The Burnouts

by Lex Thomas

  “You’ll find her. I know it,” David said.

  “Yeah, and when you do, we’ll have the cure here, waiting for her,” Will said.

  David nodded along for Gonzalo’s benefit, but Will seemed to sense that David was just humoring them.

  “I’m serious,” Will said to David. “We should go to Minnesota.”

  David glanced over at his brother.

  “Uh, I don’t know. That’s pretty far to go on just a rumor. Half the trip, maybe more, is through the infected zone.”

  “So?”

  “Well, it’s dangerous,” David said.

  “It’s dangerous here. It’s dangerous everywhere. My first hour on the farm nearly got me blown up.”

  “Yeah, but … you haven’t been out there,” David said, looking to Gonzalo for support. He was a stone wall. Outside was Gonzalo’s life. David didn’t want to go back out there. He was scared, but he didn’t want to tell them that.

  “David, you’re the one that said it’s only a matter of time until we’re outnumbered by people moving back to Pale Ridge. What if everyone inside hasn’t graduated by then? A cure is a chance to better the odds, man. If everybody gets virus-free, then we’ve got no problems anymore. And how far is Minnesota anyway?”

  “Twelve, fifteen-hour drive, something like that,” Gonzalo said.

  Will pointed at Gonzalo with a wild grin.

  “Let’s do it,” he said. “We’d be heroes.”

  It was what David admired most about his brother. He had no fear of the unknown. Then again, too many times David had seen the brashness that came with it be Will’s undoing. That was exactly what had tangled him up with Gates when David had been powerless to help. Watching that train wreck from above and then going on the missions to fulfill Gates’s demands had been agonizing. But that was over now. They’d survived. And just as often David had seen Will’s brashness morph into bravery, like when he had taken down Varsity single-handedly. Everything Will was saying now was right. If they retrieved a cure, all of this just might end happily.

  “A fifteen-hour drive is nothing to scoff at,” David said. “We’ll need supplies we can’t spare. Fuel we don’t have. And we’ll have to get more gas mask filters somewhere on the way. There’s still infected out there. It’s still a war zone.”

  “So, what are you saying?” Will said.

  “If we could get all that,” David said, “then … it’s worth a shot.”

  Will clapped his hands with a big smile.

  “Road trip!”

  7

  LUCKY COULD HANDLE THE REST. SHE COULD stomach the loneliness of her new life in her plant room. She could withstand the waves of sadness that washed over her without warning. She could deal with the fact that none of the gangs would let her join. And with the reality that she’d traded away everything she’d owned in the last few weeks. She’d made peace with becoming a thief, a beggar in disguise. The hunger dictated her morality, it negated her pride. She could handle all that. What she couldn’t handle was what she held in her hand.

  A positive pregnancy test.

  She’d traded nearly everything she had left for it. Lucy squinted at the pink plus sign like it might be a mirage. The result seemed impossible, even though she knew it was the opposite. It was extremely possible. It was what happened when people had sex. They hadn’t used any protection that night. This was happening because of what she’d done. She’d brought it on herself. Just like Violent’s death, or getting kicked out of the Sluts.

  Sometime in the future, somewhere other than here, maybe this news would have warmed her heart that there was a tiny person growing within her, but not here in McKinley, and not now, when she had no one. The responsibility felt like a tree trunk strapped to her shoulders. She was too young for this, too ill-equipped. Before the quarantine, she’d never even babysat.

  Her heart started to thump, a film of sweat covered her body. She had to do something. She’d go crazy sitting and thinking about it in her plant room. She had to find food. Now more than ever. She had to start building up a supply for when she got too big to go back and forth through the vent.

