pandemonium 15 страница

A way back, I think, but I don’t say it.

“I kept it. ” Julian twists one side of his mouth into a smile. “I cut a slit in my mattress; I used to store it in there, so my dad wouldn’t find it. I started reading it that day. ”

“Is it good? ” I ask him.

“It’s full of illegal things, ” Julian says slowly, as though he’s reevaluating the meaning of the words. His eyes slide away from mine, and for a moment there’s a heavy pause. Then his eyes click back to mine, and this time when he smiles, it’s full of light. “But yes. It’s good. It’s great, I think. ”

For some reason I laugh; just that, the way he says it, breaks up the tension in the room, makes everything seem easy and manageable. We were kidnapped; we were beaten and chased; we have no way to get home. We come from two different worlds, and we belonged to two different sides. But everything will be okay.

“I filled a bath for you, ” I say. “It should be hot by now. You can take clean clothes. ” I gesture to the shelves, neatly stacked and labeled: MEN’S SHIRTS, WOMEN’S PANTS, CHILDREN’S SHOES. Raven’s work, of course.

“Thanks. ” Julian grabs a new shirt and pants from the shelves, and, after a moment of hesitation, replaces Great Expectations among the books. Then he straightens up, hugging the clothes to his chest. “It’s not so bad here, you know? ”

I shrug. “We do what we can, ” I say, but I’m secretly pleased.

He starts to move around me, toward the bathing room. When we’re side by side he stops abruptly. His whole body stiffens. I see a tremor run through him, and for a terrifying second I think, Oh my God, he’s having an attack.

Then he says simply, “Your hair…”

“What? ” I’m so surprised I can barely croak out the word.

Julian’s not looking at me, but I can feel an alertness in his whole body, an absorption, and it makes me feel even more exposed than if he were staring.

“Your hair smells like roses, ” he says, and before I can respond, he wrenches away from me and into the hall, and I am left alone, with a fluttering in my chest.

While Julian bathes, I set out dinner for us. I’m too tired to light up the old woodstove, so I set out crackers, and open up two cans of beans, and one each of mushrooms and tomatoes; whatever doesn’t need to be cooked. There’s salted beef, too. I take only a small tin of it, even though I’m so hungry I could probably eat a whole cow myself. But we have to save for others. That is a rule.

There are no windows in Salvage and it is dark. I turn off the lantern; I don’t want to waste battery power. Instead I find a few thick candles—already burned down almost to stubs—and set those out on the floor. There is no table in Salvage. When I lived here with Raven and Tack, after Hunter had gone with the others even farther south, to Delaware, we ate like this every night, bent over a communal plate, knees bumping, shadows flickering on the walls. I think it was the happiest I’d been since leaving Portland.

From the bathing room I hear watery, sloshing sounds, and humming. Julian, too, is finding heaven in small things. I go to the front door and crack it. The sun is already setting. The sky is pale blue and threaded with pink and gold clouds. The metal detritus around Salvage—the junk and the shrapnel—smolders red. I think I see a flicker of movement to my left. It must be the cat again, picking its way through the junk.

“What are you looking at? ”

I whirl around, slamming the door accidentally. I didn’t hear Julian come up behind me. He is standing very close. I can smell his skin, soapy and yet somehow still boy. His hair curls wetly around his jawline.

“Nothing, ” I say, and then because he just stands there, staring at me, I say, “You look almost human. ”

“I feel almost human, ” he says, and runs a hand through his hair. He has found a plain white T-shirt and jeans that fit.

I’m glad Julian doesn’t ask too many questions about this homestead, and who stays here, and when it was built. I know he must be dying to. I light the candles and we sit cross-legged on the ground, and for a while we’re too busy eating to talk about much of anything. But afterward we do talk: Julian tells me about growing up in New York and asks me questions about Portland. He tells me about wanting to study mathematics in college, and I tell him about running cross-country.

We don’t talk about the cure, or the resistance, or the DFA, or what happens tomorrow, and for that hour while we’re sitting across from each other on the floor, I feel as though I have a real friend. He laughs easily, like Hana did. He’s a good talker, and an even better listener. I feel weirdly comfortable around him—more comfortable, even, than I did with Alex.

