Breathe (11 page)

Maude sniffs. “Yeah, The Switch were an accident. But everything else is a load of old poppycock. Lightnin’? Pah! I bet they’re still pretending they’re working on replanting the earth and cleaning up the seas.”

“I know all this already,” Alina says. “You’re useless to me.”

“But if there’s no clean-up, we’ll never get out of the pod,” I say.

Alina moves toward the window and peers out at the drizzle. “I have to go,” she says.

“I should come along with yous,” Maude suggests, ignoring me completely and looking sideways at Alina. “I know the whole area, dun’ I? There’s about a gazillion drifters and I know where they’re at and … and …” She runs out of ideas.

“
And
you tried to kill me, you witch.” Alina rolls up her sleeves like she’s preparing to fight. I stand between her and Maude.

“Why wouldn’t they replant the earth? They’re growing trees in the biosphere,” I whisper.

“Tokens!” Maude barks, pointing a twisted finger at me.

Alina sighs. “They pretend they’re the only ones who can grow anything. That the earth is so scary, even the trees would rather be in the pod.”

“Bring me along. I ain’t useless,” Maude whines.

“And they kill the trees on purpose?” I keep my voice even, but inside I’m coming apart, and I realize suddenly that there was never any way I was going to make it into the Leadership Program, not after what I said in the debates about the trees and how much they matter.

“They’ve capitalized on a very ugly reality,” Alina says.

Quinn puts up a hand in protest. “Okay, but Breathe didn’t cause
this
.” He tugs on his facemask. Then he gives me a pleading look like there’s something I could do that would stop what they’re saying from being true.

“They’re after you because you did something,” I say to Alina.

“I need to keep moving,” she replies. “Stay here, if you like. I’m off.” She moves toward the door.

Quinn’s face is pale. He jumps in front of the door, barring Alina’s way out. “What did you do?” he asks.

“I stole cuttings from the biosphere. That’s what I did. And they’ll do anything to stop the Resistance from replanting the earth. That’s why I have to get out of here.” She pushes Quinn easily aside but doesn’t leave.

“They don’t want the world to get better because then we’d be free,” I say.

Alina nods sadly, like she’s full of pity for my lost innocence. “People are dying. People who try to grow things are being killed. If I’d stayed—” She pauses. “It’s a long story.” She reaches for the doorknob.

“Maude will die if we leave her,” I say. “We need to get her somewhere safe, at least. Maybe find other drifters who can feed her.” Alina turns around, looks at the old woman and then at me. Her eyes have lost some of their fury.

“Leave me ’ere and I’ll holler up a hurricane as soon as the first Breathe convoy rolls by,” Maude says. No one responds. It isn’t a serious threat.

“She’ll attack us on the road. It’s too dangerous.”

“Not if we’re with you,” Quinn suggests. “We want to help.” I have little interest in helping Alina, but how can I go back to the pod when there’s so much I don’t know? I need to know everything. About the pod. About the Ministry. And about what the alternatives are to it all.

“We’re coming,” I tell Alina. “If you say no, we’ll simply follow you.” I keep my chin up, trying to look tougher than I feel. “And we’re bringing Maude Blue.”

We’ve been walking for more than two hours, and I think I’ve spent one hour looking at Alina’s ass and another hour trying
not
to look at it. I have to be careful though, when Alina glances around, not to let her see me staring. She’s the kind of girl who’d be likely to sock me if she caught me.

Old Maude Blue with her stench and knotty hair is gasping in her mask, but Alina won’t slow down, and Maude has to keep up with her because the airtank she’s now wearing, my spare, is tied to Alina’s wrist. I was pretty impressed when Bea came up with the idea: there’s no way the old woman’s going to bolt and then turn up and attack us later when her air supply is attached to Alina. Compared to the soggy air she’s been breathing, the stuff in my airtank probably feels golden, but even so, she’s old and not used to walking. I feel sorry for her, in a way.

