Quarantine: The Saints q-2

by Lex Thomas

  The doors swung inward. A Slut with six paper clip wire hoops piercing one nostril peered out at Will. He edged his foot forward to block the door from being slammed shut in his face. It never came to that. The Slut grabbed Will by the sweatshirt just below his neck and yanked him in. Before he knew it, more hands were on him, and they were moving him fast. They dragged him into the dining hall and threw him forward.

  Will stumbled and he came to a stop behind Violent, who was screaming at someone.

  “Lips, I told you to—”

  “Boss!” one of the Sluts that threw Will said. Violent turned and looked down at Will.

  “You,” she said. Her lip curled and the corners of her mouth sunk.

  “Yeah, me.”

  “This is your fault.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Not maybe! Yes. What is it with you, huh? Why are you such a shit magnet?”

  Will tried to stop his temper from flaring, but her words had already kicked the furnace door open.

  “Why are you such a towering bitch? You can act like this is my fault, but you’re the one that’s got her walking around school like she’s bulletproof—”

  Violent grabbed his hood, spun him round, and slammed him into a table. She was surprisingly strong. He felt something sharp pricking through the crotch of his jeans.

  “Whoa, whoa!” he said, throwing his hands up. He looked down to the knife pressing into him. “Slow down.”

  “She’s too good for you, you little bug!” Her pupils shook like the epicenters of micro-earthquakes.

  It was a weird thing; despite the knife at his crotch, Will felt he could trust her.

  “You love her, don’t you?” he said.

  “I’ve never loved anyone.”

  Will smiled. “Liar.”

  He thought he saw a smile begin to arc her mouth upward just before she bared her teeth and jabbed him in the Adam’s apple with her fingers. Will couldn’t breath. He hacked and coughed, and his throat ground against itself like it was full of pumice grit.

  Violent withdrew her knife. Will coughed so hard he felt the blood swell in his head. He saw spark clouds all across his vision.

  “I should hand you over to Gates right now!” Violent said.

  Will sucked in a desperate breath, and then another, and the cough subsided. He looked at Violent with snot dripping from his nose and tears in his eyes.

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking.”

  37

  SAM WAS SO CLOSE. ESCAPE WAS ONLY A FEW minutes away. He could feel his own body heat in the air around him. Sweat stung his eyes, and slicked his whole body. His right arm was pressed against the metal wall, and it was cool. Three horizontal slashes of light from the locker vent striped his face.

  He spied the hall. A herd of Freaks had just passed by, whining, posing, snarling at imaginary enemies, dressed like they’d raided a party store at Halloween. He’d barely gotten the locker door closed before these Freaks came moping around the corner.

  There was a time when the idea of hiding from those loser Freaks like a monumental pussy would have been something he and Anthony or Dixon or whoever would have had a good laugh about. It was Sam’s reality now, and his friends had all turned on him. They despised him like the rest of the school. When he was the Saints’ prisoner, all Sam had wanted was revenge. But now, he was free and he didn’t give a shit about any of them, what they thought, what they’d done to him, any of it. It was the greatest relief he’d ever felt in his life, and it was all because his father loved him. Sam had been losing for months, unequivocally losing, and his father still loved him. It was a feeling like nothing he’d ever known. For the first time, he was looking forward to life on the outside.

  Sam pressed his ear hard against the locker vents. The Freaks were gone. There hadn’t been any sound for the last two minutes. He opened the locker door and stepped out into the dusty, cooler air. He clutched a heavy wrench to his chest and limped on, down the hall. He’d sprained his knee running in the hall, after he’d escaped the quad, and the pain had only gotten worse since then. He must have torn a muscle too. Only two short hallways and he’d be in the quad. Sam scanned every locker handle as he went, always aware of where the next locker without a lock on it was, always ready. Jumping locker to locker was how he’d made it this far, undiscovered. He’d been hiding in the ruins since he got away from Gates, waiting for the frenzy over him to die down.

