Good, fine. I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine. He grabs my arm. I shrug him off and put my shirt back on more slowly than I should. I am fine. I’m alive.
I don’t even know what that means.
“Look, we’ve got to get back out there,” he says as I do up my buttons. “There are three other doors that need to be secured—” He grabs my arm and turns me around. “Look at me—are you ready? Sloane, are you ready?”
I open my mouth but nothing comes out.
SEVEN HOURS LATER
This must be what Dorothy felt like, I think. Maybe. If Dorothy was six scared teenagers and Oz was hell. No, this must be a joke; we are six scared teenagers and our high school is one of the last buildings in Cortege that is still in one piece and I’m not sure I can think of a better or worse place to spend the end of days. It was supposed to be the community center. We went there first like we were told—the town’s designated emergency shelter for the kind of emergencies we were assured would likely never happen—and it was the first place to fall. There were too many of us and too many of them. Somehow, we fought our way from one side of town to the other. In another life, the trip would have taken forty minutes.
In this one, it took seven days.
“Listen closely.”
The radio crackles the prerecorded voice of that woman at us over and over. We have done everything she has told us to do. We have locked and barricaded all the doors. We have covered the windows so no one can see outside and—more importantly—nothing can see in. “Do not draw attention to yourself,” the woman says, but if we know anything by now, it’s that. “Once you have found a secure location, stay where you are and help will come soon.” Cary sits on the stage across from me, waiting for the message to change. It doesn’t.
“This is not a test. Listen closely. This is not a test.”
But I think she’s wrong. I think this is a test.
It has to be.
Grace and Trace sit on the floor below. She’s whispering in his ear and he’s nodding to whatever she’s saying and he doesn’t look right. He looks sick. He reaches for his sister’s hand and holds it tightly, pressing his fingers into her skin like he’s making sure she exists. After a while, he feels me looking at him and turns his pale face in my direction. I hold his gaze until the chaos outside breaks my concentration. Outside, where everything is falling, landing and breaking at once. Sometimes you catch something specific like the screams and cries of people trying to hold on to each other before they’re swallowed into other, bigger noises.
This is what it sounds like when the world ends.
I take in the auditorium. The cheery purple and beige walls, the matching banners that hang from the ceiling, the Rams posters (GO RAMS, GO!) taped up all over. It was Cary’s idea to come to the school. After we found the community center overrun, we heard that woman’s voice on the phone. Find a place. He didn’t even hesitate before he said CHS. Cortege High. It was built to be the most distraction-free learning environment in the county, which means maximum windows for minimal view. Strategically placed transoms line the classrooms and halls, save for skylights in the auditorium and gym. Two large windows open up the right side of the second and third floors and overlook the school’s parking lot. They’re covered now.
“It’s still happening,” Harrison says.
I follow his tearful gaze to the exit just right of the stage. The doors open into the parking lot which bleeds out into the streets of Cortege, a half-dead, half-dying town. They’re locked, the doors. Locked and covered with lunch tables reinforced by desks, thanks to Rhys and me. Every entrance and exit in here is the same. The idea is nothing gets past these barriers we’ve created. We spent the first five hours here putting them up. We’ve spent the last two shaking and quiet, waiting for them to fall.
“Of course it’s still happening,” Rhys mutters. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
Cary turns the radio off and eases himself onto the floor. He looks like he has something to say but first he runs his hands through his black hair, letting his eyes travel over each of us. Cary Chen. We followed him for days. Lily used to buy pot from him sometimes and sometimes I wanted to, but I thought that would make English class weird and I don’t know if she always paid in cash.
“Listen, I—” He sounds sandpaper rough from screaming instructions at us for hours and never once taking a breath. He clears his throat. “Phone?”
Trace makes a gurgling noise, digs his hand into his pocket, pulls out his cell, and frantically dials a number, but it’s no use. The woman’s voice drones over each desperate push of the buttons, a condensed version of what we’re getting on the radio. I watch the sound work its way into Trace’s bones, his blood. His face turns white and he whips his phone across the room. It breaks into three pieces; the back flies off, the battery falls out, and the body skitters across the shiny linoleum floor. Nothing works anymore and the things that still do don’t work like they should.
“I can’t get through,” he says flatly.
Cary picks up the pieces and fits them back in place.
“Give it more time. You will.”
“Think they’d pick up if I did?”
I watch Cary, waiting to see if he’ll defend himself. He doesn’t. He turns the cell phone over and over in his hands and says, “Trace, the message is a good thing. I think it means they’re leaving priority signal for emergency workers.”
Harrison sniffs. “So they can save us?”
“Yeah.” Cary nods. “We’ll be saved.”
“And that’s your expert opinion?” Trace asks.
Cary shrugs but he doesn’t look Trace in the eyes, focusing instead on the doors. His expression reveals nothing, but he’s turning the phone in his hands faster now, clumsily.
“It just makes sense,” he says.
“That’s what you said about coming here. That really paid off for me and Grace.”
Cary winces.
“He got the rest of us here,” Rhys says.
There were eight of us, before.
“Oh, so I’m here. Hey, Grace!” Trace turns to her. “You’re here. We’re here with Cary Chen.” He laughs bitterly. “You think that means anything to us when—”
“Trace, stop.” Grace sounds just broken enough that Trace doesn’t take it any further. He frowns, holds out his hand to Cary and says, “Give me back my fucking phone.”
Cary stares at it like he doesn’t want to give it up, like Trace’s cell phone is an anchor keeping him here but I don’t know why anyone would want to be anchored here.
“Now,” Trace says.
Cary holds it out and finally looks Trace in the eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “about your parents.”
Trace rips the phone from Cary’s grasp.
I close my eyes and imagine this place under totally normal circumstances. We have assemblies here. The principal gives speeches here. We eat in this room at lunch. I imagine a day, any school day, setting up the lunch tables and getting in line, picking from the menu. I can almost smell the food …
But then the noises outside get louder than anything I can imagine. They pump through my veins, speed up my heart, and remind me to be afraid even though I have never stopped being afraid, not since Lily left. I open my eyes at the same time the whole barricade seems to shift. Rhys rushes to it, pushing against the desks and tables until they’re settled again.
“What was that?” Harrison asks. “Why did it—”
“It’s just the way this desk was—it wasn’t the door—”
“It’s the door?”
“It wasn’t the door. Just calm down, Harrison. Jesus.”
Harrison starts to cry. He stands in the middle of the room and holds himself because no one else will and it’s the loneliest thing I’ve ever seen. I’d go to him, maybe, but I don’t even know Harrison. None of us do. He’s one of those invisible freshmen made even more invisible by the fact he just moved here four weeks ago. Cary had to ask him his name after we found him trapped under a bike with his jeans caught in the spokes.