This Is Not a Test (20 page)

Rhys pulls him out of the room and then I’m alone, trying to understand everything that just happened but I can’t. I bring my hand to my face and my skin is hot.

Trace told everyone.

Grace keeps throwing me
talk to me
glances. I ignore them until she finally gets the hint that I don’t want to talk about it. I mean, I do want to talk about it—just not with her. I want to talk about it with Lily.

I want to ask her why she got to be with other people.

I want to know why I listened to her when she told me I had to wait for all these things until after we were out of that house, away from our father.

She must have really thought I’d mess it up, that I’d say the wrong thing to the wrong person, give everything away for a kiss and maybe I would have, if it was all going to turn out like this anyway.

I should have.

We settle in for the night. Rhys is next to me. Trace is next to me.

I wait until it seems like everyone is asleep and then I turn to Rhys. He reaches out to me. I stare at his open hand and then I touch my fingertips to his. He grabs them, holds them tightly. I close my eyes and imagine myself with him on the cot in the nurse’s room until I feel the ghost of his touch all over me, until I feel like I’m ready to climb on top of him and make it happen all over again—and then take it further. When I open my eyes, his are closed. His grip on my hand has loosened. The ache for him makes me angry at her. Both feelings compete with each other, confusing me. I don’t know why they have to be so close together. I
want
but I don’t know what I want. All these things I could have had, I knew I could have them but I didn’t know I
wanted
them. I want, I want, I want. Every part of me is reaching for something but I don’t know what it is but I know it’s not Rhys and it’s not her.

Short breathy gasps from the mat next to mine interrupt my thoughts. I shift a little and as soon as I do, it stops. A minute passes. It starts again and then I understand.

I wish I didn’t.

Trace is masturbating.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force sleep and then it happens and I dream of Baxter’s room. I am making my way down a row of desks filled with former classmates. They look like all the blood has drained from their bodies. They stare at the chalkboard, as still and blank as statues, but I know I could wake them up if I move the wrong way and I don’t want to wake them up. The closet door at the back of the room is shaking. I hurry down the aisle until I’m pressed against the door, where I found Baxter. This is where I found Baxter but Baxter is dead. We killed him. That means what’s behind the door is new. I open it and then she’s there, Lily is there, falling into me. I hold her until her skin melts into mine and then I’m not holding on to anything.

I wake up, fuzzy around the edges. Rhys’s wrist is draped across my wrist. I raise my head. Everyone is still asleep except for Cary, who moves around the room restlessly.

He stops when he notices my eyes are open.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “Why are you up?” He shakes his head, doesn’t answer. I look at him more closely. “Did you even sleep?”

“How can I sleep when the psycho’s got the gun?”

“Cary—”

He holds his hand up and then heads over to the table. He pulls the chair out and drags it across the floor so it screeches loudly and jolts everyone awake.

“What’s going on?” Rhys asks sleepily. “Cary, what are you doing?”

“I have something I want to talk about.”

“What?”

“Rayford.”

Rayford.
Rayford.
A survivor’s camp, waiting. I forgot all about it and they probably haven’t stopped thinking about it. I forget my brain doesn’t work like theirs do. Trace shifts beside me and rubs his eyes. I think about what I heard him doing.

I wonder who he was thinking about when he did it.

“Did you hear me?” Cary asks loudly. “I said I want to talk about Rayford.”

“Yeah, we
heard
you,” Trace says.

It takes a while to get it together. Everyone does the bathroom thing, changes into fresh clothes. Cary’s patience wanes quickly. His eyes say he wants to throttle us, but he keeps his mouth shut. When we finally gather around the table, Trace not-so-subtly claims the seat at the head of it. Cary remains standing.

“I’m trying for Rayford,” he announces.

He might as well be telling us someone’s died.

“You’re trying for Rayford,” Rhys repeats slowly.

“I want to find out what’s happened to the rest of the world. I want the military protection. I want—”

“To be away from Trace,” Grace finishes.

Cary turns red. “It’s not about that.”

“Well, the gun stays with me. You think I’ll just give it to you if you convince us to go to Rayford?” Trace leans forward. “Not going to work, Chen. Nice try, though.”

