A Game of Firsts (The Forest of Hands and Teeth) Read Free

cars, all of them crawling with the risen dead.
    “We’re safer here,” Danny said and I swallowed the words, for how long?
    On the seventh day, the power blew, and a few hours later Danny looked over at me. “I’m out of juice.” He held up his phone. “Where are the keys to the truck so I can charge it up?”
    That’s when I remembered the day in the kitchen. Dropping the flashlight, leaving the door open, forgetting the key ring still lodged in the lock.
    My body became still, my lungs squeezing out any air I’d ever breathed.
    I didn’t have to say it. Danny knew from my expression. He reached over to the phone in my hand and slid the power switch to off. “We’ll check it at noon and midnight. For a few minutes, just to look for news and see if Mom and Dad called.”
    Numbly, I nodded. Outside the zombies still came, stumbling into the cul-de-sac as if drawn by our sign: Alive Inside. Might as well have been an advertisement for a 24/7 diner. Not that the zombies could read.
    “ I CHEATED ON MY math final last year,” Danny admits.
    I’m stunned into silence. My brother’s always been the one with better grades and it never occurred to me he’d come by them any way other than honestly. “Why?”
    He’s sitting under the hole in the roof, letting a fine mist of rain dance on his shoulders. “I wasn’t spending enough time studying.” He stares at his hands. “I was worrying about the SATs and where to apply for college and…” he trails off.
    “No one ever figured it out?” I realize it’s a stupid question. I’d have known if they had. Mom and Dad would have been absolutely livid. “Was that the first time?”
    When he looks up at me rain slides down his face, and for a moment I mistake it for tears. He shakes his head. “Everyone thinks of me as the smart one and if I’m not that, then what am I?”
    His admission makes my lungs feel too small. How could I not have realized how he felt?
    I try to figure out how to respond but my brother’s first to break the silence, shifting the conversation away to shallower topics. “Being holed up here in the garage makes you wish we’d been allowed to go on that senior cruise after all, right?”
    T HE POUNDING DOWNSTAIRS WAS more insistent than the usual fare and it jolted us both. “Come on, man,” someone shouted from outside. “Let me in!”
    Danny scrambled out of the hole in the roof before I had a chance to tell him maybe it was a bad idea, because what if they were dangerous? The news had reported bandits were searching for safe places to shack up and we had a big white sheet on display for anyone who was looking.
    Just as I started to go after him he jumped back into the attic and ran for the trap door, pushing open the stairs and sliding down them. I grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?” I hissed.
    “It’s Raf.” He sounded excited.
    “So?” I raised my eyebrows.
    His forehead crinkled, confused. “He’s outside. He’s in trouble. We gotta get him through the window before the dead break down the fence to reach him.”
    “Danny…”
    “We gotta help him.”
    I hated the way his words made me feel: selfish and ashamed. But I didn’t know what else to do. We didn’t have a lot of supplies, and no one knew how long this would all last. It didn’t matter in the end though, because Danny slid the window open and in Raf came.
    He stood panting, hands fisted on his knees, and then he grabbed my brother, holding him tight and sobbing, telling him again and again, “Thank you. Thank you.”
    D ANNY WAKES UP ONE night with the idea that he’ll figure out how to hot-wire the truck by looking it up online. I watch as the battery icon draws down on the cell phone, eventually turning red. The glow of the screen makes his face appear green—dead like the neighbors pounding away downstairs.
    Eventually it cuts out and we’re back to darkness.
    “Did you figure it out?”
    I hear his head move, the rustle of the skin along the