by Lex Thomas
“I’ll be okay. What are you gonna do?”
“I’m gonna help put out that fire,” David said, and he took off down the length of the wall, toward the blazing building.
Another explosion rocked the night. Then a cluster of them like a fireworks finale. Will looked down at the farm. The tractor-trailer barrier ran like the Great Wall of China around a patchwork of crops, outbuildings, and smaller fenced-in areas, hugging them close to the school, which for the first time didn’t seem titanic to Will.
A flash of light burst out from a third-floor ledge after a grenade didn’t reach the roof. The hunters had reached the school. On the next throw, they might get it right, and the parents defending the school were in high gear to stop it.
Three parents on the school’s roof dared to rise over the ledge with rifles and fired down at the hunters. They missed. The hunters were working their way toward the industrial elevator that provided roof access. A parent in work overalls and an orange bandanna headband sent a hatchet flying at the hunters. It sunk into the hip of the hunter in the dark baseball cap and the man shrieked. Another hunter raised up a grenade to throw at the parents, but an arrow cut through the dark and planted itself in his thigh. He fell to the ground with his gym bag. The live grenade tumbled into the dark dirt nearby. Everyone scattered.
A blast of white fire. The bags of grenades detonated. The resulting blast lit up the whole school and forced Will to close his eyes to keep from being blinded. His ears rang. Nothing remained of the two hunters. Will looked to the roofline where two of the parents cheered while the third, a tubby one with a compound bow, stared at the carnage he’d sparked.
A clang sounded off behind Will, on the outer farm wall. Then, the aluminum rattle of a ladder. Two more hunters were climbing up a ladder twenty feet from Will, onto the wall. They had guns strapped to their backs.
Will tightened up on his pickax and ran at them. The pounding of his feet on the hollow metal trailers was like church bells, alerting the hunters to climb faster. As the highest hunter reached the top of the ladder, Will swung his pickax at him.
“Yagh!” The hunter slid down a few rungs.
“Stay off!” Will said.
The hunter reached to his back with one hand, where his rifle was. Will dropped the pickax and grabbed the ladder with both hands. Will strained, drawing on all the strength in his thighs and arms. The ladder lifted away from the wall. The second hunter cut his losses and scrambled down to the ground. The first hunter leveled his rifle at Will.
David wouldn’t be coming to save him. This was on him. If he died, there was a chance the school would be sacked and the kids inside murdered. In a flash he understood why the parents had been doing things the way they’d been doing them.
Will shoved the ladder away from the wall, and the hunter’s gun fired up into the air.
The ladder dropped, screeching the whole way down. Will turned toward the school, heaving breath. He saw that the parents had finally gained the advantage. All of the hunters were fleeing toward the gate out of the farm. All but one.
“You’re gonna die, rat lover,” a voice said from below Will.
“I’ll take you with me, prick,” another voice said.
Will crept to the farm-side ladder with his pickax. A stocky hunter with a bowie knife shuffled toward a silver-haired parent with an athletic build. The parent was on the ground, clutching his ankle. His only weapon was a motorcycle helmet. Black.
Sam’s dad.
Will was fast onto the ladder. At the bottom in seconds. The hunter lunged at Sam’s dad with the bowie knife, but he got a pickax through his own shoulder instead. The hunter screamed and fell to the ground beside Sam’s father.
Will approached the hunter. The man was squirming in the dirt and trying to reach back to the pickax. He looked over to Sam’s dad, who was studying him with a skeptical face. A stream of profanity kept oozing out of the hunter’s mouth.
“Shut up,” Sam’s father told the man.
Sam’s dad winced in pain as he tried to stand, but his twisted ankle wouldn’t do him any favors.
Seeing the man this close, with no helmet, Will became acutely aware of what an awful thing he’d done. He’d forced this man and his wife to watch their son’s beheading. He must think I’m a monster.
“I didn’t kill your son,” Will blurted out.
The hatred in the man’s eyes frightened Will.
