pandemonium 16 страница

Raven and Tack exchange a glance. Tack speaks up soothingly. “Listen, Lena. We know you’ve been through a lot. Just relax, okay? You’re safe now. Eat up, and rest up. ” They’ve led me into a room dominated by a large metal folding table. On it are foods I haven’t had in forever: fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, cheese. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The air smells like coffee, good and strong.

But I can’t sit and eat yet. First, I need to know. And I need them to know—about the Scavengers, and the people who live underground, and the raid this morning, and about Julian.

They can help me rescue Julian: The thought comes to me suddenly, a deliverance. “But—, ” I start to protest. Raven cuts me off, laying a hand on my shoulder.

“Tack’s right, Lena. You need to get your strength up. And we’ll have plenty of time to talk on the road. ”

“On the road? ” I repeat, looking from Raven to Tack. They are both smiling at me, still, and it makes a nervous prickling feeling in my chest. It is a form of indulgence, the smile doctors give children when they administer painful shots. Now I promise, this will only pinch for a second. . . .

“We’re heading north, ” Raven says in a too-cheerful voice. “Back to the homestead. Well, not the original homestead—we’ll spend the summer outside of Waterbury. Hunter has been in touch. He heard about a big homestead by the perimeter of the city, lots of sympathizers on the other side, and—”

My mind has gone blank. “We’re leaving? ” I say dumbly, and Raven and Tack exchange another look. “We can’t leave now. ”

“We have no other choice, ” Raven says, and I start to feel anger rising in my chest. She’s using her singsong voice, like she’s speaking to a baby.

“No. ” I shake my head, ball my fists against my thighs. “No. Don’t you get it? I think the Scavengers are working with the DFA. I was kidnapped with Julian Fineman. They locked us underground for days. ”

“We know, ” Tack says, but I barrel on, coasting on the fury now, letting it build.

“We had to fight our way out. They almost—they almost killed me. Julian saved me. ” The rock in my stomach is migrating up into my throat. “And now they’ve taken Julian, and who knows what they’ll do. Probably drag him straight to the labs, or maybe throw him in prison, and—”

“Lena. ” Raven puts her hands on my shoulders. “Calm down. ”

But I can’t. I’m shaking from panic and rage. Tack and Raven must understand; they need to. “We have to do something. We have to help him. We have to—”

“Lena. ” Raven’s voice turns sharper, and she gives me a shake. “We know about the Scavengers, okay? We know they’ve been working with the DFA. We know all about Julian, and everything that happened underground. We’ve been scouting for you around all the tunnel exits. We were hoping you would make it out days ago. ”

This, at last, makes me shut up. Raven and Tack have finally stopped smiling. Instead they are looking at me with twin expressions of pity.

“What do you mean? ” I pull away from Raven’s touch and stumble a bit; when Tack draws a chair out from the table, I thud into it. Neither of them answers right away, so I say, “I don’t understand. ”

Tack takes a chair across from me. He examines his hands, then says slowly, “The resistance has known for a while that the Scavengers were being paid off by the DFA. They were hired to pull off that stunt you saw at the demonstration. ”

“That doesn’t make any sense. ” I feel like my brain is covered in thick paste; my thoughts flounder, come to nothing. I remember the screaming, the shooting, the Scavengers’ glittering blades.

“It makes perfect sense. ” Raven speaks up. She is still standing, keeping her arms wrapped around her chest. “Nobody in Zombieland knows the difference between the Scavengers and the rest of us—the other Invalids. We’re all the same to them. So the Scavengers come and act like animals, and the DFA shows the whole country how terrible we are without the cure, how important it is to get everyone treated for deliria immediately. Otherwise the world goes to hell. The Scavengers are the proof. ”

“But—” I think of the Scavengers swarming into the crowd; faces monstrous with screaming. “But people died. ”

“Two hundred, ” Tack says quietly. He still won’t look at me. “Two dozen officers. The rest citizens. They didn’t bother to tally the Scavengers who were killed. ” He shrugs his shoulders, a quick convulsion. “Sometimes it is necessary that individuals are sacrificed for the health of the whole. ” That’s straight out of a DFA pamphlet.