I don’t mean to think the comparison, but I do, and it’s there, and I stand up abruptly, while Julian is in the middle of a story, and carry the plates to the sink. Julian breaks off, and watches me clatter the dishes into the basin.

“Are you okay? ” Julian asks.

“Fine, ” I say too sharply. I hate myself in that moment, and I hate Julian, too, without knowing why. “Just tired. ”

That, at least, is true. I am suddenly more tired than I have ever been in my life. I could sleep forever; I could let sleep fall over me like snow.

“I’ll find us some blankets, ” Julian says, and stands up. I feel him hesitating behind me, and I pretend to be busy at the sink. I can’t bear to look at him right now.

“Hey, ” he says. “I never got to thank you. ” He coughs. “You saved my life down there—in the tunnels. ”

I shrug, keeping my back toward him. I am gripping the edges of the sink so tightly my knuckles are white. “You saved my life too, ” I say. “I almost got stuck by a Scavenger. ”

When he speaks again, I can tell that he’s smiling. “So I guess we saved each other. ”

I do turn around then; but Julian has already taken up a candle and disappeared with it into the hall, so I am left with the shadows.

Julian has selected two lower bunks, and made them up as best he can, with sheets that don’t quite fit and thin woolen blankets. He has placed my backpack at the foot of my bed. There are a dozen beds in the room, and yet he has chosen two right next to each other. I try not to think about what this means. He is sitting on his bunk, head ducked, wrestling off his socks. When I enter with the candle, he looks up at me, his face so full of open happiness that I almost drop the candle, and the flame sputters out. Now we are left in darkness.

“Can you find your way? ” he says.

“Yes. ” I feel my way toward his voice, using the other bunks to guide me.

“Easy. ” His hand skates across my back, briefly, as I pass him and find my own bunk. I lie down beneath the sheet and the woolen blanket. Both of them smell like mildew and, very faintly, like mouse shit, but I’m grateful for the warmth. The heat from the fire in the bathing room didn’t penetrate this far. When I exhale, small clouds of breath crystallize in the darkness. It will be hard to sleep. The exhaustion that hit after dinner has evaporated just as quickly as it came. My body is on high alert, full of a twinkling frost. I am incredibly aware of Julian’s breathing, his long body almost next to mine in the pitch dark. I can feel that he is awake too.

After a while he speaks. His voice is low, a little bit hoarse.

“Lena? ”

“Yeah? ” My heart is beating high and fast in my throat and chest. I hear Julian roll over to face me. We are only a few feet apart—that is how close the beds have been built together.

“Do you ever think about him? About the boy who infected you? ”

Images flash in the darkness: a crown of auburn hair, like autumn leaves burning; the blur of a body, a shape running next to me; a dream-figure. “I try not to, ” I say.

“Why not? ” Julian’s voice is quiet.

I say, “Because it hurts. ”

Julian’s breath is rhythmic, reassuring.

I ask, “Do you ever think of your brother? ”

There is a pause. “All the time, ” Julian says. Then, “They told me it would be better after I was cured. ” There are a few more moments of silence. Then Julian speaks again. “Can I tell you another secret? ”

“Yes. ” I pull my blanket tighter around my shoulders. My hair is still wet.

“I knew it wouldn’t work. The cure, I mean. I knew it would kill me. I—I wanted it to. ” The words come out in a low rush. “I’ve never told anyone that before. ”

Suddenly I could cry. I want to reach over and grab his hand. I want to tell him it’s okay, and feel the softness of his seashell ear against my lips. I want to curl up against him, as I would have done with Alex, and let myself breathe in his warm skin.

He is not Alex. You don’t want Julian. You want Alex. And Alex is dead.

But that’s not quite true. I want Julian, too. My body is filled with aching. I want Julian’s lips on mine, full and soft; and his warm hands on my back and in my hair. I want to lose myself in him, dissipate into his body, feel our skin melting together.

I squeeze my eyes shut, willing away the thought. But with my eyes closed, Julian and Alex melt together. Their faces merge and then separate, then collapse again, like images reflected in a stream, passing over each other until I am no longer sure which of them I am reaching for—in the dark, in my head.

