I cross my arms. “Why would he do that?”

“Who knows why anyone does anything now?” Cary looks past me and Rhys, to the door, and we both turn. There’s no one there but Cary lowers his voice anyway. “If he’s had some bad experiences with other survivors, he could be looking at his way in as leverage. He needs to make sure we trust him.”

“Right … we keep him around no matter what, hoping that it will eventually come to him because we can’t find it ourselves,” Rhys says. “When he’s sure he’s safe here, he tells us or … he holds it over our heads for the entire time we’re here.”

“He thinks he can just come in and take over,” Cary mutters.

“We’ve been in this room, what, ten minutes and we’re already saddling the guy with a bunch of sinister motivations,” I say. “This is our English teacher. Someone we know.”

“We all know each other and we don’t trust each other,” Cary says. “The only people I trust in this building are you and Rhys. The rest are dead weight to me.”

“But maybe…” I grope desperately for some kind of explanation for Baxter’s behavior that seems more human. “Maybe Baxter was going to come to the school with the guy outside but they got separated or he really did think the guy was dead. Maybe he’s so traumatized he can’t remember how he got in. Why isn’t that possible?”

They both stare at me and I can tell I’ve disappointed them. I don’t know why I don’t just believe what they believe. I don’t know why I’m defending Baxter. I think of his hand on my face. Maybe I should tell them but I can’t. It makes me feel too weird. It would just make things worse.

“Whatever,” Cary finally says. “None of that matters yet. The only thing that matters right now is how he got in.”

We can’t find it.

We look everywhere, scour classrooms, the custodian’s office. We go into the basement and it’s so dark in there, the weak light from our flashlights turn the sinks and the shelves against the far wall into terrifying shadows. I wonder if Baxter is some sort of group hallucination but I know he’s not. I also know the other barricades are holding, undisturbed, and there is absolutely no way he got past them. How did he get in? I check the closet we found him in halfheartedly, like it might hold a secret passageway but it doesn’t. Of course it doesn’t.

The building is officially one less place we can trust.