Free This Is Not a Test by Courtney Summers Page B

all-the-time thing. He lets me go, gives Rhys a curt nod, and then hands us each a baseball bat. I hold mine limply at my side. Rhys clutches his so hard his knuckles turn white.
    “Stay by the door,” he tells Cary. “Don’t move and open it when you hear us.”
    “I’m not moving,” Cary says. “Good luck.”
    Rhys looks at me. His eyes ask if I’m ready. I nod. I’m more ready than there are words for. Cary pushes the door open. It’s still dark. A cool April breeze drifts in and curls around us, making me realize how stale the air is in here. I take a gulp of it and hold it in my lungs.
    Rhys and I step outside.
    The door closes quietly and firmly behind us.
    The fence is in front of us. We back into each other automatically, checking both sides. Nothing. There’s nothing. I feel Rhys breathing against me, scared out of his mind.
    “Do you really think it’s Mr. Casper?” he whispers.
    “I don’t know,” I say.
    “I don’t want to die today, Sloane.”
    We stare down the path that leads to the athletic field. It’s a blind spot, totally wide open. We don’t know what’s out there. The path to the front of the school is gated, slightly closer to the parking lot but it’s still a walk around the building. And if the gate is locked, we’ll have to climb it. We won’t be soundless doing it.
    I wouldn’t care if Rhys wasn’t here but now I have to care. When there’s more distance between us, that’s when I’ll leave, but for now I have to be careful for his sake. I’m not selfish like Lily. I nod in the direction of the front of the school. Rhys swallows and nods back. I make my way forward but he grabs my arm.
    “Let me—” his voice cracks. “Let me go first.”
    I shake my head but he trudges ahead of me anyway. I follow him, glancing over my shoulder repeatedly. We reach the gate. He ducks and I duck beside him.
    We press our faces against the chain link and look around.
    The street ahead seems empty, looks almost normal, like the world has yet to wake up, but as our eyes adjust to the dark, things that are wrong slowly begin to assert themselves. The windows in the house across the street are all broken and the front door is wide open. I can see a shape that looks like a body on the lawn. There’s a car wrapped around a telephone pole and I imagine a man or woman slumped over the steering wheel, killed on impact. That must have been a good way to go. But there’s nothing else that we can see.
    No dead.
    Maybe they’re still at Russo’s.
    Rhys tests the gate. Locked.
    “We should go over together,” he says.
    We stick the toes of our running shoes through the links. The gate rattles under our weight and the baseball bats clang against the metal. Rhys holds his breath. As soon as he clears the top, he jumps. I do the same, landing easily. He grabs my arm again and pulls me behind a pair of decorative hedges at the corner of the front of the school.
    “Didn’t see anything. Did you?”
    I shake my head. We make our way alongside the building, tiptoeing over flowerbeds until we’re interrupted by the concrete walk close to the main entrance.
    We cling to shadows every time we make a noise we shouldn’t and then move on more quickly than before. We finally get to the opposite corner of the school, past the bike rack, and stand just before the parking lot. Rhys stops suddenly.
    “What if he’s been bitten?” he asks, and I swear we both have the same thought right after he asks it. Why didn’t anyone think of that before now?
    “He didn’t get back up,” I say. “He’s not bitten.”
    And then I step into the lot, feeling the bravest and most indestructible I’ve ever felt in my life which is strange, I guess, because I’m readying myself to die. The morning air is so welcome against my skin.
    “Sloane,” Rhys says.
    I make my way around a car, checking the ignition. No keys. Rhys takes a few more steps and then he stops again and I know he won’t go any farther, that