Текст книги "This is Not a Test"

Автор книги: Courtney Summers

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Baxter is weak.

While we’ve been making ourselves comfortable in here, he’s been running and starving, seeking shelter in the least obvious places he can find. Surviving, he says, and the word is bitter out of his mouth. We give him food. He eats canned peaches and throws them up. He drinks a bottle of water and throws it up too. We find antacids in the nurse’s office and he’s able to keep a bit of food and water down after that. He tells us he was on his “last leg” before he got here. His eyes are dull, cloudy and he can’t hold on to a thought long enough to say anything useful. Every time he speaks, there’s something so sad about the way his voice sounds. I can’t believe there was a time he stood in front of a classroom and taught us.

This man is Mr. Baxter but he’s not Mr. Baxter anymore.

“The barricades are incredible.” He looks at us, something akin to pride in his eyes. “An incredible testament … to teenage ingenuity. Look at how safe we are.”

“We’re not safe,” Cary says. This will be the thousandth time he tries to direct Baxter’s attention to the most important situation at hand. “If you got in, those things outside can too.”

“I know, Mr. Chen. I know that—”

“Then you know it’s life and death. We need to know how you got in.”

Baxter closes his eyes and then opens them. “I can’t remember…”

“But you remember being in this school,” Rhys says. “You don’t remember getting in, but you remember being in here after you got in.”

“Just pieces. Price,” Baxter says. “I remember seeing Ms. Price…” They all look at me when he says this and I feel sick when I remember his hand on my face as I slept. I want to ask him why he did that, but I don’t think I really want to know. “But it all feels like—the same day.” He licks his lips. They’re so raw, cracked. “Every day feels the same.”

“You could’ve shown yourself,” Rhys tells him. “You had a gun.”

“You outnumber me and I didn’t know what you’d been through. How long you were here … what you were capable of…”

“We’re not infected,” Harrison says. “We wouldn’t have hurt you.”

Mr. Baxter looks at Harrison in total wonderment and then he laughs. It’s a bad sound, wrong. It makes me shiver.

“Does the water still work?” he asks. “The tank still has water in it?”

Trace nods. “Do you know how full it was before this started?”

Baxter shakes his head.

“Mr. Baxter?” Grace steps forward, nervous. “What’s it like out there? Is it—is it much worse than it was? Or is it getting better at all?”

“Sometimes … it seems safer than it is,” he says. “They wait, now. If they can’t find life, they seem to wait for it. That’s why it’s quieter. It’s quiet but it’s not safer.”

I glance at Rhys.

Quiet.

“What do they eat?” I ask. “When there are no people?”

“I’ve seen them eat animals. Anything … living.”

“You seriously can’t remember how you got in?” Cary asks.

“Cary,” Grace snaps. “Just give him a minute—”

“Grace, a minute could be the difference between us being ripped apart—”

“The gun,” Baxter interrupts. “If something happens, it should help. Where is it?”

“You know what? Mr. Baxter needs a minute, you’re right,” Cary says abruptly. “We can talk about this after. Rhys, Sloane, I want to search the first floor for his way in. I don’t imagine he scaled the wall and got in through the roof, right, Mr. B?”

“I don’t imagine,” Baxter echoes.

“So we’ll find it and we’ll seal it.” Cary turns to the others. Trace and Grace stare at him contemptuously. Cary’s directive to them has to be something they can’t argue with. Something simple. “Make sure Mr. Baxter has everything he needs. Mr. Baxter, I want you to work as hard as you can to remember in the meantime.”

“Amazing,” Baxter says at our backs as Cary, Rhys, and I make our way out of the room. “If only you’d shown that kind of initiative in my class, Mr. Chen.”

“You’re sounding better by the second, sir,” Cary replies without turning.

When we hit the hall, Cary mouths library. Rhys and I head one way and Cary heads the other. I don’t know why we can’t go there together. Cary gets there before us. He’s checking the room for Baxter’s way in. We wait until he’s finished.

