“What do you mean?” He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Don’t play dumb,” I say. “You shouldn’t have volunteered to scout. This isn’t a joke, Julian. We’re in the middle of a war.”
“I don’t think it’s a joke.” His calmness is infuriating. “I know better than anyone else what the other side is capable of, remember?”
I look away, biting my lip. He has a point. If anyone knows about the tactics of the zombies, it’s Julian Fineman.
“You still don’t know the Wilds,” I insist. “And Tack won’t protect you. If you get attacked—if anything happens, and it’s a question of you or the rest of us—he’ll leave you. He won’t endanger the group.”
“Lena.” Julian puts his hands on my shoulders and forces me to look at him. “Nothing’s going to happen, okay?”
“You don’t know that,” I say. I know I’m overreacting, but I can’t help it. For some reason, I feel like crying. I think of the quietness of Julian’s voice as he said I love you, the steadiness of his rib cage rising and falling against my back as we sleep.
I love you, Julian. But the words don’t come.
“The others don’t trust me,” Julian says. I open my mouth to protest, but he cuts me off. “Don’t try and deny it. You know it’s true.”
I don’t contradict him. “So what? You need to prove yourself?”
He sighs and rubs his eyes. “I chose to make my place here, Lena. I chose to make my place with you. Now I have to earn it. It’s not about proving myself. But like you said, there’s a war on. I don’t want to sit on the sidelines.” He leans forward and kisses my forehead once. He still hesitates for just a fraction of a second before he kisses me, as though he has to shake out that old fear, the terror of touch and contamination. “Why are you so upset about this? Nothing will happen.”
I’m scared, I want to say. I have a bad feeling. I love you and don’t want you to get hurt. But again, it’s as though the words are trapped, buried under past fears and past lives, like fossils compressed under layers of dirt.
“We’ll be back in a few hours,” Julian says, and cups my chin briefly. “You’ll see.”
But they aren’t back by dinnertime, and they aren’t back by the time we rake dirt over the fire, extinguishing it for the night. It’s a liability now, and even though we’ll be colder, and Julian and Tack will have trouble finding their way to us without it, Raven is insistent.
I volunteer to stay up and stand watch. I’m too anxious to sleep. Raven gives me an extra coat from our store of clothing. The nights are still edged with a hard chill.
A few hundred feet from the camp is a slight incline, and an old cement wall, still imprinted with ghostly loops of graffiti, that will shield me from the wind. I huddle up with my back against the stone, cupping the mug of water Raven boiled for me earlier to help warm my fingers. My gloves were lost, or stolen, somewhere between the New York homestead and here, and now I have to do without.
The moon rises and touches the camp—the slumbering forms, the domed tents and makeshift shelters—with a fine white sheen. In the distance, a water tower, still intact, hovers over the trees like a steel insect, perched on long, spindly legs. The sky is clear and cloudless, and thousands of stars float out of the darkness. An owl hoots, a hollow, mournful sound that echoes through the woods. From even this short distance, the camp looks peaceful, wrapped up in its white haze, surrounded by the splintered wrecks of old houses: roofs collapsed into the ground, a swing set, overturned, its plastic slide still protruding from the dirt.
After two hours, I’m yawning so much my jaw aches, and my whole body feels as though it has been filled with wet sand. I lean my head back against the wall, struggling to keep my eyes open. The stars above me blur together…they became one beam of light—sunshine—Hana is stepping out of the sunshine, leaves in her hair, saying, “Wasn’t it a funny joke? I was never planning to get cured, you know….” Her eyes are locked on mine, and as she steps forward, I see she’s about to put her foot in a trap. I try to warn her, but—
Snap. I jolt awake, heart throbbing in my throat, and quickly, as quietly as possible, move into a crouch. The air is still again, but I know I didn’t imagine or dream the sound: the sound of a twig snapping.
The sound of a footstep.
Let it be Julian, I think. Let it be Tack.
I scan the camp and see a shadow moving between the tents. I tense up and reach forward, ever so slowly, easing the rifle into my hands. My fingers are swollen with cold, and clumsy. The gun feels heavier than it did earlier.
The figure steps into a patch of moonlight, and I exhale. It’s just Coral. Her skin shines a vivid white in the moonlight, and she is wearing an oversized sweatshirt that I recognize as belonging to Alex. My stomach clenches. I bring the rifle up to my shoulder, swing the muzzle toward her, think: Bang.