Sick

by Tom Leveen

  “You sure?” I ask.

  “I’m fine, Brian,” she says. “Now we know what we’re dealing with, what to look for … I’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “Thanks, Cammy.”

  “You got it.” She walks out, hockey stick in hand.

  I look at Kenzie, who’s now standing against one wall, her arms wrapped around her middle.

  “Hey,” I say to her. “You want to lie down or something?”

  Kenzie shakes her head. “I need to move,” she says. “We were crouched in the library for so long … standing is good right now.”

  “Okay. How you doing?”

  Kenzie lifts her chin, and the smile she pulls on is grim. Determined.

  “I don’t have cancer, if that’s what you mean.”

  I can’t stop a pathetic chuckle from escaping my throat. I pull her to me again and hug her tight.

  “You’re shaking,” she says.

  “Maybe you are.”

  “Maybe I am.” She pulls back. “I didn’t go through a year of hell to get eaten up by some freshman,” she says. “We’re going to make it.”

  At that moment, I crash headlong into a disconcerting truth: until my sister said it, I didn’t really believe it. I talked big and I thought big, but the reality is, until just now, I did not believe any of us were going to get out of here alive.

  Kenzie’s gaze is sharp, glinting. There are also circles under her eyes, and I imagine mine don’t look much different. But you don’t go through something like she did without getting something out of it. In her case, I think it’s fearlessness. Strength.

  Will.

  “I might need to borrow some of that,” I say.

  “Some of what?”

  “Nothing. Forget it. I need to go talk to Jaime. You staying in here?”

  “Actually, I think I’m going to pee, if you must know.”

  That same tired chuckle drops from my mouth. Except tired isn’t a big enough word for what I’m feeling. It’s like every ounce of energy has been squeezed out of me from the top down until I’m nothing more than a husk.

  We walk out of the office. Kenzie heads for the restroom as Kat comes up to me. Her eyes are red and squinting.

  “Some of them have been asking about food,” Kat says, glancing back at the students lining the hallway. “What do you want to do?”

  “I’ll ask Jaime,” I say.

  “Jaime’s on the roof. He didn’t want anyone to bother him. I left him alone.” She looks disappointed.

  “How’s Travis?”

  “Okay, I think. He’s, uh … in the bathroom. With Dave.”

  It takes me a second to process what she means. “Wait … Dave? You mean, with him with him?”

  Kat shrugs. “They’ve been flirting all year,” she tells me. “I guess they figured, you know, time was short.”

  “Are they … like …”

  Kat raises her hands. “Hey, I don’t know and I don’t need to know. But I’d knock before I go in.”

  I very nearly laugh.

  “It’s been quiet outside,” Kat says. “Those … things are still out there, though. They bang on the doors sometimes. But Dave’s moved the lighting instruments up to the roof, in case we need to throw them, like you said. And we’re still surrounded. But …”

  She trails off and bites her lip.

  “But what?”

  “It seems like there’s more of them now,” she says. “A lot more.”

  Oh, god.

  “Okay,” I say. “Thanks, Kat. I’m going to go talk to Jaime.”

  Kat nods. “Sure,” she says. “And Brian?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I asked around. No one has anything on them. Drugs, I mean. Sorry.”

  “Why am I not surprised,” I say. “Thanks for trying.”

  Kat nods, and I head toward the auditorium. Some kids are asleep up and down the hallway. Serena, that senior chick, still cradles the blond freshman girl in her arms, rocking her gently. I think the freshman has checked out, maybe for good. Even if we—

  Even when we get out of here, she’ll need some hard-core therapy.

  She’s not the only one.

  In the auditorium, the lighting pipes have been lowered to waist height, and they’re empty. Usually they’re covered with heavy stage lights and hanging high overhead. The tall ladder’s out too—the one we use to make focus adjustments when the lights are hanging.

  I climb the spiral stairs to the grid, then make my way to the ladder to the roof. The hatch is open, and I see that it’s dark out. The sky overhead is a strange orange color, and the air smells faintly of smoke. Before I even stick my head out of the hatch, though, I hear music.

