pandemonium 8 страница

Raven holds Blue, stiff-white and terrified, in her arms. I lead Sarah by the hand. She cries soundlessly, wrapped in Lu’s enormous jacket. Sarah had no time to grab her own. Lu does without. When the frostbite starts to set in, Raven and I take turns giving Lu our coats. The cold reaches in, squeezes our guts, makes our eyes water.

And behind us is the inferno.

Fifteen of us made it safely away from the homestead; Squirrel and Grandma are missing. No one can remember seeing them, in our rush to leave the burrow. One of the bombs exploded a wall of the sickroom and sent a shower of rock and dirt and insects rocketing into the hall. After that, everything was screaming chaos.

Once the planes withdraw, the helicopters come. For hours they circle above us, and the air is spliced into fragments, beaten to shreds by the endless whirring. They mist the Wilds with chemicals. It burns our throats, stings our eyes, makes us choke. We wrap T-shirts and dish towels around our necks and mouths, move through the haze.

Finally it is too dark for the attacks to continue. The night sky is smudgy with smoke. The woods are full of distant crashing and cracking as so many trees succumb to the flames, but at least we have moved far enough downstream to be safe from the fire. At last Raven thinks it safe to pause and rest, and take stock of what we have.

We have only a quarter of the food we’d been storing, and none of the medical supplies.

Bram thinks we should go back for the food. “We’ll never make it south with what we’ve got, ” he argues, and I can see Raven trembling as she struggles to get a fire lit. She can barely strike a match. Her hands must be freezing. Mine have been numb for hours.

“Don’t you get it? ” she says. “The homestead is done. We can’t go back. They meant to wipe us out today, all of us. If Lena hadn’t warned us, we’d all be dead. ”

“What about Tack and Hunter? ” Bram says stubbornly. “What’ll they do when they come back for us? ”

“Damn it, Bram. ” Raven’s voice rises a little, hysterical, and Blue, who has fallen asleep finally, curled up among the blankets, stirs fitfully. Raven straightens up. She has managed to get a fire started. She takes a step back and stares at the first twisting flames, blue and green and red.

“They’ll have to take care of themselves, ” she says more quietly, and even though she has regained her self-control I can hear the pain running under her words, a ribbon of fear and grief. “We’ll have to go on without them. ”

“That’s fucked, ” Bram says, but halfheartedly. He knows she’s right.

Raven stands there for a long time, as some of the others move quietly along the banks of the river, setting up camp: piling the backpacks together to form a shelter from the wind, unpacking and repacking the food, figuring out new rations. I go to Raven and stand next to her for a while. I want to put my arms around her, but I can’t. You don’t do that kind of thing with Raven. And in a weird way, I understand that she needs her hardness now more than ever.

Still, I want to comfort her somehow. So I say, low so that nobody else can hear me, “Tack will be okay. If anybody can survive out here, no matter what, it’s Tack. ”

“Oh, I know, ” she says. “I’m not worried. He’ll make it just fine. ”

But when she looks at me I can see a deadness in her eyes, like she has closed a door somewhere deep inside of her—and I know that even she does not believe it.

The morning dawns gray and cold. It has begun to snow again. I’ve never been so cold in my life. It takes forever to stamp the feeling back into my feet. We have all slept out in the open. Raven worried that the tents would be too conspicuous, making us easy targets should the helicopters or planes return. But the skies are empty and the woods are still. Bits of ash intermingle with the snow, carrying the faint smell of smoke.

We head for the first encampment, the one Roach and Buck prepared for our arrival: a distance of eighty miles. At first we all walk quietly, occasionally scanning the skies, but after a few hours we start to loosen up. The snow continues to fall, softening the landscape, purifying the air, until the lingering smells of smoke have all been whited out.

Then we talk a little more freely. How did they find us? Why the attack? Why now?

For years, the Invalids have been able to count on one critical fact: They are not supposed to exist. The government has for decades denied that anyone inhabits the Wilds, and thus the Invalids have remained relatively safe. Any large-scale physical attack from the government would be tantamount to an admission of error.

But it seems that has changed.

