Requiem

Lena

The sky doesn’t set so much as break apart. The horizon is brick-colored. The rest of the sky is streaked with shock-red tendrils.

The river has slowed to a bare trickle. Fights break out over water. Pippa warns us not to leave her circle, and posts guards around its periphery. Summer has already split. Either Pippa doesn’t know where she has gone, or won’t share her plans with us.

In the end, Pippa decides that smaller is better: The fewer people we involve, the less chance of a screwup. The best fighters—Tack, Raven, Dani, and Hunter—will be responsible for the main action: getting to the dam, wherever it is, and taking it down. Lu insists on going with them and so does Julian, and even though neither one is a trained fighter, Raven relents.

I could kill her.

“We’ll need guards, too,” she says. “Lookouts. Don’t worry. I’ll bring him back safely.”

Alex, Pippa, Coral, and one of Pippa’s crew, nicknamed Beast—I can only assume because of his tangle of wild black hair and the dark beard that obscures his mouth—will form one diversionary force. Somehow I get roped into heading up the second one. Bram will be my support.

“I wanted to stay with Julian,” I tell Tack. I don’t feel comfortable complaining directly to Pippa.

“Yeah? Well I wanted bacon and eggs this morning,” he says, without glancing up. He’s rolling a cigarette.

“After all I did for you,” I say, “you still treat me like a child.”

“Only when you act like one,” he says sharply, and I remember a fight I had with Alex once, a lifetime ago, after I had first discovered that my mom had been imprisoned in the Crypts my whole life. I haven’t thought about that moment, and Alex’s sudden outburst, in forever. That was just before he told me he loved me for the first time. That was just before I said it back.

I feel suddenly disoriented and have to squeeze my nails into my palms until I feel a brief shock of pain. I don’t understand how everything changes, how the layers of your life get buried. Impossible. At some point, at some time, we must all explode.

“Look, Lena.” Now Tack raises his head. “We’re asking you to do this because we trust you. You’re a leader. We need you.”

I’m so startled by the sincerity of his tone, I can’t think of a response. In my old life, I was never a leader. Hana was the leader. I got to follow along. “When does it end?” I say finally.

“I don’t know,” Tack says. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him admit to not knowing something. He tries to roll up his cigarette, but his hands are shaking. He has to stop, and try again. “Maybe it doesn’t.” Finally he gives up and throws the cigarette down in disgust. For a moment we stand there in silence.

“Bram and I need a third,” I say at last. “That way if something happens, if one of us goes down, the other one still has backup.”

Tack looks up at me again. I’m reminded that he, too, is young—twenty-four, Raven once told me. In that second, he looks it. He looks like a grateful kid, like I’ve just offered to help with his homework.

Then the moment passes, and his face goes hard again. He removes his pack of tobacco, and some rolling papers, and begins again. “You can have Coral,” he says.

The part of the mission that frightens me the most is the journey through the camp. Pippa gives us one of the battery-operated lanterns, which Bram carries. In its jerky glow, the crowd around us is broken into pieces and fragments: the flash of a grin here; a woman, bare-breasted, nursing a baby, staring at us resentfully. A tide of people barely break apart to let us through, then reform and refold behind us. I have a sense of their sucking need: Already, the moans have started, the whispers of water, water. From everywhere, too, comes the sound of shouting; stifled cries in the darkness; fists into flesh.

We reach the riverbank, now eerily quiet. There are no more people teeming in its depths, fighting over water. There is no more water to fight over—only a tiny trickle, no wider than a finger, black with silt.

It’s a mile to the wall, and then another four northwest along its perimeter, to one of the better-fortified areas. A problem there will bring the most attention and pull the largest number of security forces away from the point Raven, Tack, and the others need to breach.

Earlier, Pippa opened the second, smaller fridge, revealing shelves packed with weapons she had been sent by the resistance. Tack, Raven, Lu, Hunter, and Julian were each provided with guns. We’ve had to make do with a half-empty bottle of gasoline, stuffed with an ancient rag: a beggar’s purse, Pippa called it. By silent consensus I have been elected the one to carry it. As we walk, it seems to grow heavier in my backpack, bumping uncomfortably against my spine. I can’t help but imagine sudden explosions, being blown accidentally to bits.

