This Is Not a Test (2 page)

“Sloane,” he says.

I find my way to my feet and back into the hall, knocking into the end table where we keep the phone. It clatters to the floor. The sound of the dial tone steadies me, rights the earth.

“Sloane—”

I push through the front door again and I keep moving until I reach the sidewalk. I’m just in time to see two cars meet in the middle of my street but not in time to get between them. The raw crunch of metal sends me reeling back and puts everything on pause for one brief, critical moment where I edge around the wreckage and try to focus on one thing that makes sense. This: Mr. Jenkins is spread-eagle on his lawn, in his housecoat. He’s twitching. Mrs. Jenkins is kneeling over him. She rips his shirt wide open.
Heart attack,
I think. Mr. Jenkins has a bad heart.
She’s giving him CPR.

Except that’s not what it is at all.

Mrs. Jenkins’s determined fingers have torn past the material of Mr. Jenkins’s shirt.

And now they are tearing into his chest.

PART ONE

SEVEN DAYS LATER

“Get the door! Get the tables against the fucking door, Trace—
move
!”

In a perfect world, I’m spinning out. I’m seven days ago, sleeping myself into nothingness. Every breath in and out is shallower than the last until, eventually, I stop. In a perfect world, I’m over. I’m dead. But in this world, Lily took the pills with her and I’m still alive. I’m climbing onstage before Cary notices and gives me something to do even though I should be doing something. I should help. I should be helping because seconds are critical. He said this over and over while we ran down streets, through alleys, watched the community center fall, hid out in empty houses and he was right—seconds are critical.

You can lose everything in seconds.

“Harrison, Grace, take the front! Rhys, I need you in the halls with me—”

I slip past the curtain. I smell death. It’s all over me but it’s not me, not yet. I am not dead yet. I run my hands over my body, feeling for something that doesn’t belong. We were one street away and they came in at all sides with their arms out, their hands reaching for me with the kind of sharp-teethed hunger that makes a person—them. Cary pulled me away before I could have it, but I thought—I thought I felt something, maybe—

“Sloane? Where’s Sloane?”

I can’t reach far enough behind my back.

“Rhys, the halls—”

“Where is she?”

“We have to get in the halls
now
!”

“Sloane?
Sloane!
”

I look up. Boxy forms loom overhead, weird and ominous. Stage lights. And I don’t know why but I dig my cell phone out of my pocket and I dial Lily. If this is it, I want her to know. I want her to hear it. Except her number doesn’t work anymore, hasn’t worked since she left, and I don’t know how I forgot that. I can’t believe I forgot that. Instead of Lily, that woman’s voice is in my ear:
Listen closely.
She sounds familiar, like someone’s mother. Not my mother. I was young when she died. Lily was older. Car accident …

“Sloane!”
Rhys pushes the curtain back and spots me. I drop the phone. It clatters to the floor. “What the hell are you doing? We’ve got to move—” He takes in the look on my face and his turns to ash. “Are you bit? Did you get bitten?”

“I don’t know—” I unbutton my shirt and pull it off and I know he sees all of me before I can turn away, but I don’t care. I have to know. “I can’t see anything—I can’t feel it—”

Rhys runs his hands over my back, searching for telltale marks. He murmurs prayers under his breath while I hold mine.

“It’s okay—you’re good—you’re fine—you’re alive—”

The noises in the auditorium get louder with the frantic scrambling of people who actually want to live, but I’m still.

I’m good, I’m fine.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure—now come on—come on, we have to—”

Good, fine. I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine. He grabs my arm. I shrug him off and put my shirt back on more slowly than I should. I am fine. I’m alive.

I don’t even know what that means.

“Look, we’ve got to get back out there,” he says as I do up my buttons. “There are three other doors that need to be secured—” He grabs my arm and turns me around. “Look at me—are you ready? Sloane, are you ready?”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out.

