“The barricades are incredible.” He looks at us, something akin to pride in his eyes. “An incredible testament … to teenage ingenuity. Look at how safe we are.”

“We’re not safe,” Cary says. This will be the thousandth time he tries to direct Baxter’s attention to the most important situation at hand. “If you got in, those things outside can too.”

“I know, Mr. Chen. I know that—”

“Then you know it’s life and death. We need to know how you got in.”

Baxter closes his eyes and then opens them. “I can’t remember…”

“But you remember being in this school,” Rhys says. “You don’t remember getting in, but you remember being in here after you got in.”

“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.