The Burnouts

by Lex Thomas

  “What do you think we would do, Bile? Go back to your place and get high? Forever?” she said, her temper flaring.

  “M-my name’s Kyle,” he said.

  She sighed when she saw how much her anger was hurting him. “I can’t live like you do,” she said, “wishing you were dead or whatever you’re doing to yourself. You don’t deserve it.”

  Bile’s eyes welled with tears.

  “I don’t deserve it either. I want a happy life. I’m sick of being afraid all the time. Of hiding. I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m going out there, and somehow I’m going to get that gun, and then I’ll leave this shithole once and for—”

  Bile pushed Lucy out of his way, whipped a curtain aside, and was gone.

  Lucy stared at the curtain, slowly closing. She stuck one hand out to stop it, and stepped through, back into the commons. People were shouting. A few were on the floor. They’d been pushed by Bile as he muscled through the crowd.

  “Bile!” Lucy let slip.

  She jumped over a fallen Skater and hurried through the field of bodies. When she reached the empty dance floor, David had been knocked down and was trying to get his footing. Bile was grappling with Hilary, who was screaming at the top of her lungs. The gun swung ’round, still in Hilary’s hands, but with Bile’s fingers working their way under them. Kids in the crowd hit the deck. Lucy lurched to a stop when the barrel’s path crossed hers. Bile stomped Hilary’s foot, and the couple fell to the ground.

  A cracking BOOM punched the air. Bile and Hilary stopped moving. No one in the commons moved. A sweet harmony crested out of the sound system. Bile pushed off Hilary, who lay still on the floor. He stood and turned. He clutched the pistol in his right hand. Smoke slithered from the gun’s nose. He raised it for the crowd to recognize and fear. They stayed frozen.

  Bile’s other hand was on his belly. Red spilled over his fingers and down the back of his hand. He was covering a gurgling hole. He stepped toward Lucy and stumbled.

  “Oh no,” she whispered.

  He lumbered toward her, walking a drunken zigzag until he was only a foot away.

  “You shouldn’t be afraid,” Bile said.

  He placed the bloody gun in her hand, and dropped.

  His breathing stopped. The blood puddle spread underneath him. He’d died so she’d have a chance to live. Or he had killed himself. Or both. It was too much to bear. She felt like the room was closing in on her. But it wasn’t the room. It was the circle of people around her, closing in, step by tentative step.

  Lucy looked to the gun in her hand. Bile’s blood made it slip as she squeezed her fingers around it. She held the gun up, just as Hilary and Bile had done before her. It seemed to press pause on the crowd’s advance.

  “Back up!” Lucy shouted.

  “We have to get out of here,” David said from somewhere in her periphery.

  She breathed for the first time at the sound of his voice. She moved toward him, keeping her eyes nimble.

  “Bobby!” David said. “Let my brother go.”

  Bobby dropped Will’s leash and put his hands up. Will wasted no time standing and running over to them.

  “Hi,” Will said. He smiled at Lucy like nothing else existed.

  That smile that said fuck the world. It got her every time. This time it made her heart hurt.

  “Hi,” she said. She wanted to hug him tight, but instead she shouted at everybody else: “We’re walking out of here.”

  Lucy kept her elbow locked and swung the gun across the crowd.

  “You heard her,” Will said. “She’ll kill you, straight up. Try her. Go ’head and try her.”

  “Will, cool it,” David whispered.

  The threesome were quick to fall into a triangular formation, so they could watch all sides. Even though everyone was still a good ten feet away, it felt as though someone could still grab the gun. And with her hands still wet with blood, it could have slipped right out.

  “Let’s go,” David said.

  They began to move in sync toward the west exit, in the direction of the quad, but a low moan drew everyone’s attention. Lucy looked over to see Hilary rising up from the floor. She was clutching her head. She looked around with fierce eyes. The fingers on her right hand moved furiously as they noticed that they were no longer in possession of the gun. They raised up and one extended to point directly at Lucy.

  “You!” Hilary said. “That doesn’t belong to you! Give it back!”

  “Go to hell,” Lucy said.

