Goodhouse (35 page)

I chose an interior pathway, a concrete track that had been built for T-4s and pedestrians alone. The bus was so much bigger. The tires kept catching at funny angles, wrenching the steering wheel from my already tentative grip. At one point I found myself on a steep, narrow pathway between Schoolhouses 1 and 2. I rode the brakes hard and the vehicle shuddered. I scanned the path ahead, and was checking and double-checking every shadow when a group of three students bolted out of a doorway. They were only twenty feet from the bus, but none of them even looked at me—a fact that seemed incredible until I heard gunfire. They were being pursued. A Zero in a proctor's uniform and red balaclava appeared from out of the same doorway.

I acted instinctively. I accelerated and yanked the steering wheel in his direction. He tried to jump backward, to gain the safety of the stoop, but I hit him. I scraped the bus along the brick wall of the schoolhouse, momentarily losing control. I heard metal tearing, a shrieking sound like the warning of a hawk, and then I was free. A spike of adrenaline made me feel that I was glowing from the inside, like I was converting my flesh into some kind of nuclear substance—raw energy.

I swerved into the residential section of campus. The back windows of the bus exploded into a cloud of glass. Someone was shooting at me. I hunched lower in my seat. Several bullets struck the dashboard to my right. I passed a cluster of Level 1 and 2 dormitories that were on fire—the front doors locked, little hooks of flame curling out of the bedroom windows. It was all happening again, I thought; it had never stopped happening. The Zeros had stayed inside me, inside my dreams and hallucinations, and now they had found their way here, climbed out of my mind and into the night.

I turned a corner, clipping the side of the bus against a low concrete pillar. Then I saw Dormitory 35. It was intact—the whole row was intact—and I accelerated, meaning to ram the front of the bus into the side of the structure, to break it open, to bypass the door altogether. I managed to brake just in time, to bring the bus up short, almost at the staircase itself.

I couldn't ram the building. I had no way to communicate with the people inside. I would almost certainly injure my friends, perhaps kill them outright. I put the bus in park and climbed out, taking the keys with me. There was a foul smell in the air, a thick toxic fog, things burning that were never supposed to burn—solar paint, linoleum, rug fibers, drywall. Bodies littered the walkway nearby.

I ran up the front staircase and yanked uselessly on the door handle. “Owen,” I called. I thought I heard muffled voices inside, heard the tap of a fist or a foot. “Can you hear me?” I turned to search for a rock, something I might use to beat at a window—that's when I saw a man's body pinned under the bus. It was the Zero, the one I'd struck earlier. He still wore his red balaclava and his proctor's uniform. His mask was askew. The eyeholes showed white skin in the place of eyes. The webbing that secured his Lewiston to his side had caught on a piece of twisted metal, and his limp body had been lifted slightly off the ground and dragged. A small rectangular screen glowed through the fabric of his pants.

In order to rip open his pocket, I had to crawl partway under the bus, something that would have been considerably easier with two arms. It took a full minute for me to free what turned out to be a handheld. On the screen was a timer—ten minutes falling away toward nine. It was running some kind of software, something the Zeros had created. I touched the screen. Nothing happened.

I groped for one of the man's hands and lifted it. Two of his fingers were gone. A length of bloody bone protruded from one of the stumps. I dropped the hand. I wiped my fingers on the ground, wanting to erase the contact.

The bus shifted overhead. I heard footsteps. Someone was walking up the stairs. I pulled my legs out of sight, tucked myself completely underneath. “It's clear,” a voice said. “We got him.”

The men didn't linger. They were in a hurry to go—to get on with things. I stared at the spot where the boy lay prone above me. I reached again for the mangled hand of the proctor. This time I didn't hesitate. I cradled it in my own. One finger was completely intact, and the screen activated at the dead man's touch. I frantically scrolled through the handheld, hoping nobody could see its glow. I searched until I found the security settings, then scrolled down to the subheading
Residential
. I attempted to override the lockdown. I kept tapping
Unlock all
, but every time I did so, the handheld asked for additional authorization. It wanted a code—four letters or numbers. There were thousands of possible combinations. “Shit,” I said. I typed in the word
pure
. Incorrect. I typed in the word
zero
. Also incorrect. My grip was getting rubbery—a warm glow filled my chest. I remembered this feeling. It was shock. My body was pulling blood out of my arms and legs, shutting down every nonessential function.

