Pandemonium
Page 10

Raven goes ahead of me. Every so often she stops, puts down her buckets, and strips willow bark from the trees, scattering it across the path so that I can find my way, even after I’ve lost sight of her. She comes back after half an hour, bringing a metal cup full of water, sanitized, for me to drink, and a small cotton cloth filled with almonds and dried raisins for me to eat. The sun is high and bright now, light cutting like blades between the trees.
Raven stays with me, although she never offers to help and I don’t ask her to. She watches impassively, arms crossed, as I make my slow, agonizing way through the forest.
Final tally: Two hours. Three blisters on my palms, one the size of a cherry. Arms that shake so badly I can barely bring them to my face when I try to wash off the sweat. A raw, red cut in the flesh of one hand, where the metal handle of one of the buckets has worn away the skin.
At dinner, Tack gives me the biggest serving of rice and beans, and although I can barely hold my fork because of the blisters, and Squirrel accidentally charred the rice so that it’s brown and crispy on its underside, I think it is the best meal I have had since I came to the Wilds.
I’m so tired after dinner I fall asleep with my clothes on, almost as soon as my head hits the pillow, and so I forget to ask God, in my prayers, to keep me from waking up.
It’s not until the following morning that I realize what day it is: September 26.
Hana was cured yesterday.
Hana is gone.
I have not cried since Alex died.
Alex is alive.
That becomes my mantra, the story I tell myself every day, as I emerge into the inky dawn and the mist and begin, slowly, painstakingly, to train again.
If I can run all the way to the old bank—lungs exploding, thighs shaking—then Alex will be alive.
First it’s forty feet, then sixty, then two minutes straight, then four.
If I can make it to that tree, Alex will come back.
Alex is standing just beyond that hill; if I can make it to the top without stopping, he’ll be there.
At first I trip and nearly twist my ankle about half a dozen times. I’m not used to the landscape of litter, can hardly see in the low, murky dawn light. But my eyes get better, or my feet learn the way, and after a few weeks my body gets used to the planes and angles of the ground, and the geometry of all those broken streets and buildings, and then I can run the whole length of the old main street without watching my feet.
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.
now
After 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.