Quarantine #2: The Saints (32 page)

Gates was playing golf. He stood ten feet from her. There was a tipped-over bucket at his feet, and a pool of golf balls was spread over the floor around him. She watched him bend
down and place a golf ball on the toe of an old sneaker, which he’d been using as a tee. He gripped his club, a big titanium driver, and took a heavy swing. The ball shot off the shoe and ricocheted off the concrete columns, and the hard floor, pingponging around the room.
Tack-a-tack-tack!
Saints ducked to avoid getting hit by the speeding ball. Gates teed up another and let it fly. She flinched when the ball cracked off the concrete column next to her head.

She saw a squat, round-faced Saint getting pushed toward Gates by the other Saints. “Okay, okay,” he said. The round-faced boy approached Gates with caution.

“Hey … um, Gates?”

Gated took another big swing and hit the shoe this time. The shoe twirled into the air. Gates threw his club to the floor. “Boring!”

“Uh,” the round-faced boy said.

“What is it, Fowler?”

He turned and looked at Fowler and his red eye fluttered. There was a little glob of yellowish gunk on the bottom lid, some sort of puss, that would jump and stretch across his eye with every blink.

“We were wondering. Why is it so important we get Will back again?”

“I told you, he knows where Sam is.”

Fowler didn’t look convinced.

“Some of us think we should just be searching for Sam.”

“Who’s some of us?” Gates said, insulted. “How many times have I saved all of your lives? How many times have we been done for, and I’ve been the one to lead us all out of it?”

“A lot of times, man.”

“That’s right. And I’ll lead us out of this one. You have to trust me. Haven’t I earned that?”

The look on this boy Fowler’s face said it all. He was frightened of his leader. Gates was losing his gang.

“Will doesn’t know where Sam is. He’s lying to you,” Lucy said to Fowler and the others.

Gates turned to her, enraged. She shouldn’t have said it. What had she been thinking? She was a sitting duck. He stomped toward her, his hands in tensed into claws.

“Hey, Eyedrops!”

Gates stopped in his tracks and jerked his eyes toward the hallway.

It was Violent. And all the Sluts. Sixty-three of them. They leaned against columns with smirks, or took a seat on the floor, picking their teeth with their blades. They glared at the forty-odd Saints with menace.

“I got something for you,” Violent said.

Will stepped out from behind the red hair and the knives in an oversized gray sweatshirt. He was one white head of hair in a sea of red.

Lucy’s heart leapt.

“Oh my God!” Gates shouted. He was covering his open mouth with his hand. His bugged-out eyes quivered as they looked at Will. It turned Lucy’s stomach that Gates’s response to seeing Will seemed to match the same kind of emotion and excitement that Lucy felt inside.

“I believe that redhead there belongs to me,” Violent said.

“Send him over first,” Gates said, still staring at Will in wonder.

Violent walked beside Will as he crossed the gap between the gangs. She held her knife in her hand; its entire handle had been dipped in red nail polish. Will looked scared, but he gave Lucy a little nod as he walked. As they got closer, Violent broke away from Will and came to stand next to Lucy’s gurney.

“What’s the plan?” Lucy whispered to Violent as Will continued his walk toward an emotional Gates. Will’s oversized gray sweatshirt made him look like a kid in a grown-up’s clothes.

“No plan,” Violent whispered back as she cut Lucy loose. “Let’s go.”

“Wait, what do you mean? How is Will getting to get out of this?” Lucy said.

“Pretty sure this is as far as he’s thought things through.”

Colton walked toward Gates. He wore a big gray sweatshirt that was too big for him. Gates was still in shock. He hadn’t expected his brother to walk out from the Sluts. He’d been
expecting someone else, or something else, but he couldn’t remember what it was. It didn’t matter now. Colton had returned.

Every step Colton took toward him brought Gates closer to joyful tears. Colton looked healthy. His brown hair was combed neatly to the side, as always. He walked stiffly though, and he wasn’t smiling. He still wore those same damn black sunglasses, and Gates wanted him to take them off now more than ever. He needed to look into Colton’s eyes and know what he was feeling. He needed to connect with him.

Gates opened his arms wide, and wrapped Colton in a warm hug. Colton’s arms stayed down. Gates never wanted to let go again. The tears began to squeeze out of his eyes. The pain of not having his little brother in his life was transforming by the millisecond into gratitude. He didn’t care how this was happening, he didn’t need an explanation, they were together again. All the irrational guilt he had felt, that it was somehow his fault that Colton had tried to turn himself in, that maybe he had said something wrong, or had taken Colton for granted, that all evaporated.

