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the gym. Names were called one after the other over the loudspeakers as kids left and never came back. Not alphabetically, but constantly, until only a dozen or so of us remained.
    A van came for us then. It was big and gray. The school nurse said one word, “Containment,” as if that explained everything. As if we needed to be contained. But I felt good or, at least, regular. Like I always felt.
    I looked around the motley crew and wondered, “Why us?”
    But I couldn’t wonder long. The van came, men in white coats, Dr. Creed out in front, big and burly and snapping that stun gun. They bundled us up in the back and the minute stupid Chip Wailing asked where we were going, out come the hypodermic needles. We all got stuck and that’s the last thing I remember. Until I woke up here.
    “B-b-but I saw it,” I stammer, inching forward in my chair just a smidge. “I watched it happen, on TV that morning. We all did, and then…and then….”
    Creed smiles as the possibilities, the alternate realities, continue to wash over me in waves. “And then what, Conner?”
    He’s leaning back so far in his chair now, he’s so satisfied with himself, the stun gun is closer to me than it is to him. I want it, badly. Want to stun the life out of him, if that’s even possible—and surely it is.
    But my need to know the truth, at least for now, is suddenly stronger than my need to kill.
    “The infestation? You said, you s-s-said, you told us it killed everybody, wiped out the whole town of Faraway Falls. That we were the only survivors….”
    As I’m talking, he reaches over and grabs a blue plastic binder off the bookshelf behind him. It’s thick and even in the briefest of moments before he opens it, I can see these words printed in white on the front cover: PROJECT Z. Highest Clearance. Instructor Protocol for Handling Unruly Participants .
    “It was all in the script, Conner,” he says, grinning, shaking his head, caressing the pages of the big, fat notebook fondly as if perhaps he’d written was what printed there himself. “We tell you the whole town is infested, get you here for a few weeks, isolate you, feed you nothing and let you out of the cages with a couple of homeless bums, then see what happens.”
    My stomach feels warm, warmer than it has in weeks. My head spins, bile rising in my throat as blood, maybe even the last of it, pounds in my ears. I swallow back the warm juices in my throat, literally, just so I can hear what comes out of his mouth next.
    Creed looks past me, either not seeing or just ignoring the sweat that’s popped out on my forehead, the gurgling in my throat, the green pallor of my waxy skin.
    “The funny thing is,” he goes on, clueless, “when they told me what had happened in past studies, in other towns where they’d tried out Project Z, I called BS on the whole thing. ‘No way,’ I said. ‘No way are you going to get young, sane, red-blooded American kids to eat each other just because you tell them they’re zombies.’”
    He looks at me, disgust slathered all over his fat, red face. “Guess the joke’s on me, huh, Conner?”
    “But the drugs,” I croak. “The injections twice a day?”
    “Placebos, Conner. Sugar-water mixed with some antidepressants to slow your blood pressure and a healthy dose of diuretics to shed water weight. How else do you think you lose twenty pounds in a couple of weeks?”
    “The teachers,” I sputter, bile sour on my lips, blood pounding between my ears. “Our teachers, t-t-they showed us the video, the zombies, the—”
    “We told them it was a drill, Conner. Ever since that outbreak over in Gallup Gorge, folks see zombies around every corner. We had them do the drill, load everyone in the cafeteria, called them back to their classes and that was that. Drill over.”
    “But there were seven, eight of us in that van that first day? You can’t just…just…kidnap eight kids and expect nobody to notice?”
    “You weren’t just any old