The Burnouts (7 page)

She had been fantasizing about this. It was why she always kept a pair of pliers in her purse. She still wanted Lucy’s teeth. All of them. She craved them. She wanted to see Lucy walk the school with just pink gums smacking together, dripping with spit. She wouldn’t be able to make
F
sounds and she’d sound like an idiot. And the best part of all—Lucy would never turn a boy’s head again. Or maybe she would from time to time. But then, she’d smile, and the boys would run away in disgust.

Hilary was kicked out of her fantasy when the most atrocious-looking boy she’d ever seen emerged from the shadows near Lucy. His complexion was bloodless, his cheeks sunken, and he had broad, sharp shoulders. No fat left on his body, just ropes of twitching muscle underneath dry, shrink-wrapped skin. His lip was split, but the wet pink wound wasn’t bleeding, and he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were cloudy and looked dumb, like farm-animal dumb. His hair was roughly cut off, in uneven lengths, like scissors had been held close to his scalp. In some scabby patches it looked like the hair had been pulled out at the roots. He wore a soiled dress tucked into black jeans that had developed a waxy sheen of burnished filth on the thighs.

The ghoulish boy grabbed Lucy’s ankles and dragged her toward a dark hole in the wall.

No!
Hilary thought.

She ran to the nearest intact stairwell, leapt down the stairs, and dashed back to the spot where Lucy had landed. She searched for the pair in a frenzy, and got so angry she nearly emptied her gun into the wall, but it would have done no good. They were gone.

WILL SLAMMED THE REAR DOOR OF GONZALO’S
custom minivan. The protective, steel blinds that crossed the rear window rattled. There was nothing left to pack. They’d gotten the list of supplies from Sam’s dad that they should look for on the way. They’d said their good-byes to the parents, and Will had a pocket full of good-luck charms after all the hugs and handshakes. A silver dollar. A St. Christopher’s medal. A green rabbit’s foot. An Indian head nickel. So much hope was riding on them, and they were as ready as they’d ever be to head out into the infected zone in search of the cure. Gonzalo had given them his van. He’d said they’d need it if they were going to make it to Minnesota. He wasn’t coming with them. The big guy had departed the day before in a jacked-up pickup truck to continue on his quest.

Will hoped Gonzalo would find Sasha out there. The world would be too cruel if he didn’t. Will looked to McKinley. Dark
gray, muscular clouds crashed together in slow motion above the school. He needed to find David. They had to get on the road before that storm caught up with them.

He moved his blistered hands across the short bristle of his freshly shorn head. He liked the springy touch to it, but he missed his white hair. He’d gotten so used to it, it had become a part of who he was. Still, he understood David’s point, that on the road it would cause more trouble than it was worth. He looked to the plump veins spiderwebbing across his forearm and the clear separation between the different cords of muscles. This past month of manual labor and regular meals had packed meat onto his bones. He was stronger, quicker. More of a man.

Lucy would dig it.

Will and David had a long journey ahead of them, and even when they got to Minnesota, he recognized that there was no guarantee that there would be a cure waiting for them, nicely packaged in a single glossy pill. He knew things never went that perfectly. Yet, that didn’t stop him from dreaming that it could go exactly that way, and that when they returned to McKinley in a week or so, Lucy could be in his arms again, uninfected, and they could finish that kiss. The one they’d been so close to having before the crane had pulled him up out of the quad.

It felt wrong to be apart from her, wrong at a core level. This couldn’t be how other people felt when they were separated
from someone they loved. There was no way. How could the world go on? He didn’t feel like he was missing his high school sweetheart, he felt like he was missing his pancreas. The only way to feel better was to do something about it. It was why he’d pushed David so hard to go on the hunt for the cure.

“David?” Will called out.

Will walked around the section of fenced-in trailers, where graduates were stashed after being pulled out of the school. There were five trailers, including the one where Will had phased out of infection, each surrounded by a separate chain-link fence. Inside the second trailer’s fence stood David. Will slowed. What was he doing there? He had said he was just going for a piss and then they would head out.

