Quarantine: The Loners q-1

by Lex Thomas

  David gave Will a puzzled look.

  “Why?” David asked.

  “I found a dog.”

  31

  Escape.

  It was David’s only option. Faced with starvation, the Loners wanted out as well, even if it meant putting people on the outside in danger. At this point, it was leave or die.

  But it was a long way from the Stairs to where Will found this dog, a lot of different gang territories to cross. All they had was the hope that however that dog got in, they could go the same way to get out. David’s chances were slim. He’d probably die before they found this theoretical exit. The idea of spending his last few hours trudging around the ruins and looking for holes in the walls sounded awful. He wanted to spend his last hours in bed with Lucy. She wouldn’t allow it. As soon as Lucy heard Will’s news, it lit a fire of hope in her that she spread to everyone else. Nearly the entire gang was behind Will’s plan.

  They wanted out of this place once and for all.

  “I think if we head through the commons, that’ll be the fast-est,” Will said.

  Will was pointing at a school map laid out on the floor of the armory. David’s headache was getting worse, and he was having trouble concentrating. Besides Will, Leonard passed weapons out to Loners in a steady flow. David took a baseball bat. He didn’t trust himself with one eye and his machete yet.

  Will continued, tapping the map: “That means either going through Freaks’ territory or Varsity’s. I think it’s a pretty easy choice.”

  “We’ll go Freaks,” David said, massaging his jaw. It still hurt.

  It was weird. David felt closer to Will now, after the punch, than he ever had before.

  “We ready?” David said.

  Will nodded. David signaled the twins to draw back the barricade and open the door. David stared at the lit hallway. He took a breath and stepped out of the safety of the Stairs. He’d never step foot in the Stairs again. Will walked in stride with David, and an army of ninety Loners followed. They stuck close to one another, timid but excited at the prospect of reaching their promised land. The hallway was quiet.

  They approached the first intersection, and Will placed his hand out across David’s chest, signaling him to stop.

  He did, and all the Loners shuffled to a stop behind them.

  David looked down at Will’s hand on him. It felt good to have his brother looking out for him. He wondered if the conflict between them was really squashed, or just put on ice.

  “I’ll scout the next hall,” Will said.

  Will bounded off to the next turn, twenty feet or so ahead.

  David marveled at how fast his brother was and how quiet.

  Will pressed his back to the wall, then peered around it for a good thirty seconds. Finally, he waved the rest of the gang forward. David began the short march.

  The school’s PA system crackled to life. David stopped. Will looked up at nearest speaker.

  “Wake up, McKinley. This is Sam.”

  A wave of anxiety washed over David at the sound of Sam’s voice. The PA was set to its loudest volume. Every click of his teeth, every burst of breath could be heard. Sam’s voice flooded the hall.

  “I have an announcement to make. Varsity is offering a one month supply of food from our surplus to any gang that brings us David Thorpe. It’s dinnertime, McKinley. Come and get it.” Sam was a bastard to the bitter end. He couldn’t even let David die in peace. David knew every Loner was staring at him, maybe even considering how they could profit from Sam’s offer. David exhaled in one long, slow breath.

  He started walking. He could sense Lucy close behind, but he didn’t know how many Loners would follow. He walked a good ten feet before he heard anything. Then, footsteps. He couldn’t tell how many. If they all ditched, he couldn’t blame them. Every gang in school had empty stomachs, and Sam had just left a steaming pie on the windowsill.

  David reached Will, then turned to face the gang. Most had followed him. Fifteen kids hung back. They stood frozen, ashamed of their choice. They stared at the floor, shifting their weight back toward the Stairs. He was flattered by all the familiar faces still standing in front of him: Mort, Belinda, Nelson, the twins, Sasha, Ritchie, Leonard and his new boyfriend, Josh. They’d been through a lot of shit, and they were about to do it again.

  David cleared his throat and spoke with an even-keeled cadence.

  “If we get separated, stick to the plan. We’ll meet up in the ruins at room 1206. Keep your weapons close and your eyes sharp.”

