“Julian Fineman … head of the youth division of Deliria-Free America and son of the group’s president…”
“… himself a victim of the disease…”
Every radio station is the same. They all tell an identical story.
“… discovered today…”
“… currently under house arrest…”
“Julian … resigned his position and has refused the cure…”
A year ago, the story would not have been reported at all. It would have been suppressed, the way the very existence of Julian’s brother was no doubt slowly and systematically expunged from public records after his death. But things have changed since the Incidents. Raven is right about one thing: It is war now, and armies need symbols.
“… emergency convention of the Regulatory Committee of New York … swift judgment … scheduled for execution by lethal injection at ten a.m. tomorrow…”
“… some are calling the measures unnecessarily harsh … public outcry against the DFA and the RCNY…”
I sink into a dullness, a place of suspension: I can no longer feel anything. The anger has ebbed away, and so has the guilt. I am completely numb. Julian will die tomorrow. I helped him die.
This was the plan all along. It is no comfort to think that had he been cured, he would have in all probability died as well. My body is chilled, frozen to ice. At some point someone must have handed me a sweatshirt, because I am wearing one. But still I can’t get warm.
“… Thomas Fineman’s official statement…
“The DFA stands behind the Regulatory Committee’s decision… They say: ‘The United States is at a critical juncture, and we can no longer tolerate those who want to do us harm … we must set a precedent…’”
The DFA and the United States of America can no longer afford to be lenient. The resistance is too strong. It is growing—underground, in tunnels and burrows, in the dark, damp places they cannot reach.
So they will make a bloody example for us in public, in the light.
At dinner, I manage to eat something, and even though I still can’t bring myself to look at Raven and Tack, I can tell they take this as a sign that I have relented. They are forced-cheerful, too loud, telling jokes and stories to the four or five other resisters who have assembled around the table. Still, the radio-voice infiltrates, seeps through the walls, like the sibilant hiss of a snake.
“… No other statement from either Julian or Thomas Fineman…”
After dinner, I go to the outhouse: a tiny shed fifty feet from the main building, across a short expanse of cracked pavement. It is the first time I’ve been outside all day, and the first chance I’ve had to look around. We are in some kind of old warehouse. It sits at the end of a long, winding concrete drive surrounded by woods on both sides. To the north I can make out the twinkling glow of city lights: This must be White Plains. And to the south, against the blush-pink evening sky, I can just detect a hazy, halo glow, the artificial crown of lights that indicates New York City. It must be around seven o’clock, still too early for curfew or mandatory blackout. Julian is somewhere among those lights, in that blur of people and buildings. I wonder whether he’s scared. I wonder whether he’s thinking of me.
The wind is cold but carries with it the smell of thawing earth and new growth: a spring smell. I think of our apartment in Brooklyn—packed up now, or perhaps ransacked by regulators and police. Lena Morgan Jones is dead, like Raven said, and now there will be a new Lena, just like every spring the trees bring forth new growth on top of the old, on top of the dead and the rot. I wonder who she will be.
I feel a sharp stab of sadness. I have had to give up so much, so many selves and lives already. I have grown up and out of the rubble of my old lives, of the things and people I have cared for: My mom. Grace. Hana. Alex.
And now Julian.
This is not who I wanted to be.
An owl hoots somewhere, sharply, in the gathering darkness, like a faint alarm. That’s when it really hits me, the certainty like a concrete wall going up inside of me. This is not what I wanted. This is not why I came to the Wilds, why Alex wanted me to come: not to turn my back and bury the people I care about, and build myself hard and careless on top of their bodies, as Raven does. That is what the Zombies do.
But not me. I have let too many things decay. I have given up on enough.
The owl hoots again, and now its cry sounds sharper, clearer. Everything seems clearer: the creaking of the dry trees; the smells in the air, layered and deep; a distant rumbling, which swells on the air, then fades again.
Truck. I’ve been listening without thinking, but now the word, the idea, clarifies: We can’t be far from a highway. We must have driven from New York City, which means there must be a way back in.
I don’t need Raven, and I don’t need Tack. And even if Raven was right about Lena Morgan Jones—she doesn’t exist anymore, after all—fortunately, I don’t need her, either.