Will studied David’s face. He wore a toothy smile. Wide and expectant, like a kid at a window waiting for his grandparents to pull into the driveway with a trunkful of toys.

Will’s heart began to thump just like it did every time he saw the crane cable retract from dangling over the quad. There was always the hope that a new graduate would be hanging from its end. Someone with news about Lucy, or best of all—Lucy herself. But in the time since he’d been on the farm, no one else had graduated.

Will ran to the fence, his fingers wrapped through the chain links.

“Did they pull somebody out?” Will called out.

David didn’t break his stare at the trailer door. “Last night. We were asleep. I just found out.”

Will looked to the door. He could feel his face stretching into the same hopeful shape as David’s.

“Who’s in there?” Will said.

The possibility that Lucy could be in that trailer threatened to cleave Will’s skull in two.

The door opened, and Belinda walked out. The basket of curly fries she called hair was still black, like a Nerd’s, but soon her natural hair color, whatever that was, would overtake it. McKinley would get foggy in her mind just like it was in Will’s. He had to talk to her.

He waved to her, but her eyes focused on David first. She stumbled back in shock, and the parent behind her, who’d tested her for the last traces of the virus, steadied her. David hurried to help, but Will was stuck on the other side of the fence. He watched as they guided Belinda to the gate. Belinda stared at David, her mouth agape and speechless as she walked.

It was odd for Will to watch someone else go through the same brain-flattening realization that he’d had that night in the rain. He knew how much Belinda had looked up to David. He knew how much she loved him. She’d been one of the original group of Scraps who had approached David about starting a gang. She had helped carry David to safety after he had been hanged. She had mourned his loss. Will had a clear
memory of Belinda sobbing by the fire the night the remaining Loners had found out that David had died. He’d always felt closer to Belinda after that, but he’d never told her, and for some reason he knew he never would.

When Will reached the gate, the man who’d tested Belinda walked on and left David to lock up. By now, Belinda seemed to be able to stand on her own two feet.

“No—but—but David, how …?” she managed to say as she neared him. She was crying, tears traveling down her round face like longitude lines on a globe.

“Long story,” David said.

She nearly toppled David with the force of her hug. She squeezed him with all her might, and pancaked her cheek into his chest. She smiled with her eyes clamped shut. You would have thought she’d just found out Santa was real.

“I can’t believe it,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it.”

When she let go, David guided her toward the newly built bunkhouse.

“Come with us,” he said, and for the first time, Belinda glanced over at Will.

“Hi,” Will said.

She didn’t reply, she simply walked with David. Will assumed that maybe she was still too caught up in the magic of David’s existence. He walked in silence as Belinda and David talked. Belinda never acknowledged him once, and he began to wonder if she had a reason to snub him. What did she know?

There were too many information bombs that Will had yet to disarm before his brother could find them out, and now he was afraid of them all exploding at once. The history of McKinley that David knew had been abridged by Will. David knew that Will had fallen in with the Saints because the Loners had fallen apart, something that had been beyond Will’s control. He knew Lucy had gone Sluts, but Will told him that he had lost contact with her at that point. He didn’t tell him that they had fallen in love or that they had slept together. He and his brother were getting along for once, and it was too nice to mess up. Will didn’t know what David still felt for Lucy, and he didn’t want to know. And David seemed just as happy to avoid the subject entirely.

But as David and Will approached the bunkhouse, Belinda’s presence made the topic of Lucy feel unavoidable. Will started to sweat. He couldn’t take it anymore.

“How is she?” Will asked. “Lucy.”

Belinda met Will’s eyes for the first time. They were angry.

“Oh, you care?” she said.

David paused as he opened the bunkhouse door. He gave Belinda a curious look.

“Of course I care,” Will said. “What do you mean?”

Her next words sucked all the air out of Will’s world.

“She’s pregnant.”

“What?” David said.

