pandemonium 10 страница

No. This is different. I can fix this.

“Forget it. Don’t try to talk, ” I say. He has now slid onto the ground, almost in a fetal position. His left eyelid flutters, and I’m not sure how much he hears or understands. I slide his head onto my lap gently and help him roll over onto his back, biting back the cry that rises to my lips when I see his face: undifferentiated flesh, a beaten, bloody thing. His right eye is swollen completely shut, and blood is flowing rapidly from a deep cut above his right eyebrow.

“Shit, ” I say. I’ve seen bad injuries before, but I’ve always been able to get some kind of medical supplies, however rudimentary. Here, I’ve got nothing. And Julian’s body is making strange, twitchy motions. I’m worried he might have an attack.

“Stick with me, ” I say, trying to keep my voice low and calm, just in case he’s conscious and listening. “I need to get you out of your shirt, okay? Stay as still as you can. I’m going to make you a compress. It will help with the bleeding. ”

I unbutton Julian’s filthy shirt. At least his chest is unmarked, apart from a few large and mean-looking bruises. All of the blood must be from his face. The Scavengers have worked him over, but they haven’t tried to do serious harm. When I ease his arms out of the sleeves he moans, but I manage to get the shirt off. I press it tightly to the wound on his forehead, wishing I had a clean cloth. He moans again.

“Shhh, ” I say. My heart is pounding. Waves of heat are radiating from his skin. “You’re okay. Just breathe, all right? Everything’s going to be fine. ”

There’s a little bit of water left in the bottom of the cup they brought for us yesterday. Julian and I were making it last. I dampen Julian’s shirt and blot his face with it; then I remember the antibacterial wipes the DFA was distributing at the rally. For the first time, I’m grateful to the DFA for their obsession with cleanliness. I still have the wipe folded into one of my back jeans pockets; as I unwrap it, the astringent smell of alcohol makes me wince, and I know it’s going to hurt. But if Julian gets an infection, there’s no way we’ll make it out of here.

“This is going to sting a little bit, ” I say, and bring the wipe into contact with Julian’s skin.

Instantly he lets out a roar. His eyes fly open—as much as they can, anyway—and he jerks upright. I have to wrestle him by his shoulders to the ground again.

“Hurts, ” he mutters, but at least he’s awake now, and alert. My heart leaps in my chest. I realize I’ve barely been breathing.

“Don’t be a baby, ” I say, and continue cleaning his face while he tenses his whole body and grits his teeth. Once I’ve cleaned most of the blood away, I get a better sense of the damage they’ve done. The cut on his lip has opened up again, and he must have been hit repeatedly in the face, probably with a fist or a blunt object. The cut on his forehead is the most trouble some. It’s still bubbling blood. But all in all, it could be much worse. He’ll live.

“Here, ” I say, and lift the tin cup to his lips, supporting his head on my knees. There’s a half inch of water left. “Drink this. ”

When he’s finished with the water, he closes his eyes again. But his breathing is regular now, and his tremors have stopped. I take the shirt and rip off a long strip of fabric, trying to will away the memories that are pressing and resurging: I learned this from Alex. At one point, in another lifetime, he saved me when I was hurt. He wrapped and bandaged my leg. He helped me escape from the regulators.

I fold the memory carefully inside of me. I bury it down deep.

“Lift your head a little, ” I say, and Julian does, this time soundlessly, so I can work the fabric around it. I tie the length of shirt low on his forehead, knotting it tightly close to the gash, so it forms a kind of tourniquet. Then I lower his head back onto my thighs. “Can you talk? ” I ask, and Julian nods. “Can you tell me what happened? ”

The right corner of his lip is so swollen that his voice sounds distorted, like he’s having to squeeze the words past a pillow. “Wanted to know things, ” he says, then sucks in a deep breath and tries again. “Asked me questions. ”

“What kind of questions? ”

“My family’s apartment. Charles Street. Security codes. Guards—how many and when. ”

I don’t say anything. I’m not sure Julian realizes what this means, and how bad it is. The Scavengers have grown desperate. They’re trying to launch an attack on his house now, use him to find a way in. Maybe they’re planning to kill Thomas Fineman; maybe they’re just looking for the typical goods: jewelry, electronics that might be bartered on the black market, money, and, of course, weapons. They are always amassing weapons.

