by Лорен Оливер
“Bastards,” Pike says again, his voice strangled. He starts to rocket out of the hollow and I reach for him, try to pull him backward.
“Don’t. Raven said to wait for her signal.”
“Raven’s not in charge.” He breaks away from me and slides onto his stomach, holding his rifle in front of him like a sniper.
“Don’t, Pike.”
Either he doesn’t hear me or he ignores me. He begins inching up the hill on his stomach.
“Alex.” Panic is filling me like a tide. The smoke, the anger, the roar of the fire as it spreads—all of it is making it impossible to think.
“Shit.” Alex moves past me and starts to reach for Pike. By now, only his boots are still visible. “Pike, don’t be a goddamn idiot—”
Bang. Bang.
Two shots. The noise seems to echo and amplify in the hollow space. I cover my ears.
Then: bang, bang, bang, bang. Gunshots from everywhere, and people screaming. A shower of dirt rains on me from above. My ears are ringing, and my head is full of smoke.
Focus.
Alex has already pushed out of the hollow and I follow him, trying to wrestle the gun off my shoulder. At the last second I shrug off the backpacks. They’ll only slow me down.
Explosions from all sides, and the roar of an inferno.
The woods are full of smoke and fire. Orange and red flames shoot between the black trees—stark, stiff-necked, like witnesses frozen in horror. Pike is kneeling, half-concealed behind a tree, shooting. His face is lit orange from the fire, and his mouth is open in a roar. I see Raven moving through the smoke. The air is alive with gunshots: so many of them that it reminds me of sitting at the Eastern Prom with Hana on Independence Day and watching the fireworks display, the rapid staccato and the flashes of dazzling color. The smell of smoke.
“Lena!”
I don’t have time to see who calls my name. A bullet whizzes past me and lodges itself in the tree directly behind me, sending off a spray of bark. I unfreeze, dart forward, and position myself flat against the large trunk of a sugar maple. Several feet ahead of me, Alex has taken refuge behind a tree as well. Every few seconds he pokes his head around the trunk, fires off a few rounds, then ducks back into safety.
My eyes are watering. I crane my head cautiously around the trunk, trying to distinguish the figures grappling in the dark, backlit by the fire. From a distance, they look almost like dancers—pairs swaying, wrestling, dipping, and spinning.
I can’t tell who is who. I blink, cough, palm my eyes. Pike has disappeared.
There: I see Dani’s face briefly as she turns to the fire. A regulator has jumped her from behind, has an arm thrown around her neck. Dani’s eyes are bulging, her face purple. I bring my gun up, then lower it again. Impossible to aim from here, not as they stagger back and forth. Dani is twisting and bucking like a bull trying to shake its rider.
There’s another chorus of gunshots. The regulator withdraws his arm from Dani’s neck, clutching his elbow, shouting in pain. He turns toward the light, and I can see blood bubbling between his fingers. I have no idea who fired or whether the bullet was aimed at Dani or the regulator, but the momentary release gives Dani the advantage she needs. She fumbles at her belt for her knife, heaving and gagging. She is obviously tired, but she moves with the dumb persistence of an animal being worked to death.
She swings her arm up toward the regulator’s neck; metal flashes in her fist. After she stabs him, he jerks, a huge convulsion. His face registers surprise. He totters forward onto his knees, and then onto his face. Dani kneels next to him, wedges a boot under his body, and uses the purchase to bring her knife out of his neck.
Somewhere, beyond the wall of smoke, a woman screams. I track my rifle helplessly from one side of the burning camp to the other, but everything is confusion and blur. I have to get closer. I can help no one where I am.
I break into the open, staying as low as possible, and move toward the fire and the chaos of bodies, past Alex, who is tracking the action from behind a sycamore.
“Lena!” he shouts as I dart by him. I don’t respond. I need to focus. The air is hot and thick. The fire is leaping from tree branches now, a deadly canopy above us; flames braid themselves around the trunks, turning them a chalky white. The sky is obscured behind all the smoke. This is all that is left of our camp, of the supplies we gathered so carefully—the clothing we hunted for, scrubbed in the river, wore to tatters; and the tents we mended so painstakingly, until they were crisscrossed with stitches: this hungry, all-consuming heat.
