by Lex Thomas
She could hear the boy in the classroom start to grunt with passion. Horse never made a noise.
“I don’t judge people.”
That wasn’t true. Lucy judged people all the time. A week ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated to call Bile and these Burnouts degenerates. She tried not to think about it. She saw a glimmer of gold from the necklace around his neck.
“What was she like? Your mom,” Lucy said.
Bile was momentarily shocked. Conflicting emotions flickered across his face.
“Was she nice?” Lucy asked.
“You really want to know?”
“Sure.”
He smiled. “She was … gentle as a feather. She never thought bad of me, no matter what I did. Like you.”
“Like me?”
“Yeah,” Bile said, then he started to whisper. “You’re … you’re the only one who knows.”
“Knows what?”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. He scratched at the open sores on his shoulder.
“Where I came from, and how I got here and all.”
It was strange. Lucy had found it so easy to forget that Bile had been the one that infected the whole school. Lucy stared at his hideous face. Every kid Bile saw, every hall he walked through, had to remind him of what he’d done. He’d destroyed the world.
“Did you mean to?” Lucy said. “Do this?”
Bile didn’t answer. He looked around at the holes knocked in the walls, the checkerboard of missing ceiling panels above them. From inside the classroom behind them they could hear the boy’s dirty talk. “Yeah, bitch. Take that shit. Take that shit, you dirty bitch. Fuck yeah. You love that shit, don’t you?”
“I was scared,” Bile said.
She heard the Freak finish in the other room.
“It’s okay,” Lucy said. She reached out and touched the paper skin of Bile’s arm.
A low moan crept out of his throat.
“Ssh, it’s okay,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure if it was okay at all, or whether he should ever be forgiven for what he’d put them through, but it was the nice friend thing to say, and right now, Bile was her only friend.
He threw his spindly arms around her and squeezed. His breathing came staggered with sobs. His body twitched and shook so hard it reminded her of one of Will’s seizures. Lucy slowly lifted her arms and wrapped them around him in a half-committed hug. The Freak brushed past them as he left the classroom behind. The clank of his belt buckle as he fastened his pants sickened Lucy like a penny in her mouth.
They all headed back to the ruins. Bile kept touching her as they walked. Brushing up against her. Putting an arm across her chest to stop her from walking around a corner until he’d checked whether it was safe. And the way he looked at her had changed. He was eager to smile at her, and she would smile back, but she couldn’t hold his gaze as long as he wanted to. It seemed that he wanted them to gaze into each other’s eyes without end. Lucy could fake that for a little while longer, but what would be next? She didn’t want to feel the hard, cracked skin of his lips if he planted a surprise kiss on her, or the scrape of his torn fingernails on her breast if he groped her.
She was thinking more clearly now. That wasn’t good. She wanted the numbness back. By the time they made it back to the single ruined room where Bile and the other Burnouts ate, drank, slept, and huffed, Lucy was dangerously close to stone-cold sober.
She sat on a backpack full of empty water bottles, with her back to the sticky wall. The room stank of armpits and sour breath and clogged toilets. She looked around and saw vacant eyes peering at nothing, faces sagging toward the floor. Bottles of sewage stacked by the wall. Horse sat crumpled up in the corner, plucking her eyelashes out one by one.
Lucy shifted her weight. She felt cold. The aches of her battered body made themselves known to her again. She groaned softly. Her brain volunteered memories she yearned to forget. She shook her head.
Bile sauntered into the room with a newfound confidence. He held a stinker in each hand. The soup of human waste sloshed around inside the bottles, and the inflated latex gloves wobbled from side to side like they were waving at her.
“Where’s the gas?” she said. Her voice was desperate.
“Running low,” he said. “We have to save it.”
He plopped down beside her with an assured grin that was almost suave. He extended one of the stinkers out to her. Lucy clamped her mouth and turned away. The urge to vomit was barely containable. She closed her eyes. She saw her child twitch in her hands. She put her head between her knees.
“Need a minute,” she said and blew out a long breath.
“You don’t mind, do you?” he said, holding up the other bottle.
