Now
The hospital walls hurt my eyes. They’re too bright. Too clean. There’s no dirt here. No stains. Except me. Lying in this bed. After all that happened, it feels wrong to be here. Unfair. Others deserved to live just as much as me. Or even more. “There’s something I didn’t say.”
Detective Perez stops thumb-typing on her cell.
It’s hard to verbalize, even now. Some things should never be spoken, never understood. Never reduced to mere words. “Max.”
Just saying his name makes my eyes well with tears and I fight them. If I let the dam of emotion break, then I will drown.
“In the hallway, he was right next to me, you know? Closer than you are to me right now. I could reach out and touch him.”
I have a sense memory of his lips against my neck, his breath warm and moist, and how I wish I’d turned around then to kiss him. I think of how we should’ve stayed on that ledge overlooking the sea. We could’ve stayed there forever. No one would find us. Years would go by and it would be only our bones turning to dust, but we would’ve been together.
Detective Perez waits for me, silently encouraging me.
“His parents, they came at him. Rushed him. It’s like he had a target on his shirt. Like he was the only one in that hallway. I don’t remember what weapons they had. Maybe they were barehanded. But when they got to him, they tackled him and he fell next to me. Because that’s where I was hiding, see? I was on the floor by then.” As if by explanation, I say, “I told you I was a coward.”
Detective Perez has no response. Instead, she places her hand on mine, resting it gently against my bandages. Such kindness. Kindness I don’t deserve.
“Max never did anything to them. He made a mistake and they all but disowned him. And at the end, you could see it. His parents—they were animals, holding him down.”
The memory is so visceral, I can see it playing out right in front of me. I shut my eyes, wishing the image away. I think of song lyrics, scenes of movies I like, poems from school, but the image burns and burrows through them.
“Max struggled. He somehow managed to throw them off. And there was a look in his father’s eyes, as if he finally understood that his son was a man. Not a boy. Strong.”
I find it hard to breathe. I’m hyperventilating.
“On the floor, Max picked up a weapon. A pick. An ice pick. Max held it next to his father’s throat and I screamed, ‘Do it, Max! Do it!’”
I stop, replaying the moment in my mind. That moment of what could’ve been.
“He didn’t. He couldn’t. He let the ice pick fall to the floor and he started crying.”
My Max, bawling.
After a moment, Detective Perez asks, “Did his parents…?”
I shake my head. “They never had a chance to. Another adult came by and….” I can’t say the words. Maybe if I never say them, it didn’t happen.
Detective Perez’s mouth tightens and she says, “I’m sorry.”
Me, too, I think.
She asks, “What did you do?”
“That’s the worst part,” I tell her. “It was Max’s dead body that I hid under. While the fighting went on, I pulled him over me.”
Yesterday
My Max.
The names kept piling up. More and more, a mountain of names, all of them blocked out by Max’s face, his sad face as he dropped the ice pick and it clinked on the floor.
“Max!” I’d screamed.
His whole body crumpled, growing smaller, impossibly small, shriveling before my eyes. And though I can’t be sure, I could swear he said to his parents forgive me.
The parents who hated him.
Why Max? Why?
I never even got the chance to tell him goodbye. I hid under his body, feeling it uncoil, relaxing. At least he was at peace. I was left with nothing but his scent, of sweat and baked apples, and I hold onto it, etching it into my memory.
I promised him, I’ll make them pay. I’ll make them hurt.
Around me, chaos reigned.
While the adults thought they’d killed all the kids, they moved in one direction looking for more. I crawled on the slippery floor in the opposite direction, past an obstacle course of bodies, making my way out. I snuck past the shop room. The gas had leaked into the hallway and just smelling it again forced me to double over. I feared my hacking cough would bring the adults.
I was in hysterics by then. That must be what it was like to be insane. Thoughts collided in my head—I don’t belong here, I never belonged here—a whirlwind of images, the living and the dead, befores and afters, and I wanted to laugh, cry, and rip out my hair. I wanted to run up and down the halls to expel the excess energy that was percolating beneath every pore, small volcanoes ready to burst. My whole body hummed and my blood felt like acid.
I repeated my name, over and over, anything to keep me anchored to reality for at any moment my mind might crack and I would sail into the terrible unknown.
Only Theo made it bearable.
I was not alone.
I’d grabbed Theo and brought him with me like a wayward puppy. We made it to the locker room, and I aimed for the farthest corner. His eyes, glazed over before, seemed empty, as if he’d seen something impossible to comprehend, something beyond human experience.
“Theo,” I said. When he didn’t respond, I slapped him. He gaze slowly met mine but he didn’t focus. He was looking far off into the distance. There was no tension in his face, no tightness in the jaw or eyes—all gone slack, a body without a soul. I grabbed his head and forced him to see me.
“Theo! It’s me. Ruthie. Your sister.”
He blinked, saying nothing.
