by Лорен Оливер
It’s so quiet that even the sound of my wheels as they turn seems overloud. A thought comes to me suddenly, unbidden—Quiet through the grave go I; or else beneath the graves I lie—the old rhyme we used to whisper as kids when we passed a graveyard.
A graveyard: That’s exactly what the Highlands is like now.
I climb off my bike and lean it against an old street sign, which points the way to Maple Avenue, another street of large, carved bowls of dark earth and uprooted trees.
I walk down Maple for a bit, feeling increasingly stupid. There is no one here. That is obvious. And Deering Highlands is a large neighborhood, a tangle of small streets and cul-de-sacs. Even if Lena’s family is squatting somewhere around here, I won’t necessarily find them.
But my feet keep stepping one in front of the other, as though controlled by something other than my brain. The wind sweeps quietly over the bare lots, and the air smells like rot. I pass an old foundation, exposed to the air, and it reminds me, weirdly, of the X-rays my dentist used to show me: toothy gray structures, like a jaw split open and tacked to the ground.
Then I smell it: wood smoke, faint but definite, threaded underneath the other smells.
Someone is having a fire.
I turn left at the next intersection and start down Wynnewood Road. This is the Highlands I remember from last summer. Here the houses were never razed. They still loom, gloomy and vacant, behind thick stands of ancient pine trees.
My throat begins to tighten and release, tighten and release. I can’t be far from 37 Brooks now. I have a sudden terror of coming across it.
I make a decision: If I come to Brooks Street, it will be a sign that I should turn around. I’ll go home; I’ll forget about this ridiculous mission.
“Mama, Mama . . . help me get home . . .”
The singsong voice stops me. I stand still for a minute, holding my breath, trying to locate the source of the sound.
“I’m out in the woods, I’m out on my own . . .”
The words are from an old nursery rhyme about the monsters that were rumored to live in the Wilds. Vampires. Werewolves. Invalids.
Except that the Invalids, it turns out, are real.
I step out of the road and into the grass, weaving through the trees that line the street. I move slowly, careful to touch my toes lightly to the ground before shifting my weight forward—the voice is so quiet, so faint.
The road turns a corner, and I see a girl squatting in the middle of the street, in a large patch of sunshine, her stringy dark hair hanging like a curtain in front of her face. She is all bones. Her kneecaps are like two spiky sails.
She is holding a filthy doll in one hand and a stick in the other. Its end is whittled to a point. The doll has hair made of matted yellow yarn, and eyes of black buttons, although only one of them is still attached to its face. Its mouth is no more than a stitch of red yarn, also unraveling.
“I met a vampire, a rotten old wreck . . .”
I close my eyes as the rest of the lines from the rhyme come back to me.
Mama, Mama, put me to bed
I won’t make it home, I’m already half-dead
I met an Invalid, and fell for his art
He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.
When I open my eyes again, she looks up, briefly, as she stabs the air with her makeshift stake, as though warding off a vampire. For a moment, everything in me stills. It’s Grace, Lena’s younger cousin. Lena’s favorite cousin.
It’s Grace, who never, ever said a word to anyone, not once in the six years I watched her grow from an infant.
“Mommy, put me to bed . . .”
Even though it’s cool in the shade of the trees, a bead of sweat has gathered between my breasts. I can feel it tracing its way down to my stomach.
“I met an Invalid, and fell for his art . . .”
Now she takes the stick and begins working it against the doll’s neck, as though making a procedural scar. “Safety, Health, and Happiness spells Shh,” she singsongs.
Her voice is pitched higher now, a lullaby coo. “Shhh. Be a good girl. This won’t hurt at all, I promise.”
I can’t watch anymore. She’s jabbing at the doll’s flexible neck, making its head shudder in response as though it is nodding yes. I step out of the trees.
“Gracie,” I call to her. Unconsciously, I’ve extended one arm, as though I’m approaching a wild animal.
