Leaving him behind is like tearing a part of my body away.
My eyes sting with tears, but a cold clarity fills me. I have to get Liam. My sister is already gone. The camp’s given over to madness. Gammas fleeing their houses. Flames in the distance. Two ships roar overhead through the black sky. The rattling of automatic guns, and the occasional whine of an energy weapon. Screams careen in from everywhere, swirling and swarming around me. I sprint diagonal between the homes, weaving my way through Gamma township to the central infirmary. I collide with a man full on and spin down into the mud, taking his elbow to my face. It barely jars him. He stumbles back, carrying a child, then rushes on. I know him. Elrow, one of my father’s headTalks from years back. He doesn’t even look down at me.
Struggling back to my feet, I find the infirmary with its door locked. A peaked white plastic building stained on its fringes by mud. Waiting there in the rain like a girl in a white dress. I hammer on the doors. “Let me in! It’s Lyria. Let me in!” I kick the doors twice before they unlock from the inside and open. Three men and a woman stand in their yellow nursing livery, holding heavy medical instruments intended for my skull. I hold up my hands.
“Lyria!” Janis, a Yellow doctor and head of the infirmary, shouts. “Let her through!”
“Janis, where’s Liam?”
“In the back.” Janis guides me through rows of cots filled with terrified children and infirm patients till we reach my nephew in the back. He’s sitting in his bed with his hands wrapped around his legs, sightless and listening to the horror outside. “What’s going on out there?” Janis asks.
“Red Hand,” I say. “Dropships and trucks.”
“They’re here?” she asks. She can’t believe it. “But the Republic…”
“Damn the Republic,” I say. “We’ve got to run. Liam…” I wrap my arms around the little boy. He’s so thin he could be made of glass. His hair’s an unruly explosion of red, like mine, but more closely cropped, and his mannerisms are all hesitant, like a boy asking a girl to dance at Laureltide. I kiss him on his head and wrap him snug in the little blue jumper I brought for him. I pull the hood up on his head so his little pale face is all that peeks out of it. “It’s well. It’s well. I’ve got you.”
“Where’s Mum?” he asks in a small voice.
“Waiting for us. But you have to come with me.”
“Is she all right?” he asks.
“I need you to be brave. Can you do that? Can you be like the Goblin? When he followed the Reaper to the Dragonmaw? Can you do that for me?”
“Yes,” he says, nodding his little head. “I can.” I heft him from the bed and move to the door. Janis blocks my way.
“It’ll be safer here,” she says. “It’s a hospital. Even they have to respect that.”
I stare at her, dumbfounded. “Are you bloodydamn bent in the head? You need to get everyone and get out.”
“Lyria…”
I don’t stop to reason with her. I shoulder past and burst out of the infirmary, running with my nephew clutched to my chest. The gunshots are closer now. Rough voices yell to one another. A woman’s screams are silenced with a wet thump. I weave through the gaps between the houses, heading for the north watchtower. Doors are broken off plastic hinges, young men run about with arms full of food and tokens and HCs and a thousand things less precious than the life I carry. Liam’s little pale arms cling around my neck. Someone screams “Gamma” and points at me. Terrified, I duck into an alley and lose them in the shadows.
The guard tower is abandoned when we reach it. Its spotlight stares directly into the sky. The Republic soldiers who were there have fled. Somewhere a dog barks. My sister is nowhere to be seen. “Ava,” I call quietly, hoping she’s in the shadows waiting for me. No one answers. Then men’s voices come from between the houses behind me. They followed me into the alley. I rush through the gate. A muddy field stretches all the way to the dark jungle. We’ll never make it. To the right is the camp’s dumpsite, and beyond that the river.
“Ava,” I whisper again. The feet are closer. I pull Liam to the side and scramble into the shadows of the rubbish heap. I dive to the ground at the top of a mound and slide halfway down the other side. I tell Liam to be quiet and crawl a little back up the mound to look at the path I fled. A tide of Gammas from my township rush through the gate toward the jungle. I know all of them. I don’t see my sister among them, so I stay silent and hunkered down in the shadow of the rubbish. But as the sounds of their footfalls fade into the night, a terrible fear of being left behind fills me. I’m about to rush from my place to join them, when I see the glimmer of something near the treeline. I want to shout at my kinsmen. Save them. But it’s too late. The glimmer becomes a hundred. Like the jungle itself is grinning and baring its pale teeth. My kinsmen scream as the men in the jungle come out to murder them in the dark with slingBlades.
I flee the screams, push deep into the dumpsite. Metal scratches my thigh as I run up a mound. I lose my balance and pitch sideways, tumbling down. Crash hard into the refuse, barely shielding Liam. He’s crying against my chest. The sweet scent of rot makes our eyes water something awful. A rat skitters across my arm. I push myself up and gain my feet, cradling my little nephew, leg stinging from the wound. Insects throb around my bare calves in thick clouds, biting and crawling. Heat from decomposition pulses up from the garbage. I find a hiding spot and huddle low underneath the remains of a broken industrial washer. Liam’s shuddering in fear, small body racked by silent sobs. I set him down. My arms are numb from carrying him. Men rove near the path now, close to where we entered the dump. Their flashlights slash at the darkness.
I flatten myself to the garbage and push a dirty finger to Liam’s lips. A light beam goes overhead. The mosquitoes buzz around his face, casting shadows. I tighten his jumper so only his nose and mouth are showing out of the hood. Water from the rain slithers and drips through the garbage as the men speak to each other. The voices are like my father’s, like my mother’s, like my sister’s and brothers’. But now their tongues sound cruel, all hard and dark and sharp-edged. How can Reds do this to their own kind? One comes close enough for me to see his painted hands. It’s not paint that covers them, but blood, dried and cracking.