Rhys sticks his fingers in his mouth and lets out a whistle loud and sharp enough to silence everyone. Even after we’re quiet, he doesn’t speak. We just stand there, staring at each other helplessly. And I think—at least with Roger, there was no time to think about it. This—there is time, enough of it. It’s a decision so big it makes the room feel small and the only conclusion I can come to is we kill him, I think. He can’t be in this school alive anymore. We can’t keep him if he turns.
“He just got here,” I say weakly, like it makes a difference. “He just got here. How do we tell him? Do we just tell him…?”
Rhys shakes his head. “Don’t—”
“You have to do it fast.” I’m babbling but I can’t stop. “Maybe it’s dark enough that he won’t see, so you have to do it fast and you have to do it—you have to do it right … so you have to get him in the head—”
“Sloane—”
“And then—his body. We can’t keep it—”
“Sloane, stop,” Rhys begs. “We don’t even know if he’s really bitten.”
Cary turns to him, mouth open. “I just told you he was.”
“Even if he’s not, he’s clearly unstable,” Trace points out. “And he woke up freaking for his gun. What happens if he finds it the next time and accidentally shoots one of us?”
“He’s lying to us about not remembering how he got in and he lied to Sloane about being out there alone,” Cary says. “He’s not acting normal—”
“What the fuck is normal?” Rhys demands. “So he freaked out a little and he lied—these are not good enough reasons to end someone’s life!”
“You want to kill me?”
My insides disappear. Baxter stands in the doorway. His hair is wet, flattened against his head, and he’s in fresh clothes, dress pants on, a new shirt. He walks into the room looking more our teacher than he ever has—but his eyes are so sad, so disappointed in us.
“You’re infected,” Cary says.
“What? What are you talking about? I didn’t—”
“Your arm. I saw it.”
Baxter shakes his head slowly. He steps forward and the rest of us take a collective step back and I know at that moment this is settled. Even if we spend the next hour letting Baxter try to negotiate his own survival, we have already decided he’s going to die.
“Can I see it?” Rhys asks. “The bite?”
Baxter studies us. I’m hoping for something but I don’t know what it is. I want him to handle it the right way. I want him to make it easier on all of us. In a way, he does.
He does the most condemnable thing ever.
He tries to run.
“Get him!” Trace shouts. He actually shouts that.
The world comes down on Baxter. Rhys, Cary, and Trace have him on the floor and the gun skitters beyond them. I grab it while Cary and Trace hold Baxter down and Rhys asks Cary, “Which arm? Which arm?”
Cary says, “Left! It’s the left—”
Rhys rolls up Baxter’s shirtsleeve. Grace shines the light on it. I’ve never seen a bite close up. It’s raw and angry, red and yellow teeth marks. The skin is clean—thanks to the shower—but inflamed. Weeping, sore. It looks like a fever.
“It’s not what you think. I promise, it’s not—”
Rhys presses his hand against Baxter’s forehead.
“If it’s not a bite, what is it?” Rhys asks. “You have to tell us what it is.”
“It’s—it’s not—” We wait. Baxter’s face crumples. “It’s a bite.” Harrison runs to the farthest corner of the room. “No—it’s not—it’s a bite—but it’s not—you have to listen to me—it’s not from one of them—I promise you—”
“But it’s infected,” Grace whispers. “Look at it—”
“I’m not infected! I’m not—you have to believe me, I’m not—”
“You have a bite but it’s not from the infected?” Trace asks incredulously. “That’s what you want us to believe?”
“That’s what it is!”
“Bullshit! You’re just saying that because you don’t want to die—”
“I think he’s telling the truth,” Rhys says.
But I’m the only one who hears him say it and I don’t have the courage to ask him to repeat himself. I look at Baxter’s arm, the bite, and I don’t understand how Baxter could be telling the truth. He’s infected and he needs to die.
“Who has the gun?” Cary asks. “Who has it?”
“Sloane,” Grace says.
Me. I have it. The gun. I stare at it. It’s heavy in my hands, hot. I raise it, feeling equal parts absurd and terrified out of my mind. I point it at Baxter. This is what they want me to do, isn’t it? This is what has to be done. Baxter starts to shout, but I can’t tell what he’s saying. It has the lilt of a prayer, though. I close my eyes.
