This Is Not a Test (21 page)

Everyone is in for Rayford.

“It doesn’t matter if Trace has the gun,” Cary decides. He scribbles something down in an old math notebook. “It will draw unwanted attention. I think we’ll be fine with baseball bats and I saw a crowbar in the custodian’s room. Good, blunt objects—”

“Don’t really mean anything when you’re surrounded,” Rhys says.

“Well, a gun won’t be much help in that case either.”

“Given any thought to transportation?”

“Check every car we see. If we can find temporary shelter while we look that would be awesome.” Cary taps his pen on the paper. “There aren’t any outside here?”

“No,” I say. “The one in the parking lot has no keys and there’s one across the street, but it’s wrecked.”

“We’ll have to keep our eyes open.” He frowns. “I think we can do this. I mean, we got here in one piece and the streets were overrun. It’s way quieter now. If we’re lucky, most of them are still at Russo’s. We’ll stay away from that side of town.”

“Just because the streets aren’t overrun—”

“Yeah, I know. They’re quiet now,” Cary says. “At first I thought we should leave at night so we can be hidden, but I think it would be better if we could see any infected coming for us, don’t you?” He doesn’t wait for a response. “Maybe we should go just before dawn, so it’s dark but not for long. Oh, and everyone needs a pack full of supplies. Two packs to two people was a stupid idea. We could get separated easily. We might have to separate.”

“You really want to do this as a group?” I ask.

“If you’re all coming, you’re all coming,” he answers. “I would’ve done it alone if I had to but there’s an obvious strength in numbers.”

I think of the Caspers then, of Harrison. I know I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t let my mind go there but I do. If he had never been with Lily—is that the thing that saved me? That made him choose Harrison over me? Being her sister? If he had to make that call again, would he choose Trace out of spite? Or maybe Grace. Maybe Grace would be the one. I can’t stand the idea of that happening to Grace.

“Sloane, I know what you’re thinking,” Cary says, watching my face. “And I wouldn’t do that to either of you.”

But it’s not either of us that I’m worried about.

“We trust you,” Rhys says.

I glance across the room. Harrison is napping on the couch. I look at him and the only thing I can see is how dead he’s supposed to be. I wonder what it would be like if we’d gotten here without him. Less tearful, maybe. I wonder if we’d cry for him.

“Harrison could be right,” I say. “By the time the water in here runs out, the military could be reclaiming cities. Towns. It could be over by then.”

“I’m not staying here with Trace longer than I have to,” Cary says, keeping his voice very low. “I don’t trust him and I will never trust him.”

“But you’ll let him leave with us,” Rhys says.

“He’ll have other things to worry about than me out there.”

“What do you think, Sloane?” Rhys asks.

“I think we’ll probably die,” I say.

Cary closes his notebook. “Very uplifting.”

*   *   *

Later, Rhys asks if he can talk to me alone.

He asks me in front of everyone, when we’re at the table, eating.
Can I talk to you? Alone?
I say yes and it isn’t until Trace dog-whistles when we walk out together that I think maybe Rhys doesn’t actually want to talk at all and then I feel cornered by the idea of touching him and him touching me. It has to happen, doesn’t it? If it’s happened twice before.

We haven’t even been on a date.

And then I wonder if I owe him anything after what we did, if I have to touch him first. If it’s my turn to figure out how to make him feel electric. I have no idea how I’d do that.

We circle the building slowly, not talking. Every so often I catch him looking at me and there’s a question in his eyes each time he does but he doesn’t ask it and I can’t stand it, so I ask mine first.

“Do you want … do you want something from me?”

“What?”

“You want … something. Right?”

“What? No—Jesus. I just wanted to talk.” He sounds as flustered as I feel and I’m glad it’s too dark in the halls for him to see my face clearly.

“What do you want to talk about?” I ask feebly.

“I just wondered if you thought…” He pauses. “I mean … do you think there’s anything human left in them?”

I think of the dead girl on top of me. How empty she seemed.

“No.”

“So do you think they have souls?” The way Rhys asks it is different from the way Harrison asked it, like he’s not just idly wondering, but he really needs to know. “Because they die, but they come back.”