Fifteen feet from me, a man the size of a boulder has brought Coral to the ground. I start toward her when someone tackles me from behind. As I’m falling, I jab hard behind me with the butt of my rifle. The man spits out a curse and pulls back several inches, giving me time and space to roll onto my back. I use my gun like a baseball bat, swinging it toward his jaw. It connects with a sickening crack, and he slumps sideways.
Tack was right about one thing: The regulators aren’t trained for combat like this. Almost all their fighting has been done from the air, from the cockpit of a bomber, from a distance.
I scramble to my feet and sprint toward Coral, who is still on the ground. I don’t know what happened to the regulator’s gun. But he has his hands coiled around her neck.
I raise the butt of my rifle high above my head. Coral’s eyes flick to mine. As I’m bringing the rifle down on the regulator’s head, he whips around toward me. I manage to graze the side of his shoulder, but I’m carried off balance by the force of my swing. I stumble, and he sweeps an arm at my shins and sends me sprawling flat. I bite down on my lip and taste blood. I want to turn onto my back, but suddenly there’s a weight on top of me, knocking me flat, crushing the air from my lungs. The gun is ripped from my hand.
I can’t breathe. My face is pressed to the dirt. Something—a knee? an elbow?—is digging into my neck. Bursts of light explode behind my eyelids.
Then there’s a thwack, and a grunt, and the weight is released. I twist around, sucking in air, kicking away from the regulator. He is still straddling me, but he is now slumped sideways, eyes closed, a small bit of blood trickling from his forehead, where he was hit. Alex is standing above me, gripping his rifle.
He leans down and grabs my elbow, hauls me to my feet. Then he picks up my rifle and passes it to me. Behind him, the fire is still spreading. The swaying dancers have dispersed. Now I can’t see anything but a huge wall of flame and several forms huddled on the ground. My stomach lurches. I can’t tell who has fallen, whether they are our people.
Next to us, Gordo lifts Coral and slings her over his back. She moans, eyelids fluttering, but doesn’t wake up.
“Come on,” Alex shouts. The noise of the fire is tremendous: a cacophony of cracking and popping, like a slurping, sucking monster.
Alex leads us away from the fire, using the butt of his rifle to swipe a clear path through the woods. I recognize that we’re heading in the direction of a small stream we located yesterday. Gordo pants loudly behind me, and I’m still dizzy, and not very steady on my feet. I keep my eyes locked on the back of Alex’s jacket, and I think of nothing but moving, one foot in front of the other, getting as far from the fire as possible.
“Coo-ee!”
As we draw close to the stream, Raven’s call echoes to us through the woods. To our right, a flashlight cuts through the darkness. We shoulder through a thick tangle of dead growth and emerge onto a gentle slope of stony land, through which a shallow stream is pushing resolutely. The break in the canopy above us allows moonlight to penetrate. It streaks the surface of the stream with silver, makes the pale pebbles lining the banks glow slightly.
Our group is crouching, huddled together, a hundred feet away on the other side of the stream. Relief breaks in my chest. We’re intact; we survived. And Raven will know what to do about Julian and Tack. She will know how to find them.
“Coo-ee!” Raven calls again, angling a flashlight in our d
irection.
“We see you,” Gordo grunts. He pushes ahead of me, his breathing now a hoarse rasp, and sloshes across the stream to the other side.
Before we can cross, Alex whirls around and takes two steps back to me. I’m startled to see that his face is twisted in anger.
“What the hell was that about?” he demands. When I can only stare at him, he goes on, “You could have died, Lena. If it wasn’t for me, you would be dead.”
“Is this your way of asking for a thank-you?” I’m shaky, and tired, and disoriented. “You could just learn to say please, you know.”
“I’m not kidding.” Alex shakes his head. “You should have stayed where you were. You didn’t need to go charging in there like some kind of hero.”
