There was an obstacle in the middle of the trail. I almost breathed a sigh of relief. I knew it had been too easy. Nothing in life was ever this easy. I held up a hand for everyone to stop.
The starthistle and grasses grew tall here, almost waist-high, providing cover for whoever might hide in its depths, but it was the path I worried about. Two people were sitting on the ground. One was laid out flat and the other one hovered over him.
“They’re Feebs,” Maibe said behind me. Too loud.
The one who was sitting looked up at Maibe’s voice. I didn’t know what I should do, what I should say. I wanted to ride on by. Their clothes were dirty and ripped. Their faces were streaked with dried blood. The younger one’s upper arm was wrapped in layers of bandaging. The man laid out on the ground looked overweight and his balding head was pointed at us.
“We don’t need more baggage,” I said.
The balding man struggled to sit up. The two of them exchanged a look that made me nervous.
“Hello,” the balding man said, nodding to us. “I’m Laurel Gillen. This is Kern. Do you know what has happened?”
“What are you doing in the middle of the trail?” Ano said. He stepped next to me, a chain hanging from his hand. They were Feebs like us, but that didn’t mean they could be trusted.
Laurel’s eyes shifted to the chain. “We were taking a break.”
“In the middle of the trail?” Ano said.
“That way we could see someone coming,” Kern said quietly. His eyes seemed to burn into mine.
“When did you wake up from the fevers?” I demanded.
Laurel’s focus shifted to me. “May I ask your name?”
I did not respond, only waited and crossed my arms across my chest.
Laurel sighed.
“I’m Corrina.”
I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth. We had a system for dealing with strangers. What right did she have to speak up?
“Hello,” Laurel said, nodding in her direction.
She strode forward and offered her hand to them.
I hissed between my teeth. “What the hell are you thinking?”
They shook. Corrina tossed her hair over her shoulder and looked at me with a guileless gaze I knew she must be faking. “We can’t keep avoiding everyone. We can’t act like everyone we meet is the enemy.”
“Yes, we can,” I said. “If we want to be smart and get out of this alive. That’s exactly what we should do.”
Laurel held up his hands as if that might fix the tension in the air, as if that somehow made him more trustworthy. “We woke up several days ago from…whatever this is. My son, Kern here, had come visiting. I thought it was a burglary, but…they killed my wife.” He went silent and pressed his thumb and index fingers onto either side of his nose as if trying to hold back tears.
Kern placed a comforting hand on his father’s shoulder. “It killed my sister too—”
“Your daughter,” I said to Laurel.
He nodded. “My wife and my daughter.”
“—and we both got really sick, in and out of this fever, these memories…and then we woke up.” Kern released his hand from his father’s shoulder and held it out and looked at it in wonder. “We saw what had happened to us, but we don’t know why. We had guns but lost them a ways back fighting off the crazies—”
“We call them Vs,” Jimmy said.
Kern cocked his head. “Sure, kid. Whatever you say. We heard there was a camp. Like for refugees. We tried the hospital first, but…”
“Who told you there was a camp?” Ano said.
Kern looked at Ano for a long second. “On the radio.”
Ano and I glanced at each other. They woke up a few days ago—were radios even still working? Maybe. But maybe not. I tapped my fingers against my thigh: W-A-T-C-H. Ano didn’t bother to reply. The scowl on his face said his message would have been something along the lines of: N-O D-U-H.
Laurel shook his head. “Don’t go to the hospital.”
“We’re not stupid,” Ricker said.
“Did you kill those Vs back there?” I said.
Kern glanced at Laurel. “We haven’t been that way yet. That’s where we were headed.”
“We think the camp is that way.” Laurel pointed back the way we’d come.
“It’s more like a prison,” Corrina said. “You don’t want to go there.”
“But the radio…” Kern turned to his father. Laurel’s face had collapsed on itself.
“The trains are no good either,” Maibe said.
This seemed to bring both Kern and Laurel to attention.
I glanced at Ano. He cocked his head. He’d seen it too. “What do you know about the trains?” I said.
“We don’t know anything about the trains,” Kern said. “We told you we only woke up a few days ago.”
“Are you sure about the camp?” Laurel said.
“We’re sure,” Maibe said.
“What the hell is happening?” Laurel looked around as if the sky would answer him.
“We don’t have time to help you understand,” I said.
“We’re not sure how it started,” Corrina said and began explaining her story.
I wanted to slap her and looked at Spencer to demand him to step in and end this farce so we could keep going, but Spencer wasn’t listening to the conversation. He was looking ahead, past the two men.
A dark clump of figures stumbled into view, still far away but coming toward us. Of course an hour without trouble had been too much to ask.
Maybe the bike trail had been a mistake after all.
“Time to go,” Spencer said quietly.
Laurel looked over his shoulder. “We should go to the camp. That way is open.”
“Are you crazy or stupid?” I said.
“We can’t stay on the trail,” Maibe said, hopping from foot to foot.
A pause. “The high school, then,” Kern said. “We were just there. There’s fencing and a gate we can close.”
