The Revival (18 page)

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Authors: Chris Weitz

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction / Action & Adventure / General, Juvenile Fiction / Action & Adventure / Survival Stories, Juvenile Fiction / Dystopian

BOOK: The Revival
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THERE ARE PEOPLE RUNNING FROM THE
Bazaar, and people running toward the Bazaar, and the
snap-crackle-pop
of gunfire tells me that the running-awayers are afraid of dying and the running-towarders are afraid of missing out on free shit they can loot.

I hope that Evan is okay.

If he's dead, I won't get to kill him myself.

When we enter from Vanderbilt Avenue, the first thing that hits us is the smell of gunshots. I look down onto the Grand Concourse from the balustrade. There's a battle going on between two squads of oldies—I think they're the Chinese and the Russians—and people are ducking and crabbing in the detritus. Bodies are scattered everywhere among the abandoned stalls like Death is scattering seeds. Around the edges, randoms and scavengers are scampering.

We watch as the two squads destroy each other. Finally, they drag their wounded off, down the ramps to the lower levels.

“Well,” I say, “it's over.”

“How do you figure that?” says the black girl. Oh, okay,
Imani
.

“Uptown's gone.”

“That's not ‘over' in my book. That's just a start.”

Then out of the shadows below, a crew of weirdos in long robes filters in.

They walk up the stairs toward us, as Imani's girls level about a hundred rifles at them. The leader reaches up to his hood for some kind of video-game-trailer-type reveal.

Imani orders the guns down when she sees that it's Peter.

“Relax, y'all,” he says. “It's just me.”

Donna puts her gun down and goes over to hug him.

Peter laughs and says, “Check it out, I'm a prophet! The Ghosts saved me! And they gave me this cool robe.”

Donna says, “You're famous, Peter. Congratulations.”

I raise my hand. “Um, 'scuse me, but are these people who I think they are? Don't they, like,
eat
people?”

As I'm saying this, all the “Ghosts” seem to peep Jefferson for the first time because they go down on their knees and bow.

Dude. What the Actual.

“Lord…” One of the Ghost guys—their leader, I guess—dares to look up at Jefferson. “Lord, forgive us. We were mired in evil. We lost the true path… We were deceived by the enemy. We—”

“Get up,” says Jefferson sharply. He doesn't seem that thrown by the way they're talking to him. Maybe it's because of how he got treated at the Gathering. Peter told me everybody was totally kissing his ass.

They get to their feet.

“Look,” says Jefferson. “There's nothing special about me. I don't know much more than anybody else.”

The Ghosts look confused. They were expecting more of a religious experience or something.

“Listen to me,” he says. “You did wrong. We all did wrong, more or less. But you have a chance to do right now. We need your help. Then maybe you can get started on a better life. Understand?”

They stand there and sort of let that sink in. Then the leader nods, which I guess goes for all of them.

Meanwhile, one of the robed dudes has been standing the whole time.

“Good speech,” he says. “My thoughts exactly.”

That's when Chapel reveals himself, and up go the guns again.

He and Peter spend a long time explaining some mumbo jumbo about how Chapel might be a devious sack of shit, but he has the best interests of humanity in mind or something. Which is not 100 percent convincing, if you ask me, but it appears that there's not much time to make fine moral distinctions.

To cut to the chase, it turns out that Evan is alive and kicking, holed up someplace called the Cloud Club and up to his usual mischief. I mean, I guess it's more than his usual mischief—more like thermonuclear war.

The Ghosts mostly keep to themselves, conferring in hushed voices. Occasionally, one of them will do this weird thing where they run up to me, turn their back, and make this sort of squeezing motion with their fingers. After a while, I realize it's what we used to call taking a selfie, except with no camera phone. Like it's become this weird little series of ritual motions that don't end up in an actual photo because it doesn't need to.

Meanwhile, Imani announces that she's done her piece now that the Bazaar is liberated and the power of the Uptowners broken.

“The slavers and Uptowners beaten in a day,” she says. “I think I'll win the next election.”

Donna says, “We can't ask you to go any further…”

Imani says, “Then don't.” But she smiles.

Jefferson puts his hand out to shake. “Thank you,” he says.

“Not good enough,” Imani says. “This is how you can thank me. This thing rolls your way, me and mine need a seat at the table. Understand? If not, we'll be coming for you.”

“I understand,” says Jefferson. And Imani shakes his hand.

So it looks like we've lost most of our muscle. Imani and her girls set to clearing out the Grand Concourse, securing the building, and sending messengers up to Harlem to spread the news.

I get a funny feeling in my chest, like the feeling when you want something really bad? But know you won't get it. Missing somebody.

Which is weird, because it's not like me and the Harlemites have ever been on the best terms. It's probably because, without the girl soldiers on our side, we don't have a fighting chance against the rest of my brother's posse. All we have are some half-starved slave girls and ex-cannibal freaks.

The rest of us set out for the Chrysler Building, spiky top glittering in the winter sunlight.

I feel a familiar presence at my side, and I turn and see Theo walking along, his eyes on the ground. He's left Imani and the Harlemites to lock down the Bazaar.

My face flushes, which is weird.

“You didn't say good-bye,” he says.

“Looks like I didn't have to,” I say.

Behind me, I hear giggling. It's the twins, who seem to be enjoying some kind of private joke. They keep looking at me and Theo and whispering.

We walk along some more, rounding the sandstone corner of the building, and it's really annoying because something is going on health-wise, too. My heart is like DunDUNdunDUNdunDUNDUN. Like I need a heart murmur on top of all this crap.

I turn to Theo and say, “Why did you come?”

He laughs. But then he looks back down at the ground, kind of angry.

“You know the answer,” he says. And he looks back at me.