  Beautiful, soaring music.

  I climb up. Jaime is seated cross-legged near the south edge of the roof, a violin beneath his chin. The tones issuing from the instrument are dark and deep. I don’t make a secret of my approach, letting my feet crunch the little white rocks beneath my shoes. I notice, too, that someone has spray-painted HELP in enormous red letters that take up most of the roof. The paint is dry. Lined up along all four edges of the roof are heavy black lights. I’ve helped Jaime focus them over the stage before; they must weigh a good ten to twenty pounds each.

  Jaime doesn’t respond as I approach. I sit next to him. His eyes are closed, face tight in concentration. I sit and listen, looking out over the city—or what remains of it.

  There are too many smoke plumes to count, lit by the fires beneath them. On all sides, anywhere from a few blocks to several miles away, fires are raging. The sky is overcast with smoke, reflecting dim orange from the city lights beneath. I hear no sirens anymore. Scarlet Ave is empty except for the guy who was hit by the car, and what’s left of Tara’s dad, half stuck between the bars of the fence.

  It hits me that we didn’t tell Tara about him yet. Just as well. What good would it do?

  “Nero tocaba el violín mientras que Roma se quemaba,” Jaime says, startling me.

  “What’s that mean?”

  Jaime’s eyes are still closed, face still knitted tight. “‘Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned.’ Seemed appropriate.”

  “Dude. Jaime. I had no idea. I mean, that you could play like that.”

  Jaime draws the bow across the strings, holding a low note, then stops. He opens his eyes.

  “Yeah, well. Not a lot of Mes’kins around here working the violin, you know. Need to keep a low profile. Don’t want to get jumped.”

  I chuckle, but only a little. Then I stall, because while I need to have a conversation with him, I’m also afraid of how he’ll respond. “What was that? That you were playing.”

  “Beethoven. Violin Concerto in D, second movement. You like it?”

  “Yeah. You’re real good.”

  “Thanks.” Jaime takes a deep breath and scans the horizon. “They’re not coming,” he adds.

  “What? Who?”

  “Anyone. Cops, fire department. National Guard. No one’s coming for us.”

  He says it was such certainty and hopelessness that I feel a chill. “Come on, man, my mom said—”

  “This thing,” Jaime says, spreading an arm to indicate the entire campus. “It’s everywhere.” He points with his bow. “Check them out.”

  I follow the point of his bow down toward the fence. It takes a second, but then I see them: three people, hunched and lurching, moving on all fours up and down Scarlet Avenue. Adults. One is in a police uniform. They discover the body in the middle of the road and race toward it. They sniff, poke, and move on. The dead are of no use to them, I guess. Not unless they’re desperate, like the sick kid in front of the cafeteria.

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Yep. Honestly, I don’t think it’s just in town, either. Not just in this state. I think it’s the whole damn country. Maybe the whole world. We’re going to die here.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  Jaime snorts and shakes his head a little. “There’s three ways for
this to end, I figure,” he says. “Been thinking about it quite a bit. One, we starve to death. Two, we go crazy and kill each other off, and whoever lives through that starves to death. Three … those zombie things eat us alive. That’s it.”

  “So what do you want to do?” I say, kind of pissy. But I can’t get up and leave, either. It’s like I have to hear this before I tell him my plan.

  Jaime shrugs. “I don’t know. Nothing? Pray, maybe. Think about God, the universe, and my place in it. I don’t know.”

  “So you want to give up? Kill yourself or something?”

  “Crossed my mind.”

  I try not to let my shock show. I wasn’t joking exactly, but it’s not like I meant it.

  “But no,” Jaime goes on. “I thought a lot about that, sitting up here. Thought about all the different ways I could do it. But I can’t go through with it. I might wish I could’ve if one of those zombies gets ahold of me. But right now … no.”

  “So you haven’t given up all hope.” I can feel myself getting fidgety. I’ve got to talk to him about my plan, but if I push now, I’m afraid I’ll lose him. My stalling has backfired. Now I’m just wasting time.

