Trace wakes everyone up.
He’s running circles around the room, his sneakers slapping against the floor. It’s a sound that gets steadily more annoying the longer my eyes are open because of it.
Rhys groans and says what we’re all thinking.
“Jesus. I’m trying to fucking sleep here, Trace.”
“Before all this shit happened,” Trace says, breathless as he laps us, “I’d wake up by six and do five miles. I’m not stopping for you, Moreno.”
“The school has a gym,” Cary points out.
“Blow me, you stupid fuck.”
“You kiss your mother with that—”
It comes out of Cary’s mouth automatically. One of those stupid throw-away lines you just say that you’ve probably said before except this is not a stupid throw-away line anymore.
Trace stops running.
I can’t deal with them fighting so I close my eyes and go back to sleep. The next time I wake up, no one has moved except Trace isn’t running anymore. He sits next to Grace on her mat while she fiddles with her phone.
“My battery’s dead,” she says.
“Doesn’t make a difference,” Trace says. “I checked the landlines in here. They’re out. There’s no more emergency message on them. Lasted nine days, though, so I guess that’s something.”
I close my eyes and go back to sleep. The next time I wake up, it’s breakfast. Rice cakes smothered in jam, canned peaches. I stay awake this time but I’m not sure why.
“Zombies,” Harrison says.
“Shut the fuck up,” Trace tells him.
Rhys laughs. It’s a sharp, unpleasant sound at first and then he really starts to laugh. He covers his face with his hands, his shoulders shaking, while we stare at him.
“Sorry.” He wipes at his eyes. “Just—sorry.”
“Do you think it’s the government?” Harrison asks, picking at his mat. “And that it’s just local? Like … they did this to us?”
“I think they’d have bombed the shit out of us by now if that was the case,” Cary says.
“So then it’s global,” Trace decides. “And if it’s global, I doubt anyone’s coming for us.”
This sets Harrison off. “What? But—”
“The message on the radio is still going,” Cary says. “They’ll come. This is what I think: Cortege is a small town, right? So it might take them a while to get to us. You think it’s crazy here, just imagine how it is in, like, the city or something. We’d have no chance.”
“Was anyone here sick?” Rhys asks. “That flu?” No one says anything. Rhys glances at me. “You were out for a while, weren’t you? The last couple of weeks before this started. Were you sick?”
“I’m not infected,” I say. “Do I look infected to you?”
“I didn’t mean that,” Rhys says quickly, but I don’t know what else he could have meant. “I’m just trying to figure it out.”
“I don’t think it’s the flu,” Cary says. “I think that was just weird timing.”
“Maybe it’s terrorists,” Harrison says.
The boys go back and forth for a while, trying to figure out how and why this started, like they have the brainpower to piece it together and if they do, it will change the fact it happened and that we’re here. Grace stares up at the skylight and says, “Maybe it’s God.”
“Don’t be so cliché,” Trace tells her.
But everyone stops talking about it after that.
* * *
“It was almost better when we were out there.” Rhys sighs.
“Don’t even joke about that,” Harrison says.
We’re still in the auditorium, lounging. There was lunch and there was napping, long stretches of silence and a bit of arguing. It’s barely past three. I understand what Rhys means. Waiting around to be saved is like waiting to die and I have done more of both than anyone else in this room. There’s a whole lot of nothing before there’s something and running was something.
Everyone clings to the idea of safety and because the auditorium seems safest, no one likes to venture too far from it without someone else in tow. Everyone except me, that is. I say I’m going to the bathroom but instead I wander the school and I pretend I’m walking Cortege when everything was normal, when it looked nice. Four years ago, all this money went into its beautification. Trees were planted along the main street, lights were strung on them, flowerbeds were put in every blank space and we got new street signs, the works.
Now it’s gone.
I wonder how much time I have before anyone looks for me. I’m far enough away from the auditorium that I don’t hear any voices and I’m far enough away from the entrance that the noises outside seem muted, or maybe they’re as loud as they ever are and I’m already used to them. I move past empty offices and classrooms. It’s an eerie route that takes me by no one. I reach the stairs to the second floor and pause, suddenly aware my life lacks structure now, that I never have to answer to anybody and I never have to suffer for it. As soon as the thought is in my head, there’s another one and it’s sharper, clearer, much more painfuclass="underline"
It doesn’t change anything.
And then a cheap, musky scent is in the air—a ghost, I know it’s a ghost—and my chest aches. I try to remember how to breathe around the loneliness, this being alone, but I can’t. I don’t know how. I have to climb the stairs to get away from it but there’s no getting away from it. I reach the landing and walk the hall, turn the corner. Sun lights this side of the building, save for a large blot of darkness—one of the big windows we covered with poster boards. I walk over and stand in its shade. Press my hand against it.
I wish I could break this window. Step through it. But I can’t break this window. I can’t even find some less dramatic way to die inside of this school, like hanging myself or slitting my wrists, because what would they do with my body? It might put everyone else at risk. I won’t let myself do that.
I’m not selfish like Lily.
I hate her. I hate her so much my heart tries to crawl out of my throat but it gets stuck there and beats crazily in the too narrow space. I bring my hands to my neck and try to massage it back down. I press so hard against the skin, my eyes sting, and then I’m hurrying back down the stairs, back to the first floor. I think of Trace running laps, something he can control.
I push through the bulky gym doors and as soon as they’re shut behind me, I run. The bleachers stretch out on either side of the room. Light pours in overhead. The gym used to feel so alive, always bustling, and now it’s nothing. The barricade against the exit is monstrous and every time I catch it out of the corner of my eye, my insides jump and it makes me run a little faster until I’m circling the gym at a pace I know I can’t maintain, a pace that is killing me. I ran as fast out there, but it was different out there. My body wants more rest, more food.
My body wants to stop.
Thud. I end up on my knees. I’m dripping with sweat and my stomach is churning and the sound I heard was not the sound of myself falling and landing but—thud.
I turn my head to the exit.
Thud.
Thud.
Tears stream down Harrison’s cheeks.
Thud.
He covers his ears.
Trace and Grace hold hands.
I hold mine together in front of my face, the edges of my thumbs against my lips like I’m praying and I am praying. I wasn’t raised to believe in God, but sometimes when I ask for things to happen, they happen. This is what I want to happen: I want the doors to burst open.
“They know we’re in here,” Rhys says. It’s true, they do. They know. This isn’t the frenzied sounds of bodies stumbling and tripping against the door amid all the other chaos, an accident that goes away. This is consistent. It has purpose. Intent.
They know we’re in here.
“Ours wasn’t the most subtle entrance ever,” Trace says.
Rhys turns to Grace. “Did you hear this when you checked the barricade yesterday?”
“No. I mean—” She stops and bites her lip. “I don’t know? It was really noisy.”
“I didn’t hear them in here when I put the barricade up,” Cary says. “So if we didn’t hear them then and Grace didn’t hear them yesterday…” He trails off. “It means they’ve figured out we’re in here since we got in here.”