by Nick Courage
Footsteps approach our truck, federales inspecting from every angle, tapping sharply on the wheels and the doors—the side of the cab, inches from my stock-still head.
“Purpose of your visit?” a federale asks Carel, his tone authoritative but bored. Even Julia-the-dog picks up on the tenseness of the situation, and we all three hold our breath.
“Pickup,” Carel answers, although . . . strangely, it doesn’t sound quite like Carel. Freckles cocks her head, and I lean closer to the curtain.
“Pick . . . up,” the federale slowly repeats to himself, as if he’s writing it down. “And,” he continues, falling back into his clipped military speech, “what are you picking up in the city this morning?”
“You know how it is, man,” not-Carel says. All trace of the gruff Belgian eco-warrior is gone—like his curling waxed mustache—replaced with a slick and comfortable local trucker. “Boss tells me to drive in for a pickup, doesn’t bother telling me what for. Could be milk and kittens, but it’s probably just more trash for the Pickers.”
“No food leaves the city,” the federale says sternly, tapping his pen against his clipboard. “No edible export.”
“Y’all are eating kittens now? Naw man, you know it’s trash for the Pickers. It’s always just more trash.”
“Trash . . . run,” the federale says, audibly relieved, as he scratches Carel’s revised answer into his checkpoint form. “Quick trip, then. I’ll sign you out in a few hours. Good to go?” he calls to the federales who’ve been checking the undercarriage of our truck with mirrors on poles.
“Good to go,” one of them shouts in affirmation, slapping the door with the heel of his hand to send us on our way.
“Alright, see you fellas in a few hours, okay?” not-Carel calls affably out the window, slapping the outside of driver’s-side door and twisting the key in the ignition. “Don’t miss me too bad!”
The engine turns over sluggishly a few times, but doesn’t catch. That’s when Belgian Carel comes back, cursing under his breath as he tries again, revving the tired engine until—finally—it catches, the truck jangling heavily back to life. Freckles and I exhale at the same time, slumping back against the boxes as we lurch past the checkpoint and into the City.
Julia-the-dog—scrambling, scattering records in her wake—is the first into the front seat, and Freckles and I follow her lead. Now that we’re on the inside, there’s no sign of the monolithic superstructures that dominated the skyline a few minutes ago. I crane my still-stiff neck in search of them, but the streets are too narrow to see past the roofs of the five- and six-story apartment buildings that line them.
They’re not skyscrapers, but these are impressive, too—solid brick cliffs with limestone facades and curling iron-worked balconies; each one as fancy as the Library, each one a million-dollar townhouse before the Crash. But, now . . . every balcony has a working garden, enormous squash and cucumbers hanging heavily from their ornamented railings. Lines of rugged black irrigation hoses run down the facades, funneling rainwater from the sagging gutters above to the crops below. These converted townhouses may still have looked stately and sophisticated if it wasn’t for the overburdened laundry lines stretched between balconies, spanning the street in every direction. Looking up, it’s a constellation of yellowed shirts and threadbare jeans, punctuated with the occasional billowing skirt.
Even though it must be almost three in the morning, most windows are illuminated from within with flickering yellow lights so bright they make the street below feel desolately black in comparison. It’s impossible to see more than suggestions of people behind them—they’re all shadows shrouded in patchworked curtains and overgrown foliage—but every so often, just beyond the corner of my eye, I feel someone looking back down at me.
As we rumble through the City, our one working headlight casting a wobbly beam into the sticky night, I notice that Carel is also paying more attention to the living room lights than to the street ahead. Like we’re at sea and they’re the stars he’s navigating by.
It’s a comforting thought.
Until Freckles, Julia, and I jolt forward in a bony pile against the dashboard, the truck’s rusty brakes shrieking into action. “Be more careful,” Carel shouts out of the window, and then turns to us as he rolls slowly past an indignant cyclist. “You all weren’t wearing seat belt?”
