The Burnouts (21 page)

Another pop sounded out. Then a few more. The stripe of daylight above them widened, and David felt the wall begin to pull away from his hands. It tipped in what seemed like slow motion at first, then it sped up. He couldn’t help but fall forward with the welded plates, like everyone else. Clouds of dry dirt whooshed into the air as the metal wall hit the ground with a reverberating crash. Daylight flooded the
foyer. David had to shut his eye from the sting of the light.

When he opened his eye, he saw the farm in all its glory. Moist, freshly tilled soil. Lush green grass. He saw a wheelbarrow full of ripe heirloom tomatoes. The sky was crowded with cotton ball clouds, each rimmed with golden light. Snow-frosted mountains seemed a million miles away. Cows lumbered away from the noise of the wall’s crash. Goats bleated in protest. Three dogs scampered into view, chasing each other.

He saw the parents. They were clustered together by the compost bins, a hundred feet away, all wearing gas masks or breathing through scuba gear, and they looked nervous. The whistling alarm blared continuously.

The line of McKinley kids stood breathless at the threshold to freedom.

“Mom?” David heard someone say.

Bobby walked out onto the fallen steel wall. Bobby’s mother broke away from the other parents and burst forward.

“Bobby! Baby, come here,” she said.

Bobby sped forward. When they got up to each other, she slowed to a stop. She cocked her head and took in his dull blacked-out skin, his shiny red teeth. Bobby stopped a few feet short of her, trembling, and they stared at each other. The alarm whistled. A gentle wind blew the rich scents of a farm into the foyer.

Bobby’s mother opened her arms to him and they embraced. The hug was like a starter pistol. Everyone sprinted out of
the school after that. David ran with them. It was madness, so many people running in different directions. He lost track of Lucy and Will. His old friends and enemies were all around him, smiling, and running in circles. They leapt through the crops, playing. They ran with arms outstretched, kicking up dirt, spreading themselves across the expanse of the thriving farm like it was the first minute of recess. They leapt, they embraced, happy faces glistened with tears. Only a few hesitant ones remained in the commons, slowly inching out, wary of their own liberty.

Parents were reuniting with their children everywhere he looked. Terry’s parents came up to thank David for giving them back their son. He saw Sam’s father off in the distance, running around like a madman, trying to wrangle all of the kids.

Lucy ran up to him. The look she gave him threw David. He had been looked at like that before, but never by Lucy. It was how Hilary used to look at him when she’d jumped into his arms after winning a football game. It was how girls used to look at him at parties when they wanted to steal him from Hilary. It was aggressive. Charged with desire. She threw her arms around him. David forgot the rest of the world around him. She kissed his neck. He closed his eye. He melted into her.

“That was amazing,” she said.

Kiss my neck again
, he wanted to say.

“Easy,” Will said.

David opened his eye. His brother was behind Lucy now, frowning underneath his mask.

Lucy broke away. Will’s face transformed when she turned to face him. He smiled for her. It looked pretty convincing, but David could tell he was pissed.

“I’m so glad you’re alive,” Lucy said. David grinned. It relieved him that she knew intuitively to be gentle with Will’s ego.

“I missed you,” Will said. He was brimming with energy, barely containing himself.

“Me too,” Lucy said.

Will placed both his hands on her stomach.

“We’re going to be okay now,” Will said.

Startled, Lucy pushed his hand away.

“Don’t—” Lucy said.

Will stumbled back, and Lucy’s eyes went wide with regret. She took up both of Will’s hands.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s—it’s okay. I understand,” Will said. “I know I’ve been a fuckup in the past and I’ve acted immature, but I’ve changed, Lucy. You’ve made me want to be someone better. I’m going to take care of you. And provide for you. Provide for our family. Lucy, I love you so much.”

“Will, I …” She didn’t continue. She looked to David.

“What?” Will said. “Why do you keep looking at him?”

“You need to know something,” David said.

“This isn’t about you, David,” Will said, whipping a finger at David. He turned back to Lucy with open, yearning eyes. “What—what’s going on?”

A Geek reached in and slapped David on the shoulder, hooted, and ran on. Will’s eyes stayed locked on Lucy.