  “This way,” Will said, and they all hurried forward.

  It was still slow going. They had to be cautious. Will scouted ahead. The twins and Ritchie checked that they weren’t being followed after they rounded each corner. And in between, there were dropped rations, arguments, untied shoes, and piss breaks. At seventy or so heads, they were no stealth operation.

  David would occasionally look to Lucy to check on her.

  “I’m all right,” she kept saying. He didn’t believe her.

  Will stayed on David’s right side, covering his blind spot.

  Having his brother so close again was the only relief David felt.

  They arrived at the wide entrance to the commons. It was a large two-story student lounge area. Faint mustard-yellow light poured down in intermittent pools from hanging ceiling lamps, and the block columns that held up the second-floor balcony cast long shadows. The outfacing wall had been one big window that looked out on the school’s front lawn. Now it was all metal plating, and the glass lay shattered on the ground, forming a jagged creek that ran the wall’s length.

  “Let me take a look,” Will said, eyeing the columns suspiciously.

  Will ran into the room, looking behind every column. He got to the other end of the expansive room, gave David a thumbs-up, and waved him through.

  “Stay close to each other,” David said.

  He led them out at a brisk pace. When he reached the column that marked the halfway point, all the lights shut off.

  They were in darkness. David wondered if the school generator had finally given out.

  “Will! Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay!”

  David heard a coarse rumbling in the distance, first from the hall in front of him, then from the hall behind. He stuck his arm out to locate Lucy and grabbed at something squishy.

  Belinda gasped. There was no time to apologize. The growling rumble was coming faster now.

  “Lucy?”

  “I’m here,” she said.

  He saw a ball of fire in the distance. The fireball moved fast, circling the room. More flying fireballs popped up around the room. One was coming right at him. It was a Skater on his board, holding a torch.

  “Skaters!” David shouted. The Skater swung his torch at him, and David narrowly avoided the blow. The flame revealed a flash of Lucy’s terrified face beside him.

  More torches descended from the balcony. Skaters were charging down the stairs, joining the flaming parade that poured in from the hallways. They circled the edges of the giant room, their flames too far away to illuminate the area around David. He still couldn’t see two feet in front of him.

  “If you got phones, use ’em!” David shouted.

  David pulled out his phone and clicked on the screen. He held it out in front of him trying to penetrate the darkness.

  Other Loners did the same, and they bunched together back to back and side to side. The room was a dangerous swirl of fire with a center of dancing white rectangles of light.

  David could make out a shadow charging him. He tightened his grip on his baseball bat and swung at the murky shape.

  He hit something. He heard a body hit the floor. He raised his phone to get a look at his victim and caught sight of a pair of Vans scampering back into the darkness.

  Someone jabbed the end of a skateboard into his kidney.

  The blow knocked the bat out of his hand. David crumpled down to his knees. Other Loners groaned around him as
invisible brutes rained down pain on them. The Skater swung their skateboards wherever they saw a phone.

  David fumbled to find his bat, but he heard the squeak of a sneaker to his left. He punched at the darkness. The punch whiffed through the air. He lost his balance and tumbled away from the Loner phalanx. Another skateboard cracked him soundly on the back of the head. He fell flat on the ground. All around him was chaos. He struggled to right himself, peering through the darkness with his one eye. A pair of arms bear-hugged David from behind and lifted him off the ground. He was still delirious, but he kicked at the shadows and tried to pry the hands off of him. Other unseen hands joined in, grabbing David’s right ankle, then his left shin.

  They carried him away.

  “Help! They’ve got me!”

  His shout added to the chorus of grunts and screams from the others. No one would hear it. He felt himself be thrown into the air. For a second, he was weightless, then he slammed down on a cloth surface. It wasn’t the floor. He flung his arms out to the sides. He felt poles, duct tape, and string making walls on either side of him. He stood and knocked his head against the same woven barrier above him. He was in the cage that the Skaters used at the food drops.

  He tried to find the door. He couldn’t. The sounds of battle thrashed all around him. He could feel the cage move.