And just like that the group followed these two strange men we had known for all of thirty seconds. I was left on the trail staring after them and at the oncoming Vs.
Corrina acted as if she were in charge now because, what? She was the oldest? That didn’t give her the right to tell the rest of us what to do, especially when all our lives were at stake.
Jimmy turned and when he saw me still on the trail, said, “Come on, Gabbi. We need you.”
This broke me out of my frozen state. I followed as they cut through the brush with the bikes. We ended up at the back parking lot of the high school.
“This way.” Laurel motioned us forward. Kern jogged ahead to a chain-link gate that opened to a quad area between two buildings. The similarity between these buildings and Sergeant Bennings’ was creepy. Government-built places always had this institutional feel, no matter how many windows they tried to include. I was about to point this out, that maybe these two men were leading us into a trap, when the clump of Vs broke through the brush behind me. They were all men, all approximately the same age and wearing similar clothes, and I wondered if they’d once been friends and what exactly they were remembering now as they ran for us. What was it that the virus made them relive with their hands out and their teeth ready to tear us apart?
“Gabbi!” Maibe’s shout broke through my thoughts.
I pedaled through the gate that Laurel held open. I would make Corrina pay if she’d helped lead us into a trap.
My bike zoomed into a courtyard teenagers had used in a former life for breaks, its cement benches and trashcans and a few spindly trees mostly untouched, ready for the next bell.
The gate slammed shut, clanking against the pole. Laurel grabbed an unlocked chain that had once secured a garbage can in place and wrapped the gate closed. Dylan took this moment to wake up and was shouting questions.
Ano grabbed a thick branch and stuck it between the chain-links. Maibe and Ricker helped me drag a cement bench over to block the front gate
.
Glass tinkled. Kern had thrown a trashcan through the windows of one of the classrooms. He took off his shirt, revealing a chest crisscrossed with bruises over muscles that flexed with his effort. He set the shirt on the window’s edge and lifted himself through the gap, then came back out the door.
I didn’t like how fast all of this was moving. I wheeled my bike up to Kern and leaned it on the outside wall.
“Welcome,” he said, ushering me through.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’ll see.”
Chapter 13
It had been almost exactly four years since I’d stepped foot in a real classroom. In this one, the desks were arranged in groups of four, facing each other instead of the front. Inspirational posters about working hard and making good choices littered the walls. Huge English textbooks lined two shelves next to the corner desk where stacks of papers and a computer sat.
Everything looked ready for the next class, as if winter vacation would end any day now and the students would file into their seats with backpacks full of books and minds ready to learn.
I laughed to myself. Yeah, right. Most people were varying shades of prick and that included teenagers too.
Kern wandered the classroom perimeter until he came upon a cork board displaying A+ student work. He ripped the board off the wall. The projects pinned to it went fluttering through the air onto desk surfaces and the linoleum floor.
“So you’re Gabbi.” He carried the board over to the broken window. Glass crunched under his shoes.
“Yeah, so what?”
“So…hi,” he said, glancing at me and then away. The others filtered in, Dylan and Corrina last, his arm around her shoulders.
Dylan kissed the side of her head and she hugged him around the chest. He whispered something in her ear, then suddenly his eyes glazed over and he lost control of his legs. She almost dropped him but then Laurel grabbed Dylan’s other side and together they controlled his fall to the floor.
Another memory-fever. Great.
“When did he get infected?” Laurel asked.
“A few days ago,” Corrina responded.
“Five days ago,” I said. “Leaf died five days ago.”
Corrina flinched.
Kern finished securing the board over the broken window and crouched next to Dylan. “Let me see. I was training to be a paramedic someday.”
Ano leaned against the wall. Not resting really, more like saving his energy. Jimmy sat nearby with Ricker and Maibe. Spencer was there too. They’d settled as a group in the opposite corner of the classroom, furthest away from the door and windows, behind the teacher’s desk, creating some privacy, a cave within a cave.
“What’s next?” I asked Spencer.
He shrugged.
“If we wait long enough, the Vs might go away,” Maibe said. “As long as they don’t find a way in.”
“So in the meantime we’re just supposed to trust those two?” I said.
“There’s more of us than there are of them,” Spencer said. “As long as no one else joins them.”
“So us now includes them,” I said, pointing at Corrina and Dylan. “When did they earn our trust?”
“They deserve it,” Jimmy said.
I scowled.
“Get over it, Gabbi,” Spencer said.
“Get over what?” I said, a menacing note in my voice. “What exactly am I supposed to get over? What exactly am I supposed to be okay with? People we hardly know, people who would as soon have ignored us in any other situation, suddenly telling us what to do as if they care what happens to us at all?”
“They do care,” Maibe said.
“And even if they do,” I said, turning on her. “So what? That doesn’t make them right! It doesn’t mean they know better than us or have the right to act better than us or that we’re just supposed to do what they say because they say so!” At each word my voice raised in volume and I knew without having to look that the others had paused and were watching me rant. This made me feel both embarrassed and angry and there was nowhere to go so I had to just sit and face it when what I wanted to do was run away until the horrible feelings melted away.
