“Nobody likes him!” Alex growled.
“You don’t like him,” she said calmly, “I don’t like him. I’m sure ... no, I know there’s a lot of people who don’t like him. But when he’s in a crowd, like at school or whatever, he can win them over. It’s what he does.”
Alex grew angry that Nicole could compliment his hated enemy. The trouble was: she was right. Everyone was always on Jared’s side and he could talk his way out of—or into—anything he wanted. He should have been suspended or even expelled for some of the things he had pulled at school, but instead he would just get a note to take home to his parents. He threw them away as soon as he’d get back to class—in front of everyone, for all to see—and that would be the end of it. He was charming, and Alex hated him for it.
Soon he’ll charm everyone here, Alex thought. Then he’ll convince them to kick ME out. Or worse! He might—
“But, like I said,” Nicole continued, “no one here is stupid enough to fall for his crap, so it won’t exactly be a problem, will it?”
KAITLYN
Kaitlyn and Hannah sat listening to Jared tell his story. Hannah started to doze off, and Kaitlyn was smoothing the sleepy girl’s hair into braids.
David took in every word, apparently enraptured.
“There was probably fifty of them—actually it was probably like a hundred of them, I didn’t really have time to count—but I had to bust through. I had to get back to my bomb shelter before those guys got back there—”
“How would the mudmen get into the bomb shelter?” Kaitlyn asked. Though she wasn’t really paying much attention, she enjoyed poking holes in his story when she saw the opportunity.
“Not the mudmen—which is a stupid name, by the way. They’re not all mud, and they’re not all men. There’s like kids, and girls and stuff too.” Jared sneered at her.
“The guy with the leather jacket?” David asked.
Though Kaitlyn had only known David for a very short period of time, she’d thought was smarter than this BS story. Evidently not.
“Yeah,” Jared said, still staring at Kaitlyn, “the guy with the leather jacket. Psycho Steve. And his buddies. A bunch of them, too. They could break in and like, kill my family or beat them up or something. People are doing pretty mean things to other people out there.”
Kaitlyn believed him about the other people, breaking into people’s houses, hurting others, maybe even killing them for their food or for a place to stay or just because they were bad. She mostly believed it because when Jared had said it, it sounded like he could do it himself.
“But yeah,” Jared said, getting back to his story and his enthralled audience of one. “I had to deal with these guys all around me. The dead guys. So I looked around, and there was all kinds of stuff in the garage that I was right in front of, so I smashed out a window and busted in. Those things were right behind me, but I was safe. There was a chainsaw, and a bat, and some golf clubs, and a machete, and a rifle. I almost took the rifle, but I find they’re not super reliable all the time. They stick, and reloading them is a pain in the ass. Plus, I knew what I was looking for and it’s none of that stuff. It’s this.” He hefted the hockey stick that he hadn’t put down since they first saw him outside. “Hockey sticks are good for this kinda thing. My uncle in Toronto designs them, and one of the things they do to test ‘em is just bang them off the wall, or off the ground and stuff to see if they’ll break. But they don’t. That’s what they’re designed to do.
“I pick it up and give it a few test swings, and I’m like ‘Yup, this’ll do.’ Then I rush back outside and just start chopping into them. Boom! Boom! Vwip! I’m taking heads off all over the place! But, like, it’s not stopping them! They’re still coming at me and moving and stuff even without heads! So I just start chopping them into a smaller pieces and then, the friggin’ pieces start coming after me! There was a hand that punched me and it didn’t even have an arm attached to it! So, I was like ‘fuck this,’ and took off after I made sure they couldn’t follow me too quick or something.”
He paused.
David inched forward, like a puppy being offered a treat. “When was that?”
Jared shrugged. “I dunno ... two days ago, I guess. You lose track of time out there.”
“What did you do after that?”
“I just wandered around, fighting off gangs and those dead guys and stuff. I dunno.”
“Why didn’t you go back to the bomb shelter?” Nicole asked from the doorway.
Jared glared at her from his seat on the floor. “Because, I was supposed to get food, and I couldn’t find any. I couldn’t just go back with nothing!”
“You looked in all the houses, and couldn’t find anything?” she asked.
Kaitlyn grinned, glad that someone else was challenging Jared’s story. He glanced at her. She quickly hid her smile as his cold eyes passed over her.
“I didn’t want to break into people’s houses!”
“But you broke into a garage?”
He hesitated. “That was different. That was life or death!” He cut her off before she got a chance to ask more questions. “I mean, look at you guys!” He pointed at Alex, who shied back into the hallway. “Alec was out gathering fuckin’ pumpkins for you guys to eat! So I guess you got the same luck, huh?”
“The pumpkins are for Halloween,” Hannah said sleepily.
Jared stared at the little girl, then into each of the faces around him. “Halloween? That’s retarded. That’s seriously retarded. You guys are doing Halloween? And you’re gonna carve pumpkins like a bunch of little kids? What is wrong with you? Are you