“Lena? ” Julian asks again, this time even more quietly. He makes my name sound like music. He has moved closer to me. I can feel him, the long lines of his body, a place where the darkness has been displaced. I have shifted too, without meaning to. I am on the very edge of my bed, as close to him as possible. But I won’t roll over to face him. I will myself still. I freeze my arms and legs, and try to freeze my heart, too.

“Yes, Julian? ”

“What does it feel like? ”

I know what he is talking about, but still I ask, “What does what feel like? ”

“The deliria. ” He pauses. Then I hear him slide slowly out of bed. He is kneeling in the space between our bunks. I cannot move or breathe. If I turn my head, our lips will be six inches apart. Less. “What does it feel like to be infected? ”

“I—I can’t describe it. ” I force the words out. Can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t breathe. His skin smells like smoke from a wood fire, like soap, like heaven. I imagine tasting his skin; I imagine biting his lips.

“I want to know. ” His words are a whisper, barely audible. “I want to know with you. ”

Then his fingers are tracing my forehead, ever so gently—his touch, too, is a whisper, the lightest breath, and I am still paralyzed, frozen. Over the bridge of my nose, and over my lips—the slightest bit of pressure here, so I taste the saltiness of his skin, feel the ridges and swirls of his thumb on my lower lip—and then over my chin, and around my jaw, and up to my hair, and I am full of a roaring hot whiteness that roots me to the bed, holds me in place.

“I told you”—Julian swallows; his voice is full, throaty now—“I told you I once saw two people kissing. Will you…? ”

Julian doesn’t finish his question. He doesn’t have to. All at once my whole body unfreezes; the whiteness, the heat, breaks in my chest and loosens my lips and all I have to do is turn my head, just a little, and his lips are there.

Then we are kissing: slowly, at first, because he doesn’t know how and it has been so long for me. I taste salt and sugar and soap; I run my tongue along his lower lip and he freezes for a second. His lips are warm and full and wonderful. His tongue traces my lips and then suddenly we both let go; and we are breathing into each other, and he is holding my face with his hands, and I am riding a wave of pure joy—I could almost cry, I’m so happy. His chest is solid, pressed against mine. I have drawn him up into the bed without meaning to, and I don’t ever want it to end. I could kiss him and feel his fingers in my hair, listen to him say my name, forever.

For the first time since Alex died, I have found my way to a truly free space: a space unbounded by walls and uninhibited by fear. This is flying.

And then, suddenly, Julian breaks off and pulls away. “Lena, ” he gasps hoarsely, as if he has just been running a long distance.

“Don’t say it. ” I still feel like I could cry. There is so much fragility in kissing, in other people: It is all glass. “Don’t ruin it. ”

But he says it anyway. “What’s going to happen tomorrow? ”

“I don’t know. ” I draw his head down toward the pillow next to mine. For a second I think I sense a presence next to us in the dark, a moving figure, and I whip my head to the left. Nothing. I am imagining ghosts beside us. I am thinking of Alex. “Don’t worry about that now, ” I say, as much to myself as to Julian.

The bed is very narrow. I turn onto my side, away from Julian, but when he puts his arm around me I relax backward into him, cupped in the long curve of his body as though I have been shaped for it. I want to run away and cry. I want to beg Alex—wherever he is, whatever otherworld now holds him—for forgiveness. I want to kiss Julian again.

But I do not do any of those things. I lie still, and feel Julian’s steady heartbeat through my back until my heart calms in response, and I let him hold me, and just before I fall asleep, I say a brief prayer that the morning never comes.

But the morning does come. It finds its way in through the cracks in the plywood, the fissures in the roof: a murky grayness, a slight ebbing of the dark. My first moments of awareness are confused: I believe I am with Alex. No. Julian. His arm is around me, his breath hot on my neck. I have kicked the sheets to the bottom of the bed in the night. I see a flicker of movement from the hall; the cat has gotten into the house somehow.

Then suddenly, a driving certainty—no, I closed the door last night, I locked it—and terror squeezing my chest.

