The Burnouts

by Lex Thomas

  The memory of him the other night, on top of her in the rain, with his pants off, trying to strangle her, would never leave her mind. She wasn’t sorry to see him dead, but the Saints were.

  They walked like they were wading through honey. Their heads seemed too heavy for their tired necks to support. They carried Gates to the center of the quad and set him down. When the last of the Saints exited the hallway, Lucy ducked back into the hall and watched from the shadows. As the procession passed she kept her head turtled inside the towel. If anyone had seen her, they hadn’t seen her face.

  A Saint girl with short wispy white hair stood by Gates’s coffin, her puffed eyes dripping tears down onto the crumpled white paper. Lucy had seen her before. Her name was Lark. She had always been hanging around Gates, or off Will. She looked like she’d been crying for hours.

  “Did you love him?” Lark said, in a voice squeezed tight with emotion.

  The Saints answered back with a resounding, “Yes.”

  “So did I,” Lark said.

  Her face was clenched like she was being electrocuted. Lucy remembered seeing Lark with a dislocated jaw at the Saint—Slut battle. It looked like it pained her to talk.

  Lark pulled out a black-and-white composition notebook she’d been holding under her arm. She opened it to a bookmarked page.

  “Gates had a statement prepared in case of his death,” Lark said.

  The Saints gasped like she’d said she’d brought stone tablets down from the mountaintop.

  Lark cleared her throat.

  “ ’S up, fags.”

  The Saints laughed.

  “I guess I’m dead,” she continued, “which is hard for me to imagine. Whatever took me out would have to be something pretty major. I hope I went down fighting two bears. Or in a bazooka fight. Was I at least on fire?”

  More laughs from the Saints. The smiles their fallen leader’s words created were quick to fade. Their grief was too profound to be reversed with a few jokes from beyond the grave.

  “I don’t know when you’ll be reading this, hopefully never. I’m writing this in the sewer underneath city hall. In Broomfield. In case we end up hiding out in any other sewers under any other city halls.”

  The Saints nodded and smiled.

  “The rest of you are eating dinner now. I’m watching you laugh. Telling stories about the summer before all this shit happened. I feel so grateful to have all of you, and to have had the opportunity to lead this group for a long time. I’ve done my best to keep us all alive. I’m going to keep going as long as I can, and try to make it fun as shit along the way. But let’s be real, my number could come up tomorrow. So I figured I had to write this letter to all of you. The group has to stay together. We are a family. Celebrate being alive together. Throw the biggest going-away party Colorado has ever seen for me, and tell stories about me till the sun rises. Please don’t forget me. I’ll never forget any of you. Peace, fuck, barf, love. Your pal, Gates.”

  In one motion, Lark ripped the page out of the notebook. She fished a lighter out of the waist of her tights, and set the page on fire.

  “Good-bye, baby,” Lark said, and dropped the flaming page into the coffin. The flames quickly ate their way across the crumpled paper until the entire coffin was ablaze. The tall fire churned out clouds of black smoke that snaked up into the sky, before getting swirled and spread thin by the gusting winds.

  Lucy retreated from the quad as fast as she could. You aren’t supposed to go to the funeral of someone you killed. She felt nauseous. She’d ended someone’s life, and she’d really believed she should feel different, changed somehow, but she felt eerily the same. She saw their anguish, and she felt awful to be the cause of it, but if she was in the same situation again, she wouldn’t do any different. She didn’t know what kind of person that made her. Bad, she guessed.

  At the top of a flight of stairs, she climbed up onto the handrail and removed the air vent cover grille above. A string was discreetly tied around one of the grille’s louvered slats, preventing it from falling to the floor. Lucy lifted herself up into the darkness of the metal air duct, and crawled through the square tunnel. She reached the grille that she was looking for and pushed till it popped out.

  She’d made it. Maxine’s secret greenhouse. This would be her new home. The room that no one who was left in McKinley knew about. The room where she’d lost her virginity to Will. It was dark, but by the light that streamed in through the window, she could see that the white flower on the windowsill was still alive, its petals open, white, and fresh.