“The pregnancy didn’t take,” she said.

Will shook his head. “What are you talking about? Belinda said …”

“I lost it, Will. There was a baby, there was, and it was ours, and I tried to keep it safe but—” Lucy shuddered. “It’s gone.”

Will opened his mouth to speak, but stopped short. He didn’t move. Like a VHS tape on pause—he was frozen, but still fidgeting. He stared at the ground. Through the ground. Lucy looked to David in a panic. He had no idea what to do either. He was afraid anything he said would set Will off. He wanted to tell him it would be all right. That this happens to couples a lot in the real world. That life goes on, and the important thing was that the three of them had survived. But he feared that Will would twist even those comforting words into malicious attempts to rub salt in his wounds.

“It’s going to be okay,” David said anyway. He couldn’t not.

“WOOO HOO!” a Skater cried out as he raced past them.

Lucy went in for a hug, but not with all her heart like she’d hugged David. This was more tentative, like she feared Will
was about to sprout thorns. He shook her off, and she backed away.

“You told him?” Will said, pointing at David. “He already knew?”

Lucy looked to David for the right answer.

“Will … yes, it was the first thing I asked her about. Just like you did. It’s not some conspiracy—”

“No,” Will said, sarcastic and vicious. “Of course not. Where would I get that idea? You two can barely keep your hands off each other. I guess this is the best thing that could’a happened, huh, Dave?”

“Will!” Lucy said.

“Choose,” he said to Lucy. “You have to choose, right now. Is it him or me?”

Lucy gasped.

“Will, come on,” David said.

“Shut up, David,” Will said without looking at him. Will’s eyes were locked on Lucy’s. She couldn’t look at him. Her eyes danced around, but she kept glancing at David.

“I should have known, right?” Will shouted. “Nothing ever changes.”

“Will, don’t say that,” Lucy said.

“Then tell me I’m wrong. Tell me you love me and not David. And don’t lie. Don’t you dare lie to me now.”

“I don’t want to lie to you,” Lucy said.

“So don’t,” Will said. His voice cracked as he said it, and his
face flickered with anger right afterward, like he was mad at his throat for betraying him.

“We had our time, and it was good,” Lucy said.

“Oh my God,” Will said.

“It’s not like those feelings weren’t real—”

“Fuck you both,” Will said.

“Will!” David cried.

Will stormed off. Lucy started crying. Will was cruising across the farm, straight for the front gate of the tractor-trailer wall.

“Stay here,” David said.

David ran and caught up with Will, twenty feet from the exit. He tried to grab Will’s arm, but Will threw him off.

“Come on, will you grow up?” David said.

Will stopped and faced him. “Go ahead. Take her. Take the glory, it’s all for you, David.”

“Nobody’s out to get you, Will. Least of all me.”

Will laughed, but it was short-lived, like a flower that wilted as it bloomed. His cheeks slackened, his eyes dulled. His stare became absent of feeling.

“I liked it better when you were dead,” Will said.

Will walked to the exit, and David didn’t stop him.

WILL HATED EVERYTHING. DAVID AND LUCY
, McKinley, the virus, the world.

The motorcycle he was riding was the only exception, because it was getting him out of Pale Ridge. He’d found it in the garage of an old couple who had lived down the street from him. It was exactly the kind of bike you’d expect an old person to ride—a bulky, maroon Honda Gold Wing with tons of storage compartments and room for two. To fill it, Will had siphoned gas out of a wrecked Subaru that had been wrapped around a tree. A motorcycle seemed perfect. It was the last thing David would want him to ride. His last motorcycle ride through the quad had made Lucy turn up her nose. Good. They could both go to hell. He cruised through the husk of Pale Ridge, and got used to how the hulking cycle turned. Before this, he’d only ridden a motorcycle in a straight line.

The more he saw of his dead town, the faster he wanted out
of it. He goosed the gas. Somewhere out there, far away, was a place where no one knew him, where no one knew that David was his brother; and where no one loved him, and where no one who could take their love away.

Now Leaving Pale Ridge, Colorado. Come back soon
.

