Quarantine: The Saints q-2

by Lex Thomas

  From out of his inside jacket pocket, the big one pulled a short section of broom handle wood, with a four-inch screw driven through the center of it, like a basic corkscrew for wine bottles. He closed his fist over the broom handle part, and the long gold screw stuck out from between his fingers.

  You could generally gauge how scared you should be of someone in McKinley by what kind of weapon they brandished. Knives and baseball bats were normal, but Will didn’t want anything to do with a dude who carried a punching spike.

  They came at him. Will jumped out the window.

  Right after his heels hit the ground, his knees hit his chin. His teeth clapped together, he fell on his side. He got to his feet and ran, stumbling and weaving, with a sore chin and aching teeth, still entirely disoriented from his fall. But he’d gotten away with it. The honey was his, and he could already feel his stomach churning through what he’d eaten.

  A loud thump behind him. Will looked back. The big one was getting up and dusting his suit off. He saw the girl land on the ground, while the little guy in his boxers jumped from the second-floor window.

  “Kill me now,” Will said to himself.

  He bolted into the nearest hallway and ran all the way to the front foyer, honey in hand. Will could hear their footsteps closing in on him, and he was getting out of breath. He ran through the front foyer’s steel graduation doors, to hide in the white room and hope the burnouts ran past. The white room was glaringly bright, as before, and it was empty except for shiny, plump, black trash bags piled up by the walls. He turned to face the doors and walked backward through the white room, watching the steel graduation doors, and praying that no one came through.

  The three burnouts entered. The big one in the dead teacher’s suit was coughing, with veins puffing out from his neck and forehead. He glared at Will. The little one had lost one of his leather gloves and the skin of his hand was badly burned. He was laughing like a panting dog. The girl with the gray dreads in her face held a permanent marker in her hand, and she had the uncapped marker stuck up her nose. Her nostrils were stained with blue. She held her other nostril closed with her finger and took long, slow inhales of the marker fumes. He could see one of her eyes. It was green, but it was so dilated that it was mostly black.

  “Last chance,” the big one said. “Honey. Now.”

  His teeth were brown. He brandished his punching spike in his fist, and the gold-plated screw gleamed in the stark light. The girl began to dance with herself, as if no one else was there. The little one took off his combination lock necklace. He let the heavy chain hang at his hip, in his gloved hand.

  Will looked at his honey. He hesitated. The big one walked toward him and cocked his spiked fist back.

  SSHTUHH

  Will felt a door slide open behind him. He ran through the open doorway without looking and collided with a barrel-chested Saint who was trying to exit. Will saw a red button on the wall by the door and he smashed his palm onto it.

  “No, wait,” the Saint said from behind him.

  The big burnout was dashing toward Will, but the metal door slid out of the wall and slammed shut between them. Will heard the dull thump of the burnout’s fist hitting the door and a muffled whelp of pain afterward.

  Adrenaline buzzed through Will’s body. He turned to the Saint, to thank him for saving his life. The Saint vomited all down the front of Will’s shirt.

  14

  “WHY’D YOU CLOSE THE DOOR?”

  “Why’d you throw up on me?!” Will said. He held his puke-soaked T-shirt away from his body with pinched fingers.

  “Oh, shit, look at you.”

  The Saint wiped the vomit off his mouth. He was a bleary-eyed guy with a moon face, sitting on his ass in the middle of the hall. “Party foul. My bad, dude. I’m so fucked up right now.”

  “Are you?” Will said, with maximum sarcasm.

  The hallway was dim and its shadows were deep. The burnouts thumped on the metal door from the other side.

  “I gotta get you a new shirt,” the Saint said. He crawled on his hands and knees into one of the open containment cells that lined the hall. Half a minute later, he came stumbling back out of the cell on his feet, with a yellow shirt over his shoulder, a towel in one hand, and a bottle of water in the other. He tried to pour the water on the towel, but he missed and most of it splattered on the floor. Will managed to wriggle out of his soiled shirt. He took the towel and water and wiped the puke moisture off his body.

