“I know. But we don’t have a choice.”
“How are you so calm about this all the sudden?” Will said.
Lucy’s face was unaffected, flat, still.
“I’m just trying to keep my shit together,” she said. “The second you leave, I’m going to lose it.”
Will forced himself to slow his breathing. He nodded. She was right. There was no point in crying about it now. Will went in for a kiss, and he made sure to make it count. It would have to tide him over for a year if this ridiculous plan worked. And if they failed, this would be the last time he would kiss her without a death sentence hanging over his head. He kissed her slowly; he wanted to feel every moment of it. Her lips pushed back with a feather’s weight. Lucy pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” Will said.
Lucy looked away. “We shouldn’t waste any more time.”
He knew what she really meant. The more they lingered, clutching each other, touching and kissing, the harder they were making it to say good-bye. Lucy moved to Sam’s body. Will sighed and followed. He bent down and slung one of Sam’s limp arms over his shoulders. Lucy did the same, and they lifted his scarecrow corpse up. They looked like Sam’s best friends, each with one of his arms over their shoulders, as they hurried him down the hall. Sam’s dead feet dragged on the floor. They threw open the doors to the quad, to the wall of rain beyond.
They charged onto the quad. Sam’s toes dragged through the mud. They carried Sam along as fast as they could. The rain was pounding now, making a haze of gray that was difficult to see through. Sam’s head bobbled.
“He’s unconscious!” Will screamed, twisting Sam’s head up toward the roof ledge to reveal Sam’s face. “He needs medical attention right away!”
They stood in the middle of the quad where the crane would meet them. They stared up and shielded their eyes from the falling raindrops.
“Come on, man!” Will shouted to Sam’s father, who now held a pair of binoculars to his eyes, under his flipped visor. Will prayed that he was satisfied with what he saw. The man took his time with his decision.
“You promised, now do it!” Lucy shouted up to the sky.
Sam’s father raised his arm to someone above they couldn’t see. The graduation harness lowered into view, attached to the crane arm high above. The harness twisted on the crane cable.
“Just strap Sam in,” his father said. “We’ll do you after.”
“It’s both of us or nothing! That’s the only way it happens!” Will shouted.
The harness finally dangled low enough for them to grab it. Will bear-hugged Sam’s corpse, so Lucy was free to strap Will in, one limb at a time.
“You’re ready,” Lucy said.
Will wasn’t sure if it was tears or rain on her face.
“It’s okay,” Will said because he thought he should. “I’m not going to abandon you, okay? I’ll find a way to help from out there. I promise. You know that, right? I swear to—”
“I’m sorry, Will,” she said.
“You’re sorry? Why are you sorry?”
“I should’ve gone with you,” she said, her voice more frantic by the second. “I should’ve gone with you to live in the elevator. We could’ve made it work. We would’ve had more time. You never would have teamed up with Gates.… I never would’ve—”
“Ssh,” Will said. “Don’t. It’s okay…”
“We could’ve had more time,” she said, her mouth down-turned in sadness. “Oh, Will.”
Lucy went in for the kiss. Her lips got within an inch of his before he was tugged up into the air. The harness bit into his flesh. Sam’s body was ridiculously heavy, and Will had to squeeze with all his might.
“Good-bye!” Lucy shouted up.
Will heard a guttural rumble from the hall. The revving of an engine. He knew who was coming.
“You have to go!” he shouted at her.
“What?” she called up.
Gates came roaring onto the quad on the motorcycle. Lucy broke into a run.
“Colton!” Gates screamed when he saw Will in the air. He poured on the throttle. Gates stood on the pedals, and reached up for Will as his bike zoomed by underneath. His fingers barely grazed Will’s right foot.
Will kept ascending, giving thanks for every additional foot of space that grew between him and Gates. Then, he saw something horrible. Lucy had only managed to run fifteen feet in the mud. As Gates dropped himself back down into the saddle seat of the motorcycle, he carelessly clipped Lucy with the handlebars as he raced past her. She spun off her feet and flew into the mud.
“Lucy!” Will shouted.
Gates wobbled and crashed. Lucy wasn’t moving.
Will crested the roofline of the school and rose up to eye level with the parents who had gathered behind Sam’s father at the east wall. He stared into the black visor of the motorcycle helmet.
Will looked down to Lucy, who still lay motionless in the mud. He wriggled all around trying to look past Sam’s body to see where Gates was. He lost his grip on Sam’s slick, rain-soaked body, and Sam’s heavy bulk began to slip through his arms. Will instinctively clamped down to hold on, and got his forearms underneath Sam’s jaw.
Sam’s weight pulled down hard against his forearms and Will heard a snap.
Sam’s body fell out of the sweatshirt. It tumbled down and thumped into the mud below. But Will held Sam’s disembodied head, still in the sweatshirt’s hood. The rest of the empty sweatshirt flapped in the wet breeze.
Will heard the adults scream. Sam’s father fell to his knees, completely silent. He gripped his helmet in agony as he stared at Will holding his son’s dead head. Will dropped it. The woman in the lilac helmet screeched and screeched. Far behind them, he could see six more adults running toward the roof ledge.
The crane began to turn and swing Will away from the quad. He looked down into the quad. Lucy was in the same spot, but writhing around on the ground, beginning to stir. He saw Gates. He reached his hands up toward Will. He might have been screaming but Will was getting so high, and so far away from the quad, that he couldn’t hear it through the rain. Someone had to come help Lucy.
Will looked up to see the tip of the long, orange crane arm, high above him, and the arrows of rain zipping down toward him from dim gray clouds. Beyond the school, he saw a wall that went around the whole McKinley campus. It was made of big rig trailers, stacked three trailers high, the work of the crane Will assumed. The wall went all around the front hill and the parking lot and circled back behind the school to include the football field, until it disappeared into the gray haze of rain.
People walked on top of the truck trailer walls, patrolling with rifles. In the front lawn Will saw a forklift, a tractor, and more heavy machinery. He saw new prefab buildings along the wall. He saw a triple chain-link fence at the only break in the trailer wall, by the entrance to the parking lot.
There was other movement within the walls. Will saw horses. Pigs. Cows grazing. There were chickens too. He saw what looked like an unfinished barn and stubby grain silo. Will squinted and strained his eyes to understand what was happening on the football field. There was something off about it. The grass was too tall, it was swaying.
It was a field of wheat.
40
GATES PALMED SAM’S HEAD AND LIFTED IT up to gaze into its eyes. He studied the slack, dead face with an unhurried curiosity. Sam’s open mouth was full of mud and rain. The defiled head of the king. There was a spray of rain bouncing off both of their heads. There was a bleeding stab wound through Gates’s cheek, to go with the one Lucy had given him in his side. The motorcycle’s engine still hacked and popped and coughed. The bike was tipped on its side, on the ground by Gates’s feet.
Lucy was on the ground twenty feet away. It felt like the quad was spinning. The motorcycle accident had disoriented her. Her clothes clung to her, drenched.