We reach the place where the camp runs up against the city’s southern border wall, a wave of people and tents lapping up against the stone. This part of the wall, and the city beyond it, has been abandoned. Enormous, dark floodlights crane their necks over the camp. Only a single bulb remains intact: It sends a bright white light forward, painting the outline of things clearly, leaving the detail and the depth out, like a lighthouse beaming out over dark water.

We follow the border wall north and finally leave the camp behind. The ground underneath us feels dry. The carpet of pine needles cracks and snaps each time we take a step. Other than that, once the noise of the camp recedes, it is silent.

Anxiety gnaws at my stomach. I’m not too worried about our role—if all goes well, we won’t even have to breach the wall—but Julian is in way over his head. He has no idea what he’s doing, no idea what he’s getting into.

“This is crazy,” Coral says suddenly. Her voice is high, shrill. She must have been fighting down panic all this time. “It’ll never work. It’s suicide.”

“You didn’t have to come,” I say sharply. “No one asked you to volunteer.”

It’s as though she doesn’t hear me. “We should have packed up, gotten out of here,” she says.

“And left everyone else to fend for themselves?” I fire back.

Coral says nothing. She’s obviously just as unhappy as I am that we’ve been forced to work together—probably even unhappier, since I’m the one in charge.

We weave between the trees, following the erratic motions of Bram’s lantern, which bobs in front of us like an overgrown firefly. Every so often, we cross ribbons of concrete, radiating outward from the city’s walls. Once, these old roads would have led to other towns. Now they run aground into earth, flowing like gray rivers around the bases of new trees. Signs—choked with brown ivy—point the way to towns and restaurants long dismantled.

I check the small plastic watch that Beast lent me: eleven thirty p.m. It has been an hour and a half since we set out. We have another half hour before we are supposed to light the rag and send the purse over the wall. This will be timed with a simultaneous explosion on the eastern side, just south of where Raven, Tack, Julian, and the others will be crossing. Hopefully, the two explosions will divert attention away from the breach.

This far from the camp, the border becomes better maintained. The high concrete wall is undamaged and clean. The floodlights become functional and more numerous: enormous, wide-open, dazzling eyes at intervals of twenty or thirty feet.

Beyond the floodlights, I can make out the black silhouettes of looming apartment complexes, glass-fronted buildings, church spires. I know we must be getting close to the downtown center, an area that, unlike some of the outlying residential portions of the city, was not completely evacuated.

Adrenaline starts working its way through me, making me feel very alert. I’m suddenly aware that the night isn’t silent at all. I can hear animals scurrying all around us, the pitter-patter of small bodies rustling through the leaves.

Then: voices, faintly, intermingling with the wood sounds.

“Bram,” I whisper at him. “Turn off the lantern.”

He does. We all stop moving. The crickets are singing, beating the air into bits, ticking off seconds. I can hear the shallow, desperate pattern of Coral’s breathing. She’s scared.

Voices again, and a bit of drifting laughter. We are hugging the woods, concealed in a thick wedge of dark between two floodlights. As my eyes adjust, I see a tiny glowing light—an orange firefly—hovering above the wall. It flares, fades, then flares again. A cigarette. Guard.

Another burst of laughter breaks the silence, this time louder, and a man’s voice says, “No frigging way.” Guards, plural.

So. There are watch points along the way. This is both good and bad news. More guards means more people to sound the alarm, more forces to divert from the main breach. But it will also make it more dangerous to get close to the wall.

I gesture for Bram to keep moving. Now that the lantern is off, we have to go slowly. I check the watch again. Twenty minutes.

Then I see it: a metal structure rising above the wall like an overgrown birdcage. An alarm tower. Manhattan, which had a wall similar to this one, had similar alarms. Inside the wire cage is a lever that will trip security alarms all across the city, summon regulators and police to the border.

The alarm tower is situated, mercifully, in one of the dark spaces between floodlights. Still, it’s a good bet that there are guards working that portion of the border, even if we can’t see them. The top of the wall is bulk and shadow, and any number of regulators could be sheltered there.

I whisper for Bram and Coral to stop. We are still a good hundred feet from the wall, and concealed in the shadow of looming evergreens and oaks.

“We’ll detonate as close to the alarm tower as possible,” I say, keeping my voice low. “If the explosion doesn’t trip the alarm, the guards will. Bram, I need you to take out one of the floodlights farther on. Not too far, though. If there are guards in the tower, I want them pulled away from their position. I’m going to need to get closer before I can toss this thing.” I ease off my backpack.