“The first death. The soul must go with it. They’re not people, Rhys.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I’m God.”

This actually gets a laugh out of him, a small one.

“I can’t stop thinking about it. They look so sad when they turn. Just in that second after. They look like they know what’s about to happen but there’s nothing they can do … and then the light goes out. But that’s why I wondered—just that second…”

“Your parents turned,” I say. “Didn’t they?”

I think I’ve always known. I wait for him to confirm it. He feels my eyes on him and he crumbles a little. At first, I think he’ll cry. He brings his hands to his eyes and stays so still and then he takes a shuddering breath out. When he lowers his hand, there are no tears.

“You were supposed to tell me how,” I remind him. “How you knew…”

So he does.

“The night … before it all really went to hell, a group of dead got into our house. Like six of them. We thought it was a break-in and one bit my dad. We got upstairs and locked ourselves in my parents’ bedroom and we called the police. The police came.” He pauses. “They were overwhelmed and we knew something had gone wrong, but not what or how, so we just thought we’d wait it out in the room until it was safe or backup came. We barricaded the door. My dad was like—he was sick, but we thought he was just upset … and then he said he felt cold.”

I wonder what infection feels like from the inside. If you can sense yourself becoming ice. And your emotions and memories too—they become ice, and you turn and then you’re free.

The way I’m thinking about this is still all wrong and romantic …

“Near the end, he said he didn’t want to hurt us. It’s like he knew it was … it’s like he knew it was taking him over. And then his heart stopped. And then he came back. He bit my mom and I knew what I had to do. The only thing we had in that room were his golf clubs.” He takes a deep breath. “Her bite wasn’t so bad. She was lucid … longer. I thought maybe if it was small, it wouldn’t count. But in the end she got cold too.”

“You killed them both.”

“I didn’t even wait for her to turn,” he whispers.

I remember how covered in blood Rhys was. All over his shirt, his jeans, caked on his neck, his hands. I didn’t even think about it then, but it must have belonged to his mother, his father. For seven days, he wore their deaths and he never said a word to any of us about it. I feel so bad for him and I don’t know how to tell him, so I reach for his hand and hold it as hard as I can, crushing his fingers in mine. It’s a futile attempt to redirect his pain. He lets me hurt him for a few minutes before gently pulling away.

“It was so easy,” he says. “Just physically … doing that. When it was over, I thought … people … we aren’t made of anything. That’s how easy it was.”

“I’m sorry, Rhys,” I say.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. It’s horrible. It’s—”

“No,” he says. “It’s fine.”

“Why?” I don’t understand. I want to understand. “Rhys, why—”

“Because I’m here because they’re not,” he says. “So I have to make it mean something.” I don’t say anything and he shakes a little, like he’s trying to get the nightmare off him, like that’s possible. “Are you coming to Rayford?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Grace wants me to go with her.”

“Grace
is
coming with us.”

“I mean when we get to Rayford. She wants me to stay with her and Trace. After.”

Rhys nods slowly. “I’m sure that invitation doesn’t extend to me or Cary…”

“It doesn’t.”

“Are you going to do it? Are you going to stay with her?” he asks, and I don’t answer him because I don’t want to answer him. I think he’s putting me between them but I’m not sure. Nothing like this has ever happened before. “What if I wanted you to stay with me and Cary.” I don’t say anything. “Sloane, are you going to stay at all?”

What he really means: am I going to leave. Am I going to finish the plan I came here with, the one I wrote down and carried with me, but have failed to see through again and again.

I open my mouth and then I close it as quickly.

“Tell me what happens next,” he says. “Just tell me.”

“I don’t know.”

“You won’t stay for Grace and you won’t stay for me,” he says. “You wouldn’t even stay for yourself. Just Lily, right?”

“Rhys—”

“Who left you,” he says like I don’t know this or that he knows it better than I do but he could never know it better than I do. I’m starting to wish I’d never come out here. And then he says, “She wasn’t the one who was trapped.” He lets this pronouncement hang between us like somehow it’s going to give way to some sort of personal epiphany or an undoing. Like I’ll become light with that knowledge, like I never knew it before. He tries again. “If you’re staying, I want you to stay with me.” I want so badly to ask him why, why he thinks he needs me, but he continues. “If you’re not staying … if you’re going to go through with it, wait until we’re out of your way. I couldn’t stand to see it.”