She freezes. I take another careful step toward her. She is gripping the stick in her fist so tightly, her knuckles are white.
“Grace.” I clear my throat. “It’s me, Hana. I’m a friend—I was a friend of your cousin, Lena.”
Without warning, she’s up on her feet and running, leaving the doll and the stick behind. Automatically, I break into a sprint and tear after her down the street.
“Wait!” I call out. “Please—I’m not going to hurt you.”
Grace is fast. She has put fifty feet of distance between us already. She disappears around a corner, and by the time I reach it, she’s gone.
I stop running. My heart drums hard in my throat, and there’s a foul taste in my mouth. I take off my hat and swipe at the sweat on my forehead, feeling like a complete idiot.
“Stupid,” I say out loud. Because it makes me feel better, I repeat, a little louder, “Stupid.”
There’s a titter of laughter from somewhere behind me. I spin around: no one. The hair pricks up on my neck; all of a sudden I have the feeling I’m being watched, and it occurs to me that if Lena’s family is here, there must be others, too. I notice that cheap plastic shower curtains are hung in the windows of the house across the street; next to it is a yard layered with plastic debris—toys and tubs and plastic building blocks, but neatly arranged, as though someone has recently been playing there.
Feeling suddenly self-conscious, I retreat into the protection of the trees, keeping my eyes on the street, scanning for signs of movement.
“We have a right to be here, you know.”
The whispering voice comes from directly behind me. I whirl around, so startled that for a moment I can’t speak. A girl has just emerged from the trees. She stares at me with wide brown eyes.
“Willow?” I choke out.
Her eyelids flicker. If she recognizes me, she doesn’t acknowledge it. But it’s definitely her—Willow Marks, my old classmate, who got pulled out of school just before we graduated, after rumors circulated that she had been found with a boy, an uncured, in Deering Oaks Park after curfew.
“We have a right,” she repeats, in that same urgent whisper. She twists her long, thin hands together. “A road and a path for everybody . . . That is the promise of the cure. . . .”
“Willow.” I take a step backward and almost trip over myself. “Willow it’s me. Hana Tate. We had math together last year. Mr. Fillmore’s class. Remember?”
Her eyelids flutter. Her hair is long and hopelessly tangled. I remember how she used to dye streaks of it different colors. My parents always said she would get into trouble. They told me to stay away from her.
“Fillmore, Fillmore,” she repeats. When she turns her head, I see that she has the three-pronged procedural mark, and I remember that she was pulled abruptly out of school just a few months short of graduation: Everyone said that her parents forced her into an early procedure. She frowns and shakes her head. “I don’t know . . . I’m not sure . . .” She brings her fingernails to her mouth, and I see that her cuticles are gnawed to shreds.
My stomach surges. I need to get out of here. I never should have come.
“Good to see you, Willow,” I say. I start to inch slowly around her, trying not to move too quickly even though I’m desperate to break into a run.
All of a sudden, Willow reaches out and puts an arm around my neck, pulling me close, as though she wants to kiss me. I cry out and strain against her, but she is surprisingly strong.
With one hand, she begins feeling her way across my face, prodding my chee
ks and chin, like a blind person. The feel of her nails on my skin makes me think of small, sharp-clawed rodents.
“Please.” To my horror, I find that I am almost crying. My throat is spasming; fear makes it hard to breathe. “Please let me go.”
Her fingers find my procedural scar. All at once, she seems to deflate. For a second, her eyes click into focus, and when she looks at me, I see the old Willow: smart and defiant and, now, in this moment, defeated.
“Hana Tate,” she says sadly. “They got you, too.”
Then she releases me, and I run.
Lena
Coral slows us down. She has no visible injuries, now that she has bathed and had various cuts and scrapes bandaged, but she is obviously weak. She falls behind as soon as we begin to move, and Alex hangs back with her. In the early part of the day, even though I try to ignore it, I can hear the ribbon of their conversation weaving up and through the other voices. Once, I hear Alex burst out laughing.
