Quaranteen: The Loners

  The table gasped and muttered about Will’s insolence.

  They waited for David’s swift and strong response, which would put Will in his place. Seconds passed. Smudge laughed.

  David’s anger over Will’s comment was making it hard to think straight.

  “Unfortunately, the situation is—”

  In the middle of David’s sentence, a Varsity tore the tent open. The whole table sprang to their feet at once and scattered. The tent was torn to pieces. Someone smashed into David from behind. He tumbled forward, got caught in the tatters of black plastic, and fell to the ground. He dug his way out of plastic to see the camp under a full-scale attack.

  Varsity was destroying everything in its path. Three of them were pulling down the desk wall of the girls’ quarters.

  Will was wrestling with a Varsity on the ground. He saw the

  boy twin yank his sister out of the way, just in time to miss the swipe of a Varsity pipe. He saw Nelson get knocked into a trash wall next to him. Nelson held his chest and grimaced in pain. A Varsity stood over him with a lacrosse stick.

  David spotted a file cabinet drawer in a pile of trash by his feet. He grabbed it and swung it hard into the Varsity’s head, catching him in the ear with the drawer’s metal corner. The Varsity crumpled to the ground. Half of his ear was torn away.

  David reached out to pull Nelson up when a sharp pain dug into his ribs. He dropped to one knee. He jerked around as fast as he could manage. His attacker was already running the other way, holding a field hockey stick in his hand. He couldn’t see his face, but whoever it was, David thought the guy was a coward, until he saw all of Varsity running back to the double doors that exited to the stairwell. Most of David’s gang was strewn across the clearing, groaning from their injuries.

  A plume of brown smoke rose up from trash clustered by the exit. And then, the first lick of orange flame.

  “Fire!” David shouted.

  David ran toward the fire. Will and Mort were on his heels.

  Others pulled themselves to their feet. David stomped on the first small fire he came to, a flaming, stuffed garbage bag. He kicked it toward the exit, but the doors were closing.

  David ran to stop them. In the brief moment before they closed, David locked eyes with Sam on the other side.

  “You’re not coming out until the food drop!” Sam shouted.

  “I’ll be waiting in the quad!”

  With a flick of his hand, he signaled the Varsity members to follow him up the stairs. The doors closed. David wrenched his hands around both knobs and pulled. Please open. Nothing gave. David pulled and yanked. He pressed one foot on one door and jerked on the other. Didn’t even budge.

  David spun around to face the basement. Will was shouting orders to everyone. People were smothering fires wherever they found them. Noxious smoke the color of dirt clouded the lights above. It took twenty minutes before every flame was out. People were coughing and hacking. They were smeared black with soot and sweat. Ghostly ash hung in the air. Piles of trash bags were now misshapen hills of black magma.

  Will looked up to David, who leaned against the door. He didn’t even want to say it, but there was no hiding it.

  “We’re trapped.”

  14

  Will closed his eyes as Lucy’s fingertips slid down his cheek. Soft. Gentle. She stroked more paint on.

  It was cold, but the warmth of her fingers radiated through.

  She drew a jagged line down his jaw.

  It had been Lucy’s idea to do the war paint. She concocted it out of a mixture of watered-down glue mixed with ash, and she’d devoted the entire morning to painting everyone’s faces. This was Lucy’s contribution to the battle effort. She hoped that if they looked like savages, maybe people would believe they were. Nobody argued with her plan; they needed all the help they could get.

  He looked at her. She looked at his cheek. He could feel her warm breath touch his nose. The last time he’d been this close, really this close, he was too young and stupid to know

  what to do. He’d just lain inches from her all night in that tent in Utah, their noses almost touching, their hands clasped.

  Why didn’t he kiss her then?

  Lucy bit down on her plump lip. Will could barely handle how adorable she looked when she concentrated. The fierce painted lines on her face couldn’t betray her beauty. Her skin glowed especially white against the muddled black of the war paint. She was perfect.