This can only mean one thing: Their plan to ransom Julian has failed. Mr. Fineman didn’t bite.

“Wouldn’t tell them anything, ” Julian huffs out. “They said … a few more days … more sessions… I’d talk. ”

There’s no longer any doubt. We have to get out as soon as possible. Whenever Julian decides to talk—which he will, eventually—neither he nor I will serve any purpose to the Scavengers. And they are not known for their policy of catch-and-release.

“All right, listen. ” I try to keep my voice low, hoping he won’t read the urgency there. “We’re getting out of here, okay? ”

He shakes his head, a tiny gesture of disbelief. “How? ” he croaks out.

“I’ve got a plan, ” I say. This isn’t true, but I figure I will have a plan. I’ve got to. Raven and Tack are counting on me. Thinking of the messages they left me, and the knife, fills me once again with warmth. I am not alone.

“Armed. ” Julian swallows, then tries again. “They’re armed. ”

“We’re armed too. ” My brain is skipping ahead now, into the hallway: Footsteps come down, they go back up, one at a time. One guard only at mealtime. That’s a good thing. If we can somehow get him to unlock the door… I’m so consumed with the planning, I don’t even pay attention to the words coming out of my mouth.

“Look, I’ve been in bad situations before. You’ve got to trust me. This one time in Massachusetts—”

Julian interrupts me. “When … you… Massachusetts? ”

That’s when I realize I’ve screwed up. Lena Morgan Jones has never been to Massachusetts, and Julian knows it. For a moment I debate telling another lie, and in that pause Julian struggles onto his elbows, swiveling around and scooting backward to face me, grimacing the whole time.

“Be careful, ” I say. “Don’t push it. ”

“When were you in Massachusetts? ” he repeats painstakingly slowly, so that each word is clear.

Maybe it’s the way that Julian looks, with the blood-spotted strip of shirt knotted around his forehead and his eyes swollen practically shut: the look of a bruised animal. Or maybe it’s because I realize, now, that the Scavengers are going to kill us—if not tomorrow, then the next day or the day after that.

Or maybe I’m just hungry, and tired, and sick of pretending.

In a flash, I decide to tell him the truth. “Listen, ” I say, “I’m not who you think I am. ”

Julian gets very still. I’m reminded again of an animal—one time we found a baby raccoon, foundering in a mud pit that had opened up in the ground after a thaw. Bram went to help it, and as he approached, the raccoon went still just like that—an electric stillness, more alert and energetic than any kind of struggle.

“All that stuff I told you—about growing up in Queens and getting held back—none of that was true. ”

Once I was on the other side, in Julian’s position. I stood, battered between currents, as Alex told me the same thing. I’m not who you think I am. I still remember the swim back to shore; the longest and most exhausting of my life.

“You don’t need to know who I am, okay? You don’t need to know where I really come from. But Lena Morgan Jones is a made-up story. Even this”—I touch my fingers to my neck, running them over the three-pronged scar—“this was made-up too. ”

Julian still doesn’t say anything, although he has inched backward even farther and used the wall to pull himself into a seated position. He keeps his knees bent, hands and feet flat on the floor, as though if he could, he would spring forward and run.

“I know you don’t have a lot of reason to trust me right now, ” I say. “But I’m asking you to trust me anyway. If we stay here, we’ll be killed. I can get us out. But I’m going to need your help. ”

There is a question in my words, and I stop, waiting for Julian’s answer.

For a long time there is silence. At last he croaks out, “You. ”

The venom in his voice surprises me. “What? ”

“You, ” he repeats. And then, “You did this. To me. ”

My heart starts beating hard against my chest, painfully. For a second I think—I almost hope—that he’s having some kind of attack, a hallucination or fantasy. “What are you talking about? ”

“Your people, ” he says, and then I get a sick taste in my mouth and I know that he’s perfectly lucid. I know exactly what he means, and what he thinks. “Your people did this. ”

“No, ” I say, and then repeat it a little more emphatically. “No. We had nothing to do with—”

“You’re an Invalid. That’s what you’re telling me, right? You’re infected. ” Julian’s fingers are trembling lightly against the ground, with a noise like the patter of rain. He’s furious, I realize, and probably scared, too. “You’re sick. ” He nearly spits out the word.

