Quarantine: The Saints q-2

by Lex Thomas

  “I have to go back,” Lucy said.

  “What?”

  “I have to help my girls, they’re only in this fight ’cause of me.”

  “No, you can’t go back there.”

  “I have to.”

  “Gates is gonna be going ballistic. I don’t want you around him.”

  “You’re the one who shouldn’t be around him. You need to go back to Minnie’s room and hide.”

  “Come with me,” Will said.

  “I can’t, Will, I told you—”

  “I’ll let you kiss me.”

  She laughed. She couldn’t help it, she wasn’t expecting that. Will smiled at her. For a moment, she smiled too, but her face went slack when she saw twin lines of blood pour out from Will’s nostrils.

  39

  WILL AND LUCY DASHED DOWN THE HALLWAY, toward the quad, holding hands.

  “I have another year,” Will said. “I’m supposed to have another year.”

  “We don’t know anything until you scan your thumb. It could be anything. Maybe you got hit,” Lucy said.

  “I told you I didn’t get hit.”

  “I don’t know, Will. Maybe the air’s too dry.”

  He wasn’t buying it. And he knew she wasn’t either, but she kept trying to keep him calm.

  “It can’t be the virus,” she said. “That just doesn’t make sense.”

  Unless Will’s body was just done with puberty. He guessed it was a possibility. He hadn’t grown any taller in months. No matter what the answer was, he still might have to leave school. He should have been thrilled to finally get to leave. To have this all end. But, not now. Not when he’d just gotten Lucy back.

  The two of them slowed. There was a corpse on the floor ahead of them, a boy. His legs were splayed, with one shoe off and one shoe on. The white floor around him was a mess of smeared blood. It wasn’t until they were closer that they saw where all that blood had come from. The whole front of the boy’s neck was gone. The flesh had been torn away, and Will could see the front of his spine nestled into the red mulch of shredded neck meat. Above the ragged wound was a face they knew all too well.

  Sam’s mouth was open. His eyes were too. They had gone gray. His face was twisted in agony. It was a painful death. Horrible. But Will guessed it was inevitable.

  “Oh my god,” Lucy said, staring down at Sam. “Who would do that?”

  Will searched inside himself for the satisfaction at seeing Sam destroyed and he couldn’t find it.

  “We should keep moving,” Lucy said, and pulled Will forward.

  “Wait,” Will said, staying put. He took off his oversized sweatshirt and flung it out like a bed sheet. He let it fall across Sam from his chest to the top of his head. He turned to Lucy and gave her a nod. “Okay.”

  They ran for the open door to the quad. Outside, it was raining hard. The air smelled clean. Will and Lucy rushed into the quad. It was one giant square of mud. Will scanned the razor wire perimeter, three floors up, and spotted an adult standing on top of the east wall.

  “Thumb check!” Lucy yelled as loud as she could.

  The adult lowered the boxy machinery of the disembodied thumb scanner. It dangled from a long pole extended over the razor wire. As they ran for the wall, the figure above became clearer. Rain splashed off his black motorcycle helmet. It was Sam’s father. The thumb scanner spun as Sam’s dad lowered it. When it was ten feet above them, Will could see that the scanner was sealed up in a ziplock freezer bag.

  Will unzipped the blue-green seal, wiped his hand on his jeans, and stuck his hand into the bag. He planted his thumb on the scanner.

  The rain poured.

  “You’re transitioning,” the man shouted down without the benefit of his amp.

  Will shook his head.

  “No,” he said, his voice barely a rasp. “It can’t be right. This doesn’t make sense.”

  If there was pain in Lucy’s face, it was only for a second. A storm gust blew it away. Her hair whipped in her face, and she looked up to the sky.

  “He has to be lifted out!” Lucy yelled.

  “No,” Sam’s father said. He reeled the scanner back up.

  “What do you mean?” she shouted. “He has to graduate! You have to let him out.”

  Sam’s father pointed a gloved hand at Will.

  “I know who you are, kid,” the man said. “You want out? You bring me Sam, alive. That’s the only way you’re getting out.”