“No!” Rhys shouts. “Jesus, Sloane, no—”
I imagine the gun going off. A hole between Baxter’s eyes. It’s so real to me, I start to shake. Hands around my hands. Rhys gently takes the gun from me and I feel like I’m turning into nothing and I don’t know if it’s because he is taking the gun out of my hands or because the gun was in them.
“I didn’t know what you wanted me to do,” I say faintly.
“Shoot him!” Trace. “Just fucking do it—”
“I want to put it to a vote,” Rhys says. “We have to make this fair—”
“You’re going to be outnumbered,” Cary tells him. “No matter what.”
“We don’t have to kill him—”
“What else are we going to do?”
“If I leave,” Baxter says over us, “you’ll never know how I got in.”
And then he starts to cry.
We’re not murderers.
We are still good people and this was the choice we were forced to make. Baxter has to leave or he has to die. The evidence is damning. He’s bitten. He’s unstable. He’s lied to us.
That’s more than enough, especially now.
We’re in the library. The flashlights are set on the table, aimed at us like a crude spotlight. Baxter is in front of the door, the way out, preparing himself for whatever is next. I think of Rhys and me, standing in that exact spot just days before and how much has changed in that time. Harrison and Grace hover by some shelves. Trace and Cary clear the barricades away and then they’re gone. Two things have to happen next: someone has to open the door and Baxter has to step through it. But what happens after that? He lives until the infection overtakes him? We go on, like nothing happened? Because nothing happened if no one used the gun, right? Still, Baxter’s outcome is inevitable. He is going to die.
But we’re not murderers.
Even though Rhys has the gun aimed directly at Baxter’s head.
It will only be used if Baxter is uncooperative and insists on jeopardizing us.
“If you try to get in again, however you got in before,” Cary says, “we’ll have to kill you.”
“You, Mr. Chen? You’ll do it?”
“I’ll do it,” Trace mutters.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Baxter,” Rhys says, and he sounds like he means it and it makes me feel like maybe there’s a chance we’re doing something really wrong here. “You have to realize—”
“You’ll never find it,” Baxter interrupts. “How I got in.”
“We will.”
Baxter looks at his hands. “I’m not infected, though. I was not bitten by an infected.”
He’s been saying this since we came to our decision. It’s like if he sounds plaintive enough, we’ll let him stay. If that was all we needed from him, I know we’d let him stay. I know we’re not bad people, not deep down inside.
“No one knows what I’ve been through,” he whispers.
He turns to us and I take a step back. I don’t want to look at him, don’t want his empty eyes and his hollowed-out face etched in my memory. Baxter turns to Cary.
“You were never a very good student. I couldn’t make you do anything,” he says, and Cary doesn’t argue this, just nods. Baxter sighs and closes his eyes. “Maybe, though, you’d be the one to open the door.”
“Okay,” Cary says.
He crosses in front of Baxter to do it.
Baxter charges at Cary faster than any of us can blink. I immediately see how we’ve done everything wrong. We thought we were stronger, smarter than a man who spent weeks out there on his own and lived this long. Cary doesn’t even have time to make a sound. They fall and his head collides with the door, leaving him dazed and limp enough for Baxter to grab Cary’s arm and I know what’s going to happen before it happens and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Baxter sinks his teeth into Cary’s arm.
Cary comes back to himself then, screams like I’ve never heard anyone scream before. I glimpse red and a thousand more things happen at once. Trace rips the gun out of Rhys’s hands and shouts for him to open the fucking door! Get him out of here! Rhys springs into action, heaving Baxter up by the shoulders and the whole time he does it, Baxter is still trying to make a case for himself. His teeth are stained with Cary’s blood.
“I’m not infected! You’ll see—I’m not infected!”
“Someone help me!” Rhys fights Baxter to the door. “Help me—”
I do it. I push the door open and the cold air calls to me. I want to step ahead of them both, but there’s a flurry of movement and Baxter’s flailing arm hits me in the chest, forcing me back. Rhys shoves him once. Hard.
Baxter is gone.
The door closes. It’s quiet just for a second and then his fists sound desperately against it.