“Those aren’t my people out there, ” I say, and now I have to stop the anger from coming and dragging me under: It is a black force, a current tugging at the edges of my mind. “Those people aren’t…” I almost say, They aren’t human. “They’re not Invalids. ”

“Liar, ” Julian snarls. There it is. Just like the raccoon when Bram finally went to lift it from the mud and it leapt, snapping, and sank its teeth into the flesh of his right hand.

The sick taste in my throat comes all the way from my stomach. I stand up, hoping Julian won’t see that I, too, am shaking. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, ” I say. “You don’t know anything about us, and you don’t know anything about me. ”

“Tell me, ” Julian says, still with that undercurrent of rage and coldness. Each word sounds hard-edged and cutting. “When did you catch it? ”

I laugh, even though none of it is funny. The world is upside down and everything is shit and my life has been cleaved and there are two different Lenas running parallel to each other, the old and the new, and they will never, ever be whole again. And I know Julian won’t help me now. I was an idiot to think that he would. He’s a zombie, just like Raven has always said. And zombies do what they were built to do: They trundle forward, blindly obedient, until they rot away for good.

Well, not me. I fish the knife out from under the mattress and sit on the cot, then begin running the blade quickly along the metal bedpost, sharpening it, taking pleasure in the way it catches the light.

“It doesn’t matter, ” I say to Julian. “None of it matters. ”

“How? ” he persists. “Who was it? ”

The black space inside me gives a tiny shudder, widens another inch. “Go to hell, ” I say to Julian, but calmly now, and I keep my eyes on the knife, flashing, flashing, flashing, like a sign pointing the way out of the dark.

then

We stay four days at the first encampment. On the night before we are supposed to set out again, Raven takes me aside.

“It’s time, ” she says.

I’m still angry at her for what she said to me at the traps, although the rage has been replaced by a dull, thudding resentment. All this time, she has known everything about me. I feel as though she has reached into me, to a deep place, and broken something.

“Time for what? ” I say.

Behind me, the campfire is burning low. Blue and Sarah and some of the others have fallen asleep outside, a tangle of blankets and hair and legs. They have begun to sleep this way a lot, like a human patchwork: It keeps them warm. Lu and Grandpa are conversing in low voices. Grandpa is chewing some of his last tobacco, working it in and out of his mouth, spitting occasionally into the fire and causing a burst of green flame. The others must have gone into the tents.

Raven gives me the barest trace of a smile. “Time for your cure. ”

My heart jumps in my chest. The night is sharply cold, and it hurts my lungs to breathe deeply. Raven leads me away from the camp, one hundred feet down along the stream, to a broad, flat stretch of bank. This is where we’ve broken through the thick layer of ice every morning to pull water.

Bram is already there. He has built another fire. This one is burning high and hot, and my eyes sting with ash and smoke when we’re still five feet away. The wood is arranged in a teepee formation, and at its crown, blue and white flames are licking up toward the sky. The smoke is an eraser, blurring the stars above us.

“Ready? ” Raven asks.

“Just about, ” Bram says. “Five minutes. ” He is squatting next to a warped wooden bucket, which is nestled between pieces of wood on the periphery of the fire. He will have soaked it with water so it doesn’t catch and burn. The proximity of the fire will eventually cause the water in the bucket to boil. I see him remove a small, thin instrument from a bag at his feet. It looks like a screwdriver, with a thin, round shaft, a sharp and glittering tip. He drops it into the bucket, handle down, and then stands up, watching as the tip of the plastic handle makes slow revolutions in the simmering water.

I feel sick. I look to Raven, but she is staring at the fire, her face unreadable.

“Here. ” Bram steps away from the fire and presses a bottle of whiskey into my hands. “You’ll want to drink some of this. ”

I hate the taste of whiskey, but I uncap the bottle anyway, close my eyes, and take a big swig. The alcohol sears my throat going down, and I have to fight back the urge to gag. But five seconds later, a warmth radiates up from my stomach, numbing my throat and mouth and coating my tongue, making it easier to take a second sip, and a third.

