They leave when darkness cloaks the city, when curfew begins and everyone settles into sleep. They wear black pants, black shirts, mash spit and charcoal into a paste and smear their faces and hands, working together. Ella isn’t letting Simon out of her sight, not after what happened last time. She’s not as careless as Lewis. She won’t abandon those closest to her.
“Worried about me, are you?” Simon says. “I like that.”
“I just don’t want you to screw things up again.”
The streets are dark and dead. They slide from alleyways to doorways, moving as quietly as they can from every pool and wedge of shadow. The moonlight feels like a spotlight. Their skin bristles with fear and excitement. They go still whenever they hear a noise—a rat scurrying, a snore spiraling from an open window—and then move on.
When the city council wishes to share some announcement—about the curfew, rations, a death march—they paint it in black capital letters across the windowless wall that rises beside each of the Sanctuary’s wells. Simon and Ella will do the same. They will write the news.
They make the paint out of chalk, linseed oil, glue, beets. They carry it in canteens stashed in backpacks with pans and brushes. They have enough for only one well. And they do not have time to whitewash the current notice, wait for it to dry, before slopping out their own message. The beets stain their paint red: the color of anger, the color of danger, the color of the fire Danica said she wanted to spread. They will slop it over the top of whatever is written there already.
A deputy guards the well. They can see him now, walking in slow circles around the stanchion of the wind turbine. The blades rotate and cast spinning shadows and make a rusty, grinding music. Simon isn’t worried about being heard over the top of them, but he is worried about being seen. If they can only get up the ladder, into the shadow of the wall, he thinks they’ll remain undetected.
He hurls a rock across the square. It sizzles through the air before finally striking a storefront awning made out of a sheet of metal. The sound startles the guard and he marches toward it with his hand at the grip of his machete. Simon tosses another rock—even farther—guiding the guard down an alley.
They scurry then to the wall, invisible in the shadow of it. There are two rebar ladders built into either side of it. They hurry to glug out their canteens, fill their pans, tuck their brushes into their belts, and climb.
*
At dawn, after the first bell rings, after the sun brightens and warps the horizon like hammered gold, people begin to line up for water. They are thirsty, and they are hungry, too, and they are ready for good news. They are ready for the giant red letters slashed across the wall near the well. LEWIS AND CLARK, the message reads, CANOE RIVERS AND SEND HOPE. A brief, bright message. Some people laugh and point their fingers. Others frown and wonder aloud whether it is true—how could it possibly be true?—and whether they dare believe. They share the words with those who can’t read. Some are so excited they depart the line without filling their jugs. By the time the sun lightens the wall, two deputies have climbed the ladders to whitewash over what they call graffiti. But they cannot erase words etched already in the mind, words whispered in the streets like a gathering wind that eventually reaches Thomas’s ear.
Slade delivers the news. He hunts his way through the Dome, looking for Thomas, finally pushing through the double oaken doors and discovering him alone in the council chambers. He wears a sky-blue silk shirt with an open neck and gold stitching along the collar. He sits in the dark, at the head of the empty table, his hands flat on the wood as though he were about to take up his silverware and carve a meal. The windows are shuttered, but bars of light fall across him.
Thomas appears to be speaking to himself—moving his lips, whispering to an audience of shadows—cut short by Slade clearing his throat.
Thomas twists in his seat and flickers a smile. “You know I’ve always liked the sound of my own voice.”
“I’ve been looking for you.” Slade enters the room fully.
“Bad news, I assume?”
“No other kind these days.”
One side of Thomas’s face jerks, as if he is uncertain whether he is suffering a barb, and then says, “Give it to me, then.”
Slade presses the door until it clicks, then walks to the opposite side of the long table, drags out the chair, and folds his body into it. “When you asked me to be sheriff, you told me you admired my brutal honesty. You told me you trusted me because of it.”
“I trust you.” And then, like an asterisk, “I trust your muscle.”
“Trust me when I say things are getting perilous.”
“Perilous. That’s a big word for you, Slade.”
“I’m more than muscle.”
Thomas gives him an assessing look. “Of course you are. Please. Tell me about how perilous things are.”
“The bodies are piling up at the morgue, some dead from the heat, some from illness, some from not enough of everything a body needs. But more and more of them are dead from murder. More and more dying because there’s more and more willing to thieve and to kill. People are talking. About how things were so much better under Meriwether. About how you’re going to ruin us all. How you’re fucking that—”
“Yes, yes, yes. Tell me what I don’t know.”
“I was working my way up to it, giving it adequate introduction.” He then explains to Thomas the red splatter of graffiti that appeared like a wound overnight. A message seemingly reported by Lewis and Clark. A message meant to excite and entice rebellion. “Maybe a thousand people saw it before we painted it over.”
His voice fires off questions like quills from a blowgun. “Do you think it’s true? Could they really be alive? Could there be water? Could they be maintaining communication with someone inside the wall?”
When Slade shrugs, his shoulders seem burdened by more than shadows. “Would it change anything if it was true? People seem to think it is. That’s what matters.”