Quarantine: The Loners q-1

by Lex Thomas

  It was cold, but the warmth of her fingers radiated through.

  She drew a jagged line down his jaw.

  It had been Lucy’s idea to do the war paint. She concocted it out of a mixture of watered-down glue mixed with ash, and she’d devoted the entire morning to painting everyone’s faces. This was Lucy’s contribution to the battle effort. She hoped that if they looked like savages, maybe people would believe they were. Nobody argued with her plan; they needed all the help they could get.

  He looked at her. She looked at his cheek. He could feel her warm breath touch his nose. The last time he’d been this close, really this close, he was too young and stupid to know

  what to do. He’d just lain inches from her all night in that tent in Utah, their noses almost touching, their hands clasped.

  Why didn’t he kiss her then?

  Lucy bit down on her plump lip. Will could barely handle how adorable she looked when she concentrated. The fierce painted lines on her face couldn’t betray her beauty. Her skin glowed especially white against the muddled black of the war paint. She was perfect.

  Will’s hand was in his pocket. He rubbed the fine gold necklace between his fingers. He wanted to pull it out. He wanted to tell her everything he felt about her. Lucy’s fingers trembled as she painted a stripe down his nose. She was scared.

  They all were. They were hungry and rattled after four days and nights of Varsity pounding on the locked doors, taunt-ing them, telling them they were going to die when the food drop came. It was no way for Lucy to have to live, terrified, scavenging trash for forgotten crumbs wedged in wrapper creases. He’d tried to comfort her, but she said she was fine.

  She said they needed to focus on keeping everybody else’s spirits up. That was just like her. He didn’t care about the rest of them, only her.

  “Lucy…”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice caught in her throat.

  Will pulled his hand out of his pocket with the necklace clutched in his clammy palm.

  “There’s something I—”

  David stepped into view behind Lucy. He held the thick wooden leg of a desk in his hand. A heavy metal L-bracket was still bolted to its end. Will paused.

  “They’re going to open the doors soon. Let’s get ready,” David said.

  Lucy looked up at David, and her chest heaved. She nodded quickly. David gave her pat on the shoulder before walking to the doors. She leaned toward David’s touch. She’d never responded to Will that way. No gift, no matter how nice, was going to outweigh everything she thought David had done for her. If he was going to get Lucy to see him for who he was, it would have to be from something he did, not something he bought her.

  Will stuffed the necklace back into his pocket. Too much, too soon, he scolded himself. He’d been playing everything wrong.

  How did he get her to sleep in that tent under the stars? He’d been crazy that day. He’d sprinted all the way across Devil’s Spine, that narrow rock bridge, without ever touching the guide rope. Chazz was pissed at him, saying it was a stupid risk, but Lucy… she looked at him differently after that. He had to do that again. He had to be her hero today.

  “What were you saying?” Lucy said.

  “Nothing.”

  Lucy promptly finished Will’s face paint. She pulled away from Will and walked with David to where the group was gathered by the locked doors. Will lifted himself to follow, but someone held him in place.

  It was Smudge.

  “It looks like a dog dumped on your face,” Smudge said.

  “So now I know what it feels like to be you.”

  “You scared?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not going,” Smudge said.

  “What? You have to. We need everyone we can get.”

  “You’re crazy if you think you got a fighting chance in that drop. It’s suicide, man. I’m not dying for your brother.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “What about your girl? You gonna let her die too?”

  “I’m not going to let her fight,” Will said.

  “Dude, there’s gonna be, like, a hundred Varsity out there.

  It’s a joke. If you go out there with them, you’re gonna die.

  You’re all gonna die.”

  David faced his tiny gang in front of the locked doors. The food drop would be starting soon. Blackened faces looked back at him. The paint couldn’t cover their fear.

  “We’re gonna make it,” David said.

  It was a lie. This food drop was a fixed fight. Sam had trapped them in the basement without food for days. He wanted them tired and hungry. He wanted to break their spirits, so they’d be easy to take down. David had no choice but to play Sam’s game.