  Hilary shook her head. “I wish you’d died when I pushed you off the stairs.”

  Lucy’s feet froze. Will bumped into her.

  “I think we should run,” Will said.

  He didn’t know. He couldn’t comprehend what Hilary meant. Lucy could barely believe what she was hearing. But David seemed to understand.

  “Lucy, forget it,” David said, and took her hand. “Come on.”

  She pulled her hand out of his.

  “You pushed me?” Lucy said, stepping away from David and Will.

  Hilary smiled. The truth of what Hilary had done lit a fire in Lucy. Her baby. Her and Will’s baby. She hadn’t lost their child. Hilary had taken it from her.

  Lucy stomped right up to Hilary and put the gun to Hilary’s head. Hilary’s attitude crumbled as the gun’s cold barrel dimpled her temple.

  “Lucy!” David called out. “It’s not worth it.”

  Lucy glanced over at David. He had both hands out like he was talking to a jumper on a ledge. Will looked confused.

  “It is worth it! Do you know what she did?” Lucy said, then locked eyes with Hilary.

  She could feel Hilary shiver. The crowd waited for what would happen next. David looked at her like she was a monster. Will shook his head back and forth fast. She put her focus back on the shivering bitch who had stolen her baby.

  “Take it out,” Lucy said.

  “What?” Hilary said with a tremor in her voice.

  “The tooth. Take it out now.”

  Hilary went pale as boiled chicken. She shook her head in a tight little movement. Lucy clicked the hammer back.

  Hilary raised a shaking hand to her lips, then stopped.

  “Please,” Hilary said, her eyes pleading with Lucy.

  “Do it,” Lucy said.

  Hilary clenched her eyes shut. She gripped her tooth between her thumb and knuckle. A tear squeezed out and ran down her cheek. She pulled. The commons gasped. Hilary covered her mouth with her hand.

  “Hand down,” Lucy said.

  Hilary cried more, but she did it.

  “Now, smile for everyone.”

  The tears poured out of Hilary. Lucy had never seen Hilary cry before. She sobbed as she spread her lips and displayed the gaping black hole in her perfect smile. A trickle of watery blood flowed down from the gum and across one of her front teeth, and then dripped onto her lower lip. Laughter rose in the room. Hurried whispers. No Pretty Ones came to her aid. Hundreds of sneaker soles squeaked across linoleum as the crowd packed in close together to get the best view. Flashes of light. At least a hundred cell phones were held in the air, freezing Hilary’s shame forever in pictures and video.

  “Your prom queen, everybody,” Lucy said. “The leader of the Pretty Ones.”

  Hilary hyperventilated. She dropped to her knees, one arm on the ground, red drool spilling from her mouth.

  “You’re going to pay for this,” she said. “I’m going to make you—”

  A red, wet chunk leapt out of her mouth. It landed on the floor with a heavy splat. The whole room gasped. Hilary straightened, and both hands went to her throat. Blood barreled out of her mouth like floodwaters out of a storm drain. It splattered heavy onto the floor. When the blood stopped gushing from her, Hilary wobbled like a slowing top, then fell face-first into the red slop that was once her lungs.

  25

  DAVID HAD SEEN ENOUGH.

  He rushed to Lucy’s side, and so did Will. Lucy was smiling over the body
of his dead ex-girlfriend, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of it, not her happiness at seeing Hilary die, not the drooling crowd watching death like it was a sporting event.

  David placed his hands over Lucy’s. They were cold.

  “Give it to me,” David said.

  The shaking tension in her hands relaxed. He took the gun from her.

  “Make a path!” David shouted. “We’re leaving!”

  David swung the gun in a half circle at the crowd that was gaping at Hilary’s wasted body. No one moved, but their eyes settled on the steel in his hand instead.

  David thrust the gun in the direction of a pack of Skaters who stood in the way of the west exit.

  “You wanna die? Huh?” Will said. “ ’Cause he’ll make it happen!”

  Shut up, Will. The crowd closed in on the trio.

  “Get back!” Lucy shouted.

