pandemonium 11 страница

The flip side of freedom is this: When you’re completely free, you’re also completely on your own.

We reach the door at the end of the hallway. I grab the door handle and pull. Nothing. That’s when I see the small keypad fitted just above the door handle, like the kind Hana used to have on her front gate.

The door requires a code.

Julian must notice it at the same time I do, because he mutters, “Shit. Shit. ”

“All right, let’s think about this, ” I whisper back, trying to sound calm. But my mind has turned to snow: the same idea coming down like a blizzard, freezing my blood. I’m screwed. I’ll be trapped here, and when I’m found, I’ll have a bruised and bound guard to atone for. They won’t be so careless anymore either. No more flap doors for me.

“What do we do? ” Julian asks.

“We? ” I shoot him a look over my shoulder. The crown of his head is encircled with dried blood, and I look away so I don’t start feeling sorry for him. “We’re in this together now? ”

“We have to be, ” he says. “We’ll need to help each other if we’re going to escape. ” He puts his hands on my shoulders and moves me gently but firmly out of the way. The touch surprises me. He must really mean what he said about setting our differences aside for now. And if he can do it, so can I.

“You won’t be able to pick it, ” I say. “We need a code. ”

Julian runs his fingers over the keypad. Then he takes a step back and squints up at the door, runs his hands along the doorjamb as though testing its sturdiness. “We have a keypad like this on the gate at home, ” he says. He’s still running his fingers along the doorjamb, tracing cracks in the plaster. “I can never remember the code. Dad’s changed it too many times—too many workers in and out. So we had to develop a system, a series of clues. A code within a code—little signs embedded in and around the gate so whenever the code is changed, I’ll know it. ”

Suddenly it clicks: the point of his story, and the way out.

“The clock, ” I say, and I point to the clock hanging above the door. It’s frozen: The small hand hovers slightly above the nine, and the big hand is stuck on the three. “Nine and three. ” But even as I say it, I’m uncertain. “But that’s only two numbers. Most keypads take four numbers, right? ”

Julian punches in 9393, then tries the door. Nothing. 3939 doesn’t work, either. Neither does 3399 or 9933, and we’re running out of time.

“Shit. ” Julian pounds the keypad once with his fist in frustration.

“Okay, okay. ” I take a deep breath. I was never good at codes and puzzles; math was always one of my worst subjects. “Let’s think about this. ”

At that second, the voices down the hall resurge. A door opens a few inches.

Albino is saying, “I’m still not convinced. I say if they don’t pay, we don’t play…”

My throat seizes with sudden terror. Albino is coming into the hall. He’ll see us at any second.

“Shit, ” Julian breathes again, a bare exhale. He’s jogging a little on his feet, back and forth, as though he’s cold, but I know he must be as scared as I am. Then, suddenly, he freezes.

“Nine fifteen, ” he says, as the door opens another couple of inches, and the voices spill into the hall.

“What? ” I grip the knife tightly, whipping my head back and forth between Julian and the door: opening, opening.

“Not nine-three. Nine fifteen. Zero-nine-one-five. ” He has already bent over the keypad again, punching the numbers in hard. There’s a quiet buzz, and a click. Julian leans into the door and it opens, as the voices grow clearer and edged with sharpness, and we slip into the next room just as the door behind us swings open, and the Scavengers take their first steps into the hall.

We’re in yet another room, this one large, high-ceilinged, and well lit. The walls are lined with shelves, and the shelves are crammed so tightly with things that in places the wood has begun to sag and warp under the weight of it all: packages of food, and large jugs of water, and blankets; but also knives, and silverware, and nests of tangled jewelry; leather shoes and jackets; handguns and wooden police batons and cans of pepper spray. Then there are things that have no purpose whatsoever: scattered radio bits lying across the floor, an old wooden wardrobe, leather-topped stools, and a trunk filled with broken plastic toys. At the opposite end of the room is another concrete door, this one painted cherry red.

“Come on. ” Julian grabs my elbow roughly, pulling me toward it.

“No. ” I wrench away from him. We don’t know where we are; we have no idea how long it will be before we escape.

“There’s food here. Weapons. We need to stock up. ”

Julian opens his mouth to respond when from the hallway comes the stuttered cadence of shouting, and the pounding of feet. The guard must have given the alarm somehow.

