Julian frowns at me. “You saw them at the demonstration, didn’t you?” When I don’t answer, he goes on, “I don’t know. Maybe what happened is a good thing. Maybe now people will understand what the DFA is trying to do. They’ll understand why it’s so necessary.” Julian is using his public voice, as though he’s addressing a large crowd. I wonder how many times he has had the same words, the same ideas, drilled into his head. I wonder whether he ever doubts.
I’m suddenly disgusted with him, and his calm certainty about the world, as though all of life can be dissected and neatly labeled, just like a specimen in a laboratory.
But I don’t say any of this. Lena Morgan Jones keeps her mask on. “I hope so,” I say fervently, and then I go to my cot, curling up toward the wall so he’ll know I’m done talking to him. For revenge I mouth words, silently, into the concrete—old, forbidden words Raven taught me, from one of the old religions.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul: he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…
At a certain point, I drift off to sleep. I open my eyes into blackness, suppressing a cry. The electric light has been switched off, leaving us in perfect darkness. I feel hot and sick, and push the woolen blanket all the way to the foot of the cot, enjoying the cool air on my skin.
“Can’t sleep?”
Julian’s voice startles me. He is not in his cot. I can barely see him. He is a large black shape against the darkness.
“I was sleeping,” I say. “What about you?”
“No,” he answers. His voice sounds softer now, less precise—as though the darkness has somehow melted its edges. “It’s stupid, but…”
“But what?” Dream images are still fluttering through my head, skirting the edges of consciousness. I was dreaming of the Wilds. Raven was there; Hunter was too.
“I have bad dreams. Nightmares.” Julian speaks the words in a rush, obviously embarrassed. “I always have.”
For a split second I feel a little hitch in my chest, like something hard there has loosened. I will the feeling down and away. We are on opposite sides, Julian and I. There can never be any sympathy between us.
“They say it will get better after the procedure,” he says, almost like an apology, and I wonder if he is thinking the obvious: If I even make it through.
I don’t say anything, and Julian coughs, then clears his throat.
“What about you?” he asks. “Did you ever have nightmares? Before you were cured, I mean.”
I think of hundreds of thousands of cureds, sleeping dreamlessly in their marital beds, their heads enveloped in fog, a sweet and empty smoke.
“Never,” I say, and roll over, drawing the covers over my legs again, and pretend to sleep.
then
There is no time to leave the way we planned. We grab what we can and we run, while the Wilds behind us turn to roaring fire and smoke. We stay close to the river, hoping the water will offer us protection if the fire spreads.
Raven holds Blue, stiff-white and terrified, in her arms. I lead Sarah by the hand. She cries soundlessly, wrapped in Lu’s enormous jacket. Sarah had no time to grab her own. Lu does without. When the frostbite starts to set in, Raven and I take turns giving Lu our coats. The cold reaches in, squeezes our guts, makes our eyes water.
And behind us is the inferno.
Fifteen of us made it safely away from the homestead; Squirrel and Grandma are missing. No one can remember seeing them, in our rush to leave the burrow. One of the bombs exploded a wall of the sickroom and sent a shower of rock and dirt and insects rocketing into the hall. After that, everything was screaming chaos.
Once the planes withdraw, the helicopters come. For hours they circle above us, and the air is spliced into fragments, beaten to shreds by the endless whirring. They mist the Wilds with chemicals. It burns our throats, stings our eyes, makes us choke. We wrap T-shirts and dish towels around our necks and mouths, move through the haze.
Finally it is too dark for the attacks to continue. The night sky is smudgy with smoke. The woods are full of distant crashing and cracking as so many trees succumb to the flames, but at least we have moved far enough downstream to be safe from the fire. At last Raven thinks it safe to pause and rest, and take stock of what we have.
We have only a quarter of the food we’d been storing, and none of the medical supplies.
Bram thinks we should go back for the food. “We’ll never make it south with what we’ve got,” he argues, and I can see Raven trembling as she struggles to get a fire lit. She can barely strike a match. Her hands must be freezing. Mine have been numb for hours.
“Don’t you get it?” she says. “The homestead is done. We can’t go back. They meant to wipe us out today, all of us. If Lena hadn’t warned us, we’d all be dead.”
“What about Tack and Hunter?” Bram says stubbornly. “What’ll they do when they come back for us?”