Lucy shook her head. She could feel Bile’s elbow rub up and down her thigh as he twisted the base of the glove. She could hear the light snap of rubber as he pulled the glove off the bottle, the squeak as he tied it off like a birthday balloon. Lucy dared to look up at him. She pinched her nose shut. Bile grabbed the middle finger of the engorged glove and bit the tip off. He sucked in the methane, squeezing the life out of the glove to make sure he didn’t waste any.
She thought he’d never exhale. She watched his eyeballs roll back until she could see only the bloodshot whites of his eyes behind fluttering eyelids. Finally his jaw drifted down and his lips pulled apart. Foul air spilled from his mouth. He moaned from deep in his chest and it sounded like a colony of bats escaping a cave.
When his corneas sank back into view, he stared through her, at something far away. Thick spit dripped off his lip like glue.
“You’re here,” he slurred.
She had to cover her nose from the rank smell of his toilet breath.
“Where else would I be?” Lucy said.
“I missed you so much,” Bile said.
“Are you all right?”
Of course he wasn’t all right. She remembered her own experience with stinkers, and she knew whoever Bile thought he was talking to, it wasn’t her.
He grabbed her hand.
“Momma,” he said.
The word formed icicles in her stomach. She tried to yank her hand away, but his grip was iron.
“Bile, let me go.”
She felt her stomach acid climb her throat. She yanked and yanked but his fingers dug into her wrist like tent stakes.
“I love you, Mommy,” he said.
She punched him in the ear. It hurt her knuckles, but he let go. His eyes were wide like a little boy’s. Tears spilled.
“Why’d you hit me? Why are you mad at me?”
Lucy ran out of the room. She dashed down ruined hallways, knocking into rubble, fleeing the sound of his voice.
“Please don’t go, Momma, I’m sorry!” he shrieked after her. “I didn’t mean to do it, Momma. I didn’t!”
17
THE HALLWAY WAS AS EMPTY AS HER UTERUS. Lucy wept, curled in a ball, inside a hall so dark she couldn’t see a foot in front of her face. Only the ceiling lights at each end of the forty feet of hallway were operational. Her wet hair clung to her cheeks. She couldn’t understand how she had gotten to this point. What had happened to her life? She used to have friends, a gang, a place to sleep, the food she needed. Now life was an unending horror show, and she didn’t know how much more she could take.
Mommy.
Bile’s broken voice echoed through her skull.
The thought of her baby-that-would-never-be drove more tears from her eyes. She couldn’t help but blame herself. Maybe all the bad things that had happened were her fault. Maybe they’d grown out of her cowardice. She’d hid behind David in the Loners. Behind Violent in the Sluts. And now she was clinging to Bile the same way. Maybe if she’d stood on her own two feet for once, this wouldn’t be where she was right now. Maybe the universe was punishing her, taking everything possible from her until she toughened up. No. That didn’t make any sense. Lucy wasn’t thinking straight.
She wished Violent were there to tell her what
to do. She wished Violent were alive. She wished it wasn’t her fault that Violent was dead.
Lucy kicked a nearby closet door. She heard it clap against the closet wall, then drift back on vibrating hinges. She couldn’t get ahold of herself. Her anguish wouldn’t release its grip on her. She wanted it all to stop. She wished there was a way she could escape the pain and leave it all behind.
Her bladder cried out to her. She had to pee. Lucy stood up and walked through the dark, toward a bathroom ahead, arms outstretched and waving through the air like insect antennae. Lucy heard the creak of the bathroom door. Blaring light streamed out of the bathroom in front of her as the door swung open. Figures filed out, backlit by the bathroom, their translucent white hair glowing atop their heads.
Saints.
Lucy froze. And so did they. She was lit up like a fugitive in a spotlight. They pushed her up against the wall. There had to be fifteen of them. Different pairs of hands pressed her into the wall. They were all in her face, staring at her like she was a silverfish in their soup. One of them held open the bathroom door to keep light on the situation. Their faces crowded around her, eyes hid under long shadows.