“I found him like that. I swear. I know I shouldn’t have pretended he was alive. I know that was messed up. But I just had to get out. I’m—sorry. I so —”
“It was the hog,” Sam’s dad said.
“What?”
“You don’t remember asking for a wild hog for a party?”
Of course Will did. He remembered the moment Gates had come up with the idea. He’d been so excited he’d thrown a champagne bottle against the wall in celebration.
“A kid that graduated yesterday … he told me he saw the hog attack Sam and rip his thr—” The man clamped his jaw shut, choking on emotion. He swallowed hard and continued. “I know it wasn’t you, but I still don’t like you or what you did. If you’re going to stay on this farm, you’re going to have to prove you’re someone worth trusting.”
Sam’s dad stood with a pained grunt and limped off.
Will shouted after him, “I will.”
“Hey,” David said. “Breakfast.”
Will opened his eyes and sat up on his cot. The smell of freshly tilled soil and manure, and trees and flowers, soothed the inside of his nostrils like the steam of a hot bath. The low whirr of summer crickets filled his ears. The day already felt warm, and sunlight had stretched its way to where he’d planted his toes in the grass below. He smiled and looked around. All the other cots under the tarp, in these emergency sleeping quarters, were empty.
“I guess I slept in.”
“We start early around here,” David said. “I just came from a security committee meeting about stepping up our security measures. Last night was a real wake-up call. Sam’s dad already has plans for how to strengthen our whole operation.”
He placed a wooden bowl in Will’s lap and handed him his daily meds with water in a tin camping cup.
“Thanks,” Will said. He swallowed his meds and set the cup aside.
“Normally I like to start the day with fresh scrambled eggs, but all the chickens are dead. We’ll find new ones though. Just one more thing on the list.”
“Morning, David,” a woman said as she walked by with a pitchfork. Her hands were calloused and respectably filthy.
“Morning, Carol.” When she was gone, David smiled at Will. “That’s Bobby Corning’s mom.”
Will twisted his face. “For real? Does she know her son calls himself Jackal?”
David grinned. “She’s the nicest lady. She makes those corn meal pancakes from scratch. Best thing you’ve ever had.”
Will looked down at the bowl in his lap. Three little yellow pancakes sat snuggled up with each other, glistening with a thin caramel glaze of syrup. His stomach tugged at him. He dug into the pancakes with a fork and began shoveling. Creamy sweetness coated his tongue.
“Oh my God,” Will said.
David arched his eyebrow. “Homemade butter.”
“This is the best thing I’ve ever had in my entire life. Ever in my whole, entire life. How could someone make something as great as this and as awful as Bobby?”
David laughed. Will kept chomping through his breakfast. It was only as he reached the last few bites that he began to soak in what was happening beyond the shadow of the tent. Parents were working diligently everywhere he looked. There weren’t many of them, maybe a couple more than he’d seen the night before, but it seemed like they’d already done the work of a hundred people. As Will’s eyes traveled across the golden expanse of the farm, he could already see the evidence of the previous night’s siege disappearing. Parts of the building had been damaged by grenade blasts. One of the massive steel plates
that kept the school sealed up had been detached completely, but a group of fathers was already standing in front of it, trying to figure out how to reattach it. Plants had already been replanted where grenades had made craters. The small herd of cattle and goats, each in their own little pen, seemed content, leisurely chewing grass. The massive vegetable garden, where the parking lot had been torn up, looked unbothered.
“These people are machines,” Will said, licking his fork. He put the bowl aside.
“They care,” David said.
Will looked at his brother. He knew that serious face. It used to piss him off. He had always thought it was self-important and stupid, but that viewpoint seemed immature now. David was right. These parents wouldn’t have been here, risking getting killed like they had last night, busting their asses like they were now, if they didn’t care. He could see what he could never understand inside—they were regular people doing the best they possibly could under the shittiest circumstances. They’d occupied McKinley for half a year, but what they’d produced was impressive.