  Will’s hand was in his pocket. He rubbed the fine gold necklace between his fingers. He wanted to pull it out. He wanted to tell her everything he felt about her. Lucy’s fingers trembled as she painted a stripe down his nose. She was scared.

  They all were. They were hungry and rattled after four days and nights of Varsity pounding on the locked doors, taunt-ing them, telling them they were going to die when the food drop came. It was no way for Lucy to have to live, terrified, scavenging trash for forgotten crumbs wedged in wrapper creases. He’d tried to comfort her, but she said she was fine.

  She said they needed to focus on keeping everybody else’s spirits up. That was just like her. He didn’t care about the rest of them, only her.

  “Lucy . . .”

  “Yes,” she said, her voice caught in her throat.

  Will pulled his hand out of his pocket with the necklace clutched in his clammy palm.

  “There’s something I—”

  David stepped into view behind Lucy. He held the thick wooden leg of a desk in his hand. A heavy metal L-bracket was still bolted to its end. Will paused.

  “They’re going to open the doors soon. Let’s get ready,” David said.

  Lucy looked up at David, and her chest heaved. She nodded quickly. David gave her pat on the shoulder before walking to the doors. She leaned toward David’s touch. She’d never responded to Will that way. No gift, no matter how nice, was going to outweigh everything she thought David had done for her. If he was going to get Lucy to see him for who he was, it would have to be from something he did, not something he bought her.

  Will stuffed the necklace back into his pocket. Too much, too soon, he scolded himself. He’d been playing everything wrong.

  How did he get her to sleep in that tent under the stars? He’d been crazy that day. He’d sprinted all the way across Devil’s Spine, that narrow rock bridge, without ever touching the guide rope. Chazz was pissed at him, saying it was a stupid risk, but Lucy . . . she looked at him differently after that. He had to do that again. He had to be her hero today.

  “What were you saying?” Lucy said.

  “Nothing.”

  Lucy promptly finished Will’s face paint. She pulled away from Will and walked with David to where the group was gathered by the locked doors. Will lifted himself to follow, but

  someone held him in place.

  It was Smudge.

  “It looks like a dog dumped on your face,” Smudge said.

  “So now I know what it feels like to be you.”

  “You scared?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not going,” Smudge said.

  “What? You have to. We need everyone we can get.”

  “You’re crazy if you think you got a fighting chance in that drop. It’s suicide, man. I’m not dying for your brother.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “What about your girl? You gonna let her die too?”

  “I’m not going to let her fight,” Will said.

  “Dude, there’s gonna be, like, a hundred Varsity out there.

  It’s a joke. If you go out there with them, you’re gonna die.

  You’re all gonna die.”

  David faced his tiny gang in front of the locked doors. The food drop would be starting soon. Blackened faces looked back at him. The paint couldn’t cover their fear.

  “We’re gonna make it,” David said.

  It was a lie. This food drop was a fixed fight. Sam had trapped them in the basement without food for days. He wanted them tired and hun
gry. He wanted to break their spirits, so they’d be easy to take down. David had no choice but to play Sam’s game.

  David heard the shuffle of footsteps down the stairs

  outside the double doors. He turned to face them, slapping on a mean face. The handles moved, and the doors were pulled open from the outside. Trash scraped against the floor. The Varsity doormen remained hidden in the shadows. His fellow Scraps crowded close behind him, and David took the first step up the stairs.

  They all wore at least five layers of ruined clothes they’d found in the dump for extra padding. Some had even poked holes in linoleum floor tiles and tied them to their bodies for added protection. Each of them carried a weapon, if not two: pipes, shivs, lengths of chain. The twins each carried a pair of scissors, broken apart, one blade in each hand. Belinda hefted a book bag full of bricks. The slashes of black paint marring their faces were dry and cracked now. They stank like hell.

  David’s stomach felt like it was turning inside out.

  “Keep walkin’, Scraps,” a Varsity said from the darkness.