“It’s not about that either,” Cary says. “I don’t give a fuck if you keep the gun and I don’t give a fuck if you go, Trace.
I’m
going. If I’m the only one, so be it.”

For once, Trace is speechless. He looks at Grace.

“Okay,” Rhys says. “We all want to know what’s going on, we all want the protection but this isn’t crossing the street. You said it yourself. We don’t know if we can get a car—”

“We’ll find a car.”

“No,” Harrison says. “No—we agreed to wait here—”

“Did we?” Cary turns to him. “Why?”

“Because it’s
safe.
”

“So you figured out how Baxter got in,” Cary says. Harrison opens his mouth and then closes it. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“You can’t blame him for not wanting to go out there,” Grace says.

“I said I don’t care if he goes out there.
I’m
leaving. If you want to come with me, fine. I don’t give a fuck if you stay here. I’m just telling you I’m going.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Rhys says. “You want to get eaten alive? Sit down and—”

“I’m
not
an idiot,” Cary replies. “Outside, I could get eaten alive. Inside, I could just as easily get shot in the face by a gun-happy asshole. I’m willing to take my chances.”

“So it
is
about me.” Trace grins broadly. “Well, you know the way out, douchebag. Far be it for me to stop you.”

“This isn’t a
joke
!” Cary pounds his fist on the table. “It’s a way
out.
Don’t you see that? I say I want to talk about Rayford—a
survivor’s camp
—and you guys have to wait until you rub the fucking sleep out of your eyes to do it? Are you kidding me? We heard that message on the radio and the last thing we want to do is leave? Is that seriously how brain-dead staying here has made us? This place isn’t safe. We’re going to forget how to survive, so when we do have to leave, we’ll die. We’ll get ourselves killed.”

“So dramatic,” Trace says, and at first I think Trace is right, that Cary is being dramatic, but that makes me realize Cary is right. There’s nothing dramatic about this.

There is a door in this school somewhere, any second the dead could come pouring in, and we move around like it’s nothing. We sent Baxter out to die and Harrison, Grace, and Trace spent the next morning in the gym playing basketball. Only three of us have looked for Baxter’s way in since he was sent out. I glance at Grace and wonder if she would be sharp enough to run, to make life-saving split-second decisions. We are one degree removed from our fear now.

We’ve gotten used to this.

I turn to Trace. “Why did you stop running?”

He shrugs. “Didn’t see the—”

He closes his mouth and doesn’t finish.
Point.
He didn’t see the point anymore. Cary crosses his arms, bolstered.

“You’re not going today, are you?” I ask him.

“No. I need a few days to plan how I want to do this. I want to make sure I’m prepared.” He pauses. “They’re going to come back. Sooner or later, they’ll surround this place and Russo’s isn’t going to explode twice. If you want to go with me, fine. But just keep that in mind—you’re coming with
me.
Not the other way around.”

“What makes you think I’m going to follow you?” Trace asks.

“Did you not hear the part where I repeatedly said I don’t care if you do or not?”

“Are you sure Rayford is closest?” Grace asks.

It’s a fair enough question that Cary crosses the room and turns the radio on.

Immediate white noise. Static. No reception.

He fiddles with the dial.

“The radio’s out,” he says numbly.

“Are you sure it’s not the battery?” Grace asks.

“It’s on,” he says. “It’s not the battery. The radio’s stopped.”

We all listen hard, like maybe there’s a human voice trying to find its way through all the buzzing but there’s nothing.

“That’s not good,” Trace says.

Harrison swallows. “Does that mean the emergency shelters—”

“It doesn’t mean anything except the radio is out,” Cary says, but there’s an edge of doubt in his voice. “Something could have happened to the tower, that’s all. It doesn’t mean something happened to the shelters.”

But it might mean exactly that. It feels like every
next
can only be bad things. The landlines are down, cell phones are dead, the power doesn’t work. The water doesn’t work. We got lucky with the tank and that’s going to run out and we don’t know when. Emergency broadcast is officially dead. We will never rebuild. This thing will overtake us, is overtaking us. Buildings will crumble and weeds will grow through their foundations. We’ll become reanimated corpses navigating a sorry imitation of our glory days and this is why I don’t understand the point in going on, why it’s so wrong to give up. There’s nothing left.

