This Is Not a Test (16 page)

“I didn’t know what you wanted me to do,” I say faintly.

“Shoot him!” Trace. “Just fucking do it—”

“I want to put it to a vote,” Rhys says. “We have to make this
fair
—”

“You’re going to be outnumbered,” Cary tells him. “No matter what.”

“We don’t have to kill him—”

“What else are we going to
do
?”

“If I leave,” Baxter says over us, “you’ll never know how I got in.”

And then he starts to cry.

We’re not murderers.

We are still good people and this was the choice we were forced to make. Baxter has to leave or he has to die. The evidence is damning. He’s bitten. He’s unstable. He’s lied to us.

That’s more than enough, especially now.

We’re in the library. The flashlights are set on the table, aimed at us like a crude spotlight. Baxter is in front of the door, the way out, preparing himself for whatever is next. I think of Rhys and me, standing in that exact spot just days before and how much has changed in that time. Harrison and Grace hover by some shelves. Trace and Cary clear the barricades away and then they’re gone. Two things have to happen next: someone has to open the door and Baxter has to step through it. But what happens after that? He lives until the infection overtakes him? We go on, like nothing happened? Because nothing happened if no one used the gun, right? Still, Baxter’s outcome is inevitable. He is going to die.

But we’re not murderers.

Even though Rhys has the gun aimed directly at Baxter’s head.

It will only be used if Baxter is uncooperative and insists on jeopardizing us.

“If you try to get in again, however you got in before,” Cary says, “we’ll have to kill you.”

“You, Mr. Chen? You’ll do it?”

“
I’ll
do it,” Trace mutters.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Baxter,” Rhys says, and he sounds like he means it and it makes me feel like maybe there’s a chance we’re doing something really wrong here. “You have to realize—”

“You’ll never find it,” Baxter interrupts. “How I got in.”

“We will.”

Baxter looks at his hands. “I’m not infected, though. I was not bitten by an infected.”

He’s been saying this since we came to our decision. It’s like if he sounds plaintive enough, we’ll let him stay. If that was all we needed from him, I know we’d let him stay. I know we’re not bad people, not deep down inside.

“No one knows what I’ve been through,” he whispers.

He turns to us and I take a step back. I don’t want to look at him, don’t want his empty eyes and his hollowed-out face etched in my memory. Baxter turns to Cary.

“You were never a very good student. I couldn’t make you do anything,” he says, and Cary doesn’t argue this, just nods. Baxter sighs and closes his eyes. “Maybe, though, you’d be the one to open the door.”

“Okay,” Cary says.

He crosses in front of Baxter to do it.

Baxter charges at Cary faster than any of us can blink. I immediately see how we’ve done everything wrong. We thought we were stronger, smarter than a man who spent weeks out there on his own and lived this long. Cary doesn’t even have time to make a sound. They fall and his head collides with the door, leaving him dazed and limp enough for Baxter to grab Cary’s arm and I know what’s going to happen before it happens and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Baxter sinks his teeth into Cary’s arm.

Cary comes back to himself then, screams like I’ve never heard anyone scream before. I glimpse red and a thousand more things happen at once. Trace rips the gun out of Rhys’s hands and shouts for him to
open the fucking door! Get him out of here!
Rhys springs into action, heaving Baxter up by the shoulders and the whole time he does it, Baxter is still trying to make a case for himself. His teeth are stained with Cary’s blood.

“I’m not infected! You’ll see—
I’m not infected
!”

“Someone
help me
!” Rhys fights Baxter to the door. “Help me—”

I do it. I push the door open and the cold air calls to me. I want to step ahead of them both, but there’s a flurry of movement and Baxter’s flailing arm hits me in the chest, forcing me back. Rhys shoves him once. Hard.

Baxter is gone.

The door closes. It’s quiet just for a second and then his fists sound desperately against it.

Let me in.

Let me in.

Let me in.

And then it stops.

“Get the barricade back up,” Rhys says. “Now—”

“Wait,” Trace says.

“What?”

“Wait.”
Trace trains the gun on Cary, who is staring at his bloody, bitten arm. “Cary’s been bitten. Doesn’t he have to go outside too?”

Cary looks up. “No—I didn’t—it’s not—”

“We all saw it, Chen. You’re bitten.”