“What am I going to do?” Coral asks.

“Stay here,” I say. “Watch. Cover me if something goes wrong.”

“That’s bullshit,” she says halfheartedly.

I check my watch again. Fifteen minutes. Almost go-time. I wrestle the bottle out of my backpack. It feels larger than it did earlier, and harder to carry. I can’t immediately find the matchbook Tack gave me, and I have a momentary panic that it somehow got lost in the dark—but then I remember I put it in my pocket for safekeeping.

Light the rag, throw the bottle, Pippa told me. Nothing to it.

I take a deep breath, exhale silently. I don’t want Coral to know that I’m nervous. “Okay, Bram.”

“Now?” His voice is soft but calm.

“Go now. But wait for my whistle.”

He unfolds from his crouch, then moves away from us soundlessly; he is soon absorbed by the greater dark. Coral and I wait in silence. At one point our elbows collide, and she jerks back. I scoot a little away from her, scanning the wall, trying to make out whether the shadows I see are people, or just tricks of the night.

I check my watch, then check it again. Suddenly the minutes seem to be tumbling forward. 11:50. 11:53. 11:55.

Now.

My throat is parched. I can hardly swallow, and I have to lick my lips twice before I manage a whistle.

For several long, agonizing moments, nothing happens. There’s no longer any point in pretending that I’m not afraid. My heart is jackhammering in my chest, and my lungs feel like they’ve been flattened.

Then I see him. Just for a second, as he darts toward the wall, he crosses into the path of the floodlight and he is lit up, frozen, a photographic still; then the darkness swallows him again, and a second later there’s a tremendous shattering, and the floodlight goes dark.

Instantly, I’m up on my feet and running for the wall. I’m aware of shouting, but I can’t make out any words, don’t focus on anything but the wall and the alarm tower behind it. Now that the floodlight is out, the tower’s silhouettes have come into starker relief, backlit by the moon and a few scattered lights from the city. Fifteen feet from the wall, I press myself against the trunk of a young oak. I put the beggar’s purse between my thighs and struggle to get a match lit. The first one sputters out.

“Come on, come on,” I mutter. My hands are shaking. Matches two and three don’t stay lit.

A staccato of gunfire breaks the stillness. The shots sound random—they’re firing blind, and I say a quick prayer that Bram is back in the trees already, concealed and safe, watching to make sure the rest of the plan goes off.

Match four catches. I move the bottle from between my thighs, touch the match tip to the rag, watch it flare up, white and hot.

Then I move out from the shelter of the trees, breathe deep, and throw.

The bottle spins toward the wall, a dizzying circle of flame. I brace myself for the explosion, but it never comes. The rag, still flaming, detaches from the mouth of the bottle and floats to the ground. I am temporarily mesmerized, watching its path—like a fiery bird, listing and damaged, collapsing into the undergrowth massed at the base of the wall. The bottle shatters harmlessly against the concrete.

“What the fuck? Now what’s the problem?”

“Fire, looks like.”

“Probably your damn cigarette.”

“Stop bitching and get me a hose.”

Still no alarm. The guards are probably used to vandalism from the Invalids, and neither a damaged floodlight nor a dinky fire is enough to cause them concern. It’s possible it won’t matter—Alex, Pippa, and Beast’s diversion is more important, closer to where the action is—but I can’t shake the fear that maybe their plan hasn’t worked either. That will leave a city full of guards, prepped, primed, attentive.

That will be sending Raven, Tack, Julian, and the rest of them into slaughter.

Without consciously deciding to move, I’m on my feet again, sprinting toward an oak close to the wall that looks like it will support my weight. All I know is I have to get over the wall and trigger the alarm myself. I wedge my foot against a knot in the tree trunk and haul myself upward. I’m weaker than I was last fall, when I used to climb to the nests quickly, daily, without a problem. I thud back down to the ground.

“What are you doing?”

I spin around. Coral has emerged from the trees.

“What are you doing?” I turn back to the tree and try again, picking a different grip this time. No time, no time, no time.

“You said to cover for you,” she says.

“Keep your voice down,” I whisper sharply. I’m surprised that she actually cared enough to follow me. “I have to get over the wall.”

“And do what?”

I try a third time—managing to skim the branches above my head with my fingertips—before my legs give out and I’m forced to jump back to the ground. My fourth attempt is worse than the first three. I’m losing control, I’m not thinking straight.

