by Лорен Оливер
But I can’t rest for very long. I hear a sudden eruption of sound: guards calling to one another, and heavy footsteps jogging in my direction. They’ll be on me in no time, and I’ll have lost my chance.
I stand and sprint toward the alarm tower.
“Hey! Hey, stop!”
Shapes materialize from the dark: one, two, three guards, all men, moonlight on metal. Guns.
The first shot dings off one of the steel supports of the alarm tower. I throw myself into the small, open-air tower as more shots rattle the air. My vision is tunneling and everything sounds distant. Disjointed images flash in my head, like stills from different movies: Shots. Firecrackers. Screaming. Children on the beach.
And then all I can see is the small lever, illuminated from above by a single bulb encased in metal wiring: EMERGENCY ALARM.
Time seems to wind down. My arm looks like someone else’s, floating toward the lever, agonizingly slow. The lever is in my hand: the metal is surprisingly cold. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the hand grips; the arm pushes.
Another shot, the ring of metal all around me: a fine, high vibration.
Then, all at once, the night is pierced with a shrill, wailing cry, and time shudders back to normal speed. The sound is so tremendous, I can feel it in my teeth. An enormous bulb at the top of the alarm tower lights up and begins turning, sending a sweep of red across the city.
There are arms reaching for me through the metal scaffolding: spider arms, huge and hairy. One of the guards grabs my wrist. I reach out and wrap a hand around the back of his neck, pull him suddenly forward, and he collides forehead-first with one of the steel supports. His grip on me releases as he staggers backward, cursing.
“Bitch!”
I burst free from the tower. Two steps, over the wall, and I’ll be fine, I’ll be free. Bram and Coral will be waiting in the trees . . . we’ll lose the guards in the darkness and the shadows. . . .
I can make it. . . .
That’s when Coral comes over the wall. I’m so startled, I stop running. This isn’t protocol. Before I have time to ask her what she’s doing, an arm is wrapped around my waist, hauling me backward. I smell leather and feel hot breath on my neck. Instincts take over; I shove my elbow back into the guard’s stomach, but he doesn’t release me.
“Hold still,” he snarls.
Everything is short bursts: Someone is screaming, and a hand is around my throat. Coral is in front of me, pale and lovely, hair streaming behind her, arm raised—a vision.
She’s holding a rock.
Her arm pinwheels, a graceful, pale arc, and I think, She’s going to kill me.
Then the guard grunts, and the arm around my waist goes slack, and the hand releases as he crumples to the ground.
But now they are appearing from everywhere. The alarm is still screaming, and at intervals the scene is lit up in red: two guards on our left; two guards on our right. Three guards, shoulder to shoulder, pressed against the wall, blocking our path to the other side.
Sweep: The light cuts over us again, illuminating a metal stairway behind us, stretching down into the narrow chasm of city streets.
“This way,” I pant. I reach out and tug Coral down the stairs. This move was unexpected, and it takes the guards a moment to react. By the time they reach the stairway, Coral and I have hit the street. Any second more guards will arrive, summoned by the alarm. But if we can find a dark corner . . . Somewhere to hide and wait it out . . .
Only a few streetlamps are still lit. The streets are dark. A smattering of gunfire rings out, but it’s clear the guards are firing at random.
We make a right, then a left, then another right. Footsteps drum toward us. More patrols. I hesitate, wondering whether we should go back the way we came. Coral puts a hand on my arm and draws me toward a thick triangle of shadow: a recessed doorway, scented with cat urine and cigarette smoke and half-concealed behind a pillared entry. We crouch in the shadows. A minute later, a blur of bodies goes by, a buzz of walkie-talkie voices and heavy breathing.
“Alarm’s still going. Position twenty-four is saying there’s been a breach.”
“We’re waiting for backup to start the sweep.”
As soon as they pass, I turn to Coral.
“What the hell were you doing?” I say. “Why did you follow me?”
“You said I was supposed to back you up,” she says. “I got freaked when I heard the alarm. I thought you must be in trouble.”
“What about Bram?” I say.
