This Is Not a Test (9 page)

“Didn’t see anything. Did you?”

I shake my head. We make our way alongside the building, tiptoeing over flowerbeds until we’re interrupted by the concrete walk close to the main entrance.

We cling to shadows every time we make a noise we shouldn’t and then move on more quickly than before. We finally get to the opposite corner of the school, past the bike rack, and stand just before the parking lot. Rhys stops suddenly.

“What if he’s been bitten?” he asks, and I swear we both have the same thought right after he asks it.
Why didn’t anyone think of that before now?

“He didn’t get back up,” I say. “He’s not bitten.”

And then I step into the lot, feeling the bravest and most indestructible I’ve ever felt in my life which is strange, I guess, because I’m readying myself to die. The morning air is so welcome against my skin.

“Sloane,” Rhys says.

I make my way around a car, checking the ignition. No keys. Rhys takes a few more steps and then he stops again and I know he won’t go any farther, that I will have to do this part on my own. I keep walking until I’m standing in the middle of the lot and that’s where I see him.

It’s not Mr. Casper.

I know that right away. I don’t know who he is that he got all the way to the school, begged for help, and ended up facedown on the pavement, but he’s got blood on him and he’s bulky in a way that reminds me of my father.

But it’s not my father, either.

I walk over to the body. This isn’t part of my plan. I was supposed to keep walking forward but for some reason I want to see even though it’s not Mr. Casper and it’s not my father.

This man was someone. He’s dead but he was alive. Maybe I knew him. Maybe I passed him on the street once. Maybe he has a note in his pocket for someone like I do. I crouch down, grab him by the shoulders, and roll him onto his back. His face is swollen, bruised. I do a quick check for bites just in case, but I don’t see any. I don’t see anything that would’ve killed him either. Maybe he survived this long and his heart gave out or something. He’s middle-aged. Wispy hair, balding. Lines edge the corners of his eyes and mouth. I wish dying was as easy as lying down next to him and stealing his death from him.

“Sloane, what are you doing?”

“I’m not coming back with you,” I say.

“What?”

“Go back and tell them it wasn’t Mr. Casper.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m leaving—” I look up at him. I can’t figure out a way to say it. A good enough way to say it. A way that he will understand. “I can’t.”

“You’ll die out here—”

“I know.”

His mouth hangs open but his eyes flicker in a way that tells me he gets it. If he gets it all he has to do is go back inside.

But he doesn’t.

Before he can say or do anything, the man’s eyes open.

Rhys pales.
“Shit!”

I drop my bat. It clatters against the ground, startling the man into awareness. He makes a noise, something halfway between a groan and a wail. He sits up, scrambles to his feet, and pushes me back—I fight to keep my balance—and then he’s babbling.

“No, no, no, no—get away from me!”

“It’s okay,” I say stupidly. I turn back to Rhys and he shakes his head. What do we do now. I don’t know what to do now. This wasn’t my plan. “It’s—”

“No!”
The man sinks to his knees and then gets up again. “Where’s Nick?
Nick?
”

I step after him. “Just—”

“Get away from me!”

“It’s okay,” I repeat. I walk over to him and before I can do anything, he charges at me, shoves me back hard. I land on my elbows and wince. I get to my feet slowly, feeling blood trickle down my arms, and look to Rhys, who is totally paralyzed by this turn of events.

“We can help,” I say. “We have shelter—”

“Stay
away
. Where’s Nick? Nick?
Nick!
”

The man wanders away from me, farther down the parking lot, and his voice gets louder and louder and louder as he calls for Nick, whoever Nick is. I turn to Rhys.

“Go back, Rhys. Go back inside—”

And then—breathing.

But it’s not breathing like the way I breathe or the way Rhys breathes. It’s something that is a sick imitation of life.

It’s how they give themselves away.

That house on Rushmore Avenue. We heard them first before they broke in. This awful choked, ragged sound that told us to leave as fast as we could. We have trained ourselves to run from it, to fear it.

I look around but I can’t source it. I want to know where it’s coming from so I can move toward it. It echoes around us, brings Rhys back to himself.

