More and more people are flowing down toward the river and fighting for what little water remains. There is no choice; we must fight alongside them. As I’m moving into the water, someone pushes me out of the way, and I end up falling backward, landing hard on the rocks. Pain shoots up my spine, and it takes me three tries to stand up. Too many people are streaming by me, shoving me. Eventually, Julian has to fight his way back through the crowd and help me to my feet.
In the end, we manage to get only a fraction of the water we wanted, and we lose some of it on the way back to Pippa’s camp, when a man stumbles into Hunter, upsetting one of his buckets. The water we have collected is filled with fine silt and will be reduced even further once we manage to boil away the mud. I would cry if I thought I could waste the water.
Pippa and the woman from resistance are standing in the middle of a small circle of people. Alex and Coral have returned. I can’t help but imagine where they have been together. Stupid, when there are so many other things to worry about; but still the mind will circle back to this one thing.
Amor deliria nervosa: It affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being. Symptom number twelve.
“The river—” Raven starts to say as we get closer, but Pippa cuts her off.
“We heard,” she says. Her face is grim. In the daylight, I see Pippa is older than I originally thought. I assumed she was in her early thirties, but her face is deeply lined, and her hair is gray at the temples. Or maybe that is only the effect of being here, in the Wilds, and waging this war. “It isn’t flowing.”
“What do you mean?” Hunter says. “A river doesn’t stop flowing overnight.”
“It does if it’s dammed,” Alex says.
For a second there’s silence.
“What do you mean, dammed?” Julian speaks first. He, too, is trying not to panic. I can hear it in his voice.
Alex stares at him. “Dammed,” he repeats. “As in, stopped. Blocked up. Obstructed or confined by a—”
“But who dammed it?” Julian cuts in. He refuses to look at Alex, but it’s Alex who responds.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” He shifts slightly, angling his body toward Julian. There’s a hot, electric tension in the air. “The people on the other side.” He pauses. “Your people.”
Julian still isn’t used to losing his temper. He opens his mouth and then shuts it. He says, very calmly, “What did you say?”
“Julian.” I place a hand on his arm.
Pippa jumps in. “Waterbury was mostly evacuated before I arrived,” she says. “We thought it was because of the resistance. We took it as a sign of progress.” She lets out a harsh bark of laughter. “Obviously, they had other plans. They’ve cut off the water source in the city.”
“So we’ll leave,” Dani says. “There are other rivers. The Wilds is full of them. We’ll go somewhere else.” Her suggestion meets with silence. She stares from Pippa to Raven.
Pippa runs a hand over the short fuzz of her hair.
“Yeah, sure.” The woman from the resistance speaks up. She has a funny accent, all lilts and melody, like drawn butter. “The people we can gather, the ones who can be mobilized—we can leave. We can scatter, break up, go back into the Wilds. But there are probably patrols waiting for us. No doubt they’re gathering even now. Easier for them if we’re in smaller groups—less of a chance we’ll be able to fight. Plus, it looks better for the press. Large-scale slaughter is harder to cover up.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
I turn around. Lu has just joined the group. She is slightly breathless, and her face is shiny, as though she has been running. I wonder where she has been all this time. As usual, her hair is loose, plastered to her neck and forehead.
“This is Summer,” Pippa says evenly. “She’s with resistance. She’s the reason you’ll be eating tonight.” The subtext is clear: Watch what you say.
“But we have to leave.” Hunter’s voice is practically a bark. I get the urge to reach out and squeeze his hand. Hunter never loses his temper. “What other choice do we have?”
Summer doesn’t flinch. “We could fight back,” she says. “We’ve all been looking for a chance to rally together, make something of this mess.” She gestures to the array of shelters, like pieces of enormous metal shrapnel, glittering vastly toward the horizon. “That was the point of coming to the Wilds, wasn’t it? For all of us? We were tired of being told what to choose.”
“But how will we fight?” I feel shyer in front of this woman, with her soft, musical voice and her fierce eyes, than I have in front of anyone for a while. But I press on. “We’re weak as it is. Pippa said we’re disorganized. Without water—”
“I’m not suggesting we go head-to-head,” she interrupts me. “We don’t even know what we’re dealing with—how many people are left in the city, whether there are patrols gathering in the Wilds. What I’m suggesting is that we take the river back.”
“But if the river’s dammed—”
Again, she cuts me off. “Dams can be exploded,” she says simply.
We are silent for another second. Raven and Tack exchange a glance. Largely from habit, we wait for one of them to speak.