“Turn it off,” Harrison says, because he’s thinking it too. Cary doesn’t. He stares at the radio and he looks so hurt that he would make this bold decision to leave and it would betray him like this. The snowy rumble emitting from the speakers only seems to get louder and Harrison starts to cry. “Turn it
off
!”

Cary snaps out of it and turns it off but I feel like I need the sound because if they hear it, they’ll see how stupid they’re being. How dumb it is to continue. I get to my feet and go to the radio. I turn it on again and Cary doesn’t stop me. I let the grainy rush of noise fill the room while Harrison whimpers and then I turn the volume all the way up—

“… shelters are equipped with food, water, military protection, and first aid. Please exercise extreme caution while traveling and avoid heavily populated areas. If you encounter anyone you suspect to be infected, do not attempt to assist them…”

There is a collective exhalation as Tina T’s voice fills the room.

I’m so disappointed.

“You’ve got magic hands, Sloane,” Rhys says.

Trace coughs. “I’m sure you think so.”

I pretend he didn’t say it. I almost turn the radio off but Cary holds up his hand and then I remember why we turned it on in the first place. We listen for the locations and the closest is still Rayford.

“You’ve got a couple of days to think it over,” Cary says. “And then I’m gone.”

He leaves the room. Rhys goes after him.

Trace, Harrison, and Grace are silent.

“Megan’s in Rayford,” Grace says after a minute. “Maybe she made it.”

“Who’s Megan?” Harrison asks.

“Our cousin.”

“I don’t want to go with Chen and Moreno,” Trace says. “Moreno will stick his neck out for Chen before he does it for us. You’ve seen it yourself. Those two are one and the same and I don’t trust either of them.”

“But it’s safer as a group,” Grace says. “You can’t deny that. Once we get to Rayford we never have to speak to either of them again…”

Trace laughs and stares at the table. “That’d be nice.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

That’s what they’ll do. I don’t know what I’ll do. I leave the room and no one stops me. When I reach the hall, I try to guess which direction Cary and Rhys went in and then choose the opposite.

“Sloane.”

Grace. I turn.

“Are you going to leave with him?” she asks. “Cary?”

“Yes,” I say. I know I have to do that much, if they’re all going.

“When we get to Rayford, are you going to stay with us?”

“What?”

“Cary and Rhys will go together. I’m with Trace and Harrison will go with Trace. And you … is it serious with Rhys?”

This is very, very awkward.

“Grace—”

“Because if it’s serious, you’d stay with him, right? That’s okay, I’m just wondering.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I say. “I don’t want to think that far ahead, you know? Who knows if we’ll even make it…”

“We’ll make it,” she says. “We will. And then when we get to Rayford we’re going to find my cousin Megan and then we’re just going to relax and…” She gives me a weak smile. “It’ll be good. It won’t be perfect but it will be good.”

“I’m sure it will be,” I say.

“I want to put in a bid for you.”

I blink. “You want to put in a bid for me?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes are so sincere. I think you have to be a good person to the core of your soul to come across so sincerely. “When we split up in Rayford, I want you to come with us.”

“What about Rhys?”

She shifts. “You heard Trace…”

“You don’t trust Rhys?”

“Trace wouldn’t want him there,” she says. “After everything I’ve done … I’m not going to push. Sloane, I want
you
to come with us.”

“Trace wouldn’t mind?”

“Not much. He’d get over it,” she says. “I mean, he said it was okay … so what do you think?”

I think I’m going to cry.

“It means a lot to me,” I say.

“Just let me know. Soon.” She gives me a quick hug and then says something terrible and wonderful all at the same time. “I’ve always wanted a sister.”

She hurries back the way she came, doesn’t look over her shoulder, doesn’t see me on the verge of tears. I am so much sadder about this than I should be. I stand there and try to think through her kindness enough to picture it—me going with them or not going with them—but I can’t. I can’t picture it either way.