“Your people,” he says, and then I get a sick taste in my mouth and I know that he’s perfectly lucid. I know exactly what he means, and what he thinks. “Your people did this.”
“No,” I say, and then repeat it a little more emphatically. “No. We had nothing to do with—”
“You’re an Invalid. That’s what you’re telling me, right? You’re infected.” Julian’s fingers are trembling lightly against the ground, with a noise like the patter of rain. He’s furious, I realize, and probably scared, too. “You’re sick.” He nearly spits out the word.
“Those aren’t my people out there,” I say, and now I have to stop the anger from coming and dragging me under: It is a black force, a current tugging at the edges of my mind. “Those people aren’t…” I almost say, They aren’t human. “They’re not Invalids.”
“Liar,” Julian snarls. There it is. Just like the raccoon when Bram finally went to lift it from the mud and it leapt, snapping, and sank its teeth into the flesh of his right hand.
The sick taste in my throat comes all the way from my stomach. I stand up, hoping Julian won’t see that I, too, am shaking. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say. “You don’t know anything about us, and you don’t know anything about me.”
“Tell me,” Julian says, still with that undercurrent of rage and coldness. Each word sounds hard-edged and cutting. “When did you catch it?”
I laugh, even though none of it is funny. The world is upside down and everything is shit and my life has been cleaved and there are two different Lenas running parallel to each other, the old and the new, and they will never, ever be whole again. And I know Julian won’t help me now. I was an idiot to think that he would. He’s a zombie, just like Raven has always said. And zombies do what they were built to do: They trundle forward, blindly obedient, until they rot away for good.
Well, not me. I fish the knife out from under the mattress and sit on the cot, then begin running the blade quickly along the metal bedpost, sharpening it, taking pleasure in the way it catches the light.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say to Julian. “None of it matters.”
“How?” he persists. “Who was it?”
The black space inside me gives a tiny shudder, widens another inch. “Go to hell,” I say to Julian, but calmly now, and I keep my eyes on the knife, flashing, flashing, flashing, like a sign pointing the way out of the dark.
then
We stay four days at the first encampment. On the night before we are supposed to set out again, Raven takes me aside.
“It’s time,” she says.
I’m still angry at her for what she said to me at the traps, although the rage has been replaced by a dull, thudding resentment. All this time, she has known everything about me. I feel as though she has reached into me, to a deep place, and broken something.
“Time for what?” I say.
Behind me, the campfire is burning low. Blue and Sarah and some of the others have fallen asleep outside, a tangle of blankets and hair and legs. They have begun to sleep this way a lot, like a human patchwork: It keeps them warm. Lu and Grandpa are conversing in low voices. Grandpa is chewing some of his last tobacco, working it in and out of his mouth, spitting occasionally into the fire and causing a burst of green flame. The others must have gone into the tents.
Raven gives me the barest trace of a smile. “Time for your cure.”
My heart jumps in my chest. The night is sharply cold, and it hurts my lungs to breathe deeply. Raven leads me away from the camp, one hundred feet down along the stream, to a broad, flat stretch of bank. This is where we’ve broken through the thick layer of ice every morning to pull water.
Bram is already there. He has built another fire. This one is burning high and hot, and my eyes sting with ash and smoke when we’re still five feet away. The wood is arranged in a teepee formation, and at its crown, blue and white flames are licking up toward the sky. The smoke is an eraser, blurring the stars above us.
“Ready?” Raven asks.
“Just about,” Bram says. “Five minutes.” He is squatting next to a warped wooden bucket, which is nestled between pieces of wood on the periphery of the fire. He will have soaked it with water so it doesn’t catch and burn. The proximity of the fire will eventually cause the water in the bucket to boil. I see him remove a small, thin instrument from a bag at his feet. It looks like a screwdriver, with a thin, round shaft, a sharp and glittering tip. He drops it into the bucket, handle down, and then stands up, watching as the tip of the plastic handle makes slow revolutions in the simmering water.
I feel sick. I look to Raven, but she is staring at the fire, her face unreadable.