A Game of Firsts (The Forest of Hands and Teeth) by Carrie Ryan Page A

television flickered the same gruesome images in a loop: highways stuffed with risen dead, fires burning unchecked, stores being looted, ambulances crashed to their sides with rear doors flapping open.
    They were everywhere. Already. Broken people coming back from the dead—a total and horrible impossibility. And yet true. I closed my eyes and thought about how a world can multiply so fast.
    By then it was too late to tempt the outside world. The roads were impossible and we were stuck in our neighborhood bordering the edge of the city. I thought we should head to the attic above the detached garage, but Danny thought we should stay in the house.
    “There are too many windows,” I pointed out. “Ground level, and there’s no way we can barricade them all.”
    He blew out a long and frustrated sigh. “But there’s air conditioning. It’s August, Julie. We’ll roast out in the garage.”
    From somewhere far away I heard a siren rising and falling. “We’ll have the cars,” I told him. “We can charge the phone off your truck battery.” What I didn’t say was in case Mom and Dad finally call us back, but he understood that anyway.
    After he eventually agreed, we started filling up anything that could hold water and shoved food into grocery bags, taking it all out to the garage. Around us the sound of sawing and hammering echoed through the neighborhood while other families loaded up massive SUVs. Last week these were the people I’d have turned to for help—we’d shared lemonade stands and yard sales, babysitting and bike pumps.
    They knew Mom and Dad were out of town, that Danny and I were left here alone. Our parents had given the neighbors strict instructions to watch out for wild parties or curfew breaks. A few of them glanced my way as I trundled boxes and bottles from the house to the garage. I wondered if they thought about inviting us over, taking us in.
    But we were mouths to feed and bodies to water. We all had to be selfish now.
    “ T HE FIRST TIME I snuck out it was totally Fiona’s fault,” I explain. We lie on our backs, sweat beading our foreheads even though it must be close to midnight. A few days ago Danny managed to saw his way through part of the roof in order to open up the garage attic to a bit of air. Overhead, stars litter the night.
    “Where’d you go?” his question comes out as a grunt, and I think about sliding my gaze his way, but I know what I’ll see: deeply bruised eyes, sunken cheeks, parched lips.
    “Leroy’s,” I tell him. “He was having some kind of secret sweet sixteen party, and Fiona claimed to have a special present for him.” At the term special present, I hold up my hands in air quotes. Danny laughs. It’s more like a wheeze but still I feel a sense of accomplishment.
    I T WAS D ANNY WHO thought to snake the hose up through the vents under the eaves of the garage. He left the faucet on a slow drip so we could refill bottles and wash our hands.
    “How long will the water pressure last?” I asked him as he sat staring at the television, watching reports of road closings and neighborhood outbreaks that seemed endless and unceasing. My father once used the garage as a shop and so it was already wired for cable and electricity; we’d just had to string a series of extension cords so we could maintain the illusion of contact with the outside world.
    Down the road a house alarm blazed. It had been going off for six hours and I kept hoping I’d get used to it, but every blare of the horn grated against my ears, increasing the pounding in my head.
    My brother lifted a shoulder. I don’t know why I felt like he should know the answers to my questions. He was only eleven months older than me. Irish Twins, my aunt always called us.
    Nuisance is the term my brother preferred. But still, it was nice to have someone to ask the hard questions. Even if he didn’t have the easy answers.
    “ T HE FIRST TIME I … you know—” I wave my hand in the air, suddenly