  “Will’s going to die if he doesn’t—”

  Will put his hand out to stop Lucy short.

  “No problem!” Will said.

  Lucy looked at Will like he’d gone crazy.

  “Just be here waiting when we show,” Will shouted up. The man turned away from the quad. The conversation was over. For now.

  “Will, what are you doing?” Lucy said under her breath.

  Will shrugged.

  “Worth a try.”

  Lucy and Will stared at Sam’s body. They had propped his blueing body up to sitting, against the lockers. They’d stripped him of his blood-soaked shirt and dressed him in the oversized sweatshirt Will had worn. They’d stuffed their own socks into the gaping wound in his neck so that the blood wouldn’t seep into the sweatshirt fabric. It was the best they could manage in the time they had, but he still didn’t look close to alive.

  “This isn’t going to work,” Lucy said. “They’ll see he’s dead.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  “You can clearly see he has no neck! Oh god, and they aren’t going to let you out,” Lucy said, going nearly as pale as Sam.

  “Hold on,” Will said and he knelt down beside Sam. Will took up both ends of the hood’s drawstring and cinched it tight. The hood closed around Sam’s face in a perfect oval, like an Eskimo. “There. What about that?”

  Lucy tilted her head slightly and studied Sam. “Actually,” she said, the tension in her face easing slightly. “That’s not bad.”

  Will stood and overcompensated with a big smile. “See? I told you, it’s going to work. I’m gonna get to leave.”

  Will’s stomach dropped out of him when he said those words.

  “Okay,” Lucy said. He didn’t want her to say “okay.” He wanted her to say, “Don’t go! Never leave me!”

  “I don’t want to leave you,” he said.

  “You have to.”

  “It’s too soon.”

  “I know.”

  “I just got you back,” he said.

  “I know. But we don’t have a choice.”

  “How are you so calm about this all the sudden?” Will said.

  Lucy’s face was unaffected, flat, still.

  “I’m just trying to keep my shit together,” she said. “The second you leave, I’m going to lose it.”

  Will forced himself to slow his breathing. He nodded. She was right. There was no point in crying about it now. Will went in for a kiss, and he made sure to make it count. It would have to tide him over for a year if this ridiculous plan worked. And if they failed, this would be the last time he would kiss her without a death sentence hanging over his head. He kissed her slowly; he wanted to feel every moment of it. Her lips pushed back with a feather’s weight. Lucy pulled away.

  “What’s wrong?” Will said.

  Lucy looked away. “We shouldn’t waste any more time.”

  He knew what she really meant. The more they lingered, clutching each other, touching and kissing, the harder they were making it to say good-bye. Lucy moved to Sam’s body. Will sighed and followed. He bent down and slung one of Sam’s limp arms over his shoulders. Lucy did the same, and they lifted his scarecrow corpse up. They looked like Sam’s best friends, each with one of his arms over their shoulders, as they hurried him down the hall. Sam’s dead feet dragged on the floor. They threw open the doors to the quad, to the wall of rain beyond.

  They charged onto the quad. Sam’s toes dragged through the mud. They carried Sam along as fast as they could. The rain was pounding now
, making a haze of gray that was difficult to see through. Sam’s head bobbled.

  “He’s unconscious!” Will screamed, twisting Sam’s head up toward the roof ledge to reveal Sam’s face. “He needs medical attention right away!”

  They stood in the middle of the quad where the crane would meet them. They stared up and shielded their eyes from the falling raindrops.

  “Come on, man!” Will shouted to Sam’s father, who now held a pair of binoculars to his eyes, under his flipped visor. Will prayed that he was satisfied with what he saw. The man took his time with his decision.

  “You promised, now do it!” Lucy shouted up to the sky.

  Sam’s father raised his arm to someone above they couldn’t see. The graduation harness lowered into view, attached to the crane arm high above. The harness twisted on the crane cable.

  “Just strap Sam in,” his father said. “We’ll do you after.”

  “It’s both of us or nothing! That’s the only way it happens!” Will shouted.

  The harness finally dangled low enough for them to grab it. Will bear-hugged Sam’s corpse, so Lucy was free to strap Will in, one limb at a time.