But I feel more sorry for Bea because she’s not used to a lot of exercise either. I am because my father can afford it. “All right?” I ask, tapping her on the shoulder. She steps over a prostrate parking meter and nods. The rain has eased, but Bea still has the hood of her rain jacket up to protect her face from the scorching wind.

Bea doesn’t seem to notice me and turns toward Alina. “We’re basically prisoners?” she asks. I should, if I want to get anywhere with her, give Alina a chance to answer. I don’t.

“No way,” I say, even though I know firsthand about the corruption in the pod. There’s no guessing how far the Ministry would go to retain power. Yet I find myself defending them. “If my father knew, he’d do something to stop it. Maybe we should be going back to the pod to tell him. He knows the Pod Minister. You should be taking this to the top instead of running away.” Maude chuckles and Alina sniffs. Bea shrugs. They don’t buy it. And neither do I. “Why would they want to breathe in chemically manufactured air when they could breathe in the real stuff?” I try desperately.

“Breathe would be ruined. Everyone would leave and rebuild their lives. What would the directors and politicians do with themselves?” Alina says. “Their way of life depends on you being unable to survive without them. And to make sure you can’t ever leave, they pump the pod with more oxygen than is needed.”

“Well, that’s obviously not true. They charge for extra oxygen consumption. Oxygen is expensive,” I say.

“That’s right. It is. But they give us enough for free to get us hooked. Before The Switch, the earth’s air was twenty-one percent oxygen. In the pod they give us almost thirty percent. Why? So that when we come outside and have to suck in only six percent, we won’t be able to cope. But we
can
cope. We would cope if they only taught us how.”

“What about the other countries?” Bea asks. “Every country can’t be corrupt.”

“Coastline Division,” Maude wheezes. “I had a pal who was a member of that unit for a couple of years. Yes. Yes. Nice little number, that was.” She pauses, puts her hands on her knees, coughs, and continues. “They don’t want no one coming and they don’t want no one going. They caught a few tourists in a makeshift boat once. Trying to make their way to France, they was.” She picks her nose with one of her long black fingernails.

“They say Russia is managing to subsist on thin air,” Alina says. “They’ve trained many of their people to exist on lower levels so they can be free. The pods in Russia are almost empty.”

“No they ain’t. They have pods.
Everyone
has pods. Pods, pods everywhere. Breathe sold the oxygen formula to the whole world,” Maude snarls. For a moment Alina looks unsure but quickly restores her composure.

“The point is, it’s possible. Do you know why we keep having to be vaccinated? It has nothing to do with diseases. They’re lowering our levels of red blood cells, so we’ll need more oxygen. Everyone, even the poorest auxiliaries, will feel the need to buy more air. We have a nurse on the inside who injects people with a saline solution instead. I make sure I see her and no one else.”

“So that’s why you were so mad when Riley and Ferris pushed in,” I say.

“The nurse’s shift ended at one.”

“It’s beyond belief. I mean, I do believe
you
… I can’t believe
it
,” I say.

“They’ll have absolute control until the trees take it back. With a little help from the Resistance. Here’s hoping we survive long enough to make a difference.” Alina looks straight at me when she says this. I don’t know what else I have to do to prove to her I’m not like all the other Premiums she’s ever met. “And talking about survival, take the batteries out of your pads or they’ll use them to track you,” Alina says.

Bea nods and pulls her pad from her backpack. She takes out the battery and hands it to Alina. I do the same thing. “You sure you’re all right?” I ask Bea. She nods. “Are you hungry? I’ve got snacks.” She shakes her head. I glance down at my watch. Almost four o’clock. It’ll be dark soon.

“We’ll need to find a safe place to camp for the night,” I mutter, looking at Maude’s ass now because she’s stepped behind Alina. I could look at Bea’s instead, but that would be weird.

“What?” Alina turns but keeps walking. Her bandage is coming loose and there’s blood seeping through it. Her cheeks are red from the cold.

“It’s getting dark. We should find a place to sleep. And maybe Bea could fix up your arm again. Looks sore.”

“
I’m
walking through the night. You do whatever you want,” she says, marching on so quickly she almost rips Maude’s mask off, and the old woman has to scurry after her. Bea has slowed and is next to me now.