  Sam heard something around the next corner. Footsteps. He moved to the nearest locker and gripped the shiny metal handle. Sam opened the locker. A boy with shoulder-length black and orange hair, blue lips, gray skin, and slit wrists crusted over with blood, fell out of the locker. A dead Geek. He left it. There was no time. He went two lockers down to the next one without a lock. He tore it open. It was empty. He jumped in and pulled the door shut.

  Even if it was a ninety pound Nerd girl with a heart of gold who was about to walk around the corner, Sam didn’t trust that she wouldn’t try to stab him with something, or at least scream at the top of her lungs so that other, bigger people, could come and stomp him to death. He was too close to happiness to take any chances. He choked up on the wrench in his hand and stayed perfectly still until the footsteps faded away.

  Around the next corner it was only one short hallway to the quad. Twenty feet. He could feel his body charging up. The pain in his knee faded. He knew this feeling, from game nights. It was time for Sam to run the ball all the way to the end zone. This was the last second, winning play, the ultimate one he and his dad would talk about for decades to come. He’d get to the quad, he’d call for his father under the cover of night. He’d be pulled out. They’d get out of Colorado. They could start over.

  Sam stepped out with all his weight on his good leg. Something big crunched under his foot, the size of a two-liter bottle. It squirmed. Sam looked down to see an animal under his shoe, its head flat on the cold linoleum and its body bent up like a lady’s high heel shoe, hind legs slipping messily. It looked like a piglet, maybe a couple weeks old.

  “Yuh—” Sam said in a panic.

  He lifted his leg up and stumbled away. The piglet made no noise, other than the chaotic scratching of its little hooves on the floor. It panted but didn’t scream, it couldn’t. Sam had crushed its spine under his foot, and it was in the last throes of panicky death. The little thing fought to hold on. Even in its small newly complete brain, it seemed to know that this was too soon.

  “I’m—”

  Sorry, he was going to say. But before he could, Sam heard a furious gallop behind him. He turned, but not fast enough. Something rammed his legs. He felt a pop in his knee. He was thrown back, away from the piglet. The wrench flew from his hand. He hit the floor and slid into a row of lockers, his head crunching into the thin metal baseboard.

  Sam groaned at impact. He pushed up to face his attacker. He didn’t know what he thought he’d see, but what he hadn’t expected was another pig. A big one. A burly beast, all stomach and shoulders, with black shining hooves and jutting, bottom-row tusks on which its rubbery top lip rested like a drape. Gray-black teats swung from its belly with every nudge it gave to the dying piglet. It was the mother, that much was clear. Five other little piglets poked their snouts out from the dark of a neighboring classroom. They shuffled and pushed against each other to see what their mother was doing, but they never ventured into the hall.

  Sam slowly pulled himself up to sitting. The pain in his knee was torturous. He watched as the crushed piglet’s little hooves gave one last scrape against the floor. The mama pig had her nose buried under the piglet’s belly, trying to lift it up, trying to make it move again.

  He scanned the hall in search of the wrench. Too far. Sam pressed his palms to the floor and pushed through the pain to scramble to standing.

  The mama pig gave one last blast of hot breath from her nostrils, a final pat on the piglet’s head to say good-bye. Then, the mama pig swung her thick muscled neck to point her head at him. She
locked one dark marble eye on Sam.

  He limped to the next corner. It was almost a hop. He was unable to put any weight on his knee. At the end of the short hall, through the half-open double doors, Sam could see blue moonlight shining into the quad. His father was only seconds away. So were the clacks of pig hooves behind him. He didn’t want to look, but he should have. Maybe then, he could have dodged the attack.

  The pig hit him squarely in his bad knee again. She knew. His leg buckled. He collapsed like a beach chair, and fell face forward onto the floor. Hooves dug into the small of his back as the pig mounted him. Sam twisted under the pig. He would find her eyes. He’d dig his thumbs into the oversized greasy black olives and pop them out.

  The pig slipped off Sam. He flipped onto his back with his hands tense, thumbs poised to stab. But the pig was faster. Her long jaws clamped down on the soft meat of Sam’s throat. She tore it away. His neck was a hole. The tubes of his throat spilled out. Sam couldn’t breathe. Blood in his lungs. The beast bit at the wound, clamping down again and tearing more of him away.

