The Burnouts (13 page)

“I think we were all making the best of a bad—”

Will grabbed David’s arm and pulled him back from the corner they were about to turn.

“Ssh,” he said. “Look at that.”

Will pointed at the darkened doorways of the two classrooms nearest to them in the long hallway ahead. The
classrooms were populated by ghostly figures. Freaks. They all held weapons. They were hiding. Waiting.

Two Nerds walked into the hall at the other end. They each shouldered plump bags from the food drop, and were chatting. He shared a worried look with Will. He was about to witness another mugging. Would he stand by and just let it happen again? But when the Nerds passed the occupied classrooms, the Freaks did nothing. The Nerds walked on, unaware of the danger they’d avoided.

“What’s going on?” Will whispered.

“I don’t get it,” David said.

But then, he did.

A giant group of Skaters rolled into the hall from the same direction the Nerds had. It was nearly the whole gang, fresh from the quad, lugging their gang’s entire food drop ration. This was what the Freaks had been waiting for, a big score.

The Freaks pounced. There were so many. They leapt from their hiding spots, and burst out of classrooms to pummel the unsuspecting Skaters with baseball bats and two-by-fours. Food scattered onto the floor. A Freak threw a brick down onto the face of a tripped Skater and snatched the bunch of carrots from his hands. He saw a Skater girl get a knife in the shoulder. The Skaters tried to fight back, but they’d been caught off guard, and they couldn’t reverse the momentum. The food on the floor was snatched up by the Freaks, and once they had most of it, they fled, leaving the Skaters to pick
up the remnants of their rations and hobble off home.

David’s spirits sank. He’d been so proud of what he and the parents had done on the farm. He’d believed the food drops had been made peaceful, and that he was helping turn McKinley into a safer place, but now he understood. The violence hadn’t been neutralized, it had only been pushed inside.

The brothers soldiered on, continuing their search, and Will started talking to him about some bullshit, but David wasn’t paying attention. He couldn’t stop thinking about how ignorant he and the parents were of what it was actually like in McKinley, and how their sense of control over the quarantine was only an illusion.

“… I mean, where did Hilary even get a loaded gun?”

“What?” David said. He turned to face Will. “What are you talking about?”

“Yeah. I heard a bunch of people talking about it. She’s got a loaded gun and she declared herself queen.”

David felt like he’d just been shoved off a cliff. Hilary with a gun. Hilary with power over everyone. How long would it take for her to find out he was here? How long would it take for her to send everyone after him, just like Sam had done? Goddamn it—he hated this school. What the fuck was he still doing here, he had to find Lucy and get out now.

David got kicked out of his thoughts when he heard a disembodied voice call out, seemingly from nowhere.

“Gas masks!” the voice said.

David tensed. There was no one else in the hallway but him and Will.

“Who said that?” Will said.

All the lockers around them sprung open. Forty Geeks, twenty on each side, bounded out of the lockers. They surrounded David and Will.

“Give us those gas masks,” a Geek with a knife said.

“Wait,” David said. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand they’re rare as shit and we’re gonna get so much food for—” The Geek’s eyes went wide. “Hoh …,” he said. “You’re David.”

“It is!” another said. “No way! And Will too.”

“If we get separated, meet at the elevator,” David whispered to Will.

The Geeks touched David. They touched his mask. Alien tribesmen meeting their first astronaut. David jerked away from one, only to end up in the hands of another.

“Hands off!” Will said.

“Tell us everything,” one said to David. “What’s going on out there?”

“It’s …,” David said. They tugged on his arms. On his bag. He could feel someone unzipping his backpack. Where the crane remote was. He shook them off his bag, but Geeks were crowding between him and Will, and David didn’t like it.

“We’re leaving now,” David said.

“Leaving the school?” one said with excitement.

“Can you get us out?” another said.

“Is it over? Is the quarantine over?”

“It’s all over,” one shouted. “It’s gotta be!”

“David’s come back and he’s going to let us out!” a Geek yelled like he was trying to tell the whole school. Other Geeks came out of hiding spots all down the hall and hustled over. The crowd around them grew.

“That’s not what’s happening,” David tried to say, but the idea had caught on too fast. The Geeks were already yelling over him.