I sit up, say, “Julian—”

And then everything explodes: They are streaming through the door, bursting through the walls, yelling, screaming—police and regulators in gas masks and matching gray uniforms. One of them grabs me and another one pulls Julian off the bed—he is awake now, calling to me, but I can’t hear over the tumult of sound, over the screaming that must be coming from me. I grab the backpack, still balled at the foot of my bed, and swing at the regulator but there are three more, flanking me in the narrow space between beds, and it’s hopeless. I remember the gun: still in the bathing room, and useless to me now. Someone pulls me by the collar and I choke. Another regulator wrenches my arms behind my back and cuffs me, then pushes me forward, so I am half dragged, half marched through Salvage and out into the bright, streaming sunshine, where more police are gathered, more members of the SWAT team carrying guns and gas masks—frozen, silent, waiting.

Setup. Those are the words drilling through me, through my panic. Setup. Has to be.

“Got ’em, ” someone announces into a walkie-talkie, and all of a sudden the air comes to life, vibrates with sound: People are shouting to one another, gesturing. Two police officers gun the engines of their motorcycles, and the stink of exhaust is everywhere. Walkie-talkies cackle around us—buzzing, a cacophony.

“Ten-four, ten-four. We got ’em. ”

“Twenty miles outside of regulated land … looked like some kind of hideout. ”

“Unit 508 to HQ…”

Julian is behind me, surrounded by four regulators; he has been cuffed too.

“Lena! Lena! ” I hear him calling my name. I try to turn around and am shoved forward by the regulator behind me.

“Keep moving, ” the regulator says, and I’m surprised to hear a woman’s voice, distorted through the gas mask.

A caravan of vehicles is parked on the road Julian and I walked, and there are more police officers here, and more members of the SWAT team. Some of them are in full gear, but others are leaning casually against their cars, dressed in civilian clothing, chatting and blowing on Styrofoam mugs of coffee. They barely glance at me as I am hauled, struggling, down the line of cars. I’m full of blind rage, a fury that makes me want to spit. This is routine for them. They will go home at the end of the day, to their orderly houses and their orderly families, and they will give no thought to the girl they saw screaming and kicking and dragged away, probably to her death.

I see a black town car; Thomas Fineman’s white, narrow face watches me impassively as I go by. If I could shake a fist loose I would plunge it through the window. I’d watch all the glass explode into his face, see how calm he would stay then.

“Hey, hey, hey! ” A policeman is waving to us from up ahead, gesturing with his walkie-talkie toward a police van. Black words stand out vividly against its sparkling white paint: CITY OF NEW YORK, DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION, REFORM, AND PURIFICATION. In Portland, we had a single prison, the Crypts. It housed all the criminals and resisters, plus the resident loonies, many of them driven crazy by botched or early cures. In New York and its sister cities there is a web of interrelated jails, a network stretching all across the sister cities, with a name almost as bad as the one Portland gave its prison: the Craps.

“Over here, this way! ” Now another policeman is waving us over to a different van, and there is a momentary pause. The whole scene is a mass of confusion, more chaotic than the raids I’ve seen. There are too many people. There are too many cars choking the air with exhaust, too many radios buzzing at once, people talking and shouting over one another. A regulator and a member of the SWAT team are arguing about jurisdiction.

My head hurts; the sun is burning my eyes. All I see is glittering, glaring sunshine; a metal river of cars and motorcycles, exhaust turning the air to mirage, to thickness and smoke.

Suddenly panic crests inside of me. I don’t know what happened to Julian. He isn’t behind me anymore, and I can’t see him in the crowd. “Julian! ” I scream out, and get no answer, although one policeman turns at the sound of my voice and then, shaking his head, hocks a brown glob of saliva onto the ground by my feet. I’m fighting against the woman behind me again, trying to tear myself out of her grasp, but her hands are a vise around my wrists and the more I struggle, the tighter she holds.

“Julian! Julian! ”

No response. The panic has turned to a solid lump, and it is clotting my throat. No, no, no, no. Not again.

“All right, keep going. ” The woman’s distorted gas-mask voice urges me forward. She pushes me past the line of waiting cars. The regulator who has been leading the procession is speaking rapidly into his walkie-talkie, some argument with Command about who is to take me in, and he barely glances at us as we thread through the crowd. I’m still fighting the woman behind me with every bit of strength I have, even though the way she is holding my arms sends a fiery pain from my wrists to my shoulders, and even if I did break free, I’m still handcuffed and wouldn’t get more than a few feet without getting tackled.