“We’ve got to hide. ” Julian pulls me toward the wardrobe. Inside it smells like mouse droppings and mold.

I swing the wardrobe doors closed behind me. The space inside is so small, Julian and I practically have to sit on top of each other. I ease my backpack onto my lap. My back is pressed up against his chest, and I can feel its rise and fall. Despite everything, I’m glad he’s with me. I’m not sure I would have made it even this far on my own.

The keypad gives another buzz; the door of the stockroom bursts open, slamming against the wall. I flinch involuntarily, and Julian’s hands find my shoulders. He squeezes once, a quick pulse of reassurance.

“Goddammit! ” That’s Albino; the raspy voice, the anger running through his words, like a live wire. “How the hell did this happen? How did they—”

“They can’t have gone very far. They don’t have the code. ”

“Well, then, where the hell are they? Two goddamn kids, for shit’s sake. ”

“They might be hiding in one of the rooms, ” the other one, the not-Albino, says.

Another voice—female, this time, probably Piercing—chimes in. “Briggs is checking on it. The girl jumped Matt, tied him up. She has a knife. ”

“Damn it. ”

“They’re in the tunnels by now, ” the girl says. “Have to be. Matt must have given up the code. ”

“Does he say he did? ”

“Well, he wouldn’t say it, would he? ”

“All right, look. ” Albino again; he’s obviously the one in charge. “Ring, you search the containment rooms with Briggs. We’ll clear out to the tunnels. Nick, take east; I’ll get west with Don. Tell Kurt and Forest they’re on north, and I’ll find someone to cover south. ”

I’m tabulating names, numbers: So, we’re dealing with at least seven Scavengers. More than I expected.

Albino is saying: “I want those pieces of shit back here in the next hour. No way I’m losing payday over this, okay? Not because of some eleventh-hour screwup. ”

Payday. An idea squirms at the edges of my consciousness; but when I try to fixate on it, it blurs into fog. If it’s not about ransom, what kind of pay can the Scavengers be expecting? Maybe they’re assuming Julian will roll, give up the security info they’ll need to get into his house. But it’s an elaborate—and dangerous—procedure for a run-of-the-mill break-in, and it’s not standard Scavenger operating procedure, either. They don’t plan. They burn, and terrorize, and take.

And I still don’t see how I fit in.

Now there’s the sound of shuffling, of guns being loaded and straps being snapped into place. That’s when the fear comes gunning back: On the other side of a one-inch plywood door are three Scavengers with an army-style arsenal. For a second I think I might faint. It’s so hot and close. My shirt is soaked with sweat. We’ll never make it out of here alive. There’s no way. It’s not possible.

I close my eyes and think of Alex, of pressing close to him on the motorcycle and having the same certainty.

Albino says, “We’ll meet back here in an hour. Now go find those little shits and skewer them for me. ” Footsteps move toward the opposite corner. So—the red door must lead to the tunnels. The door opens and closes. Then there’s quiet.

Julian and I stay frozen. At one point I start to move, and he draws me back. “Wait, ” he whispers. “Just to be sure. ”

Now that there are no voices and no distractions, I’m uncomfortably aware of the heat from his skin, and the tickle of his breath on the back of my neck.

Finally I can’t take it anymore. “It’s fine, ” I say. “Let’s go. ”

We push out of the wardrobe, still moving cautiously, just in case there are any other Scavengers sniffing around.

“What now? ” Julian asks me, keeping his voice low. “They’re looking for us in the tunnels. ”

“We have to risk it, ” I say. “It’s the only way out of here. ” Julian looks away, relenting.

“Let’s load up, ” I say.

Julian moves to one of the shelves and starts pawing through a heap of clothing. He tosses a T-shirt back to me. “Here, ” he says. “Looks like it should fit. ”

I find a pair of clean jeans, too, a sports bra, and white socks, stripping down quickly behind the wardrobe. Even though I’m still dirty and sweaty, it feels amazing to put on clean clothes. Julian finds a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. They’re a little too big, so he holds them up with an electrical wire he uses as a belt. We stuff my backpack with granola bars and water, two flashlights, some packages of nuts, and jerky. I come across a shelf filled with medical supplies, and pack my bag with ointment and bandages and antibacterial wipes. Julian watches me wordlessly. When our eyes meet, I can’t tell what he’s thinking.

