Sir?”
The commander paused before heading toward his snowmobile. “He’s pretty far out to be infected.”
• • •
My nylon jacket squeaks against the suit of the soldier on the snowmobile. “Hold on,” he says, perhaps being kind, but through the muffle of the suit, I’ll never know. We zig through the woods, faster than I thought possible, and at first I keep ducking my head at the branches. I try to see the others, but when I turn my head, I freak out and feel like I’m about to fall, so I just hug the disturbingly warm body in front of me and hold on.
Far away, a gunshot echoes in the hills. It sounds familiar, that gunshot. I picture all of us flinching on our perches on the back of the snowmobiles. Probably thinking the same thing. One of the soldiers must have finished the job Brayden started, a bullet to the head of the dying soldier. A mercy kill.
If the soldiers in special suits are dying, I don’t want to even think about what’s going on in my body right now. I wonder if the school is quiet, empty of life, full of hundreds of prematurely aged bodies.
• • •
I’m not sure how long we’re on the snowmobiles. The twists and turns through the trees make me nauseated, so I keep my eyes closed. I end up pretty numb, almost falling asleep against the shoulder in front of me, my burning toes the only thing keeping me awake.
Without warning, we pull into a clearing that, despite it being dead of night, is bright as day. I put one of my hands up to block the glare. We’re in a broad field, but to my right, I can make out a paved road running parallel to our path. On the other side of the road lies an equally large field. I peek over my driver’s shoulder to stare at the wall that looms before us. There are spotlights, big baseball-style floodlights, both stationary and shifting, resting on tall towers that rise over the brick wall. Shadows are up there too, men with guns, I’m sure. They’re probably peering at us right now, each one assigned a face to crosshair. Ready if we do anything crazy. Beyond the wall is a mansion, a huge house, and it takes me a second to put it all together, but the moment I do is the moment we get close enough to the gate to make out the words FURBISH MANOR engraved beautifully into the metal. I gasp and try to see Brayden, but he’s too far up in the convoy to make out.
Did they take over the manor like they took the school? Are his parents being held hostage, trussed up in the basement? Or worse, sick and infected? If I was groggy on the ride here, I am pulsing now, my teeth tingling and every hair on edge. I find myself squeezing the soldier’s body in front of me so hard that he yells at me. We slow to an idle, still in line, and I see a couple of guards inspect Jimmy’s snowmobile up front. I try to stand in my seat to get a better look at Brayden, but he’s just staring ahead. Jo turns, though, and mouths, What is going on? I shrug. The gate to Furbish is massive enough to accommodate any military vehicle. The guards wave Jimmy’s guy on, and we inch forward, like in traffic. Brayden is up next, but this takes longer. The guard speaks into a walkie-talkie, conferring about something. Then he pulls off Brayden’s cap, leaving his hair spiking and staticky. Brayden snatches for the cap, but the soldier bats him gently away. He points somewhere inside the manor, and the driver nods and veers off to the side. They recognized him for some reason. They know Brayden by sight. Did they report his arrival? Why would the guard have orders to do that? Why are they here at Furbish Manor at all? My stomach shifts uneasily as we pull forward in line, no one else receiving the same treatment.
Once inside the manor, I can tell that the guard towers are makeshift, easy-to-assemble metal scaffolding no better than glorified deer blinds. The courtyard in front of the mansion is filled with other impermanent setups. Tents and small prefab buildings line the place, and I can only assume those are the barracks. Darkstorm logos splash on fabric and tarp but on none of the vehicles. I see Humvees with big guns on top, and trucks; one tank is sitting just inside the outer wall. A whole row of snowmobiles. Something’s weird, but it takes me a minute to figure it out: the soldiers walking around inside the walls aren’t wearing hazmat suits.
“Where are you taking us?” I shout over the engine. Though I assume the mansion is the answer, sitting like this has me feeling alone, and I can’t just diffuse my fear by making jokes with Rob. I squeeze my arms tight. “Come on. You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not supposed to. We aren’t the bad guys. We’re just kids. Where are we going?”
“Quarantine.”
I laugh. “We already were quarantined.”
He shakes his head. “Detox, observation, testing. Quarantine.”
I don’t like the word testing. I prefer quarantine.
The convoy pulls up to the mansion, as expected, and we’re all ordered off our machines. But our escorts don’t get off; they just back up and scoot away, and suddenly we’re huddling together. Jimmy’s pawing at his tiny mustache, making me nervous. Jo nudges me, and I look up and gasp, as shocked as I’ve ever be
en; I see Brayden on the marble front steps to the house. He’s talking to Blake Sutton, who’s standing there with his legs together, his arms crossed and a hand on his chin, nodding occasionally, listening intently. I can’t make sense of this at all. My stomach turns over just watching the two of them speak. Brayden looks, somehow, small next to the older man, as if Sutton owns this place. And, considering the soldiers everywhere, maybe he does. Brayden points our way.
“What the crazy is going on?” Rob asks, taking in the scene.
“Brayden must know that guy,” Jo says, her voice hurt.
“No,” I say. But I can’t tear my eyes off him, desperately trying to put two and two together. “No way. They’ve got Brayden’s family. That’s why they’re here. He doesn’t know Brayden.”
Sutton puts an arm on Brayden’s head and further tousles his hair. Then he makes eye contact with a soldier and nods toward us. He doesn’t look at me, not at all, just turns and walks through the tall wooden doors of the house.
“Looks like they get along pretty well,” Jimmy says. This is, I realize, the first time he’s seen the man.
“I don’t get it,” I murmur. Sutton knows Brayden? And they’re here, at his parents’ house, using it as their base?
“Mia,” Jo says, her face twisted in concern. She’s got a lock of her hair and is brushing her lips with it back and forth while she muses aloud. “Who even is Brayden? He transferred to Westbrook, what, a minute ago? And he’s superhelpful and knowledgeable, and now we end up at his house that happens to be controlled by this guy who’s chasing us?”