  Her hands trembled as she took her nose plugs off the windowsill. They were short sections of a thick plastic straw from a sports water bottle. Each was only a centimeter long, and she’d lined the outside in layers of masking tape to make them thicker. When she shoved them up into her nostrils, it changed the shape of her nose. It was wider, with chunkier nostrils, but she could still breathe. Next, she took two jelly bra inserts and stuck them in her cheeks. She’d found them in a backpack she’d stolen from a bathroom while the owner was in one of the stalls. She had cut the inserts down to fit right, but they successfully puffed out her cheeks and made her face seem rounder. She grabbed handfuls of moist soil from the jars by the wall, and smeared the dirt all over her face, her hands, and any exposed skin.

  There was a handful of kids in school with real mental conditions, who wandered around in filthy clothes, looking confused, begging for food, and yelling at people who weren’t there. Dickie Bellman would have been one of them, if he hadn’t been shot down at Gonzalo’s graduation. There was Mime Jerry, who stood by the same water fountain near the stairs to the basement, and he never stopped miming. Twenty-four/seven, you could always count on him being there, fighting to get out of a box, desperately, silently begging you to let him out. There was a cross-eyed boy who never stopped running through the halls of the school. There was another boy on the second floor by the auditorium who just sat in an open locker, smiling all day and staring into the distance. There was a girl who never wore pants, or underwear. She was always angry, and never seemed to understand anything you said to her. Once she’d broken a Skater girl’s fingers who’d tried to help her out by brushing her hair. No one touched the girl after that. That was the sort of reputation Lucy was looking for now.

  She crawled through the air duct to the hall. The middle of the day was the worst time to travel through the halls of McKinley, but Lucy needed to talk to a friend. She made her way to the library. Passersby avoided her like the plague, but she much preferred that to her actual reputation of the girl who got her gang leader killed. When she neared the library, she discovered Belinda cleaning out her locker in the hallway.

  Seeing Belinda now, after weeks of loneliness and rejection, had a crippling effect on Lucy. She watched in awe as her old friend rifled through her locker, either chucking things onto the floor or into the small purple backpack she had with her. Her clothes were clean and unwrinkled. Belinda’s face bloomed with happiness. There was something vivacious to the way she was sorting her locker. She was bubbling over with energy, and love, and hope—all feelings that Lucy couldn’t seem to summon anymore.

  “Belinda …,” Lucy dared to say, her syllables distorted by her overstuffed cheeks.

  Belinda jerked with shock, and backed away at the sight of Lucy coming toward her. Lucy realized she had forgotten her disguise for a moment.

  “Wait,” she said. She pulled the spacers out of her nose, and the jelly cutlets out of her mouth. “It’s me, Lucy.”

  She saw the truth click into place on Belinda’s face.

  “Oh my God, Lucy. Oh, baby. Oh no. What happened to you?” Belinda said.

  Lucy wanted to tell her no, this was only a disguise, that she wasn’t this low, this dirty, this driven to the edge, but as soon as she thought it she started to cry. She was all those things, only in a disguise. She told Belinda everything. She told her about the baby, about starving, about living in hiding, about the feeling that the world was collapsing in all around her.

  Belinda rubbed her back as Lucy spilled her feelings. Belinda bit her lip. She told her all the nice girlfriend things that she was supposed to say: that this would be okay, that this was probably meant to be, that she’d only grow stronger from it, and that Lucy was too nice a person for this to be the end of her story. All that stuff.

  “I feel so much better just knowing I have you in my
life again,” Lucy said.

  A yelp escaped before Belinda could cover her mouth with her hand.

  “What? What is it, Bel?”

  Belinda shook her head and stomped her foot.

  “It’s not fair. I’d change it if I could.”

  “Change what?”

  “I’m graduating today.”

  Lucy felt like she was seeing life through a pinhole camera. Belinda’s voice became softer and softer. Her words had less impact, they were temporary distractions from the truth of how alone Lucy was. When the two of them parted, it was with forced casualness, because the real feelings were too tough. Belinda gave Lucy what food she could get from the library and some valuable items she had in her locker. Then, she hugged Lucy good-bye like it wasn’t a big deal. Neither of them could handle how big a deal it really was.

  “Everything will be okay, Lucy. I won’t abandon you. I’ll get help.”