I shake my head clear, eyes locked with the cyclist we’d almost hit. He’s yelling at us, spitting curses at our grimy windshield as he steadies himself on his pedals. No one’s hurt, but the fuzzy bubble of rock and roll radio we’d been floating through the City on has given way to an explosion of noise: the unrelenting jangle of the City outside. It’s almost like the cicadas on the way here, but with more depth and rhythm.
More fury.
Working my jaw from side to side, I try to pop my ears back to normal, but it’s no use. The City’s almost deafening. Driving in, the radio had only been turned up halfway, and it’s hard to believe I’d been too distracted by the sights to register the sounds; the loudness.
I notice that Carel’s glaring at me, so I rub my ears one last time and fasten my seat belt. It had been a close one—if we’d been going any faster, we would’ve all been thrown, bloody, through the bug-plastered window.
And yet, here we are. Driving as if nothing’s happened. Despite the shock and the angry protestations following us down the street, it’s not long before I lose myself in the swirl of the City: the sing-song sales pitches of the cross-legged traders who line the sidewalks; ratty-looking punks with their hard-worn wares spread out on colorful scarves; heavily tattooed older men selling incense and fruit and batteries from the front baskets of their beaten-up bicycles, weaving through pedestrians and rusty pedicabs as they call out their merchandise.
Freckles and I stare wide-eyed at the sheer mass of people milling about in the streets in the middle of the night. Every block we pass is more of the same; the crowding never seems to lessen. It’s like the entire Green Zone packed into the Library, times a thousand. Except no one’s wearing khaki shorts and white-collared shirts. In fact . . .
They all look sort of like Tom and Rachel.
“I didn’t know that . . . we thought . . .” I stumble, rubbing my elbow where it had hit the dashboard, and feeling a telltale buzz instead of a bruise.
“It’s like the Other Side!” Freckles shouts, face plastered to the window. I follow her gaze, noticing for the first time the graffiti blanketing the bottom ten or so feet of every available wall, a mess of shaky bubble letters and jagged political slogans obscured in places by large paper drawings that look like they’ve been literally pasted onto the brick, like wallpaper. Amazingly, there’s no sign of any federales; no black jeeps or suits, just a city full of dirty Other Siders sitting on overcrowded stoops, bartering fruit for batteries and weaving their bicycles through crowded streets toward even more crowded streets.
In fact, we’re in the only car on the road, which is why Carel is having such a hard time pushing through the congestion—and why we’re getting so many open-faced stares. The streets don’t seem to be meant for cars here.
Carel snorts derisively in response to Freckles’ excitement. “Is nothing like Other Side. Look, too many people. Nobody doing nothing, just walking around.” He raps on the glass of the front windshield, drawing the attention of the City-dwellers ahead. “Living off trash, one meal away from Pickers.”
Freckles slumps down next to me and sighs, theatrically annoyed. “Can I ask you something?” she says, a shrill edge to her voice. “Why do you talk like you can’t speak English? We heard you talking to the federales, you sounded totally normal.”
My face tightens.
I’d wondered the same thing at the checkpoint, but—not wanting to say anything that would make Carel shout again—I’d let myself get distracted by the City, by the chaos of it all. Carel doesn’t seem that bothered, though; he just shrugs his shoulder and clears his throat as if in disgust. “Hate to talk lik
e . . . them,” he spits. “If federales are normal, no thanks. Prefer French, but no one speaks here.” Julia’s nails skitter across the floor of the truck as she scrambles into Freckles’ lap, and Freckles instinctively pets her, despite her frustration with Carel, who has admittedly been dragging a cartoon storm cloud behind him ever since we left the Other Side. It’s gotten so I barely trust my memory of him serving biscuits with a smile.
But I guess everything’s different now.
I never would’ve guessed that the City would be so fun and familiar. I’d expected it to be sterile and clean, full of steel and glass and stern-eyed federales with strong jaws and crisp black suits. Never in a million years would I have predicted rock and roll radio and thousands of Other Siders packing the streets. That Carel can speak perfect English and chooses not to—that almost doesn’t seem so strange in comparison.