  David heard the shuffle of footsteps down the stairs outside the double doors. He turned to face them, slapping on a mean face. The handles moved, and the doors were pulled open from the outside. Trash scraped against the floor. The Varsity doormen remained hidden in the shadows. His fellow Scraps crowded close behind him, and David took the first step up the stairs.

  They all wore at least five layers of ruined clothes they’d found in the dump for extra padding. Some had even poked holes in linoleum floor tiles and tied them to their bodies for added protection. Each of them carried a weapon, if not two: pipes, shivs, lengths of chain. The twins each carried a pair of scissors, broken apart, one blade in each hand. Belinda hefted a book bag full of bricks. The slashes of black paint marring their faces were dry and cracked now. They stank like hell.

  David’s stomach felt like it was turning inside out.

  “Keep walkin’, Scraps,” a Varsity said from the darkness.

  They ascended the stairs and reached the first floor. Two Varsity guys, in full pads with lacrosse sticks, stood on either side of entrance. They were Rhodes Dixon and George Diaz.

  There was a time when David had laughed hard with these guys about stupid stuff, farts and nicknames for ugly girls.

  Today, they were laughing at him.

  “Ooo, check it out, Rhodes, look at their faces.”

  “I can’t, Diaz,” Rhodes said with a mocking shiver. “I’m too scared.”

  Both guys cracked up. David ignored them and waved everyone forward.

  “You’re gonna die, Thorpe,” Rhodes called out like a song after him.

  The hallway ahead was long. Nelson hyperventilated behind him. Belinda mumbled calming words into Nelson’s funnel. David looked at Lucy. She forced a smile, but it ended up being nothing but a flat line. David checked on the rest of the group.

  There were only eight of them.

  David’s fear nearly sank him. Including him, that made nine against a hundred. He hated the deserters for jumping ship, but he couldn’t blame them.

  “They’re not coming,” Will said beside him.“Smudge and Dorothy and some of the other ones… they never left the basement.”

  David scanned past Will. A Varsity in a football helmet with a tinted visor stepped into the hall from a classroom. David glanced to the other side of the hall where another one stood, holding a position beside the opposite row of lockers. It was the same all the way down the corridor. Bulky figures stepped out from classroom doorways and from locker rows.

  They barked and hissed and spit as David and the gang walked past. David’s gang huddled closer together. Each Varsity they passed joined the growing pack, led by Rhodes and George, that followed at their heels.

  David stepped through the wide open doors to the quad.

  Every gang was represented: the redheaded Sluts in their spikes and chrome; the Nerds in their khakis; the Freaks in black with their blue hair; the Pretty Ones in their pristine whites. The Band Geeks wore their ragged regalia and set up their instruments in one corner to score the bloody affair.

  Some were there to fight. Most were there for the show.

  Conversation burst through the crowd when they saw David. What had they come to see? A bloodbath? He wanted to run. Like a coward. He wanted to hide i
n the trash like Smudge and Dorothy. David strode forward instead, making sure his strides were long and confident. The crowd hushed.

  Hundreds and hundreds of eyes were on him, riveted by his presence. What did they think? That he was an idiot for even showing up? That he knew something they didn’t? David fixated on a broken window on the far wall so that no one’s gaze could throw him. Behind David, the sound of Nelson’s breathing changed to the sound of Nelson throwing up. Some Skaters laughed. David kept walking.

  He saw a small clearing along the perimeter where no gangs stood. He led his crew to it. They stood close together in that spot, their backs to the wall. As David faced the quad, he realized that their spot being vacant was no coincidence. Varsity was assembled directly across the quad from them.

  Varsity’s front line was bashing helmets and thudding each other in the chest. There were so many of them. David couldn’t see Sam. Every other gang looked from Varsity to David and

  back again, ready for something to pop off.

  “Look at the fat one!” a voice declared from the Varsity crowd.

  Laughs.

  “No fair! Elephants aren’t allowed to fight at the drop!” Varsity laughed louder.

  People in other gangs covered their mouths, embarrassed for them but still laughing. Sam’s voice cut through the crowd’s rabble.

