Delirium: The Complete Collection (63 page)

I know, now, where the story is going. I am walking toward the muddy box alongside her; I am lifting the water-warped cover. The horror and disgust is a mud too: It is rising, black and choking, inside of me.

Raven’s voice drops to a whisper. “She was wrapped in a blanket. A blue blanket with yellow lambs on it. She wasn’t breathing. I—I thought she was dead. She was … she was blue. Her skin, her nails, her lips, her fingers. Her fingers were so small.”

The mud is in my throat. I can’t breathe.

“I don’t know what made me try to revive her. I think I must have gone a little crazy. I was working as a junior lifeguard that summer, so I’d been certified in CPR. I’d never had to do it, though. And she was so tiny—probably a week, maybe two weeks old. But it worked. I’ll never forget how I felt when she took a breath, and all that color came rushing into her skin. It was like the whole world had split open. And everything I’d felt was missing—all that feeling and color—all of it came to me with her first breath. I called her Blue so I would always remember that moment, and so I would never regret.”

Abruptly, Raven stops speaking. She reaches down and readjusts Blue’s sleeping bag. The light from the fire is a low, red glow, and I can see that Blue is pale. Her forehead is beaded with sweat, and her breath comes slowly, raspingly. I am filled with a blind fury, undirected and overwhelming.

Raven isn’t finished with her story. “I didn’t even go home. I just took her and ran. I knew I couldn’t keep her in Yarmouth. You can’t keep secrets like that for long. It was hard enough to cover up the bruises. And I knew she must be illegal—some unmatched girl, some unmatched guy. A
deliria
baby. You know what they say.
Deliria
babies are contaminated. They grow up twisted, crippled, crazy. She would probably be taken and killed. She wouldn’t even be buried. They’d be worried about the spread of disease. She’d be burned, and packed up with the waste.” Raven takes another twig and throws it in the fire. It flares momentarily, a hot white tongue of flame. “I’d heard rumors about a portion in the fence that was unfortified. We used to tell stories about the Invalids coming in and out, feasting on people’s brains. Just the kind of shit you talk as a kid. I’m not sure whether I still believed it or not. But I took my chance on the fence. It took me forever to figure out a way over with Blue. In the end I had to use the blanket as a sling. And the rain was a good thing. The guards and the regulators were staying inside. I made it over without any trouble. I didn’t know where I was going or what I would do once I crossed. I didn’t say good-bye to either of my parents. I didn’t do anything but run.” She looks at me sideways. “But I guess that was enough. And I guess you know about that too.”

“Yeah,” I croak out. There’s a shredding pain in my throat. I could cry at any second. Instead, I dig my nails, as hard as I can, into my thighs, trying to break the skin beneath the fabric of my jeans.

Blue murmurs something indecipherable and tosses in her sleep. The rasping in her throat has gotten worse. Every breath brings a horrible grating noise, and the watery echoes of fluid. Raven bends forward and brushes the sweat-damp strands of hair from Blue’s forehead. “She’s burning up,” Raven says.

“I’ll get some water.” I’m desperate to do something, anything, to help.

“It won’t make any difference,” Raven says quietly.

But I need to move, so I go anyway. I pick my way through the frosty dark toward the stream, which is covered with a layer of thin ice, all webbed with fissures and cracks. The moon is high and full and reflects the silver surface and the dark flowing water underneath. I break through the ice with the bottom of a tin pail, gasping when the water flows over my fingers and into the bucket.

Raven and I don’t sleep that night. We take turns with a towel, icing Blue’s forehead, until her breathing slows and the rasping eases. Eventually she stops fidgeting and lies quiet and docile under our hands. We take turns with the towel until dawn breaks in the sky, a blush rose, liquid and pale, even though by that time, Blue has not taken a breath for hours.

J
ulian and I move through stifling darkness. We go slowly, painstakingly, even though both of us are desperate to run. But we can’t risk the noise or a flashlight. Even though we’re moving through what must be a vast network of tunnels, I feel just like a rat in a box. I’m not very steady on my feet. The darkness is full of whirling, swirling shapes, and I have to keep my left hand on the slick tunnel wall, which is coated with moisture and skittering insects.