By the time Bram says, “We’re ready, ” I’ve polished off a quarter of the bottle and above me, through the smoke, the stars make slow revolutions, all of them glittering like pointed metal tips. My head feels detached from my body. I sit down heavily.

“Easy, ” Bram says. His white teeth flash in the dark. “How you feeling, Lena? ”

“Okay, ” I say. The word is harder to get out than usual.

“She’s ready, ” Bram says, and then, “Raven, grab the blanket, will you? ” Raven moves behind me, and then Bram tells me to lie back, which I do, gratefully. It helps the woozy, spinning feeling in my head.

“You take her left arm, ” Raven says, kneeling next to me. Her earrings—a feather and a silver charm, both threaded through one ear—sway together like a pendulum. “I’ll take her right. ”

Their hands grip me tightly from both sides. Then I start to get scared.

“Hey. ” I struggle to sit up. “You’re hurting me. ”

“It’s important that you stay very still, ” Raven says. Then she pauses. “It’s going to hurt for a bit, Lena. But it will be over quickly, okay? Just trust us. ”

The fear is causing a new fire in my chest. Bram is holding the metal tool, newly sterilized, and its blade seems to catch all the light from the fire behind him, and glow hot and white and terrible. I’m too frightened to try and struggle, and I know it wouldn’t do any good. Raven and Bram are too strong.

“Bite on this, ” Bram says, and suddenly there is a strip of leather going into my mouth. It smells like Grandpa’s tobacco.

“Wait—, ” I try to say, but I can’t choke the word out past the leather. Then Bram places one hand on my forehead, angling my chin up to the sky, hard, and he’s bending over me, blade in hand, and I can feel its tip just pressing into the space behind my left ear, and I want to cry out but I can’t, and I want to run but I can’t do that, either.

“Welcome to the resistance, Lena, ” he whispers to me. “I’ll try to make this quick. ”

The first cut goes deep. I am filled with burning. And then I find my voice, and scream.

now

Lena. ”

My name pulls me out of sleep. I sit up, heart careening in my chest.

Julian has moved his cot toward the door, pressed it against the wall, as far away from me as possible. Sweat is beading on my upper lip. It has been days since I’ve showered, and the room is full of a close, animal smell.

“Is that even your real name? ” Julian asks, after a pause. His voice is still cold, although it has lost some of its edge.

“That’s my name, ” I say. I squeeze my eyes closed, tight, until little bursts of color appear behind my eyelids. I was having a nightmare. I was in the Wilds. Raven and Alex were there, and there was an animal, too, something enormous we had killed.

“You were calling for Alex, ” Julian says, and I feel a small spasm of pain in my stomach. More silence, then: “It was him, wasn’t it? He’s the one who got you sick. ”

“What does it matter? ” I say. I lie down again.

“So what happened to him? ” Julian asks.

“He died, ” I say shortly, because that is what Julian wants to hear. I picture a tall tower, smooth-sided, stretching all the way to the sky. There are stairs cut in the side of the tower, winding up and up. I take the first step into the coolness and shade.

“How? ” Julian asks. “Because of the deliria? ” I know if I say yes he’ll feel good. See, he’ll think. We’re right. We’ve been right all this time. Let people die so that we can be right.

“You, ” I say. “Your people. ”

Julian sucks in a quick breath. When he speaks again, his voice is softer. “You said you never had nightmares. ”

I wall myself up inside. From the tower, the people on the ground are no more than ants, specks, punctuation marks: easily smudged out.

“I’m an Invalid, ” I say. “We lie. ”

In the morning my plan has hardened, clarified. Julian is sitting in the corner, watching me the way he did when we were first taken. He is still wearing the rag around his head, but he looks alert now, and the swelling in his face has gone down.

I wrestle the umbrella apart, pulling the nylon shell away from its hinged metal arms. Then I lay the nylon flat and cut it into four long strips. I tie the strips together into a makeshift cord and test its strength. Decent. It won’t hold forever, but I don’t need longer than a few minutes.

“What are you doing? ” Julian asks me, and I can tell he’s trying hard not to seem too curious. I don’t answer him. I no longer care what he does, or whether he comes with me or remains here to rot forever, as long as he stays out of the way.

