This is Not a Test

“It was so easy,” he says. “Just physically … doing that. When it was over, I thought … people … we aren’t made of anything. That’s how easy it was.”

“I’m sorry, Rhys,” I say.

“It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay. It’s horrible. It’s—”

“No,” he says. “It’s fine.”

“Why?” I don’t understand. I want to understand. “Rhys, why—”

“Because I’m here because they’re not,” he says. “So I have to make it mean something.” I don’t say anything and he shakes a little, like he’s trying to get the nightmare off him, like that’s possible. “Are you coming to Rayford?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Grace wants me to go with her.”

“Grace is coming with us.”

“I mean when we get to Rayford. She wants me to stay with her and Trace. After.”

Rhys nods slowly. “I’m sure that invitation doesn’t extend to me or Cary…”

“It doesn’t.”

“Are you going to do it? Are you going to stay with her?” he asks, and I don’t answer him because I don’t want to answer him. I think he’s putting me between them but I’m not sure. Nothing like this has ever happened before. “What if I wanted you to stay with me and Cary.” I don’t say anything. “Sloane, are you going to stay at all?”

What he really means: am I going to leave. Am I going to finish the plan I came here with, the one I wrote down and carried with me, but have failed to see through again and again.

I open my mouth and then I close it as quickly.

“Tell me what happens next,” he says. “Just tell me.”

“I don’t know.”

“You won’t stay for Grace and you won’t stay for me,” he says. “You wouldn’t even stay for yourself. Just Lily, right?”

“Rhys—”

“Who left you,” he says like I don’t know this or that he knows it better than I do but he could never know it better than I do. I’m starting to wish I’d never come out here. And then he says, “She wasn’t the one who was trapped.” He lets this pronouncement hang between us like somehow it’s going to give way to some sort of personal epiphany or an undoing. Like I’ll become light with that knowledge, like I never knew it before. He tries again. “If you’re staying, I want you to stay with me.” I want so badly to ask him why, why he thinks he needs me, but he continues. “If you’re not staying … if you’re going to go through with it, wait until we’re out of your way. I couldn’t stand to see it.”

“Okay,” I say.

“I really hope I don’t see it, Sloane,” he says softly. “I really hope you wake up.”

He hesitates and then he brings his hand to the crook of my elbow. He presses his lips against the side of my mouth and my heart recoils because for all its gentleness, it hurts.

He goes back to the auditorium alone.

So we prepare.

We go through lockers and find book bags for everyone. There are certain requirements: utilitarian is best. They can’t be too big or bulky or easy to grab. We overstuff them with water bottles and food and find them too heavy and then we start making hard decisions like less water or less food? Medical supplies. We need those too, in case someone gets hurt. It quickly becomes obvious we’ll need far more than we’ll ever be able to carry.

In the end, the book bags become a depressing sight lined up in the library.

“We should go with the clothes on our backs,” Grace says. I don’t think she’s talking about the latest ensemble she’s wearing. Another fifties-style dress. “Layer.”

“Good idea,” Trace says. “It’s not exactly warm out.”

“Hey,” Cary says. “We made it seven days out there before—”

“You mean most of us made it seven days out there before.”

“Okay, most of us made it seven days out there before.” He gives Trace a bitter look. “We should probably establish some ground rules for that gun.”

“Sure.” Trace nods. “Rule number one: you don’t get to tell me how I can use the gun. Great. I’m glad we had this talk.”

“Trace,” Grace says. She turns to Cary. “What were you thinking?”

“Gunfire will draw them out. Any loud noises will. Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to. That’s all I was going to say.”

Grace turns back to Trace. “Use discretion. Sounds reasonable.”

Trace gives a grudging shrug. I look around the library. Walls, ceiling, doors that are locked and barricaded. Soon we’ll be trading them for the ugly outdoors. I can’t help but feel a certain nervousness about what’s coming the day after tomorrow.

On the way out of the library, Grace asks me if I’ve thought about what I’m going to do when we get to Rayford. I tell her I haven’t and she looks disappointed. I know it’s awful and ungrateful to leave her hanging after she can say something as extraordinarily generous as I’ve always wanted a sister to me but I am afraid to tell her yes. I can’t promise to stay with her when I don’t know if I will. I couldn’t do that. I’m not like Lily.

Still, the guilt I feel about it is like a thousand needles all over my skin and it doesn’t go away. It lasts through di

Soon there will be no more showers, none. Nothing.

I sit on the bench in the dark, naked. I run my hands over my body, feeling out my bruises without being able to see them, and I think about what Rhys said, how we’re not made of anything. I wonder if my father felt the same way about me, Lily. Maybe once he realized it the first time, he wanted to realize it over and over because it made him feel like he was made of something. I get dressed slowly and make my way back.

The halls are pitch dark. I let the flashlight guide me but I go the long way around, taking corners, pausing at exits, studying the barricades we put up.

I keep walking, letting the light trail over the floor.

My heart stops.

I jerk my hand up, washing the ceiling with light. I think I must have been imagining what I just saw, like I’ve imagined my father’s cologne and I have imagined his voice. I did not just see—what I thought I saw. I squeeze my eyes shut and count back from ten, until I’ve calmed down and then I direct the ray of light from the ceiling, over the wall. It spills into the open basement door.

The open basement door.

My hand shakes. If I don’t move, if I don’t move the light, if I keep the light off it, it will go away. I open my mouth to shout for help but if I shout for help, I might wake it.

The body on the floor.

I aim the light back on it and in the time it took me to do it, he is up, on his knees, his palms pressed against the floor.

He stares at me. The expression on his face is odd. The fresh clothes I last saw him in are tattered. He is filthy. He left here clean and came back filthy. Came back alive.

“Mr. Baxter,” I whisper. “Mr. Baxter, what are you—”

“I told you I wasn’t infected,” he says. “I told you.”

He reaches for me.

I run.

I know it’s stupid dangerous to turn my back on him, that I shouldn’t leave him in the hall but I have no other choice. I burst into the auditorium and I’m shouting, Baxter’s here—he’s here! And no one asks me if I’m imagining it this time. Trace gets the gun from wherever he’s been hiding it and there are more flashlights, spastic beams of light dancing all over the room. I tell them what Baxter said to me before I fled. I told you I wasn’t infected. I told you.

We storm down the hall, around the corner to the place where I found him, and I expect him to be gone but he’s still there—like I first saw him.

Flat on his back. Crumpled.

We stop.

“Mr. Baxter?” Cary calls.

We wait for him to move, respond. He doesn’t.

Cary steps forward but Trace cuts in front of him, the gun out. He holds it over Baxter’s prone, still form. Cary goes to the basement door and peers inside.