They berated her, said vicious things. They mocked her and ripped her clothes. A tiny, bird-boned hand reached out and clamped Lucy’s neck. It belonged to Lark. She leaned in close, into the light from the bathroom. Dark circles stained the skin under Lark’s eyes. Her hair was a mess, roughly collected in a rubber band atop her head. The fingernails on the hand that wasn’t choking Lucy had been gnawed down to gummy crescents of red enflamed skin. Her middle fingertip was bleeding, and there was a string of thinned blood framing her upper lip. Her eyes seemed to swirl.
“I’ve been waiting for this,” Lark said.
“Wait. No, you have it wrong.”
“Did you kill Gates?” Lark frothed.
“Yes, but—” Lucy said.
“Then how do I have it wrong?”
Lark flashed her eyes as if to dare Lucy to speak.
“Because …,” Lucy said, swallowing hard to wet her dry throat. “Gates wasn’t who you thought he was. He snapped. He killed your friend Pruitt.”
The other Saints eyed each other with doubt. By the way they were reacting they might already have suspected that fact, or known it. Lark slapped Lucy in the face with the heel of her palm. Lucy’s ear buzzed. Her cheek flared hot.
“Gates was a hero,” Lark whispered.
The Saints nodded, until Lark pulled out a buck knife. The blade had seen heavy use, its finish was dull, and the cutting edge was bent and wiggly. Lark pressed the misshapen blade into the softness of Lucy’s neck.
“Gates was my friend,” Lark said. Her voice chugged like a steam engine. Tears streamed down her cheek. “I loved him.”
“I’m sorry,” Lucy said. She meant it. She could feel the first drip of blood roll hot down her neck. “I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry won’t bring him back.”
“Take it easy, Lark,” one of the Saints said. They were looking to each other now, wondering who would stop her. This was apparently more than they’d bargained for.
“He’d want me to do this,” Lark said. “You know he’d want revenge. We owe it to him.”
Lark locked eyes with Lucy again and tensed her wrist. Now was the time to fight back, this was the moment, and yet she didn’t. Something inside her gave way. A long straining muscle finally went slack. She allowed an idea to enter her mind, and it shocked her how amenable she was to it. The pain could all stop right here. The knife could end it.
The thunder of approaching footsteps filled the silence. All heads turned to peer at the hall’s end where the ceiling light worked and the area was bathed in a bright light.
A boy in a gas mask ran around the corner.
A clamoring crowd was right on his heels. Lucy focused on the prey, but the masked boy ran past the lit section and into the dark belly of the hallway, becoming one with the darkness. She watched the crowd follow. A constant river of faces, each defined in brilliant light for a brief moment before slipping into the black. They were mostly Geeks. Lucy felt the Saints’ grip on her relax. They were clearly as dumbfounded as she was. Saints whipped out their phones. Nine smartphones shone their wan light toward the oncoming stampede, illuminating nothing, but casting a pale glow that only made it harder to see, like a film of milk glazed over the scene.
The masked boy burst into the light from the open bathroom, colliding with a few Saints, and then dashed past. In the second that he was fully illuminated, Lucy could see right into his mask.
Lucy saw an eye patch.
18
THE SAINTS TOPPLED LIKE CANDLESTICK PINS as the rushing crowd barreled down the hallway. One Saint held onto Lucy longer than the others, but the current of bodies knocked him down, too. He almost pulled Lucy to the ground with him. When the cotton of her shirt slipped out of his grip, she burst forward like a sprinter out of the starter blocks. Lucy lost herself in the confusion of the speeding mob.
It couldn’t be.
But she’d seen it. She knew she had. In that blur of a moment, she’d seen a black eye patch. She wasn’t sure about the guy’s face. When she tried to summon a mental image of the face she’d glimpsed, it was a hazy and shifting blob. But who else could it be? Who else would come back into this school? It was the scenario Lucy’d dreamed about, but it had been so long since she’d had those dreams because it was impossible. David was dead. He’d been dead for months. He hadn’t dug himself out of the grave. Zombies weren’t real. David wasn’t Jesus. It had to have been someone else with an eye patch.