Underneath the medical supplies is a shelf empty but for a single wooden box. Curious, I squat down and swing open its lid. My breath catches in my throat.

ID cards. The box is filled with hundreds and hundreds of ID cards, rubber-banded together. There is a pile of DFA badges too, gleaming brightly under the lights.

“Julian, ” I say. “Look at this. ”

He stands next to me, staring wordlessly as I sift past all the laminated cards, a blur of faces, facts, identities.

“Come on, ” he says, after a minute. “We have to hurry. ”

I select a half-dozen ID cards quickly, trying to pick girls who look roughly my age, and rubber-band them together, slipping them into a pocket. I take a DFA badge too. It might be useful later.

Finally it’s time for the weapons. There are crates of them: old rifles heaped together like a tangle of thick thorns, gathering dust; well-palmed and well-oiled handguns; heavy clubs and boxes of ammunition. I pass Julian a handgun after checking to see that it’s loaded. I dump a box of bullets in my backpack.

“I’ve never shot one before, ” Julian says, handling it gingerly, as though he’s worried it will explode on its own. “Have you? ”

“A few times, ” I say. He sucks his lower lip into his mouth. “You take it, ” he says. I slip the handgun into my backpack, even though I don’t like the idea of being weighed down.

Knives, on the other hand, are useful, and not just for hurting people. I find a switchblade and stick it under the strap of the sports bra. Julian takes another switchblade, which he also pockets.

“Ready to go? ” he asks me, after I’ve shouldered my backpack.

That’s when it hits me: The shimmering worry at the edge of my thoughts swells and breaks over me. This is wrong—all wrong. This is too organized. There are too many rooms, too many weapons, too much order.

“They must have had help, ” I say, as the idea occurs to me for the first time. “The Scavengers could never have done this on their own. ”

“The who? ” Julian asks impatiently, casting an anxious look at the door.

I know we have to go, but I can’t move; a tingling feeling is working its way from my toes up into my legs. There’s another idea flickering in the back of my mind now—a brief impression, something seen or remembered. “Scavengers. They’re uncureds. ”

“Invalids, ” Julian says flatly. “Like you. ”

“No. Not like me, and not Invalids. Different. ” I squeeze my eyes shut and the memory crystallizes: pressing the point of my knife into the flesh below the Scavenger’s jaw, just above faint blue markings that looked somehow familiar…

“Oh my God. ” I open my eyes. My chest feels as though someone is pounding on it.

“Lena, we have to go. ” Julian reaches out to grab my arm, but I pull away from him.

“The DFA. ” I can barely croak out the words. “The guy—the guard back there, the one we tied up—he had a tattoo of an eagle and a syringe. That’s the DFA crest. ”

Julian stiffens. It’s as though a current has run through his whole body. “It must be a coincidence. ”

I shake my head. Words, ideas, are tumbling through my head, a stream: Everything flows one way. Everything makes sense: talk of payday; all this equipment; the tattoo; the box of badges. The complex, the security—all of it costs money. “They must be working together. I don’t know why, or what for, or—”

“No. ” Julian’s voice is low and steely. “You’re wrong. ”

“Julian—”

He cuts me off. “You’re wrong, do you understand me? It’s impossible. ”

I force myself not to look away from him, even though there’s something strange going on behind his eyes, a roiling and swirling that makes me feel dizzy, as though I’m standing on the edge of a cliff and in danger of falling.

That’s how we’re standing—frozen like that, a tableau—when the door bangs open and two Scavengers burst into the room.

For a second nobody moves, and I have just enough time to register the basics: one guy (middle-aged), one girl (blue-black hair, taller than I am), both of them unfamiliar. Maybe it’s the fear, but I fixate, too, on the strangest details: the way the man’s left eyelid droops, as though gravity is pulling on it, and the way the girl stands there, mouth open, so I can see her cherry-red tongue. She must have been sucking on something, I think. A lollipop or candy; my mind flies to Grace.

Then the room unfreezes, and the girl goes for her gun, and there’s no thinking anymore.

