Two Alive, стр. 71

Francine watched the boy from her seat with a small girl from classroom 5. She couldn’t remember her name, but she had finally calmed the little girl down and she had passed out in Francine’s lap. Brandon sat on the other side of the girl looking vacant with his mouth hanging open.

“Brandon? Brandon?” Francine’s voice was small and shrill. She couldn’t remember screaming but she could feel the effects of it now. “Brandon… are you ok?”

Brandon blinked and looked at her. He blinked again and took a breath. “Francine… yeah. Yeah, yeah. I’m OK.” His eyes opened wider and he was finally able to see what was right in front of him.

“Can you watch her? I wanna get Miles from the floor.” Before Brandon could answer, Francine was already scooping the girl up and putting her in Brandon’s arms.

The girl clung to Brandon and wrapped her arms and legs around him like tentacles. Brandon struggled to hold the heavy eight-year-old. Francine slid down on the floor with Miles and the boy looked at her with big doughy brown eyes. He started to whimper.

“It’s OK Miles. C’mon. Come sit with me and Brandon. You wanna sit with us?” Francine stretched out her arms to him and looked down to see her skirt was ripped up the side of her leg.

“Ms. Francine…” Miles said as his eyes started to water. “Ms. Francine, did everybody die? Is everybody dying?”

Francine collapsed into the boy and wrapped her arms around him. “Miles…” she whispered, then started rubbing his back trying to soothe him.

“Is Ms. Dottie dead? Is Mr. Arthur dead? Is Ms. Amber dead? Is my mommy dead?”

Francine started rocking with the boy and cooing him, not sure of what else to do or say.

Johnathan was at the other end of the train with Antonio chasing behind him. “Mr. Johnathan, what we gon do? Where we goin’?” Antonio was on high alert and had latched onto the old man. “We need to kill them niggas out there that’s killin’ people! That’s what we need to do!”

“Watch your mouth boy!” Johnathan kept moving and slapped a hand to his face.

“Then what we gon do Mr. Johnathan? My brother got hella guns in Vegas! He let me shoot ‘em before! I can shoot! If I had a gun I woulda used it too! I woulda used it!”

“Antonio, just calm down, OK! We can’t just kill those people. They’re sick. We don’t know what’s wrong with them.”

“They killin’ people! And if I had my brother’s gun I’da shot them niggas!”

Johnathan stopped and turned around, “Antonio, stop it!”

“I woulda killed them niggas…” The young teen was crying and squeezing his fist. “I woulda killed them and saved Ms. Rachel! I’da save her! I’da shot them niggas and I’da saved her!”

Johnathan grabbed the distraught teenager and put his arms around him. “It’s ok. It’s ok. It was nothing you could do. It was nothing you could do.”

“What’s happenin’ Mr. Johnathan? Why are them people going crazy?”

“I… I don’t know Antonio. I wish I did. But right now, we can’t worry about that. We have to get somewhere safe. We’ll just ride the train and get off in Frisco and go to that quarantine Brandon found on his phone.”

“That place got overrun!” Some grizzled man in a gray fleece coat and blood splatter on his face stood up with his phone in hand. “The quarantine zone in San Francisco had hella people turn crazy and start attackin’ people! It’s hella them crazy people in San Francisco! It’s all over Facebook!”

Johnathan’s eyes narrowed.

A woman’s voice came from somewhere and called out, “Oakland just as bad! Kaiser is all fucked up! Them crazy people there too!”

“Where the hell we ‘pose to go? What the hell we ‘pose to do?” another voice shouted.

The police station! That’s gotta be the safest place!

City Hall! Don’t they got armed guards and shit?

What is going on? Is the world going to hell?

They ain’t people no more! They ain’t people!

It was chaos. There were so many voices now that Johnathan could barely make out what was being said. He just held onto Antonio and pushed through the throngs of people getting out of their seats and into the aisle.

“Mr. Johnathan, what we doin’?” Antonio asked the old man.

Johnathan shoved a man aside and pulled Antonio under his arm. “We can’t stay on this train! The front car is the next car ahead! The conductor said he wasn’t going to stop and was going straight into San Francisco!”

“Johnathan! I have to go home! This isn’t the train that I take to go home!” Grant came running through the people, standing in the aisles, following the old man.

“Grant, go back with Francine and the others!” Johnathan didn’t even know the boy was following him. “We’ll get off at the next stop and figure out what to do.”

“You shouldn’t get off! Them monsters everywhere!” A woman reached out and grabbed at Johnathan but he snatched away.

Finally he reached the sliding doors that led to the next car. Just as he prepared to pull open the glass doors, a maniac on the other side, launched himself into the door violently. Johnathan looked through the glass and saw the storm of wild people attacking anything moving. There were still people trying to fight them off and trying to save themselves, but the situation was dire. He wasn’t going to open that door. The risk was too high. The front car was lost.

But what did that mean for the train? Was there an emergency brake somewhere to pull? Johnathan didn’t like the idea being trapped with crazed people in the next car and going to San Francisco. Maybe getting off at Lake Merritt station and going to City Hall was the best place