“Stop!” I shout. The men hardly notice me. One of them jams the butt of the shotgun into Zachary’s gut. Zachary groans and curls in on himself. “Stop!” I say again, this time trying a new tactic. “If you don’t want to get it, you should stay as far away from him as you can. It’s incredibly contagious.”
The guy with the shovel steps toward me, an angry look focused on my purple eyes. My body shakes and any food in my stomach may soon be splattered on the blades of grass along with Zachary’s blood. But another guy slams his forearm into shovel-guy’s chest.
“She’s right,” he says.
“Look, just let us go. We’ll go back into the quarantine,” I say.
“We got no way of knowing you’ll keep your word,” the shovel guy says.
“No, we don’t,” the older man says. “We’ll call the cops. Jimmy, Sandy and Billy, y’all watch ‘em. Keep your distance, but shoot ’em if they try to leave.” He turns around and pulls his phone out of his pocket.
The guys nod and back up, running their fingers along their guns. I tremor at the number of weapons, the order to shoot us, but shoo the scary thoughts away. I stumble and fall and grasp Zachary.
“Where’s Mandy?” I squeeze his arms, my fingernails digging into his flesh. I don’t care about the blood that splatters onto my jeans as he coughs. It’s warm against my thigh. I don’t care about the shotgun trained on my head twenty feet away. I just care about those eyes. His purple eyes still have life in them.
“Mandy,” he murmurs, his brown hair nestled in my lap. “Quinn?”
“Where is she?” I press. I must keep pressing. His eyelids droop. His cheek is a mix of blood and gore. And rips and slits. I see the edges of his skin. I see inside him.
I focus on the closing eyes. “Where is she?”
“She’s safe,” he says, before his neck can no longer hold his head and it flops onto me. “But, Quinn, I’m sorry. Please tell them I’m sorry. What’s happened to the town...what’s at Professor Livingston’s house...I was in too deep...and Mandy...”
Livingston. My heart thumps. Zachary wasn’t alone in this.
His face contorts. He groans.
Sirens zoom. Moments. It just took moments.
“Where is Mandy—is she at Professor Livingston’s?”
Zachary’s head droops. “Was that a nod?” I screech.
Instead of cop cars, the field is trampled by big, black, shiny vans. Men in space-costume-like black rubber outfits with hoods and plastic windshield fronts spill out and swarm toward us. I wipe away tears and snatch at Zachary’s shirt as rubber-covered hands grab at me, grab at him. They pull us apart. I scream. “Where is she?”
Zachary strains to respond. He coughs blood on the grass. His blood smears across the space suits.
“Mandy is safe. She’s finally safe.”