“Lena. What are you planning to do?” Coral repeats.

I spin around to look at her. “Give me a boost,” I whisper.

“A what?”

“Come on.” The panic is creeping into my voice. If Raven and the others haven’t already crossed, they’ll be trying to any second. They’re counting on me.

Coral must hear the change in my tone, because she doesn’t ask any more questions. She laces her fingers together and squats so I can wedge my foot in the cradle formed by her hands. Then she lifts me, grunting, and I shoot upward and manage to pull myself into the branches, which fan out from the trunk like the spokes of an umbrella laid bare. One branch extends almost all the way to the wall. I lean down onto my stomach, pressing myself flat against the bark, scooting forward like an inchworm.

The branch begins to sink under my weight. Another foot or so, and it begins to sway. I can’t go any farther. As the branch sinks, the distance between my position and the top of the wall increases; any farther, and I’ll have no chance of making it over.

I take a deep breath and move into a crouch, keeping my hands tightly wrapped around the branch, which is swaying lightly underneath me. There’s no time to worry or debate. I spring up and toward the wall and the branch moves with me, like a springboard, as my weight is released.

For a second I’m airborne, weightless. Then the wall’s concrete edge drives hard into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I just manage to hook both my arms over the wall and pull myself over, dropping onto the elevated pathway that the guards walk during their patrol. I pause in the shadows to get control of my breathing.

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.

“Don’t move,” I say in a voice that doesn’t sound like my own. She goes limp—all except for her eyes, which keep rolling, terrified, from my face to the sky.

Flex and release. A simple motion; a twitch.

I can smell her breath, too: hot and sour.

I push her away from me. She falls back, gasping, as though I’ve been choking her.

“Go,” I say. “Take him”—I gesture to the regulator, who is still moaning, and clutching his thigh—“and go.”

She licks her lips nervously, her eyes darting to the man on the ground.

“Before I change my mind,” I add.

She doesn’t hesitate after that; she squats and slings the regulator’s arm around her shoulders, helping him to his feet. The stain on his pants is black, spreading from mid-thigh down to his kneecap. I find myself hoping, cruelly, that he’ll bleed out before they can find help.

“Let’s go,” Lu whispers to him, her eyes still locked on me. I watch as she and the regulator hobble off down the street. Each one of his steps is punctuated by a cry of pain. As soon as the darkness has swallowed them, I exhale. I turn around and see that Coral is sitting up, rubbing her head.

“I’m all right,” she says when I go to help her up. She climbs to her feet unsteadily. She blinks several times, as though trying to clear her vision.

“You sure you can walk?” I ask, and she nods. “Come on,” I say. “We’ve got to find our way out of here.”

Lu and the regulator will give us away at their first opportunity. If we don’t hurry, any minute we’ll be surrounded. I feel a deep spasm of hatred, thinking of the fact that Tack shared his dinner with Lu only a few days ago, thinking of the fact that Lu accepted it from him.

Thankfully, we make it to the border wall without encountering any patrols, and locate a rusty metal stairwell that leads up to the guards’ walkway, which is also empty; we must be at the southernmost end of the city right now, very close to the camp, and security is concentrated in more populated portions of Waterbury.

Coral mounts the stairs shakily and I go behind her, to make sure she won’t fall, but she refuses my help and jerks away from me when I place a hand on her back. In just a few hours, my respect for her has increased tenfold. As we reach the walkway, the alarm in the distance finally stops, and the sudden quiet is somehow scarier: a silent scream.

Getting down the other side of the wall is trickier. The drop from the top is a good fifteen feet, onto a steep, loose slope of gravel and rock. I go first, swinging out, hand over hand, on one of the disabled floodlights; when I let go and drop to the ground, I slide forward several feet, thudding onto my knees, and feel the gravel bite through my denim. Coral follows after me, her face pale with concentration, landing with a small cry of pain.

I don’t know what I was expecting—I had feared, I think, that the tanks would have already arrived, that we would find the camp already consumed by fire and chaos—but it stretches before us as it ever did, a vast and pitted field of peaked tents and shelters. Beyond it, across the valley, are the high cliffs, capped with a shaggy black mass of trees.

“How long do you think we have?” Coral says. I know without asking that she means before the troops come.

“Not long enough,” I say.