“It’s not here,” he says, frustrated. “Rhys, you hid the gun?”

“Yeah. It’s—” Rhys stops himself. “It’s someplace safe. I’ll show you later.”

Cary glances at Rhys and then me but he doesn’t pursue it.

“I don’t trust him,” he says.

“Cary, you don’t like him,” I say. “You never did. He never liked you.”

“Yeah, and that has nothing to do with this. This is fucked. We have to timeline it. He hasn’t been here since we got here, right?”

“I don’t think so,” I say. “I think he got in before Rhys and I went out … I mean, not by days or anything. I’m talking minutes, maybe a half an hour to an hour, I don’t know.”

“Why do you think that?”

“The man outside.” I glance at Rhys. “He called for Nick over and over … and Mr. Baxter’s first name is Nick.”

We’re quiet for a moment, and then Rhys speaks. “So if he got here with that guy, he left him out there to die. Something bad must have happened between them.”

“But that man was unconscious when we found him,” I say. “We thought he was dead. Maybe Mr. Baxter did too and went on without him…”

“Or maybe Baxter hurt him,” Cary suggests.

I shake my head. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“Why not? He hasn’t said anything about the guy outside yet. If it was innocent, why wouldn’t he just get it out of the way and say so?”

“He’s hardly said anything. He’s out of it. Shell-shocked.”

“Is he, though?” Rhys asks.

“Wait.” I can’t keep up with this. “You think he’s faking it?”

“You really think he can’t remember how he got in this school?” Rhys looks at me like he can’t believe I haven’t come to all the conclusions they have in the hour Baxter has been here. “How do you forget something like that?”

I cross my arms. “Why would he do that?”

“Who knows why anyone does anything now?” Cary looks past me and Rhys, to the door, and we both turn. There’s no one there but Cary lowers his voice anyway. “If he’s had some bad experiences with other survivors, he could be looking at his way in as leverage. He needs to make sure we trust him.”

“Right … we keep him around no matter what, hoping that it will eventually come to him because we can’t find it ourselves,” Rhys says. “When he’s sure he’s safe here, he tells us or … he holds it over our heads for the entire time we’re here.”

“He thinks he can just come in and take over,” Cary mutters.

“We’ve been in this room, what, ten minutes and we’re already saddling the guy with a bunch of sinister motivations,” I say. “This is our English teacher. Someone we know.”

“We all know each other and we don’t trust each other,” Cary says. “The only people I trust in this building are you and Rhys. The rest are dead weight to me.”

“But maybe…” I grope desperately for some kind of explanation for Baxter’s behavior that seems more human. “Maybe Baxter was going to come to the school with the guy outside but they got separated or he really did think the guy was dead. Maybe he’s so traumatized he can’t remember how he got in. Why isn’t that possible?”

They both stare at me and I can tell I’ve disappointed them. I don’t know why I don’t just believe what they believe. I don’t know why I’m defending Baxter. I think of his hand on my face. Maybe I should tell them but I can’t. It makes me feel too weird. It would just make things worse.

“Whatever,” Cary finally says. “None of that matters yet. The only thing that matters right now is how he got in.”

We can’t find it.

We look everywhere, scour classrooms, the custodian’s office. We go into the basement and it’s so dark in there, the weak light from our flashlights turn the sinks and the shelves against the far wall into terrifying shadows. I wonder if Baxter is some sort of group hallucination but I know he’s not. I also know the other barricades are holding, undisturbed, and there is absolutely no way he got past them. How did he get in? I check the closet we found him in halfheartedly, like it might hold a secret passageway but it doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t.

The building is officially one less place we can trust.

Cary heads back to the auditorium wringing his hands, trying to figure out a good way to break bad news. Rhys wanders off and I can tell he’s taking this hard. We survived outside once and then again despite my better efforts, and then we got back inside and we thought we were safe but we’re not safe. Everything is up in the air. He doesn’t want to die.

