I’m so startled, I stop short. “What the hell?”
Max is walking behind me, and has to dodge at the last second. “New construction,” he says. “Tightened border control. Tightened control everywhere. Portland’s making an example.” He shakes his head and mutters something.
This image—the sight of a wall, newly erected—has made my heart start pounding. I left Portland less than a year ago, but already, it has changed. I’m seized by a fear that everything will be different on the inside of the wall too. Maybe I won’t recognize any of the streets. Maybe I won’t be able to find my way to Aunt Carol’s house.
Maybe I won’t be able to find Grace.
I can’t help but worry about Hana, too. I wonder where she will be once we begin pouring into Portland: the cast-out children, the prodigal sons, like the angels described in The Book of Shhh who were thrown out of heaven for harboring the disease, expelled by an angry god.
But I remind myself that my Hana—the Hana I knew and loved—is gone now.
“I don’t like it,” I say.
Max swivels around to look at me, one corner of his mouth quirked into a smile. “Don’t worry,” he says. “It won’t be standing too much longer.” He winks.
So. More explosions. It makes sense; we need to move a large number of people into Portland somehow.
A high, thin whistle disrupts the morning stillness. Beast. He and Pippa have been scouting ahead of the group this morning, tracing the periphery of the city, looking for other Invalids, signs of a camp or homestead. We turn toward the sound. We’ve been walking since midnight, but now we find renewed energy and move more quickly than we have all night.
The trees spit us out at the edge of a large clearing. The growth has been rigorously trimmed back, and a long, well-tended alley of green extends a quarter of a mile into the distance. In it are trailer homes propped on cinder blocks and chunks of concrete, as well as rusted truck beds, tents, and blankets strung up from tree branches to form makeshift canopies. People are already moving around the camp, and the air smells like smoking wood.
Beast and Pippa are standing a little ways away, conversing with a tall, sandy-haired man outside one of the trailers.
Raven and my mother begin shepherding the group into the clearing. I stay where I am, rooted to the spot. Julian, realizing I am not with the group, doubles back to me.
“What’s the matter?” he asks. His eyes are red. He has been doing more than almost anyone—scouting, foraging, standing watch while the rest of us are sleeping.
“I—I know where we are,” I say. “I’ve been here before.”
I don’t say with Alex. I don’t have to. Julian’s eyes flicker.
“Come on,” he says. His voice is strained, but he reaches out and takes my hand. His palms have grown calloused, but his touch is still gentle.
I scan instinctively across the line of trailers, trying to pick out the one Alex had claimed for himself. But that was last summer, in the dark, and I was terrified. I don’t remember any of its features but the rollaway, plastic-tarp roof, which won’t be distinguishable from where I’m standing.
I feel a brief flicker of hope. Maybe Alex is here. Maybe he came back to familiar grounds.
The sandy-haired man is speaking to Pippa. “You got here just in time,” he says. He is much older than he appeared from a distance—in his forties at least—although his neck is unblemished. He has obviously not spent any significant amount of time in Zombieland. “Game time is tomorrow at noon.”
“Tomorrow?” Pippa repeats. She and Tack exchange a look. Julian squeezes my hand. I feel a pulse of anxiety. “Why so soon? If we had more time to plan—”
“And more time to eat,” Raven cuts in. “Half our number is practically starving. They won’t put up a very good fight.”
The sandy-haired man spreads his hands. “It wasn’t my decision. We’ve been coordinating with our friends on the other side. Tomorrow is our best chance for getting in. A large portion of security will be busy tomorrow—there’s a public event down by the labs. They’ll be pulled away from the perimeter to guard it.”
Pippa rubs her eyes and sighs. My mother puts in, “Who’s going in first?”
“We’re still working out the details,” he says. “We didn’t know whether Resistance got the word out. We didn’t know whether we could expect any help.” When he speaks to my mom, his whole manner changes—he becomes more formal, and more respectful, too. I see his eyes skate down to the tattoo on her neck, the one that marks her as a former prisoner of the Crypts. He obviously knows what it means, even if he has not spent time in Portland.
“You have help now,” my mother says.