“Forget him—forget about him—we have to go back.” Rhys walks backward as he says it, heading toward the gate. “Sloane, we have to go back
now
—”

“I’m not going with you,” I say.

“
Nick?
Nick…”

I have to get this man to shut up. I have to get this man to shut up for a minute so Rhys can get back. I hurry over to him, my brain slowly registering other things as I do, like his shirt is half open. There are holes in the legs of his pants. There are red splotches all over him. He’s twitching and he whirls around when I’m within reach. He raises his fist. I flash to my father, stop in my tracks.

“Don’t you come closer—don’t—”

I call back to Rhys, my eyes on the man. “Get inside while you can. I’m staying—”

“I’m
not
going back without you.”

I turn to him.

This is the moment everything goes wrong.

At least five infected are running for Rhys, coming in from all directions, stragglers alerted to us by the man’s shouting. They materialize from seemingly nowhere, some kind of hibernation. I yell for Rhys to get back into the school but he’s a deer in the headlights.

I don’t want to die today, Sloane.

I run to him.

“Rhys, go!”

I make it to him first, I get in front of him and the weight of at least three infected are on me, pushing at me as they fight for my body. I lose my footing and lurch forward. One of the dead—a girl—grabs my arm and pulls me to her and Rhys finally wakes up. He grabs my other arm and pulls me to him but as hard as he pulls, the dead girl pulls harder while the other four scramble around her for a piece. They all want at me.
I’m the prize,
I think stupidly—and then my shoulder pops out of its socket. I scream. Rhys grabs his bat and smashes it against the dead girl’s wrists, smashes it into the others, whatever he can do to get me free and I’m thinking about how it’ll never work, how this is it, when the dead girl’s grip loosens. Rhys grabs my arm, the wrong arm, and the world comes into the cruelest kind of focus, makes me realize something. We can’t go back. They’ll follow us to the door. And then it’s not just Rhys, it’s everyone, I’ll risk everyone and I’m not Lily, I would never do what she did to me—

“We have to lead them away,” I say. “We have to—”

But they’ll follow you no matter where you go.
My brain puts the puzzle together before I even know what the pieces are and I run into the parking lot, Rhys close behind me, all the dead following fast. My chest aches, my lungs can’t hold air. My feet hit the ground so hard I feel it in my bones. We round the parking lot and the man is still there. When he sees us, all of us, his eyes widen. I close the distance easily and—I push him.

The man grabs on to me. We fall and he lands a second after I do and it’s a second I have on him. I use my good arm to scramble to my feet. The man reaches for me. I kick him in the—face. I hear myself kick him in the face. His teeth. Rhys is ahead of me now. I run after him because I don’t want to be near what is about to happen, what I made happen.

“Help me—help me—”

I look back. I can’t help myself.

They’re feeding. Four of them. But one—that girl—hasn’t lost sight of us yet. She pursues us, her hair flying around her head. She’s not wearing a shirt and all of her exposed skin is gray. The veins beneath it are dark, angry lines that want to break free, be outside of her. Her lips twitch, revealing vicious teeth.

“Come on!” Rhys shouts.
“COME ON!”

We finally reach the athletic field. It’s wide open but there are no other infected, none that I can see. I can hear the girl behind me, though, and she’s close, she’s fast, faster.

She dives for me and we both crash to the ground. The side of my forehead connects with the pavement. I swear I hear it
crack
and then I’m underwater and everything is strange and removed and I’m strange and removed from it. I turn myself over, slowly, painfully, and stare into milky white irises, all the capillaries around them busted and red. I lose focus. I see one of her, two of her, three of her. Calm settles over me. She licks her lips. I close my eyes.

This is it. Finally.

A splintering sound reaches my ears and then again, again and again. Something splitting open. At first I think it’s me, that when you die, you splinter into a million pieces, but then I feel wet—wet against me, but slick and wrong. And then a dead wet weight on top of me.

Rhys hooks his arms under my arms and pulls me out from under the girl and I blink and she comes into focus; her head is completely decimated, bits of blood and brain all over me, and then I’m on my feet but I don’t feel like I’m on my feet. Rhys drags me by the hand and I trip after him. Everything is turning gray. He urges me on.

