Read Quarantine #2: The Saints for Free Online

his bag. He remembered being scared of going to high school, but excited at the same time to be in the same school as his brother. He remembered the breeze whipping through David’s messy brown hair. The ratty black hooded sweatshirt he always wore. Pale Ridge rushing past as they cruised through green lights. David teasing him, giving him advice. They had no idea that a catastrophe awaited them that morning. The brutal world they would have to endure. They had no idea that David, the depressed quarterback who had quit the team, would rise to be the savior and protector of the rejected, defenseless kids without gangs.
    David could have done something great if he’d had a normal life. If none of this had ever happened, or if he had survived whatever killed him. He could have helped people. He would have been a success, Will knew it. He had more potential than Will ever would. But David would never get any of that. He’d never get to be in his twenties, or his thirties. He’d never have a wife, or kids, or a career. He’d never grow into an old man. He’d never know anything but the struggle that startedthat day they walked into this school, the same struggle that eventually robbed him of his life.
    The grief that Will had been running from all night took hold of him, and he crumpled down onto the steps. Tears gushed from him. He couldn’t control himself anymore. He sobbed, and moaned, and let the sadness pull him under.
    He felt soft hands on his back, rubbing in an easy circle.
    “Shhhh,” Lucy said. “It’s all right.”
    He reached out for her and they embraced. Lucy began to cry as well. She must have been holding her feelings back all night, like he had. They sat there, crying and hugging each other in the dark, for what must have been hours, before they lay down on the hard stairs and fell asleep.

6
    THERE WAS A MACHETE IN LUCY’S HANDS. David’s machete. He’d made it out of a radiator shell that he hammered until it was sharp. She’d found it dangling by a shoe string, in the furthest corner of the armory. She pulled out the blade and ran her fingers down the cardboard sheath. Originally, David had simply folded a piece of cardboard into a long rectangle and sealed it with duct tape. Lucy had removed the tape and cut the rectangular sheath into the shape of the machete. With great care, she’d sewn the edges back together with spiral notebook wire.
    She was nearly finished now. She twisted the excess of the two wires together, until they were a little loop at the sheath’s tip. She took a leather cord that she’d cut from a belt and laced it through the loop. She ran the cord to the other end and fastened it to make a strap.
    Lucy sat on David’s bed, legs folded under her to the side.She held the sheath out before her and admired it. The words “THE LONERS” were spelled across the face of it in silver thumbtacks. It was an impressive design. It would have looked great slung across David’s back. That could never happen now. She sheathed the blade and set it down on the floor.
    She had been spending a lot of time in David’s room since the last drop, hiding away behind those heavy curtains that still hung, separating the top landing from the rest of the Stairs. It was the only place she felt safe. So many people were sure that the parents were fixing to quit after how horribly the drop had ended. And even if they stuck around and followed through on their big promises, life inside McKinley wasn’t any less dismal.
    David’s room remained a shrine that no one felt they had the right to disturb. She was surprised there weren’t bunches of flowers piled all over the floor, like a highway memorial. A single lantern was the only light source. It was a glass applejuice bottle in the shape of an apple, filled with cooking oil. A plastic gallon jug shielded the flaming wick and gave off a frosted yellow light.
    The sheets of David’s bed were still rumpled and thrown about, like he had only crawled