We move in silence toward the outskirts of the camp—walking the periphery will still be quicker than trying to navigate the maze of people and tents. The river is still dry. The plan obviously failed. Raven and the others did not manage to disable the dam—not that it matters much, at this point.

All these people . . . thirsty, exhausted, weak. They’ll be easier to corral.

And, of course, far easier to kill.

By the time we make it back to Pippa’s camp, my throat is so dry I can hardly swallow. For a second, when Julian rushes toward me, I don’t recognize his face: It is a collection of random shapes and shadows.

Behind him, Alex turns away from the fire. He meets my eyes and starts toward me, mouth open, hands extended. Everything freezes, and I know I’ve been forgiven and I reach out my hands—reach out my arms to him . . .

“Lena!” Then Julian is sweeping me into his arms, and I snap back into myself, press my cheek against his chest. Alex must have been reaching for Coral; I hear him murmuring to her, and as I pull away from Julian, I see that Alex is leading Coral back toward one of the campfires. I was so sure, for just that one second, that he was reaching for me.

“What happened?” Julian asks, cupping my face and bending down a little bit so that we’re nearly eye to eye. “Bram told us—”

“Where’s Raven?” I say, cutting him off.

“I’m right here.” She flows out of the dark, and suddenly I am surrounded: Bram, Hunter, Tack, and Pippa, all speaking at once, firing questions at me.

Julian keeps one hand on my back. Hunter offers me a drink from a plastic jug, which is mostly empty. I take it gratefully.

“Is Coral okay?”

“You’re bleeding, Lena.”

“God. What happened?”

“There’s no time.” The water has helped, but still the words shred my throat. “We have to leave. We have to get everyone we can, and we have to—”

“Slow down, slow down.” Pippa holds up both hands. Half her face is lit by the fire; the other is plunged in darkness. I think of Lu and feel nauseous: a half person, a two-faced traitor.

“Start from the beginning,” Raven says.

“We had to fight,” I say. “We had to go inside.”

“We thought you might have been taken,” Tack says. I can tell he’s hopped up, anxious; everybody is. The whole group is charged with bad electricity. “After the ambush—”

“Ambush?” I repeat sharply. “What do you mean, ambush?”

“We never made it to the dam,” Raven says. “Alex and Beast managed to get their blast off okay. We were a half-dozen feet from the wall when a group of regulators started swarming us. It was like they were waiting. We would have been screwed if Julian hadn’t spotted the movement and given the alarm early.”

Alex has joined the group. Coral gets clumsily to her feet, her mouth a fine, dark line. I think she looks more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her. My heart squeezes once, tight, in my chest. I can see why Alex likes her.

Maybe even why he loves her.

“We beat it back here,” Pippa pipes up. “Then Bram showed up. We’ve been debating whether to go looking—”

“Where’s Dani?” I notice, for the first time, that she isn’t with the group.

“Dead,” Raven says shortly, avoiding my eyes. “And Lu was taken. We couldn’t get to them in time. I’m sorry, Lena,” she finishes in a softer voice, and looks at me again.

I feel another surge of nausea. I wrap my arms around my stomach, as though I can press it deep and down. “Lu wasn’t taken,” I say. My voice comes out as a bark. “And they were waiting for you. The regulators. It was a trap.”

There’s a second of silence. Raven and Tack exchange a glance. Alex is the one who speaks.

“What are you talking about?”

It’s the first time he has spoken to me directly since that night on the banks, after the regulators burned our camp.

“Lu isn’t what we thought she was,” I say. “She isn’t who we thought she was. She’s been cured.”

More silence: a sharp, shocked minute of it.

Finally Raven bursts out, “How do you know?”

“I saw the mark,” I say. Suddenly I’m exhausted. “And she told me.”

“Impossible,” Hunter says. “I was with her. . . . We went to Maryland together. . . .”

“It’s not impossible,” Raven says slowly. “She told me she’d broken off from the group for a while, spent some time floating between homesteads.”

“She was only gone for a few weeks.” Hunter looks at Bram for confirmation. Bram nods.

“That’s time enough.” Julian speaks softly. Alex glares at him. But Julian’s right: It is time enough.

Raven’s voice is strained. “Go on, Lena.”

“They’re bringing in troops,” I say. Once the words leave my mouth I feel like I’ve been socked in the stomach.

There’s another moment of silence. “How many?” Pippa demands.

