“Just pieces. Price,” Baxter says. “I remember seeing Ms. Price…” They all look at me when he says this and I feel sick when I remember his hand on my face as I slept. I want to ask him why he did that, but I don’t think I really want to know. “But it all feels like—the same day.” He licks his lips. They’re so raw, cracked. “Every day feels the same.”

“You could’ve shown yourself,” Rhys tells him. “You had a gun.”

“You outnumber me and I didn’t know what you’d been through. How long you were here … what you were capable of…”

“We’re not infected,” Harrison says. “We wouldn’t have hurt you.”

Mr. Baxter looks at Harrison in total wonderment and then he laughs. It’s a bad sound, wrong. It makes me shiver.

“Does the water still work?” he asks. “The tank still has water in it?”

Trace nods. “Do you know how full it was before this started?”

Baxter shakes his head.

“Mr. Baxter?” Grace steps forward, nervous. “What’s it like out there? Is it—is it much worse than it was? Or is it getting better at all?”

“Sometimes … it seems safer than it is,” he says. “They wait, now. If they can’t find life, they seem to wait for it. That’s why it’s quieter. It’s quiet but it’s not safer.”

I glance at Rhys.

Quiet.

“What do they eat?” I ask. “When there are no people?”

“I’ve seen them eat animals. Anything … living.”

“You seriously can’t remember how you got in?” Cary asks.

“Cary,” Grace snaps. “Just give him a minute—”

“Grace, a minute could be the difference between us being ripped apart—”

“The gun,” Baxter interrupts. “If something happens, it should help. Where is it?”

“You know what? Mr. Baxter needs a minute, you’re right,” Cary says abruptly. “We can talk about this after. Rhys, Sloane, I want to search the first floor for his way in. I don’t imagine he scaled the wall and got in through the roof, right, Mr. B?”

“I don’t imagine,” Baxter echoes.

“So we’ll find it and we’ll seal it.” Cary turns to the others. Trace and Grace stare at him contemptuously. Cary’s directive to them has to be something they can’t argue with. Something simple. “Make sure Mr. Baxter has everything he needs. Mr. Baxter, I want you to work as hard as you can to remember in the meantime.”

“Amazing,” Baxter says at our backs as Cary, Rhys, and I make our way out of the room. “If only you’d shown that kind of initiative in my class, Mr. Chen.”

“You’re sounding better by the second, sir,” Cary replies without turning.

When we hit the hall, Cary mouths library. Rhys and I head one way and Cary heads the other. I don’t know why we can’t go there together. Cary gets there before us. He’s checking the room for Baxter’s way in. We wait until he’s finished.

“It’s not here,” he says, frustrated. “Rhys, you hid the gun?”