I lunge at her, knocking the gun from her hand before she has the chance to level it at me. Behind me, Julian shouts something. There’s a gunshot. I can’t look to see who fired. The girl swings at me, clipping me on the jaw with her fist. I’ve never been punched before, and it’s the shock of it, more than the pain, that stuns me. In that split second she manages to get her knife out, and the next thing I see is the blade whistling toward me. I duck, drive hard into her stomach with my shoulders.

She grunts. The momentum carries us both off our feet, and we tumble backward into a box of old shoes. The cardboard collapses under our weight. We’re grappling so close I can taste her hair, her skin in my mouth. First I’m on top, straining, then she is, flipping me down onto my back so my head slams against the concrete, her knees hard in my ribs, thighs gripping me so tight the air is getting squeezed from my lungs. She’s wrestling another knife free of her belt. I’m scrabbling on the floor for a weapon—any weapon—but she’s on me too hard, is gripping me too tightly, and my fingers are closing on air and concrete.

Julian and the man are locked in a shuffling embrace, both straining for an advantage, heads down, grunting. They swivel hard and hit a low wooden bookshelf filled with pots and pans. It teeters, teeters, and then falls: the pots spill everywhere, a cacophony of ringing and dinging metal. The girl glances backward and just that, that little shift, gives me enough room to move. I rocket my fist up, connecting with the side of her face. It can’t hurt too badly, but it sends her sideways and off me, and I’m up and rolling on top of her, ripping the knife out of her grip. My hatred and fear is flowing hard and electric and hot, and without thinking about it I lift the blade and drive it hard down into her chest. She jerks once, lets out a cry, and then goes still. My mind is a loop, an endless refrain: your-fault-your-fault-your-fault. There’s a mangled sobbing sound coming from somewhere, and it takes me a long time to realize I’m the one crying.

Then everything goes black for a moment—the pain comes a split second after the darkness—as the other Scavenger, the man, catches me on the side of my head with a baton. There’s a thunderous crack; I’m tumbling, and everything is a blur of disconnected images: Julian lying facedown near the toppled shelf; a grandfather clock in the corner I hadn’t noticed before; cracks in the concrete floor, expanding like a web to embrace me. Then a few seconds of nothing. Jump-cut: I’m on my back, the ceiling is revolving above me. I’m dying. Weirdly enough, I think of Julian. He put up a pretty good fight.

The man is on top of me, breathing hot and hard into my face. His breath smells like something spoiling in a closed place. A long, jagged cut runs under his eye—nice one, Julian—and some of his blood drips onto my face. I feel the razor-bite of a knife under my chin, and everything in my body freezes. I go absolutely still.

He’s staring at me with such hatred I suddenly feel very calm. I will die. He will kill me. The certainty relaxes me. I am sinking into a white snow. I close my eyes and try to picture Alex the way I used to dream of him, standing at the end of a tunnel. I wait for him to appear, to reach out his hands to me.

I’m fading in and out. I’m hovering above the ground; then I’m on the floor again. There’s the taste of swamp in my throat.

“You gave me no choice, ” the Scavenger pants out, and I snap my eyes open. There’s a note of something there—regret, maybe, or apology—that I didn’t anticipate. And with that, the hope comes rushing back, and the terror, too: Please-please-please-let-me-live.

But just then he inhales and tenses, and the point of the knife breaks through my skin and it’s too late—

Then he jerks, suddenly, on top of me.

The knife clatters out of his hand. His eyes roll up to the ceiling, terrible, a doll’s blank gaze. He falls forward slowly, on top of me, knocking the air out of my chest. Julian is standing above him, breathing hard, shaking. The handle of a knife is sticking out of the Scavenger’s back.

A dead man is lying on top of me. A hysterical feeling builds in my chest, then breaks, and suddenly I am babbling, “Get him off of me. Get him off of me! ”

Julian shakes his head, dazed. “I—I didn’t mean to. ”

“For God’s sake, Julian. Get him off of me! We have to go now. ”

He starts, blinks, and focuses on me. The Scavenger’s weight is crushing.

“Please, Julian. ”

Finally Julian moves. He bends down and heaves the body off me, and I scramble to my feet. My heart is racing and my skin is crawling; I have the desperate urge to bathe, to get all that death off me. The two dead Scavengers lie so close to each other they are almost touching. A butterfly pattern of blood spreads across the floor between them. I feel sick.