I seek him out and find him in the gym, opening a pack of cigarettes. He places one between his lips and brings a lighter to it. The flame flickers, illuminating his face briefly, before the smoke drifts lazily around him. He shoves the half-crumpled pack in his pocket. He doesn’t say anything to me, but he knows I’m here. I don’t say anything to him, just watch him inhale like a pro. I close the distance between us. When he exhales, he takes care to turn his head from me and I’m struck by how attractive and easy he makes it look but he always made it look that way.

“I just had this vision of you out front, smoking,” I say.

“That was my thing.” He ashes the cigarette. “What do you want, Sloane?”

I stare out at the bleachers. It used to give me hives, imagining myself on any kind of team, people looking at me. “If Baxter got in here two days ago, that means however he got in here has been open since we got here. None of the infected found their way in.”

“Are you trying to make me feel better?”

“Where did you hide the gun?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Promise I’m not going to shoot myself in the face.”

“Why should I take you at your word? You threw yourself into a bunch of infected. Blowing a bullet through your skull seems way less hardcore so why wouldn’t you go for it? It’s that much easier for you.”

“What do you think you’d do with my body?” I ask, and he twitches, steps away from me. I’ve crossed some invisible line. “Oh, what? It’s okay for you to be so candid with me?” I stare at the ceiling and think about it. “You couldn’t just leave it here to decompose. That would probably be unsafe. Taking it outside would be even more dangerous…”

“It must thrill you that there’s a secret way in here,” Rhys shoots back. “That one day we could wake up and be totally surrounded—”

“The way you look at things is so uncomplicated.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry I’ve pegged you all wrong.” He raises a hand. “I take it back. You’re not thrilled we could wake up one day and be totally surrounded.”

“I’m not thrilled. I’m not anything.”

Rhys drops the cigarette on the floor and grinds it out.

“Wasn’t your dad though, was it.”

“No.”

“You know, if I thought it was mine, like even for a second—even if I knew, rationally, it couldn’t be him—” He stops and shrugs. “Fuck it. Never mind.”

He takes out the pack of cigarettes again, but this time he holds it out. I shake my head. He shrugs but he doesn’t look away, just keeps his eyes on me until I’m so uncomfortable I feel I have to be the first of us to leave to win this moment between us, so I do.

*   *   *

Baxter sits in the chair at the head of the table and starts nodding off and then Trace and Rhys help him to his own mat so he can sleep for a bit. We move quietly around him. We don’t even talk. He’s already leveled our dynamic and Harrison is the only one who seems happy about it. He should be devastated about this new unknown way into the school but instead, he’s happy. It’s easy to understand why because Harrison is really simple. This is what Harrison thinks: Baxter will remember soon and then he’ll recover and he’ll take care of us.

I watch Baxter sleep. He moans and jerks awake.

“The radio,” he says groggily.

“You’ve heard it?” Trace asks.

“Once. Has it changed? I doubt it has…”

Trace crosses the room and switches the radio on. It’s static for a few minutes and then that woman’s voice comes through, loud and clear.

“—Not a test—”

Baxter holds up a hand and closes his eyes. Trace turns the radio off.

Around dinner, we rouse Baxter again. He sits at the head of the table—Cary’s spot—and watches as Harrison and Grace bring in two trays of food.

“So you banded together. Got here all by yourselves,” Baxter says as we settle around him. I hate the way it feels. This is our place but he’s at the head of our table. In the best chair—the one we snagged from LaVallee’s office. “You survived.”

“Not all of us,” Trace says. “Our parents. We lost them.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that. How?”

“Excuse me?”

“How did they die?”

Cary is reaching for a bag of chips when Mr. Baxter asks this. His hand freezes over it, totally suspended for the briefest second, and then he grabs it and rips it open. This does not escape Baxter’s notice.

“It was—” Trace starts, and I can tell he’s ready to lay into Cary something fierce, which is the worst thing he could do. I brace myself but he never finishes and when I look, Grace’s hand is on his arm. She’s silenced him.

“We were overwhelmed,” she says. “That’s all.”