  “You’re ready,” Lucy said.

  Will wasn’t sure if it was tears or rain on her face.

  “It’s okay,” Will said because he thought he should. “I’m not going to abandon you, okay? I’ll find a way to help from out there. I promise. You know that, right? I swear to—”

  “I’m sorry, Will,” she said.

  “You’re sorry? Why are you sorry?”

  “I should’ve gone with you,” she said, her voice more frantic by the second. “I should’ve gone with you to live in the elevator. We could’ve made it work. We would’ve had more time. You never would have teamed up with Gates.… I never would’ve—”

  “Ssh,” Will said. “Don’t. It’s okay…”

  “We could’ve had more time,” she said, her mouth down-turned in sadness. “Oh, Will.”

  Lucy went in for the kiss. Her lips got within an inch of his before he was tugged up into the air. The harness bit into his flesh. Sam’s body was ridiculously heavy, and Will had to squeeze with all his might.

  “Good-bye!” Lucy shouted up.

  Will heard a guttural rumble from the hall. The revving of an engine. He knew who was coming.

  “You have to go!” he shouted at her.

  “What?” she called up.

  Gates came roaring onto the quad on the motorcycle. Lucy broke into a run.

  “Colton!” Gates screamed when he saw Will in the air. He poured on the throttle. Gates stood on the pedals, and reached up for Will as his bike zoomed by underneath. His fingers barely grazed Will’s right foot.

  Will kept ascending, giving thanks for every additional foot of space that grew between him and Gates. Then, he saw something horrible. Lucy had only managed to run fifteen feet in the mud. As Gates dropped himself back down into the saddle seat of the motorcycle, he carelessly clipped Lucy with the handlebars as he raced past her. She spun off her feet and flew into the mud.

  “Lucy!” Will shouted.

  Gates wobbled and crashed. Lucy wasn’t moving.

  Will crested the roofline of the school and rose up to eye level with the parents who had gathered behind Sam’s father at the east wall. He stared into the black visor of the motorcycle helmet.

  Will looked down to Lucy, who still lay motionless in the mud. He wriggled all around trying to look past Sam’s body to see where Gates was. He lost his grip on Sam’s slick, rain-soaked body, and Sam’s heavy bulk began to slip through his arms. Will instinctively clamped down to hold on, and got his forearms underneath Sam’s jaw.

  Sam’s weight pulled down hard against his forearms and Will heard a snap.

  Sam’s body fell out of the sweatshirt. It tumbled down and thumped into the mud below. But Will held Sam’s disembodied head, still in the sweatshirt’s hood. The rest of the empty sweatshirt flapped in the wet breeze.

  Will heard the adults scream. Sam’s father fell to his knees, completely silent. He gripped his helmet in agony as he stared at Will holding his son’s dead head. Will dropped it. The woman in the lilac helmet screeched and screeched. Far behind them, he could see six more adults running toward the roof ledge.

  The crane began to turn and swing Will away from the quad. He looked down into the quad. Lucy was in the same spot, but writhing around on the ground, beginning to stir. He saw Gates. He reached his hands up toward Will. He might have been screaming but Will was getting so high, and so far away from the quad, that he couldn’t hear it through the rain. Someone had to come help Lucy.

  Will looked up to see the tip of the long, orange crane arm, high above him, and the arrows of rain zipping down toward him from dim gray clouds. Beyond the school, he saw a wall that went around the whole McKinley campus. It was made of big rig trailers, stacked three trailers high, the work of the crane Will assumed. The wall went all around the front hill and the parking lot and circled back behind the school to include the football field, until it disappeared into the gray haze of rain.

  People walked on top of the truck trailer walls, patrolling with rifles. In the front lawn Will saw a forklift, a tractor, and more heavy machinery. He saw new prefab buildings along the wall. He saw a triple chain-link fence at the only break in the trailer wall, by the entrance to the parking lot.

  There was other movement within the walls. Will saw horses. Pigs. Cows grazing. There were chickens too. He saw what looked like an unfinished barn and stubby grain silo. Will squinted and strained his eyes to understand what was happening on the football field. There was something off about it. The grass was too tall, it was swaying.