Much later, we will find out why: The resistance has stepped up its game. They grew tired of waiting, of minor pranks and protests.

And so, the Incidents: explosives planted in prisons, and city halls, and government offices across the country.

Sarah, who has been running ahead, loops back around to me. “What do you think happened to Tack and Hunter? ” she says. “Do you think they’ll be okay? Do you think they’ll find us? ”

“Shhh. ” I hush her sharply. Raven is walking ahead of us, and I glance up to see whether she has heard. “Don’t worry about that. Tack and Hunter can take care of themselves. ”

“But what about Squirrel and Grandma? Do you think they got out okay? ”

I think about that giant convulsive shudder—stone and dirt blasting inward—all the shouting and the smoke. There was so much noise, so much flame. I try to reach for a memory of Squirrel and Grandma, some vision of them running into the woods, but all I have are silhouettes, screaming and shouted orders, people turning to smoke.

“You ask too many questions, ” I tell her. “You should be saving your strength. ”

She has been trotting like a dog. Now she slows down to a walk. “Are we going to die? ” she asks solemnly.

“Don’t be stupid. You’ve relocated before. ”

“But the people on the inside of the fence…” She bites her lip. “They want to kill us, don’t they? ”

I feel something tighten inside of me, a spasm of deep hatred. I reach out and put a hand on her head. “They haven’t killed us yet, ” I say, and I imagine that one day I will fly a plane over Portland, over Rochester, over every fenced-in city in the whole country, and I will bomb and bomb and bomb, and watch all their buildings smoldering to dust, and all those people melting and bleeding into flame, and I will see how they like it.

If you take, we will take back. Steal from us, and we will rob you blind. When you squeeze, we will hit.

This is the way the world is made now.

We reach the first encampment just before midnight on the third day, after a last-minute confusion about heading east or west at the large overturned tree lying gutted, roots exposed to the sky, which Roach had marked with a red bandanna. We waste an hour going the wrong way and have to double back, but as soon as we spot the small pyramid of stones Roach and Buck piled together to mark the place where the food is buried, there is general celebration. We run, shouting, the last fifty feet to the small clearing, full of renewed energy.

The plan was to stay here for a day, two tops, but Raven thinks we should camp out longer, and try to trap what we can. It is getting colder and will be increasingly difficult to find small game, and we do not have enough food to make it all the way south.

Now it is safe to set up our tents. For a while it is possible to forget we’re on the run, forget we’ve lost members of our group, forget about all the supplies we left back at the homestead. We light a fire; we sit in its glow, warm our hands, and tell one another stories to distract ourselves from the cold and the hunger, from the air, which smells like coming snow.

now

Tell me a story. ”

“What? ” Julian’s voice startles me. He’s been sitting in silence for hours. I’ve been pacing again, thinking about Raven and Tack. Did they escape the demonstration? Will they think I’ve been hurt, or killed? Will they come looking for me?

“I said, tell me a story. ” He’s sitting on his cot, legs crossed. I’ve noticed he can sit like that for hours, eyes half-closed, like he’s meditating. His calm has started to irritate me. “It’ll make the time go faster, ” he adds.

Another day, more dragging hours. The light is on again, and breakfast (more bread, more jerky, more water) came again this morning. This time I pressed myself close to the floor and caught a glimpse of dark trousers and heavy boots. A barking male voice directed me to pass the old tray through the flap door, which I did.

“I don’t know any stories, ” I say. Julian is comfortable looking at me now—too comfortable, actually. I can feel his eyes on me as I walk, like a light touch on my shoulder.

“Tell me about your life, then, ” Julian says. “It doesn’t have to be a good story. ”

I sigh, running through the life Raven helped me construct for Lena Morgan Jones. “I was born in Queens. I attended Unity through fifth grade, then transferred to Our Lady of the Doctrine. Last year I came to Brooklyn and enrolled at Quincy Edwards for my final year. ” Julian is still watching me, as though he expects more. I make a quick, impatient gesture with my hand and add, “I was cured in November. I’ll take my evaluation later on this semester, though, with everyone else. I don’t have a match yet. ” I run out of things to say. Lena Morgan Jones, like all cureds, is pretty boring.