Will’s hearing went away. He saw David gesturing, but he
stopped processing the words that came out of his mouth. David waved Belinda inside. Will followed in a daze. Lucy was pregnant. Will shook his head. He dropped onto a cot. His hearing tuned back in with David’s next three words: “Who’s the father?”

Will’s eyes snapped to Belinda. They screamed at her to not say if she knew. She looked away from Will, back to David, but she didn’t answer him. Will could see her wrestling with a decision. She frowned and huffed air out her nose.

“She didn’t say. She only told me right before I left.”

David raked his fingers through his brown hair. He stumbled a little bit and sat down on a cot.

“Is she okay?” Will asked. He felt like an idiot asking it. What girl was ever okay being pregnant inside McKinley? He knew what it meant. And he got the answer he dreaded most.

“No,” Belinda said. “She isn’t.”

David pounded a cot-side table with one heavy fist. He pounded the table four or five more times before grasping his forehead. They all sat in silence for a moment.

“I want to know everything,” David said, his voice barely a whisper.

Belinda took a breath and told them the terrible story.

Will and David left Belinda behind in the bunkhouse. A parent would be along soon to educate her about her options going forward if she wanted to stay on the farm or leave in
search of her family. She’d choose family. They all did.

Family. The idea meant something new to Will now, and he felt like he was going to be crushed under its weight.

“We have to do something,” Will said as they walked toward the minivan.

“I know,” David said.

Will waited a moment for more, but more didn’t come.

“We have to go in,” Will said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You heard what Belinda said. She’s all alone.”

David looked around as they walked, as if he was sure someone was eavesdropping. The only ears nearby belonged to the sheep.

“We have a plan, Will. Let’s get the cure. We’ll be back in a week. That’ll fix everything.”

“What if the cure’s not real?”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not? Because it might be true?”

“You’re the one who was so convinced we needed to go in the first place. Now you’re telling me you don’t believe in it?”

“All I know is Lucy’s pregnant. That’s a fact. If we waste a week or two on this trip and come back with nothing, that’s forever that Lucy’s in there alone with no help. Anything could happen to her.”

David fell back against the minivan and let out a groan.

“David, don’t tell me you forgot what it feels like to be
in there. To not belong to a gang. To have no one watching your back. Can you even imagine facing all that while being pregnant?”

David faltered. “Jesus Christ.”

“She needs us. We have to get her out. We have gas masks. They filter out the virus, right?”

“It’s too dangerous. We’ll make an announcement, have her come to the quad.”

“We can’t single her out. She’ll be as bad off as Sam was. Someone will use her against us. Just like before.”

“What about the guy who knocked her up?” David said with a splash of anger in his voice. “Huh? Isn’t he looking after her?”

Will couldn’t fathom a way to answer that.

“What if he’s not?” Will finally said. “What if he’s just some dickhead that doesn’t care what happens to her?”

It didn’t inspire the response Will was looking for. David began to sneer. With his black eye patch, he looked almost frightening.

“Do you know who she was dating before you left?”

Will shook his head before he could say something. “I don’t—I don’t think so.”

“No idea?”

“I don’t know, maybe some Nerd with stupid hair,” Will said. “I saw her with him at this party, but he looked like a big pussy. We can’t count on him.”

David stared at the school. Will understood that going into the school was madness, but Lucy needed them. He stared at David and waited. If anything would bring him back to his old self, it would be Lucy in trouble.

Finally, David shook his head.

“There’s no way.”

“But—”

“It’s a death sentence,” David said. He was raising his voice, trying to drown Will out. Will hated that.

“And what if the cure isn’t a rumor?” David continued. “Then, we would’ve gotten ourselves killed when there was an easy answer. And Lucy would still be in danger.”

“You don’t get it,” Will said. Not that he could unless Will told him the truth. But he knew that would only make his brother angrier, and then Will would be on the defensive.

“No, you don’t get it,” David said. “You didn’t go on pointless missions to get your old pal Gates’s bullshit, and watch good people cough up their lungs and die, because some angry kids wanted revenge. You’re not infected anymore, Will. You don’t realize how afraid you should be of everyone in that school.”