  “It’s David! They’ve got me in the cage!” But the battle noises and the glow of the torches faded as the cage was pulled out of the commons. The cage jostled him around. He dug his fingers through the irregular gaps in the cage walls and yanked, but nothing gave.

  There was the sound of doors being kicked open behind David. He spun around just as the cage was dragged into a lit room. He charged the other end of the cage to face his cap-tors and instead saw Nelson.

  Nelson dropped the steering handle of the cage and looked up at David with a goofy smile. He strained to catch his breath. David stared at him, totally confused.

  “Did you see that? I took the cage right out of their hands! I gotta go back and help,” he said.

  Nelson ran back toward the commons. David shook the cage.

  “Nelson! No! Don’t leave me here! Nelson!” Nelson didn’t hear him. He disappeared back through the double doors to the commons.

  “Are you kidding me?” David yelled to no one.

  He was in another foyer, another open space that used to be a second entrance to the school. The Skaters must have pulled a fuse in the commons because the lights were still on in this foyer, and David was in plain sight. Anyone could happen across him. There was a price on his head, and he was alone, locked in a cage on wheels. This wasn’t good.

  David slumped to the cloth floor of the cage.

  He pulled his hair in frustration. He stared out into the foyer. Three quarters of the far wall was plastered over with sheets of painted butcher paper that together formed an enormous mural.

  “What the hell?” he said.

  It was a heroic portrait of David with a sea of white-haired Loners behind him, and a wide-open cobalt-blue sky overhead. The mural wasn’t finished. Butcher paper sheets that had yet to be glued to the wall were scattered on the floor below. Dorothy lay dead upon them.

  Lucy hid under the staircase as the battle with the Skaters neared its end. She clutched a length of pipe in her hand, but there was no point. She was too afraid to use it. She’d never seen a battle like this. It wasn’t like the drops. It was more cutthroat.

  She dared to peer out at the madness. There was a large fire in the center of room where the Loners once were. Someone had set a broken-down couch ablaze. Silhouettes tangled in the fire’s light. The first face she recognized was Will’s.

  He slashed at a Skater with a knife, and the Skater dropped the board he was wielding. With a clean kick, Will shot the skateboard across to Ritchie, who stomped it in two. Ritchie snatched up the two pieces and chucked them in the fire.

  All around the circle, Loners were stripping Skaters of their boards whenever they had the chance and sending them to Ritchie for destruction. The Skaters clutched their remaining boards to their chests and began to retreat into the shadows. Soon they were gone altogether. When the battle was over, Will led the Loners out of the commons in the direction of the ruins.

  Lucy waited until they had all passed before sliding out from under the staircase. The fire crackled in the center of the room. It was the only sound that remained. She felt like such a coward, but she didn’t know what else to do. She followed their path but paused in front of the doors to the foyer.

  Lucy looked down at herself. Her dress was clean, she had no cuts or bruises on her arms, she clearly had not participated in the battle. She couldn’t bring herself to open the doors.

  Lucy bent down and rubbed her hands across the dirty floor.

  She wiped the filth on her face and dress, then reached down and ripped her dress to her thigh.

  She took a breath and stumbled into the foyer. She expected everyone to be looking at her, watching her. They weren’t, not even David. They were standing in a circle around something.

  She saw it all so fast. David was crying. A giant portrait of him was on the wall. Dorothy’s body. It was too much.

  She went to David’s side. He stared up at the mural.

  “She fell off the ladder,” David said.

  A twenty-foot construction ladder lay by Dorothy’s body.

  David wiped the tears off his cheek.

  “We’re going to give her a proper funeral,” David said.

  “We don’t have time,” Will objected.

  “We’ll make time. Help me lift her into the cage.” David, Will, and Ritchie picked Dorothy up and placed her gently into the Skaters’ rolling cage. Lucy took David’s hand; she wanted to be close to him. She wanted him to smother the insecurity flaring up inside her. David pulled hard on her hand and whipped her behind him. Over his shoulder she saw that Zachary and the Geeks had entered the foyer. The Loners picked up their weapons.

