Lex Thomas - Quarantine - The Saints

“Are you?” Will said, with maximum sarcasm.

The hallway was dim and its shadows were deep. The burnouts thumped on the metal door from the other side.

“I gotta get you a new shirt,” the Saint said. He crawled on his hands and knees into one of the open containment cells that lined the hall. Half a minute later, he came stumbling back out of the cell on his feet, with a yellow shirt over his shoulder, a towel in one hand, and a bottle of water in the other. He tried to pour the water on the towel, but he missed and most of it splattered on the floor. Will managed to wriggle out of his soiled shirt. He took the towel and water and wiped the puke moisture off his body.

“Thanks,” Will said.

“Here, take this.” The kid held up the bright yellow shirt. It was a short-sleeve, collared, Izod golf shirt. Will pulled it on. It was brand-new. Fabric this clean and fresh and unblemished didn’t exist in McKinley, and wearing it now made Will feel like it was the first day of school.

“Lemme getchoo a drink,” the Saint slurred. “Come on.”

The Saint weaved down the hall, away from Will, clearly drunk. Will didn’t know what he was walking into, but it had to be better than the honey-hungry burnouts waiting for Will in the white room.

“Yeah, all right,” Will said.

He caught up with the Saint.

“I’m so sorry, dude. Name’s Fowler,” the guy said. They shook hands.

“Will.”

As Fowler led him through the hallway of containment cells, and through the room with the airtight doors, Will heard the sound of people laughing. Lots of people. He heard sing-alongs. Happy shouts. Will followed him into the room where the ruined school bus protruded from the wall of rubble. The giant slabs of concrete had been wrestled away from the bus and now you could clearly see the front cab of the bus extending out from the wreckage of the wall. The bus’s yellow metal was bent and battered, the windshield was smashed out, the grille was crumpled. The front left wheel had come completely off so the whole thing tilted at an odd angle. Saints sat on the bent hood of the bus, joking with each other and drinking from disposable plastic cups.

“Check this out,” Fowler said.

Fowler led Will to the bus, to the misshapen hole that used to be the door. They went through the bent hole and up the three stairs into the bus. It was lit only by two camping lanterns. The inside was busy with activity. Saints were tearing out the seats and passing them up front to be removed entirely.

“It’s being turned into Gates’s room,” Fowler said.

Fowler led Will further in, past the Saints at work, to the back of the bus, where the lantern light barely reached. Every window was blacked out. Will clicked on his phone and shined its light to see why. On the other side of the glass was gray cement. He swung the phone around to see that it was true for every window.

“Whoa,” Will said. “Did the parents do this?”

Fowler nodded. “Yep. It was like this when we finally got inside. They sealed the whole thing in cement. Guess they mean business.”

“Guess so,” Will said, marveling at it all.

“You have any cigarettes?” Fowler said.

“Cigarettes? Are you serious?”

“Figured it was worth asking. I didn’t know if you had them here or not. I’m dying for one, Dill.”

“Will.”

“I said Will, man. Pull it together.”

Fowler slapped Will in the chest and led him back out of the bus. They went to the room that was the source of most of the noise in the processing facility, the soldiers’ mess hall.

It was a party. Most of the Saints were packed into this large room, plastic cups in hand. Rows of long metal tables dominated the space and Saints lounged atop them. There was slurred speech, and eyelids at half mast all around Will. So many drunk people, telling each other how much they loved each other, and thinking things were funnier than they were. A short Saint boy ran down the length of one of the long metal tables, and his friends chased him. Their footfalls sounded like someone punching a steel drum. The kids leapt from table to table, and the Saints who sat at those tables would yell in protest but almost immediately return to their sloppy conversations and be laughing moments later.

“Get this guy a drink!” Fowler said to the room.

A cute Saint girl in a sweater and tights sauntered up to Will with a bottle of vodka in her hand. She had dark eyes and short, white, wispy hair, like a baby chick. She smiled and tilted the bottle toward his lips.

“Open wide,” she said.

Will parted his lips and let her pour vodka into his mouth. She winked at him and continued on her way, sharing her bottle with others.

“Where did this vodka come from?” Will said.

“Tiffy found two crates in a locked closet off the soldiers’ infirmary,” Fowler said.

“Man, what a score,” Will said. His bottle of honey didn’t seem so impressive anymore.

“Hey, let me introduce you around.”

Fowler pulled Will over to a group of people standing in a circle. “This is Beaumont, Robert, Preston, Beatrice, Matt, Chauncey, Babs, Stewart, Dianne, and Fisk. Everybody, this is… What was your name again, man?”

“Will.”

“Right. Everybody, this is Will.”

“Out of the way!” someone screamed from behind Will.

He turned to see Gates, on all fours, atop a moving tower of three, precariously stacked, hospital gurneys. Two other Saints pushed the wobbling stack of gurneys, running at a full clip.

“Faster!” Gates yelled. “Faster!”

The Saints smiled like fools as they poured on the speed, and the unstable gurney-tower sped into the crowded mess hall. Gates stood and spread his arms wide, with a bottle of vodka in one hand, and his long hair flapping behind him.

“I am the party God. Hear my—oh shit!”

The gurney tower tipped, and came crashing down. Gates flew over the heads of some Saints sitting at one of the metal tables, and slammed to the floor where Will couldn’t see.

Five seconds later, he popped up to his feet, grinning madly. He tried to take a swig off his vodka bottle, only to discover that he held only the bottle’s neck and the rest of it had shattered in the fall. He laughed, and held his fists over his head in victory anyway. The crowd went nuts for it. Best party entrance Will had ever seen. Of course, he’d never gotten the chance to go to a real high school party before the quarantine. In a way, this was his first.

“That was insane!” Fowler shouted.

Gates looked over at Fowler, still riding the high of his stunt, and his clear eye locked onto Will. His other eye was shut.

“I know this guy,” Gates said, smiling. He walked over. “How are you here?”

“I puked on him so I invited him to the party,” Fowler said.

Gates busted up, laughing. “Aw, shit. I wasn’t expecting that. Well, that’s the price of admission, I guess. What do you say, Will, was it worth it?”

“Believe it or not, the puke was one of the better parts of my day.”

“Ha-ha, nice. Well, you’re here now,” Gates said, finally opening his other eye. It was still red. “Welcome to our party.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“We found vodka.”

“That’s it?”

“You need more of a reason than that?”

“I guess not.”

“Come sit with us.”

Will followed Gates and the others to a nearby metal table and they all sat down. Will couldn’t stop looking at his red eye. A pale boy in a purple Patagonia fleece came running up to Gates.

“You are a madman, I can’t believe you just did that!” the boy said.

“It was fun,” Gates said.

“Fuckin’ maniac, this guy,” the boy said.

“We got a lot of ’em around here,” Will said.