It was hopeless. I didn't know the code, and the smell of smoke was stronger now; either the wind had shifted or the fire was moving closer. And then I thought of something that Bethany had said the night she'd visited me in the infirmary. I used the light from the screen to illuminate the man's name tag, illuminate the sequence of four digits that were stamped in the lower right corner. It was his employee number, 4358. I typed it in. The handheld authorized.

I expected to get an immediate response. I expected to hear students kicking open doors, streaming out onto the pathways. But nothing happened. I realized that they didn't know, that everyone would stay exactly where they were unless they were told otherwise. I found the PA system under
CAMPUS UTILITIES
. I selected the word
Broadcast
, and specified that it should be schoolwide. A little picture of a camera appeared. From under the bus I could see a subtle shift in the light outside as every screen on campus lit up. I was about to activate the camera, about to send a video of myself into every room, but I thought better of it. I needed the boys to follow me without question. I needed authority. Instead, I activated the audio portion only.

“This is Davis Goodhouse, your class leader,” I said, imitating his voice, approximating his smooth and commanding tone. “Your dormitories are now open. Leave immediately. Make your way to the Exclusion Zone. You all know where that is. Do not stay in your rooms. You are not safe there.” I closed the transmission. There was a pause, and then doors were opening everywhere. A ragged, discordant cheer rose, disembodied, from the campus, absorbing all other sound. But I had one more thing to do.

I turned on the lights.

Every one.

 

TWENTY-ONE

By the time I got into Dormitory 35, it was empty. “Hello?” I called. I went from room to room. “Hello?” Owen's box of painting supplies had been pulled out from under his bed and left open. A half-eaten Swann Industries chocolate bar lay on the floor. I hoped that meant that he'd been here, that he'd escaped. I did a quick check, room to room, and then I headed out. I'd been gone only a few days, but seeing all the familiar items—the heaps of linens, the uniforms, the trunks—was disorienting. I'd done what I could. It had not been nearly enough, but this life, my life as a student, had come to an abrupt and total stop.

I'd intended to drive to the factory. I was closer to that exit, and I knew there'd be a gate there, a place where the big trucks loaded and unloaded their cargo. But once I returned to the bus, I made a different plan. The boy I'd assumed was dead, the boy whose blood had soaked into my pants, had rolled over onto his back. He was alive—his chest rising and falling, his lips moving slightly.

“Fuck,” I said. I couldn't just leave him. I put the bus in gear. The gunfire had stopped, and this gave me the courage to steer into the heart of the campus. The first thing I noticed was that things looked so much worse with the lights on, with the damage in full color. Even with Dr. Cleveland's drug inside me, I struggled not to see the details. I was sure that everything I witnessed tonight would be replayed, would be endlessly considered, minutely inspected, in dreams, in memory. I was afraid that I'd be invaded by these images, and so this time I was careful. I allowed myself to look only at the path ahead and nothing more.

I wanted to drop the boy at the infirmary, to leave him where he'd be found, where he'd receive some help. This would put me near the access road I'd taken with Bethany, near an exit, or close enough. But when I got to the infirmary, I didn't recognize it. The building had been completely destroyed. The two upper stories had cascaded into the basement. Part of the façade was intact, windows still in recognizable shapes, but these were just sections of walls, lying on their sides, their edges dissolving into piles of smoldering brick and debris. Still, wounded students had congregated nearby. They didn't know where else to go. Many had brought their injured friends. A few T-4s were abandoned at the site, parked haphazardly on the grass, but all the proctors were missing. At the arrival of the bus some boys fled in panic, but others surged forward, waving, expecting help.

