The line between his eyebrows deepens, and he shakes his head confusedly. “The police came,” he says, like it should be obvious. “They were taken into quarantine at Rikers. For all I know, they’re still there.”
And just like that, the remaining laughter is driven out of me, like a sharp blow to the chest. I remember that Julian is one of Them; the zombies, the enemies. The people who took Alex from me.
Suddenly I feel sick. I have just been laughing with him. We’ve shared something. He’s looking at me like we’re friends, like we’re the same.
I could throw up.
“So,” he says. “Now you go.”
“I don’t have any stories,” I say. My voice comes out harshly, a bark.
“Everyone has—,” Julian starts to say.
I cut him off. “Not me,” I say, and climb off the cot again. My body is full of itching; I try to walk it out.
We go the rest of the day without exchanging a word. A few times, Julian seems about to speak, and so eventually I go to the cot and stretch out, closing my eyes and pretending to sleep. But I do not sleep.
The same words are whirling again and again in my mind: There must be a way out. There must be a way out.
Real sleep does not come until much later, after the electric light once again clicks off. Real sleep is like sinking slowly, like drowning in a mist. All too soon I am awake again. I sit up, heart pounding.
Julian is shouting in his sleep on the cot next to me, muttering gibberish words. The only one I can make out is no.
I wait for a bit, to see whether he will wake himself up. He kicks out, thrashing. The metal bed frame rattles.
“Hey,” I say. His urgent mutterings continue, and I sit up and say a little louder, “Hey, Julian.”
Still no response. I reach over, fumbling for his arm in the dark. His chest is damp with sweat. I find his shoulder and shake him gently.
“Wake up, Julian.”
Finally he wakes, gasping, and jerks away from my touch. He sits up. I can hear the rustle of the mattress as his weight shifts, and I can just make out his shape, a heavy blackness, the curve of his spine. For a moment we sit in silence. He is breathing hard. A rasping sound comes from his throat. I lie down again and listen to his breathing in the dark, waiting for it to slow.
“More nightmares?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says after a beat.
I hesitate. Part of me is inclined to roll over and go to sleep. But I’m awake now too, and the darkness is oppressive.
“Want to talk about it?” I say.
There’s a long minute of silence. Then Julian begins speaking in a rush.
“I was in a lab complex,” he says. “And outside there was this big fence. But there were all these… I can’t really explain it, but it wasn’t a real fence. It was made of bodies. Corpses. The air was black with flies.”
“Go on,” I say in a whisper, when Julian pauses again.
He swallows hard. “When it was time for my procedure, they strapped me down to a table and asked me to open my mouth. Two scientists wrenched open my jaw, and my dad—he was there too—picked up this huge vat of concrete, and I knew that he was going to pour it down my throat. And I was screaming and trying to fight him off, and he kept saying it would feel fine, it would all be better, and then the concrete started filling my mouth and I couldn’t breathe…”
Julian trails off. There’s a squeezing in my chest. For one wild second I feel like hugging him—but that would be horrible, and wrong on about a thousand levels. Julian must feel better too, after relating the dream to me, because he lies down again.
“I have nightmares too,” I say, and then quickly correct myself. “Used to, I mean.”
Even in the dark, I can feel Julian staring at me.
“Want to talk about it?” He echoes my words back to me.
I think of the nightmares I used to have about my mother: dreams in which I would watch, helpless, as she walked off a cliff. I have never told anyone about them. Not even Alex. The dreams stopped after I found out she’d been alive, in the Crypts, for all the years I thought she was dead. But now my nightmares have taken new shape. Now they are full of burning, and Alex, and thorns that become chains and drag me into the earth.
“I used to have nightmares about my mom,” I say. I choke a little on the word mom, and hope he doesn’t notice. “She died when I was six.” This may as well be true. I will never see her again.
There is rustling from Julian’s cot, and when he speaks I can tell he has turned toward me. “Tell me about her,” he says softly.
I stare up into the darkness, which seems to be full of swirling patterns. “She liked to experiment in the kitchen,” I say slowly. I can’t tell him too much. I can’t say anything that will make him suspicious. This is no longer the story of Lena Morgan Jones. But speaking into the darkness feels like a relief, so I let myself go on: “I used to sit on the counter and watch her messing around. Most of what she made went in the trash. But it was always funny, and it made me laugh.” I pause. “I remember one time she made hot pepper pancakes. Those weren’t bad.”