SEVEN HOURS LATER

This must be what Dorothy felt like, I think. Maybe. If Dorothy was six scared teenagers and Oz was hell. No, this must be a joke; we are six scared teenagers and our high school is one of the last buildings in Cortege that is still in one piece and I’m not sure I can think of a better or worse place to spend the end of days. It was supposed to be the community center. We went there first like we were told—the town’s designated emergency shelter for the kind of emergencies we were assured would likely never happen—and it was the first place to fall. There were too many of us and too many of them. Somehow, we fought our way from one side of town to the other. In another life, the trip would have taken forty minutes.

In this one, it took seven days.

“Listen closely.”

The radio crackles the prerecorded voice of that woman at us over and over. We have done everything she has told us to do. We have locked and barricaded all the doors. We have covered the windows so no one can see outside and—more importantly—nothing can see in.
“Do not draw attention to yourself,”
the woman says, but if we know anything by now, it’s that.
“Once you have found a secure location, stay where you are and help will come soon.”
Cary sits on the stage across from me, waiting for the message to change. It doesn’t.

“This is not a test. Listen closely. This is not a test.”

But I think she’s wrong. I think this is a test.

It has to be.

Grace and Trace sit on the floor below. She’s whispering in his ear and he’s nodding to whatever she’s saying and he doesn’t look right. He looks sick. He reaches for his sister’s hand and holds it tightly, pressing his fingers into her skin like he’s making sure she exists. After a while, he feels me looking at him and turns his pale face in my direction. I hold his gaze until the chaos outside breaks my concentration. Outside, where everything is falling, landing and breaking at once. Sometimes you catch something specific like the screams and cries of people trying to hold on to each other before they’re swallowed into other, bigger noises.

This is what it sounds like when the world ends.

I take in the auditorium. The cheery purple and beige walls, the matching banners that hang from the ceiling, the Rams posters (
GO RAMS, GO!
) taped up all over. It was Cary’s idea to come to the school. After we found the community center overrun, we heard that woman’s voice on the phone.
Find a place.
He didn’t even hesitate before he said
CHS.
Cortege High. It was built to be the most distraction-free learning environment in the county, which means maximum windows for minimal view. Strategically placed transoms line the classrooms and halls, save for skylights in the auditorium and gym. Two large windows open up the right side of the second and third floors and overlook the school’s parking lot. They’re covered now.

“It’s still happening,” Harrison says.

I follow his tearful gaze to the exit just right of the stage. The doors open into the parking lot which bleeds out into the streets of Cortege, a half-dead, half-dying town. They’re locked, the doors. Locked and covered with lunch tables reinforced by desks, thanks to Rhys and me. Every entrance and exit in here is the same. The idea is nothing gets past these barriers we’ve created. We spent the first five hours here putting them up. We’ve spent the last two shaking and quiet, waiting for them to fall.

“Of course it’s still happening,” Rhys mutters. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

Cary turns the radio off and eases himself onto the floor. He looks like he has something to say but first he runs his hands through his black hair, letting his eyes travel over each of us. Cary Chen. We followed
him
for days. Lily used to buy pot from him sometimes and sometimes I wanted to, but I thought that would make English class weird and I don’t know if she always paid in cash.

“Listen, I—” He sounds sandpaper rough from screaming instructions at us for hours and never once taking a breath. He clears his throat. “Phone?”

Trace makes a gurgling noise, digs his hand into his pocket, pulls out his cell, and frantically dials a number, but it’s no use. The woman’s voice drones over each desperate push of the buttons, a condensed version of what we’re getting on the radio. I watch the sound work its way into Trace’s bones, his blood. His face turns white and he whips his phone across the room. It breaks into three pieces; the back flies off, the battery falls out, and the body skitters across the shiny linoleum floor. Nothing works anymore and the things that still do don’t work like they should.

“I can’t get through,” he says flatly.

Cary picks up the pieces and fits them back in place.

“Give it more time. You will.”

“Think they’d pick up if I did?”

I watch Cary, waiting to see if he’ll defend himself. He doesn’t. He turns the cell phone over and over in his hands and says, “Trace, the message is a good thing. I think it means they’re leaving priority signal for emergency workers.”