Colton had never died. He hadn’t been shot by a soldier. That was just Gates’s mind playing tricks on him. His brother was alive and well and everything was fine. Gates wasn’t to blame for anything.

“Guys, get him his presents! What are you waiting for?” Gates said, while still squeezing his brother.

Behind him, the Saints jumped to his orders, dragging out old beaten boxes from the shadows, full of toys, and sports equipment, and DVDs.

Gates sensed movement to his left. He looked up from his hug and saw Lucy rushing up to him with Violent running after her. Lucy held a knife with a red handle, and before he realized what was happening, she plunged the blade into his side, just under his ribs. The pain made his legs buckle and his hands instinctively went to the wound. He fell on to his side on the floor, and looked at the red knife handle sticking out of his waist like a flagpole. Lucy pulled Colton away.

Saints ran past Gates, going after Lucy, which made the Sluts charge the Saints. A gang battle erupted through the commons.

Gates grasped the glossy red handle of the knife, and pulled the bloody blade out of his body, inch by excruciating inch. He was gagging from the pain by the time he got it all the way out, and let it clang down onto the floor. Thick blood came belching up out of the hole in his side.

Gates clutched his side, and grunted through the pain to stand up. He frantically scanned the sea of swinging weapons in search of Colton. He saw knives everywhere. He saw Sluts slicing at eyes and necks. He saw them kicking crotches. He saw a Slut eat a rifle butt to the face. He saw Tiffy swing a croquet mallet into a Slut’s stomach. He saw Lark on the floor
shrieking over her dislocated jaw. He saw all that, but he couldn’t see Colton anywhere.

He had finally gotten his brother back. The only thing that mattered was Colton. And Lucy had taken him away again. He couldn’t breathe.

“Don’t take him from me!” Gates shrieked at the top of his lungs. He kept looking everywhere. “GIVE HIM BACK!”

“Shut up, rich boy,” Violent said. She came running out of the fray, and tackled Gates to the ground. His stab wound exploded with pain. She attacked him with fists and fingernails. Gates clamped his hands around the bitch’s neck, and saw her startled eyes blast wide open. He crushed down on her throat with all his strength.

Will and Lucy ran out of the commons, and down two halls. The further they ran, the more the battle sounds faded. Will pulled her into an empty classroom and shut the door. They clung to each other. She hugged him with all her strength. He was alive, and away from the grips of that psychopath. They separated.

“I have to go back,” Lucy said.

“What?”

“I have to help my girls, they’re only in this fight ’cause of me.”

“No, you can’t go back there.”

“I have to.”

“Gates is gonna be going ballistic. I don’t want you around him.”

“You’re the one who shouldn’t be around him. You need to go back to Minnie’s room and hide.”

“Come with me,” Will said.

“I can’t, Will, I told you—”

“I’ll let you kiss me.”

She laughed. She couldn’t help it, she wasn’t expecting that. Will smiled at her. For a moment, she smiled too, but her face went slack when she saw twin lines of blood pour out from Will’s nostrils.

WILL AND LUCY DASHED DOWN THE HALLWAY,
toward the quad, holding hands.

“I have another year,” Will said. “I’m supposed to have another year.”

“We don’t know anything until you scan your thumb. It could be anything. Maybe you got hit,” Lucy said.

“I told you I didn’t get hit.”

“I don’t know, Will. Maybe the air’s too dry.”

He wasn’t buying it. And he knew she wasn’t either, but she kept trying to keep him calm.

“It can’t be the virus,” she said. “That just doesn’t make sense.”

Unless Will’s body was just done with puberty. He guessed it was a possibility. He hadn’t grown any taller in months. No matter what the answer was, he still might have to leave school. He should have been thrilled to finally get to leave.
To have this all end. But, not now. Not when he’d just gotten Lucy back.

The two of them slowed. There was a corpse on the floor ahead of them, a boy. His legs were splayed, with one shoe off and one shoe on. The white floor around him was a mess of smeared blood. It wasn’t until they were closer that they saw where all that blood had come from. The whole front of the boy’s neck was gone. The flesh had been torn away, and Will could see the front of his spine nestled into the red mulch of shredded neck meat. Above the ragged wound was a face they knew all too well.

