Lex Thomas - Quarantine - The Saints

“You took him from me,” Gates said.

Lucy got to one knee. Pain spread all through her body. She made herself stand. If the Sluts had taught her anything worthwhile, it was to never let your enemy know your fear. She didn’t quiver, she didn’t whimper, she didn’t cry. She gave him nothing. All those feelings were for her alone.

He pulled off his blood-soaked T-shirt and dropped it. The wet fabric slapped down into the mud. The skin of his chest was a mess of red dripping holes, the bite marks of Slut knives.

The quad’s spinning slowed. Lucy’s vision sharpened. Whatever Gates had planned made Lucy want to vomit. But what truly shook her, what obliterated all the heat in her body, was the sight of Violent’s many-bladed necklace around his neck. It shimmered in the pale light.

“It’s your fault,” he said, standing there in pale blue boxers and mud-covered sneakers.

No one was coming to save her. The Sluts had probably disowned her after she’d forced them into a gang brawl they didn’t want and then ran away with a boy none of them liked. David was dead. Will was outside. The Loners were no more. She had no ideas, no tricks up her sleeve. He might kill her right here. This could be the way she died.

She took a step forward, and it didn’t hurt too much. Then another. She walked toward him.

The surprise on his face was genuine. So was the confusion.

“Are you serious?” he said.

She sped to a jog. Her hips hurt. Her lower back clicked.

He seemed almost delighted to see her heading for him, but the coldness in his eyes took all the heart out of his smile.

Her jog became a run. She kicked through the mud, all the way to where he stood, by the motorcycle, fists up, stance wide. She kicked for his balls, and she connected, but mostly with his inner thigh.

He slapped her with a heavy hand, and blood burst from torn scabs left by the Pretty Ones’ claws, and streamed down her cheek.

She raked at his face with her fingernails. She made a grab for Violent’s necklace next. If she had a knife she could take him. But she never got the chance. He punched her in the stomach first.

Lucy crumpled. She slipped and fell into the mud, landing hard on her back, right beside the motorcycle. She couldn’t breathe. Her chest was a vacuum. Reality hit hard. Gates was ten times stronger than she was.

Gates fell on her, he dug his knees into her ribs and began to strangle her. The rain fell in her eyes. All noise went soft and muffled when her ears sunk under the mud.

She needed air. She clawed at his hands. One of her fingernails bent back and she cringed. She shook her hand out on instinct and his grip tightened. Her vision dimmed. Raindrops hurtled toward her in slow motion and landed cold on her cheeks. She looked at his frenzied face. She looked at the bleeding hole in his cheek.

Lucy reached up and dug her middle finger through that hole. She hooked her finger inside his mouth and yanked. The stab wound widened, the hole stretched, and Gates let go of her neck. He was holding his sagging cheek in horror.

She stabbed her fingernails at his eyes. One nail hit its mark. Right in the red. He grabbed at his eye and fell back, screaming. He lay groaning on top of the fallen motorcycle, pressing his fingers into his eye. He rolled around with his head on the back tire. The engine crackled underneath him.

She’d put a skid mark on his face. She grabbed the front handlebar and twisted the throttle. The spokes of the speeding back tire caught hold of Gates’s long hair that was whipping off his shoulders. The whirring wheel kicked his head around, and snapped his neck.

Gates was dead. His neck was a Twizzler.

Lucy lay down in the mud.

HILARY’S PLIERS SCRATCHED ACROSS THEenamel of the Freak girl’s tooth.

“Stop squirming.”

The Freak girl was small. Tons of freckles. Probably naturally a redhead, but her pixie haircut was chemical blue, and her eyebrows were white. Her wrists were fastened to her ankles by wire. Her ankles were fastened to the chair, which stood in a clearing in the trash-filled basement. She’d woken up just minutes before. She probably didn’t even remember Hilary whacking her in the back of the head with a two-by-four.

Hilary had a grip on that tooth and she wanted it now. The pointy jaws of her needle-nose pliers were jammed into the pink of the Freak’s gums. The girl’s crying made her face uglier. She wasn’t much of a looker, but she had great teeth.

Hilary pulled. She squeezed just tight enough to keep even pressure. The girl screamed into the old gray hand towel that Hilary had crammed into her mouth. Hilary tongued the gap in her own teeth as she strained. The pliers slipped off and snapped closed, her arm yanked back.

“Whore!”

Hilary kicked the girl’s chair over and it fell on its side. The freckly girl shook her head violently. She made more sad honking noises. Hilary closed the metal jaws on the tooth again and imagined it was Lucy tied to the chair. She sat on the floor and got her feet in the Freak’s face. She shoved one of her heels into the girl’s open mouth, bottom of her shoe against the girl’s upper row of teeth. Her other heel was in the girl’s eye, pressing down on the lip of her brow. She pushed with her legs and pulled with her back, like she was using a rowing machine. The girl honked into the towel again.

Scream, Lucy .

Both hands crushed down on the rubber handles. The burning muscles of her forearm stood out like steel cables. Her thumb wanted to cramp. She gave it everything. The girl shrieked. Hilary heard a crack.

Something gave way inside the Freak’s gums. It felt like tearing a drumstick off a chicken. Hilary stood up, still gripping tight on the pliers. The Freak coughed out the towel and screamed for her mother.

The tooth was beautiful. So long and pointy, like a normal tooth with a unicorn horn on top. It might be a little too wide, but maybe she could grind it down.

She’d find a way to make it fit. She’d climb her way back up to the top, return to her former glory, and no one would ever know. That vile pig, Lucy, was the only one who knew her secret. Hilary was coming for her, and no one in McKinley could keep her away. Nothing could stop Hilary from yanking every tooth out of that bitch’s head.

COLD RAIN PELTED WILL IN THE HEAD. THEraindrops were fat, and the downpour had doubled in strength in the short time since he’d been lifted out of the school. The crane had swung him away from the school, and was now lowering him down to the ground. He could hardly see a thing in the heavy rain. The harness pinched his skin. Thunder cracked. Wind whipped across his wet body and Will shivered.

His mind was on Lucy. What would happen to her? What was Gates doing to her right at that moment? Was he running her over to get back at him for leaving? Was he riding through the halls with her corpse laid over the motorcycle? Or dragging behind? Jesus. He should have waited, he should have stayed in McKinley another day, at least another few hours. Even though his mind would have started to break apart and he might not have gotten another chance to get out, and he might have died… he should have stayed.

Through the torrential downpour, he could barely make out the base of the crane in the distance. He was being lowered into a fenced-in area, on the lawn next to the school. Barbed wire ran along the top of the tall chain-link fences. The only thing inside the fenced-in area was an Airstream trailer. It looked like an aluminum Twinkie. His descent ended as his sneakers sank into the moist grass.

Will unfastened himself. He was glad to get the harness off. The wind surged again, blowing the rain sideways for a second. The harness rose back into the sky. He watched it go until he couldn’t see it anymore.