  “I heard there was a new gang!”

  Sam lazily swung a length of steel chain in his hand.

  “I could have sworn I heard that. I’m looking, but I don’t see one,” he said.

  Varsity laughed right on cue. Some of the crowd did too.

  “All I see is nine Scraps with a death wish.” The thup-thup-thup of helicopter blades floated in from far away. It was almost time. Varsity readied themselves for attack. David’s only thought was that he could make them chase him. Sam only wanted him. If David ran out of the quad and into the school, maybe he could lose them, maybe he couldn’t, but Will and Lucy and the others would be spared.

  David scanned the Varsity line, focusing on their best run-ners. He knew Keith Anderson was definitely faster than him. And Wesley James was at least equal his speed, probably faster with David’s lack of sleep and nourishment.

  Sam signaled Anthony Smith and the other linebackers.

  They hustled to each exit and stood guard. Shit. Sam had anticipated his plan. David wasn’t getting off the quad now.

  There was no way out of this. He was going to die here.

  A new sound drowned out the distant sound of the helicopter. It was the rhythmic crack of Varsity’s baseball bats on a brick wall. They’d be cracking David’s head next.

  David turned back to his gang of eight. They didn’t deserve to die because of him.

  “This is not your fight,” David said. As he looked from face to face, his words became more urgent. He didn’t want any argument. “Stay against the wall. Then, split up. When other gangs are leaving, get lost in their numbers and sneak out.

  Run and hide. This whole thing was a mistake—” A heavy hand slapped down on David’s shoulder. He almost jumped out of his skin. He turned. It was Gonzalo. Gonzalo was huge. Six foot seven. Stout and round. He carried a fire ax over his shoulder. He had long, dry, white metalhead hair that covered his face. Back when David had been captain of the football team, he’d tried desperately to get Gonzalo to join the team, but the guy couldn’t be bothered. He was the epitome of a loner. Gonzalo was the only student who was able to thrive at the drops, fighting all by himself. Every two weeks he walked through the drops unchallenged, picking up what he wanted.

  No one wanted to mess with him, and there was never a good reason to. He only ever wanted enough for himself.

  “Heard they tried to hang you in the market,” Gonzalo said.

  “That ain’t right.”

  David was in shock. Gonzalo towered over him. He could only nod slowly in response.

  “Is it true you’re starting a gang that won’t stand for that shit?” Gonzalo asked.

  “Th-that’s right,” David said.

  “Then I’m in.”

  “You’re shitting me,” Will said. David couldn’t have put it better if he tried.

  Gonzalo took his place beside David and faced the crowd, ax in hand.

  The sight of Gonzalo threw the crowd into disarray. Everyone was shocked. The bats cracked faster. The blades above thumped louder. One white-haired Scrap came running out of the crowd and stood in front of David and Gonzalo. He was a little guy, wiry. His face was latticed with crisscrossing scars.

  “Name’s Ritchie. I want to fight with you guys. Is that cool?” David nodded again. This was really happening.

  Nelson handed Ritchie a hammer. Ritchie refused it and cracked his knuckles.

  “No, I’m cool.”

  Then more Scraps came. It was just a few white heads of hair trickling through other gangs at first, but within moments Scraps converged on him from all over the quad. Some he didn’t think he’d ever seen before. They were loner kids who lived in the shadows, who haunted the edges of the school, who had long ago been forgotten.

  The helicopter roared overhead. The canopy was opened, and the giant pallets were lowered through the hole.

  David was encircled by white hair. There had to be eighty of them now. He had no idea this many kids were without gangs.

  A familiar feeling flickered inside of him. He had a team behind him again, one with a fighting chance.

  “Listen to me!” David screamed. “You’re not alone anymore.

  We fight together!”

  They raised their fists and cheered.

  “This is your gang! And that”-David pointed to the heavy pallets swinging above-“is OUR food!”

  The pallets dropped.

  With a wooden crack, the pallets hit the ground. Food erupted from the broken containers. David’s gang charged.