  It was a field of wheat.

  40

  GATES PALMED SAM’S HEAD AND LIFTED IT up to gaze into its eyes. He studied the slack, dead face with an unhurried curiosity. Sam’s open mouth was full of mud and rain. The defiled head of the king. There was a spray of rain bouncing off both of their heads. There was a bleeding stab wound through Gates’s cheek, to go with the one Lucy had given him in his side. The motorcycle’s engine still hacked and popped and coughed. The bike was tipped on its side, on the ground by Gates’s feet.

  Lucy was on the ground twenty feet away. It felt like the quad was spinning. The motorcycle accident had disoriented her. Her clothes clung to her, drenched.

  Gates chucked Sam’s head over his shoulder like a watermelon rind at a picnic. It landed in the mud behind him with a splatter. He stared up at the sky, to where Will had gone.

  “He’s gone forever,” Gates said.

  Gates’s gaze lowered to Lucy. She didn’t flinch, she didn’t look away, but inside she was petrified by whatever mental, lunatic dialogue he’d had with Sam’s head. What grisly thing had he resolved?

  He took off his pants.

  A wave of nausea melted Lucy. She swallowed and blinked. She clenched her jaw and forced herself to sit up and brace for the horror of what might happen next.

  “You took him from me,” Gates said.

  Lucy got to one knee. Pain spread all through her body. She made herself stand. If the Sluts had taught her anything worthwhile, it was to never let your enemy know your fear. She didn’t quiver, she didn’t whimper, she didn’t cry. She gave him nothing. All those feelings were for her alone.

  He pulled off his blood-soaked T-shirt and dropped it. The wet fabric slapped down into the mud. The skin of his chest was a mess of red dripping holes, the bite marks of Slut knives.

  The quad’s spinning slowed. Lucy’s vision sharpened. Whatever Gates had planned made Lucy want to vomit. But what truly shook her, what obliterated all the heat in her body, was the sight of Violent’s many-bladed necklace around his neck. It shimmered in the pale light.

  “It’s your fault,” he said, standing there in pale blue boxers and mud-covered sneakers.

  No one was coming to save her. The Sluts had probably disowned her after she’d forced them into a gang brawl they didn’t w
ant and then ran away with a boy none of them liked. David was dead. Will was outside. The Loners were no more. She had no ideas, no tricks up her sleeve. He might kill her right here. This could be the way she died.

  She took a step forward, and it didn’t hurt too much. Then another. She walked toward him.

  The surprise on his face was genuine. So was the confusion.

  “Are you serious?” he said.

  She sped to a jog. Her hips hurt. Her lower back clicked.

  He seemed almost delighted to see her heading for him, but the coldness in his eyes took all the heart out of his smile.

  Her jog became a run. She kicked through the mud, all the way to where he stood, by the motorcycle, fists up, stance wide. She kicked for his balls, and she connected, but mostly with his inner thigh.

  He slapped her with a heavy hand, and blood burst from torn scabs left by the Pretty Ones’ claws, and streamed down her cheek.

  She raked at his face with her fingernails. She made a grab for Violent’s necklace next. If she had a knife she could take him. But she never got the chance. He punched her in the stomach first.

  Lucy crumpled. She slipped and fell into the mud, landing hard on her back, right beside the motorcycle. She couldn’t breathe. Her chest was a vacuum. Reality hit hard. Gates was ten times stronger than she was.

  Gates fell on her, he dug his knees into her ribs and began to strangle her. The rain fell in her eyes. All noise went soft and muffled when her ears sunk under the mud.

  She needed air. She clawed at his hands. One of her fingernails bent back and she cringed. She shook her hand out on instinct and his grip tightened. Her vision dimmed. Raindrops hurtled toward her in slow motion and landed cold on her cheeks. She looked at his frenzied face. She looked at the bleeding hole in his cheek.

  Lucy reached up and dug her middle finger through that hole. She hooked her finger inside his mouth and yanked. The stab wound widened, the hole stretched, and Gates let go of her neck. He was holding his sagging cheek in horror.