“Okay, ” I say. My hands are shaking, and I grip the sides of my chair. I’m still having trouble thinking straight. “Okay. So what are we going to do about it? ”

Raven’s eyes flick to Tack, but he keeps his head bowed. “We’ve already done something about it, Lena, ” she says, still in that baby-voice, and once again I get a weird prickling in my chest. There is something they aren’t telling me—something bad.

“I don’t understand. ” My voice sounds hollow.

There are a few seconds of heavy silence. Then Tack sighs, and says over his shoulder to Raven, “I told you, we should have clued her in from the start. I told you we should have trusted her. ”

Raven says nothing. A muscle twitches in her jaw. And suddenly I remember coming downstairs a few weeks before the rally and hearing Tack and Raven fighting.

I just don’t understand why we can’t be honest with each other. We’re supposed to be on the same side.

You know that’s unrealistic, Tack. It’s for the best. You have to trust me.

You’re the one who isn’t trusting. . . .

They were fighting about me.

“Clued me in to what? ” The prickling is becoming a heavy thud, painful and sharp.

“Go ahead, ” Raven says to Tack. “If you want to tell her so badly, be my guest. ” Her voice is biting, but I can tell, underneath that, she’s afraid. She’s afraid of me and how I will react.

“Tell me what? ” I can’t stand this anymore—the cryptic glances, the impenetrable web of half phrases.

Tack passes a hand over his forehead. “Okay, look, ” he says, speaking quickly now, as though eager to end the conversation. “It wasn’t a mistake that you and Julian were taken by the Scavengers, okay? It wasn’t an error. It was planned. ”

Heat creeps up my neck. I lick my lips. “Who planned it? ” I say, though I know: It must have been the DFA. I answer my own question, saying, “The DFA, ” just as Tack grimaces and says, “We did. ”

Ticking silence. One, two, three, four. I count off the seconds, take a deep breath, close my eyes, and reopen them. “What? ”

Tack actually flushes. “We did. The resistance planned it. ”

More silence. My throat and mouth have gone to dust. “I—I don’t understand. ”

Tack is avoiding my eyes again. He walks his fingers across the edge of the table, back and forth, back and forth. “We paid the Scavengers to take Julian. Well, the resistance did. One of the higher-ups in the movement has been posing as a DFA agent—not that it matters. The Scavengers will do anything for a price, and just because they’ve been in the DFA’s pocket for a while now doesn’t mean their loyalties aren’t for sale. ”

“Julian, ” I repeat. Numbness is creeping through my body. “And what about me? ”

Tack hesitates for just a fraction of a second. “They were paid to hold you, too. They were told that Julian was being tailed by a girl. They were told to hold both of you together. ”

“And they thought they’d get a ransom for us, ” I say. Tack nods. My voice sounds foreign, as though it’s coming from far away. I can hardly breathe. I manage to gasp out, “Why? ”

Raven has been standing still, staring at the ground. Suddenly she bursts out, “You were never in any danger. Not really. The Scavengers knew they wouldn’t get paid if they touched you. ”

I think back to the argument I overheard in the tunnels, the wheedling voice urging Albino to stick with the original plan, the way they tried to pump Julian for information about his security codes. The Scavengers were obviously getting impatient. They wanted their payday sooner.

“Never in any danger? ” I repeat. Raven won’t look at me either. “I—I almost died. ” Anger is spreading hot tentacles through my chest. “We were starved. We were jumped. Julian was beaten half to death. We had to fight—”

“And you did. ” Finally Raven looks at me, and to my horror her eyes are shining; she looks happy. “You escaped, and you got Julian out safely too. ”

For several seconds I can’t speak. I am burning, burning, burning, as the true meaning of everything that happened slams into me. “This … this was all a test? ”

“No, ” Tack says firmly. “No, Lena. You have to understand. That was part of it, but—”

I push back from the table, turn away from the sound of his voice. I want to curl into a ball. I want to scream, or hit something.

“It was bigger than that, what you did. What you helped us do. And we would have made sure you were safe. We have our own people underground. They’d been told to look out for you. ”

The rat-man and Coin. No wonder they helped us. They were paid to.

