Free This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

enough. It’s not light enough to see anyone or anything.
    “Where?” Rhys asks. “I don’t see him—”
    “He was…” Trace nudges us away. “He—”
    “How could you even see—”
    “Shut up—”
    “Listen,” Cary hisses. “Just listen.”
    I press the side of my head against the glass and listen with everything I have. I hear car alarms in the distance. Grace takes a sharp breath in.
    Trace spins around. “What—”
    She points and I follow her outstretched finger to the crumpled shape of a man facedown on the pavement. I don’t know how we missed it at first, until I realize we missed it because we were looking for signs of life.
    “No—no,” Trace says. “No—that’s not—he was alive—”
    I squint. It could be anyone from here. I don’t know how Trace could have made out his father’s face in this lack of light. I’m too afraid to ask him in front of Grace.
    “If he’s dead, infected can’t be far off,” Cary says. “Was he shouting?”
    “He’s not dead! He was standing—he was up! He’s just hurt or something—he just— Dad! We have to go out—we have to bring him back in—we have to help—”
    “Trace—”
    I tune them out. The parking lot is empty. I look for others—the shambling, broken bodies of people we used to know surrounding the school again—but there’s nothing.
    “Dad! DAD! ”
    Cary pulls Trace away from the window but Trace is made of the kind of energy people with hope have. He frees himself and shoves Cary against a row of lockers.
    “Don’t fucking touch me—”
    “You don’t even know it’s him—”
    I hear it first and then I see it: Trace drives his fist into Cary’s face. It’s a dull sound, but I know it’s a sharp hurt. I know what it feels like. Cary’s knees buckle but he doesn’t fall. He rights himself and stands there, stunned, while blood trickles from his nostrils. He brings his hand to his face and stares at his stained fingertips and I see his anger building in a way I’m not sure anyone else can. It’s from his heart, in his veins. I almost want to tell everyone to back away but I watch, transfixed, instead.
    “You’re useless—” Trace spits at him. “You fucking murderer !”
    Cary tackles Trace and they’re a sloppy mess of fists and legs and Grace is screaming get off him, get off my brother!
    Rhys is the one who separates them. He has to hold Trace down in the end by climbing on top of him and pushing his knee into Trace’s back.
    I turn back to the window, the man outside.
    Trace gasps under Rhys. “We’re wasting time—”
    “He’s not moving, Trace—”
    “Are you sure it’s him?” I ask.
    “Who else would it be? I have to go out there—I have to get him—”
    “No!” Grace says. “You are not going out there. You can’t—” And Trace says, Grace, it’s Dad, I know it is, I saw him, we have to get him because he believes this. He’s fevered with it. It’s his father out there because it can be no one else.
    And she’s saying, “No, you can’t. You can’t leave me—”
    She repeats this over his insistence he has to go outside and the more she says it, it’s like the more she believes he will leave her until she’s crying so hard she’s hyperventilating. Trace tries to reach for her, but he can’t unless Rhys gets off him. When Rhys does, Trace holds Grace and she sobs all over his shirt. He holds her and stares at me, at the window beyond me, trying to soothe her and figure this out at the same time. Then his eyes spark. He turns to Cary.
    “You go out there and get him.”
    Cary stares. “What?”
    “It’s your fault he’s out there. Go out there and bring him back in.”
    “Go out there yourself—”
    “I’m not leaving Grace,” Trace says. “This is your fault, so you do it.”
    “I am not dying for you,” Cary says through his teeth. “And fuck you for asking me—that guy out there? Whoever he is? He’s dead. ”
    Cary storms down the hall. It must be