Coral shakes her head. “I don’t know.”
“You shouldn’t have risked it,” I say sharply. Then I add, “Thank you.”
I start to climb to my feet, but Coral draws me back.
“Wait,” she whispers, and brings her fingers to her lips. Then I hear it: more footsteps, moving in the opposite direction. Two figures come into view, moving fast.
One of them, a man, is saying, “I don’t know how you lived with that filth for so long. . . . I’m telling you, I couldn’t have done it.”
“It wasn’t easy.” The second one is a woman. I think her voice sounds familiar.
As soon as they pass out of view, Coral nudges me. We need to move away from the area, which will soon be crawling with patrols; they’ll probably turn on the streetlamps, too, so their search will be easier.
We need to head south. Then we’ll be able to cross back into the camp.
We move quickly, in silence, sticking close to the buildings, where we can easily duck into alleys and doorways. I’m filled with the same suffocating fear I felt when Julian and I escaped through the tunnels and had to make our way through the underground.
Abruptly, all the streetlamps come on at once. It’s as though the shadows were an ocean, and the tide has gone out, leaving a barren, ridged landscape of empty streets. Instinctively, Coral and I duck instinctively into a darkened doorway.
“Shit,” she mutters.
“I was afraid this would happen,” I whisper. “We’ll have to stick to the alleys. We’ll stick to the darkest places we can find.”
Coral nods.
We move like rats: We scamper from shadow to shadow, hiding in the small spaces: in the alleys and the cracks, the darkened doorways and behind the Dumpsters. Twice more, we hear patrols approaching us and have to duck into the shadows, until the buzz of static walkie-talkies, and the rhythm of footsteps, is gone.
The city changes. Soon, the buildings thin out. At last the sound of the alarm, still wailing, is no more than a distant cry, and we sink gratefully back into an area where the streetlamps are dark. The moon above us is high and bloated. The apartments on either side of us have the empty, forlorn look of children separated from their parents. I wonder how far we are from the river, whether Raven and the others managed to explode the dam, whether we would have heard it. I think of Julian and feel a twist of anxiety and also regret. I’ve been hard on him. He’s doing his best.
“Lena.” Coral stops and points. We’re moving past a park; at its center is a sunken amphitheater. For a second, confusedly, I have the impression of dark oil, shimmering between its stone seats; the moon is shining down onto a slick black surface.
Then I realize: water.
Half the theater is flooded. A coating of scattered leaves is swirling across its surface, disturbing the watery reflections of the moon, stars, and trees. It’s strangely beautiful. I take an unconscious step forward, onto the grass, which squelches under my feet. Mud bubbles up beneath my shoes.
Pippa was right. The dam must have forced the water over the riverbanks and flooded some of the downtown areas. That must mean we’re in one of the neighborhoods that was evacuated after the protests.
“Let’s get to the wall,” I say. “We shouldn’t have any trouble crossing.”
We continue skirting the periphery of the park. The silence around us is deep, complete, and reassuring. I’m starting to feel good. We’ve made it. We did what we were supposed to do—with any luck, the rest of our plan went
off too.
At one corner of the park is a small stone rotunda, surrounded by a fringe of dark trees. If it weren’t for the single, old-fashioned lantern burning on the corner, I would have missed the girl sitting on one of its stone benches. Her head is dropped between her knees, but I recognize her long, streaked hair and her mud-caked purple sneakers. Lu.
Coral sees her at the same time I do. “Isn’t that . . . ?” she starts to ask, but I’m already breaking into a run.
“Lu!” I cry out.
She looks up, startled. She must not recognize me immediately; for a second her face is vivid white, frightened. I drop into a squat in front of her, put my hands on her shoulders.
“Are you all right?” I say breathlessly. “Where are the others? Did something happen?”
“I . . .” She trails off and shakes her head.
“Are you hurt?” I straighten up, keeping my hands on her shoulders. I don’t see any blood, but she’s trembling slightly under my hands. She opens her mouth and then closes it again. Her eyes are wide and vacant. “Lu. Talk to me.” I lift my hands from her shoulders to her face, giving her a gentle shake, trying to snap her out of it. As I do, my fingertips skim the skin behind her left ear.