I can’t speak anymore. I am having trouble swallowing. It takes all my energy just to stay on my feet. The containment, the fear, the bodyguards who were killed in the subway—the resistance’s fault. Our fault. A test.

Raven speaks up again, her voice filled with quiet urgency: a salesman trying to convince you to buy, buy, buy. “You did a great thing for us, Lena. You’ve helped the resistance in more ways than you know. ”

“I did nothing, ” I spit out.

“You did everything. Julian was tremendously important to the DFA. A symbol of everything the DFA stands for. Head of the youth group. That’s six hundred thousand people alone, young people, uncured. Unconvinced. ”

My blood goes all at once to ice. I turn around slowly. Tack and Raven are both looking at me hopefully, as though they expect me to be pleased. “What does Julian have to do with this? ” I say.

Once again Raven and Tack exchange a glance. This time I can read what they are thinking: I am being difficult, obtuse. I should understand this by now.

“Julian has everything to do with it, Lena, ” Raven says. She sits down at the table, next to Tack. They are the patient parents; I am the troublemaking teen. We could be discussing a flunked test. “If Julian’s out of the DFA, if he’s cast out—”

“Even better, if he chooses out, ” Tack interjects, and Raven spreads her hands as if to say, Obviously.

She continues, “If he’s cast out or he wants out, either way, it sends a powerful message to all the uncureds who have followed him and seen him as a leader. They might rethink their loyalties—some of them will, at least. We have a chance to bring them over to our side. Think about that, Lena. That’s enough to make a real difference. That’s enough to turn the tide in our favor. ”

My mind is moving slowly, as though it has been encased in ice. This morning’s raids—planned. I thought it was a setup, and I was right. The resistance was behind it: They must have tipped off the police and the regulators. They gave up the location of one of their own homesteads just to ensnare Julian.

And I helped ensnare him. I think of his father’s face, floating in the window of the black town car: tight, grim, determined. I think of the story Julian told me about his older brother—how his father locked him in a basement, injured, to die alone and in the dark. And that was just for participating in a demonstration.

Julian was in bed with me. Who knows what they’ll do to him as punishment.

Blackness surges inside of me. I close my eyes and see Alex and Julian’s faces, merging together and then separating, like they did in my dream. It’s happening again. It’s happening again, and again it’s my fault.

“Lena? ” I hear a chair scrape away from the table and suddenly Raven is next to me, slipping an arm around my shoulders. “Are you okay? ”

“Can we get you something? ” Tack asks.

I shake out of Raven’s grasp. “Get off of me. ”

“Lena, ” Raven croons. “Come on. Have a seat. ” She is reaching for me again.

“I said, get off of me. ” I pull away from her, stumble backward, bump against a chair.

“I’m going to get some water, ” Tack says. He pushes away from the table and heads into a hall that must lead to the rest of the warehouse. For a moment I hear a surge in conversation, raucous, welcoming; then silence.

My hands are shaking so badly I can’t even squeeze them into fists. Otherwise I might hit Raven in the face.

She sighs. “I understand why you’re mad. Maybe Tack was right. Maybe we should have told you the plan from the beginning. ” She sounds tired.

“You—you used me, ” I spit out.

“You said you wanted to help, ” Raven says simply.

“No. Not like that. ”

“You don’t get to choose. ” Raven takes a seat again and lays her hands flat on the table. “That isn’t how it works. ”

I can feel her willing me to yield, to sit, to understand. But I can’t, and I won’t.

“What about Julian? ” I force myself to meet her eyes, and I think I see her flinch just slightly.

“He’s not your problem. ” Raven’s voice turns slightly harder.

“Yeah? ” I think of Julian’s fingers running through my hair, the encircling warmth of his arms, how he whispered, I want to know. I want to know with you. “What if I want to make him my problem? ”

Raven and I stare at each other. Her patience is running out. Her mouth is set in a line, angry and tight. “There’s nothing you can do, ” she says shortly. “Don’t you get it? Lena Morgan Jones doesn’t exist anymore. Poof—she’s gone. There’s no way back in for her. There’s no way in for you. Your job is done. ”

“So we leave Julian to be killed? Or thrown in prison? ”

Once again Raven sighs, as though I’m a spoiled child throwing a tantrum. “Julian Fineman is the head of the youth division of the DFA—, ” she begins again.