I hugged him. “Come back, Theo. Come back. We’ll be okay.” My brother. My poor brother. “Don’t leave me, please. Not now.”
His clothes, I felt, were moist, and I realized he’d wet himself. It didn’t matter to me.
I continued hugging him, both of us in the corner on the cold floor of the men’s locker room. I placed my hands over his ears, trying to muffle sounds from outside. The echoing shouts, the clanging of lockers, the thunderstorm of horror.
“Do you remember, Theo? How Dad used to take us hiking out in the forest? And we’d go to the highest point on the island? That little nub of land? We’d stand there and you could see all around you. The ocean everywhere. You were into Lord of the Rings at the time and you asked if elves lived there.”
Theo’s head rested against my shoulder and I noticed his arms weren’t even around me. They lay limp at his sides. “Theo,” I said, “I never told anyone this before, but when I went walking in the forest, I was always on the lookout for creatures with pointy ears. The forest at night? I was never scared. I felt safe. You did that for me.” I squeezed him harder. “I couldn’t have come this far without you. Please, come back.”
I needed to stay strong for the both of us.
Then I smelled it—the gas.
It was probably filling the entire school. I could hear coughing in the hallways. The adults were gagging.
Good, I thought.
They might never come this far, this deep.
I listened to the sounds of my breathing, amplified by the tile and porcelain. Just me and Theo, like those statues made of ash in Pompeii.
Suddenly, Dirk barged inside, heaving and out of breath. But not from exhaustion. The out of breath that comes after a rollercoaster ride. Exhilaration. His metal pipe dripped, covered in wet flakes of something I didn’t want to know. And his face—his face! A fine mist of red covered it entirely, making his teeth too white in contrast. He almost didn’t seem human anymore.
“There’s too many,” he huffed. “They keep coming. Like that game? What’s that game?”
I shook my head.
“You know the one.” He snapped his fingers. “Whack-a-mole! I keep knocking ’em down, but they keep coming back up.” He paused, staring at me. “Why are you crying?”
I didn’t know I had been. Maybe it was from the gas. We couldn’t stay long.
Dirk circled the room, searching. “Gotta be a way out. A window. Something.”
There was nothing. Only individual showers and shower curtains, sinks and tile.
“Damn,” he said. “Guess it’s just the door.” He twirled the metal pipe in his hand like a drummer with his drumstick and stood near the doorframe, ready to surprise anyone who entered.
I asked, scared of the answer. “Is there anyone else left?”
“Not likely. They were all pretty pathetic if you ask me. Though that pizza-face kid held his own for a bit.”
I didn’t know who he was talking about.
Dirk stepped toward us, noticing Theo as if for the first time. “Your brother? What’s wrong with him?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
Dirk stooped, waving his hand back and forth in front of Theo’s face. “Earth to Theo? You there?” He snapped his fingers and when that didn’t generate a response, he slapped Theo’s face—too hard for my liking.
“Don’t,” I said.
“How long’s he been like this?”
“Does it matter?”
Dirk’s brow furrowed as he did some thinking from that reptile brain of his. “He’s a senior, right? Seventeen, almost eighteen?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “What’s the difference?”
“Almost an adult, then.”
It took me a second, but I understood where he was going. “No.”
“We don’t know how this thing works or when they get infected. I think it’s when they become adults.”
“He’s just sick, Dirk. He’ll come back. He will, I know it.”
“Yeah, like them. Get out of the way.”
I stammered, “What are you going to do?”
“What I’ve been doing.”
Not after everything. Not this.
“No.”
Before I knew it, I saw tile. He’d pushed me out of the way. I was sideways on the floor. My world was tilted, and when I stood, I saw Dirk twirling his pipe, ready to swing.
I leapt on him, clawing at his eyes.
He tried to throw me off, the pipe swinging wildly. I felt the hits against my arms and shoulder, but I would not let go.
My fingers dug into his eyes, and I felt the gelatinous softness starting to give way.
That’s when I took a blow to the head.
I literally saw stars and we tumbled to the floor. Dirk was screaming, and I got up, grabbing onto a shower curtain. I thrust it around his face, pressing hard, pressing with everything I had, and it encompassed him like a latex mask.
I caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror and it was a death shroud, his mouth open, trying to breathe, and I gripped harder and harder.
Something came out of me, something I never knew I had. I was Death itself.
Dirk twirled, and being on him was like riding a wild animal, round and round, as he tried clawing the curtain off and I bit down on his hands. As he moved, the shower curtain tore off the rod.
No one would ever hurt my brother.
I squeezed and the plastic curtain dug into Dirk’s neck.
In a last spasm, Dirk stopped moving and collapsed onto the floor.
Never threaten me.
Never threaten my brother.
I pulled the curtain so tight, I could see Dirk’s entire face as if painted in pale plastic, his mouth open. I pulled and pulled, allowing no slack. No hope. No mercy.
Seconds passed and he fell still. Completely still.
Dirk Kincaid was dead and I’d murdered him.