  Sam didn’t understand. His hands pawed at the animal’s hefty chub, doing none of the damage he’d planned to impose. This was wrong. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. His mind was flooded with regrets. All the while, the pig dug into him, shaking him like a pillow. His body became warmer, more numb. She threw him down. His cheek pressed against the cold linoleum. As his vision blurred, the whitish blue light of the quad became a richer blue, then black.

  He wanted to go home.

  She stood there above him, huffing through her shotgun-barrel nostrils. Sam’s blood dripped from the coarse hairs on her chin, and it was painted all around her mouth.

  The pig turned away from her kill and trotted back to the den where her babies were waiting for her. They would be hungry.

  38

  LUCY LAY ON A GURNEY IN THE COMMONS, the same giant room where she’d fought the Skaters alongside the Loners and Will had broken all their boards. It was where she’d first drawn blood in a battle. That seemed like ages ago.

  There was no fighting to be done now, her wrists were duct-taped to the metal pipes on the gurney’s sides. She strained against them, but she couldn’t slip her hands out. It was almost time for the exchange. She watched the hallway that eventually led to the cafeteria, where the Sluts would be coming from. Saints lurked in the shadows just outside the pools of orange light that polka-dotted the vast floor of the commons. Wide concrete columns dominated the space.

  Gates was playing golf. He stood ten feet from her. There was a tipped-over bucket at his feet, and a pool of golf balls was spread over the floor around him. She watched him bend down and place a golf ball on the toe of an old sneaker, which he’d been using as a tee. He gripped his club, a big titanium driver, and took a heavy swing. The ball shot off the shoe and ricocheted off the concrete columns, and the hard floor, pingponging around the room. Tack-a-tack-tack! Saints ducked to avoid getting hit by the speeding ball. Gates teed up another and let it fly. She flinched when the ball cracked off the concrete column next to her head.

  She saw a squat, round-faced Saint getting pushed toward Gates by the other Saints. “Okay, okay,” he said. The round-faced boy approached Gates with caution.

  “Hey… um, Gates?”

  Gated took another big swing and hit the shoe this time. The shoe twirled into the air. Gates threw his club to the floor. “Boring!”

  “Uh,” the round-faced boy said.

  “What is it, Fowler?”

  He turned and looked at Fowler and his red eye fluttered. There was a little glob of yellowish gunk on the bottom lid, some sort of puss, that would jump and stretch across his eye with every blink.

  “We were wondering. Why is it so important we get Will back again?”

  “I told you, he knows where Sam is.”

  Fowler didn’t look convinced.

  “Some of us think we should just be searching for Sam.”

  “Who’s some of us?” Gates said, insulted. “How many times have I saved all of your lives? How many times have we been done for, and I’ve been the one to lead us all out of it?”

  “A lot of times, man.”

  “That’s right. And I’ll lead us out of this one. You have to trust me. Haven’t I earned that?”

  The look on this boy Fowler’s face said it all. He was frightened of his leader. Gates was losing his gang.

  “Will doesn’t know where Sam is. He’s lying to you,” Lucy said to Fowler and the others.

  Gates turned to her, enraged. She shouldn’t have said it. What had she been thinking? She was a sitting duck. He stomped toward her, his hands in tensed into claws.

  “Hey, Eyedrops!”

  Gates stopped in his tracks and jerked his eyes toward the hallway.

  It was Violent. And all the Sluts. Sixty-three of them. They leaned against columns with smirks, or took a seat on the floor, picking their teeth with their blades. They glared at the forty-odd Saints with menace.

  “I got something for you,” Violent said.

  Will stepped out from behind the red hair and the knives in an oversized gray sweatshirt. He was one white head of hair in a sea of red.

  Lucy’s heart leapt.

  “Oh my God!” Gates shouted. He was covering his open mouth with his hand. His bugged-out eyes quivered as they looked at Will. It turned Lucy’s stomach that Gates’s response to seeing Will seemed to match the same kind of emotion and excitement that Lucy felt inside.

  “I believe that redhead there belongs to me,” Violent said.

  “Send him over first,” Gates said, still staring at Will in wonder.