  Lucy needed water. She’d finished the water from the spray bottle meant for Maxine’s flower the night before. And that was the last of it. She needed food too. The waves of hunger would take hold of her belly, but if she rode them out, they’d fade for another hour or two. Until they’d come back worse. Still, that was better than venturing out of her hidden room. At least in here, she was safe.

  She stared at a piece of paper in her hand. It was a Xerox of Lucy’s and Will’s faces, nose to nose, their cheeks smushed into the copier glass. The image was overexposed and grainy, but they were both grinning like fools. They’d stuck their heads on the machine and made it on the one night they’d stayed in this room together. The last night he’d been here.

  It was as if that night had never happened. Will was gone, people were dead, and all she had left of it was a piece of paper. She missed him like crazy. She wished he had never graduated, and it was just the two of them living in this room together. Then she wouldn’t be so afraid. Lucy touched his face on the Xerox.

  She tucked the image in her pocket and climbed on top of the table. She pulled herself into the metal air duct. She brought the empty spray bottle with her. If she didn’t find food and water soon, she’d end up being too weak to do anything, and she’d die for sure. The duct was cold and dark. The metal popped and burped as she moved her weight across it. She came to the vent cover that opened to the stairwell, and pressed her face to the vent.

  Four Skater boys were heading down the stairs. When they reached the landing below and turned the corner to go down the next flight, Lucy began to unfasten the vent cover. She heard a rumble up the stairwell. The Skaters turned on their heels and hightailed it back up the stairs and down the hall. A moment later, Lucy saw what they were running from.

  Varsity flooded the landing. They poured out from around the corner and ascended the stairs, right under her nose. They kept coming, a river of yellow hair, fifty at least. It had to be half their gang, all walking together. Freshly dyed and in uniform.

  The sight of a gang that size made her acutely aware that she was alone. She couldn’t believe she was a Scrap again. Her first time as a Scrap, after the Pretty Ones had kicked her out, had been horrible, but it had only lasted a few hours before David had entered her life as her protector. The other girls in the Loners had told her stories of what it was like for girl Scraps, and they’d painted a frightening picture. Boys offering protection in return for sex. Offering food for sex. Boys finding any leverage possible to get you to spread your legs. And if you made the mistake of actually doing it? They’d all know. They’d tell each other, and after that, they’d never stop hounding you, and they’d offer less and less in return each time.

  That wasn’t going to be her.

  She’d steal. She’d fight in the food drops by herself. She’d do what she had to do. The Sluts had taught her to be tough, to not take any shit She’d changed while she was with them. She knew she had. She was still the tougher, braver version of herself. She just had to keep repeating that in her head.

  6

  “GET HIM!” DAVID SHOUTED.

  He’d just made a dive to grab a gopher, but all he had to show for it was a fist full of kale. He’d worked hard to make sure having one eye wasn’t a handicap, but there were times when he couldn’t count on his depth perception, and this was one of them. The little brown bastard was bounding through the crop and if he made it to the football fi
eld of wheat, they’d lose him for another day or two. Which meant more plants ruined by his little, gnawing rodent teeth.

  Thankfully, Will was on the job. Where David had fallen, Will had closed in. He was moving at a good clip, only a foot behind the animal.

  In the past month, Will had gotten great at catching gophers, among other things. The truth was that David was in awe of his little brother. He’d manage to charm most of the parents, Sam’s dad included, with his scrappiness and his humor. He’d been afraid they’d have a rocky relationship like they’d had in McKinley, but it wasn’t the case. They were getting along and Will was coming into his own right in front of David’s eyes.

  The parents had enforced a regimented food drop, where every gang received their food separately, and no fighting was allowed. It had been rough getting it going, but now the food drops were violence-free, and going off without a hitch. He could barely believe it, peaceful food drops. David let out a contented sigh. This was as good as life had been for a long time.

  Will made his lunge, but the gopher made a snap turn and dove into a freshly dug hole. Dry dust engulfed Will as he rolled onto his back and shouted in frustration.