I feel a flicker of anger. I hold on to it and coax it into life. “Excuse me,” I say. “If I hadn’t charged in there, your new—your new girlfriend would be dead right now.” I’ve rarely had occasion to use the word in my life, and it takes me a second to remember it.
“She’s not your responsibility,” Alex says evenly.
Instead of making me feel better, his response makes me feel worse. Despite everything that has happened tonight, it’s this stupid, basic fact that makes me feel like I am going to cry: He didn’t deny that she was his girlfriend.
I swallow back the sick taste in my mouth. “Well, I’m not your responsibility either, remember? You can’t tell me what to do.” I’ve found the thread of anger again. Now I’m following it, pulling myself forward on it, hand over hand. “Why do you even care, anyway? You hate me.”
Alex stares at me. “You really don’t get it, do you?” His voice is hard.
I cross my arms and squeeze tight, trying to squeeze back the pain, to push it deep under the anger. “Don’t get what?”
“Forget it.” Alex shoves a hand through his hair. “Forget I said anything at all.”
“Lena!”
I turn. Tack and Julian have just emerged from the woods on the other side of the stream, and Julian runs toward me, splashing through the water without seeming to register it. He charges straight past Alex and sweeps me up in his arms, lifting me off the ground. I let out a single, muffled sob into his shirt.
“You’re okay,” he whispers. He’s squeezing me so tightly, I can hardly breathe. But I don’t mind. I don’t want him to let go, ever.
“I was so worried about you,” I say. Now that my anger at Alex has drained away, the need to cry is resurging, pushing at my throat.
I’m not sure Julian understands me. My voice is muffled by his shirt. But he gives me another hard squeeze before setting me down. He brushes the hair back from my face.
“When you and Tack didn’t come back . . . I thought maybe something had happened. . . .”
“We decided to camp for the night.” Julian looks guilty, as though his absence was somehow the cause of the attack. “Tack’s flashlight went bust and we couldn’t see a damn thing when the sun went down. We were worried about getting lost. We were probably only a mile from here.” He shakes his head. “When we heard the shots, we came as fast as we could.” He touches his forehead to mine and adds, a little softer, “I was so scared.”
“I’m fine,” I say. I keep my arms wrapped around his waist. He is so steady, so solid. “There were regulators—seven or eight of them, maybe more. But we chased them off.”
Julian finds my hand and laces his fingers in mine.
“I should have stayed with you,” he says, his voice breaking a little.
I bring his hand to my lips. This simple thing—the fact that I can kiss him like this, freely—suddenly seems like a miracle. They have tried to squeeze us out, to stamp us into the past. But we are still here.
And there are more of us every day.
“Come on,” I say. “Let’s make sure the others are okay.”
Alex must have crossed the stream and rejoined the group already. At the edge of the water, Julian doubles down and sweeps an arm behind my knees, so I stumble backward and into his arms. He picks me up, and I put my arms around his neck and rest my head against his chest: His heart is a steady rhythm, reassuring. He wades across the stream and deposits me on the other side.
“Nice of you to join us,” Raven is saying to Tack,as Julian and I push our way into the circle. But I can hear the relief in her voice. Despite the fact that Raven and Tack are often fighting, it’s impossible to imagine one without the other. They are like two plants that have grown around each other—they strangle and squeeze and support at the same time.
“What are we supposed to do?” Lu asks. She is an indistinct shape in the darkness. Most of the faces in the circle are ovals of dark, individual features fragmented by the small patches of moonlight. A nose is visible here; a mouth there; the barrel of a gun.
“We go to Waterbury, like we planned,” Raven says firmly.
“With what?” Dani says. “We have nothing. No food. No blankets. Nothing.”
“It could have been worse,” Raven says. “We got out, didn’t we? And we can’t be too far.”
“We aren’t.” Tack speaks up. “Julian and I found the highway. It’s a half day from here. We’re too far north, just like Pike said.”
“I guess we can forgive you, then,” Raven says, “for almost getting us killed.”
Pike, for the first time in his life, has nothing to say.
Raven sighs dramatically. “Okay. I admit it. I was wrong. Is that what you want to hear?”
Again: no response.
