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Will kept ascending, giving thanks for every additional foot of space that greeen hi horrible Lucy had only ed to run fifteen feet in the mud As Gates dropped himself back down into the saddle seat of the motorcycle, he carelessly clipped Lucy with the handlebars as he raced past her She spun off her feet and flew into the mud
"Lucy!" Will shouted
Gates wobbled and crashed Lucy wasn’t
Will crested the roofline of the school and rose up to eye level with the parents who had gathered behind Sam’s father at the east wall He stared into the black visor of the motorcycle helmet
Will looked down to Lucy, who still layto look past Sarip on Saan to slip through his arot his forearainst his forearms and Will heard a snap
Sam’s body fell out of the sweatshirt It tumbled down and thumped into the mud below But Will held Sam’s disembodied head, still in the sweatshirt’s hood The rest of the empty sweatshirt flapped in the wet breeze
Will heard the adults screaripped his hel his son’s dead head Will dropped it The woman in the lilac helmet screeched and screeched Far behind thee
The crane began to turn and swing Will away from the quad He looked down into the quad Lucy was in the sa to stir He saw Gates He reached his hands up toward Will He h, and so far away froh the rain Someone had to co, orange crane ar doard hiray clouds Beyond the school, he saall that went around the whole McKinley ca trailers, stacked three trailers high, the work of the crane Will assu lot and circled back behind the school to include the football field, until it disappeared into the gray haze of rain
People walked on top of the truck trailer walls, patrolling with rifles In the front lawn Will saw a forklift, a tractor, andthe wall He saw a triple chain-link fence at the only break in the trailer wall, by the entrance to the parking lot
There was otherThere were chickens too He sahat looked like an unfinished barn and stubby grain silo Will squinted and strained his eyes to understand as happening on the football field There was so
It was a field of wheat
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GATES PALMED SAM’S HEAD AND LIFTED IT up to gaze into its eyes He studied the slack, dead face with an unhurried curiosity Sam’s openThere was a spray of rain bouncing off both of their heads There was a bleeding stab wound through Gates’s cheek, to go with the one Lucy had given hiine still hacked and popped and coughed The bike was tipped on its side, on the ground by Gates’s feet
Lucy was on the ground twenty feet away It felt like the quad was spinning Theto her, drenched
Gates chucked Sam’s head over his shoulder like a watermelon rind at a picnic It landed in the mud behind him with a splatter He stared up at the sky, to where Will had gone
"He’s gone forever," Gates said
Gates’s gaze lowered to Lucy She didn’t flinch, she didn’t look away, but inside she was petrified by whatever risly thing had he resolved?
He took off his pants
A wave of nausea melted Lucy She sed and blinked She clenched her jaw and forced herself to sit up and brace for the horror of what ht happen next
"You took hiot to one knee Pain spread all through her body Shehile, it was to never let your enemy know your fear She didn’t quiver, she didn’t whis were for her alone
He pulled off his blood-soaked T-shirt and dropped it The wet fabric slapped down into theholes, the biteslowed Lucy’s vision sharpened Whatever Gates had planned made Lucy want to vomit But what truly shook her, what obliterated all the heat in her body, was the sight of Violent’s many-bladed necklace around his neck It shiht
"It’s your fault," he said, standing there in pale blue boxers andto save her The Sluts had probably disowned her after she’d forced the brawl they didn’t want and then ran aith a boy none of them liked David was dead Will was outside The Loners were no ht kill her right here This could be the way she died