Sam’s mouth was open. His eyes were too. They had gone gray. His face was twisted in agony. It was a painful death. Horrible. But Will guessed it was inevitable.

“Oh my god,” Lucy said, staring down at Sam. “Who would do that?”

Will searched inside himself for the satisfaction at seeing Sam destroyed and he couldn’t find it.

“We should keep moving,” Lucy said, and pulled Will forward.

“Wait,” Will said, staying put. He took off his oversized sweatshirt and flung it out like a bed sheet. He let it fall across Sam from his chest to the top of his head. He turned to Lucy and gave her a nod. “Okay.”

They ran for the open door to the quad. Outside, it was raining hard. The air smelled clean. Will and Lucy rushed into the quad. It was one giant square of mud. Will scanned the razor
wire perimeter, three floors up, and spotted an adult standing on top of the east wall.

“Thumb check!” Lucy yelled as loud as she could.

The adult lowered the boxy machinery of the disembodied thumb scanner. It dangled from a long pole extended over the razor wire. As they ran for the wall, the figure above became clearer. Rain splashed off his black motorcycle helmet. It was Sam’s father. The thumb scanner spun as Sam’s dad lowered it. When it was ten feet above them, Will could see that the scanner was sealed up in a ziplock freezer bag.

Will unzipped the blue-green seal, wiped his hand on his jeans, and stuck his hand into the bag. He planted his thumb on the scanner.

The rain poured.

“You’re transitioning,” the man shouted down without the benefit of his amp.

Will shook his head.

“No,” he said, his voice barely a rasp. “It can’t be right. This doesn’t make sense.”

If there was pain in Lucy’s face, it was only for a second. A storm gust blew it away. Her hair whipped in her face, and she looked up to the sky.

“He has to be lifted out!” Lucy yelled.

“No,” Sam’s father said. He reeled the scanner back up.

“What do you mean?” she shouted. “He has to graduate! You have to let him out.”

Sam’s father pointed a gloved hand at Will.

“I know who you are, kid,” the man said. “You want out? You bring me Sam, alive. That’s the only way you’re getting out.”

“Will’s going to die if he doesn’t—”

Will put his hand out to stop Lucy short.

“No problem!” Will said.

Lucy looked at Will like he’d gone crazy.

“Just be here waiting when we show,” Will shouted up. The man turned away from the quad. The conversation was over. For now.

“Will, what are you doing?” Lucy said under her breath.

Will shrugged.

“Worth a try.”

Lucy and Will stared at Sam’s body. They had propped his blueing body up to sitting, against the lockers. They’d stripped him of his blood-soaked shirt and dressed him in the oversized sweatshirt Will had worn. They’d stuffed their own socks into the gaping wound in his neck so that the blood wouldn’t seep into the sweatshirt fabric. It was the best they could manage in the time they had, but he still didn’t look close to alive.

“This isn’t going to work,” Lucy said. “They’ll see he’s dead.”

“No, they won’t.”

“You can clearly see he has no neck! Oh god, and they aren’t going to let you out,” Lucy said, going nearly as pale as Sam.

“Hold on,” Will said and he knelt down beside Sam. Will took up both ends of the hood’s drawstring and cinched it tight. The hood closed around Sam’s face in a perfect oval, like an Eskimo. “There. What about that?”

Lucy tilted her head slightly and studied Sam. “Actually,” she said, the tension in her face easing slightly. “That’s not bad.”

Will stood and overcompensated with a big smile. “See? I told you, it’s going to work. I’m gonna get to leave.”

Will’s stomach dropped out of him when he said those words.

“Okay,” Lucy said. He didn’t want her to say “okay.” He wanted her to say, “Don’t go! Never leave me!”

“I don’t want to leave you,” he said.

“You have to.”

“It’s too soon.”

“I know.”

“I just got you back,” he said.

“I know. But we don’t have a choice.”

“How are you so calm about this all the sudden?” Will said.

Lucy’s face was unaffected, flat, still.

“I’m just trying to keep my shit together,” she said. “The second you leave, I’m going to lose it.”

Will forced himself to slow his breathing. He nodded. She was right. There was no point in crying about it now. Will went in for a kiss, and he made sure to make it count. It would have to tide him over for a year if this ridiculous plan worked.
And if they failed, this would be the last time he would kiss her without a death sentence hanging over his head. He kissed her slowly; he wanted to feel every moment of it. Her lips pushed back with a feather’s weight. Lucy pulled away.