Near the parking lot garden, a team of moms was sorting through crates of fresh produce and cardboard boxes of supplies, making organized piles of cans in the grass. They distributed everything into battered plastic tubs that were on the crane pallet. They were prepping for a food drop. Two of the moms stepped away from their work to take a break. They shared a heartfelt hug.
“How often does this place get attacked?” Will said.
“That was the first time since I’ve been here. Pale Ridge hasn’t seen too many homesteaders yet. From the wall, we’ve spotted the occasional RV or truck passing through town. Those guys last night are the first to stick around in a long time.”
“Will there be more?”
“Maybe. People are moving back to Colorado since the military did their purge of infected. But the good news is we don’t have to be here forever. We only have to last as long as the virus dies out inside McKinley, right? There’s only so many people left inside.”
Will nodded. He was only thinking of one. And if what David had told him was true, that Gates was dead, then he didn’t have to worry about Lucy too badly. She had the Sluts.
“We just have to hold out until then,” David said. “Thank God the parents planted as soon as they arrived. There’s nothing more to be found from neighboring towns anymore. I know what you must think of Mr. Howard, but the guy had a plan for when the truck shipments got fewer and further between. We’ve got to be self-sufficient. Especially if we’re going to have to be a fortress in the final days.”
Will started to get sucked into a vortex of worry about how many other people like the grenade gang might eventually call Pale Ridge home again.
David put his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “We’ve been through a lot. We’ll get through this too.”
Will nodded. “Yeah, we will.”
“We’ll be watching cable on the couch before you know it.”
Will laughed.
“You two!” Will and David looked over to see Sam’s dad watching them. He leaned on a cane. David cringed and shot Will a worried look.
“Shit, here we go. Let me do the talking, okay? I’m in good with him,” David said, then waved to Sam’s dad.
“Will, I’ve got a special job for you. Think you can handle it?” Sam’s dad said.
Will nodded and stood.
“Get your brother and follow me,” Sam’s dad said to Will.
David looked at Will, baffled. Will hadn’t told him about saving Sam’s dad’s life the night before, and clearly no one else had.
“ ‘Get your brother’?” David muttered.
Will grinned. He couldn’t help it. He loved when David was shocked. Will gave David a semi-gentle shove forward.
“You heard the guy. Get moving, slacker.”
3
THREE CANDLES BY VIOLENT’S HEAD. THEY were the only light source in the small room. Lucy stood by the door. Violent hadn’t noticed her yet. Asymmetrical swelling warped the shape of the Slut leader’s head. Her breathing was shallow. They’d made her a bed on the floor out of all the gang’s pillows, near an air vent in the wall so it would blow gently on her face. They’d thought maybe the filtered air would be better for her. Violent looked weak and vulnerable on the floor. Her health had been going downhill fast since the brawl with the Saints. The brawl that Lucy’d gotten them all into.
Her eyes bulged like two plums. Her head was wrapped in a white terry cloth towel, but red had soaked through. Her injuries were severe. Lucy knew Violent was human like the rest of them, but she carried herself with such an air of invincibility that Lucy had come to believe it was true. This seemed like a trick, a practical joke, that Violent was damaged and defeated. It didn’t seem possible.
Her plum eyes opened and she looked at Lucy.
“You asked to see me?” Lucy said.
“C’mere.”
Lucy approached with reluctance. She was frightened of what Violent would say. She’d never imagined this would happen. The other Sluts didn’t want her talking to Violent. They were furious with her for getting their beloved leader so badly hurt in a brawl over a boy. Each girl had made sure to tell Lucy their version of the story—and list their personal injuries, all to get the point across about how badly she’d screwed up. After Lucy had escaped with Will, Gates and Violent had tangled and Violent had quickly lost the upper hand. Gates had slammed Violent’s head into the floor over and over, and hadn’t stopped until long after her eyes had rolled back in her head, and her arms had gone to rubber. The fact that Lucy had killed Gates was the only thing keeping the Sluts from ripping her apart. She was sure of it.