Harrison sniffs. “So they can save us?”

“Yeah.” Cary nods. “We’ll be saved.”

“And that’s your expert opinion?” Trace asks.

Cary shrugs but he doesn’t look Trace in the eyes, focusing instead on the doors. His expression reveals nothing, but he’s turning the phone in his hands faster now, clumsily.

“It just makes sense,” he says.

“That’s what you said about coming here. That really paid off for me and Grace.”

Cary winces.

“He got the rest of us here,” Rhys says.

There were eight of us, before.

“Oh, so I’m here. Hey, Grace!” Trace turns to her. “You’re
here.
We’re
here
with
Cary Chen.
” He laughs bitterly. “You think that means
anything
to us when—”

“Trace, stop.” Grace sounds just broken enough that Trace doesn’t take it any further. He frowns, holds out his hand to Cary and says, “Give me back my fucking phone.”

Cary stares at it like he doesn’t want to give it up, like Trace’s cell phone is an anchor keeping him here but I don’t know why anyone would want to be anchored here.

“Now,” Trace says.

Cary holds it out and finally looks Trace in the eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “about your parents.”

Trace rips the phone from Cary’s grasp.

I close my eyes and imagine this place under totally normal circumstances. We have assemblies here. The principal gives speeches here. We eat in this room at lunch. I imagine a day, any school day, setting up the lunch tables and getting in line, picking from the menu. I can almost smell the food …

But then the noises outside get louder than anything I can imagine. They pump through my veins, speed up my heart, and remind me to be afraid even though I have never stopped being afraid, not since Lily left. I open my eyes at the same time the whole barricade seems to shift. Rhys rushes to it, pushing against the desks and tables until they’re settled again.

“What was that?” Harrison asks. “Why did it—”

“It’s just the way this desk was—it wasn’t the door—”

“It’s the
door
?”

“It
wasn’t
the door. Just calm down, Harrison. Jesus.”

Harrison starts to cry. He stands in the middle of the room and holds himself because no one else will and it’s the loneliest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d go to him, maybe, but I don’t even know Harrison. None of us do. He’s one of those invisible freshmen made even more invisible by the fact he just moved here four weeks ago. Cary had to ask him his name after we found him trapped under a bike with his jeans caught in the spokes.

Things I know about Harrison now: not only is he short and stocky, he also cries. A lot. Grace takes pity on him because she’s better than I’ll ever be. She wraps her arm around him and murmurs gentle-sounding words at him and I watch his sobs slowly turn to gasps that turn into pathetic little hiccups. Everyone else averts their eyes. They find things to do so they don’t have to watch. I watch because I don’t know what else to do. I watch until I can’t anymore. I dig my hand into my pockets. My fingers curl around a crumpled piece of paper.

I take it out and unfold it.

Lily,

“Hey.”

The voice is quiet, close. I shove the note back in my pocket. Rhys hovers at the edge of the stage. His brown hair sticks up everywhere and his brown eyes are bloodshot. Things I know about Rhys: he’s a senior. Our lockers are across from each other.

He put his hands on me and told me I was okay.

He has a case of water in his arms. He sets it on the stage and holds a bottle out to me. I don’t even ask him where he got it, just rip it from his hands. I remember us huddled around this old birdbath yesterday, yesterday morning. We cupped our palms together and lapped up all the dirty, stagnant water and it tasted so awful but so,
so
wonderful because we were so desperate and isn’t everything better when you’re desperate? We managed to forget our parched mouths and cracked lips while we secured the school and settled into the last two hours, but now I don’t even know how that’s possible because I am so fucking thirsty. I down the water quickly and then I want more. Rhys hands me another and watches me drink it too. I drink until I feel like the ocean is in my stomach and when I’m done, I’m spent. I curl my knees up to my chin and wrap my arms around them. Rhys gives me a crooked smile.

“Still here,” he says. “We made it.”

“Is that
water
?” Trace calls from his side of the room. “Is that really water?”