  “Not yet. I think it’s in the mail, though. You thought about it?”

  “What, killing myself? No.”

  “Eh,” Jaime says. “Dying in general. As in tonight, let’s say.”

  “No,” I say. “Not really. I think I’m going to make it. I think we’re all going to make it.” I don’t tell him that I didn’t reach this conclusion until a few minutes ago.

  “Those of us who made it this far, you mean.”

  “Well, yeah. I guess. There must be some reason we survived this long.”

  Jaime grunts. “You believe in God?”

  “Right now I think it’s probably more important that he believes in me.”

  “That’s pretty deep, amigo.”

  “Yeah, well. I’m not giving up. That’s all I know for sure.”

  “How come?” Jaime’s voice is remarkably probing.

  I arch an eyebrow. “How come I’m not giving up?”

  “Yeah,” Jaime says. “I mean, is it just self-preservation at this point? Base instinct? Their will to eat us alive versus our will to survive? What?”

  I’d never thought about it. Hell, when would I have? I start to tell him it’s instinct, but then my gaze goes back to Tara’s dad, dangling from those goddam wrought iron bars … basically having given up his life to try to get her out of this.

  “Your dad live with you?” I say. I’m disgusted by the sight of the man caught in the fence, and disgusted that I no longer need to turn away.

  Jaime doesn’t answer immediately. And when he does, it’s a simple “No.”

  “Me neither. Chad too.”

  “And Kat. Jesus. Talk about an epidemic, hey?”

  For one weird, surreal moment, it’s actually peaceful up here, watching the apocalypse unfold below us in our high school parking lot. The particular orange shade of the sky would be pretty under different circumstances.

  Maybe I really am losing it.

  “So, yeah,” I say, mostly to startle myself back to reality. “Fuck anyone who wants to give up. Not me. Not ever, not on anyone. We have to be better than them.”

  “Better than—” Jaime begins. Then he stops, grins a bit, and says, “Ah. Roger that.”

  He puts his violin back in its case without closing the lid and looks out over the city.

  “You seen that show on TV?” he says. “The one about what happens to the planet after people are gone?”

  “Sounds familiar, yeah.”

  “If it’s as bad as I think it is, we’re only going to have power for another day or two. A week tops, unless someone’s able to get back in control. So what do we do then? How do we handle the crowd in the hall when the lights go out, you know? And without food, where does that leave us? How much time do we have before we melt down?”

  Something greasy unrolls in my gut as I process where he’s headed.

  “I mean, look at us,” he goes on. “We’re a petri dish of social study here. We’re like lord of the goddam flies. How soon before we turn on each other? Go, like, feral or whatever? Start raping the girls, killing each other off, just going batshit crazy. When the food’s gone, the power’s out, these things stalking around …”

  I swallow hard. I taste air tinged with the odor of smoke and rotting flesh from the school below.

  “I’ve been doing some math,” Jaime says. “If there are other survivors here at school, they’re probably in classrooms, and they’re expecting the police to come get them. Soon. They can’t possibly have much food, or any water. Eventually, they’re going to leave. One by one, or all at once, they’re going to leave. There’s probably three dozen conversations just like ours happening all over campus. And you and I both know they’re not going to make it. No one else has a view like we do from up here. They might see a couple of zombies roaming around and think they can outrun them, but they don’t know how many there really are. We can assume their phones aren’t helping them any more than ours helped us. They’re going to run for it, Brian. And when they do, most of them won’t make it. Then they’ll turn into more zombies. See what I’m saying? Sooner or later, this whole campus, or a damn fine portion of it, is going to turn bad.”

  He pauses, and snorts. “Or worse than usual, anyway.”

  “Yeah.” I cough. “I get it.”

  “Now, you throw in our lack of food too. Trying to keep everyone calm and sane. It won’t last.”

  “So, wait—now you want out too? For real?”

  “Fucking A, I want out now too. I want to head over to Madison, see if I can find my brother. Take him home.”