In the afternoon, we come across a large oak. Its trunk has been gouged and slashed with various lines. I let out a cry of recognition as soon as I see it: a triangle, followed by a number and a rudimentary arrow. It’s Bram’s knife pattern, the specific series of markings he used during relocation from the northern homestead last year to mark our progress and help us find our way back in the spring.
This mark I remember specifically; it indicates the way to a house we came across last year, intact and inhabited by a family of Invalids. Raven must recognize it too.
“Jackpot,” she says, grinning. Then she raises her voice to the group. “This way to a roof!” There are whoops and exclamations. Just a week outside of civilization makes us crave the simplest things: roofs and walls and tubs full of steaming water. Soap.
It’s less than a mile to the house, and when I see the gabled roof, covered in a fur of brown and tangled ivy, my heart leaps. The Wilds—so vast and changeable, so disorienting—also make us lust for the familiar.
I burst out to Julian, “We stopped here last autumn. During the journey south from Portland. I remember that broken window—see how they’ve patched it with wood? And the little stone chimney peeking up over the ivy.”
I notice, though, that the house is more run-down than it was even six short months ago. Its stone facade is darker, coated with a slick surface of black mold that has webbed itself into the caulking. The small clearing around the house, where last year we pitched our tents, is overgrown with high brown grasses and thorned plants.
There is no smoke piping from the chimney. It must be cold inside the house with no fire going. Last autumn the kids ran out to intercept us when we were halfway to the front door. They were always outside, laughing and shouting, teasing one another. Now there is quiet and stillness, except the wind through the ivy, a slow sigh.
I begin to feel uneasy. The others must feel it too. We’ve covered the last mile quickly, moving together as one large group, buoyed by the promise of a real meal, an indoor space, a chance to feel like humans. But now everyone falls silent.
Raven reaches the door first. She hesitates with a fist raised; then she knocks. The sound is hollow and overloud in the stillness. Nothing happens.
“Maybe they’re out gathering,” I say. I’m trying to quell the panic that is building, the spiky sense of fear I used to get whenever I ran past the graveyard in Portland. Better go fast, Hana used to say, or they’ll reach out and grab your ankles.
Raven doesn’t answer. She puts her hand on the knob and turns. The door opens.
She turns to Tack. He unslings his rifle and passes in front of her into the house. Raven seems relieved that he has taken the lead. She removes a knife from the belt she wears on her hips and follows him inside. The rest of us flow in after them.
It smells terrible. A little light penetrates the darkness, spilling in from the open door and piercing the wooden slats that cover the broken window. We can just see the bare outlines of the furniture, much of it smashed or overturned. Someone lets out a cry.
“What happened?” I whisper. Julian finds my hand in the darkness and squeezes. Nobody answers. Tack and Raven move farther into the room, their shoes crunching on broken glass. Tack takes the butt of his rifle and slams it, hard, against the wooden slats in the window; they break apart easily, and more light flows into the room.
No wonder it smells so bad; there is food, rotted, spilling out of an overturned copper pot. When I take a step forward, insects scurry into the corners. I fight down a surge of nausea.
“God,” Julian mutters.
“I’ll check the upstairs,” Tack says, at normal volume, which makes me jump. Someone clicks on a flashlight, and the beam sweeps over the littered floor. Then I remember that I, too, have a flashlight, and I fumble in my backpack for it.
I move with Julian into the kitchen, keeping the flashlight in front of me, rigid, as though it will protect us. There are more signs of struggle here—a few smashed glass jars, more insects and rotting food. I draw my sleeve up to my nose and breathe through it. I pass the beam of light over the pantry shelves. They are still fairly well-stocked: jars of pickled vegetables and meats are lined neatly next to bundles of dried jerky. The jars are labeled with neat, handwritten script that identifies their contents, and I feel a sudden vertigo, a wild swinging, as I remember a woman with fire-red hair, bending over a jar with her pen, smiling, saying, There’s hardly any paper left at all. Soon we’ll have to guess at what’s what.