  They ascended the stairs and reached the first floor. Two Varsity guys, in full pads with lacrosse sticks, stood on either side of entrance. They were Rhodes Dixon and George Diaz.

  There was a time when David had laughed hard with these guys about stupid stuff, farts and nicknames for ugly girls.

  Today, they were laughing at him.

  “Ooo, check it out, Rhodes, look at their faces.”

  “I can’t, Diaz,” Rhodes said with a mocking shiver. “I’m too scared.”

  Both guys cracked up. David ignored them and waved

  everyone forward.

  “You’re gonna die, Thorpe,” Rhodes called out like a song after him.

  The hallway ahead was long. Nelson hyperventilated behind him. Belinda mumbled calming words into Nelson’s funnel. David looked at Lucy. She forced a smile, but it ended up being nothing but a flat line. David checked on the rest of the group.

  There were only eight of them.

  David’s fear nearly sank him. Including him, that made nine against a hundred. He hated the deserters for jumping ship, but he couldn’t blame them.

  “They’re not coming,” Will said beside him.“Smudge and Dorothy and some of the other ones . . . they never left the basement.”

  David scanned past Will. A Varsity in a football helmet with a tinted visor stepped into the hall from a classroom. David glanced to the other side of the hall where another one stood, holding a position beside the opposite row of lockers. It was the same all the way down the corridor. Bulky figures stepped out from classroom doorways and from locker rows.

  They barked and hissed and spit as David and the gang walked past. David’s gang huddled closer together. Each Varsity they passed joined the growing pack, led by Rhodes and George, that followed at their heels.

  David stepped through the wide open doors to the quad.

  Every gang was represented: the redheaded Sluts in their spikes and chrome; the Nerds in their khakis; the Freaks in black with their blue hair; the Pretty Ones in their pristine whites. The Band Geeks wore their ragged regalia and set up their instruments in one corner to score the bloody affair.

  Some were there to fight. Most were there for the show.

  Conversation burst through the crowd when they saw David. What had they come to see? A bloodbath? He wanted to run. Like a coward. He wanted to hide in the trash like Smudge and Dorothy. David strode forward instead, making sure his strides were long and confident. The crowd hushed.

  Hundreds and hundreds of eyes were on him, riveted by his presence. What did they think? That he was an idiot for even showing up? That he knew something they didn’t? David fixated on a broken window on the far wall so that no one’s gaze could throw him. Behind David, the sound of Nelson’s breathing changed to the sound of Nelson throwing up. Some Skaters laughed. David kept walking.

  He saw a small clearing along the perimeter where no gangs stood. He led his crew to it. They stood close together in that spot, their backs to the wall. As David faced the quad, he realized that their spot being vacant was no coincidence. Varsity was assembled directly across the quad from them.

  Varsity’s front line was bashing helmets and thudding each other in the chest. There were so many of them. David couldn’t see Sam. Every other gang looked from Varsity to David and

  back again, ready for something to pop off.

  “Look at the fat one!” a voice declared from the Varsity crowd.

  Laughs.

  “No fair! Elephants aren’t allowed to fight at the drop!” Varsity laughed louder.

  People in other gangs covered their mouths, embarrassed for them but still laughing. Sam’s voice cut through the crowd’s rabble.

  “I heard there was a new gang!”

  Sam lazily swung a length of steel chain in his hand.

  “I could have sworn I heard that. I’m looking, but I don’t see one,” he said.

  Varsity laughed right on cue. Some of the crowd did too.

  “All I see is nine Scraps with a death wish.” The thup-thup-thup of helicopter blades floated in from far away. It was almost time. Varsity readied themselves for attack. David’s only thought was that he could make them chase him. Sam only wanted him. If David ran out of the quad and into the school, maybe he could lose them, maybe he couldn’t, but Will and Lucy and the others would be spared.

  David scanned the Varsity line, focusing on their best run-ners. He knew Keith Anderson was definitely faster than him. And Wesley James was at least equal his speed, probably faster with David’s lack of sleep and nourishment.

