Requiem (17 page)

“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.