  “Thanks,” Will said.

  “Here, take this.” The kid held up the bright yellow shirt. It was a short-sleeve, collared, Izod golf shirt. Will pulled it on. It was brand-new. Fabric this clean and fresh and unblemished didn’t exist in McKinley, and wearing it now made Will feel like it was the first day of school.

  “Lemme getchoo a drink,” the Saint slurred. “Come on.”

  The Saint weaved down the hall, away from Will, clearly drunk. Will didn’t know what he was walking into, but it had to be better than the honey-hungry burnouts waiting for Will in the white room.

  “Yeah, all right,” Will said.

  He caught up with the Saint.

  “I’m so sorry, dude. Name’s Fowler,” the guy said. They shook hands.

  “Will.”

  As Fowler led him through the hallway of containment cells, and through the room with the airtight doors, Will heard the sound of people laughing. Lots of people. He heard sing-alongs. Happy shouts. Will followed him into the room where the ruined school bus protruded from the wall of rubble. The giant slabs of concrete had been wrestled away from the bus and now you could clearly see the front cab of the bus extending out from the wreckage of the wall. The bus’s yellow metal was bent and battered, the windshield was smashed out, the grille was crumpled. The front left wheel had come completely off so the whole thing tilted at an odd angle. Saints sat on the bent hood of the bus, joking with each other and drinking from disposable plastic cups.

  “Check this out,” Fowler said.

  Fowler led Will to the bus, to the misshapen hole that used to be the door. They went through the bent hole and up the three stairs into the bus. It was lit only by two camping lanterns. The inside was busy with activity. Saints were tearing out the seats and passing them up front to be removed entirely.

  “It’s being turned into Gates’s room,” Fowler said.

  Fowler led Will further in, past the Saints at work, to the back of the bus, where the lantern light barely reached. Every window was blacked out. Will clicked on his phone and shined its light to see why. On the other side of the glass was gray cement. He swung the phone around to see that it was true for every window.

  “Whoa,” Will said. “Did the parents do this?”

  Fowler nodded. “Yep. It was like this when we finally got inside. They sealed the whole thing in cement. Guess they mean business.”

  “Guess so,” Will said, marveling at it all.

  “You have any cigarettes?” Fowler said.

  “Cigarettes? Are you serious?”

  “Figured it was worth asking. I didn’t know if you had them here or not. I’m dying for one, Dill.”

  “Will.”

  “I said Will, man. Pull it together.”

  Fowler slapped Will in the chest and led him back out of the bus. They went to the room that was the source of most of the noise in the processing facility, the soldiers’ mess hall.

  It was a party. Most of the Saints were packed into this large room, plastic cups in hand. Rows of long metal tables dominated the space and Saints lounged atop them. There was slurred speech, and eyelids at half mast all around Will. So many drunk people, telling each other how much they loved each other, and thinking things were funnier than they were. A short Saint boy ran down the length of one of the long metal tables, and his friends chased him. Their footfalls sounded like someone punching a steel drum. The kids leapt from table to table, and the Saints who sat at those tables would yell in protest but almost immediately return to their s
loppy conversations and be laughing moments later.

  “Get this guy a drink!” Fowler said to the room.

  A cute Saint girl in a sweater and tights sauntered up to Will with a bottle of vodka in her hand. She had dark eyes and short, white, wispy hair, like a baby chick. She smiled and tilted the bottle toward his lips.

  “Open wide,” she said.

  Will parted his lips and let her pour vodka into his mouth. She winked at him and continued on her way, sharing her bottle with others.

  “Where did this vodka come from?” Will said.

  “Tiffy found two crates in a locked closet off the soldiers’ infirmary,” Fowler said.

  “Man, what a score,” Will said. His bottle of honey didn’t seem so impressive anymore.

  “Hey, let me introduce you around.”

