The Burnouts (20 page)

“I saved you,” said a crackly, Southern voice.

Lucy turned, and the hand let her go. Bile stared back at her. He wore a glow-stick necklace that made his spectral face look as if it were floating in the blackness.

“Why’d you run away?” he said.

“I … I had to go.”

“Go where?”

“With my friends.”

“But I’m your friend.”

“I know that, but we only just met. These friends are … everything I have.”

“But … I love you.”

“You don’t,” Lucy said. “You just think you do.”

“I LOVE YOU,” Bile said and thrust his face into hers. His mouth was pocked with sores. His breath was salty and bitter like his insides were rotting.

“Well, I don’t love you,” Lucy snapped back.

Bile shrunk away from Lucy. He looked frightened of her, and for some reason, that only made her more upset.

“What do you think we would do, Bile? Go back to your place and get high? Forever?” she said, her temper flaring.

“M-my name’s Kyle,” he said.

She sighed when she saw how much her anger was hurting him. “I can’t live like you do,” she said, “wishing you were dead or whatever you’re doing to yourself. You don’t deserve it.”

Bile’s eyes welled with tears.

“I don’t deserve it either. I want a happy life. I’m sick of being afraid all the time. Of hiding. I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m going out there, and somehow I’m going to get that gun, and then I’ll leave this shithole once and for—”

Bile pushed Lucy out of his way, whipped a curtain aside, and was gone.

Lucy stared at the curtain, slowly closing. She stuck one hand out to stop it, and stepped through, back into the
commons. People were shouting. A few were on the floor. They’d been pushed by Bile as he muscled through the crowd.

“Bile!” Lucy let slip.

She jumped over a fallen Skater and hurried through the field of bodies. When she reached the empty dance floor, David had been knocked down and was trying to get his footing. Bile was grappling with Hilary, who was screaming at the top of her lungs. The gun swung ’round, still in Hilary’s hands, but with Bile’s fingers working their way under them. Kids in the crowd hit the deck. Lucy lurched to a stop when the barrel’s path crossed hers. Bile stomped Hilary’s foot, and the couple fell to the ground.

A cracking
BOOM
punched the air. Bile and Hilary stopped moving. No one in the commons moved. A sweet harmony crested out of the sound system. Bile pushed off Hilary, who lay still on the floor. He stood and turned. He clutched the pistol in his right hand. Smoke slithered from the gun’s nose. He raised it for the crowd to recognize and fear. They stayed frozen.

Bile’s other hand was on his belly. Red spilled over his fingers and down the back of his hand. He was covering a gurgling hole. He stepped toward Lucy and stumbled.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

He lumbered toward her, walking a drunken zigzag until he was only a foot away.

“You shouldn’t be afraid,” Bile said.

He placed the bloody gun in her hand, and dropped.

His breathing stopped. The blood puddle spread underneath him. He’d died so she’d have a chance to live. Or he had killed himself. Or both. It was too much to bear. She felt like the room was closing in on her. But it wasn’t the room. It was the circle of people around her, closing in, step by tentative step.

Lucy looked to the gun in her hand. Bile’s blood made it slip as she squeezed her fingers around it. She held the gun up, just as Hilary and Bile had done before her. It seemed to press pause on the crowd’s advance.

“Back up!” Lucy shouted.

“We have to get out of here,” David said from somewhere in her periphery.

She breathed for the first time at the sound of his voice. She moved toward him, keeping her eyes nimble.

“Bobby!” David said. “Let my brother go.”

Bobby dropped Will’s leash and put his hands up. Will wasted no time standing and running over to them.

“Hi,” Will said. He smiled at Lucy like nothing else existed.

That smile that said
fuck the world
. It got her every time. This time it made her heart hurt.

“Hi,” she said. She wanted to hug him tight, but instead she shouted at everybody else: “We’re walking out of here.”

Lucy kept her elbow locked and swung the gun across the crowd.

“You heard her,” Will said. “She’ll kill you, straight up. Try her. Go ’head and try her.”

“Will, cool it,” David whispered.

The threesome were quick to fall into a triangular formation, so they could watch all sides. Even though everyone was still a good ten feet away, it felt as though someone could still grab the gun. And with her hands still wet with blood, it could have slipped right out.