“Okay,” I say.

“I really hope I don’t see it, Sloane,” he says softly. “I really hope you wake up.”

He hesitates and then he brings his hand to the crook of my elbow. He presses his lips against the side of my mouth and my heart recoils because for all its gentleness, it hurts.

He goes back to the auditorium alone.

So we prepare.

We go through lockers and find book bags for everyone. There are certain requirements: utilitarian is best. They can’t be too big or bulky or easy to grab. We overstuff them with water bottles and food and find them too heavy and then we start making hard decisions like less water or less food? Medical supplies. We need those too, in case someone gets hurt. It quickly becomes obvious we’ll need far more than we’ll ever be able to carry.

In the end, the book bags become a depressing sight lined up in the library.

“We should go with the clothes on our backs,” Grace says. I don’t think she’s talking about the latest ensemble she’s wearing. Another fifties-style dress. “Layer.”

“Good idea,” Trace says. “It’s not exactly warm out.”

“Hey,” Cary says. “We made it seven days out there before—”

“You mean most of us made it seven days out there before.”

“Okay,
most
of us made it seven days out there before.” He gives Trace a bitter look. “We should probably establish some ground rules for that gun.”

“Sure.” Trace nods. “Rule number one: you don’t get to tell me how I can use the gun. Great. I’m glad we had this talk.”

“Trace,” Grace says. She turns to Cary. “What were you thinking?”

“Gunfire will draw them out. Any loud noises will. Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to. That’s all I was going to say.”

Grace turns back to Trace. “Use discretion. Sounds reasonable.”

Trace gives a grudging shrug. I look around the library. Walls, ceiling, doors that are locked and barricaded. Soon we’ll be trading them for the ugly outdoors. I can’t help but feel a certain nervousness about what’s coming the day after tomorrow.

On the way out of the library, Grace asks me if I’ve thought about what I’m going to do when we get to Rayford. I tell her I haven’t and she looks disappointed. I know it’s awful and ungrateful to leave her hanging after she can say something as extraordinarily generous as
I’ve always wanted a sister
to me but I am afraid to tell her yes. I can’t promise to stay with her when I don’t know if I will. I couldn’t do that. I’m not like Lily.

Still, the guilt I feel about it is like a thousand needles all over my skin and it doesn’t go away. It lasts through dinner, after dinner, after the sun sets. I take a shower in the dark to get it off me. The cold water hurts, but it’s a better hurt.

Soon there will be no more showers, none. Nothing.

I sit on the bench in the dark, naked. I run my hands over my body, feeling out my bruises without being able to see them, and I think about what Rhys said, how we’re not made of anything. I wonder if my father felt the same way about me, Lily. Maybe once he realized it the first time, he wanted to realize it over and over because it made him feel like he was made of something. I get dressed slowly and make my way back.

The halls are pitch dark. I let the flashlight guide me but I go the long way around, taking corners, pausing at exits, studying the barricades we put up.

I keep walking, letting the light trail over the floor.

My heart stops.

I jerk my hand up, washing the ceiling with light. I think I must have been imagining what I just saw, like I’ve imagined my father’s cologne and I have imagined his voice. I did not just see—what I thought I saw. I squeeze my eyes shut and count back from ten, until I’ve calmed down and then I direct the ray of light from the ceiling, over the wall. It spills into the open basement door.

The open basement door.

My hand shakes. If I don’t move, if I don’t move the light, if I keep the light off it, it will go away. I open my mouth to shout for help but if I shout for help, I might wake it.

The body on the floor.

I aim the light back on it and in the time it took me to do it, he is up, on his knees, his palms pressed against the floor.

He stares at me. The expression on his face is odd. The fresh clothes I last saw him in are tattered. He is filthy. He left here clean and came back filthy. Came back
alive.

“Mr. Baxter,” I whisper. “Mr. Baxter, what are you—”