  “Our houses might actually be more dangerous, you know. But my thinking is, at least at there we’ve got home-field advantage. Food, water. The most logical place for people who are looking for us to check.”

  “Agreed, amigo. So I’m on board. There’s just one problem.”

  “Well, shit, that’s a relief. Just one?”

  Jaime smirks. “We have more than twenty people down there. They’re not all going to fit into a station wagon. How do you plan on getting around that math?”

  “Let’s assume there’s room for twelve,” I say. “We’ve done that many before. Me, you, Chad. Travis, I assume, but we’ll have to ask him. That’s four. Cammy and Kenzie, that’s six. If I—when we find Laura, that’s seven. Room for five more. Who’s it going to be?”

  “Hold up. Laura? Man, I’m sure you love her or whatever, but we can’t risk—”

  “She’s got that stuff my mom mentioned. Klonopin. She’s got a pretty bad panic disorder. I’ve seen her on those meds. They’ll work. On Chad.”

  “Oh, so all we have to do is find her, borrow her meds, and dose your buddy? Easy as that?”

  “I didn’t say it would be easy. But it’s our best bet.”

  Jaime gets to his feet. “There’s a good chance someone has pot,” he says. “John, maybe. We could, you know. Smoke Chad out.”

  “Dude,” I say, “Chad’s straight edge.”

  “Serious?”

  “Yes, I’m serious. What, you think because he’s got a Mohawk he’s all coked out or something?”

  “You think because I’m in drama I date guys?”

  “He’s going into the Marines. He can’t risk getting high.” It then hits me what a stupid goddam thing that is to say. Smoking out is the absolute least of Chad’s worries.

  “Kat said no one had anything, anyway,” I go on. “And … I got another idea. A way out of here, a way to get you to Madison.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “But not without Laura, and not without getting those meds for Chad,” I say. “You won’t make it as far as Madison without a car, and you know it.”

  Jaime considers this for a minute.

  “All right,” he says. “Shoot.”

  I glance at the open roof hatch. Time’s
running out.

  “There’s a good chance Laura’s in the C buildings somewhere, the west side,” I say. “We take a small group, like before. Me, you, Chad, Travis. Find Laura, dose Chad, then radio back to Kat. Kat and Dave, or whoever, they come out with a ladder—”

  Jaime winces. “To do what with?”

  “The tall one, the one you use when you’re working on the lights? Tip it against the fence, like a ramp. Anyone could climb that. Just crawl up the ladder and hop down the other side. We beeline for Chad’s car, and we’re gone.”

  “You think someone like Serena’s going to be able to climb over that fence?”

  I blink. “Serena? No, no, she’s staying here. The rest of them stay here.”

  “Great. Do you want to explain that to everyone? ‘Sorry, we’re bugging out. You’re on your own’?”

  “I think we just ask. Throw it open. See who wants to give it a shot. Thing is, one way or another, anyone who wants out will have to get over that fence at some point, probably while being chased down by those monsters. Honestly, I think most of them will want to stay put.”

  Jaime nods, as if considering this.

  “So that’s the plan,” I say. “You still in? Or if you got a better idea …”

  Jaime takes a deep breath. Out of nowhere, he soccer-kicks his violin over the edge of the roof. It crashes to the ground a second later in a quiet symphony of broken strings.

  “All right,” he says. “Time’s a-wasting. Let’s go get the troops.”

  I FIND CHAD AND CAMMY SEATED IN THE HALL BY the boarded-up double doors, their backs against the wall. Their weapons are within easy reach. They’re playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. I notice Chad’s using his good hand. Cammy is leaning over with her elbows on her knees, looking ridiculously out of place in her bloody cheer outfit.

  I almost laugh. Almost.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” Chad says. Cammy tips her head back.

  “You all right?”

  “Peachy with a side of keen, Nilla Wafah.”

  “You sure?”

  “Naw, man. I ain’t sure of nothin’ anymore. You?”

  “Mostly the same. How’s your hand?”

  “Hurts like hell. But I’ll be fine.”