The sign zipped past, and Will pulled onto the two-lane interstate that extended ahead of him for miles. Heavy green forests crowded the road on both sides, and the asphalt was littered with leaves and twigs and debris like it hadn’t been driven on for a while. Will poured on the gas and zoomed down the road.

Lucy had loved him once. He hadn’t imagined it. Her love had felt so real to him. It had kept him going, kept him fighting, through everything he’d faced. Lucy’s love had given him a reason to act right, it let him believe that he could be a man. But he didn’t realize that her love had been provisional. She loved him, but only as long as David was dead.

Will accelerated. The trees whipped past.

He felt like a fool. He’d walked David right to her, not thinking that would tempt her. He’d assumed she’d want the same thing he did. God, it was laughable now. Dreaming about being the father of her child. He’d conjured the boy so clearly in his mind. He was like Will, but before he’d made any mistakes. Will was going to make sure the kid never messed up like he did. Those desires were the purest emotions he could remember experiencing. And he supposed they were real, and they were warranted, because at one point the baby had been
alive. The sadness of it hollowed him. It ate at his insides.

Your baby is dead. Your baby is dead. Your baby is dead.

Will cranked the throttle, and felt the handlebars try to pull out of his hands. He hunkered down and gripped the bar harder, and clamped down on the rumbling beast with his thighs.

There had to be a way to blame it all on David, and he wanted to find it. The anger was there, but Will couldn’t find the logic to support it. David had taken Lucy away, he tried to tell himself. But he hadn’t. Lucy was the one who had turned her back on him. He knew he shouldn’t have said what he had said to David. His brother had done nothing to harm him. But that was just the thing, David didn’t
have
to do anything. Just as it had been for Will’s whole life. All David had to do was walk into a room, and Will ceased to matter.

Will cranked the throttle, and the motor yelled. The forest was a blur of green in his periphery. The bike shook. Bugs pelted his face shield.

What a piece of shit Will was. A loser and a sore one. What had he accomplished by storming off? Did he really think it would change Lucy’s mind to see him have a hissy fit? If anything, his behavior had probably done away with any doubt she might’ve had. All he’d done was cement her decision. He felt like a hurt little boy running away from home because he just got spanked. He wondered if—

Oh no
.

Will felt a familiar sensation. A wrongness.

His brain became a vacuum, no thoughts, no words, no firm ground to stand on. He felt the bike fall away from him, even though it was still there. His eyes rolled back in his head, against his will. Then they jerked to the right, then left, and the last thing Will was aware of was the wobble of the motorcycle against his crotch, before the world disappeared.

He was tangled in a bush on the side of the road. There was pain in his head, all through his body. His brain spun. Dizzy and nauseous. His gas mask was intact. His faceless motorcycle helmet was still on over it. He looked down at his body and found everything still attached and bending in the correct directions. He’d gotten lucky.

David was right, Will shouldn’t ride motorcycles. He shouldn’t ride a bicycle. And he should have never skipped a day of taking his pills. Not enough food and water had undoubtedly made it worse. He’d been seizure-free for so long that he’d forgotten how easily his epilepsy could bitch-slap him, especially when he got himself worked up.

He was always trying to forget that he was epileptic, and prove that he didn’t need anyone, but he did need someone. He’d always need someone.

Will kicked his leg free of the bush and planted it on the ground. Everything hurt. He wondered if he would ever learn. Would he always push people away when they tried to help? Would he always repel girls once they found out how much
help he really needed, and realized that his tough act was just a desperate charade?

Will heard an approaching engine. He craned his neck to peer down the road, and he saw a giant white vehicle driving his way. It looked like a cross between a garbage truck and a double-decker bus. The windshield was black and he couldn’t see through it, but the rest of the thing was painted glossy white. A giant red cross was painted on the front. The vehicle came to a stop thirty feet down the road from him, with a hiss from its air brakes.

A gentle female voice called out from the speaker on the roof.

“Are you infected?”

Will shook his aching head, and pointed to his gas mask.

A door opened on the side of the vehicle, and out walked three adults in white haz-mat suits. They approached Will, and when they got a few yards from him one of them raised a hand. It held a gray device that looked like a large garage door opener. With the click of a button the device fired a dart.