“Yes. That happens.” Baxter reaches for some rice cakes and gazes at them, like he can’t believe they’re real. “Did you try to get to the community center?”

“Yeah,” Harrison says. “We almost didn’t make it.”

“We thought it would be safe,” Trace says. “I guess everyone did. It was the first place we headed, right? First one gone. If we had known, we wouldn’t have even tried.”

“We made the same mistake,” Baxter says.

“We?” I ask.

He closes his eyes and then he opens them.

“You know, we could stay here for so long if we wanted to. Even if the water tank goes, there’s bottled. We could stay here as long as it takes for help to come. That’s what we could do. What we should do. Until … help comes.”

“Or the infected figure out the way you got in,” Cary says.

“They won’t.”

“Then you remember where?”

Baxter shakes his head and then he says, “I just know that where we are and what we have is better than what’s out there. We should hold on to it as long as possible.”

Everyone murmurs in agreement, but I can’t. My appetite is gone. I can’t shake the feeling something is very wrong.

I get to my feet. “I’m just going to go to the bathroom…”

“You know what?” Grace stands. “Me too.”

In the bathroom, she hovers while I splash water on my face and my neck. I try to get her to go back to the auditorium but she won’t. She asks if I’m okay.

“I’m fine. Headache. Short-circuiting. I don’t know.”

She doesn’t say anything, which is awkward. It looks like she wants to. I press my head against the mirrors. Cold. I like that.

“Can I get you anything?”

“No. I just don’t want to go back out there yet. Baxter’s freaking me out.”

“When Cary and Rhys walked him in, Trace thought it was our dad.”

“Did you?”

“No. I don’t like this, though, Sloane.” At first, I think she’s talking about Baxter being here, but she’s not. “What if they get in the school? I mean, what if—what if it’s my dad or my mom the next time? What if they come in?”

“Grace, the odds of that happening—”

“Must be as good as the odds of Baxter getting in here after all this time, right?” There’s nothing I can say to that. Tears fill her eyes. “God, when will this stop feeling so bad?”

“I don’t think it does.” I stare at my reflection. “I think it’s just going to be like this.”

She rips a swath of paper towels from the dispenser and wipes at her eyes.

“I just want to be less of a mess. I sneak in here, like, ten times a day to cry.” She laughs weakly. “I wish I was like you. Strong.”

I look away from my reflection. “What?”

“You just handle this. Every time I look at you, you’re just taking it. And then you went outside like it was nothing. And everyone tiptoes around me. No one else made me think about laying off Cary the way you did … no one else made me feel bad for him. It’s like you see things how they need to be and you’re not afraid to call it.”

“You’re giving me way too much credit.”

“I want to be more like that.”

“You have more,” I say. Her forehead crinkles. I can’t believe she thinks I’m strong, that this is strength. “I always wanted to be like you. I still do.”

“I thought you hated me,” she says.

“What?”

“Sophomore year.” She tosses the crumpled paper towels into the garbage. “You slept over. I thought it was great and then you stopped talking to me. I called and your sister said you didn’t want to speak to me anymore. I could never figure out what I did.”

The room does a slow rotation. I want to reach out for something, steady myself, but I’m frozen.

“I didn’t know she did that.”

“How could you not?”

“I didn’t. I swear I didn’t know Lily did that, Grace.”

Grace studies me. “Where is she now, anyway?”

“She ran away. Six months ago,” I say. When Grace’s expression morphs into something pitying, I shrug and look away. “I’m sure she’s fine.”

“I’m so sorry, Sloane. I can’t even imagine being here without Trace,” she says. “And you two were as close we were…”

“Right. Were.” I pull at a strand of my hair. I want to rip it out. I want to climb onto the roof and throw myself off it. I want to bash my head against the mirror until it breaks. “That’s past tense.”

She seems awed, like I’m more than what I am, like I’m not imagining a thousand different ways I could end it all right now and trying to remember why I can’t.

“See? You just accept.”

And then it’s just me and my former English teacher.