  “I had him!” he said.

  A throaty cackle came from the wall.

  “Screw you, Bertie,” Will said and threw up a middle finger at the man doing the laughing.

  Bertie was the farm’s only prisoner, the hunter Will had taken down with the pickax, which had become everyone’s favorite story to tell about the night of the siege. Especially since Bertie had proved himself to be such a miserable excuse for human life. He lived in a custom cell in one of the tractor trailers that made up the outer farm wall. The parents had done him a favor by giving him a big, steel mesh window, so he wasn’t in the dark all day, but Bertie didn’t give a damn about the view. All he used it for was heckling.

  “I been watching you two dumbasses for weeks, chasing gophers, setting pillowy, lil’ pussy traps. All you’re doing is wasting time while your food dies. And then you die. Why’re you killing yourself when there’s an easy answer right in front’a ya?” he said. His voice was a nasally assault, with the timbre of a chain saw.

  “We’re not shooting them,” Will said as he dusted himself off.

  Bertie cackled again. “That’s the rat in you talking, kid. One disease carrier sympathizing with another. Hey, one-eye, you sure little brother here is not still infected? ’Cause it sounds like his brain still is.”

  Will started walking toward Bertie’s cell. David moved to stop him.

  “Let it go,” David told his brother.

  “You want me to come in there with a pickax again, old man?” Will said. “Maybe I should just finish the job.”

  “You don’t got it in you, kid. None of you bleeding hearts do. That’s why you’re up on this hill, all scared and waiting. You know what’s gotta happen.”

  “Oh, yeah, asshole? What’s that?”

  “You’re sitting on a balloon full of poison! How long till it pops? You gotta burn ’em. Roast ’em. Put a bullet through every one of their heads, you pussies. You know that’s the only way. You’re just too blind to see it.”

  David patted Will on the back.

  “Let’s go,” he said. It took a little tug, but he got Will to walk away from the wall.

  “You’re gonna kill us all,” Bertie said to their backs.

  David could feel the tension in Will’s back, the urge to turn, but he kept walking.

  “Ya hear me?” Bertie shouted.

  “We did a heck of a job on that fence,” David said to drown Bertie out.

  Will looked up at the farm wall and the razor-wire-lined chain-link fence that gleamed atop it. Three crows sat along the fence not far from the front gate. The gate doors, which were welded patchworks of rusted sheet metal, wavy aluminum siding, and a few road signs, looked more like folk art, but they were as high as a castle gate.

  “You mean I did a heck of a job,” Will said. “All you did was ‘supervise.’ ”

  “Somebody’s gotta be the brains in this family,” David said. He laughed and tapped his eye patch. “Besides, I’m handicapped.”

  “Yeah, when it’s handy.”

  David laughed again. The three crows flew from their perch, making the razor wire tremble at their takeoff. The guard on the wall, Mr. Miller, a bald man in green sweatpants, who had been David’s music teacher in elementary school, turned to face the farm. He mumbled in a panic, then called out to the others, “Uh, someone’s coming!”

  Bertie didn’t miss a beat from his cage. “They’re coming for me! I told ya, didn’t I? Ya bastards. Didn’t I say? They’re coming for me!”

  Will shared a nervous look with David.

  There was a rush to the wall from all over the farm. Parents wove through the labyrinth of single-lane paths that cut around the crops and gardens. Those closest to the wall were quick to get up it, with weapons ready. Jason Howard was already at Mr. Miller’s side. He climbed to the metal bridge that passed over the gate and was also a checkpoint for interaction with anyone outside. Sam’s dad began to talk to someone unseen below, on the other side of the wall.

  David and Will passed the hog pen, and David snatched up a shovel that was leaning against the fence. He choked up tight on the tool, not quite sure what he was ready for, but ready nonetheless. Sam’s dad turned back to face the farm.

  “Open the gate.”