It doesn’t take me long to remove the hinges from the flap door, just some wiggling and working with the point of the knife: the hinges are rusted and loose anyway.

Once the hinges are off, I manage to push the door outward, so it falls, clattering into the hall. That will bring someone, and soon. My heart speeds up. It’s showtime, as Tack used to say, right before heading out on a hunt. I pull The Book of Shhh onto my lap and tear out a page.

“You’ll never fit through that space, ” Julian says. “It’s too small. ”

“Just stay quiet, ” I say. “Can you do that for me? Just don’t speak. ”

I unscrew the mascara that made its way into my backpack, silently send a message of thanks to Raven—now that she is on the other side, in Zombieland, she can’t get enough of its little trinkets and comforts, its well-lit stores stocked with rows and rows of things to buy.

I can feel Julian watching me. I scrawl out a note on the blank side of the page.

The girl is violent. Worried she might kill me. Ready to talk if you let me out NOW.

I slip the note through the cat-flap door and into the hallway. Then I repack my backpack with The Book of Shhh, the empty water bottle, and pieces of the dismantled umbrella. I grip the knife in my hand, stand by the door, and wait, trying to slow my breathing, every so often flipping the knife into my other hand and wiping sweat from my palms onto my pants. Hunter and Bram once took me deer hunting with them, just to watch, and this was the part I couldn’t stand: the stillness, the waiting.

Fortunately, I don’t wait long. Someone must have heard the flap door fall. Pretty soon I hear another door close—more information; information is good; that means there’s another door somewhere, another room underground—and footsteps coming toward me. I hope it’s the girl who comes, the one with the wedding ring threaded through her nose.

I hope, above all, it’s not the albino.

But the boot steps are heavy, and when they stop just outside the door, it’s a man who mutters, “What the hell? ”

My whole body feels wound up, coiled like an electrical wire. I’ll have only one shot to get this right.

Now that I’ve disabled the flap door, I have a solid view of mud-splattered combat boots and baggy green trousers, like the kind lab techs and street sweepers wear. The man grunts, and moves the flap door a few inches with a boot, as though toeing a mouse to see whether it is alive. Then he kneels down and snatches up the note.

I tighten my grip on the knife. Now my heart feels as though it is barely going at all. I am not breathing, and the space between heartbeats is an eternity.

Open the door. Don’t call for backup. Open the door now. Come on, come on, come on.

Finally there’s a heavy sigh, and the sound of keys jingling; a clicking, too, as I imagine him sliding the safety off his gun.

Everything is sharp and very slow, as though funneled through a microscope. He’s going to open the door.

The keys turn in the lock and Julian scrabbles, alarmed, to his feet, letting out a short cry. For a second the guard hesitates. Then the door begins to push inward, inward, toward me—toward where I am standing, pressed up against the wall, invisible.

Just like that the seesaw has swung: The seconds are banging together so fast I can hardly keep track of them. Everything is instinct and blur. Things happen in one collapsed moment: The door swings fully open, just a few inches from my face, as he takes a step into the cell, saying, “All right, I’m all ears, ” and as he does I push against the door with both hands, slamming it toward him, hear a small crack and his short exclamation, a curse and a groan. Julian is saying, “Holy shit, holy shit. ”

I leap out from behind the door—all instinct now, no more thinking—and land on the Scavenger’s back. He is staggering on his feet, clutching his head, where the door must have hit him, and my momentum carries him off his feet and onto the ground. I drive a knee into his back and press the knife into his throat.

“Don’t move. ” I’m shaking. I hope he can’t feel it. “Don’t scream. Don’t even think about screaming. Just stay where you are, nice and easy, and you won’t get hurt. ”

Julian watches me, wide-eyed, silent. The Scavenger is good. He stays still. I keep my knee in his back and the tip of my knife at his throat, take one end of the nylon rope in my teeth, and twist his left hand behind his back, and then his right, keeping them both stabilized with my knee.

Julian wrenches away from the wall suddenly and comes over to me.

“What are you doing? ” My voice is a snarl, through the nylon and my gritted teeth. I can’t take Julian and the Scavenger at once. If he interferes, it’s all over.