Lucy knelt by her leader’s side. She took Violent’s hand in hers. It was cold. She held it between her hands to warm it.
“I need to talk to you,” Violent said. Her voice warbled. The authoritative bass she spoke with was gone, as was the forceful diction. Her voice had a childlike tremor to it.
“I’m here.”
“I think this is it for me,” Violent said.
“No, don’t say that.”
“I can feel it going away.”
“You’re imagining it. You’re not going anywhere. I need you here.” Lucy started crying. Saying the words out loud made her understand how much she depended on Violent, how much she drew strength from her. All the Sluts did. “The girls need you too.”
Violent sighed, and Lucy could hear a gurgle in her windpipe.
“Doesn’t change anything,” she said.
“It’s my fault,” Lucy said.
“Lucy, shut up.”
“Okay.”
“I’m scared, Lucy. I’m really scared.”
Lucy froze. This wasn’t right. Violent didn’t get scared. Sluts weren’t supposed to.
“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Lucy said through a choked throat.
“I don’t want this to be the end.”
Lucy nodded. She didn’t know what to say.
“I couldn’t tell any of the others,” Violent said. “They wouldn’t understand. But you do.”
But I don’t, Lucy wanted to scream. Please go back to being the old Violent. She wanted her to sit up, shrug this off, and ask, “What’s for dinner?”
“You’ve always reminded me of me,” she said.
“How is that possible?” Lucy said.
“I used to be like you before all this. Soft. Sensitive. Worried about everything.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“That’s my secret. I still am that girl. I’m scared, Lucy. All the time.”
“No, you’re not. You’re the most confident person I know.”
Violent gripped her wrist. With a burst of strength, she yanked Lucy in close. Face-to-face. Sweat streaked Violent’s pulsing temples. Her mouth couldn’t decide on a position. Her pupils shivered.
“I’m too young to die,” Violent said, on the edge of crying.
“Please don’t say that.”
“Help me, Lucy.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“What’s going to happen to me?”
Violent moaned through a raspy throat. She held out her arms to Lucy. She wanted Lucy to hug her. Lucy hesitated from the shock, but as she went to hug her, Violent collapsed. She slumped facedown on the floor.
“I need help!” Lucy hollered.
The door whipped open and Sophia shot in. Sluts piled into the small room. They pulled Lucy away from Violent. Lips got ahold of Lucy and shoved her toward the door.
“Out,” Lips said. She stared at Lucy with murder eyes.
Lucy ran out of the room, to the cafeteria dining hall. Black eyes, bloody lips, and scraped tits all around her. None of the girls was happy to see her. Lucy hung by herself in the corner.
It was only twenty minutes later that Sophia came shuffling into the dining hall. The bruising around Sophia’s broken nose was purple and black, and her cheeks puffed out from the swelling, stretching her skin until it was shiny. Sophia blinked as she stared at Lucy, and when she spoke, her voice was cold as a gravestone.
“Her heart stopped beating,” Sophia swallowed. “We couldn’t get it back.”
Everyone lost it, Lucy included. There was no Slut bravado, only grief. Girls started hugging, some dropped to the floor in agony. Lucy spotted Raunch and went in for a big hug. Raunch straight-armed her, palm to the chest. Raunch’s tears soaked into the bandage for the severe gouge that now split her cheek. There was no love in her eyes. Lucy wandered to some of the other girls, but no one in the cafeteria would hug her. The picture was clear. Lucy didn’t deserve a place in this mourning. She snuck off to the bathroom to cry alone.
“You sleep out here tonight,” Lips said later, when it was time for bed.
The rest of the Sluts retired to the kitchen to sleep together, swaddled by the heat of the ovens. Lucy lay on a foldout table in the wide, empty room, where every creak of the table echoed, and she wished she had a blanket. The only thing that kept her company was her anguish over Violent, and one nagging question. If Violent’s confidence had been fake all this time, if she was just as vulnerable and scared as the rest of them, what hope did Lucy have?