“You all right?” I try one more time.

“I’m
fine
,” she grumbles. I don’t blame her for being fed up. I mean, our trip hasn’t exactly turned out as planned. She whispers something so Alina won’t hear. But I can’t hear her either and move my ear next to the holes in the blowoff valve of her mask. “We’re in deep,” she whispers. Alina spins around.

“I didn’t ask you to come,” she says, “and I’ll actually have a lot of explaining to do if you’re with me. I really don’t want to get you into something you aren’t ready for. Go home. I don’t want another death on my conscience.”

“
Another
death?” we all respond in unison.

“Who’s dead?” Bea asks.

“You should go back,” she repeats. I’m starting to wonder whether we
should
. I took a fancy to a girl, so I helped her escape the pod. After that I saved her from a crazy drifter. Now I’m following her to God-knows-where to see God-knows-who, and all she can do is give me the evil eye and tell me to get lost when really she should be applauding my audacity. I’ve managed to make Bea hate me, and if Alina kind of despises me, despite my best efforts to impress her, why on earth am I using up my oxygen and vacation time to trek into the city with her? I think about saying this, but I don’t because the truth is, I like her.

“We can’t go back while you have
her
tied to you,” I say, pointing at Maude, who grimaces. “You said yourself she’d attack you.”

“Oh, don’t you fret about me. I’ll be as good as gold,” Maude cackles. I’m about to tell Alina that we won’t leave her unprotected when Bea speaks up.

“It’s got nothing to do with protecting anyone, Quinn. I’m not going back to the pod to spend the rest of my life being an underling. Maybe if we go with Alina we can help change things. Or at least learn the truth.” She glares at me.

“I still think we should take a rest,” I say. “What harm would a few minutes do?”

“Not ’ere,” Maude says sharply, scurrying forward and signaling with her thumb to a building on our right with broken stained-glass windows and a tall, crooked spire. Up in the bell tower, I make out the shape of a person. A man whose face is covered in hair. He’s waving. “That there’s Larry,” she says. “He ain’t dangerous but he’s got scabies or somethin’ like that in his skin. Contagious for sure.” The man waves and waves. Maude doesn’t look up. We keep moving.

After another mile or so, Bea begins to slow down. “We’re resting,” I announce. This isn’t a request. I stop walking and grab Bea’s arm to make her stop, too.

“Five minutes. Then we move on,” Alina says.

“Yeah, five or ten minutes should be good,” I say. Alina frowns at me. I look away.

Mountains of rubble are everywhere now, and the buildings still standing on either side of the road are twice the height of those we passed before we found Maude. If any of these buildings spontaneously crumble, we’ll all be dead for sure, buried beneath tons of concrete blocks and steel rods. Alina takes out an old-fashioned compass and starts to turn it this way and that. “Where are we?” Bea asks.

“Blackhorse Road,” Alina says.

“And where exactly are we going?”

“The Grove. It’s an old stadium.”

“A soccer stadium from before? Where is it?” I ask. I take out my pad again, to show them pictures of our school soccer team, when I remember there’s no battery in the thing. “By some fluke, my team won the league last year.”

“How wonderful for you,” Alina says.

Bea and Maude are sitting on a red plastic bench beneath a transparent structure. It looks like a miniature tram stop although there is no evidence of tracks on the road or tram lines overhead. Next to it is a tall sign with faded numbers printed on it: 123, 230, 158, N73. Maude sees me examining the sign. “Bus stop,” she wheezes. “
Brum-brum
. Like a big buggy.” Bea reaches into her backpack and pulls out her water flask, which she holds to Maude’s lips while the old woman keeps the facemask in place over her nose. I’m not thirsty, but I’ve been bursting to pee for over an hour. I’ve only managed to keep my mind off it by, well, looking at things I shouldn’t.

“I’m off to take care of some business,” I say.

“What kind of business?” Alina asks.

“
Private
business,” I say slowly, so she gets the point and I don’t have to say
I’m going to pull my trooper out and take a piss
.