Grunts. Heavy breathing. Screeching sneakers. Lucy fought her way toward the front of the pack. The mob hooked around a corner, past a melted plastic display case full of black-and-white photos of old school plays. She realized her aches and pains had evaporated.
She saw David. Or whoever it was. For a flash, she saw his back before he rushed around another dark corner thirty feet ahead. She lusted to grab this guy by the shoulders, whip him around, and stare through that mask. Her mind had become very clear. For the first time in weeks, life didn’t seem so futile. Gone was her inner conviction that every road would end down for her. If David was alive and he was here, then everything would be all right. She knew it would, if he was here. The last time she had felt truly safe had been with David, and she had never allowed herself to admit that fact until now, because it was too sad, because it could never happen again, because he was dead. Now, he might be alive, with a fifty-foot lead, doing his best to get the hell away from her.
The kid who might be David slammed into a door frame ahead and then scurried into a classroom. Lucy and the mob rammed toward the classroom and clogged the doorway. Stuck inside the knot of bodies in the doorway, Lucy spotted a pair of legs hanging out of a fractured hole in the classroom’s ceiling. The legs swayed and kicked as their owner climbed up a wobbling orange extension cord that hung down through the hole.
Lucy slipped out of the knot of bodies, just as it was starting to pop through the doorway. She was the first to grab the extension cord. It swung with her weight, and the Geeks trailing her tumbled down as they grabbed for the cord and missed.
The masked boy’s feet were already too high to grab, but she would’ve if she could’ve. She hoisted herself up with a tremendous pull. She felt the cord jerk with new weight below her. The Geeks were getting a grip now.
The extension cord was knotted every two feet with handholds like a rope swing. Above, she saw that there was another hole hacked through the second-floor ceiling, and the knotted extension cord hung from the third-floor ceiling like a gymnasium climbing rope. The masked boy didn’t look down. Lucy climbed, gripping knots in her hands and clamping them between the insteps of her feet. The climb was hard. It didn’t help that kids were fighting each other to be next up the rope, and she swore she could feel someone tugging on her clothes.
Lucy breached the hole in the ceiling. Her head was now on the sec
ond floor. The walls of this second-floor classroom were papered with photographs of grass and foliage from textbooks. There was a picnic blanket laid out in the middle of the room with a cracked acoustic guitar on top of it. The boy in the mask was waist-high into the third floor and climbing. She saw the bottom of his boots above her head and wondered whether those were the kind of shoes David would choose if he were on the outside.
Her arms caught fire as she urged them to not give up. Her forearms protested but she didn’t listen. She could feel muscle fibers giving up all across her back, she felt a shard of glass forming in the meat of her left bicep, but she wasn’t going to give in to cramps and fatigue.
Overhead, the masked boy swung a foot onto the third floor, got his weight over his feet, and dashed away.
“Wait,” Lucy cried, but he was gone.
The weight of the Geeks below her pulled the cord straighter than a fireman’s pole. Lucy kept climbing, acid in her arms, until she pulled herself up to the third floor. She reached out for the edge of the ragged hole and grasped a piece of rebar that jutted out from the crumbling concrete. She transferred her other hand from the cord to the bar, with half her weight still resting on the knot in between her shoes. The knot’s resistance dropped away from her feet.
Too many kids climbing at once. The cord had been tied to a sprinkler pipe on the ceiling of the third floor. The slender metal bracket that had fastened the pipe to the ceiling couldn’t withstand the weight. The pipe had ripped out of the ceiling and bent toward the floor, dumping the cord right off the end of the pipe. It slipped away and fell.
She heard the other climbers crunch into the floor and wail in agony. Her weight pulled on her fingers, and tried to pop her knuckles apart. The rebar was cold, and rough, and angled down into the hole. Water burst from the broken sprinkler pipe above, spitting onto her. The water slicked the rebar, and Lucy felt her grip sliding down its length.
A minute before, she had felt ready to face death. The prospect of it had seemed like a relief, but now everything was different. She was dumbfounded that she had ever felt that way. She wanted to live. She wanted to cling to life with everything in her, to hang on until the end, and to wring every drop of happiness out of it before her time was up.