And rats. Rats chittering from corners; rats scampering across the tracks, nails going
tick, tick, tick
against the stone.

I don’t know how long we walk. Impossible to tell, with no change in sound or texture, no way of knowing whether we are moving east or west or going around endlessly in circles. Sometimes we move alongside old railway tracks. These must have been the tunnels for the underground trains. Despite my exhaustion and nerves, I can’t help but feel amazed at the idea of all these twisting, labyrinthine spaces filled with barreling machines, and people thundering along freely in the dark.

Other times the tunnels are flowing with water—sometimes a bare trickle, sometimes a few feet of foul-smelling, litter-cluttered liquid, probably backed up from one of the sewer systems. That means we can’t be too far from a city.

I’m stumbling more and more. It has been days since I’ve eaten anything substantial, and my neck throbs painfully, where the Scavenger broke the skin with his knife. Increasingly, Julian has to reach out and steady me. Finally he keeps a hand on my back, piloting me forward. I’m grateful for the contact. It makes the agony of walking, and silence, and straining for the sound of Scavengers through the echoes and the drips, more bearable.

We go for hours without stopping. Eventually the darkness turns milky. Then I see a bit of light, a long silver stream filtering down from above. There are grates in the ceiling, five of them. Above us, for the first time in days, I see sky: a patchy nighttime sky of clouds and stars. Unconsciously, I cry out. It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

“The grates,” I say. “Can we—?”

Julian moves ahead of me, and at last we risk the flashlight. He angles the beam upward, then shakes his head.

“Bolted tight from outside,” he says. He strains onto his tiptoes and gives a little push. “No way to budge them.”

Disappointment burns in the back of my throat. We’re so close to freedom. I can smell it—wind and space, and something else, too. Rain. It must have rained recently. The smell brings tears to my eyes. We’ve ended up on a raised platform. Below us, the tracks are pooled with water and a covering of leaves driven down from above. On our left is an alcove, half-excavated and filled with wooden crates; a flyer, remarkably well preserved, is posted on the wall.
CAUTION
, it reads.
CONSTRUCTION ZONE. HARD HAT AREA
.

I can’t stand up anymore. I break from Julian’s grasp, thudding heavily to my knees.

“Hey.” He kneels next to me. “Are you okay?”

“Tired,” I gasp out. I curl up on the ground, resting my head on my arm. It’s getting harder to keep my eyes open. When I do, I see the stars above me blur into a single enormous point of light, and then fracture again.

“Go to sleep,” Julian says. He sets my backpack down and sits next to me.

“What if the Scavengers come?” I say.

“I’ll stay awake,” Julian says. “I’ll listen for them.” After a minute, he lies down on his back. There’s a wind sweeping down from the grates, and I shiver involuntarily.

“Are you cold?” Julian asks.

“A little,” I say. I can barely get the words out. My throat, too, is frozen.

There’s a pause. Then Julian rolls over onto his side and loops his arm around me, scooting forward so our bodies are pressed together, and I am cupped in the space around him. His heart beats through my back—a strange, stuttering rhythm.

“Aren’t you worried about the
deliria
?” I ask him.

“Yes,” he says shortly. “But I’m cold, too.”

After a while his heartbeat becomes more regular, and mine slows to match his. The coldness melts out of me.

“Lena?” Julian whispers. I’ve had my eyes closed. The moon is now directly above us, a high white beam.

“Yeah?”

I can feel Julian’s heart speed up again. “Do you want to know how my brother died?”

“Okay,” I say, even though something in his tone of voice makes me afraid.

“My brother and my dad never really got along,” Julian says. “My brother was stubborn. Headstrong. He had a bad temper, too. Everyone said he would be okay once he was cured.” Julian pauses. “It just got worse and worse as he got older, though. My parents were talking about having his cure moved up. It looked bad, you know, for the DFA and all. He was wild, and he didn’t listen to my father, and I’m not even sure he believed in the cure. He was six years older than me. I was—I was scared for him. Do you know what I mean?”