  Lucy shook her head as Belinda walked away. Don’t say that. That was what Will said. That was exactly what Will had said. And he never came. Lucy became certain, as Belinda walked away, that she would do the same. Lucy wandered the halls in a daze, holding her belly, and telling herself that she would get through this, and maybe she would graduate before she gave birth, like Maxine, and then maybe the baby wouldn’t die when it breathed its first breath of infected air. If she made it out, there could be a happy life for her out there, as a mother. Maybe with Will.

  Before she knew it she’d come to a trashed stairwell in the ruins. The destruction and decay matched her mood. The walls were in terrible shape, full of cracks and holes. The first three stairs down from the landing were intact, but beyond that, they were gone. She stood at the edge of the landing and stared down. Fifteen feet below her was an uneven floor full of trash and beer cans. It reminded her of the remnants of a homeless man’s bender that she had discovered once with her cousin. She’d found it gross and scary to look at back then, to imagine how sad the man must have been to spend the nights alone, drinking cheap liquor in a moldy heap of a building. Now she understood. She could see herself doing the same. The rest of that man’s life had probably been really sad, but the little booze party he had given himself hadn’t been. She bet it had been the only peace he knew.

  Lucy didn’t even realize there was someone behind her. She hadn’t noticed that she’d been followed ever since she walked away from her fatty friend. Stupid bitch. Might as well have been blind on top of being ugly. But Hilary had to give it to her on the disguise. If she hadn’t spied Lucy taking all that crap out of her face, she would have missed this opportunity.

  Hilary tightened her grip on the gun and slunk toward Lucy. She stepped softly, making sure to place each foot down where the floor was clean of any debris that might make noise under her shoes. She was only a few feet away now.

  She leveled the gun’s barrel at the back of Lucy’s head as she crept. There was only one question on her mind. Should she waste a bullet on Lucy? They were so precious. They were the real source of her power.

  Hilary remembered her tooth flushing down the toilet, and her trigger finger twitched. Her perfect tooth. The one that was meant to be in her mouth, that had fit better than this Freak girl’s tooth ever would. Lucy had sent her pretty white tooth on a waterslide into a tank full of shit.

  She was so close that the gun nearly tickled by Lucy’s hair.

  Hilary’s shoe made the slightest squeak against the floor. Lucy whipped around, and Hilary shoved instead of shot. The shove tipped Lucy over the edge before she could see who’d shoved her. When Lucy realized she was falling, she screamed. She plummeted off the remains of the staircase, and thumped down to the floor below. Hilary peered over the edge and saw Lucy splayed out on the floor, still as a stone.

  She had been fantasizing about this. It was why she always kept a pair of pliers in her purse. She still wanted Lucy’s teeth. All of them. She craved them. She wanted to see Lucy walk the school with just pink gums smacking together, dripping with spit. She wouldn’t be able to make F sounds and she’d sound like an idiot. And the best part of all—Lucy would never turn a boy’s head again. Or maybe she would from time to time. But then, she’d smile, and the boys would run away in disgust.

  Hilary was kicked out of her fantasy when the most atrocious-looking boy she’d ever seen emerged from the shadows near Lucy. His complexion was bloodless, his cheeks sunken, and he had broad, sharp shoulders. No fat left on his body, just ropes of twitching muscle underneath dry, shrink-wrapped skin. His lip was split, but the wet pink wound wasn’t bleeding, and he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were cloudy and looked dumb, like farm-animal dumb. His hair was roughly cut off, in uneven lengths, like scissors had been held close to his scalp. In some scabby patches it looked like the hair had been pulled out at the roots. He wore a soiled dress tucked into black jeans that had developed a waxy sheen of burnished filth on the thighs.

  The ghoulish boy grabbed Lucy’s ankles and dragged her toward a dark hole in the wall.

  No! Hilary thought.

  She ran to the nearest intact stairwell, leapt down the stairs, and dashed back to the spot where Lucy had landed. She searched for the pair in a frenzy, and got so angry she nearly emptied her gun into the wall, but it would have done no good. They were gone.