But the rock in my throat is there, and the panic, and the certainty. I need to find Julian. I need to save him.

Beneath that, older words, more urgent words, continue to surge through me: Not again, not again, not again.

“Julian! ” I strike backward with my foot and connect with the woman’s shins. I hear her curse, and for just a second her grip loosens. But then she is once again restraining me, jerking my wrists so sharply that I gasp.

And then, as I tipped backward to give relief to my arms, trying to catch my breath, trying not to cry, she bends forward a little so the mouth of her mask bumps once against my ears.

“Lena, ” she says, low. “Please. I don’t want to hurt you. I’m a freedom fighter. ”

That word freezes me: That’s a secret code sympathizers and Invalids use to indicate their allegiances. I stop trying to fight her off, and her grip relaxes. But she continues to propel me forward, past the caravan of cars. She walks quickly, and with such purpose that nobody stops her or interferes.

Up ahead I see a white van straddling the gutter that runs next to the dirt road. It is also stenciled with the CRAP sign, but the markings seem slightly off—they are a tiny bit too small, I realize, although you’d have to be staring to notice it. We’ve rounded a bend in the road and are concealed from the rest of the security detail by an enormous pile of twisted metal and shattered concrete.

Suddenly the woman releases my arms. She springs forward to the van and produces a set of keys from one of her pockets. She swings open the back doors; the interior of the van is dark, empty, and smells faintly sour.

“In, ” she says.

“Where are you taking me? ” I’m sick of this helplessness; for days I’ve been left with a swirling confusion, a sense of secret allegiances and complex plots.

“Somewhere safe, ” she says, and even through the mask I can hear the urgency in her voice. I have no choice but to believe her. She helps me into the van and instructs me to turn around while she unlocks my handcuffs. Then she tosses in my backpack and slams the doors shut. My heart flips a little as I hear her slide a lock into place. I’m trapped now. But it can’t be worse than what I would have faced outside the van, and my stomach bottoms as I think of Julian. I wonder what will happen to him. Maybe—I feel a brief flicker of hope—they’ll go easy on him, because of his dad. Maybe they’ll decide it was all just a mistake.

And it was a mistake: the kissing, the way we touched.

Wasn’t it?

The van lurches forward, sending me tumbling onto an elbow. The van floor rattles and shakes as we bump along the pitted road. I try to mentally chart our progress: We must be near the dump now, headed past the old train station and toward the tunnel that goes into New York. After ten minutes we roll to a stop. I crawl to the front of the truck bed and press my ear against the pane of glass—painted black, completely opaque—that separates me from the driver’s seat. The woman’s voice filters back to me. I can make out a second voice, too: a man’s voice. She must be talking to Border Control.

The waiting is an agony. They’ll be running her SVS card, I think. But the seconds tick away, and stretch into minutes. The woman is silent. Maybe SVS is backed up. Even though it’s cold in the cab, my underarms are damp with sweat.

Then the second voice is back, barking a command. The engine cuts off, and the silence is sudden and extreme. The driver’s door opens and slams shut. The van sways a little.

Why is she getting out? My mind is racing: If she is a part of the resistance, she may have been caught, recognized. They’re sure to find me next. Or—and I’m not sure which is worse—they won’t find me. I’ll be trapped here; I’ll starve to death, or suffocate. Suddenly I’m having trouble breathing. The air is thick and full of pressure. More sweat trickles down my neck and beads on my scalp.

Then the driver’s door opens, the engine guns to life, and the van sails forward. I exhale, almost a sob. I can somehow feel it as we enter the Holland Tunnel: the long, dark throat around the van, a watery, echoey place. I imagine the river above us, flecked with gray. I think of Julian’s eyes, the way they change like water reflecting different kinds of light.

