Delirium: The Complete Collection (48 page)

Then it’s farther, and faster.

Alex is alive. Just one more push, just a final sprint, and you’ll see.

When Hana and I were on the track team together, we used to play little mental games like this to keep ourselves motivated. Running is a mental sport, more than anything else. You’re only as good as your training, and your training is only as good as your thinking. If you make the whole eight miles without walking, you’ll get 100 percent on your history boards. That’s the kind of thing we used to say together. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Sometimes we’d give up, laughing, at mile seven, saying,
Oops! There goes our history score
.

That’s the thing: We didn’t really care. A world without love is also a world without stakes.

Alex is alive. Push, push, push. I run until my feet are swollen, until my toes bleed and blister. Raven screams at me even as she is preparing buckets of cold water for my feet, tells me to be careful, warns me about the dangers of infection. Antibiotics are not easy to come by here.

The next morning I wrap my toes in cloth, stuff my feet into my shoes, and run again. If you can … just a little bit farther … just a little bit faster … you’ll see, you’ll see, you’ll see. Alex is alive.

I’m not crazy. I know he isn’t, not really. As soon as my runs are done and I’m hobbling back to the church basement, it hits me like a wall: the stupidity of it all, the pointlessness. Alex is gone, and no amount of running or pushing or bleeding will bring him back.

I know it. But here’s the thing: When I’m running, there’s always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blur—and in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and there’s a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color (auburn hair, burning, a crown of leaves)—and I know then, too, that if I only turn my head he’ll be there, laughing, watching me, holding out his arms.

I don’t ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and he’ll be back, and everything will be okay.

And until then: I run.

A
fter the DFA meeting, I follow the crowd streaming out into the watery, early spring light. The energy is still there, pulsing through us all, but in the sunshine and the cold it feels meaner, harder-edged: an impulse to destroy.

Several buses are waiting at the curb, and already the lines to board zigzag back up the stairs of the Javits Center. I’ve been waiting for half an hour, and have already seen three different rotations of buses, when I realize I’ve left one of my gloves inside the auditorium. I stop myself from cursing. I am packed among the cured, surrounded by them, and don’t want to raise any alarms.

I’m only twenty people from the front of the line now, and for a moment I consider leaving the glove. But the past six months have taught me too much about wanting: In the Wilds it is practically a sin to waste, and it is definitely bad luck. Waste today, want tomorrow—another of Raven’s favorite mantras.

I slip out of line, attracting puzzled looks and frowns, and head back up the stairs to the polished glass doors. The regulator who was manning the metal detector is gone, though he has left a portable radio on, and a half-drunk cup of coffee, lid off, sitting next to it. The woman who checked my ID has also disappeared, and the folding table has been cleared of DFA leaflets. The overhead lights have been turned off, and the room feels even vaster than usual.

Swinging open the auditorium doors, I am momentarily disoriented. I am staring, suddenly, at the enormous peak of a snow-capped mountain as though falling toward it from above. The picture is projected, huge, on the screen where Julian Fineman’s face was enlarged earlier. But the room is otherwise dark, and the image is sharp and vivid. I can make out the dense ring of trees, like a black fur, at its base, and the sharp, bladelike peaks at its summit, crowned with lacy white caps. My breath catches a little. It’s beautiful.

Then the picture changes. This time I am looking at a pale, sandy beach, and a swirling blue-green ocean. I take several steps into the room, suppressing a cry. I haven’t seen the ocean since leaving Portland.

The picture changes again. Now the screen is full of huge trees, shooting up toward the sky, which is just visible through the canopy of thick branches. Sunlight slants at steep angles across the reddish trunks and the undergrowth of curling green ferns and flowers. I move forward again—entranced, compelled—and bump against one of the metal folding chairs. Instantly a person jumps from the front row, and a shadow silhouette floats onto the screen, obscuring a portion of the forest. Then the screen goes blank and the lights go on, and the silhouette is Julian Fineman. He is holding a remote control.