The dinner trays are cleared from the table, the garbage is thrown away. The others decide to search for how Baxter got in. Cary’s going to give them the rundown on everything we’ve managed to piece together about what happened before Baxter got in and the possibility that he’s lying and then we’ll all be suspicious. I stayed behind because I feel sick and tired and Cary said it’s good if one of us stays because it will prevent Baxter from getting suspicious of our suspicion of him. Rhys said it might make him more suspicious and then suspicious stopped seeming like a real word. I can’t tell if Cary is enjoying this or not, but I feel like he might be. I know he’s worried about how Baxter got in but it’s like the rest of it, the paranoia, is just something to do so he can feel like he’s doing something.

“Do you think you could get me some water?” Baxter is still sitting at the table and I’m on my mat and I don’t know why he can’t do that for himself but I get him a bottle of water and bring it to him. He sets it on the table and then he grabs me and his fingers are as rough against my wrist as they were against my face. I swallow.

“You’re hurt,” he says. “The others aren’t. Did they do this to you?”

“They?” My stomach turns when I realize what he’s suggesting. “No.”

He holds my gaze and then he lets my wrist go. I exhale and resist the urge to rub it. I walk back to my mat and sit down on it instead.

“It’s good, then, that you’ve found people you can trust.”

“I guess,” I say.

“That’s a rare thing at a time like this.”

“Is it?”

“I think so,” he says, and then he starts to ramble. “Panic reduces people to ruin. Cortege is gone and so are most of its residents. And the people who are left … won’t be … they won’t be good. That’s not how you survive, by being good … but—you all must be good and yet you made it this far.” I want to ask him about the man outside, if he was good. “But you must be the exception.”

He winces and leans forward a little, letting out a slow breath through his teeth and after a long moment, he straightens. His eyes are watery.

“Are you okay, Mr. Baxter?”

“Just tired,” he assures me. “You all address me like I’m still your teacher.”

“I’m sorry. We can—”

“I’m fine. I’m still your teacher…” He drums his fingers on the table. “If they hurt you, you can tell me. We can figure out what to do. You don’t have to pretend that they’re good.”

It is so strange to hear this question from someone in this context. I think of all the times I sat in Baxter’s class, long-sleeved sweaters on hot days, no one saying anything. I imagine how it would have sounded to me then. If he hurt you, tell me. We can figure out what to do. You don’t have to pretend that he’s good.

“I’m not. We went outside the night you got here,” I say. “It didn’t go well.”

He stops drumming his fingers. “Why would you do something so ridiculous?”

I know I shouldn’t say what I say next but I say it anyway.

“We went to get that man—the one you came here with.” Baxter’s face goes white but he doesn’t say a word and I keep talking because I’m not smart but maybe these things should be said. “Mr. Baxter, we know you didn’t come here alone. We know you came with another man—he was outside. He was calling for you when we got to him … he was calling your name. Nick. He was alive. He’s not anymore. You can tell us about it. It’s okay.”

Baxter stares at me blankly. “I don’t understand what you’re saying. I came here alone.”

My heart sinks. “You really can’t remember how you got in?”

“You think I’d lie about that? Is that what you’re telling me?”

I shake my head but when Cary and Rhys come back that’s what I tell them. He’s lying about everything.

In spite of this, I think most of us envision our future with Baxter as uncomfortable but inoffensive; the kind of situation where the other person is so strange, you start to wonder if the actual problem is you, so you don’t say anything to them but nothing comes of it anyway and it’s okay. I don’t think any of us are expecting things to go so badly so quickly, but they do.

We are dead asleep when his shouting wakes us up.

“Where’s the gun? Where did you put the gun? I want the gun—”

Baxter’s voice echoes around the room, shrill and demanding. The gun. At first I think I’m dreaming but I realize my eyes are open and everyone is getting to their feet, so I do the same. Baxter stands at the edge of the stage with a flashlight, pushing aside garbage and crumpled clothes and running his hands through his hair.

“What the fuck?” Trace asks. “What’s going on—”

Baxter turns to him. “Where did you put it?”