“Why are these people all out here in the middle of the night, anyway?”
Carel ignores the question, grumbling a response to what Freckles said earlier instead, about the City being like the Other Side. “Anyway, being Other Sider means getting out, living for yourself . . . not living off others. Not living like this, in big federale prison.”
Scanning the streets from the privileged vantage of the truck, which is tall, if lumbering, I try to recast the City as Carel imagines it: nefarious and doomed. But all I see are laundry lines and glowing windows and thousands of Toms and Rachels. The apartments do seem to be rippling, though, their lights doubling, then tripling, then doubling again. I shake my suddenly groggy head, but my vision doesn’t clear. Instead, the pandemonium of the city goes unexpectedly quiet. Carel’s still complaining to Freckles, but I have to strain to hear—it’s like they’re underwater.
“Have to be out in two hours,” he says, as I ball my shaking hands into nervous fists and try to will my vision and hearing back to normal. Unsuccessfully. “Told guards I’m just picking up, can’t afford to stay and be arrested. Could go away forever.”
The City continues to swim in front of me as I shiver and pop my jaw, forcing myself to hear. To stay conscious. “Have trailer to pick up from school friends. No time to go anywhere else. You can find the way, yes?”
“I . . . I think so,” Freckles stammers, not sounding so sure. “Hank knows where we’re going, right, Hank?”
I want to respond, but I can’t—it’s taking all my energy just to keep myself from fainting. Lights flicker and fade into white as my eyes strain back into my pounding head, the rumbling of the City obscured almost entirely by the cloud of an attack. Not now, I think, gritting my teeth. But it’s too late; I’m already slipping away.
“Earth to Hank,” Freckles teases through the haze as she elbows me in the side. “You still have the address, right . . .”
The buzz jolts me back into the front seat of the truck for just a split second, although the clarity of everything makes it seem longer: Freckles’ face, heart-shaped and pink from the heat, wreathed in messy brown curls, mouth hanging open in shock. Julia-the-dog perched on Freckles’ lap, legs tucked, rabbit-like, beneath her taut, square frame, bright red tongue lolling out onto the plastic seat. Carel scowling into the traffic enveloping us, fidgeting with the grimy knobs of the dashboard radio, which seems to have lost its signal completely.
Falling heavily back against the headrest, I let the crashing thunder of the City rush in as Freckles squeezes my hand, electricity jumping jaggedly from myself to her as I slip out of consciousness. “You’re . . . doing it again!” she whispers, her voice wavering somewhere between concern and wonder.
The last thing I remember before I pass out is my hand resting in hers as Carel jerks his head toward me, cursing loud enough for me to hear him through the fog.
And then I’m gone.
If he doesn’t wake up in the next fifteen minutes, we need to take him to a hospital, someone says to a murmur of agreement, their voice high-pitched and agitated. I try to force my eyes open, to let them know I don’t need to see a doctor . . . that this has happened a lot recently and Dr. Singh said I should just roll with it. That I should get as far away from the Green as possible, I want to joke. But as much as I strain, I can’t seem to move. It’s as if someone’s stolen my bones and left me draped helplessly across the back of a chair.
We don’t have time.
How long’s he been like this?
An unpleasant realization needles through my exhaustion. I don’t know how long I’ve been out; I could be anywhere, with anyone. I try to force my eyes open again, fighting against the boneless sleep and losing. As helpless as I am, it wouldn’t be so terrible if I could just know that everything’s okay. The crick in my neck is finally gone, replaced with a warm emptiness. I sigh contently despite the danger, my chest rising and falling without a care in the world; as if, despite all signs to the contrary, everything is going to be all right after all.
That’s when I realize the room’s gone silent.
Even without seeing, I can feel everyone’s attention focus on me with an almost audible snap. Holding my breath, I will myself back to sleep . . . but a tickle at the back of my throat spreads and intensifies, and I sputter, racked back into consciousness with ragged coughs.