  Sam signaled Anthony Smith and the other linebackers.

  They hustled to each exit and stood guard. Shit. Sam had anticipated his plan. David wasn’t getting off the quad now.

  There was no way out of this. He was going to die here.

  A new sound drowned out the distant sound of the helicopter. It was the rhythmic crack of Varsity’s baseball bats on a brick wall. They’d be cracking David’s head next.

  David turned back to his gang of eight. They didn’t deserve to die because of him.

  “This is not your fight,” David said. As he looked from face to face, his words became more urgent. He didn’t want any argument. “Stay against the wall. Then, split up. When other gangs are leaving, get lost in their numbers and sneak out.

  Run and hide. This whole thing was a mistake—” A heavy hand slapped down on David’s shoulder. He almost jumped out of his skin. He turned. It was Gonzalo. Gonzalo was huge. Six foot seven. Stout and round. He carried a fire ax over his shoulder. He had long, dry, white metalhead hair that covered his face. Back when David had been captain of the football team, he’d tried desperately to get Gonzalo to join the team, but the guy couldn’t be bothered. He was the epitome of a loner. Gonzalo was the only student who was able to thrive at the drops, fighting all by himself. Every two weeks he walked through the drops unchallenged, picking up what he wanted.

  No one wanted to mess with him, and there was never a good reason to. He only ever wanted enough for himself.

  “Heard they tried to hang you in the market,” Gonzalo said.

  “That ain’t right.”

  David was in shock. Gonzalo towered over him. He could only nod slowly in response.

  “Is it true you’re starting a gang that won’t stand for that shit?” Gonzalo asked.

  “Th-that’s right,” David said.

  “Then I’m in.”

  “You’re shitting me,” Will said. David couldn’t have put it better if he tried.

  Gonzalo took his place beside David and faced the crowd, ax in hand.

  The sight of Gonzalo threw the crowd into disarray. Everyone was shocked. The bats cracked faster. The blades above thumped louder. One white-haired Scrap came running out of the crowd and stood in front of David and Gonzalo. He was a little guy, wiry. His face was latticed with crisscrossing scars.

  “Name’s Ritchie. I wan
t to fight with you guys. Is that cool?” David nodded again. This was really happening.

  Nelson handed Ritchie a hammer. Ritchie refused it and cracked his knuckles.

  “No, I’m cool.”

  Then more Scraps came. It was just a few white heads of hair trickling through other gangs at first, but within moments Scraps converged on him from all over the quad. Some he didn’t think he’d ever seen before. They were loner kids who lived in the shadows, who haunted the edges of the school,

  who had long ago been forgotten.

  The helicopter roared overhead. The canopy was opened, and the giant pallets were lowered through the hole.

  David was encircled by white hair. There had to be eighty of them now. He had no idea this many kids were without gangs.

  A familiar feeling flickered inside of him. He had a team behind him again, one with a fighting chance.

  “Listen to me!” David screamed. “You’re not alone anymore.

  We fight together!”

  They raised their fists and cheered.

  “This is your gang! And that”—David pointed to the heavy pallets swinging above—“is OUR food!”

  The pallets dropped.

  With a wooden crack, the pallets hit the ground. Food erupted from the broken containers. David’s gang charged.

  Varsity and the rest of the school did the same. The quad was a vortex of bodies, all grabbing for loot. Everyone slammed into each other. David swung his club into the forearm of his old teammate Rhodes and heard a crunch. Rhodes clutched his ruined arm and fell.

  Someone blindsided David, tackling him into a pileup.

  Anonymous fingers hooked the inside of David’s mouth, threatening to tear his cheek off. David chomped down on the fingers. Whomever they belonged to screamed. George Diaz rushed toward David wearing a lacrosse glove with nails sticking out from it. George swung at David with looping

  punches. The nails whizzed by his nose. David threw a lucky punch and caught the underside of George’s glove, driving the nailed side into his face. George screamed and tumbled off, the fat glove still fastened to his cheek.