“I know all that, ” I snap. “You made me memorize it, remember? So, what? He gets sacrificed for the cause? ”

Raven looks at me in silence: an assent.

“You’re just as bad as they are, ” I squeeze out, through the tightness of the fury in my throat, the heavy stone of disgust. That is the DFA’s motto too: Some will die for the health of the whole. We have become like them.

Raven stands again and moves toward the hallway. “You can’t feel guilty, Lena, ” she says. “This is war, you know. ”

“Don’t you get it? ” I fire back at her the very words she used on me a long time ago, back at the burrow, after Miyako died. “You can’t tell me what to feel. ”

Raven shakes her head. I see a flash of pity on her face. “You—you really liked him, then? Julian? ”

I can’t answer. I can only nod.

Raven rubs her forehead tiredly and sighs again. For a moment I think she is going to relent. She’ll agree to help me. I feel a surge of hope.

But when she looks at me again, her face is composed, emotionless. “We leave tomorrow to go north, ” she says simply, and just like that the conversation is ended. Julian will go to the gallows for us, and we will smile, and dream of victory—hazy-red, soon to come, a blood-colored dawn.

The rest of the day is a fog. I drift from room to room. Faces turn to me, expectant, smiling, and turn away again when I do not acknowledge them. These must be other members of the resistance. I recognize only one of them, a guy Tack’s age who came once to Salvage to bring us our new identity cards. I look for the woman who brought me here but see no one who resembles her, hear no one who speaks the way she did.

I drift and I listen. I gather we are twenty miles north of New York, and just south of a city named White Plains. We must be skimming our electricity from them: We have lights, a radio, even an electric coffeemaker. One of the rooms is piled with tents and rolled-up sleeping bags. Tack and Raven have prepared us for the move. I have no idea how many of the other resisters will be joining us; presumably, at least some of them will stay. Other than the folding table and chairs, and a room full of sleeping cots, there is no furniture. The radio and the coffeemaker sit directly on the cement floor, nested in a tangle of wires. The radio stays on for most of the day, piping thinly through the walls, and no matter where I go, I can’t escape it.

“Julian Fineman … head of the youth division of Deliria-Free America and son of the group’s president…”

“… himself a victim of the disease…”

Every radio station is the same. They all tell an identical story.

“… discovered today…”

“… currently under house arrest…”

“Julian … resigned his position and has refused the cure…”

A year ago, the story would not have been reported at all. It would have been suppressed, the way the very existence of Julian’s brother was no doubt slowly and systematically expunged from public records after his death. But things have changed since the Incidents. Raven is right about one thing: It is war now, and armies need symbols.

“… emergency convention of the Regulatory Committee of New York … swift judgment … scheduled for execution by lethal injection at ten a. m. tomorrow…”

“… some are calling the measures unnecessarily harsh … public outcry against the DFA and the RCNY…”

I sink into a dullness, a place of suspension: I can no longer feel anything. The anger has ebbed away, and so has the guilt. I am completely numb. Julian will die tomorrow. I helped him die.

This was the plan all along. It is no comfort to think that had he been cured, he would have in all probability died as well. My body is chilled, frozen to ice. At some point someone must have handed me a sweatshirt, because I am wearing one. But still I can’t get warm.

“… Thomas Fineman’s official statement…

“The DFA stands behind the Regulatory Committee’s decision… They say: ‘The United States is at a critical juncture, and we can no longer tolerate those who want to do us harm … we must set a precedent…’”

The DFA and the United States of America can no longer afford to be lenient. The resistance is too strong. It is growing—underground, in tunnels and burrows, in the dark, damp places they cannot reach.

So they will make a bloody example for us in public, in the light.

At dinner, I manage to eat something, and even though I still can’t bring myself to look at Raven and Tack, I can tell they take this as a sign that I have relented. They are forced-cheerful, too loud, telling jokes and stories to the four or five other resisters who have assembled around the table. Still, the radio-voice infiltrates, seeps through the walls, like the sibilant hiss of a snake.