“Trace,”
Rhys says.

Trace ignores him. His eyes stay fixed on Cary.

“Trace,” I say. “Think about what you’re saying—”

“But
why
? That’s what we just did to Baxter. Baxter’s infected. Baxter bit Cary. Cary is infected. It’s simple. Anything that risks me or Grace is not allowed to stay in this fucking building. Chen, tell me which way you want to leave.”

Cary’s face loses all color. He holds his arm out and blood trails down it, drips onto his shirt. He silently begs Trace for his life. Trace winces, but the gun stays aimed at Cary’s face. It is so ugly.

“I brought us here,” Cary whispers.

“Doesn’t matter. Baxter bit you and now you’re infected.”

“Give me the gun, Trace,” Rhys says.

“Back the
fuck off,
Moreno.”

“Come on. We can quarantine him until he turns. The nurse’s office.”

“We didn’t do that for Baxter. Why should we do that for Chen? After what he did to my parents? Give me one good reason why.”

“Because Rhys is right.”

Her voice shocks us, makes us quiet. Trace’s grip on the gun nearly falters. We all turn to her. Grace stands there, nervous but determined. She moves to Trace and puts her hand on his arm. He swallows hard and I think maybe he’s as scared at the idea of killing Cary as we are. But that doesn’t really mean anything as long as he still has the gun.

“Don’t even,” he tells her.

“They’re dead. It’s not going to change. Hey, look at me,” she says. Trace refuses to. He leaves her no option but to stand directly between him and Cary. The way she moves is almost holy; Cary stares at her like she’s a saint. And Trace—as soon as she’s in front of him, he lowers the gun and I can tell that even the millisecond he had it pointed at her has hurt him, scarred him. “They wouldn’t want you to do this.”

“Grace. He. Is. Bitten.”

“But he hasn’t turned. If he turns—”

“He can do whatever he wants to me,” Cary says. He clutches his arm to his chest and I think—
Cary’s going to die before me.
We’ll lose Cary.

“Trace,” Grace pleads.

I stagger out of the library because I can’t listen to them talk about Cary’s fate like he’s not in the room, can’t listen to how he’s going to die before me. When I hit the hall, I run. I run upstairs, past the second floor, to the third floor. I rip the posterboard down and I stare out at Cortege below. The moon is bright enough to illuminate the street, but I don’t see Baxter and I think about how this day must have been carved out for him from the moment he was born, that he would live, find Madeline, teach high school, meet Roger, and end up in here with us, his death.

PART THREE

Cary won’t talk.

He lays on the cot while Rhys douses the bite in peroxide. It bubbles angrily and he doesn’t even flinch. Rhys dabs away the blood with a wet cloth until the wound is clean. Then salve. I can’t get over the damage, what human teeth can do. What Baxter’s teeth have done. It shouldn’t surprise me after everything we’ve seen, but it does. An actual piece of Cary’s arm is missing and that part of Cary’s arm was in Baxter’s mouth. I try to remember if he spit it out, but I can’t and then I think I’ll be sick.

“I don’t think you’re infected,” Rhys tells Cary as he bandages Cary’s arm. Cary doesn’t respond. “Cary, you’re not going to die. I mean, you’re not going to die from this.”

Cary grimaces and presses his face into his pillow. Rhys finishes with the bandages and Cary clutches his arm to his chest. He shivers. Rhys frowns and feels Cary’s forehead, just for a second. Three days. We are giving Cary three days. We figure if he hasn’t turned by then, he won’t. But I don’t think anyone believes he won’t. Three days.

In three days, it will be twenty-five days since the world ended.

Eighteen spent in this school.

It feels like years.

“Someone will bring you food. We’ll check on you by the hour. Cary.” Rhys waits for Cary to acknowledge him. He doesn’t. “Cary, if you’re still you three days from now, you’re going to be fine. So don’t do anything stupid, okay?”

Cary doesn’t say anything and I want to draw the blankets up around his shoulders, a gesture of comfort, but most of me is afraid to touch him. Rhys and I stand there and listen to him breathe and I wonder if Cary feels how sick people feel when they’re told they’re terminal, that their time on earth is going to be so much less than they thought. He must. This is the day that was carved out for him.

