This Is Not a Test (26 page)

“The windows are boarded,” I whisper excitedly. “The windows are boarded—” Another thought crosses my mind. “But the doors probably are too—”

The back door starts to give. They’re going to get past it. I fling the front door open and grab Rhys’s hand again, forcing him forward. We trip down the steps and race to my yard. I push on the front door but it won’t open. I step back and notice the second floor windows are clear. I bet she left them clear for me. Rhys follows me around the side of the house. The maple tree outside my window. My grip tightens on the crowbar.

“We have to climb it.”

Our desperate scramble up is nothing like in the movies. The bark is gritty and painful against our hands and the rain has made it slick. There’s no learning curve. Lily is the one who climbed trees, not me, and I think that’s the only reason I make it. Because I know she did it.

Somehow, we get to the weak branch that leads directly to my window. By that time, the infected are below us. The branch strains under our weight and starts to give as I break the glass with the crowbar. I launch myself through the window. Rhys falls in after me. I crawl across the floor and use my bed to get myself to my feet—
my bed
—and I’m dizzy with how untouched my room is. The end of the world didn’t happen here.

Or maybe it did. Maybe I’m dead. I turn to Rhys.

“We made it, right? We’re here—Rhys, are we here? Rhys—” I crouch next to him and put my hands against his face while he gasps for breath. “We’re here, aren’t we?”

“We’re still here,” he manages.

Home.

I stand in the middle of the room wondering why she hasn’t come to meet me. The house is boarded and safe but I broke glass. I broke glass and I hit the floor hard, but no one has come up here to investigate. The door to my room stays closed.

Maybe they’re in the rec room and they can’t hear me.

Maybe they heard me and think I’m death and they’re hiding from it.

“How is Cary going to know to climb the tree?” Rhys’s voice is raspy. He looks at me. “He won’t know.”

My throat gets tight. I don’t say it, but he sees it in my eyes.

Cary is not coming back.

Rhys buries his face in his hands.

I can’t ignore the feeling building inside me that something is wrong.

“I’m going to check the house,” I say.

Maybe my father lied. Maybe Lily was never here and this was just his way to get me back home. I tighten my grip on the crowbar, which makes my other hand feel too empty, so I search for something I can put in it. I pick up a piece of my window. Glass. It’s jagged, but feels right with my fingers curled around it.

Rhys gets to his feet but I say, “I want you to stay here.”

“Sloane—”

“Just stay here.”

He won’t win this and he knows it. He sits on the edge of my bed—
my bed
—and tells me to shout if something happens. I nod. I move across the carpet, leaving muddy footprints in my wake. I open my bedroom door quietly and close it just as quietly behind me.

The hall is empty. Movement catches the corner of my eye. I whirl around and confront—my reflection. The mirror at the top of the stairs. I drop the glass and touch my face. I am caked in mud and my hair is straggly and knotted from the rain. My lips are bruised. There are cuts and scratches on me that I must have gotten since leaving the school but I don’t remember how. She won’t recognize me when she sees me. I look like someone who has survived.

I bypass the stairs, my heart thudding in my chest, and go straight to her room. I’ll know what I’m dealing with if I do that, if he was lying to me. I close my eyes before I open the door. I pray. I wasn’t raised to believe in God, but I am not above begging favors. I open my eyes.

The sight brings tears. They streak through the dirt on my face.

She’s been here.

I know she has. Her bed is rumpled, it’s been slept in. I almost cross the threshold but I remember how dirty I am. I don’t want to get mud on her floor, her things. I run downstairs and nearly fall down the last three steps.

“Lily? Lily—”

I pass the living room. The picture window is covered, boarded. The glass cleared away. The front door has been nailed shut. Our street must have cleared out quickly for him to find the time to do this. I stop when I reach the kitchen. The breakfast table.
You better eat that.
The room is empty. The house feels like a ghost.

What if they went to Rayford.

I hurry across the room and push the door to the garage open.

The car is there.

I close the door and step back into the kitchen. Keys on the hook beside the fridge.

They’re not in Rayford.

“Lily?” I call, softer this time.

I walk back down the hall with the memory of my father’s arms on me, pulling me to the rec room. I let them take me there again and press my hand against the closed door. I know she’s inside. I open the door and peer into the dark. A weak yellow glow radiates from the edge of the room. A flashlight, I think. I walk down the stairs, stand still at the bottom of them.

My eyes travel over the mess. The overturned chair. The desk at the back of the room. My father’s desk. The TV in the corner—the screen cracked. Something happened here but it doesn’t matter because in the middle of it all, in the heart of this room, is a blond girl with her back to me. She stiffens.

“Lily,” I say.

She turns.

Gray skin. Angry veins. A dead girl’s face. The side of it is peeled away and rotting. The corners of her mouth are red, her lips black and crusty, her eyes sunken and white. She opens her mouth and runs at me, her arms out, she pushes me, throws herself at me and I use the crowbar to keep her back. She digs her nails into my shoulders, while I keep the metal pressed against her throat.

She doesn’t feel it, doesn’t choke against it.

She’s cold.

I force her off me. She gropes to her feet and lunges at me again and I meet her this time, this time I’m on top of her, using the crowbar to keep her pinned against the floor by the neck. I hear something inside of her crunch against the pressure.