“Those are facts, ” Julian says. “That’s not a story. ”

“Fine. ” I go and sit on my cot, bringing my legs underneath me, and turn to him. “If you’re such an expert, why don’t you tell me a story? ”

I’m expecting him to be flustered, but he just tilts his head back, thinking, blowing air out of his cheeks. The cut on his lip looks even worse today, bruised and swollen. Shades of yellow and green have begun to spread across his jawline. He hasn’t complained, though, either about that or the ragged cut on his cheek.

He says finally, “One time, when I was really little, I saw two people kissing in public. ”

“You mean, like, at a marriage ceremony? To seal it? ”

He shakes his head. “No. On the street. They were protesters, you know? It was right in front of the DFA. I don’t know if they weren’t cured or the procedure didn’t take or what. I was only, like, six. They were—” At the last second Julian falters.

“What? ”

“They were using their tongues. ” He looks at me for just a second, then clicks his eyes away. Tongue-kissing is even worse than illegal nowadays. It’s considered dirty, disgusting, a symptom of disease taken root.

“What did you do? ” I lean forward in spite of myself. I’m amazed, both by the story and by the fact that Julian is sharing it with me.

Julian cracks a smile. “Want to hear something funny? At first I thought he was eating her. ”

I can’t help it: I let out a short bark of laughter. And once I start laughing I can’t stop. All the tension from the past fortyeight hours breaks in my chest, and I laugh so hard I start to tear up. The whole world has been turned inside out and upside down. We are living in a funhouse.

Julian starts to laugh too, then winces, touching his bruised lip. “Ow, ” he says, and this makes me laugh even harder, which makes him laugh, which makes him say “Ow” again. Pretty soon we’re both cracking up. Julian has a surprisingly nice laugh, low and musical.

“Okay, your turn, ” he finally gasps, as the laughter runs out.

I’m still struggling for breath. “Wait—wait. What happened after that? ”

Julian looks at me, still smiling. He has a dimple in his right cheek; a line has appeared between his eyebrows. “What do you mean? ”

“What happened to the couple? The ones who were kissing? ”

The line between his eyebrows deepens, and he shakes his head confusedly. “The police came, ” he says, like it should be obvious. “They were taken into quarantine at Rikers. For all I know, they’re still there. ”

And just like that, the remaining laughter is driven out of me, like a sharp blow to the chest. I remember that Julian is one of Them; the zombies, the enemies. The people who took Alex from me.

Suddenly I feel sick. I have just been laughing with him. We’ve shared something. He’s looking at me like we’re friends, like we’re the same.

I could throw up.

“So, ” he says. “Now you go. ”

“I don’t have any stories, ” I say. My voice comes out harshly, a bark.

“Everyone has—, ” Julian starts to say.

I cut him off. “Not me, ” I say, and climb off the cot again. My body is full of itching; I try to walk it out.

We go the rest of the day without exchanging a word. A few times, Julian seems about to speak, and so eventually I go to the cot and stretch out, closing my eyes and pretending to sleep. But I do not sleep.

The same words are whirling again and again in my mind: There must be a way out. There must be a way out.

Real sleep does not come until much later, after the electric light once again clicks off. Real sleep is like sinking slowly, like drowning in a mist. All too soon I am awake again. I sit up, heart pounding.

Julian is shouting in his sleep on the cot next to me, muttering gibberish words. The only one I can make out is no.

I wait for a bit, to see whether he will wake himself up. He kicks out, thrashing. The metal bed frame rattles.

“Hey, ” I say. His urgent mutterings continue, and I sit up and say a little louder, “Hey, Julian. ”

Still no response. I reach over, fumbling for his arm in the dark. His chest is damp with sweat. I find his shoulder and shake him gently.

“Wake up, Julian. ”

Finally he wakes, gasping, and jerks away from my touch. He sits up. I can hear the rustle of the mattress as his weight shifts, and I can just make out his shape, a heavy blackness, the curve of his spine. For a moment we sit in silence. He is breathing hard. A rasping sound comes from his throat. I lie down again and listen to his breathing in the dark, waiting for it to slow.