“We’re getting out! We’re finally getting out!”

People from other gangs came running from halls and classrooms, breathless at the news. Four Saints came rushing around the corner. A group of Sluts appeared. Six Varsity came jogging up. He saw others approaching from the distance.

David’s eyes jerked to Will, and he saw the panic rising in his brother.

Will face-palmed a Geek into the lockers. “Run!” he yelled, and bolted away.

David wanted to run after Will, but there were too many people between them.

“Don’t let him go!” Geeks said, and grabbed for him.

David jumped out of reach, and was able to sprint away—in the opposite direction of Will.

LUCY WOULD NEVER THINK OF GASOLINE THE
same way. If she ever made it out of McKinley and had a real life again, she’d probably hit the gas station every day and top off her tank, just to be around the wonderful smell. She pressed her gas-soaked rag over her mouth and nose and sucked, already anticipating the numbing haze that would descend on her.

She watched one of the Burnout girls squat down and piss on the floor of the hallway, with her shorts bunched at her knees. The urine pooled by the girl’s bare feet, which were black with grime. The girl’s eyelids were drooping, she looked on the verge of falling asleep. She showed no embarrassment that other people could see her. She even seemed bored. She pulled her shorts back on with no underwear and without dabbing herself dry. It meant nothing to this girl. It meant nothing to Lucy either, now that the gasoline fumes were swirling in her chest.

Lucy let out a breath and felt the ground begin to pull away from her feet. Dizzy, she had to grab Bile’s bony shoulder to keep from falling. The high she got from the gasoline fogged the world around her. As soon as the fog showed hints of clearing, she’d ask Bile to dribble more gas on her rag, and he’d look at her like a proud parent, then gladly oblige. That’s how it had gone for hours. She wasn’t sure how many. She just wanted to keep this feeling, or lack of feeling, going for as long as she could.

Bile touched her lightly on the small of her back, letting her know he was there to catch her again if she needed him to. He’d proven to her that he would keep her safe. Any one of the other Burnouts who tried to mess with her in the hours she’d been on this bender received a minor beating from Bile, or the threat of one. She knew what it looked like when a guy wanted to protect her.

They were in Skater territory, near P-Nut’s strip club. From what Lucy had heard weeks ago, the strip club was a joke, just one room where three or four girls danced in underwear with pillowcases over their heads to protect their reputations. For all the hype and promotion P-Nut had been doing over the PA system, the strip club hadn’t amounted to much. Kids weren’t rich like they’d been in the Gates days. Fewer and fewer people had extra food to throw away on a little look-but-don’t-touch action.

One of the other Burnouts—she’d heard Bile call him
Clive—was selling homemade drugs. He wore a jean jacket with a dozen panties stapled to the front. His belt was two toy rubber snakes tied together. He wore black sunglasses in the dark hall. A Skater walked up to Clive.

“What are you selling?” the Skater said.

“Burners. Clouds,” Clive said.

“Are those new?”

“Blows my old shit out of the water.”

Clive pulled something out of his pocket. In his palm were a crusty cotton ball and a cigarette made out of notebook paper.

“Burners are the cigarettes, and they speed things up, makes things intense, y’know. These balls are called clouds. You light this up, inside a bag, or a bucket or something, and stick your head in that smoke, you won’t be feelin’ dick.”

“Cool, cool,” the Skater said, “I’ll take two clouds.”

“Smart man.”

Lucy wanted two clouds too, but she didn’t want to owe Clive anything. He looked at her like she was a house of cards that he wanted to blow over. A nervous Freak walked up to Clive, looking over his shoulder the whole time like he was afraid of being seen.

“Hey, somebody told me I should come here for some, ya know, satisfaction.”

“Yeah, sure,” Clive said to the Freak. “Just wait over there.”

Clive pointed to the classroom where Lucy and Bile were standing. The Freak walked over to them, and stared at
Lucy’s breasts like he could see through her shirt. He smiled at her.

“All right, nice,” the Freak said. “We’re gonna have fun.”

He reached out to touch her. Lucy didn’t move. She wondered what would happen. Would she care if he squeezed her? Would she like it?

Bile stepped between Lucy and the Freak.

“Three cans,” he said, his voice slow and lilting.