I remember the first time I met him. We were walking through Harlem, hoping to make our way to the East River Drive without getting shot. A full-on police car pulled up, sirens blazing, and we had to Assume the Position. In the patrol car on the way to headquarters, hands cuffed, I looked at the back of Theo's head, a long horizontal scar across his bunched neck. And I told him to just go ahead and do what he was going to do.

But it wasn't like that.

Theo
wasn't like that.

He was quiet and fierce and almost shy, his voice so low you had to strain to hear it.

Then later the twins and I found him tied up in a hangar on Long Island, and we got him free, and we boosted cars and road-tripped back to the city. He saved my life right back, in a pharmacy someplace on the Montauk Highway.

I figured I'd never see him again after we arrived at the UN. I was off to find Jefferson, and Theo was spreading the word that there was a whole other world, with electricity and food and running water.

And he was back to Harlem, and I was back to whatever it is that I think I'm doing.

But why is my heart doing that?

Mom and Dad would not approve.

Mom and Dad are dead.

What if everything—the running and killing and starving and surviving the Sickness, even falling for Jefferson—what if it was to get me
here
? And now. With Theo.

My heart is still going DunDUNdunDUNDUNDUN.

This could be a bad idea. He could change his mind. He could walk away. He could get killed. He could get me killed. This could be a bad idea.

“I'm glad you came,” I say, and I reach out and put my hand in his.

I
'
M LOOKING UP
at the
shining eagles and giant winged hood ornaments studded around the top stories of the Chrysler Building, light winking down from the off-white sky.

Getting a real deathy vibe here.

I mean, there's
always
a chance you're gonna get your ass killed in this place; but it feels like things are particularly coming to a head at this particular moment. I wish we could just call it a day and head back to the Square to lick our wounds.

But Chapel says that if we don't get control of the situation fast, there'll only be more soldiers on their way, and the next time it'll be a full-on invasion.

The gist of it seems to be that Chapel and his Resistance buddies have infected the rest of the world with new strains of the virus they got out of us, me and my peeps, on the
Ronald Reagan
. Strains that they can't cure without access to our blood to make serum. The Resistance's idea is to keep curing and infecting the world in perpetuity, with new sources of virus from the citizens of Newest York and the rest of the United States of Post-Apocalyptic America. Or at least, they'll keep doing it until some kind of treaty can be signed. Keep them on a biological leash. We're gonna make this a new country of refugees and castoffs and escaped debtors and plague kids.

Our chief export? Our bodily fluids, to make serum, to keep the rest of the world healthy. Gross.

But the only thing that's going to keep the Reconstruction from tracking us down, imprisoning us, and hooking us up to pumps like dairy cows is the threat of the football. Which Evan is holding hostage in some cloud chamber up on the billionth floor.

So up the Chrysler Building it is.

We head down Forty-Second from Grand Central, under the green street overpass, trailing a herd of freed slaves. Some come from the Square but many from all over, and most of them will be absolutely zero use to us in a fight. Tired, traumatized, and hungry, they're following us for no other reason than that they don't know what else to do. In terms of able bodies, we've got me, Peter, Chapel, Jeff, Kath, the twins, Theo, and Rab. Carolyn and the Three Ashleys from our tribe have picked up guns from the dead commandos. That's about a dozen guns against however many Evan has left up there.

Can't wait them out, though. Kath says they have enough food to last for months. Besides, Evan can get into some major, world-changing shit in a heck of a lot less time than that.

We leave the freed girls outside, under the command of Carolyn and the Ashleys. If any rescue party comes for Evan, they'll try to fend them off. And we go in through the formerly shining doors, now blotchily oxidized.

Rab comes up to me in the art deco hallway of the lobby, which is wall-to-wall marble, with slashes of bronze and burly murals.

Rab: “This elevator idea is insane.”

Me: “Have you got a better idea?”

Rab: “Yes. Going home. Letting the big boys handle this. It'll be a complete massacre if we go up there. They're going to see us coming. They have half an hour to point their machine guns just the right way.”

Me: “So you just want the Reconstruction to come in and sort things out, is that right?”

Rab: “That's absolutely right.”

Me: “And what happens to us?”

Rab: “We'll be all right. We'll talk our way out of it. You can't think
that
lunatic”—he means Chapel—“and his bunch of anarchists are going to make anything better!”

Me: “You want me to trust the government.”

Rab is desperate, pleading. His big gray-green eyes well with tears.

Rab: “Trust me. Trust
me
, Donna. I have seen all sides of this thing. And all I want is for you and me to be together. Your friends can come, too. I can arrange it. I know I can.”

Me: “My friends? Even Jefferson?”

Rab pauses. Nods, as if he's debating with himself and has just come to an agreement.

Rab: “If I had wanted Jefferson to die, all I would have had to do is follow orders.”

I realize he's telling the truth. He tries to take my hand. I pull it away.

Rab: “I did it for you. Or rather, I didn't do it. For you. For you to be able to
choose
who you want to be with. Choose me. Please. And we all live. We can go someplace safe and decent and peaceful. Come back with me.”

I look at his beautiful face; I dream back to the time in Cambridge, quiet afternoons on the river, lazy mornings in Nevile's Court, the sun streaming in through the basement window. Some part of me plays a little movie of Rab and me, home again, safe and sound and happy.

Me: “That's just it. Rab, I'm not safe and I'm not decent and I'm not peaceful. This is me. This is my city. Our city. And nobody is going to take it from us. You can't understand that because you don't belong to anybody but yourself. You're not part of anything. That's why I can't love you.” I watch the impact on his face. It knocks the tears loose. “I'm sorry. I thought for a while I did. And I'm grateful for the time we had. It helped me then. But if you can't help all of us now, you had better go.”

So he does. He nods and makes his way sadly out of the building.

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