“… No other statement from either Julian or Thomas Fineman…”

After dinner, I go to the outhouse: a tiny shed fifty feet from the main building, across a short expanse of cracked pavement. It is the first time I’ve been outside all day, and the first chance I’ve had to look around. We are in some kind of old warehouse. It sits at the end of a long, winding concrete drive surrounded by woods on both sides. To the north I can make out the twinkling glow of city lights: This must be White Plains. And to the south, against the blush-pink evening sky, I can just detect a hazy, halo glow, the artificial crown of lights that indicates New York City. It must be around seven o’clock, still too early for curfew or mandatory blackout. Julian is somewhere among those lights, in that blur of people and buildings. I wonder whether he’s scared. I wonder whether he’s thinking of me.

The wind is cold but carries with it the smell of thawing earth and new growth: a spring smell. I think of our apartment in Brooklyn—packed up now, or perhaps ransacked by regulators and police. Lena Morgan Jones is dead, like Raven said, and now there will be a new Lena, just like every spring the trees bring forth new growth on top of the old, on top of the dead and the rot. I wonder who she will be.

I feel a sharp stab of sadness. I have had to give up so much, so many selves and lives already. I have grown up and out of the rubble of my old lives, of the things and people I have cared for: My mom. Grace. Hana. Alex.

And now Julian.

This is not who I wanted to be.

An owl hoots somewhere, sharply, in the gathering darkness, like a faint alarm. That’s when it really hits me, the certainty like a concrete wall going up inside of me. This is not what I wanted. This is not why I came to the Wilds, why Alex wanted me to come: not to turn my back and bury the people I care about, and build myself hard and careless on top of their bodies, as Raven does. That is what the Zombies do.

But not me. I have let too many things decay. I have given up on enough.

The owl hoots again, and now its cry sounds sharper, clearer. Everything seems clearer: the creaking of the dry trees; the smells in the air, layered and deep; a distant rumbling, which swells on the air, then fades again.

Truck. I’ve been listening without thinking, but now the word, the idea, clarifies: We can’t be far from a highway. We must have driven from New York City, which means there must be a way back in.

I don’t need Raven, and I don’t need Tack. And even if Raven was right about Lena Morgan Jones—she doesn’t exist anymore, after all—fortunately, I don’t need her, either.

I go back into the warehouse. Raven is sitting at the folding table, packing food into cloth bundles. We will strap them to our packs, and hang them from tree branches when we camp at night, so the animals won’t get at them.

At least, that is what she will do.

“Hey. ” She smiles at me, over-friendly, as she has been all evening. “Did you get enough to eat? ”

I nod. “More than I’ve had in a while, ” I say, and she winces slightly. It’s a dig, but I can’t help it. I lean up against the table, where small, sharp knives have been laid out to dry on a kitchen towel.

Raven draws one knee to her chest. “Listen, Lena. I’m sorry we didn’t tell you earlier. I thought it would be—well, I just thought it would be better this way. ”

“It was a purer test, too, ” I say, and Raven looks up quickly. I lean forward, place my palm over the handle of a knife, feel its contours pressing into my flesh.

Raven sighs, and looks away again. “I know you must hate us right now, ” she starts to say, but I cut her off.

“I don’t hate you. ” I straighten up again, bringing the knife with me, slipping it into my back pocket.

“Really? ” For a moment Raven looks much younger than her age.

“Really, ” I say, and she smiles at me—small, tight, relieved. It’s an honest smile. I add, “But I don’t want to be like you either. ”

Her smile falters. As I’m standing there, looking at her, it occurs to me that this may be the last time I ever see her. A sharp pain runs through me, a blade in the center of my chest. I am not sure that I ever loved Raven, but she gave birth to me here, in the Wilds. She has been a mother and a sister, both. She is yet another person I will have to bury.

“Someday you’ll understand, ” she says, and I know that she really believes it. She is staring at me wide-eyed, willing me to understand: that people should be sacrificed to causes, that beauty can be built on the backs of the dead.

But it isn’t her fault. Not really. Raven has lost deeply, again and again, and she, too, has buried herself. There are pieces of her scattered all over. Her heart is nestled next to a small set of bones buried beside a frozen river, which will emerge with the spring thaw, a skeleton ship rising out of the water.