“I didn’t mean to, Lena. I just—I saw him on top of you and I grabbed a knife and I just…” Julian shakes his head. “It was an accident. ”

“Julian. ” I reach out and put my hands on his shoulders. “Look. You saved my life. ”

He closes his eyes for one second, then opens them again.

“You saved my life, ” I repeat. “Thank you. ”

He seems about to say something. Instead he nods and shoulders the backpack. I reach forward impulsively and seize his hand. He doesn’t pull away, and I’m glad. I need him to steady me. I need him to help keep me on my feet.

“Time to run, ” I say, and together we stumble out of the room and, finally, into the cool mustiness of the old tunnels, into the echoes, and the shadows, and the dark.

then

The temperature drops sharply on the way to the second encampment. Even when I sleep in the tents, I’m freezing. When it’s my turn to sleep outside, I often wake up with shards of ice webbed in my hair. Sarah is stoic, silent, and pale-faced.

Blue gets sick. The first day she wakes up sluggish. She has trouble keeping up, and at the end of our day of hiking, she falls asleep even before the fire is built, curling up on the ground like a small animal. Raven moves her into her tent. That night I wake to a muffled shouting. I sit up, startled. The night sky is clear, the stars razor-sharp and glittering. The air smells like snow.

There is rustling from Raven’s tent, some whimpering; the sound of whispered reassurances. Blue is having bad dreams.

The next morning, Blue comes down with a fever. There is no choice: She must walk anyway. The snow is coming, and we are still thirty miles from the second camp, and many more miles than that from the winter homestead.

She cries as she walks, stumbling more and more. We take turns carrying her—me, Raven, Hunter, Lu, and Grandpa. She is burning. Her arms around my neck are electric wires, pulsing with heat.

The next day, we reach the second encampment: an area of loose shale set underneath an old, half-tumbled-down brick wall, which forms a kind of barrier and shields us somewhat from the wind. We set to work digging up the food, pitching traps, and scavenging the area, which once must have been a decent-sized town, for canned goods and useful supplies. We’ll stay here for two days, possibly three, depending on how much we can find. Beyond the hooting of the owls and the rustling of nighttime creatures, we hear the distant sounds of rumbling trucks. We are less than ten miles from one of the inter-city highways.

It’s strange to think how close we have been to the valid places, established cities filled with food, clothing, medical supplies; and yet we may as well be in a different universe. The world is bifurcated now, folded cleanly in half like the pitched steep sides of a tent: the Valids and the Invalids live on different planes, in different dimensions.

Blue’s nighttime terrors get worse. Her cries are piercing; she babbles nonsense, a language of gibberish and dream-words. When it is time to start toward the third encampment—the clouds have moved in, heavy-knitted through the sky, and the light is the dull, dark gray of an imminent storm—she is almost unresponsive. Raven carries her that day; she won’t let anyone help, even though she, too, is weak, and often falls behind.

We walk in silence. We are weighed down by fear; it blankets us thickly, making it feel as though we are already walking through snow, because all of us know that Blue is going to die. Raven knows it too. She must.

That night Raven builds a fire and places Blue next to it. Even though Blue’s skin is burning, she shivers so hard that her teeth knock together. The rest of us move around the fire as quietly as possible; we are shadows in the smoke. I fall asleep outside, next to Raven, who stays awake to rake the fire and make sure Blue stays warm.

In the middle of the night, I wake up to the muffled sounds of crying. Raven is kneeling over Blue. My stomach caves, and I am filled with terror; I have never seen Raven cry before. I’m afraid to speak, to breathe, to move. I know that she must think everyone is asleep. She would never allow herself to cry otherwise.

But I can’t stay silent, either. I rustle loudly in my sleeping bag, and just like that the crying stops. I sit up.

“Is she…? ” I whisper. I can’t say the last word. Dead.

