This is Not a Test

“Well, the gun stays with me. You think I’ll just give it to you if you convince us to go to Rayford?” Trace leans forward. “Not going to work, Chen. Nice try, though.”

“It’s not about that either,” Cary says. “I don’t give a fuck if you keep the gun and I don’t give a fuck if you go, Trace. I’m going. If I’m the only one, so be it.”

For once, Trace is speechless. He looks at Grace.

“Okay,” Rhys says. “We all want to know what’s going on, we all want the protection but this isn’t crossing the street. You said it yourself. We don’t know if we can get a car—”

“We’ll find a car.”

“No,” Harrison says. “No—we agreed to wait here—”

“Did we?” Cary turns to him. “Why?”

“Because it’s safe.”

“So you figured out how Baxter got in,” Cary says. Harrison opens his mouth and then closes it. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

“You can’t blame him for not wanting to go out there,” Grace says.

“I said I don’t care if he goes out there. I’m leaving. If you want to come with me, fine. I don’t give a fuck if you stay here. I’m just telling you I’m going.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Rhys says. “You want to get eaten alive? Sit down and—”

“I’m not an idiot,” Cary replies. “Outside, I could get eaten alive. Inside, I could just as easily get shot in the face by a gun-happy asshole. I’m willing to take my chances.”

“So it is about me.” Trace grins broadly. “Well, you know the way out, douchebag. Far be it for me to stop you.”

“This isn’t a joke!” Cary pounds his fist on the table. “It’s a way out. Don’t you see that? I say I want to talk about Rayford—a survivor’s camp—and you guys have to wait until you rub the fucking sleep out of your eyes to do it? Are you kidding me? We heard that message on the radio and the last thing we want to do is leave? Is that seriously how brain-dead staying here has made us? This place isn’t safe. We’re going to forget how to survive, so when we do have to leave, we’ll die. We’ll get ourselves killed.”

“So dramatic,” Trace says, and at first I think Trace is right, that Cary is being dramatic, but that makes me realize Cary is right. There’s nothing dramatic about this.

There is a door in this school somewhere, any second the dead could come pouring in, and we move around like it’s nothing. We sent Baxter out to die and Harrison, Grace, and Trace spent the next morning in the gym playing basketball. Only three of us have looked for Baxter’s way in since he was sent out. I glance at Grace and wonder if she would be sharp enough to run, to make life-saving split-second decisions. We are one degree removed from our fear now.

We’ve gotten used to this.

I turn to Trace. “Why did you stop running?”

He shrugs. “Didn’t see the—”

He closes his mouth and doesn’t finish. Point. He didn’t see the point anymore. Cary crosses his arms, bolstered.

“You’re not going today, are you?” I ask him.

“No. I need a few days to plan how I want to do this. I want to make sure I’m prepared.” He pauses. “They’re going to come back. Sooner or later, they’ll surround this place and Russo’s isn’t going to explode twice. If you want to go with me, fine. But just keep that in mind—you’re coming with me. Not the other way around.”

“What makes you think I’m going to follow you?” Trace asks.

“Did you not hear the part where I repeatedly said I don’t care if you do or not?”

“Are you sure Rayford is closest?” Grace asks.

It’s a fair enough question that Cary crosses the room and turns the radio on.

Immediate white noise. Static. No reception.

He fiddles with the dial.

“The radio’s out,” he says numbly.

“Are you sure it’s not the battery?” Grace asks.

“It’s on,” he says. “It’s not the battery. The radio’s stopped.”

We all listen hard, like maybe there’s a human voice trying to find its way through all the buzzing but there’s nothing.

“That’s not good,” Trace says.

Harrison swallows. “Does that mean the emergency shelters—”

“It doesn’t mean anything except the radio is out,” Cary says, but there’s an edge of doubt in his voice. “Something could have happened to the tower, that’s all. It doesn’t mean something happened to the shelters.”