“Yeah, fine,” the Freak said and produced the payment.

“In there,” Bile said and thumbed the Freak toward the classroom.

The Freak smiled at Lucy.

“See you inside,” he said and walked in.

Bile planted two fingers in his mouth and let out a sharp whistle.

A girl walked out from behind the row of lockers across the hall. The others called her Horse, and she looked like a body that had washed up on a riverbank. Her hair was a bird’s nest, her eyes were sunken pits, and her skin looked like it was having an allergic reaction to her life. She wore a flower-print dress. Horse didn’t look at Lucy or Bile as she followed the Freak into the room and shut the door.

Part of Lucy was appalled. Somewhere in the depths of her mind Lucy knew that what was about to happen in that room, what she’d seen Horse do three times already, was wrong. But that part of her that objected was small and feeble-voiced and
just barely rising into her consciousness. Bile doused the gas rag again and put it to her face. She clutched his hands in hers, tighter this time, and inhaled. That small part of her drifted away again.

Bile turned to Lucy and smiled. His inflamed gums seemed to be fleeing his teeth.

“You’d fit in great with us,” he said.

“I would?”

“Most folks think we’re crap, but you don’t judge us like that.”

She could hear the boy in the classroom start to grunt with passion. Horse never made a noise.

“I don’t judge people.”

That wasn’t true. Lucy judged people all the time. A week ago, she wouldn’t have hesitated to call Bile and these Burnouts degenerates. She tried not to think about it. She saw a glimmer of gold from the necklace around his neck.

“What was she like? Your mom,” Lucy said.

Bile was momentarily shocked. Conflicting emotions flickered across his face.

“Was she nice?” Lucy asked.

“You really want to know?”

“Sure.”

He smiled. “She was … gentle as a feather. She never thought bad of me, no matter what I did. Like you.”

“Like me?”

“Yeah,” Bile said, then he started to whisper. “You’re … you’re the only one who knows.”

“Knows what?”

He wouldn’t meet her eyes. He scratched at the open sores on his shoulder.

“Where I came from, and how I got here and all.”

It was strange. Lucy had found it so easy to forget that Bile had been the one that infected the whole school. Lucy stared at his hideous face. Every kid Bile saw, every hall he walked through, had to remind him of what he’d done. He’d destroyed the world.

“Did you mean to?” Lucy said. “Do this?”

Bile didn’t answer. He looked around at the holes knocked in the walls, the checkerboard of missing ceiling panels above them. From inside the classroom behind them they could hear the boy’s dirty talk. “Yeah, bitch. Take that shit. Take that shit, you dirty bitch. Fuck yeah. You love that shit, don’t you?”

“I was scared,” Bile said.

She heard the Freak finish in the other room.

“It’s okay,” Lucy said. She reached out and touched the paper skin of Bile’s arm.

A low moan crept out of his throat.

“Ssh, it’s okay,” she said, even though she wasn’t sure if it was okay at all, or whether he should ever be forgiven for what he’d put them through, but it was the nice
friend thing to say, and right now, Bile was her only friend.

He threw his spindly arms around her and squeezed. His breathing came staggered with sobs. His body twitched and shook so hard it reminded her of one of Will’s seizures. Lucy slowly lifted her arms and wrapped them around him in a half-committed hug. The Freak brushed past them as he left the classroom behind. The clank of his belt buckle as he fastened his pants sickened Lucy like a penny in her mouth.

They all headed back to the ruins. Bile kept touching her as they walked. Brushing up against her. Putting an arm across her chest to stop her from walking around a corner until he’d checked whether it was safe. And the way he looked at her had changed. He was eager to smile at her, and she would smile back, but she couldn’t hold his gaze as long as he wanted to. It seemed that he wanted them to gaze into each other’s eyes without end. Lucy could fake that for a little while longer, but what would be next? She didn’t want to feel the hard, cracked skin of his lips if he planted a surprise kiss on her, or the scrape of his torn fingernails on her breast if he groped her.

She was thinking more clearly now. That wasn’t good. She wanted the numbness back. By the time they made it back to the single ruined room where Bile and the other Burnouts ate, drank, slept, and huffed, Lucy was dangerously close to stone-cold sober.