Raven shakes her head. “She’s not breathing very well. ”

“At least she’s breathing, ” I say. A long silence stretches between us. I’m desperate to fix this. I know, somehow, that if we lose Blue we lose a piece of Raven, too. And we need Raven, especially now that Tack is gone. “She’ll get better, ” I say, to comfort her. “I’m sure she’ll be okay. ”

Raven turns to me. The fire catches her eyes, makes them glow like an animal’s. “No, ” she says simply. “No, she won’t. ”

Her voice is so full of certainty, I can’t contradict her. For a moment, Raven doesn’t say anything else. Then she says, “Do you know why I named her Blue? ”

The question surprises me. “I thought you named her for her eyes. ”

Raven turns back toward the fire, hugging her knees. “I lived in Yarmouth, close to a border fence. A poor area. Nobody else wanted to live so close to the Wilds. Bad luck, you know. ”

A shiver snakes through me, and I suddenly feel very alert. Raven has never spoken of her life before the Wilds. She has always repeated that there is no such thing. No before.

“I was like everybody else, really. Just accepted what people told me and didn’t think too much about it. Only cureds go to heaven. Patrols are for my own protection. The uncured are dirty; they turn into animals. The disease rots you from inside. Stability is godliness and happiness. ” She shrugs, as though shaking off the memory of who she was. “Except that I wasn’t happy. I didn’t understand why. I didn’t understand why I couldn’t be like everybody else. ”

I think of Hana, spinning around once in her room, arms wide, saying, You think this is it? This is all there is?

“The summer I turned fourteen, they started new construction by the fence. They were projects, really, for the poorest families in Yarmouth: the badly matched ones, or families whose reputations had been ruined because of dissent, or even rumors of it—you know what it’s like. During the day, I used to play around the construction site. A bunch of us did. Of course, we had to be careful to stay separate, the boys and the girls. There was a line that divided us: Everything east of the waterline was ours, everything west of it was theirs. ” She laughs softly. “It seems like a dream now. But at the time it seemed like the most normal thing in the world. ”

“There was nothing to compare it to, ” I say, and Raven shoots me a quick glance, nodding sharply.

“Then there was a week of rain. Construction came to a standstill, and nobody wanted to explore the site. I didn’t mind the rain. I didn’t like to be at home very much. My dad was—” There’s a hitch in her voice, and she breaks off. “He wasn’t totally right after the procedure. It didn’t work correctly. There was disruption of the mood-regulating temporal lobes. That’s what they called it. He was mostly okay, like everybody else. But every so often he flew into rages…” For a while she stares at the fire, silent. “My mom helped us cover the bruises, put on makeup and stuff. We couldn’t tell anyone. We didn’t want too many people knowing that my dad’s cure hadn’t worked properly. People get hysterical; he could have been fired. My mom said people would make things difficult. So instead we hid it. Long sleeves in summertime. Lots of sick days. Lots of lies, too—falling down, bumping my head, hitting the door frame. ”

I have never imagined Raven as any younger than she is now. But I can see the wiry girl with the same fierce mouth, rubbing concealer over the bruises on her arms, shoulders, and face. “I’m sorry, ” I say. The words seem flimsy, ridiculous.

Raven clears her throat and squares her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter, ” she says quickly. She breaks a long, skinny twig into quarters and feeds it, one piece at a time, into the fire. I wonder whether she has forgotten about the original course of conversation—about Blue’s name—but then she starts speaking again.

“That week—the week of the rain—was one of my dad’s bad times. So I went out to the site a lot. One day, I was just picking around one of the foundations. It was all cinder block and pits; hardly any of the building had actually gotten done. And then I saw this little box. A shoe box. ” She sucks in a breath, and even in the dark I see her tense.

The rest of her story comes out in a rush: “Someone must have left it there, wedged in the space underneath a part of the foundation. Except the rain was so bad it had caused a miniature mudslide. The box had rolled out into the open. I don’t know why I decided to look inside. It was filthy. I thought I might find a pair of shoes, maybe some jewelry. ”

I know, now, where the story is going. I am walking toward the muddy box alongside her; I am lifting the water-warped cover. The horror and disgust is a mud too: It is rising, black and choking, inside of me.

Raven’s voice drops to a whisper. “She was wrapped in a blanket. A blue blanket with yellow lambs on it. She wasn’t breathing. I—I thought she was dead. She was … she was blue. Her skin, her nails, her lips, her fingers. Her fingers were so small. ”