“We have no other choice,” Raven says, and I start to feel anger rising in my chest. She’s using her singsong voice, like she’s speaking to a baby.
“No.” I shake my head, ball my fists against my thighs. “No. Don’t you get it? I think the Scavengers are working with the DFA. I was kidnapped with Julian Fineman. They locked us underground for days.”
“We know,” Tack says, but I barrel on, coasting on the fury now, letting it build.
“We had to fight our way out. They almost—they almost killed me. Julian saved me.” The rock in my stomach is migrating up into my throat. “And now they’ve taken Julian, and who knows what they’ll do. Probably drag him straight to the labs, or maybe throw him in prison, and—”
“Lena.” Raven puts her hands on my shoulders. “Calm down.”
But I can’t. I’m shaking from panic and rage. Tack and Raven must understand; they need to. “We have to do something. We have to help him. We have to—”
“Lena.” Raven’s voice turns sharper, and she gives me a shake. “We know about the Scavengers, okay? We know they’ve been working with the DFA. We know all about Julian, and everything that happened underground. We’ve been scouting for you around all the tunnel exits. We were hoping you would make it out days ago.”
This, at last, makes me shut up. Raven and Tack have finally stopped smiling. Instead they are looking at me with twin expressions of pity.
“What do you mean?” I pull away from Raven’s touch and stumble a bit; when Tack draws a chair out from the table, I thud into it. Neither of them answers right away, so I say, “I don’t understand.”
Tack takes a chair across from me. He examines his hands, then says slowly, “The resistance has known for a while that the Scavengers were being paid off by the DFA. They were hired to pull off that stunt you saw at the demonstration.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” I feel like my brain is covered in thick paste; my thoughts flounder, come to nothing. I remember the screaming, the shooting, the Scavengers’ glittering blades.
“It makes perfect sense.” Raven speaks up. She is still standing, keeping her arms wrapped around her chest. “Nobody in Zombieland knows the difference between the Scavengers and the rest of us—the other Invalids. We’re all the same to them. So the Scavengers come and act like animals, and the DFA shows the whole country how terrible we are without the cure, how important it is to get everyone treated for deliria immediately. Otherwise the world goes to hell. The Scavengers are the proof.”
“But—” I think of the Scavengers swarming into the crowd; faces monstrous with screaming. “But people died.”
“Two hundred,” Tack says quietly. He still won’t look at me. “Two dozen officers. The rest citizens. They didn’t bother to tally the Scavengers who were killed.” He shrugs his shoulders, a quick convulsion. “Sometimes it is necessary that individuals are sacrificed for the health of the whole.” That’s straight out of a DFA pamphlet.
“Okay,” I say. My hands are shaking, and I grip the sides of my chair. I’m still having trouble thinking straight. “Okay. So what are we going to do about it?”
Raven’s eyes flick to Tack, but he keeps his head bowed. “We’ve already done something about it, Lena,” she says, still in that baby-voice, and once again I get a weird prickling in my chest. There is something they aren’t telling me—something bad.
“I don’t understand.” My voice sounds hollow.
There are a few seconds of heavy silence. Then Tack sighs, and says over his shoulder to Raven, “I told you, we should have clued her in from the start. I told you we should have trusted her.”
Raven says nothing. A muscle twitches in her jaw. And suddenly I remember coming downstairs a few weeks before the rally and hearing Tack and Raven fighting.
I just don’t understand why we can’t be honest with each other. We’re supposed to be on the same side.
You know that’s unrealistic, Tack. It’s for the best. You have to trust me.
You’re the one who isn’t trusting. . . .
They were fighting about me.
“Clued me in to what?” The prickling is becoming a heavy thud, painful and sharp.
“Go ahead,” Raven says to Tack. “If you want to tell her so badly, be my guest.” Her voice is biting, but I can tell, underneath that, she’s afraid. She’s afraid of me and how I will react.
“Tell me what?” I can’t stand this anymore—the cryptic glances, the impenetrable web of half phrases.
Tack passes a hand over his forehead. “Okay, look,” he says, speaking quickly now, as though eager to end the conversation. “It wasn’t a mistake that you and Julian were taken by the Scavengers, okay? It wasn’t an error. It was planned.”
Heat creeps up my neck. I lick my lips. “Who planned it?” I say, though I know: It must have been the DFA. I answer my own question, saying, “The DFA,” just as Tack grimaces and says, “We did.”