  Kids crept forward, a mad hunger in their eyes. The circle closed tighter. They were never getting to the quad.

  David realized what he had to do. Sam’s dad had shared a plan with him, a final solution, he called it. It was only to be used as a last resort, and David hadn’t told Will or Lucy about it, because he hadn’t wanted anything to do with it. He didn’t want to be responsible for more lives lost.

  He cocked the hammer back.

  Three kids ran at him.

  David raised the gun and emptied it into the ceiling.

  BLAM. BLAM. BLAM.

  Everyone cowered and slid to a stop, covering their heads with their arms.

  Click. Click.

  He wanted them to hear that, and know the gun was useless now, like all the others in the school.

  “Are you out of your mind?” Will said.

  David ignored him, and tossed the gun into the crowd. A few scrambled for it, but most of the kids understood.

  “This quarantine has gone on too long. None of you deserve to be locked up in here,” David said.

  “No shit!” someone yelled.

  “Nobody wants to hear it, buddy boy,” P-Nut said. “You just threw away the microphone.” The leader of the Skaters sauntered forward from the crowd and smiled. “Skaters, the good times are back. I think we’ve found ourselves some hostages. Grab ’em!”

  Skaters charged toward him.

  “I know a way out!” David yelled.

  The Skaters halted.

  “You do?” Will said.

  “A possible one,” David said to the crowd. “Isn’t that what you want, to walk out of here, once and for all?” He looked into the eyes of as many people as he could. Hope glinted there.

  “It’s time to leave. Things never should have gone this far. I’m not saying it’s going to be a friendly world out there, but you should be free. You deserve the chance to deal with the situation yourselves, make your own choices, not tear each other apart in here. But, if we’re gonna have even a chance of pulling this off …” They clung to his every word. “It’s going to take every single one of us.”

  David’s palms pressed against steel. He pushed. Lucy and Will flanked him, pushing hard, and the rest of the school stretched out on either side of him, all pushing on the steel wall in the back foyer. He remembered when this wall of steel plating used to be an inviting glass entryway that looked out to the faculty parking lot. The crowd grunted and strained. The ones who couldn’t fit pushed on the backs of the ones at the wall.

  Behind them, the massive old mural that depicted David in front of the Loners, under a blue sky, loomed over the two-story foyer. The squares of butcher paper that illustrated the Loners had fallen away. What remained was most of David’s face, and five small squares of blue, like an 8-bit sky.

  David had told them about Sam’s dad’s final solution. A month back, when the school had been damaged by the grenade attack, and the steel plate that sealed up the back foyer had become detached, it had given Sam’s dad an idea. If there was ever a need to evacuate the students inside, if something were threatening their lives, say a fire, they would need an evacuation route that could get the kids out quickly. The detached steel wall had been chosen as that exit. Its immense weight was doing the work of keeping it upright. In the event of a crisis, they’d pull the wall down with the crane, and the kids could escape to safety. A steel rivet had been driven into the concrete of the building to keep the wall attached. The whole school had to be stronger than a single rivet.

  “Push harder!” David yelled.

  This had to end. They had to be set free. He knew he’d be risking the lives of uninfected adults out there, but things had gotten too savage. It would be a mess having everyone outside, but there was no way to avoid it. This was a messy situation. On the farm, he’d believed the infected were safest inside the school, but he’d forgotten how sick McKinley was, and now he realized that its sickness was terminal. If David didn’t get them out of this place, they’d destroy each other.

  “Everyone work with me when I say push!” David shouted.

  Hundreds of hands waited for his command.

  “PUSH!” David said.

  Everyone moved as a unit, shoving with everything they had in them.

  “PUSH!”

  He heard a pop of metal. The wall jolted forward. A two-inch-wide line of daylight appeared above them, where the plates met the building. A whistling alarm rang out from the outside.

  “Keep pushing!” David said.

  The crowd pushed harder and the metal creaked. He heard Varsity snarl with effort, he heard the higher-pitched grunts of girls, giving their everything. He saw Skaters piling in with Freaks, Nerds with Geeks, Saints with Sluts, working together, refusing to quit.

