This is Not a Test

Bury it. Lily is gone, has been gone. It’s been weeks since I had to face my father and the last of those bruises have been replaced by ones that have nothing to do with him. I don’t want to be here now. Especially now.

“You’re not infected,” I say. Cary nods and looks at his still-bandaged arm. “Which means Baxter wasn’t infected, which means we let him go outside to die. Does it bother you?”

“I’m just glad it wasn’t me.”

“What about the Caspers?” I ask. “Are you glad that wasn’t you now? Did Grace forgive you? What about that?”

“I’m as close as I’m getting.”

“So you buried it,” I say. “You’re here now.”

“Yeah.”

“Enjoy your di

I leave, locking the door behind me. I make it a short way down the hall before I stop and lean against the wall, my head buzzing, trying to figure out everything Cary knows. Rhys told him about me and Lily. Did Rhys tell him I wanted to die? Did Rhys tell Cary what we did? When Cary sees me, does he see a girl with her shirt open, pressed up against Rhys?

I go to the bathroom and I check my forehead. Underneath the bandage, my skin is raw pink and red, gouged out and trying desperately to heal. I’ll have to change the bandage soon, but all of the first aid is with Cary and I don’t want to see him again. I leave the bathroom and make my way to the auditorium. I’m almost there when Rhys charges out of it. He shouts my name.

“Sloane, I need the key to the nurse’s office—we have to get Cary.”

Figures.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Nothing. We just have to get him now.”

He won’t tell me what it’s about before we get to Cary. He won’t even tell me after we get to Cary, just says we have to get back to the auditorium now, it’s important. There’s a strange energy about him, not dire, but urgent. When we step inside the room, Grace, Trace, and Harrison are huddled around the radio. Trace turns it off as soon as he spots Cary.

“What is he doing out? It’s not tomorrow yet—”

“Cut the bullshit, Trace,” Rhys says. “You know he’s not infected—”

“We agreed on three days. Put him back.”

“Here, Trace,” Cary says. “I’ll prove I’m not infected. Give me your arm.”

“Real clever. I want you to stay at least ten feet away from me at all times—”

“I can stand wherever the fuck I want to stand.”

Cary gets as close to Trace as he can before Trace reaches out and shoves Cary. Cary rebounds quickly, shoving Trace back. In no time, Grace is between them, looking tired. When she says, “Trace, stop,” an uncomfortable silence fills the room. Cary backs off, his cheeks pink. Trace pulls a disgusted look at the back of Grace’s head.

“Would you stop acting like you want to fuck the guy?”

Grace’s face turns white. She whirls around and Trace steps back, knowing at once he’s crossed the line but not knowing at all how on the mark he is.

“Grace, I’m—look, Grace, I’m sorry. I know you wouldn’t—”

“You should be,” she says before he can finish, and there’s something beyond hurt in her expression. She shares everything with him but she can’t share this.

“The radio,” Rhys says. “If you’re finished.”

Trace walks over to the radio and turns it on. The soft drone of Tina T’s voice comes through the static, familiar at first and then—different.

“Emergency shelters have been established in the following locations…”

My fingers tingle at the list of locations. My ears perk up at the name of only one: Rayford.

“All survivors are to proceed to the shelter nearest to them for medical processing. Shelters are equipped with food, water, military protection, and first aid. 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…”

“See that, Chen? We shouldn’t have attempted to assist you.” Trace turns the radio off. “Help isn’t coming for us. We have to go to it.”

“Rayford,” I say.

“Yep,” Trace says.

“That’s almost a hundred miles.”

“Yeah.”

Everyone is still. No one looks like this is good news.

“Sounds like a death sentence to me,” Cary says.

“Find a car,” Grace says. “Drive it out of here.”

“First we have to prepare, then we have to find a car, then we have to assume that car can get us there, then we have to assume absolutely nothing will go wrong from here to there.”

“Your point?” Trace asks. “You’re not saying anything we don’t already know. We were talking about this before you got into the fucking room.”

Cary keeps going, undeterred. “We don’t know how congested the highway is going to be. We don’t know how bad the infection has spread. How many are out there…”

“We could take back roads.”

“Which adds more time to the trip. There’s not going to be any supplies on back roads,” Cary continues. “So what happens when we run out of gas? We just die on some country road or camp out in the woods? Start a colony?”

Trace throws his hands up. “Well, what the fuck else are we supposed to do? We have to go there if we want help. That’s what they said. They are not coming for us—”

“I know that,” Cary says. “I think we should go, I just want to make sure we’ve thought of everything—”

“What is—” Rhys interrupts. “What is ‘medical processing’?”

“It’s probably some kind of procedure to make sure we’re not infected, duh,” Trace answers. “Are you infected? No. There, processed. Welcome to safe haven.”

Rhys doesn’t respond. He turns the radio on and we listen to it again. And then again. Each time we hear it, what little hope it gave us diminishes until Rhys finally turns the radio off for good.

“It feels impossible,” Cary says. “Rayford.”

“It is,” Harrison says. I thought out of all of us, he would be the most excited, the most insistent that we leave, but he’s not. “I think we should stay here.”

“We can’t stay here forever,” Cary says. “We have to leave.”

“But does it have to be today?” Harrison asks. “Tomorrow? This week? What if they’ve reclaimed this town by the time we get there and we never had to take that risk—”

“But it’s not safe here,” I say. “We still haven’t found Baxter’s way in.”

“It’s safer,” Harrison says. “Baxter said we should hold on to this as long as possible. We have food, we have shelter, we have water, we have some first aid, and no one here is infected.”

“That water’s not going to last,” Cary says. “It’s going to run out eventually.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know when—”

“Which could be all the more reason to go—”

“Baxter said they waited now. I don’t want to go out there again. They’re out there and they’re waiting for us—”

“Harrison, we have to do things we don’t want to—”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Harrison explodes and it is so beyond anything we expect from him, we’re stu

Cary’s jaw drops. His eyes dart from Harrison to Trace and I watch that realization hit him hard, that Harrison is no longer “his” if Harrison ever was.

“Where’s the gun?” Cary asks. He turns to Rhys. “You have it, right?”

“No.” Trace doesn’t even try to keep the glee out of his voice. “He doesn’t.”

“How could you give him the gun?” Cary asks us.

“I didn’t give him the gun,” Rhys says. “He took it—”

“Great, one of these nights, I’ll wake up with a fucking gun against my head—”

“Now that’s a good idea,” Trace comments at the same time Grace says, “He would never! Trace would never.” She turns to him. “You would never do that, Trace. Tell him.”

But Trace waits an agonizing minute before saying, “Not unless I had to.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Cary asks.

“Well, maybe you’ll still turn. Maybe you’re just a late bloomer.”