“Are they inside?” Harrison’s as shrill as Baxter. “Did they get in—”

“No one got inside,” Rhys says quickly. “Mr. Baxter—”

“Where is the gun?”

Cary steps forward. “Mr. B, what’s wrong—”

“I want my gun, Mr. Chen. Where did you put it? I need it—”

“I don’t have your gun. What do you need it for?”

Trace grabs the other flashlights and hands one to Grace. The room brightens. Baxter makes a frustrated noise and moves back to the stage, tries to climb up on it. Cary turns to Rhys, panicked, and I know right away the gun is somewhere beyond the curtain, somewhere obvious. Luckily, Baxter is too weak to get himself on the stage. He drops back to his feet.

“If Roger is out there, I need—”

Cary grabs Baxter by the arm and pulls him away.

“I think you’re confused—”

“Roger is out there!” Baxter insists. He grabs at Cary’s shirt, his eyes everywhere, unable to focus. “I need the gun. You have to understand. I need it—”

“I do—I understand—I totally understand—but we can’t do anything until you calm down, okay? You need to calm down—”

“Roger is out there—”

“I know, but—”

“You have no idea what he’ll do—”

“Mr. Baxter—”

“He’s out there!”

“I know, but he’s not in here!”

Finally, a combination of words that work. They sedate Baxter, make him go limp. He sinks to his knees and realizes where he is. The way he breathes is so ragged and so worn out.

“Harrison,” Cary says. “Can you get Mr. Baxter some water?”

“I’m not going in the kitchen alone,” Harrison says.

“I’ll go with you,” Trace says.

They are the only ones who move. The rest of us watch Baxter try to get a hold of himself. Cary’s face is ashen. All of this is beyond him, beyond us. Grace moves to me. She grabs my hand and squeezes and just for a second, I feel the kind of strong she thinks I am.

Little gasps issue from Baxter’s lips.

“I’m sorry,” he tells Cary. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how to be comfortable, that’s all. I don’t—”

“It’s okay.”

“You have to understand—I’ve been outside so long—”

“We get it—”

“I don’t know how to be comfortable.”

“It’s okay.”

Cary helps Baxter to his feet. Baxter winces, falters a little, and rights himself at the same moment Trace and Harrison return with the water. Baxter takes it from them and presses the bottle against his sweaty forehead.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers.

“Who is Roger?” Rhys asks, because for some stupid reason he thinks this is the time to ask. I brace myself, expecting Baxter to go into another round of hysterics but thankfully, he doesn’t. He flinches at someone else saying Roger’s name, though. It’s undeniable now, that something happened between them out there.

“I’d like to take a shower,” Baxter says. “I need to—clear my head before we talk about this. Mr. Chen, maybe you could find me some clean clothes…”

“Sure,” Cary says. Baxter nods, dazed. He drinks the water and then hands the half-full bottle to Trace. Cary hauls Mr. Baxter up by the arm. “Let’s just … get you set up…”

We watch them exit the auditorium.

“If he’s going to be like this the whole fucking time he’s here,” Trace says, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“He’s worse than Harrison,” Rhys agrees. Harrison gives him an indignant look. Rhys ignores it and turns to me. “His name was Roger.”

Roger. The man outside was Roger. Knowing his name makes it worse. I could have gone the rest of my life without knowing his name. My hands still feel what it was like to push him. If I think about it, I can hear him die, access that part of my memory easily. It makes me cold all over. The man outside, that I killed, was named Roger and Mr. Baxter knew him. I killed a man named Roger. My brain frantically tries to make excuses for me:

He was bad, he had to have been bad if Baxter left him out there, Baxter’s scared of Roger enough to want to get the gun back, Roger was bad so it’s good that I killed him …

“You should hide the gun somewhere else,” I say to Rhys.

It’s almost funny. Almost. The timing of my saying that. Maybe later I’ll think it was funny, we’ll all think it was funny how the second it comes out of my mouth, Cary bursts into the room shouting, “I need the gun—I need the gun!”