“What are you doing here?” he demands. I’ve clearly caught him off guard. Without waiting for me to reply, he says, “The meeting’s over.”

Beneath the aggression, I sense something else: embarrassment. And I am positive, then, that this is Julian Fineman’s secret: He sits in the dark, he imagines himself into other places. He looks at beautiful pictures.

I’m so surprised I can barely stammer out a reply. “I—I lost my glove.”

Julian looks away from me. I see his fingers tighten on the remote control. But when his eyes slide back to mine, he has regained his composure, his politeness. “Where were you sitting?” he asks me. “I can help you look for it.”

“No,” I burst out too loudly. I’m still in shock. The air between us still feels charged and unstable, like it did during the meeting. Something deep inside of me is aching—those pictures, that ocean, blown up on the enormous screen, made me feel as though I could fall through space and into the forest, could lick the snow off the mountaintop like whipped cream from a spoon. I wish I could ask him to turn off the lights, to show me again.

But he is Julian Fineman, and he is everything I hate, and I will not ask him for anything.

I move quickly back up to where I was sitting. Julian watches me the whole time, although he doesn’t move—he stands there, perfectly still, in front of the now-blank screen. Only his eyes are mobile, alive. I can feel them on my neck, on my back, tangled in my hair. I find my glove easily and scoop it off the ground, holding it up for Julian’s inspection.

“Found it,” I say, deliberately avoiding his eyes. I start walking quickly to the exit. He stops me with a question.

“How long were you standing there?”

“What?” I turn around again to look at him. His face is now expressionless, unreadable.

“How long were you there? How many pictures did you see?”

I hesitate, wondering whether this is some kind of test. “I saw the mountain,” I say finally.

He looks down at his feet, then meets my gaze again. Even from a distance, I am startled by the clarity of his eyes. “We’re looking for strongholds,” he says, lifting his chin, as though expecting me to contradict him. “Invalid camps. We’re using all kinds of surveillance techniques.”

So, another fact: Julian Fineman is a liar.

At the same time, it’s a mark of progress that someone like Julian would even use the word. A year ago, Invalids weren’t even supposed to exist. We were supposed to have been exterminated during the blitz. We were the stuff of myth, like unicorns and werewolves.

That was before the Incidents, before the resistance started asserting itself more forcefully and we became impossible to ignore.

I force myself to smile. “I hope you find them,” I say. “I hope you find every last one.”

Julian nods.

As I turn around, I add, “Before they find you.”

His voice rings out sharply. “What did you say?”

I shoot him a look over my shoulder. “Before they find us,” I say, and push through the doors, letting them swing shut behind me.

By the time I make it back to Brooklyn, the sun has set. The apartment is cold. The shades are drawn, and a single light burns in the foyer. The sideboard just inside the hall is stacked with a slender pile of mail.

NO ONE IS SAFE UNTIL EVERYONE IS CURED
, reads the writing on the first envelope, printed neatly above our address. Then, beneath it:
PLEASE SUPPORT THE DFA
.

Next to the mail is a small silver tray for our identification papers. Two IDs are lined up next to each other: Rebecca Ann Sherman and Thomas Clive Sherman, both unsmiling in their official portraits, staring straight ahead. Rebecca has coal-black hair, perfectly parted, and wide brown eyes. Thomas’s hair is clipped so short it’s difficult to judge what color it might be. His eyes are hooded, as though he’s close to sleep.

Beneath their IDs are their documents, clipped together neatly. If you were to page through the packet, you would learn all the relevant facts about Rebecca and Thomas: dates and places of birth, parents and grandparents, salaries, school grades, incidents of disobedience, evaluation and board scores, the date and place of their wedding ceremony, all previous addresses.