But it might mean exactly that. It feels like every next can only be bad things. The landlines are down, cell phones are dead, the power doesn’t work. The water doesn’t work. We got lucky with the tank and that’s going to run out and we don’t know when. Emergency broadcast is officially dead. We will never rebuild. This thing will overtake us, is overtaking us. Buildings will crumble and weeds will grow through their foundations. We’ll become reanimated corpses navigating a sorry imitation of our glory days and this is why I don’t understand the point in going on, why it’s so wrong to give up. There’s nothing left.

“Turn it off,” Harrison says, because he’s thinking it too. Cary doesn’t. He stares at the radio and he looks so hurt that he would make this bold decision to leave and it would betray him like this. The snowy rumble emitting from the speakers only seems to get louder and Harrison starts to cry. “Turn it off !”

Cary snaps out of it and turns it off but I feel like I need the sound because if they hear it, they’ll see how stupid they’re being. How dumb it is to continue. I get to my feet and go to the radio. I turn it on again and Cary doesn’t stop me. I let the grainy rush of noise fill the room while Harrison whimpers and then I turn the volume all the way up—

“… shelters are equipped with food, water, military protection, and first aid. Please exercise extreme caution while traveling and avoid heavily populated areas. If you encounter anyone you suspect to be infected, do not attempt to assist them…”

There is a collective exhalation as Tina T’s voice fills the room.

I’m so disappointed.

“You’ve got magic hands, Sloane,” Rhys says.

Trace coughs. “I’m sure you think so.”

I pretend he didn’t say it. I almost turn the radio off but Cary holds up his hand and then I remember why we turned it on in the first place. We listen for the locations and the closest is still Rayford.

“You’ve got a couple of days to think it over,” Cary says. “And then I’m gone.”

He leaves the room. Rhys goes after him.

Trace, Harrison, and Grace are silent.

“Megan’s in Rayford,” Grace says after a minute. “Maybe she made it.”

“Who’s Megan?” Harrison asks.

“Our cousin.”

“I don’t want to go with Chen and Moreno,” Trace says. “Moreno will stick his neck out for Chen before he does it for us. You’ve seen it yourself. Those two are one and the same and I don’t trust either of them.”

“But it’s safer as a group,” Grace says. “You can’t deny that. Once we get to Rayford we never have to speak to either of them again…”

Trace laughs and stares at the table. “That’d be nice.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

That’s what they’ll do. I don’t know what I’ll do. I leave the room and no one stops me. When I reach the hall, I try to guess which direction Cary and Rhys went in and then choose the opposite.

“Sloane.”

Grace. I turn.

“Are you going to leave with him?” she asks. “Cary?”

“Yes,” I say. I know I have to do that much, if they’re all going.

“When we get to Rayford, are you going to stay with us?”

“What?”

“Cary and Rhys will go together. I’m with Trace and Harrison will go with Trace. And you … is it serious with Rhys?”

This is very, very awkward.

“Grace—”

“Because if it’s serious, you’d stay with him, right? That’s okay, I’m just wondering.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I say. “I don’t want to think that far ahead, you know? Who knows if we’ll even make it…”

“We’ll make it,” she says. “We will. And then when we get to Rayford we’re going to find my cousin Megan and then we’re just going to relax and…” She gives me a weak smile. “It’ll be good. It won’t be perfect but it will be good.”

“I’m sure it will be,” I say.

“I want to put in a bid for you.”

I blink. “You want to put in a bid for me?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes are so sincere. I think you have to be a good person to the core of your soul to come across so sincerely. “When we split up in Rayford, I want you to come with us.”

“What about Rhys?”

She shifts. “You heard Trace…”

“You don’t trust Rhys?”

“Trace wouldn’t want him there,” she says. “After everything I’ve done … I’m not going to push. Sloane, I want you to come with us.”

“Trace wouldn’t mind?”

“Not much. He’d get over it,” she says. “I mean, he said it was okay … so what do you think?”

I think I’m going to cry.

“It means a lot to me,” I say.

“Just let me know. Soon.” She gives me a quick hug and then says something terrible and wonderful all at the same time. “I’ve always wanted a sister.”