We crowd together with all the others in the upstairs hallways. People sit on the floors or squeeze onto cots, huddled together. Some people are crying; some let out startled shouts as the storm kicks up.
“Where’s Liz and the other kids?” Daphne asks as she gets two of the kids to settle down.
“She took the other stairs on the gym side,” Andrew says. He bolts back to his feet, the blanket falling from his shoulders. “Oh! Taylor and the Kid came up here, too.”
“They’re safe.” I say.
If he goes looking for them in the dark, he’s bound to trip or step on someone, and who knows where tempers are at right now. Our food is all on the flooded first floor of the school—where it shouldn’t have been to begin with.
“Cara is with them, too. Just wait here till the storm dies down a bit,” I say, taking his hand. I can barely see the outline of his face in the darkness, but I think he’s trying to decide whether he wants to go or if he wants to stay with me. If he is, at least it means he’s torn on the matter.
Not that I would ever expect him to choose between me and anyone else. But the way things have been going between us, it might not have been a hard decision. He sits down next to me on the floor, and I feel him shivering against me. I wrap the blanket back around him, pulling it tight.
“You okay?” I ask quietly.
“Yeah, I think. Yeah.” He sounds wired—scared and anxious. I squeeze his hand tighter and he squeezes back, then puts his head on my shoulder. I lean over and kiss his forehead. For a little over an hour, every time thunder cracks or some part of the school clangs or smashes from the wind or debris, he startles against me. Each time I rub his back, and soon he doesn’t startle anymore, and I can feel his breath grow steady and calm. He’s asleep.
After what feels like a few hours, the thunder grows distant and therain lightens. A little later, the wind dies down. And soon after that, just as the world outside is turning blue with the coming dawn, I fall asleep, too.
“Jamie.” Andrew shakes me gently and the muscles in my neck, arms, shoulders, and back ache. I groan and try to stretch, opening my eyes slightly against the bright sun blasting through the classroom windows, as though Armageddon wasn’t happening outside just a few hours ago.
“What time is it?”
“Still morning,” he says. There’s something in his voice that makes me focus on him, squinting against the brightness. His eyes are red and bloodshot as though he’s been crying.
“What’s wrong?” I look around the hallway. The kids are curled up around each other, fast asleep on the floor. Taylor is there, too, her legs pulled tight to her chest and her eyes puffy and red, tears streaming down her face. The little boy they call the Kid is asleep at her feet. She keeps a protective hand on his shoulder.
Andrew follows my gaze to her and nods in the direction of the stairwell we came up. I stand and follow him.
The flood on the first floor has only gone down about two feet, judging by the layer of mud up to the half landing. As soon as we round the corner, Andrew wraps his arm tightly around me. He buries his face against my damp, brackish-smelling chest and unleashes a howl of pain.
“What?” I ask, my heart racing. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him make these sounds before. I hold him tight with one arm whilerubbing his back with the other. Asking quietly what’s wrong but knowing he can’t verbalize it yet.
He cries like that for almost five full minutes before he says something quietly against my chest. I hold him close to me while lowering my ear to his mouth.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, keeping my voice low, as if, if I get any louder, it will spook him and we’ll have to start this process all over again.
It comes out in a croak. “They’re dead.”
My heart seizes. Cara. She wasn’t there when I woke. My own legs feel wobbly and I try my hardest to stay upright. My mouth is dry but I manage to get out, “Who?”
“Liz. The kids.”
Oh no. The kids who tried to go upstairs. They sent them the other way. The way the flood came. I wait for him to add Cara’s name, but he doesn’t. He sobs again and I wait, still expecting the news to get even worse. Then I remember Cara was already upstairs when the flood hit. I hold him tighter, hoping that he doesn’t add another name.
When he’s ready to go on he leans back, looking up at me. “The other side of the school collapsed.”
My extremities go cold as my mouth drops open.
“Everyone who was in the gym, the people using the stairs on the parking lot side of the school, the people upstairs in that wing. They all got trapped. Crushed or drowned. Liz, Matthew, Lisa, Quinten, Jeremy, Lucy. Frank.”
The last one he barely gets out before he breaks down again.The little boy with the dodgeball. No-Filter Frank. That one breaks me, too, and silent tears stream down my cheeks as I try to comfort Andrew. My heart wrenches in my chest and I start to panic.
“What about Amy? Henri-Two and Cara? Are they...?”
He lets out a long breath. “They’re okay. Cara’s a bit bruised, but Amy and Henri-Two were safe up here. Rocky Horror got up in time, too.”
Good. At least that’s something. Still, the number of people who must have died last night, trapped in the other side of the school—it’s horrific. Even after all the death we’ve seen from the superflu, this somehow seems worse, though I’m not sure why.
