This is Not a Test

“I don’t think it’s the flu,” Cary says. “I think that was just weird timing.”

“Maybe it’s terrorists,” Harrison says.

The boys go back and forth for a while, trying to figure out how and why this started, like they have the brainpower to piece it together and if they do, it will change the fact it happened and that we’re here. Grace stares up at the skylight and says, “Maybe it’s God.”

“Don’t be so cliché,” Trace tells her.

But everyone stops talking about it after that.

* * *

“It was almost better when we were out there.” Rhys sighs.

“Don’t even joke about that,” Harrison says.

We’re still in the auditorium, lounging. There was lunch and there was napping, long stretches of silence and a bit of arguing. It’s barely past three. I understand what Rhys means. Waiting around to be saved is like waiting to die and I have done more of both than anyone else in this room. There’s a whole lot of nothing before there’s something and running was something.

Everyone clings to the idea of safety and because the auditorium seems safest, no one likes to venture too far from it without someone else in tow. Everyone except me, that is. I say I’m going to the bathroom but instead I wander the school and I pretend I’m walking Cortege when everything was normal, when it looked nice. Four years ago, all this money went into its beautification. Trees were planted along the main street, lights were strung on them, flowerbeds were put in every blank space and we got new street signs, the works.

Now it’s gone.

I wonder how much time I have before anyone looks for me. I’m far enough away from the auditorium that I don’t hear any voices and I’m far enough away from the entrance that the noises outside seem muted, or maybe they’re as loud as they ever are and I’m already used to them. I move past empty offices and classrooms. It’s an eerie route that takes me by no one. I reach the stairs to the second floor and pause, suddenly aware my life lacks structure now, that I never have to answer to anybody and I never have to suffer for it. As soon as the thought is in my head, there’s another one and it’s sharper, clearer, much more painful:

It doesn’t change anything.

And then a cheap, musky scent is in the air—a ghost, I know it’s a ghost—and my chest aches. I try to remember how to breathe around the loneliness, this being alone, but I can’t. I don’t know how. I have to climb the stairs to get away from it but there’s no getting away from it. I reach the landing and walk the hall, turn the corner. Sun lights this side of the building, save for a large blot of darkness—one of the big windows we covered with poster boards. I walk over and stand in its shade. Press my hand against it.

I wish I could break this window. Step through it. But I can’t break this window. I can’t even find some less dramatic way to die inside of this school, like hanging myself or slitting my wrists, because what would they do with my body? It might put everyone else at risk. I won’t let myself do that.

I’m not selfish like Lily.

I hate her. I hate her so much my heart tries to crawl out of my throat but it gets stuck there and beats crazily in the too narrow space. I bring my hands to my neck and try to massage it back down. I press so hard against the skin, my eyes sting, and then I’m hurrying back down the stairs, back to the first floor. I think of Trace running laps, something he can control.

I push through the bulky gym doors and as soon as they’re shut behind me, I run. The bleachers stretch out on either side of the room. Light pours in overhead. The gym used to feel so alive, always bustling, and now it’s nothing. The barricade against the exit is monstrous and every time I catch it out of the corner of my eye, my insides jump and it makes me run a little faster until I’m circling the gym at a pace I know I can’t maintain, a pace that is killing me. I ran as fast out there, but it was different out there. My body wants more rest, more food.

My body wants to stop.

Thud. I end up on my knees. I’m dripping with sweat and my stomach is churning and the sound I heard was not the sound of myself falling and landing but—thud.

I turn my head to the exit.

Thud.

Thud.

Tears stream down Harrison’s cheeks.

Thud.

He covers his ears.

Trace and Grace hold hands.

I hold mine together in front of my face, the edges of my thumbs against my lips like I’m praying and I am praying. I wasn’t raised to believe in God, but sometimes when I ask for things to happen, they happen. This is what I want to happen: I want the doors to burst open.

“They know we’re in here,” Rhys says. It’s true, they do. They know. This isn’t the frenzied sounds of bodies stumbling and tripping against the door amid all the other chaos, an accident that goes away. This is consistent. It has purpose. Intent.

They know we’re in here.

“Ours wasn’t the most subtle entrance ever,” Trace says.