  Violent walked beside Will as he crossed the gap between the gangs. She held her knife in her hand; its entire handle had been dipped in red nail polish. Will looked scared, but he gave Lucy a little nod as he walked. As they got closer, Violent broke away from Will and came to stand next to Lucy’s gurney.

  “What’s the plan?” Lucy whispered to Violent as Will continued his walk toward an emotional Gates. Will’s oversized gray sweatshirt made him look like a kid in a grown-up’s clothes.

  “No plan,” Violent whispered back as she cut Lucy loose. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait, what do you mean? How is Will getting to get out of this?” Lucy said.

  “Pretty sure this is as far as he’s thought things through.”

  Colton walked toward Gates. He wore a big gray sweatshirt that was too big for him. Gates was still in shock. He hadn’t expected his brother to walk out from the Sluts. He’d been expecting someone else, or something else, but he couldn’t remember what it was. It didn’t matter now. Colton had returned.

  Every step Colton took toward him brought Gates closer to joyful tears. Colton looked healthy. His brown hair was combed neatly to the side, as always. He walked stiffly though, and he wasn’t smiling. He still wore those same damn black sunglasses, and Gates wanted him to take them off now more than ever. He needed to look into Colton’s eyes and know what he was feeling. He needed to connect with him.

  Gates opened his arms wide, and wrapped Colton in a warm hug. Colton’s arms stayed down. Gates never wanted to let go again. The tears began to squeeze out of his eyes. The pain of not having his little brother in his life was transforming by the millisecond into gratitude. He didn’t care how this was happening, he didn’t need an explanation, they were together again. All the irrational guilt he had felt, that it was somehow his fault that Colton had tried to turn himself in, that maybe he had said something wrong, or had taken Colton for granted, that all evaporated.

  Colton had never died. He hadn’t been shot by a soldier. That was just Gates’s mind playing tricks on him. His brother was alive and well and everything was fine. Gates wasn’t to blame for anything.

  “Guys, get him his presents! What are you waiting for?” Gates said, while still squeezing his brother.

  Behind him, the Saints jumped to his orders, dragging out old beaten boxes from the sha
dows, full of toys, and sports equipment, and DVDs.

  Gates sensed movement to his left. He looked up from his hug and saw Lucy rushing up to him with Violent running after her. Lucy held a knife with a red handle, and before he realized what was happening, she plunged the blade into his side, just under his ribs. The pain made his legs buckle and his hands instinctively went to the wound. He fell on to his side on the floor, and looked at the red knife handle sticking out of his waist like a flagpole. Lucy pulled Colton away.

  Saints ran past Gates, going after Lucy, which made the Sluts charge the Saints. A gang battle erupted through the commons.

  Gates grasped the glossy red handle of the knife, and pulled the bloody blade out of his body, inch by excruciating inch. He was gagging from the pain by the time he got it all the way out, and let it clang down onto the floor. Thick blood came belching up out of the hole in his side.

  Gates clutched his side, and grunted through the pain to stand up. He frantically scanned the sea of swinging weapons in search of Colton. He saw knives everywhere. He saw Sluts slicing at eyes and necks. He saw them kicking crotches. He saw a Slut eat a rifle butt to the face. He saw Tiffy swing a croquet mallet into a Slut’s stomach. He saw Lark on the floor shrieking over her dislocated jaw. He saw all that, but he couldn’t see Colton anywhere.

  He had finally gotten his brother back. The only thing that mattered was Colton. And Lucy had taken him away again. He couldn’t breathe.

  “Don’t take him from me!” Gates shrieked at the top of his lungs. He kept looking everywhere. “GIVE HIM BACK!”

  “Shut up, rich boy,” Violent said. She came running out of the fray, and tackled Gates to the ground. His stab wound exploded with pain. She attacked him with fists and fingernails. Gates clamped his hands around the bitch’s neck, and saw her startled eyes blast wide open. He crushed down on her throat with all his strength.

  Will and Lucy ran out of the commons, and down two halls. The further they ran, the more the battle sounds faded. Will pulled her into an empty classroom and shut the door. They clung to each other. She hugged him with all her strength. He was alive, and away from the grips of that psychopath. They separated.