“Cary,” Rhys says.

Cary still doesn’t respond. Rhys stands there. I can tell he wants to do more but there’s nothing else he can do. We leave the nurse’s office. He locks the door behind him. I hate him for that, hate him for telling Cary he’s not infected and then turning around and locking that door. I’m about to tell him so when Grace appears.

“What do you want, Grace?” Rhys asks.

“How is he?”

“Well, let’s see—he’s been bitten and had a gun pointed at his face all in the span of like an hour. How do you think he is?”

“Can I see him?” she asks. Rhys sighs. “I mean alone. Not with you.”

“What do you want to see him for?”

“Doesn’t matter,” she says. “I saved him.”

He snorts. I’m amazed. I don’t know how she can say or do things like this and call
me
the strong one. She holds out her hand. Rhys doesn’t give her the keys right away. He stares at them for a long time, and when he finally hands them over, he’s clearly not happy about it.

“Thank you,” she says.

“Bring them straight back to me,” he says. Grace nods and moves to the door. “And Grace?” She pauses. “If I find out Trace is bothering Cary—shooting his mouth, threatening him, or just hanging around, whatever—I will beat the shit out of him. Okay?”

Grace’s face turns a furious shade of red but she wants to keep the keys more than she wants to borrow trouble, so she just nods. I want to watch her go to Cary but Rhys tugs on my hand. We walk down the hall. My back is to the nurse’s office when its door opens and closes. Rhys and I are quiet. It’s going to be weird to come back to the auditorium, just to Trace and Harrison.

“If you think he’s not infected, then why did you lock the door?” I ask.

“Because I’m the only one who thinks he’s not.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I’m an optimist, I guess.”

“Don’t bullshit me. Why do you think that?” He quickens his pace, trying to get away from me, but I stand in front of him. “You said that about Baxter too. Tell me how you know.” He clenches his jaw. “Rhys.”

“They were both bitten but they’re not … cold,” he says.

“What does that mean?”

“Baxter was bitten before he got here and he’d been in here for a couple of days. When people get bitten, they get cold. How fast it happens depends on the bite. If he was infected, he would’ve already been cold.”

“How do you know that?”

He looks away. “Doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s different now, I don’t know. Maybe they don’t get cold anymore. But if Cary doesn’t turn in the next forty-eight hours, I don’t think he’s going to.”

“So you knew Baxter wasn’t infected and you let him go out there to die.”

“Are you kidding me? I got him out of this school
alive
.”

“But you didn’t say about the bites—you
knew
and you let them—”

“And
you
held the fucking gun in his face! You were ready to kill him!”

I hate when people yell at me. Hate it. There’s been so much shouting lately, it’s hard to be totally bothered by it now, but this—this is
at
me. I storm down the hall, but he keeps pace with me and then he cuts me off before I can step inside the auditorium. Harrison’s and Trace’s voices drift into the hall and they sound normal. It makes everything worse.

“You had the gun on him too,” I whisper.

“I know,” he says. “It doesn’t matter if he was infected or not. He lied to us and no one wanted him here. No one would have believed me about the bites if I’d said it and I already put my ass on the line for Cary. Look—hey, look at me.” I look at him. “That whole thing happened way too fast. Okay?”

I swallow. “Okay.”

We step inside the auditorium. When Grace comes back, Trace rounds on her.

“What were you doing in there with him?”

“Don’t start.”

“What the
fuck
were you doing in there with him
alone
? Are you out of your
mind
?”

“I just wanted to talk to him—”

“There’s nothing you need to say to Cary Chen and if there is, it’s not going to matter soon anyway. Stay away from him, Gracie. I’m not kidding.”

“He hasn’t turned,” she says.

“Yeah, well, I’m counting the days till he does. Dibs on braining him—”

“Shut the fuck up, Trace,” Rhys says, “or I’ll shut you up.”

“Try.”

Rhys moves forward and then he stops. They stare at each other and a smile slowly stretches across Trace’s face.

“Where did you put the gun?” Rhys asks.

“Somewhere safe.”

“Tell me where you put it.”

“No.”

Rhys looks a second away from exploding, jumping Trace, something. Trace senses it. His smile vanishes at the same time Rhys recovers. It’s the most incredible show of restraint.