I can’t bring myself to speak, so I just nod. Memories are crowding me, surging from the dark places where I have walled them up: the constant, buzzing anxiety I felt as a child, watching my mom laughing, dancing, singing along to strange music that piped from our speakers, a joy threaded through with terror; fear for Hana; fear for Alex; fear for all of us.

“Seven years ago, we had another big rally in New York. That’s when the DFA was going national. It was the first rally I attended. I was eleven years old. My brother begged off. I don’t remember what excuse he gave.”

Julian shifts. For a second his arms tighten around me, an involuntary gripping; then he relaxes again. Somehow I know he has never told this story before.

“It was a disaster. Halfway through the rally, protesters stormed city hall—that’s where we were—half of them masked. The fight turned violent, and the police came to break it up, and suddenly it was just a brawl. I hid behind the podium, like a little kid. Afterward, I was so ashamed.

“One of the protesters got too close to the stage; too close to my dad. He was screaming something—I couldn’t hear what. It was loud, and he was wearing a ski mask. The guard brought him down with a nightstick. Weirdly, I remember I could hear that; the crack of the wood against his knee, the thud as he collapsed. That’s when my dad saw it, must have seen it: the birthmark on the back of his left hand, shaped like a big half-moon. My brother’s birthmark. He jumped off the stage into the audience, tore off the mask, and … it was him. My brother was lying there, in agony, his knee shattered in a thousand places. But I’ll never forget the look he gave my father. Totally calm, and resigned, too, like … like he knew what was going to happen.

“We finally made it out—had a police escort all the way home. My brother was stretched out in the back of the van, moaning. I wanted to ask him whether he was okay, but I knew my dad would kill me. He drove the whole way home without saying a word, without taking his eyes off the road. I don’t know what my mom was feeling. Maybe not much. But I think she was worried.
The Book of Shhh
says that our obligations to our children are sacred, right? ‘And the good mother will finish discharging her duties in heaven…’” Julian quotes softly. “She wanted him to see a doctor, but my dad wouldn’t hear of it. My brother’s knee looked bad—swollen to the size of a basketball, practically. He was sweating like crazy, in so much pain. I wanted to help. I wanted to—” A tremor passes through Julian’s body. “When we got home, my dad threw my brother into the basement and locked it. He was going to leave him there for a day, in the dark. So my brother would learn his lesson.”

I picture Thomas Fineman: the clean-pressed clothing and gold cuff links, which must give him such satisfaction; the polished watch and the neatly trimmed hair. Pure, clean, spotless, like a man who can always count on a good night’s sleep.
I hate you
, I think, for Julian’s sake. Julian has never gotten to know those words, to feel the relief in them.

“We could hear my brother crying through the door. We could hear him from the dining room when we ate dinner. My dad made us sit through a whole meal. I’ll never forgive him for that.” The last part is spoken in a whisper. I find his hand and lace my fingers in his and squeeze. He gives me a small pulse back.

For a while we lie there in silence. Then, from above, there’s a soft rushing sound: then the sound separates, becomes thousands of raindrops hitting the pavement. Water drums down through the grates, pinging off the metal rails of the old tracks.

“And then the crying stopped,” Julian says simply, and I think of that day in the Wilds with Raven, taking turns mopping Blue’s head while the sun broke in a wave over the trees, long after we had felt her grow cold under our hands.

Julian clears his throat. “They said afterward it was a freak accident; a blood clot from his injury that migrated into his brain. One-in-a-million chance. My dad couldn’t have known. But still, I—”

He breaks off. “After that, you know, I was always so careful. I would do everything right. I would be the perfect son, a model for the DFA. Even once I found out the cure would probably kill me. It was more than fear,” Julian says, a sudden rush of words. “I thought if I followed the rules, things would turn out all right. That’s the thing about the cure, isn’t it? It isn’t just about
deliria
at all. It’s about order. A path for everyone. You just have to follow it and everything will be okay. That’s what the DFA is about. That’s what I believed in—what I’ve had to believe in. Because otherwise, it’s just … chaos.”