“Pike?” Dani ventures, into the silence.
“Shit,” Tack mutters. Then he says again, “Shit.”
Another pause. I shiver. Julian puts his arm around me, and I lean into him.
Raven says quietly, “We can light a small fire. If he’s lost, it will help him find his way to us.”
This is her gift to us. She knows—just like we all know in that instant, deep down—that Pike is dead.
Hana
God forgive me, for I have sinned. Cleanse me of these passions, for the diseased will wallow in the dirt with the dogs, and only the pure will ascend into heaven.
People aren’t supposed to change. That’s the beauty of pairing—people can be plotted together, their interests made to intersect, their differences minimized.
That’s what the cure promises.
But it’s a lie.
Fred isn’t Fred—at least, he’s not the Fred I thought he was. And I’m not the Hana I was supposed to be; I’m not the Hana everyone told me I would be after my cure.
The realization brings with it a physical disappointment—and a feeling, too, of relief.
The morning after Fred’s inauguration, I get up and take a shower, feeling alert and very refreshed. I’m overly conscious of the brightness of the lights, the beeping of the coffee machine from downstairs, and the thump-thump-thump of the clothes in the dryer. Power, power, power all around us: We pulse with it.
Mr. Roth has once again come over to watch the news. If he behaves, maybe the minister of energy will give him his juice back, and then I won’t have to see him every morning. I could speak to Fred about it.
The idea makes me want to laugh.
“Morning, Hana,” he says, keeping his eyes locked on the TV.
“Good morning, Mr. Roth,” I say cheerfully, and pass into the pantry. I scan the well-stocked shelves, run my fingers over the boxes of cereal and rice, the identical jars of peanut butter, a half-dozen jams.
I’ll have to be careful, of course, to steal only a little at a time.
I make my way directly to Wynnewood Road, where I saw Grace playing with the doll. I again abandon my bike early and go most of the way on foot, careful to stick closely to the trees. I listen for voices. The last thing I want is to be taken by surprise by Willow Marks again.
My backpack digs painfully into my shoulders, and underneath the straps, my skin is slippery with sweat. It’s heavy. I can hear liquid sloshing around when I move, and I just pray that the li
d of the old glass milk jug—which I’ve filled with as much gasoline from the garage as I could get away with stealing—is screwed on tightly.
Once again, the air is scented faintly with wood smoke. I wonder how many of the houses are occupied, and which other families have been forced to live way out here, scraping out a living. I don’t know how they make it through the winters. No wonder Jenny, Willow, and Grace look so pale and drawn—it’s a miracle that they’re still alive.
I think of what Fred said: They must learn that freedom will not keep them warm.
So disobedience will kill them slowly.
If I can find the Tiddles’ house, I can leave them the food I’ve stolen, and the bottle of gasoline. It’s a small thing, but it’s something.
As soon as I turn onto Wynnewood—only two streets away from Brooks—I once again see Grace in the street, this time squatting on the sidewalk directly in front of a weathered gray house, chucking stones in the grass as though she is trying to skip them over water.
I take a deep breath and step out of the trees. Grace tenses up instantly.
“Please don’t run,” I say softly, because she looks like she’s about to bolt. I take a tentative step toward her and she scrambles to her feet, so I stop walking. Keeping my eyes on Grace’s, I unsling the backpack from my shoulder. “You might not remember me,” I say. “I was a friend of Lena’s.” I choke a little on her name and have to clear my throat. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay?”
The backpack clinks against the sidewalk when I set it down, and her eyes flit to it briefly. I take this as an encouraging sign and move into a crouch, still keeping my eyes on her, willing her not to run. Slowly, I unzip the backpack.
Now her eyes are darting between the bag and me. She relaxes her shoulders a little.
“I brought you a couple of things,” I say, slowly reaching into the bag and withdrawing what I’ve stolen: a bag of oatmeal; Cream of Wheat and two boxes of macaroni and cheese; cans of soup; vegetables and tuna fish; a package of cookies. I lay them all out on the sidewalk, one by one. Grace takes a quick step forward and then stops herself.