It was then that I spotted Owen's abstract for the mural, that large oblong canvas full of children and well-meaning adults and one tiger. The painting appeared to be leaning against a stranded T-4. I angled the bus so that I passed within a few feet of it. And then I hit the brakes. The painting was propped on someone's lap, obscuring the face and torso of whoever was behind it.

I cut the engine. I slid out of the driver's seat and hobbled down the little staircase. Several boys tried to get onto the bus. “Back up,” I shouted. “Stay back.” Everyone complied, and I locked the doors behind me.

I ran over to the T-4 and pulled the canvas away. It was Owen. “Are you all right?” I asked. “Are you hurt?”

He smiled before he opened his eyes. The birthmark on his cheek seemed very prominent, a blotch of brown. “I recognize your voice,” he said.

I felt a huge rush of relief. I'd found him. He had been spared. “Get up,” I said. “We're leaving.”

Owen didn't move, just gave me a dreamy, disconnected look. “I'm imagining you,” he said, “as a civilian.”

“Get up,” I repeated. But something was wrong.

“You're dead, too,” Owen said. “That's why we can see each other.”

“What are you talking about?” I knelt beside him, looking for a wound. I found a small bullet hole in his forearm, but this injury wasn't really bleeding. It was just a hole. I pulled open his light blue work shirt, and there was blood everywhere, bright like paint.

“How did you do that?” Owen wondered. He was looking at the torn shirt. “You ripped off the buttons.”

“You're going to be okay,” I said. The fear in my voice was audible. I looked around for a nurse, for any trained adult, but I didn't see one. Only dozens of students, some of them terribly wounded, others just huddling together, waiting to be told what to do. Some of the younger children were openly crying, and one boy had his legs pinned under a pile of bricks. He was screaming—a wild, wailing sort of sound. “You're going to be fine,” I said again. “You're going to be okay.”

“I always thought you were paranoid,” Owen said. “Just full of shit.”

“I'm going to lay you down,” I said. “Just lean into me.” But with one arm I didn't have much control. I slid him sideways, and he groaned with pain. I pressed my hand against the wound on his chest.

“You're hurting me,” he wheezed. “Stop. Get off.”

“I have to do this,” I said.

We sat for a moment, me trying to press without hurting him, his expression growing slack. “Stay awake,” I said. “Open your eyes.”

He whispered something I couldn't understand. I leaned closer. He was mumbling about going back to the dormitory to get a painting. “Before they burn it,” he said. “Come back with me.” And then he arched his back slightly as if he were lying on something sharp and couldn't get comfortable.

“Everything's fine,” I said. “Don't worry. We're all safe. The painting is safe.” I squeezed his hand more tightly. I leaned in close and hummed the tune that he'd liked so much, the one we'd heard that night in the soybean field. I had no conversation now, nothing to say, nothing but these notes, reaching for whatever spark of consciousness still flickered inside him. I was whispering to what remained, offering this—a final benediction, a song without words.

Owen seemed to stop breathing, and then a moment later he took one more breath. I was smoothing his hair now, that clipped scrub brush. My hand passed over the birthmark on his face. “I'm here,” I said. “I came back.”

*   *   *

I thought this was the worst moment—that wrenching, unbelievable moment when the world tilts, when people you love are pulled behind the curtain of death. I thought I was enduring it right there, in the dirt beside the infirmary, with my hand on Owen's still-warm skin. But some things grow worse over time, more complex. That's how it is. You miss the dead, and then you live your life without them, and you realize slowly, painfully, incrementally, what it is that you've lost.

A helicopter passed overhead, with its rhythmic pulsation of rotors. More boys were arriving, walking around the bus, crowding the pathway. Bitter smoke suffused the air. I tried to get to my feet, but wasn't able to. Everything seemed remote. I was on the other side of some invisible barrier. I was alone with Owen. We were alone.

It was Davis who recognized me. He squatted down so we were face to face. His angelic features—his serene expression—were in horrible contrast to the chaos around us. I remember he wore a gray T-shirt. It was torn across the shoulder, but he appeared otherwise unhurt. “James,” he said. And I must have looked catatonic, because he touched my face, turning it slightly as if to confirm my identity. “You in there?”