“Sure,” Cary says. Baxter nods, dazed. He drinks the water and then hands the half-full bottle to Trace. Cary hauls Mr. Baxter up by the arm. “Let’s just … get you set up…”

We watch them exit the auditorium.

“If he’s going to be like this the whole fucking time he’s here,” Trace says, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

“He’s worse than Harrison,” Rhys agrees. Harrison gives him an indignant look. Rhys ignores it and turns to me. “His name was Roger.”

Roger. The man outside was Roger. Knowing his name makes it worse. I could have gone the rest of my life without knowing his name. My hands still feel what it was like to push him. If I think about it, I can hear him die, access that part of my memory easily. It makes me cold all over. The man outside, that I killed, was named Roger and Mr. Baxter knew him. I killed a man named Roger. My brain frantically tries to make excuses for me:

He was bad, he had to have been bad if Baxter left him out there, Baxter’s scared of Roger enough to want to get the gun back, Roger was bad so it’s good that I killed him …

“You should hide the gun somewhere else,” I say to Rhys.

It’s almost funny. Almost. The timing of my saying that. Maybe later I’ll think it was funny, we’ll all think it was funny how the second it comes out of my mouth, Cary bursts into the room shouting, “I need the gun—I need the gun!”

Before we can react, he’s onstage, past the curtain.

When he reappears, the gun is in his hand.

“What are you doing—”

“He’s bitten—he’s infected—”

Trace drops Baxter’s water bottle and leaps away from it. “Holy shit—”

“Where?” Grace asks. “Where? I didn’t see a bite—”

“His arm.” Cary looks like he’s going to vomit all over himself. “I got him some clothes from the drama room and when I got back he was getting undressed and I saw it. He didn’t know I saw him but he’s bitten. If he stays here, he turns and it doesn’t matter how he got in because we’re all dead anyway—”

Harrison covers his mouth. “Oh my God.”

Cary stares at the gun and he looks so young, younger than Harrison, and then his face changes, becomes more resolved. He strides for the door.

“Wait!” Rhys grabs Cary by the arm and pulls him back. “You’re going to kill him? You’re going to go in there now and just fucking shoot him in the shower—”

“What else can we do?”

“Are you sure it’s a bite?”