The noises in the auditorium get louder with the frantic scrambling of people who actually want to live, but I’m still.

I’m good, I’m fine.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure—now come on—come on, we have to—”

Good, fine. I’m fine. I’m fine, I’m fine. He grabs my arm. I shrug him off and put my shirt back on more slowly than I should. I am fine. I’m alive.

I don’t even know what that means.

“Look, we’ve got to get back out there,” he says as I do up my buttons. “There are three other doors that need to be secured—” He grabs my arm and turns me around. “Look at me—are you ready? Sloane, are you ready?”

I open my mouth but nothing comes out.

SEVEN HOURS LATER

This must be what Dorothy felt like, I think. Maybe. If Dorothy was six scared teenagers and Oz was hell. No, this must be a joke; we are six scared teenagers and our high school is one of the last buildings in Cortege that is still in one piece and I’m not sure I can think of a better or worse place to spend the end of days. It was supposed to be the community center. We went there first like we were told—the town’s designated emergency shelter for the kind of emergencies we were assured would likely never happen—and it was the first place to fall. There were too many of us and too many of them. Somehow, we fought our way from one side of town to the other. In another life, the trip would have taken forty minutes.

In this one, it took seven days.

“Listen closely.”

The radio crackles the prerecorded voice of that woman at us over and over. We have done everything she has told us to do. We have locked and barricaded all the doors. We have covered the windows so no one can see outside and—more importantly—nothing can see in. “Do not draw attention to yourself,” the woman says, but if we know anything by now, it’s that. “Once you have found a secure location, stay where you are and help will come soon.” Cary sits on the stage across from me, waiting for the message to change. It doesn’t.

“This is not a test. Listen closely. This is not a test.”

But I think she’s wrong. I think this is a test.

It has to be.

Grace and Trace sit on the floor below. She’s whispering in his ear and he’s nodding to whatever she’s saying and he doesn’t look right. He looks sick. He reaches for his sister’s hand and holds it tightly, pressing his fingers into her skin like he’s making sure she exists. After a while, he feels me looking at him and turns his pale face in my direction. I hold his gaze until the chaos outside breaks my concentration. Outside, where everything is falling, landing and breaking at once. Sometimes you catch something specific like the screams and cries of people trying to hold on to each other before they’re swallowed into other, bigger noises.