“More nightmares? ” I ask.

“Yes, ” he says after a beat.

I hesitate. Part of me is inclined to roll over and go to sleep. But I’m awake now too, and the darkness is oppressive.

“Want to talk about it? ” I say.

There’s a long minute of silence. Then Julian begins speaking in a rush.

“I was in a lab complex, ” he says. “And outside there was this big fence. But there were all these… I can’t really explain it, but it wasn’t a real fence. It was made of bodies. Corpses. The air was black with flies. ”

“Go on, ” I say in a whisper, when Julian pauses again.

He swallows hard. “When it was time for my procedure, they strapped me down to a table and asked me to open my mouth. Two scientists wrenched open my jaw, and my dad—he was there too—picked up this huge vat of concrete, and I knew that he was going to pour it down my throat. And I was screaming and trying to fight him off, and he kept saying it would feel fine, it would all be better, and then the concrete started filling my mouth and I couldn’t breathe…”

Julian trails off. There’s a squeezing in my chest. For one wild second I feel like hugging him—but that would be horrible, and wrong on about a thousand levels. Julian must feel better too, after relating the dream to me, because he lies down again.

“I have nightmares too, ” I say, and then quickly correct myself. “Used to, I mean. ”

Even in the dark, I can feel Julian staring at me.

“Want to talk about it? ” He echoes my words back to me.

I think of the nightmares I used to have about my mother: dreams in which I would watch, helpless, as she walked off a cliff. I have never told anyone about them. Not even Alex. The dreams stopped after I found out she’d been alive, in the Crypts, for all the years I thought she was dead. But now my nightmares have taken new shape. Now they are full of burning, and Alex, and thorns that become chains and drag me into the earth.

“I used to have nightmares about my mom, ” I say. I choke a little on the word mom, and hope he doesn’t notice. “She died when I was six. ” This may as well be true. I will never see her again.

There is rustling from Julian’s cot, and when he speaks I can tell he has turned toward me. “Tell me about her, ” he says softly.

I stare up into the darkness, which seems to be full of swirling patterns. “She liked to experiment in the kitchen, ” I say slowly. I can’t tell him too much. I can’t say anything that will make him suspicious. This is no longer the story of Lena Morgan Jones. But speaking into the darkness feels like a relief, so I let myself go on: “I used to sit on the counter and watch her messing around. Most of what she made went in the trash. But it was always funny, and it made me laugh. ” I pause. “I remember one time she made hot pepper pancakes. Those weren’t bad. ”

Julian is quiet. The rhythm of his breathing has grown steady.

“She used to play games with me too, ” I say.

“She did? ” Julian’s voice has a touch of awe in it.

“Yeah. Real games, too, not just the development stuff they advocate in The Book of Shhh. She used to pretend…” I stop, biting my lip, worried I’ve gone too far.

“Pretend what? ”

There’s a crazy pressure building in my chest, and now all of it is coming back, my real life, my old life—the rickety house in Portland and the sound of the water and the smell of the bay; the blackened walls of the Crypts and the emerald-green diamond patterns of the sun slanting through the trees in the Wilds; all these other selves, stacked one on top of another and buried, so that no one will ever find them. And suddenly I feel I have to keep talking; if I don’t, I will explode. “She had a key she pretended would unlock doors to other worlds. It was just a regular key—I don’t know where she got it, some garage sale, probably—but she kept it in a red box and only brought it out on special occasions. And when she did, we would pretend to go traveling through all these different dimensions. In one world, animals kept humans as pets; in another, we could go riding on the tails of shooting stars. There was an underwater world, and one where people slept all day and danced all night. My sister played too. ”

“What was her name? ”

“Grace, ” I say. My throat is squeezing up, and now I’m combining selves and places, combining lives. My mom disappeared before Grace was even born; besides, Grace was my cousin. But strangely, I can picture it: my mother lifting Grace, swooping her around in an enormous circle while music piped from the fuzzy speakers; the three of us galloping down the long wooden hallways, pretending to be catching a star. I open my mouth to say more, but find I can’t. I am on the verge of crying, and have to swallow back the feeling, hard, while my throat spasms.