“Ten thousand.” I can barely speak the words.

There is a sharp intake of breath, gasps from all around the circle. Pippa stays laser-focused on me. “When?”

“Less than twenty-four hours,” I say.

“If she was telling the truth,” Bram says.

Pippa runs a hand through her hair, making it stick up in spikes. “I don’t believe it,” she says, but adds almost immediately, “I was worried something like this might happen.”

“I’ll fucking kill her,” Hunter says softly.

“What do we do now?” Raven addresses the comment to Pippa.

Pippa is silent for a second, staring at the fire. Then she rouses herself. “We do nothing,” she says firmly, sweeping her eyes deliberately around the group: from Tack and Raven to Hunter and Bram; to Beast and Alex and Coral, and to Julian. Finally her eyes click to mine, and I involuntarily draw back. It’s as though a door has closed inside her. For once, she isn’t pacing. “Raven, you and Tack will lead the group to a safe house just outside of Hartford. Summer told me how to get there. Some contacts from the resistance will be there in the next few days. You’ll have to wait it out.”

“What about you?” Beast asks.

Pippa pushes her way out of the circle, stepping into the three-sided structure at the center of camp and moving toward the old refrigerator. “I’ll do what I can here,” she says.

Everyone speaks at once. Beast says, “I’m staying with you.”

Tack bursts out, “That’s suicide, Pippa.”

And Raven says, “You’re no match for ten thousand troops. You’ll be mowed down—”

Pippa raises a hand. “I’m not planning to fight,” she says. “I’ll do what I can to spread the word about what’s coming. I’ll try to clear the camp.”

“There’s no time.” Coral speaks up. Her voice is shrill. “The troops are already on their way. . . . There’s no time to move everyone, no time to get the word out—”

“I said I would do what I can.” Now Pippa’s voice turns sharp. She removes the key from around her neck and opens the lock around the fridge, removing food and medical equipment from the darkened shelves.

“We won’t leave without you,” Beast says stubbornly. “We’ll stay. We’ll help you clear the camp.”

“You’ll do what I say,” Pippa says, without turning around to face him. She squats and begins pulling blankets from under the bench. “You’ll go to the safe house and you’ll wait for the resistance.”

“No,” he says. “I won’t.” Their eyes meet: Some wordless dialogue flows between them, and at last, Pippa nods.

“All right,” she says. “But the rest of you need to clear out.”

“Pippa—” Raven starts to protest.

Pippa straightens up. “No arguing,” she says. Now I know where Raven learned her hardness, her way of leading people. “Coral is right about one thing,” Pippa continues quietly. “There’s hardly any time. I expect you out of here in twenty minutes.” She sweeps her eyes around the circle again. “Raven, take the supplies you think you’ll need. It’s a day’s walk to the safe house, more if you have to circumvent the troops. Tack, come with me. I’ll make you a map.”

The group breaks up. Maybe it’s the exhaustion, or the fear, but everything seems to happen as it does in a dream: Tack and Pippa are crouching over something, gesticulating; Raven is rolling up food in blankets, tying up the bundles with old cord; Hunter is urging me to have more water and then, suddenly, Pippa is pressing us to go, go.

The moon beats down on the switchback paths cut in the hill, tawny-colored and dry, as though steeped in old blood. I shoot a last glance back down at the camp, at the sea of writhing shadows—people, all those people, who don’t know that even now the guns and the bombs and the troops are drawing closer.

Raven must sense it too: the new terror in the air, the proximity of death, the way an animal must feel when it is caught in a trap. She turns and shouts down to Pippa.

“Please, Pippa.” Her voice rolls off the bare slope. Pippa is standing at the bottom of the dirt path, watching us. Beast is standing behind her. She’s holding a lantern, which illuminates her face from below, carves it into stone, into planes of shadow and light.

“Go,” Pippa says. “Don’t worry. I’ll meet you at the safe house.”

Raven stares at her for a few more seconds, and then begins to turn around again.

Then Pippa calls, “But if I’m not there in three days, don’t wait.”

Her voice never loses its calm. And I know, now, what the look was that I saw earlier in her eyes. It was beyond calm. It was resignation.

It was the look of someone who knows she will die.

We leave Pippa behind, standing in the dark, teeming bowels of the camp, while the sun begins to stain the sky electric, and from all sides the guns draw closer.