That’s a good sign, right? someone asks, sounding a little unsure of themselves. It’s a voice I don’t recognize, and I curse my body for not keeping quiet. It’s too late for that, though, so I just keep my eyes squeezed shut instead, afraid of what I might see if I open them. Carel could have been recognized and arrested after I passed out. It’s not like a shaved mustache is a fool-proof disguise—he has a tan shadow outlining the white skin where it used to be, and a million tattoos as well. If he’s as wanted as everyone says he is, there’s no way the federales can miss him.
Chewing on my tongue, I walk through the entire scenario in my head, step by increasingly panicked step.
The biker incident would have drawn attention to us and earned us a federale tail. I didn’t see anything else with a motor, and as the only car on the road, we’d have been easy to track and bust. The federales would have surrounded us as we waded through the crowds, rapping on the windows to get our attention and then ripping the doors open, throwing Carel to the ground before cuffing him and dragging him off to some bottomless federale jail, the truck left idling on the streets to be scavenged and stolen.
If they were lucky, Freckles and Julia may have gotten away, melting into the tumult of the sweltering midnight crowd. But we haven’t been particularly lucky so far . . . not really. Just on the run. And now the only sign of us ever having been in the City would be Rachel’s self-portrait propped against a graffitied wall somewhere, between jars of incense and rows of grimy silverware.
We’ll rot here.
But probably not, I try to convince myself, still playing dead.
The voices sound too jumpy to belong to federales. And—now that I’m more awake—I recognize the smell of Julia-the-dog’s radish breath, feel the weight and warmth of her dusty nub of a tail wagging against my feet.
Maybe one hour. I recognize Carel’s husky voice and purposefully foreign accent. Only twenty block, but so much traffic. It’s good to hear Carel, to know that he’s here and okay, not rotting in solitary somewhere, or worse. Just as I’m about to finally open my eyes, the room explodes into whispered argument. I can’t make out much, just scuffles and resentful sighs, so I lie still and decide to wait it out.
After a few taut moments, the argument seems to have moved elsewhere, leaving only receding footsteps in its wake . . . and then quiet.
I count to five and peer through my eyelashes, holding my breath with the hope that I’m not trapped in some godforsaken federale holding cell. Instead of bars, though, I see Julia’s slightly crossed eyes an inch from mine, staring back expectantly. As soon she notices I’m awake, she jumps onto my chest and paints my face and neck with slobbery kisses and breath so bad I can’t keep pretending to be unconscious.
“Henry!”
I turn my head, slowly, as the warm emptiness of semi-consciousness gives way to an aching fullness. Even though I’m happy to hear Freckles’ voice—sweet and concerned, relieved, but also a little angry around the edges—my brain is throbbing so hard against the inside of my skull that I feel like it might actually pop.
And the soreness.
I must have been flexing with all my strength while I was out, because my calves and hamstrings and even my stomach, where I’ve never seen a muscle in my life, aren’t just burning—they’re ablaze.
“Hank,” Freckles cries again. She’s sitting beneath me, on an overstuffed sofa, my head resting awkwardly on her angular thighs. I blink up at her, but can’t make out her face. She’s silhouetted against a series of bluish fluorescent lights overhead, but somehow her green eyes still seem to sparkle through the shadows. Cat eyes. I shiver beneath my hoodie, which is spread, blanket-like, across my chest, remembering the Library attic after she’d kissed me the first time. “We showed Carel’s friends the address you had in your sweatshirt, Hank. For Conor’s brother . . .”
Without warning, she’s cradling my head in her bony arms, clumsily hugging her face against mine. Her cheeks are wet with tears. I hadn’t realized she was crying. “They recognized his name,” she whispers, her voice ragged with frustration. “He’s a stupid federale. There’s no way he would’ve helped us.”
I go cold despite the warmth of Freckles’s hug.
I’d tried so hard not to think about it, to focus on getting to the City instead of being crippled by impossible logistics. But all my fragile hope was on everything just working once we got here. On Carel knowing what to do, and—for some reason I can’t quite place—on the dumb, crumpled piece of paper Conor gave me.