“Come on, you can do this—”

It’s quiet around us now but he moves like we’re still being chased. My legs are rubber and I fall. I can’t breathe. He pulls me up again, wraps his arm around my waist and we both stagger to the library door. He pounds his fists against it and I slump to my knees.

“Open the door—
open the fucking door
!”

PART TWO

Sometimes I’m brave. Like the sleepover at Grace’s. I wasn’t supposed to be there. I went without permission but I was willing to face my father’s wrath after just so I could have something nice, a memory that belonged only to me. And it was nice. I told Grace I liked her family and she said she noticed me watching her parents a lot and I said I wasn’t used to seeing parents together, up close. I guess I could if I watched more TV but that wouldn’t be real and when it’s real and it’s in front of you, two happy people who love each other, a family—that’s better than TV. I got to be part of that for a day. Lily was so mad about having to pick up the pieces afterward, but I still did it. I was brave. I tried leaving. Weeks before everything ended, I was one half of Lily’s old plan and my bags were next to my door and I don’t know how my father found out but he did and he was so angry I had to stay home from school until it didn’t show on me anymore. It was the first time he lost control enough to hit me in the face. I tried leaving again, but Lily took the pills with her. Tried again …

After Rhys pulls me through the door, I go outside of myself somehow. I don’t know how. I wish I knew how. They drag me to the locker room, the showers. Even the shock of freezing cold water against my body can’t bring me back. I watch them scramble to get me clean. They keep asking Rhys if I’ve been bitten, if I’m turning. He says
no
but he also says
wait—be careful—wait until most of the blood’s off …

They keep me under the showerhead forever. They keep me under until my lips turn blue and the water runs clear and then Cary sets my shoulder. I come back to myself for this, for how dizzyingly awful it feels, how familiar. My shoulder has been dislocated before. My father. He watched videos on YouTube about how to put everything back in place so we wouldn’t have to go to the hospital. So I know what’s coming. More pain. I bite down so hard I think my teeth will shatter. Cary tells me
it’s okay, it’s okay
, but it’s not and then it’s done, it’s over. I close my eyes and the next time I force them open, it’s like looking at the world through distorted glass. I don’t know where I am at first and then—I remember. The school.

But I don’t know where in the school.

My heart beats fast. I touch my forehead. It’s been bandaged sloppily. I blink until my vision clears and I process all these things at once: the nurse’s office. I am in the nurse’s office on a cot with a thin sheet covering me, my forehead is bandaged and I am wearing a scratchy long sweater that isn’t mine, that I don’t remember changing into. I don’t know what is more distressing to me; someone changing my clothes or the hurt. My bones are screaming, my skin feels raw. I try to take some kind of weird comfort in the fact these feelings aren’t ones I’m not used to. I’ve been variations of hurt my whole life. My heart calms. I look around. The door is wide open and the hall is empty. I try to gauge the time. The room is light enough. Day.

I sit up slowly, carefully.

“Still here.”

Rhys sits in a chair against the wall, in front of a poster about the dangers of crystal meth. It’s a series of photos, the progression of one woman’s face over the course of a year on the drug—from haggard to cracked-out. She reminds me of the girl outside and then I get so dizzy with those memories, I feel like I’m going to fall into the sky. I lay back on the cot and take steadying breaths in and out. Rhys walks over and rests his hand against my forehead but there’s nothing comforting in his touch and he does it so quickly, I wonder if I imagined it.

“How am I?”

My voice is gravel. He presses a bottle of water into my shaking hands. I drink it and miss my mouth. The water trails down my chin and onto this sweater that’s not mine.

Rhys takes the water back from me.

“You’re sick.” The way he says it, I can’t tell if it’s an insult or a diagnosis. “Maybe you’re concussed. Maybe you have brain damage. But then I think you must have been totally brain damaged before we went out there, so—”

“Rhys—”

“Or
maybe,
” he continues, “you’re infected. Maybe you’ll be dead in hours and then you’ll come back—”