  Fowler pulled Will over to a group of people standing in a circle. “This is Beaumont, Robert, Preston, Beatrice, Matt, Chauncey, Babs, Stewart, Dianne, and Fisk. Everybody, this is… What was your name again, man?”

  “Will.”

  “Right. Everybody, this is Will.”

  “Out of the way!” someone screamed from behind Will.

  He turned to see Gates, on all fours, atop a moving tower of three, precariously stacked, hospital gurneys. Two other Saints pushed the wobbling stack of gurneys, running at a full clip.

  “Faster!” Gates yelled. “Faster!”

  The Saints smiled like fools as they poured on the speed, and the unstable gurney-tower sped into the crowded mess hall. Gates stood and spread his arms wide, with a bottle of vodka in one hand, and his long hair flapping behind him.

  “I am the party God. Hear my—oh shit!”

  The gurney tower tipped, and came crashing down. Gates flew over the heads of some Saints sitting at one of the metal tables, and slammed to the floor where Will couldn’t see.

  Five seconds later, he popped up to his feet, grinning madly. He tried to take a swig off his vodka bottle, only to discover that he held only the bottle’s neck and the rest of it had shattered in the fall. He laughed, and held his fists over his head in victory anyway. The crowd went nuts for it. Best party entrance Will had ever seen. Of course, he’d never gotten the chance to go to a real high school party before the quarantine. In a way, this was his first.

  “That was insane!” Fowler shouted.

  Gates looked over at Fowler, still riding the high of his stunt, and his clear eye locked onto Will. His other eye was shut.

  “I know this guy,” Gates said, smiling. He walked over. “How are you here?”

  “I puked on him so I invited him to the party,” Fowler said.

  Gates busted up, laughing. “Aw, shit. I wasn’t expecting that. Well, that’s the price of admission, I guess. What do you say, Will, was it worth it?”

  “Believe it or not, the puke was one of the better parts of my day.”

  “Ha-ha, nice. Well, you’re here now,” Gates said, finally opening his other eye. It was still red. “Welcome to our party.”

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “We found vodka.”

  “That’s it?”

  “You need more of a reason than that?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Come sit with us.”

  Will followed Gates and the others to a nearby metal table and they all sat down. Will couldn’t stop looking at his red eye. A pale boy in a purple Patagonia fleece came running up to Gates.

  “You are a madman, I can’t believe you just did that!” the boy said.

  “It was fun,” Gates said.

  “Fuckin’ maniac, this guy,” the boy said.

  “We got a lot of ’em around here,” Will said.

  “Shit, I’m no maniac,” Gates said. “I’m a regular guy.”

  “Liar!” a smiling Saint girl with a missing pinkie finger said. “Gates, you are a lunatic, and you know it. You filled a water gun with your own blood to spray on soldiers to see if they would die.”

  “That was an experiment!” Gates said, clearly enjoying the attention. “Hey, if that’d worked we could have made poisoned arrows and all sorts of stuff. How sweet would that’a been?”

  Kids nodded and laughed. Evidently, it would’ve been sweet.

  “Remember the time you talked those soldiers out of searching the barn we were hiding in?” a curvy girl in long underwear said. She turned and spoke directly to Will. “He had his hair dyed brown at the time, right, and when he sees them coming he puts on this old haz-mat suit we found, then goes out there and feeds these soldiers a line of bs about him being some college kid—”

  “Randall Beckwith,” Gates said, and clapped. “I went to Princeton!”

  The girl nodded. “Right, he said he was the son of the man who owned the farm, who said he flunked out and was back home to tend to things—”

  “While I went to community college,” Gates interrupted again. “That was my favorite part. Randall was a real fuck-up.”

  “So, the whole time he’s talking to him, he’s trying to keep his back to them, ’cause the ass of the haz-mat suit was ripped out. I mean, if they saw that, the jig was up.”

  “Did they?” Will said, cracking a smile.

  The girl shook her head. “He talked to those guys for twenty minutes, never broke a sweat! One of the zillion times this guy saved our lives.”