  8

  WILL SLAMMED THE REAR DOOR OF GONZALO’S custom minivan. The protective, steel blinds that crossed the rear window rattled. There was nothing left to pack. They’d gotten the list of supplies from Sam’s dad that they should look for on the way. They’d said their good-byes to the parents, and Will had a pocket full of good-luck charms after all the hugs and handshakes. A silver dollar. A St. Christopher’s medal. A green rabbit’s foot. An Indian head nickel. So much hope was riding on them, and they were as ready as they’d ever be to head out into the infected zone in search of the cure. Gonzalo had given them his van. He’d said they’d need it if they were going to make it to Minnesota. He wasn’t coming with them. The big guy had departed the day before in a jacked-up pickup truck to continue on his quest.

  Will hoped Gonzalo would find Sasha out there. The world would be too cruel if he didn’t. Will looked to McKinley. Dark gray, muscular clouds crashed together in slow motion above the school. He needed to find David. They had to get on the road before that storm caught up with them.

  He moved his blistered hands across the short bristle of his freshly shorn head. He liked the springy touch to it, but he missed his white hair. He’d gotten so used to it, it had become a part of who he was. Still, he understood David’s point, that on the road it would cause more trouble than it was worth. He looked to the plump veins spiderwebbing across his forearm and the clear separation between the different cords of muscles. This past month of manual labor and regular meals had packed meat onto his bones. He was stronger, quicker. More of a man.

  Lucy would dig it.

  Will and David had a long journey ahead of them, and even when they got to Minnesota, he recognized that there was no guarantee that there would be a cure waiting for them, nicely packaged in a single glossy pill. He knew things never went that perfectly. Yet, that didn’t stop him from dreaming that it could go exactly that way, and that when they returned to McKinley in a week or so, Lucy could be in his arms again, uninfected, and they could finish that kiss. The one they’d been so close to having before the crane had pulled him up out of the quad.

  It felt wrong to be apart from her, wrong at a core level. This couldn’t be how other people felt when they were separated from someone they loved. There was no way. How could the world go on? He didn’t feel like he was missing his high school sweetheart, he felt like he was missing his pancreas. The only way to feel better was to do something about it. It was why he’d pushed David so hard to go on the hunt for the cure.

  “David?” Will called out.

  Will walked around the section of fenced-in trailers, where graduates were stashed after being pulled out of the school. There were five trailers, i
ncluding the one where Will had phased out of infection, each surrounded by a separate chain-link fence. Inside the second trailer’s fence stood David. Will slowed. What was he doing there? He had said he was just going for a piss and then they would head out.

  Will studied David’s face. He wore a toothy smile. Wide and expectant, like a kid at a window waiting for his grandparents to pull into the driveway with a trunkful of toys.

  Will’s heart began to thump just like it did every time he saw the crane cable retract from dangling over the quad. There was always the hope that a new graduate would be hanging from its end. Someone with news about Lucy, or best of all—Lucy herself. But in the time since he’d been on the farm, no one else had graduated.

  Will ran to the fence, his fingers wrapped through the chain links.

  “Did they pull somebody out?” Will called out.

  David didn’t break his stare at the trailer door. “Last night. We were asleep. I just found out.”

  Will looked to the door. He could feel his face stretching into the same hopeful shape as David’s.

  “Who’s in there?” Will said.

  The possibility that Lucy could be in that trailer threatened to cleave Will’s skull in two.

  The door opened, and Belinda walked out. The basket of curly fries she called hair was still black, like a Nerd’s, but soon her natural hair color, whatever that was, would overtake it. McKinley would get foggy in her mind just like it was in Will’s. He had to talk to her.

  He waved to her, but her eyes focused on David first. She stumbled back in shock, and the parent behind her, who’d tested her for the last traces of the virus, steadied her. David hurried to help, but Will was stuck on the other side of the fence. He watched as they guided Belinda to the gate. Belinda stared at David, her mouth agape and speechless as she walked.