The van hits a pothole, and my stomach lurches as I rocket into the air and down onto the floor again. Then a climb, and through the metal walls I can hear sporadic sounds of traffic: the distant whirring of a siren, a horn bleating nearby. We must be in New York. I’m expecting the van to stop at any minute—every time we do stop, I half expect the doors to slide open and for the woman in the mask to haul me into the Craps, even though she told me she was on my side—but another twenty minutes passes. I have stopped trying to keep track of where we are. Instead I curl up in a ball on the dirty floor, which vibrates under my cheek. I am still nauseous. The air smells like body odor and old food.

Finally the van slows, and then stops altogether. I sit up, heart pounding in my chest. I hear a brief exchange—the woman says something I can’t make out, and somebody else says, “All clear. ” Then there is a tremendous creaking, as of old doors scraping back on their hinges. The van advances forward another ten or twenty feet, then stops again. The engine goes silent. I hear the driver climb out of the van and I tense, gripping my backpack in one hand, preparing to fight or run.

The doors swing open, and as I slide cautiously out of the back, disappointment is a fist in my throat. I was hoping for some clues, some answer to why I’ve been taken and by whom. Instead I am in a featureless room, all concrete and exposed steel beams. There is an enormous double door, wide enough to accommodate the van, in one wall; in another wall is a second single door, this one made of metal and painted the same dull gray as everything else. At least there are electric lights. That means we are in an approved city, or close to one.

The driver has removed her gas mask but is still wearing a tight-fitting nylon cloth over her head, with cut-away holes for her mouth, nose, and eyes.

“What is this place? ” I ask as I straighten up and swing the backpack onto one shoulder. “Who are you? ”

She doesn’t answer me. She is watching me intently. Her eyes are gray, a stormy color. Suddenly she reaches out, as though to touch my face. I jerk backward, bumping against the van. She, too, takes a step backward, balling up her fist.

“Wait here, ” she says. She turns to leave through the double doors, the ones that admitted us, but I grab her wrist.

“I want to know what this is about, ” I say. I am tired of plain walls and closed rooms and masks and games. I want answers. “I want to know how you found me, and who sent you to get me. ”

“I’m not the one who can give you the answers you need, ” she says, and tries to shake me off.

“Take off your mask, ” I say. For a second, I think I see a flash of fear in her eyes. Then it passes.

“Let go of me. ” Her voice is quiet, but firm.

“Fine, ” I say. “I’ll take it off myself. ”

I reach for her mask. She swats me away but not quickly enough. I manage to lift a corner of the fabric back, peeling it away from her neck, where a small tattooed number runs vertically from her ear toward her shoulder: 5996. But before I can wrangle the mask any higher, she gets hold of my wrist and pushes me away.

“Please, Lena, ” she says, and again I hear the urgency in her voice.

“Stop saying my name. ” You don’t have a right to say my name. Anger surges in my chest, and I swing at her with my backpack, but she ducks. Before I can go at her again, the door opens behind me and I spin around as Raven strides into the room.

“Raven! ” I cry out, running to her. I throw my arms around her impulsively. We’ve never hugged before, but she allows me to squeeze her tightly for several seconds before she pulls away. She’s grinning.

“Hey, kid. ” She runs a finger lightly along the cut on my neck, and scans my face for other injuries. “You look like shit. ”

Tack is behind her, leaning in the doorway. He’s also smiling, and I can barely keep myself from flying at him, too. I settle for reaching forward and squeezing the hand he offers me.

“Welcome back, Lena, ” he says. His eyes are warm.

“I don’t understand. ” I’m overwhelmingly happy; relief makes waves in my chest. “How did you find me? How did you know where I would be? She wouldn’t tell me anything, I—” I turn around, gesturing to the masked woman, but she is gone. She must have ducked out the double doors.

“Easy, easy. ” Raven laughs, and slings an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get you something to eat, okay? You’re probably tired, too. Are you tired? ” She’s piloting me past Tack, through the open door. We must be in some kind of a converted warehouse. I hear other voices, talking and laughing, through the flimsy dividing walls.

“I was kidnapped, ” I say, and now the words bubble out of me. I need to tell Tack and Raven; they’ll understand, they’ll be able to explain and make sense of everything. “After the demonstration I followed Julian into the old tunnels. And there were Scavengers, and they attacked me—only I think the Scavengers must have been working with the DFA, and—”