“Give me the rope, ” he says calmly. For a second I don’t move, and he says, “I’m helping you. ”

I pass the cord to him wordlessly, and he kneels down behind me. I keep the Scavenger pressed to the ground as Julian binds his hands and feet.

I press my knee harder into the Scavenger’s back, holding him still. I picture the spaces between the ribs, the soft skin and layers of fat and flesh—and beneath it all, the heart, squeezing and pumping out life. It would only take one quick jab. . . .

“Give me the knife, ” Julian says.

I tighten my grip on the handle. “For what? ”

“Just give it to me, ” he says.

I hesitate, then pass it back to him. He cuts off the excess nylon cord—he is clumsy with the knife, and it takes him a minute—and then passes both the knife and the strip of nylon back to me.

“You should gag him, ” Julian says matter-of-factly. “So he won’t be able to call for help. ”

He is amazingly calm. I tip the Scavenger’s head up and wrestle the makeshift gag into his mouth. He kicks out with his legs, thrashing like a fish pulled onto land, but I manage to get the fabric knotted behind his head. The bonds are flimsy—he’ll get his hands free in ten, fifteen minutes—but that should be enough time.

I climb quickly to my feet and sling my backpack over my shoulders. The door to the cell is still gaping open. Just that—the open door—fills me with a sense of joy so complete I could shout. I imagine Raven and Tack, watching me approvingly.

I won’t let you down.

I look back. Julian has gotten to his feet.

“You coming, or what? ” I say.

He nods. He still looks like shit, his eyes bare cracks, but his mouth is set tight in a line.

“Let’s go, then. ” I tuck the knife, sheathed, into the waistband of my pants. I can’t worry about whether Julian will slow me down. And he may even be helpful. At least he’s another target; if I get pursued or jumped, he’ll be a distraction.

We close the cell door carefully behind us, which quiets the sounds of the Scavenger’s muffled cries, the scuffing of his shoes against the floor. The hall outside the cell is long, narrow, and well lit: four doors, all of them closed and all of them metal, run along the wall to our left, and at the end of the hall is another steel door. This throws me a bit. I’ve been assuming our cell was simply annexed off one of the old subway tunnels, and we would emerge into darkness and dankness. But we’re obviously in a space that is far more elaborate, an underground complex.

The voices I heard earlier are coming from behind one of the closed doors on our left. I think I recognize the low, flat growl of Albino. I pick up only a few words of conversation: “… waiting … bad idea from the start. ” A staccato response follows: another man’s voice. At least I know where the albino is now, although that makes the girl with the piercings unaccounted for. That means at least four Scavengers were involved in our kidnapping. They’re obviously getting organized: a very, very bad thing.

As we progress, the voices get louder and clearer. The Scavengers are arguing.

“Stick with the original agreement…”

“Don’t owe … to anyone…”

My heart has lodged in my throat, making it difficult to breathe. Just as I’m about to scoot past the door I hear a loud bang from inside the room. I freeze, thinking immediately of gunfire. The door handle rattles. My insides go loose and I think, This is it, right here.

Then the voice I don’t recognize says loudly, “Come on, don’t be upset. Let’s talk about this. ”

“I’m tired of talking. ” That’s Albino: So whatever happened inside, it wasn’t a gunshot I heard.

Julian has frozen beside me. We’ve both instinctively flattened ourselves against the wall—not that it will help us, if the men come bursting out into the hall. Our arms are just touching, and I can feel the light fuzz of blond hair on his forearms. It seems to be conducting a current, small electrical pulses. I inch away from him.

The door handle gives a final rattle and then Albino says, “All right, I’m listening. ” His footsteps retreat back into the room, and the spasm in my chest relaxes. I make a motion to Julian. Let’s go. He nods. He has been clenching his fists. His knuckles are tiny white half-moons.

All the remaining doors in the hallway are closed, and we hear no more voices, and see no evidence of other Scavengers. I wonder what the rooms contain: Maybe, I think, there are prisoners in all of them, lying in twin cots, waiting to be ransomed or killed. The idea makes me sick, but I can’t think about it too long. That’s another rule of the Wilds: You have to take care of yourself first.