Lex Thomas - Quaranteen

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.”

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 hungry. 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.