  There were about twenty of them, lightly armed, and they stumbled into a clumsy formation behind Zachary when they saw the Loners. They looked liked they’d happened upon a stickup and it was too late to walk back out of the bank. The Geeks quickly drew what weapons they had.

  David walked forward, putting his hands up to show he meant no harm. Will motioned for the Loners to keep close to David.

  “Zachary, what’s up?”

  Zachary relaxed and smiled at David.

  “We heard there was a mural. I wanted to see it for myself.

  It’s… kind of unbelievable.”

  Lucy watched David closely. He wasn’t looking at Zachary anymore. He was studying the Geeks. Most of them were from the art clique. They had paint on their clothes and X-Acto knife cuts on their fingers. Zachary stared at Dorothy’s body.

  His head was bowed, and his expression was grave.

  “Do you mind if I…?” Zachary gestured toward the mural, and David shrugged.

  Zachary walked away from the Geeks to a central spot in front of the mural. He was quiet for a while.

  “It’s really something, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” David said.

  “I don’t suppose you’d be all right with it if my people changed it to my face, would you? I’d probably keep the eye patch,” Zachary said with a wink.

  David smiled and shook his head. “I like it the way it is.”

  “I want you to know I don’t condone this bounty on your head business. Sam is a pig.”

  “I agree.”

  “Somebody’s got to take a stand against that guy. I think we should join forces.”

  Zachary pointed toward a far corner, signaling that they should talk privately. David nodded in response.

  “How badly do you want out of this school?” David asked.

  Zachary shoved David. David stumbled on his blind side, his foot tangled with the rungs of the construction ladder, and he fell to the ground. Zachary pounced on him.

  Will and five oth
ers broke into a run to intercede, but Zachary was already behind David, his fingers in his hair. Zachary pulled David up by the head, produced a knife, and held it to David’s throat.

  Lucy choked with dread. She could almost feel the knife at her own throat, its sharp edge denting her skin.

  “Stay back!” Zachary yelled at her. He sidestepped toward the Geeks, pulling David with him.

  “I’m gonna kill you,” Will snapped at Zachary.

  “Will, back off!” David shouted. He lowered his voice to talk to Zachary. “Hey, man, this is the wrong move. You aren’t a fighter.”

  “Shudup, David. You don’t know what I am.” David stomped Zachary’s foot. Zachary cried out in pain.

  David pushed the knife away and elbowed Zachary in the face.

  David twisted Zachary’s hand behind his back and pried the knife out. It was hardly a fair fight. Zachary was instantly overwhelmed by David’s strength. David pressed the knife to Zachary’s neck.

  The Geeks charged David but stopped a dozen feet short.

  The Loners piled in around him, weapons out.

  “Come on,” Belinda said, pulling Lucy in with the Loners.

  “We’re getting out of here.” Belinda stopped cold. She narrowed her eyes at one of the Geek girls with curly locks dyed a rich auburn.

  “That’s my hair!” Belinda said.

  The Geeks were shouting at the Loners, and the Loners were shouting back. David raised his voice above all the noise.

  “Move out of the way. We’re walking out of here!”

  He waved for the Geeks to clear a path. They didn’t budge.

  “MOVE!” David shouted again. “You want me to kill him?

  Huh? I’ll run this piece of metal right through his brain! You want him to be another Brad?”

  Some of the Geeks moved, but others stared David down.

  “Tell ’em, Zachary,” David said. “You really want to die today?”

  “Do what he says,” Zachary finally said, and the Geeks parted.

  David pushed Zachary toward the hall the Geeks had come from. Nelson dragged the rolling Skater cage. The Loners flanked the cage, and the Geeks kept a five-foot distance on all sides. Will and the twins brought up the rear. Belinda had one arm looped through Lucy’s. She felt Belinda’s arm slip out. Belinda lunged forward and snatched the Geek girl’s auburn hair right off her head. It was a wig. The girl’s hair was white underneath, and she covered her head and ran off, embarrassed.