Chapter 38
Fifteen minutes later, Lis brings a small flat screen into my room and sets it in my lap. She hovers behind the head of my bed, watching with me. The words Being Broadcast Live scroll endlessly across the bottom of the screen.
The television shows the walled city just before sunset, from the high view of a helicopter—green fields, houses, buildings, people. In the distance, a man is standing on the wall, arms raised, voice booming above the throb of the helicopter. It circles closer to the man, and the camera focuses on his face.
My heart starts pounding as I stare at the screen, mesmerized.
“… a cure!” Bowen shouts. The setting sun glows orange on his skin, frames him with light and hope and salvation. “I repeat! We have found a cure for the beasts, and for the Fecs,” he yells, voice as loud and strong as thunder, thanks to the chip he stole from the commentator.
The helicopter crosses the boundary of the wall. In the distance loom Mile High Stadium and the Pepsi Center. The camera dips and bobs and focuses on the dead, dusty world just outside the wall—buildings with broken windows, trash-strewn streets, cracked pavement. And, surprisingly, people. They are creeping out of buildings, climbing up from sewer grates, skulking on rooftops, leaning out of windows, and they all have their faces turned up toward Bowen.
“I repeat,” Bowen calls, “we have found a cure! There is hope. There is an end! A new beginning!”
The camera zooms in on the people outside the wall, on their gaunt, dirty, haggard faces. Scared faces. Weeping faces, with tear-streaked cheeks. Laughing faces, eyes full of hope. Shocked faces, mouths hanging open. People start jumping up and down. Clapping. Dancing. Embracing. They start calling out the news, passing the words to others farther down the street, who pass it on to more people farther down the street. And then they dance, until as far as the camera can see, people are dancing in the streets.
I can literally see the news spreading through them, wiping away despair like a physical wave, and I understand what is happening.
For the first time in four years, they have been given hope.