Before we can react, he’s onstage, past the curtain.

When he reappears, the gun is in his hand.

“What are you doing—”

“He’s bitten—he’s infected—”

Trace drops Baxter’s water bottle and leaps away from it. “Holy shit—”

“Where?” Grace asks. “Where? I didn’t see a bite—”

“His arm.” Cary looks like he’s going to vomit all over himself. “I got him some clothes from the drama room and when I got back he was getting undressed and I saw it. He didn’t know I saw him but he’s bitten. If he stays here, he turns and it doesn’t matter how he got in because we’re all dead anyway—”

Harrison covers his mouth. “Oh my God.”

Cary stares at the gun and he looks so young, younger than Harrison, and then his face changes, becomes more resolved. He strides for the door.

“Wait!” Rhys grabs Cary by the arm and pulls him back. “You’re going to kill him? You’re going to go in there now and just fucking shoot him in the shower—”

“What else can we do?”

“Are you sure it’s a bite?”

“Yes! It’s—” Cary’s throat hitches. He presses his hand against his mouth. When he’s more sure of himself, he lowers it. “He’ll turn.”

“Is he hot? How does he feel?”

“What?”

“Like—like his temperature! Does he have a temperature? Is he cold?”

“He’s fucking bitten, Rhys! There are teeth marks on his arm! I don’t care how he feels!” Cary points to the hall with the gun and it looks like it belongs. A natural extension of his arm. “We have to get rid of him—”

“Are you absolutely sure? This is not the time to be wrong—”

“How many times do I have to—”

“Look, if you two pussies can’t come to an agreement, just give me the fucking gun and I’ll do it,” Trace interrupts. “Or do you want to wait until he’s turned?”

“What if he’s turned right now?” Harrison asks.

Rhys sticks his fingers in his mouth and lets out a whistle loud and sharp enough to silence everyone. Even after we’re quiet, he doesn’t speak. We just stand there, staring at each other helplessly. And I think—at least with Roger, there was no time to think about it. This—there is time, enough of it. It’s a decision so big it makes the room feel small and the only conclusion I can come to is we kill him, I think. He can’t be in this school alive anymore. We can’t keep him if he turns.

“He just got here,” I say weakly, like it makes a difference. “He just got here. How do we tell him? Do we just tell him…?”

Rhys shakes his head. “Don’t—”

“You have to do it fast.” I’m babbling but I can’t stop. “Maybe it’s dark enough that he won’t see, so you have to do it fast and you have to do it—you have to do it right … so you have to get him in the head—”

“Sloane—”

“And then—his body. We can’t keep it—”

“Sloane, stop,” Rhys begs. “We don’t even know if he’s really bitten.”

Cary turns to him, mouth open. “I just told you he was.”

“Even if he’s not, he’s clearly unstable,” Trace points out. “And he woke up freaking for his gun. What happens if he finds it the next time and accidentally shoots one of us?”

“He’s lying to us about not remembering how he got in and he lied to Sloane about being out there alone,” Cary says. “He’s not acting normal—”

“What the fuck is normal?” Rhys demands. “So he freaked out a little and he lied—these are not good enough reasons to end someone’s life!”

“You want to kill me?”

My insides disappear. Baxter stands in the doorway. His hair is wet, flattened against his head, and he’s in fresh clothes, dress pants on, a new shirt. He walks into the room looking more our teacher than he ever has—but his eyes are so sad, so disappointed in us.

“You’re infected,” Cary says.

“What? What are you talking about? I didn’t—”

“Your arm. I saw it.”

Baxter shakes his head slowly. He steps forward and the rest of us take a collective step back and I know at that moment this is settled. Even if we spend the next hour letting Baxter try to negotiate his own survival, we have already decided he’s going to die.

“Can I see it?” Rhys asks. “The bite?”

Baxter studies us. I’m hoping for something but I don’t know what it is. I want him to handle it the right way. I want him to make it easier on all of us. In a way, he does.