Julian is quiet for a minute. Then he says, “I used to pretend things too. ”

“Yeah? ” I turn my face into my pillow so the trembling in my voice will be muffled.

“Yeah. In the hospitals, mostly, and the labs. ” Another beat. “I used to pretend that I was back at home. I’d change the noises into other things, you know? Like the beeping of the heart monitors—that was actually just the ‘beep-beep-beep’ of the coffee machine. And when I heard footsteps I would pretend they were my parents’, even though they never were; and I would pretend the smell—you know how hospitals always smell like bleach, and just a little bit like flowers? —was because my mother was washing the sheets. ”

The clenching in my throat has subsided, and I can breathe more easily now. I’m grateful to Julian; for not saying that my mother’s behavior seems unregulated, for not being suspicious or asking too many questions. “Funerals smell like that too, ” I say. “Like bleach. Like flowers, too. ”

“I don’t like that smell, ” Julian says quietly. If he were less well trained, and less careful, he would say hate. But he can’t say it; it is too close to passion, and passion is too close to love, and love is amor deliria nervosa, the deadliest of all deadly things: It is the reason for the games of pretend, for the secret selves, for the spasms in the throat. He says, “I used to pretend to be an explorer, too. I used to think about what it would be like to go to … other places. ”

I think of finding him after the DFA meeting: sitting alone in the dark, staring up at those dizzying images of mountains and woods.

“Like where? ” I ask, my heart speeding up a bit.

He hesitates. “Just around, ” he says finally. “Like to other cities in the USA. ”

Something tells me he’s lying again; I wonder if he was really talking about the Wilds, or other places in the world—the unbordered places, where love still exists, where it was supposed to have consumed everyone by now.

Maybe Julian senses that I don’t believe him, because he rushes on. “It was just kid stuff. The kind of stuff I did on overnights to the labs, when I had tests and procedures and things like that. So I wouldn’t be scared. ”

In the silence, I can feel the weight of the earth above our heads: layers and layers of it, airless and heavy. I try to fight off the feeling that comes to me: We will be buried here forever. “Are you scared now? ” I ask.

He pauses for just a fraction of a second. “I’d be more scared if I were alone, ” he says.

“Me too, ” I say. Again, I feel a rush of sympathy for him. “Julian? ”

“Yeah? ”

“Reach out your hand. ” I’m not sure what makes me say it—maybe it’s the fact that I can’t see him. It feels easier with him in the dark.

“For what? ”

“Just do it, ” I say, and I can hear him shifting; he is already moving, stretching his hand across the space between our cots. I reach out and find his hand, which is cool and large and dry, and he jerks a bit as our skin comes into contact.

“Do you think we’re safe? ” he asks. His voice is hoarse.

I’m not sure whether he is referring to the deliria, or whether he is asking about the fact that we are trapped here, but he lets me lace my fingers through his. He has never held hands with someone before, I can tell. It takes him a moment of fumbling to understand how to do it.

“We’ll be okay, ” I say. I don’t know whether I believe it or not. He gives my hand a quick squeeze, surprising me—there are some things, I guess, that come naturally, even if you’ve never done them before. We hold hands across the dark, and after a while I hear his breathing slow and deepen, and I close my eyes and think of waves pulling slowly on a shore. After a little while I am asleep too, and dream of being on a carousel with Grace, and watching, laughing, as all the wooden horses slowly break from their positions and begin galloping up into the air.

then

For three days, the weather holds. The woods are a symphony of cracking and snapping, as the trees and the river slough off their ice. Fat, jewel-colored droplets of water rain down on our heads as we move through the woods, looking for berries, animal burrows, and good places to hunt. There is a great feeling of release and celebration, almost as if spring has really come, even though we know this is only a temporary reprieve. Raven is the only one who seems no happier.

We must be on constant lookout for food now. On the third morning, Raven nominates me to check the traps with her. Every time we find one empty, Raven curses a little under her breath. The animals have mostly gone underground.