Rhys turns to Grace. “Did you hear this when you checked the barricade yesterday?”

“No. I mean—” She stops and bites her lip. “I don’t know? It was really noisy.”

“I didn’t hear them in here when I put the barricade up,” Cary says. “So if we didn’t hear them then and Grace didn’t hear them yesterday…” He trails off. “It means they’ve figured out we’re in here since we got in here.”

“But how do they know?” Rhys asks.

“Why don’t you go out there and ask them?”

“Go to hell, Trace.”

“What if it’s help?” Harrison asks in a small voice.

No one says anything because we all know it’s not help. If it was anyone we wanted inside, they’d use their voice. They’d tell us to open the door. Cary’s hand covers his mouth as he thinks. We watch him think. After a while, he starts walking, gesturing us out of the gym. We follow him down the halls until he gets to the very back of the school, to the doors Rhys secured. We stand there and stare at them. Wait.

Thud.

Harrison moans and I wonder what it’s like to be him, to feel each bad development like it’s the first bad development, that it’s still worth resisting enough to cry over.

“Don’t start,” Cary tells him. “We’re not done…”

He leads us to the front of the school.

Thud.

The sound of more bodies forcing themselves against the doors, trying to get to us.

We go to home base, the auditorium.

It’s started there, too.

Thud.

We finish in the library. We stand there for twenty minutes, none of us speaking, but nothing happens. Here, nothing is outside the door.

“I wonder if they just have to know that we could be in here,” Cary says.

Trace snorts. “Bullshit. They saw us break in.”

“But why didn’t we hear them trying to get in before now? Remember that house on Rushmore? We were quiet as hell and they stormed the place.”

I remember the house on Rushmore Avenue. It wasn’t fortified, not like this, but we were quiet and got inside without being noticed and we stayed quiet. It was only minutes before we were discovered and then we were running again, climbing out a bedroom window while the door holding them back turned to nothing before our eyes. I remember the way it sounded, the wood splintering as easily as a twig …

“So you think they want in here because they can be in here? Because the school is here and they are too? That makes no sense, Einstein,” Trace says to Cary. “Try again.”

“We’re practically surrounded,” Cary snaps. “If there are no other survivors around this area, what else have they got to do? They’re at every fucking door because they’re looking for food. If anything makes sense to them, it’s that buildings like these are just fucking food containers.”

“They’re not at this door, though,” Grace says.

“Why would they be at this door?” Cary asks. “It’s practically invisible.”

“Don’t talk to Grace like that,” Trace says.

“I wasn’t talking to her like anything—”

“Stop,” Rhys tells them.

I contemplate the door. The exit in the library opens up into a narrow path that leads around the front of the school and to the athletic field out back. A chain-link fence lines the path, separating the school’s property from a dense but small cluster of trees that lead to the road. The front of the path is gated, but the back, leading to the field, is wide open.

“So that’s our way out,” I say. “If we have to leave.”

“That’s the door,” Cary agrees. “Unless they end up finding it too. In which case, we’d have to fight our way out of here.”

Rhys nods. “So we should be ready, one way or the other.”

How we are ready:

Two bags packed with the essentials: water, food, clothes, and medical stuff we raided from the nurse’s office. Cary and Rhys volunteer to carry them. Trace demands we get a bag each, but changes his mind when he remembers how the dead outside can and will reach for anything they can hold on to. We get aluminum baseball bats from the gym. Our weapons.

The supplies rest on the table next to the door and then we start fine-tuning our plan, as if plans make a difference when you’re being chased from one moment to the next. We had a lot of plans before we got here and I’m not sure we saw any of them through.

The plan: if the doors are breached, Cary is counting on the noise of our barricades falling to give us the lead time to get in here and get this barricade out of our way. And then we escape into the night. Or the day. Whichever.

Harrison whimpers at the idea of leaving, even though it’s purely hypothetical at this point, and we have to promise him repeatedly that we won’t leave him behind even though Trace threatens to. When Cary tries to figure out where we’ll go after we leave, Trace decides Cary’s acting too much like a leader and they get in a fight and we never figure it out. We have this teamwork thing down. And then Cary declares the library off limits.