They were under lockdown out of fear, not necessity. The students were at an assembly, perhaps to alleviate or control the rising worries. The pets were dead because someone had poisoned them. People were not in danger.
Her father had told her: She was not in danger.
Back on her feed, all the doomsday prophets were broadcasting their end of the world theories as a full-fledged assault. Several of her feed items were calls to faith in the midst of judgment day. If Lucy believed in evangelical Christianity, she would have guessed her classmates had been spirited away through rapture. But Lucy shook her head and scowled—she may not be perfect, but she had a hard time believing that God would leave her behind and take the entirety of Pacific Lake High School instead.
This was ridiculous. The overreacting. The fear.
“Bears are not trying to poison me,” she thought to herself. “Bears are not trying to poison me.”
There was no way that any of this amounted to anything remotely exciting. She just needed her damn homework so she could go on vacation with her family. For a moment, she thought of just walking with confidence down toward her locker, and if a guard stopped her, she would just say with calm precision, “My ride to the airport is waiting outside. I just need my Ray Bradbury book and I’ll be on my way.”
The walkie-talkie crackled again, but it was moving away from her. Further down the hall it traveled. A man’s voice, some security guard, sounded an “All Clear” for the science and main hallways. The talking turned a corner, toward the cafeteria, and away from her.
Two minutes.
With a deep breath, Lucy hesitated. Then, without thought, she sprinted, running as fast as her legs would carry her, shoes slapping heavily on the tile. She closed her eyes and ran; straight by lockers and classrooms, past the front of the building and the main office, they were all a blur as she sped down the wide stretch of hallway.
Then, she rounded the corner toward the English hall. Within eyesight of her locker, she slowed her pace, her heart beating with rapid thumps against her chest, blood pounding in her ears. Then her body flew forward. Pain shot up her legs and arms as she hit the tile with a crash, knocking the air out of her body. She landed on her elbows and knees and slid forward several feet before stopping. Her head caught the metal of a locker—a burning pain traveled from the top of her ear and all the way down her neck.
After a few moments, Lucy collected her composure and took in a giant gulp of air. She hoisted herself into a sitting position and then turned to see what had caused her fall.
And that was when she saw the body.
Crumpled in a heap, like someone dropped a wet rag on the floor and left it there.
She scooched herself backward, her feet slipping against the tile, until she felt her back hit the hardness of the lockers. It was a boy, his face turned in her direction, his eyes open and staring past her; one eye, one-solitary eye, was filled with blood, the blackness of the pupil still peeking through the bright red. It was a freshman she didn’t recognize.
One minute.
Lucy stood up, viscerally aware of how her knees wobbled together. Her heart thumped wildly in her chest; pulsating outward all the way to her fingertips. As if walking on a small ledge, she high-stepped along the row of lockers, until she reached her own and only then did she turn around, her hands shaking as she spun the lock.
Nine.
Twenty-six.
Seventeen.
There was a dead boy in the hall.
A dead boy in the hall.
Someone left a dead boy in the hallway.
And yet she was still fully fixated on her homework and getting the hell out of there.
She couldn’t shake the boy’s image as she pulled up and opened the locker with a click. Lucy grabbed her big purple binder that was covered in Salem’s doodles, political cartoons, and a photo of her family stuck on one side and a picture of her holding Harper on the other. She dropped the binder into the backpack and then grabbed her copy of Fahrenheit 451, sliding it into the bag and zipping it up. Only then did she realize she had been holding her breath and she let it in one giant hot gush. Voices down the hall snapped her to attention. Men’s voices, conversational, but hushed.
Time was up.
The voices were gaining on her.
No more than thirty feet away were the doors leading outside. Lucy could hear the distant sounds of sirens traveling up the street. Ethan was out there, waiting for her, and her mother and her family were at home. They had a plane to catch. This couldn’t be happening; she had a plane to catch.
Lucy struggled to wrap her mind around the evidence—the lack of students, the dead classmate. The lockdown. Her fear was intense; Lucy gnawed on her bottom lip until she tasted blood.
Her time was up.
The voices approached. To run to the door now would risk exposure. To wait would risk abandonment. She ducked into the closest classroom, grabbed the handle and shut the door without making a noise. Then she reached for her phone. It blinked with three unread messages. Amidst the panic she had not felt the phone pulsating in her pocket.
The first was a cryptic message from her mother:
“Not what we expected. Please come home. Please come home. NOW.”
The second was from Ethan:
“Mom needs me. She called. She was frantic. Bawling. Screaming. Going home. Taking Anna. We will come back for you. Sit tight.”
The third was from Salem:
“My family is dead. They’re all dead. It’s the end of the world.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Lucy collapsed against the door.
She closed her eyes and listened as the footsteps reached her and then passed her without incident.
When she opened her eyes, she cried out and then flung her hand over her mouth.
Splayed outward in the center of the classroom was another body. A man. His green Levis crept up to his mid-calf, exposing pink and gray argyle socks. The acidic smell of vomit wafted from his direction. Dried blood pooled on the floor, it had trickled down from the twisted mouth, opened wide as if in protest. His skin was yellow and waxy, and his eyes glassed over with a thin film, giving them the appearance of having cataracts.
Lucy knew that she was looking at Mr. North: Senior English teacher, recently married, advisor to the chess club. He was young and funny and impeccably dressed—a combination that added up to an adoring fan club of bright-eyed girls. She turned her head and then she saw the other bodies. A girl, head on her desk and a boy right next to her. And more. Six people altogether.
Some looked like they had sat down and fallen asleep, but others were a twisted mess of limbs and clothing.
She shook her head. A scream caught in her throat.
Lucy dialed her house number on her phone and hit send, but the phone beeped angrily at her. She dialed again. It beeped. Her screen flashed an angry All Circuits Busy message. Busy. Busy. Busy.
Lucy stuck the phone in her pocket and stood up; she gathered up her white shirt and pulled it over her nose and mouth—the futility of this act was not lost on her, but Lucy didn’t know what else to do. She pushed her anxiety away and focused as best she could. Was this related to the dogs? What was happening? Would this happen to her? Had it happened to her family? Where was Ethan? Would he really come back? The questions flooded her brain, and ran in a loop, like a clip playing without stop.
Staying in the room with the dead was not an option, and it was not a fear of the bodies, but a fear of what killed them. Lucy peered out into the hallway and discovering it quiet, left the room with her bag hoisted up on her shoulder. She rounded the corner toward the social studies hall and froze.
Scattered up and down the long hallway were more dead students.
Like the ones before, many of these victims had thrown-up prior to collapsing. They bled from their eyes, noses, and mouths; under the bright florescent lights of the high school, their skin took on a green tint. For the first time, Lucy noticed that one boy was covered in hives. The sickness did not bother her, but the smell was overpowering. While Lucy was certain from her biology classes that decomposition wouldn’t begin for hours or days, these bodies already seemed to bloat and smell like decay. Frozen in the hallway, she watched one boy, eight or ten feet away, and waited to see the subtle movement of his chest—waited to see his breathing resume.