A cube the size of a walk-in closet, made of thick slabs of clear plastic and mounted on a black metal base with all-ter-rain tires, rolled in from the outside and continued down the hallway of soldiers. Its motor buzzed like an electric pencil sharpener.
“What the hell is that?” David said.
The cube came to a halt five feet in front of Gonzalo.
“It’s a fat guy in a little box,” Lucy whispered without missing a beat.
A man sat inside the cube, behind a small steering wheel and a set of computerized panels. He was some kind of scien-tist, or maybe that was overstating it, but he had on a clean white lab coat. His flabby bulk barely fit into the cube. And he was terrified. This clearly wasn’t in his job description. He shook as he looked around the room. His eyes were so wide it looked like toothpicks held them open.
“Uh… f-f-first student. Step, uh, come forward.” Gonzalo approached the box. The fat man shrank back in his seat.
“Place your hand in the glove,” the fat man said.
Gonzalo slid his hand into a long, rigid, rubberlike glove that extended into his box from the outside, like an incuba-tor. The glove sealed tightly around his wrist. Gonzalo waited.
The fat man stared at the screen on his equipment and patted the sweat from his round, hastily shaven cheeks.
Finally, the fat man said, “Name?”
“Gonzalo Mendez.”
“Take your hand out of the glove.”
Gonzalo did as the man asked. There was a slight hum of whirring parts, and then the hand-hole spit out the glove lining that had fit over Gonzalo’s hand. It landed with a nasty splat on the ground.
Gonzalo waited for the fat man to say something. The guy seemed to be busy with follow-up procedures on the panel.
“Come on, man,” Gonzalo finally said.
The fat man looked up, rattled.
“Oh, uh, you’re free. You’re processing section is F. Proceed to the exit.”
Boos echoed out from the crowd at the fat man’s performance.
“YOU SUCK!” someone shouted.
Someone else threw an oily clump of rags from far back in the room. It smacked onto the side of the cube. The fat man jumped in his seat, making the cube rock from side to side on its wheelbase. The man’s heart rate must have tripled. Some kids laughed. The soldiers choked up on their rifles. The rag slid down the plastic, leaving a trail of goo behind it.
“See you on the other side, McKinley,” Gonzalo said.
Gonzalo walked into the hall of shields. His face transformed when he looked through the doors to the white room.
Clean, cool light washed over Gonzalo’s face. He breathed in deep. His smile was reverent. It was like nothing David had ever seen from Gonzalo. The rest of his life was waiting for him. He stepped through the door.
And then Gonzalo was gone.
David felt exposed and vulnerable again. He felt the focus of the room shift back on him. He’d been maimed by a girl he used to date; he was half blind; his brother was missing; and he’d just lost the strongest fighter in his gang.
Five more students were set to graduate. Dickie Bellman was next in the graduation line. That wasn’t right.
Dickie was at least a year too young to be phasing out of infection. Everyone who had graduated so far would have been a senior. Dickie would only have been a junior at this point. A panic fluttered in David.
“What’s Dickie doing?” Lucy whispered.
The Freak behind Dickie was trying to pull him out of the line by his shirt, but he clearly didn’t want to cause a commotion that would involve the soldiers. Dickie pushed the Freak off and hustled up to the cube. Without prompting, he stuck his hand into the glove. As Dickie waited for a response from the fat man, whispered conversation spread through the crowd. People were making the same observation David and Lucy already had.
The fat man’s eyes flicked over his control panel, then looked up, frightened.
“You are not eligible for release,” the fat man said.
“Sir, I hate to be argumentative, but you have to be mistaken,” Dickie said.
Dickie gestured emphatically, causing the black glove to snap back and forth inside the cube. The fat man yelped, petrified, and pressed as much of his body he could manage against the back wall of the cube, as though he was trapped in a car with a cobra.
“Pardon me, would you mind fucking running the test again?” Dickie said. His voice slid up and down in pitch as he spoke.
“No! Get out of here!”
The hallway of soldiers turned their guns on Dickie, while the others kept their aim on the crowd. Dickie didn’t seem to notice any of it. He was focused on the fat man.
David wished Dickie would just walk away.
“I’m just trying to talk to you like a human being, sir, I don’t need to be yelled at. If you simply called the Pentagon, they would tell you I’ve already negotiated this—”
“I said, go!” the fat man yelled.
“Get back, kid!” the commanding soldier barked. It seemed to snap Dickie into a larger awareness. He turned to see the whole school staring at him. Dickie looked back at them all with disgust. He focused on the fat man again.
“I’ll have you fired,” he said, and pulled his hand from the glove.
Dickie turned and walked away from the cube. The glove mechanism whirred and spit Dickie’s glove lining out after him. The splat of the lining on the floor made Dickie’s face flinch.
“Next,” the fat man announced.
A Freak who was next in line strutted up to the cube and stuck his hand inside. The hole sealed around his wrist.
Dickie spun around and dashed back toward the man in the box. A soldier fired a single shot. He missed Dickie and shot the Freak in the hip.
The Freak howled. Dickie had no intention of stopping. He sprinted past the fat man and into the hallway of shields. The soldiers opened fire. Blood shot up over the shield line like a blender with the top off. What used to be Dickie fell to the ground, a mangled lump.
The Freak still wailed, yanking and yanking at the glove that held him, fastened to the cube.
“Let go’a me! Let me loose!” the Freak yelled.
With every yank, the cube shook, and the fat man screamed.
The front line of soldiers fired on the Freak, executing him.
All the Freaks went wild. Bobby led them in a mad rush on the cube. The Freaks barreled into it. The cube tipped over and crashed to the ground. Simultaneously, a surge of kids ran for the door.
The soldiers’ roaring guns spit bullets into the heads, chests, and legs of the charging students. Blood sprayed in the air. Bodies flopped to the ground. Screams filled the room. The kids were screaming in pain and rage, the soldiers were screaming orders at each other, and the man in the cube screamed louder than anyone, his wheels spinning uselessly in the air.
“GET ME OUT OF HERE! PLEEEASE! GET ME OUT!” A few soldiers desperately tried to lift the cube back onto its wheels. They abandoned their effort and resorted to dragging the whole thing toward the metal door while the other soldiers’ guns coughed fire into the riot. Three kids took one soldier down to the ground. They clawed furiously at the back of his suit like dogs trying to dig under a fence. They tore rips into his suit, and within seconds his clear face mask flooded with blood and lung. Another Freak ran straight past the discombobulated crowd of soldiers and out the front doors.
David heard adults scream beyond the exit.
The Loners were scattered by the chaos. David pushed Lucy toward the hall.
“Go! I’ll be right there!” David said.
Lucy nodded, and David did one last scan of the foyer for any Loners who could have fallen behind. He didn’t see any.
He turned right to run for the hall and smacked hard into someone on his blind side. He spiraled off the anonymous body and landed on the floor.
David scrambled to get up, machine guns blaring in his ears.
He kept getting knocked back down; he couldn’t see anything on his right. When he finally got his bearings, he caught sight of a face staring at him through the mob. It belonged to Sam, who watched in fascination as David was helplessly smacked around.