My heart stops. Lu lets out a small cry and tries to jerk away from me. But I keep my hands wrapped tightly around the back of her neck. Now she is bucking and twisting, trying to fight her way from my grasp.
“Get away from me,” she practically spits.
I don’t say anything. I can’t speak. All my energy is in my hands now, and my fingers. She is strong, but she has been taken by surprise, and I manage to haul her to her feet and pin her back against a stone column. I drive my elbow into her neck, forcing her to turn, coughing, to the left.
Dimly I’m aware of Coral’s voice. “What the hell are you doing, Lena?”
I wrench Lu’s hair away from her face, so that her neck is exposed, white and pretty.
I can see the frantic flutter of her pulse—just beneath the neat, three-pronged scar on her neck.
The mark of the procedure. A real one.
Lu is cured.
The past few weeks cycle back to me: Lu’s quietness, and her changes in temperament. The fact that she grew her hair long and brushed it carefully forward every day.
“When?” I croak out. I still have my forearm pressed against her throat. Something black and old is rising up inside of me. Traitor.
“Let me go,” she gasps. Her left eye rolls back to look at me.
“When?” I repeat, and give her throat a nudge. She cries out.
“Okay, okay,” she says, and I ease the pressure, just a little. But I keep her pinned against the stone. “December,” she croaks. “Baltimore.”
My head is spinning. Of course. It was Lu I heard earlier. The regulator’s words come back to me with new, terrible meaning: I don’t know how you lived with that filth for so long. And hers: It wasn’t easy.
“Why?” I choke out the words. When she doesn’t answer me immediately, I lean into her again. “Why?”
She starts speaking in a hoarse rush. “They were right, Lena. I know that now. Think of all those people out there in the camps, in the Wilds . . . like animals. That’s not happiness.”
“It’s freedom,” I say.
“Is it?” Her eye is huge; her iris has been swallowed by black. “Are you free, Lena? Is this the life you wanted?”
I can’t respond. The anger is a thick, dark mud, a rising tide in my chest and throat.
Lu’s voice drops to a silken whisper, like the noise of a snake through the grass. “It’s not too late for you, Lena. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done on the other side. We’ll wipe that out; we’ll start clean. That’s the whole point. We can take all that away . . . the past, the pain, all your struggling. You can start again.”
For a second, we both stand there staring at each other. Lu is breathing hard.
“All of it?” I say.
Lu tries to nod, and grimaces as she once again encounters my elbow. “The anxiety, the unhappiness. We can make it go away.”
I ease the pressure off her neck. She sucks in a deep, grateful breath. I lean in very close to her and repeat something that Hana once said to me a lifetime ago.
“You know you can’t be happy unless you’re unhappy sometimes, right?”
Lu’s face hardens. I’ve given her just enough space to maneuver, and when she goes to swing at me, I catch her left wrist and twist it behind her back, forcing her to double over. I wrestle her to the ground, press her flat, force a knee between her shoulder blades.
“Lena!” Coral shouts. I ignore her. A single word drums through me: Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.
“What happened to the others?” I say. My words are high and strangled, clutched in the web of anger.
“It’s too late, Lena.” Lu’s face is half-mashed against the ground, but still she manages to twist her mouth into a horrible smile, a leering half grin.
It’s a good thing I don’t have a knife on me. I would drive it straight into her neck. I think of Raven smiling, laughing. Lu can come with us. She’s a walking good-luck charm. I think of Tack dividing his bread, giving her the largest share when she complained about being hungry. My heart feels like it’s crumbling to chalk, and I want to scream and cry at the same time. We trusted you.
“Lena,” Coral repeats. “I think—”
“Be quiet,” I say hoarsely, keeping my focus locked on Lu. “Tell me what happened to them or I’ll kill you.”
She struggles under my weight, and continues beaming that horrible twisted grin at me. “Too late,” she repeats. “They’ll be here before nightfall tomorrow.”