Of course, Rebecca and Thomas don’t really exist, any more than Lena Morgan Jones exists: a thin-faced girl, also unsmiling in her official ID. My ID goes next to Rebecca’s. You never know when there might be a raid, or a census. It’s better if you don’t have to go digging for your documents. It’s best, actually, if nobody ever goes digging around here.

It wasn’t until I moved to New York City that I understood Raven’s obsession with order in the Wilds: The surfaces must look right. They must be smooth. There must never be any crumbs.

That way there is never any trail to follow.

The curtains are closed in the living room. This keeps the heat in and also the eyes—of the neighbors, of the regulators, of passing patrols—out. In Zombieland, someone is always watching. There is nothing else for people to do. They do not think. They feel no passion, no hatred, no sadness; they feel nothing but fear, and a desire for control. So they watch, and poke, and pry.

At the back of the apartment is the kitchen. Hanging on the wall above the table is a photograph of Thomas Fineman, and another of Cormac T. Holmes, the scientist credited with performing the first-ever successful cure.

Past the stove is a little alcove pantry. It is lined with narrow shelves and absolutely packed with food. The memory of a long hunger is difficult to shake, and all of us—the ones who know—are secret hoarders now. We pack granola bars in our bags and stuff our pockets with sugar packets.

You never know when the hunger will be back.

One of the pantry’s three walls is, in fact, a hidden door. I ease it open to reveal a set of rough wooden stairs. A light glows dimly in the basement, and I hear the staccato rhythm of voices. Raven and Tack are fighting—nothing new there—and I hear Tack, sounding pained, say, “I just don’t understand why we can’t be honest with each other. We’re supposed to be on the same side.”

Raven responds sharply, “You know that’s unrealistic, Tack. It’s for the best. You have to trust me.”

“You’re the one who isn’t trusting—”

His voice cuts off sharply as I shut the door behind me, a little louder than I normally would, so they’ll know I’m there. I hate listening to Tack and Raven fight—I’d never heard any adults fight until I escaped to the Wilds—though over time I’ve grown more used to it. I’ve had to. It seems like they’re always bickering about something.

I go down the stairs. As I do, Tack turns away, passing a hand over his eyes. Raven says shortly, “You’re late. The meeting ended hours ago. What happened?”

“I missed the first round of buses.” Before Raven can start lecturing, I quickly add, “I left a glove and had to go back for it. I spoke to Julian Fineman.”

“You what?” Raven bursts out, and Tack sighs and rubs his forehead.

“Only for, like, a minute.” I almost tell them about the pictures and decide, at the last minute, that I won’t. “It’s cool. Nothing happened.”

“It’s not cool, Lena,” Tack says. “What did we tell you? It’s all about staying under the radar.”

Sometimes it feels as though Tack and Raven take their roles as Thomas and Rachel—strict guardians—a little bit too seriously, and I have to fight the urge to roll my eyes.

“It was no big deal,” I insist.

“Everything’s a big deal. Don’t you get it? We—”

Raven cuts him off. “She gets it. She’s heard it a thousand times. Give her a break, okay?”

Tack stares at her mutely for a second, his mouth a thin white line. Raven meets his gaze steadily. I know they’re angry about other things—that it’s not just me—but I feel a hot rush of guilt anyway. I’m making things worse.

“You’re unbelievable,” Tack says. I don’t think he means for me to hear.

Then he brushes past me and pounds up the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Raven demands, and for a moment something flares in her eyes—some need, or fear. But it’s gone before I can identify it.

“Out,” Tack says without stopping. “There’s no air down here. I can hardly breathe.” Then he’s pushing into the pantry and the door closes at the top of the stairwell, and Raven and I are left alone.

For a second we stand in silence. Then Raven barks a laugh. “Don’t mind him,” she says. “You know Tack.”

“Yeah,” I say, feeling awkward. The fight has soured the air; Tack was right. The basement feels heavy, clotted. Normally it’s my favorite place in the house, this secret space—Tack and Raven’s, too. It’s the only place where we can shed the false skins, fake names, fake pasts.