  “That’s nothing,” a boy with a bottle of vodka duct-taped to his hand said. “I’ll take it back further than that. What about at St. Patrick’s?” The Saints all around the table began to smile and lean forward at the mention of their old school. “Your parents made you get braces—”

  Everyone started to laugh. Gates laughed and nodded his head like he was used to hearing about this. Another girl chimed in, “He hated those braces.”

  The boy pointed at Gates. “Hate is not a strong enough word! You reviled them.”

  “Ooo, what’s up, Vocab!” someone said.

  The boy laughed. “Any sane human being woulda complained about them, maybe searched out alternatives to braces on the Internet. This guy tore his braces off with pliers, and he wants to say he’s not a maniac? Fuck you, dude!”

  The rest of the Saints burst with laughter. Gates slammed his fist down on the table repeatedly, laughing so hard he nearly fell off the bench. “I did do that,” he said.

  Tearing off your own braces was one of the most badass things Will had ever heard.

  “How bad did that hurt?” Will said.

  Gates looked at him with tears in the corners of his eyes, still red in the face from laughing. “To tell you the truth, I was on so much Ecstasy at the time, and I was doing it in a hot tub, so that part of my body was feeling really good, and the mix of the two feelings… didn’t feel that bad.”

  “That’s pretty weird, man,” Will said. “I heard you partied hard, but that’s out there.”

  As soon as Will said it, he regretted it. Had he just insulted his host? He didn’t even mean anything bad by it. In truth, he was more in awe.

  “I guess it is,” Gates said with a chuckle. “But it was a once-in-a-lifetime situation, a new experience. Like getting trapped in this place. I don’t know what it means yet, or what we can do about it, but it’s new, it’s different, and it’s definitely not at all what we thought it would be—”

  “You really thought we had it made in here?” Will said, recalling Gates’ story the day the parents had sealed them back in.

  “Totally. We thought it was like summer camp here, and you all were chilling in a safe, clean school. Then, we get here and it’s like one big battlefield, you guys all hate each other, the whole place is trashed! I mean, what the hell happened, how did it get like this?”

  The other Saints in the room halted their conversations and looked over at Will. For a moment he didn’t know what to say, it had been bad for so long. He had a stab of doubt that maybe it was their own fault that things had gotten so bad in McKinley, like maybe if St. Patrick’s Academy had been quarantined, they all wo
uld have gotten along fine, and filled their time with happy parties like this one. The Saints were still staring, and waiting for Will to speak.

  He started at the beginning. He told them about the first day of school. He told them about David. He told them about the seniors losing their minds before the graduations started. He told them about Danny Liner and how Sam had murdered him in front of the whole school with a spike to the neck. He told them how the other gangs came quickly after Sam formed Varsity, just to have a shot in the drops.

  The more he talked, the more the Saints from other tables drifted over, until they all crowded around his table, listening. Will felt like a fireman visiting a kindergarten class. One by one, they asked him everything about life in the school: what a Geek show was, what the deal was with Jackal, what was in the ruins, what Varsity and the Pretty Ones’ pool was like, how the market worked. No matter how many questions he answered, they had more. He grew to like the Saints across their Q&A. They were normal kids who’d been through hell, just like McKinley kids had. And they were scared about their new life here. That was something Will could relate to.

  “Can I ask you a question? It might be a not that cool thing to ask,” Will said to Gates, once the Q&A had died down.

  “I bet I can take it.”

  “What’s going on there with your eye?”

  Gates sighed. “I don’t know. Been like this for months. It stings all the time.”

  “Huh,” Will said. “That blows.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  Saints at the table next to them stood on the metal benches, and did shots of vodka together.

  “Do you guys not know how valuable that vodka is?” Will said to Gates. “You could have traded those bottles for anything in the market.”

  “We’d rather drink it.”

  “Yeah, but, all of it in one night? You could have stretched it out for a few months.”