Pippa removes a key from around her neck and unlocks the large refrigerator. Inside it are rows and rows of canned food, as well as bags of rice. The bottom shelves are packed with bandages, antibacterial ointment, and bottles of ibuprofen. As Pippa moves, she tells us about the camp, and the riots in Waterbury that led to its creation.
“Started in the streets,” she explains as she dumps rice into a large, dented pot. “Kids, mostly. Uncureds. Some of them were riled up by the sympathizers, and we got some members of the R in as moles, too, to keep everybody fired up.”
She moves precisely, without wasting any energy. People materialize out of the dark to help her. Soon she has placed various pots on one of the fires at the periphery. Smoke—delicious, threaded with food smells—drifts back to us.
Immediately there is a shift, a difference in the darkness that surrounds us: A circle of people has gathered, a wall of dark, hungry eyes. Two of Pippa’s men stand guard over the pots, knives drawn.
I shiver. Julian doesn’t put his arm around me.
We eat rice and beans straight out of a communal pot, using our hands. Pippa never stops moving. She walks with her neck jutting forward, as though she constantly expects to encounter a barrier and intends to head-butt her way through it. She doesn’t stop talking, either.
“The R sent me here,” she says. Raven has asked her how she came to be in Waterbury. “After all the riots in the city, we thought we had a good chance to organize a protest, plan a large-scale opposition. There are two thousand people in the camp right now, give or take. That’s a lot of manpower.”
“How’s it going?” Raven asks.
Pippa squats by the campfire and spits. “How does it look like it’s going? I’ve been here a month and I’ve found maybe a hundred people who care about the cause, who are willing to fight. The rest are too scared, too tired, or too beat down. Or they just don’t care.”
“So what are you going to do?” Raven asks.
Pippa spreads her hands. “What can I do? I can’t force them to get involved, and I can’t tell people what to do. This isn’t Zombieland, right?”
I must be making a face, because she looks at me sharply.
“What?” she says.
I look at Raven for guidance, but her face is impassive. I look back to Pippa. “There must be some way…” I venture.
“You think so?” Her voice gets a hard edge. “How? I have no money; I can’t bribe them. We don’t have enough force to threaten them. I can’t convince them if they won’t listen. Welcome to the free world. We give people the power to choose. They can even choose the wrong thing. Beautiful, isn’t it?” She stands abruptly and moves away from the fire. When she speaks again, her voice is composed. “I don’t know what will happen. I’m waiting for word from higher up. It might be better to move on, leave this place to rot. At least we’re safe for the moment.”
“What about fears of attack?” Tack says. “You don’t think that the city will retaliate?”
Pippa shakes her head. “The city was mostly evacuated after the riots.” Her mouth quirks into a small smile. “Fear of contagion—the deliria spreading through the streets, turning us all into animals.” Then the smile fades. “I’m telling you something. The things I’ve seen here…They might be right.”
She takes the stack of blankets and passes them to Raven. “Here. Make yourself useful. You’ll have to share. The blankets are even harder to keep around than the pots. Bed down wherever you can find the space. Don’t wander too far, though. There are some crazies around here. I’ve seen it all—botched procedures, loons, criminals, the lot. Sweet dreams, kiddies.”
It’s only when Pippa mentions sleep that I realize how exhausted I am. It has been more than thirty-six hours since I’ve slept, and until now I have been fueled primarily by fear of what will happen to us. Now my body is leaden. Julian has to help me to my feet. I follow him like a sleepwalker, blindly, hardly conscious of my surroundings. We move away from the three-sided hut.
Julian stops by a campfire that has been allowed to burn out. We are at the very base of the hill, and here the slope is even steeper than the one we came down, and no path has been beaten in its side.
I don’t care about the hardness of the ground, the bite of the frost, the continued shouts and hoots from all around us, a darkness alive and menacing. As Julian settles behind me and wraps the blankets around us both, I’m already somewhere else: I am at the old homestead, in the sickroom, and Grace is there, speaking to me, saying my name over and over. But her voice is drowned out by the fluttering of black wings, and when I look up I see that the roof has been blown apart by the regulators’ bombs, and instead of a ceiling there is only the dark night sky, and thousands and thousands of bats, blotting out the moon.
Hana
I wake up as the dawn is barely washing over the horizon. An owl hoots somewhere outside my window, and my room is full of drifting dark shapes.
In fifteen days, I will be married.