We hear the animal before we get to the last trap, and Raven quickens her pace. There is a frantic sound of scrabbling against the brittle leaves that carpet the forest floor, and a panicked chittering, too. A large rabbit has its hind leg caught in the metal teeth of the trap. Its fur is stained with spots of dark blood. Panicked, the rabbit tries to pull itself forward; then falls back, panting, on its side.

Raven squats and removes a long-handled knife from her bag. It is sharp but spotted with rust and, I imagine, old blood. If we leave the rabbit here, I know it will twist and turn and writhe until it bleeds out from the leg—or, more likely, it will eventually give up and die slowly of starvation. Raven will be doing it a favor by killing it quickly. Still, I can’t watch. I’ve never been on trap duty. I don’t have the stomach for it.

Raven hesitates. Then, suddenly, she shoves the knife into my hand.

“Here, ” she says. “You do it. ” I know it’s not squeamishness on her part; she hunts all the time. This is another one of her tests.

The knife feels surprisingly heavy. I look at the rabbit, scrabbling and sputtering on the ground. “I—I can’t. I’ve never killed anything before. ”

Raven’s eyes are hard. “Well, it’s time to learn. ” She puts two hands on the squirming rabbit—one on its head, one on its belly, stilling it. The rabbit must think she’s trying to help. It stops squirming. Even so, I can see the rapid, desperate pattern of its breathing.

“Don’t make me, ” I say, both ashamed because I have to plead with her and angry for being made to.

Raven stands up again. “You still don’t get it, do you? ” she says. “This isn’t a game, Lena. And it doesn’t end here, or when we go south, or ever. What happened at the homestead…” She breaks off, shaking her head. “There is no room for us anywhere. Not unless things change. We’ll be hunted. Our homesteads will be bombed and burned. The borders will grow, and cities will expand, and there will be no Wilds left, and nobody to fight, and nothing to fight for. Do you understand? ”

I say nothing. Heat is creeping up the back of my neck, making me feel light-headed.

“I won’t always be around to help you, ” she says, and kneels again, one knee in the dirt. This time she parts the rabbit’s fur with her fingers, exposing a pink, fleshy bit of neck, a throbbing artery. “Here, ” she says. “Do it. ”

It strikes me then that the animal under her hands is just like us: trapped, driven out of its home, desperately fighting for breath, for a few more inches of space. And suddenly I am blindingly angry at Raven—for her lectures, and her stubbornness, and for thinking that the way that you help people is by driving them against a wall, by beating them down until they fight back.

“I don’t think it’s a game, ” I say, and I can’t keep the anger out of my voice.

“What? ”

“You think you’re the only one who knows anything. ” I’m clenching my fists, one against my thigh, one around the handle of the knife. “You think you’re the only one who knows about loss, or being angry. You think you’re the only one who knows about running. ” I’m thinking of Alex, and I hate her for that, too; for bringing that back to me. The grief and anger is swelling, a black wave.

“I don’t think I’m the only one, ” Raven says. “We’ve all lost something. That’s the rule now, isn’t it? Even in Zombieland. They lose more than most, maybe. ” She raises her eyes to mine. For some reason I can’t stop shaking.

Raven speaks with quiet intensity. “Here’s something else you might as well learn now: If you want something, if you take it for your own, you’ll always be taking it from someone else. That’s a rule too. And something must die so that others can live. ”

My breath stops. For a moment the world stops turning, and everything is silence and Raven’s eyes.

“But you know all about that, don’t you, Lena? ” She never raises her voice, but I feel the words physically—my head starts pounding, my chest is full of searing pain. All I can think is Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it, and I’m falling into the long dark tunnels of her eyes, back to that terrible dawn at the border, when the sun seeped across the bay like a slow stain.

She says, “Didn’t you try to cross with someone else? We heard the rumors. You were with somebody…” And then, as though she’s only just remembering, although now I see that she has known—of course she has known—all along, and hatred and fury are welling up so fast and thick I think I will drown. “His name was Alex, wasn’t it? ”

I am in midair, lunging at her, before I realize I’ve moved. The knife is in my hand and I am going to drive it straight into her throat, bleed her and gut her and leave her to be picked apart by the animals.