“I hope not, ” I say, as gently as I can, and that is how I say good-bye to her.

I tuck the knife into my backpack, feeling to make sure I still have the small bundle of ID cards I stole from the Scavengers. They will come in handy. I take a wind breaker from next to one of the cots, and, from a small nylon backpack, already packed up for tomorrow, I steal granola bars and a half-dozen bottles of water. My backpack is heavy, even after I’ve removed The Book of Shhh—I won’t need that anymore, not ever—but I don’t dare take out any supplies. If I do manage to spring Julian, we will need to run fast and far, and I have no idea how long it will be before we stumble on a homestead.

I move quietly back through the warehouse, toward the side door that opens onto the parking lot and the outhouse. I pass only one person—a tall, lanky guy with fire-red hair who looks me over once and then lets his gaze slide off me. That is one skill I learned in Portland that I have never forgotten: how to shrink into myself, and turn invisible. I scoot quickly past the room in which most of the resisters, including Tack, are lounging around the radio, laughing and talking. Someone is smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. Someone is shuffling a deck of cards. I see the back of Tack’s head and think a good-bye in his direction.

Then I’m once again slipping out into the night, and I am free.

New York is still casting its halo glow into the sky south of us—probably a good hour from curfew, and blackout for most of the city. Only the very richest people, the government officials and scientists and people like Thomas Fineman, have unlimited access to light.

I start jogging in the general direction of the highway, pausing every so often to listen for the sound of trucks. Mostly there is silence, punctuated by hooting owls and small animals scurrying in the darkness. Traffic is sporadic. It is no doubt a road used almost exclusively for supply trucks.

But all of a sudden it is there, a long, thick river of concrete, lit silver by the rising moon. I turn south and slow to a walk, my breath steaming in front of me. The air is fresh, thin, and cold, slicing my lungs every time I take a breath. But it’s a good feeling.

I keep the highway on my right, careful not to venture too close. There may be checkpoints along the way, and the last thing I need is to be caught by a patrol.

It is roughly twenty miles to the northern boundary of Manhattan. It’s hard to keep track of time, but I think it has been at least six hours before I see, in the distance, the high concrete wall that marks the city’s border. The going was slow. I have no flashlight, and the moon was often lost beyond the thick tangle of tree branches above me, all interlocked, skeletal fingers clasped together tightly. At times I was practically feeling my way. Thankfully the highway to my right reflected some light, and served to orient me. Otherwise I’m sure I would have gotten lost.

Portland was enclosed entirely in a cheap chain-link fence, rumored to be electrified. In New York, portions of the boundary are built of concrete and loops of barbed wire, with high watchtowers interspersed at intervals along the wall, beaming floodlights into the dark, lighting up the silhouettes of the trees on the other side, in the Wilds. I am still several hundred feet from the border—its lights are just visible, winking through the trees—but I drop into a crouch and move toward the highway slowly, listening for any sounds of movement. I doubt that there are patrols on this side of the border. But then again, things are changing now.

You can never be too careful.

There’s a long, shallow gully fifteen feet from the highway, coated in a thin covering of rotting leaves, and still patchy with puddles from rain and melting snow. I maneuver down into the gully and press myself flat on my stomach. This should make me pretty much invisible from the highway, even if someone is patrolling. Dampness seeps through my sweatpants, and I realize I’ll need to find a place to change and something to change into when I make it into Manhattan. There’s no way I can walk the city streets like this without arousing suspicion. But I’ll have to deal with that later.

It’s a long time before I hear the rumble of a truck engine in the distance. Then headlights bloom from the dark, lighting up swirling mist. The truck rattles by me—enormous, white, and stamped with the logo of a grocery chain—slowing as it approaches the border. I prop myself onto my elbows. There is a gap in the border wall, through which the highway extends like a silver tongue; it is barred by a heavy iron gate. As the truck comes to a stop, two dark figures emerge from a guardhouse. Backlit by the floodlights, they are nothing but etched shadows and the black shape of rifles. I’m too far away to make out what they are saying, but I imagine they are checking the driver’s papers. One of the guards circles the truck, inspecting it. He does not open the truck bed, though, and check the interior. Sloppy. Sloppiness is good.