“Bram and I need a third,” I say at last. “That way if something happens, if one of us goes down, the other one still has backup.”
Tack looks up at me again. I’m reminded that he, too, is young—twenty-four, Raven once told me. In that second, he looks it. He looks like a grateful kid, like I’ve just offered to help with his homework.
Then the moment passes, and his face goes hard again. He removes his pack of tobacco, and some rolling papers, and begins again. “You can have Coral,” he says.
The part of the mission that frightens me the most is the journey through the camp. Pippa gives us one of the battery-operated lanterns, which Bram carries. In its jerky glow, the crowd around us is broken into pieces and fragments: the flash of a grin here; a woman, bare-breasted, nursing a baby, staring at us resentfully. A tide of people barely break apart to let us through, then reform and refold behind us. I have a sense of their sucking need: Already, the moans have started, the whispers of water, water. From everywhere, too, comes the sound of shouting; stifled cries in the darkness; fists into flesh.
We reach the riverbank, now eerily quiet. There are no more people teeming in its depths, fighting over water. There is no more water to fight over—only a tiny trickle, no wider than a finger, black with silt.
It’s a mile to the wall, and then another four northwest along its perimeter, to one of the better-fortified areas. A problem there will bring the most attention and pull the largest number of security forces away from the point Raven, Tack, and the others need to breach.
Earlier, Pippa opened the second, smaller fridge, revealing shelves packed with weapons she had been sent by the resistance. Tack, Raven, Lu, Hunter, and Julian were each provided with guns. We’ve had to make do with a half-empty bottle of gasoline, stuffed with an ancient rag: a beggar’s purse, Pippa called it. By silent consensus I have been elected the one to carry it. As we walk, it seems to grow heavier in my backpack, bumping uncomfortably against my spine. I can’t help but imagine sudden explosions, being blown accidentally to bits.
We reach the place where the camp runs up against the city’s southern border wall, a wave of people and tents lapping up against the stone. This part of the wall, and the city beyond it, has been abandoned. Enormous, dark floodlights crane their necks over the camp. Only a single bulb remains intact: It sends a bright white light forward, painting the outline of things clearly, leaving the detail and the depth out, like a lighthouse beaming out over dark water.
We follow the border wall north and finally leave the camp behind. The ground underneath us feels dry. The carpet of pine needles cracks and snaps each time we take a step. Other than that, once the noise of the camp recedes, it is silent.
Anxiety gnaws at my stomach. I’m not too worried about our role—if all goes well, we won’t even have to breach the wall—but Julian is in way over his head. He has no idea what he’s doing, no idea what he’s getting into.
“This is crazy,” Coral says suddenly. Her voice is high, shrill. She must have been fighting down panic all this time. “It’ll never work. It’s suicide.”
“You didn’t have to come,” I say sharply. “No one asked you to volunteer.”
It’s as though she doesn’t hear me. “We should have packed up, gotten out of here,” she says.
“And left everyone else to fend for themselves?” I fire back.
Coral says nothing. She’s obviously just as unhappy as I am that we’ve been forced to work together—probably even unhappier, since I’m the one in charge.
We weave between the trees, following the erratic motions of Bram’s lantern, which bobs in front of us like an overgrown firefly. Every so often, we cross ribbons of concrete, radiating outward from the city’s walls. Once, these old roads would have led to other towns. Now they run aground into earth, flowing like gray rivers around the bases of new trees. Signs—choked with brown ivy—point the way to towns and restaurants long dismantled.
I check the small plastic watch that Beast lent me: eleven thirty p.m. It has been an hour and a half since we set out. We have another half hour before we are supposed to light the rag and send the purse over the wall. This will be timed with a simultaneous explosion on the eastern side, just south of where Raven, Tack, Julian, and the others will be crossing. Hopefully, the two explosions will divert attention away from the breach.
This far from the camp, the border becomes better maintained. The high concrete wall is undamaged and clean. The floodlights become functional and more numerous: enormous, wide-open, dazzling eyes at intervals of twenty or thirty feet.