“Clear,” Tack announces. We hear him thudding back downstairs, and Julian draws me through the short hallway and into the main room, where most of the group is still assembled.
“Scavengers again?” Gordo asks gruffly.
Tack passes a hand through his hair.
“They weren’t looking for food or supplies,” I say. “The pantry’s still stocked.”
“Maybe it wasn’t Scavengers at all,” Bram says. “Maybe the family just took off.”
“What? And trashed the place before they split?” Tack toes a metal cup. “And left their food behind?”
“Maybe they were in a hurry,” Bram insists. But I can tell even he doesn’t believe it; the atmosphere in the house is rancid, wrong. This is a house where something very bad has happened, and all of us can feel it.
I move toward the open door and step out onto the porch, inhaling clean, outside smells, scents of space and growth. I wish we’d never come.
Half the group has already retreated outside. Dani is moving across the yard slowly, parting the grasses with a hand—looking for what, I don’t know—as though she is wading through knee-high water. From the back of the house I hear shouted conversation; then Raven’s voice, rising above the noise. “Get back, get back. Don’t go down there. I said, don’t go down there.”
My stomach tightens. She found something.
She comes around the side of the house, breathless. Her eyes are shiny, bright with anger.
But all she says is, “I found them.” She doesn’t have to say that they’re dead.
“Where?” I croak.
“Bottom of the hill,” she says shortly, then she pushes past me, back into the house. I don’t want to return inside, to the smell and the darkness and the fine layering of death that covers everything—that’s what it is, that wrong-thing, that evil silence—but I do.
“What did you find?” Tack asks. He’s still standing in the middle of the room. Everyone else surrounds him in a semicircle, frozen, quiet, and for a moment, when I reenter the room, I have the impression of statues, gripped in gray light.
“Evidence of a fire,” Raven says, and then adds, a little more quietly, “Bone.”
“I knew it.” Coral’s voice sounds high and slightly hysterical. “They were here. I knew it.”
“They’re gone now,” Raven says soothingly. “They won’t be back.”
“It wasn’t Scavengers.”
All of us whip around. Alex is standing in the doorway. Something red—a ribbon, or strip of fabric—i
s balled loosely in his fist.
“I told you not to go down there,” Raven says. She is glaring at him—but beneath the anger, I see fear as well.
He ignores her and passes into the room, shaking out the fabric as he does, holding it up for us to see: It’s a long strip of red plastic tape. At intervals it is imprinted with an image of a skull and crossbones, and the words CAUTION: BIOHAZARD.
“The whole area’s cordoned off,” Alex says. He keeps his face neutral, but his voice has a strangled quality, as though he is speaking through a muffler.
Now I feel like the statue. I want to speak, but my mind has gone blank.
“What does it mean?” Pike says. He has been in the Wilds since he was a child. He knows hardly anything about life inside the bordered places—about the regulators and the health initiatives, the quarantines and the prisons, the fears of contamination.
Alex turns to him. “The infected aren’t buried. They’re either kept apart, in the prison yards, or they’re burned.” For just a second, Alex’s eyes slide to mine. I am the only person here who knows that his father’s body was buried in the tiny prison courtyard of the Crypts, unmarked, uncelebrated; I am the only person who knows that for years Alex visited the makeshift grave and wrote his father’s name in marker on a stone, to keep him from being forgotten. I’m sorry, I try to think to him, but his eyes have already passed over me.
“Is it true, Raven?” Tack asks sharply.
She opens her mouth, then closes it again. For a second I think she’ll deny it. But at last she says, in a tone of resignation, “It looks like regulators.”
There’s a collective inhale.
“Fuck,” Hunter mutters.
Pike says, “I don’t believe it.”
“Regulators . . .” Julian repeats. “But that means . . .”
“The Wilds aren’t safe anymore,” I finish for him. The panic is building now, cresting in my chest. “The Wilds aren’t ours anymore.”