“What are you talking about?”
Her laughter is a rattle in her throat. “You didn’t think it would last, did you? You didn’t think we’d let you keep playing in your little camp, in your filth—” I twist her arms another inch toward her shoulder blades. She cries out, and then continues speaking in a rush. “Ten thousand soldiers, Lena. Ten thousand soldiers against a thousand hungry, thirsty, diseased, disorganized uncureds. You’ll be mowed down. Obliterated. Poof.”
I think I’m going to be sick. My head is thick, fluid-feeling. Distantly, I’m aware that Coral is speaking to me again. It takes a moment for the words to work their way through the murk, through the watery echoes in my head.
“Lena. I think someone’s coming.”
She has barely spoken the words when a regulator—probably the one we saw with Lu earlier—rounds the corner, saying, “Sorry that took so long. Shed was locked—”
He breaks off when he sees Coral and me, and Lu on the ground. Coral shouts and lunges for him but clumsily, off balance. He pushes her backward, and I hear a small crack as her head collides with one of the stone columns of the portico. The regulator lunges forward, swinging his flashlight at her face. She manages to duck, barely, and the flashlight crashes hard against the stone pillar and sputters into darkness.
The regulator has thrown too much weight into the swing, and his balance is upset. This gives Coral just enough time to break past him, away from the pillar. She’s swaying on her feet, and obviously unsteady. She staggers around to face him, but clutching one hand to the back of her head. The regulator regains his footing and his hand goes to his belt. Gun.
I rocket to my feet. I have no choice but to release Lu from underneath me. I dive at the regulator and grab him around the waist. My weight and momentum carry us both off our feet, and we hit the ground together, rolling once, arms and legs tangled together. The taste of his uniform and sweat is in my mouth, and I can feel the weight of his gun digging against my thigh.
Behind me, I hear a shout, and a body thudding to the ground. I pray that it’s Lu and not Coral.
Then the regulator breaks free of my grip and scrambles to his feet, pushing me off him roughly. He is panting, red-faced. Bigger than I am, and stronger—but slower, too, in bad shape. He fumbles with his belt, but I’m on my
feet before he can get the gun from its holster. I grab his wrist, and he lets out a roar of frustration.
Bang.
The gun goes off. The explosion is so unexpected, it sends a jolt through my whole body; I feel it ringing all the way up into my teeth. I jump backward. The regulator screams out in pain and crumples; a dark black stain is spreading down his right leg and he rolls over onto his back, clutching his thigh. His face is contorted, wet with sweat. The gun is still in its holster—a misfire.
I step forward and take the gun off him. He doesn’t resist. He just keeps moaning and shuddering, repeating, “Oh shit, oh shit.”
“What the hell did you do?”
I whip around. Lu is standing, panting, staring at me. Behind her, I see Coral lying on the ground, on her side, her head resting on one arm and her legs curled up toward her chest. My heart stops. Please don’t let her be dead. Then I see her eyelids flutter, and one of her hands twitch. She moans. Not dead, then.
Lu takes a step toward me. I raise the gun, level it at her. She freezes.
“Hey, now.” Her voice is warm, easy, friendly. “Don’t do anything stupid, okay? Just hold on.”
“I know what I’m doing,” I say. I’m amazed to see how steady my hand is. I’m amazed that this—wrist, finger, fist, gun—belongs to me.
She manages to smile. “Remember the old homestead?” she says in that same smooth lullaby-voice. “Remember when Blue and I found all those blueberry bushes?”
“Don’t you dare talk to me about what I remember,” I practically spit. “And don’t talk about Blue, either.” I cock the gun. I see her flinch. Her smile falters. It would be so easy. Flex and release. Bang.
“Lena,” she says, but I don’t let her finish. I take a step closer to her, closing the distance between us, then wrap one arm around her neck and draw her into an embrace, shoving the muzzle of the revolver into the soft flesh of her chin. Her eyes begin rolling, like a horse’s when it’s frightened; I can feel her bucking against me, shaking, trying to wrestle away from me.