“Let’s go,” David said.

They began to move in sync toward the west exit, in the direction of the quad, but a low moan drew everyone’s attention. Lucy looked over to see Hilary rising up from the floor. She was clutching her head. She looked around with fierce eyes. The fingers on her right hand moved furiously as they noticed that they were no longer in possession of the gun. They raised up and one extended to point directly at Lucy.

“You!” Hilary said. “That doesn’t belong to you! Give it back!”

“Go to hell,” Lucy said.

Hilary shook her head. “I wish you’d died when I pushed you off the stairs.”

Lucy’s feet froze. Will bumped into her.

“I think we should run,” Will said.

He didn’t know. He couldn’t comprehend what Hilary meant. Lucy could barely believe what she was hearing. But David seemed to understand.

“Lucy, forget it,” David said, and took her hand. “Come on.”

She pulled her hand out of his.

“
You
pushed me?” Lucy said, stepping away from David and Will.

Hilary smiled. The truth of what Hilary had done lit a fire in Lucy. Her baby. Her and Will’s baby. She hadn’t lost their child. Hilary had taken it from her.

Lucy stomped right up to Hilary and put the gun to Hilary’s head. Hilary’s attitude crumbled as the gun’s cold barrel dimpled her temple.

“Lucy!” David called out. “It’s not worth it.”

Lucy glanced over at David. He had both hands out like he was talking to a jumper on a ledge. Will looked confused.

“It is worth it! Do you know what she did?” Lucy said, then locked eyes with Hilary.

She could feel Hilary shiver. The crowd waited for what would happen next. David looked at her like she was a monster. Will shook his head back and forth fast. She put her focus back on the shivering bitch who had stolen her baby.

“Take it out,” Lucy said.

“What?” Hilary said with a tremor in her voice.

“The tooth. Take it out now.”

Hilary went pale as boiled chicken. She shook her head in a tight little movement. Lucy clicked the hammer back.

Hilary raised a shaking hand to her lips, then stopped.

“Please,” Hilary said, her eyes pleading with Lucy.

“Do it,” Lucy said.

Hilary clenched her eyes shut. She gripped her tooth between her thumb and knuckle. A tear squeezed out and ran down her cheek. She pulled. The commons gasped. Hilary covered her mouth with her hand.

“Hand down,” Lucy said.

Hilary cried more, but she did it.

“Now, smile for everyone.”

The tears poured out of Hilary. Lucy had never seen Hilary cry before. She sobbed as she spread her lips and displayed the gaping black hole in her perfect smile. A trickle of watery blood flowed down from the gum and across one of her front teeth, and then dripped onto her lower lip. Laughter rose in the room. Hurried whispers. No Pretty Ones came to her aid. Hundreds of sneaker soles squeaked across linoleum as the crowd packed in close together to get the best view. Flashes of light. At least a hundred cell phones were held in the air, freezing Hilary’s shame forever in pictures and video.

“Your prom queen, everybody,” Lucy said. “The leader of the Pretty Ones.”

Hilary hyperventilated. She dropped to her knees, one arm on the ground, red drool spilling from her mouth.

“You’re going to pay for this,” she said. “I’m going to make you—”

A red, wet chunk leapt out of her mouth. It landed on the floor with a heavy splat. The whole room gasped. Hilary straightened, and both hands went to her throat. Blood
barreled out of her mouth like floodwaters out of a storm drain. It splattered heavy onto the floor. When the blood stopped gushing from her, Hilary wobbled like a slowing top, then fell face-first into the red slop that was once her lungs.

DAVID HAD SEEN ENOUGH
.

He rushed to Lucy’s side, and so did Will. Lucy was smiling over the body of his dead ex-girlfriend, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of it, not her happiness at seeing Hilary die, not the drooling crowd watching death like it was a sporting event.

David placed his hands over Lucy’s. They were cold.

“Give it to me,” David said.

The shaking tension in her hands relaxed. He took the gun from her.

“Make a path!” David shouted. “We’re leaving!”

David swung the gun in a half circle at the crowd that was gaping at Hilary’s wasted body. No one moved, but their eyes settled on the steel in his hand instead.

David thrust the gun in the direction of a pack of Skaters who stood in the way of the west exit.

