Alex is a fast climber; he’s made it halfway up the fence. He looks over his shoulder and sees that I’m still standing there like an idiot, not moving. He jerks his head at me like, What are you doing?
I put my hand out to the fence again and then immediately jerk it back again: A shock runs through me all at once, but it has nothing to do with the voltage that should be pumping there. Something has just occurred to me.
They’ve lied about everything—about the fence, and the existence of the Invalids, about a million other things besides. They told us the raids were carried out for our own protection. They told us the regulators were only interested in keeping the peace.
They told us that love was a disease. They told us it would kill us in the end.
For the very first time I realize that this, too, might be a lie.
Alex rocks carefully back and forth on the fence so that it sways a little. I glance up, and he gestures to me again. We’re not safe. It’s time to move. I reach up and hoist myself onto the fence and start climbing. Being on the fence is even worse, in some ways, than being out in the open on the gravel. At least there we had more control—we could have seen if a guard was patrolling, could have hurried back to the cove and hoped to lose him in the darkness and the trees. A small hope, but hope nonetheless. Here we have our backs turned to the guard huts, and I feel like I’m a gigantic moving target with a big sign on my back saying SHOOT ME.
Alex reaches the top before me, and I watch him pick his way slowly, painstakingly, around the loops of barbed wire. He makes it over and lowers himself carefully down the other side, climbing backward a few feet and pausing to wait for me. I follow his motions exactly. I’m shaking by this point, from fear and exertion, but I manage to pass over the top of the fence and then I’m climbing down the other side. My feet hit the ground. Alex takes my hand and pulls me quickly into the woods, away from the border.
Into the Wilds.
Chapter Eighteen
Mary bring out your umbrella—
The sun shines down on this fine, fine day
But the ashes raining down forever
Are going to turn your hair to gray.
Mary keep your oars a-steady
Sail away on the rising flood
Keep your candle at the ready
Red tides can’t be told from blood.
—“Miss Mary” (a common child’s clapping game,
dating from the time of the blitz), from
Pattycake and Beyond: A History of Play
The lights from the guard hut get suctioned away all at once like they’ve been sealed back behind a vault. Trees close in around us, leaves and bushes press on me from all sides, brushing my face and shins and shoulders like thousands of dark hands, and from all around me a strange cacophony starts up, of fluttering things and owls hooting and animals scrabbling in the underbrush. The air smells so thickly of flowers and life it feels textured, like a curtain you could pull apart. It’s pitch-black. I can’t even see Alex in front of me now, can just feel his hand in mine, pulling.
I think I might be even more frightened now than I was making the crossing, and I tug on Alex’s hand, willing him to understand me and stop.
“A little farther,” comes his voice, from the darkness ahead of me. He tugs me on. We go slowly, though, and I hear twigs snapping and the rustle of tree branches, and I know that Alex is feeling his way, trying to clear a path for us. It seems that we move forward by inches, but it’s amazing how quickly we’ve lost sight of the border and everything on the other side of it, as though they’ve never existed at all. Behind me is blackness. It’s like being underground.
“Alex—” I start to say. My voice comes out strange and strangled-sounding.
“Stop,” he says. “Wait.” He lets go of my hand, and I let out a little shriek without meaning to. Then his hands are fumbling on my arms, and his mouth bumps against my nose as he kisses me.
“It’s okay,” he says. He’s speaking almost at a normal volume now, so I guess we’re safe. “I’m not going anywhere. I just have to find this damn flashlight, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” I struggle to breathe normally, feeling stupid. I wonder if Alex regrets bringing me. I haven’t exactly been Miss Courageous.
As though he can read my mind, Alex gives me a second small peck, this time near the corner of my lips. I guess his eyes haven’t adjusted to the dark either. “You’re doing great,” he says.
Then I hear him rustling in the branches all around us, muttering little curses under his breath, a monologue I don’t quite follow. A minute later he lets out a quick, excited yelp, and a second after that a broad beam of light cuts upward, illuminating the densely packed trees and growth all around us.