  Another pop sounded out. Then a few more. The stripe of daylight above them widened, and David felt the wall begin to pull away from his hands. It tipped in what seemed like slow motion at first, then it sped up. He couldn’t help but fall forward with the welded plates, like everyone else. Clouds of dry dirt whooshed into the air as the metal wall hit the ground with a reverberating crash. Daylight flooded the foyer. David had to shut his eye from the sting of the light.

  When he opened his eye, he saw the farm in all its glory. Moist, freshly tilled soil. Lush green grass. He saw a wheelbarrow full of ripe heirloom tomatoes. The sky was crowded with cotton ball clouds, each rimmed with golden light. Snow-frosted mountains seemed a million miles away. Cows lumbered away from the noise of the wall’s crash. Goats bleated in protest. Three dogs scampered into view, chasing each other.

  He saw the parents. They were clustered together by the compost bins, a hundred feet away, all wearing gas masks or breathing through scuba gear, and they looked nervous. The whistling alarm blared continuously.

  The line of McKinley kids stood breathless at the threshold to freedom.

  “Mom?” David heard someone say.

  Bobby walked out onto the fallen steel wall. Bobby’s mother broke away from the other parents and burst forward.

  “Bobby! Baby, come here,” she said.

  Bobby sped forward. When they got up to each other, she slowed to a stop. She cocked her head and took in his dull blacked-out skin, his shiny red teeth. Bobby stopped a few feet short of her, trembling, and they stared at each other. The alarm whistled. A gentle wind blew the rich scents of a farm into the foyer.

  Bobby’s mother opened her arms to him and they embraced. The hug was like a starter pistol. Everyone sprinted out of the school after that. David ran with them. It was madness, so many people running in different directions. He lost track of Lucy and Will. His old friends and enemies were all around him, smiling, and running in circles. They leapt through the crops, playing. They ran with arms outstretched, kicking up dirt, spreading themselves across the expanse of the thriving farm like it was the first minute of recess. They leapt, they embraced, happy faces glistened with tears. Only a few hesitant ones remained in the commons, slowly inching out, wary of their own liberty.

  Parents were reuniting with their children everywhere he looked. Terry’s par
ents came up to thank David for giving them back their son. He saw Sam’s father off in the distance, running around like a madman, trying to wrangle all of the kids.

  Lucy ran up to him. The look she gave him threw David. He had been looked at like that before, but never by Lucy. It was how Hilary used to look at him when she’d jumped into his arms after winning a football game. It was how girls used to look at him at parties when they wanted to steal him from Hilary. It was aggressive. Charged with desire. She threw her arms around him. David forgot the rest of the world around him. She kissed his neck. He closed his eye. He melted into her.

  “That was amazing,” she said.

  Kiss my neck again, he wanted to say.

  “Easy,” Will said.

  David opened his eye. His brother was behind Lucy now, frowning underneath his mask.

  Lucy broke away. Will’s face transformed when she turned to face him. He smiled for her. It looked pretty convincing, but David could tell he was pissed.

  “I’m so glad you’re alive,” Lucy said. David grinned. It relieved him that she knew intuitively to be gentle with Will’s ego.

  “I missed you,” Will said. He was brimming with energy, barely containing himself.

  “Me too,” Lucy said.

  Will placed both his hands on her stomach.

  “We’re going to be okay now,” Will said.

  Startled, Lucy pushed his hand away.

  “Don’t—” Lucy said.

  Will stumbled back, and Lucy’s eyes went wide with regret. She took up both of Will’s hands.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “It’s—it’s okay. I understand,” Will said. “I know I’ve been a fuckup in the past and I’ve acted immature, but I’ve changed, Lucy. You’ve made me want to be someone better. I’m going to take care of you. And provide for you. Provide for our family. Lucy, I love you so much.”

  “Will, I …” She didn’t continue. She looked to David.

  “What?” Will said. “Why do you keep looking at him?”

  “You need to know something,” David said.

  “This isn’t about you, David,” Will said, whipping a finger at David. He turned back to Lucy with open, yearning eyes. “What—what’s going on?”