“What’s your problem?” Corrina said.
“You are,” I said.
A shadow fell across me and I knew without looking that Corrina stood over me now. I rose slowly onto my feet because I could not let her loom over me like that, as if I had already submitted to her will.
“What have I done?” Corrina demanded. “Exactly what have I done to make you distrust me?”
“What haven’t you done?” I said, anger working me into jitters. “When have you listened to what we had to say, when have you done anything other than judge and question our every move? I saved your goddamn life on that stage, when you were hanging from that noose. If it hadn’t been for us, you would have killed Maibe by now, and probably yourself and your boyfriend too—”
“You have no idea—”
“YOU have no idea,” I said, pointing at her. “Leaf died because of you.” I was so angry I was losing my words and I hated her even more right then because I knew I must sound foolish, like a petulant teenager, and I hated myself for letting myself down like that. “You have no idea,” I said again and turned my back on her and sunk to the floor.
Ano stared at me, daring my temper. He did not make me feel ashamed. He understood even if he didn’t agree. Ricker and Jimmy avoided my gaze. Maibe stared and when I stared back she stood up and walked away. Spencer looked out into the vacuum of air around us, absentmindedly scratching his knee—I hated how disconnected he seemed, as if he didn’t particularly care what happened to the rest of us now that Leaf was gone. I had no idea how to bring him back. I did not want the responsibility of making the decisions for all of us but I most definitely did not want Corrina to take that responsibility either.
Outside there was a rattle and scratching. A crack as the branch broke. Kern jumped to one of the unbroken windows and looked out. “They’re inside the courtyard.”
Ano rose from the floor in one fluid motion.
I pictured them tumbling in and surrounding the classroom door. We should never have come here. “This is your fault,” I said turning to Corrina again. “We should have gone back.”
“You wanted us to take the bike trail,” Corrina said.
Her words pierced me worse than any V bite could have.
“Hate me later,” she said, “when we have the time for that sort of crap.”
I sat stunned at the accusation in her words and the truth that rang in them. The Vs were about to attack and I was still hurling insults.
She ran over to Dylan and yelled back at me. “Do something useful with that bat.”
Faces began appearing in the frosted windows. One of them banged on the door once, then again, then harder. A splayed hand hit one of the windows and smeared yellowish fluid down the glass.
Corrina and Laurel tumbled a few desks in front of the door and I screamed at them to stop because the Vs weren’t going to come through that way, the door was sturdy and they were blocking our only exit to the outside with a maze of desks.
The first window broke. Maibe shouted. Kern ran to the V, grabbed a three-legged stool, and smashed it over the head of the woman clawing her way across broken glass. The wood splintered over her but did not stop her.
Her vacant eyes stared unseeing into the room and I thought—she wasn’t running for us, but away from something else that had scared her.
Kern took up a desk and threw it at the woman. It crashed onto her, pushing her back out of the window, but also enlarging the gap.
Two more Vs filled the hole, climbing over each other to get in. I raised my bat, ran forward, and connected with the head of another V. Blood sprayed and I tasted iron. The V behind him kept coming.
Corrina ran up with a textbook and smashed it across the Vs head. I waited for the V to move, but Corrina smashed the textbook down again and there was a crunch sound and the V twitched
and went limp.
More glass sprayed around me and suddenly five Vs fell in and the classroom became overrun as others followed. I lost my grip on the bat. I dropped to the ground and looked for it. It had rolled near the teacher’s desk where Maibe fought off a V by herself. I scrambled up and ran for her. A yank on my ankle took me down hard. I hit my head on the corner of a desk. Sounds and light disappeared. All I could hear was the roar of wind in my ears. All I could see were black dots flashing on and off. A burning pain erupted on my leg. Everything swam away except for the shuffling feet between the metal legs of the desks and chairs that squeaked as people ran for their lives while mine was ending on the linoleum floor of a high school classroom.
Chapter 14
The fevers smothered my brain even as their grip loosened. I coughed and then tried to stifle the cough because I didn’t know who was still alive and whether it included any Vs. It was too dark to see if their bodies were around, but the stink of blood and shit and other slimy fluids told me that whatever had died here was still very much present.
I wiped a hand over my hair and felt the crunch of glass. My leg lanced with pain when I even thought about moving it. I forced it to move anyway and I cried out.
Even though it was dangerous, I couldn’t help but call to see if anyone else was still alive. “Hello?”
Nothing.
“Ano? Ricker? Maibe?”
Still nothing.
Faint moonlight filtered through the broken windows of the classroom. It cast only enough light to outline figures hung over the sill and draped across the desks.
I grabbed the nearest desk leg and pulled myself up, careful not to put any weight on my injury.
My heart fluttered in my chest. Where was everyone?
I hobbled to the closest body facedown on the ground. I grabbed his shirt, turned it over, and moved within inches of the face. Its iron, acidic stink overwhelmed me and I dropped him.
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