  Varsity and the rest of the school did the same. The quad was a vortex of bodies, all grabbing for loot. Everyone slammed into each other. David swung his club into the forearm of his old teammate Rhodes and heard a crunch. Rhodes clutched his ruined arm and fell.

  Someone blindsided David, tackling him into a pileup.

  Anonymous fingers hooked the inside of David’s mouth, threatening to tear his cheek off. David chomped down on the fingers. Whomever they belonged to screamed. George Diaz rushed toward David wearing a lacrosse glove with nails sticking out from it. George swung at David with looping punches. The nails whizzed by his nose. David threw a lucky punch and caught the underside of George’s glove, driving the nailed side into his face. George screamed and tumbled off, the fat glove still fastened to his cheek.

  David lifted himself to his feet. He saw Hilary bolt from the Pretty Ones and into the mix. Sam was one thing, but Hilary never left the sidelines during a drop. David tracked her path to Lucy, who was hefting food toward the exit with Belinda.

  Hilary grabbed Lucy by the hair and flung her to the ground. David pushed off to stop her, but Will was already ahead of him. David ran up and kept pace with Will. He was afraid of what Will might do to Hilary.

  “I got this,” David said, putting his hand out to block Will.

  “Focus on the food.”

  “Get off me,” Will shoved back. “I’m serious.” David stumbled, and Will took the lead. Ahead of them, Lucy flailed underneath Hilary, who had both hands in Lucy’s hair, pulling her around like a dog by the ears. Will got to Lucy first and grabbed hold of her. David ran to Hilary and clutched her by the waist. David yanked Hilary off of Lucy and spun her away. He held her firmly in his hands. It was the first time he’d touched her since the night she’d broken up with him. He didn’t want to let go.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he shouted at her. Her eyes were still savage from the fight, but David’s voice seemed to tame her.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, and jerked free of him.

  When David reached out to take her hand, a rock hit him in the forehead. He didn’t lose consciou
sness, but he clutched his eyes shut and bent in pain. When he opened them again, Will was already hurrying Lucy off the quad. All around, rocks, bricks, pencil sharpeners, staplers, and other small objects rained down from above.

  David looked up to see white-haired kids throwing those objects out of second- and third-floor windows. Their target was a large group of Varsity guys who were dragging a huge unbroken pallet of food toward the gym. The Varsity guys were pelted over and over, bricks ricocheting off their helmets. The ones without helmets bailed until there weren’t enough of them to haul the pallet. Ritchie was on their trail and moved swiftly with a pack of white-hairs to reverse the pallet’s path. The supplies had all been scooped up, and the fights were dying down.

  “Scraps!” David called out, his hands raised victoriously in the air. “Let’s roll!”

  As David turned toward the southern exit, he saw Sam tromping toward him, his heavy steel chain dangling from his hand. David knelt down to pick up a bat that had been lost by a Varsity. He took a wide stance and dug in.

  Sam was closing in fast. Scraps, eager to prove themselves to David, stepped into Sam’s path to stop him. Each one received a vicious slap of chain for their trouble. But they still piled in.

  Five feet from David, Sam was consumed by vengeful Scraps.

  They hated Sam. They fought each other for the privilege of hitting him. They kicked his face, they pounded his ribs, they tore at his skin. They were going to kill him. David caught glimpses of Sam’s face through the writhing heap. Sam was in agony. He met David’s gaze. Sam was scared. Truly, honestly scared.

  “Get off him!” David shouted.

  No one listened.

  “I said stop!”

  The mob backed off, leaving Sam on his back, bloody and limp. David stood over him. Seeing the tyrant who had tormented him for a year lying broken on the ground in front of him was better than any trophy he could ever win. David walked away. Varsity members swooped in fast and carried Sam off.

  David led his gang off the quad. No one blocked their path.

  He saw awestruck grins and nods of begrudging respect from the other gangs. If it was a show they were looking for, David had delivered. David’s gang regrouped near the foyer. The initial nine were now nearly a hundred, their faces blood-streaked and smiling. Each one had their arms full with food.