“You wanna die? Huh?” Will said. “ ’Cause he’ll make it happen!”

Shut up, Will
. The crowd closed in on the trio.

“Get back!” Lucy shouted.

Kids crept forward, a mad hunger in their eyes. The circle closed tighter. They were never getting to the quad.

David realized what he had to do. Sam’s dad had shared a plan with him,
a final solution
, he called it. It was only to be used as a last resort, and David hadn’t told Will or Lucy about it, because he hadn’t wanted anything to do with it. He didn’t want to be responsible for more lives lost.

He cocked the hammer back.

Three kids ran at him.

David raised the gun and emptied it into the ceiling.

BLAM. BLAM. BLAM
.

Everyone cowered and slid to a stop, covering their heads with their arms.

Click. Click
.

He wanted them to hear that, and know the gun was useless now, like all the others in the school.

“Are you out of your mind?” Will said.

David ignored him, and tossed the gun into the crowd. A few scrambled for it, but most of the kids understood.

“This quarantine has gone on too long. None of you deserve to be locked up in here,” David said.

“No shit!” someone yelled.

“Nobody wants to hear it, buddy boy,” P-Nut said. “You just threw away the microphone.” The leader of the Skaters sauntered forward from the crowd and smiled. “Skaters, the good times are back. I think we’ve found ourselves some hostages. Grab ’em!”

Skaters charged toward him.

“I know a way out!” David yelled.

The Skaters halted.

“You do?” Will said.

“A possible one,” David said to the crowd. “Isn’t that what you want, to walk out of here, once and for all?” He looked into the eyes of as many people as he could. Hope glinted there.

“It’s time to leave. Things never should have gone this far. I’m not saying it’s going to be a friendly world out there, but you should be free. You deserve the chance to deal with the situation yourselves, make your own choices, not tear each other apart in here. But, if we’re gonna have even a chance of pulling this off …” They clung to his every word. “It’s going to take every single one of us.”

David’s palms pressed against steel. He pushed. Lucy and Will flanked him, pushing hard, and the rest of the school stretched out on either side of him, all pushing on the steel wall in the back foyer. He remembered when this wall of steel plating used to be an inviting glass entryway that looked out to the faculty parking lot. The crowd grunted and strained.
The ones who couldn’t fit pushed on the backs of the ones at the wall.

Behind them, the massive old mural that depicted David in front of the Loners, under a blue sky, loomed over the two-story foyer. The squares of butcher paper that illustrated the Loners had fallen away. What remained was most of David’s face, and five small squares of blue, like an 8-bit sky.

David had told them about Sam’s dad’s final solution. A month back, when the school had been damaged by the grenade attack, and the steel plate that sealed up the back foyer had become detached, it had given Sam’s dad an idea. If there was ever a need to evacuate the students inside, if something were threatening their lives, say a fire, they would need an evacuation route that could get the kids out quickly. The detached steel wall had been chosen as that exit. Its immense weight was doing the work of keeping it upright. In the event of a crisis, they’d pull the wall down with the crane, and the kids could escape to safety. A steel rivet had been driven into the concrete of the building to keep the wall attached. The whole school had to be stronger than a single rivet.

“Push harder!” David yelled.

This had to end. They had to be set free. He knew he’d be risking the lives of uninfected adults out there, but things had gotten too savage. It would be a mess having everyone outside, but there was no way to avoid it. This was a messy situation. On the farm, he’d believed the infected were safest
inside the school, but he’d forgotten how sick McKinley was, and now he realized that its sickness was terminal. If David didn’t get them out of this place, they’d destroy each other.

“Everyone work with me when I say
push
!” David shouted.

Hundreds of hands waited for his command.

“PUSH!” David said.

Everyone moved as a unit, shoving with everything they had in them.

“PUSH!”

He heard a pop of metal. The wall jolted forward. A two-inch-wide line of daylight appeared above them, where the plates met the building. A whistling alarm rang out from the outside.

“Keep pushing!” David said.

The crowd pushed harder and the metal creaked. He heard Varsity snarl with effort, he heard the higher-pitched grunts of girls, giving their everything. He saw Skaters piling in with Freaks, Nerds with Geeks, Saints with Sluts, working together, refusing to quit.