  David loosened up on the shovel. The parents nearest the gate unfastened the chain that was looped through its giant iron handles. They pulled the doors open. A black minivan idled in the drive. Its paint was flecked with white dings, and an ugly smash had pushed the custom grille guard up on one side, giving it a crooked smile. Five wide metal slats ran across the windshield and side windows like protective venetian blinds.

  With a rev, the van cruised in. The parents shut the door behind it. The van stopped, the driver-side door swung open, and a giant figure stepped out. The van seemed to sigh at the relief of no longer carrying its tremendous driver. The guy lifted a thick hand and gave David and Will a wave.

  “Is that …?” Will said.

  Gonzalo. The ax-wielding Loner who could scare a Varsity with a sneer. He was even bigger than he used to be. He towered over the van, his shoulders level with its roof. David hadn’t seen him in months. His hair was still a frizzy mop that hid his face, but it was shorter. He’d cut off the white.

  David stabbed the shovel into the ground, and the brothers hurried to their old friend.

  “Big man! Where you been?” David said.

  “Up north,” Gonzalo said.

  “Did you find her?” David said.

  Gonzalo shook his head, jutting his jaw in disappointment.

  “Find who?” Will said. “Hold on, you two have seen each other since McKinley?”

  It was a long story, and from a period that David had been avoiding telling Will about. A memory he wanted to forget. After he’d broken out of McKinley and escaped the hunters, he’d decided to head east, away from the Rockies, hoping that if he crossed the state line, he might be back in civilization again, and maybe there he could find someone sane who could help him help McKinley. Instead, what he found was more danger and more starvation.

  After three weeks, he was living under a railroad bridge with a broken ankle, surviving on fish from a polluted stream and hiding out from a group of infected whom he’d watched torture and kill a hunter. He’d thought of Lucy nearly constantly and wished she were there to nurture and encourage him. He’d been so sure he’d die out there but Gonzalo had found him and taken him away. Gonzalo had been spending his time scouring the infected zone by himself, searching for his girlfriend, Sasha. He told David about what the parents were doing, and helped him get back to the school so he could join the effort.

  That was the last time he’d talked to Gonzalo. Seeing him again, now, with Will, was a surprise treat, especially on a campus populated by fiftysomethings.

  The three
of them sat at a circular beige table under the blue dining tent. Sam’s dad had just left them after inquiring about what Gonzalo had seen outside. He’d told Sam’s dad “nothing much” but that wasn’t what he was telling them now.

  “There’s a cure,” Gonzalo said. He was chewing on a piece of venison jerky from the farm stock.

  “What?” Will said. He gaped at Gonzalo. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  Gonzalo shrugged. “Figured you’d want to know first. You can tell who needs to know.”

  “So …,” David said. “They’re handing this cure out or what?”

  “I don’t know the details, man. All I know is that people are saying that there is one. I was up in Nebraska. Tracked Sasha there, only it wasn’t her. Dead ringer, though.”

  The corners of Gonzalo’s mouth dipped. It was the only hint of disappointment he let on.

  “This girl and the crew she was with were headed to Minnesota. Some famous research place there. A hospital or something in Rochester. They heard they had a cure for the virus—”

  “They heard,” David clarified.

  Gonzalo finished his jerky and wiped his massive hands. “Yeah, heard. But it sounds pretty legit to me.”

  “You didn’t go see for yourself?” Will said.

  Gonzalo shook his head. “My girl’s still out there, Willie. I gotta backtrack my trail until I catch her scent again. When I find her, then we’ll go for the cure.”

  The big guy cleared his throat. David could have sworn he heard his voice crack with emotion.

  “But nothing’s distracting me till she’s with me again. That’s all I care about. David knows what I’m talking about.”

  Will gave David a piercing look. His face was tensed by a hint of that old jealousy David remembered from when Lucy had been in their everyday life. It had nearly torn them apart back in McKinley. And David wasn’t about to let that happen again. Since Will had gotten out, things between David and his brother had been better than they’d ever been. The last thing he wanted was for some drivel he’d said about Lucy after his breakdown in the infected zone to ruin things. He didn’t even know if he still felt that way about Lucy anymore, anyway.