“Lily,” I say. “
Lily
—it’s me. Lily—”

She thrashes under me and then suddenly she stills, seems to focus. She sees me. Her eyes get wide and there’s something in them—I think there’s something in them but I don’t know what and I try so hard to understand it;
I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore.
Tears spill over my cheek and drip onto hers. The look in her eyes fades. She digs her hands into the sleeves of my shirt and grinds her teeth together. Her gaze flickers around the room as she tries to figure out a way she can be free from me, always. Even though she knows I’ll die without her.

But maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be.

I drive the crowbar into her face.

I disappear into a dark, empty place.

There is nothing to see, nothing to feel. It’s a relief to be in something so endless and undemanding because everything has been too much and I’ve been so tired. I hear my heartbeat in this place, steady at first, but eventually it slows and then it stops.

I wait.

Sloane.

I open my eyes. My arms are wrapped around my dead sister’s body and my head is resting against her chest and the voice that has pulled me from the darkness, without my permission, belongs to Rhys. He’s above me and she is beneath me and she’s not moving anymore. I uncurl my fingers from her and he helps me to my feet and I stare down at my sister’s dead body and its stillness wraps itself around my heart and it fills my lungs until I want to bury myself inside her. I want to bury myself inside her.

“Sloane, we should—”

The gritty sound of air cutting through dead lungs sounds from the other side of the room and pulls my gaze from Lily. My chest tightens. More dead. Close.

I don’t know how there could be more.

I point to her and then I hold my hand out. Rhys takes the crowbar out of her face, a sick, awful sound that becomes a part of me as soon as I hear it. We cross the room slowly and a familiar scent floods my head with images, puts a bitter taste in my mouth, makes me want to tear my skin off …

I find my father on the floor, wedged between his desk and the wall. His eyes are cloudy, his skin is gray, his veins vivid, so visible. He’s on his back and his abdomen is wide open, but it’s been so feasted on, it’s hardly there anymore. What’s left of his insides are dried out, have cemented him to the carpet. He flails his arms uselessly but he can’t get up.

Lily did this.

I raise the crowbar over my head. I’ll finish this. Everything. But his teeth—they catch my eye. They’re perfectly white, clean. They’ve never sunk themselves into anything. He’s weak and his expression is sick with want. He moans at us. I lower the crowbar.

“Just leave him,” I whisper.

We go back upstairs. Rhys packs clothes and searches the house for supplies. I take the car keys and shove them in my pocket and my fingers brush over a crinkled piece of paper. I take it out and unfold it. My note to Lily. I stare at it. It’s been through as much as I have and the letters have smeared together, have mixed with dirt and blood.

Only a few words are readable now.

Rhys steps into the room. “Are you ready?” I stare at the letter. Can’t stop staring at the letter. He moves in front of me and brings his hand to my face. “Sloane, are you ready?”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out. He tells me he should drive. I give him the keys. The car starts on the first try and the gas tank is half full. He lets the car idle while I open the garage door and then I run back, jump into the passenger’s side. He eases out of the driveway and then we’re moving and we go by empty, broken houses, abandoned cars, and then eventually, the
YOU ARE NOW LEAVING CORTEGE
sign. We pass more dead along the way and they reach for us before they know we’re gone.

“Tell me what happens next,” Rhys says after miles of silence because he knows. He knows the brief moment where everything was certain—her, me, him—is over now and I don’t know what’s left anymore. I turn my gaze away from him, back to the window. I catch sight of something.

I tell him to stop and he stops.

A young dead girl limps across an otherwise empty road. She’s so little. She can’t be more than seven. Her ankle is badly broken but she drags her foot along determinedly until she finds herself at my window. She puts her hand to the glass and I do the same. Her palm is so much smaller than mine. She’s too young, too frail to break through what separates us but she stares at me with pure longing. Her eyes are so desperate.

I see them in her.

Lily. Grace. Every death I’ve ever known is in her eyes and they are looking out at me, all of them, reaching for me with more than just this animal need to consume. It’s more than that. I don’t know what it is, though. But I need to know.

“Sloane,” Rhys says.

“Wait,” I whisper.

I move closer to the glass, as close as I can get to it, begging her, begging Lily, begging Grace, begging all of them to tell me what’s left, to just
tell me,
while the girl pushes against the window, turns her tiny hands into tiny fists, begging me for a taste of—
life.

My life.

Lily disappears. Grace. They all leave, they’re gone, they will never be here again. But the weight of what they’ve shown me is settling into my bones. I don’t know if I will keep it, but just in this moment, however brief, I feel closer to it than I ever have before …

The dead girl presses her face against the glass. She waits for me to tell her what’s next.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For their love and faith in me: Susan and David Summers, Megan and Jarrad Gunter, Marion and Ken LaVallee, Lucy and Bob Summers, and Damon Ford.

For working hard to bring this book together, inside and out: Amy Tipton, Sara Goodman, Lisa Pompilio, Anna Gorovoy, and all at St. Martin’s Press.

For their kindness, keen-eyed critiques, and inspiration: Emily Hainsworth and Tiffany Schmidt.

For their listening and encouragement: CK Kelly Martin, Nova Ren Suma, and Daisy Whitney.

For the very first push in this direction: Mur Lafferty.

For the helpful e-mail about the phones: Brian Stoffer.

For their support and zombie-related enthusiasm: Kelly Jensen, Robert Kent, Will and Annika Klein, Amy Spalding, Brian Williams, TS, and every single one of my friends and readers.

For their lovely hearts and minds and for sharing them with me: Whitney Crispell, Kim Hutt, Baz Ramos, and Samantha Seals.

For more than I could ever say in this small space: Lori Thibert, TF. NRSM4L. (Shake it out!)

Thank you all. Without you, this book would not have been written.

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