“Shouldn’t” is not going to save anyone from SS, though. It won’t matter one way or another until it does. I’ll know soon enough if those few exposed moments will change me.
What was Mei before she got sick? I wonder. An image of her face as she crouched between me and Kasim flashes through my head.
Give me the gun, Tai-ge, she said. And I did.
She keeps using my name, as if now we’re friends. As if she has some right. I keep using hers because it’s the only one she gave to me, the feel of it intimate on my lips.
I peer over the edge of my hammock to where she’s strung below me. “Thank you for what you did.”
Mei’s eyes stay closed, but she turns on her side, the hammock swinging as she buries her head in the fabric, as much away from me as she can. I lie back and close my eyes, wishing I could breathe.
CHAPTER 36 Howl
THE MOMENT THE MOUNTAIN NOTICES we’re gone is obvious. Radios begin chirping as Song Jie and I walk up the hall. Soldiers who were at ease perk up, walking more purposefully as they listen to the radio chatter. Most people are in their rooms, hiding away with the people they love to eat Guonian dumplings made from old ration packs.
It isn’t hard to lead Song Jie along as if we’re both part of this Menghu machine. I was one of them for long enough to know how to fit in. I threw together some knockout bombs from the chemicals in Sole’s room, and now I hold them close, watching the soldiers flood the hallways as we head for the long, barren stretch that leads to the barricades. Song Jie walks a little too close next to me, hand clenched inside his coat around one of the gas bombs. They’re not much different from what we used to do out on patrols. I hope. They have to work. There’s no other option.
The first barricade has two soldiers watching the halls, hands on their guns. Fingering the grenade in my hand, I fall into step directly next to Song Jie. “Take the closer one.”
His shoulders tense, his fingers going to his mask, but he keeps walking. When we get to the barrier, one of the Menghu steps forward to stop us. “You can’t leave now. There’s a lockdown—”
Then he catches sight of my face.
Song Jie lurches forward, but that’s all I see before dodging around the Menghu to kick the one behind him in the stomach. He folds over, one hand going to his radio, but I grab hold of his mask, wrenching him up by its straps and kicking out his knee. My fingers find the strap’s clasp, undoing it and pulling it from the man’s face. I press the mask to my own nose and mouth, then drop the gas grenade.
When I turn around, Song Jie is still grappling with the Menghu, but the soldier’s mask is off, and with no protection against the gas it’s only a few seconds before he drops to the floor with dead-weighted thunk.
Grabbing the radio as it chirps, I fiddle with the controls, finding the signal that links to the next two barriers between me and Outside. Inform them two soldiers will be coming through, then run.
Song Jie is jumpy as we walk past the next barricade, the Menghu manning them focused on their radios as they wave us through, waiting for some kind of tragedy, an outbreak of Sephs, an attack, or something worse to reveal itself over the radio. The barricade past that is empty, the place where the guards should have been, eerie and silent.
Perhaps SS got to them. Sephs. I try not to look as we pass, keeping hold of Song Jie’s arm to pull him past the post.
“What now?” Song Jie rasps through his mask, his eyes catching on the empty chair turned over by the barricade’s empty mouth. “Did you get anything from the people here, or was that just a colossal waste of time?”
I slip through the opening and pull him after me. “I got some coordinates, and I got you some medicine.”
“Coordinates for what?”
I keep walking through the cave, the darkness leaking in through my nose and mouth as I drop the mask and start running. Kasim and some other Menghu are already trying to get Sev out tomorrow. I have to get there first. And if everyone else is going to die anyway and if Sole can’t see any of me left to save…
I’ll save myself.
My voice echoes in the cave, Song Jie’s shadowy form like a spider crawling after me through the dark. “I know all you really want to do is kill people from the City, Song Jie. There’s a company of Reds not far away, and if you bomb them, I can use the distraction to get you enough medicine to last a long time.”
The lie feels like a sticky coating in my throat, Sev’s face a light in the cave’s dusty darkness.
“You want me to believe you now, after you just got me infected and thrown in a cell?” His voice goes flat.
I look over my shoulder, tossing him the bottle of Mantis I stole from Sole’s room. He doesn’t quiet catch it, stopping to fumble for it in the dark. “You don’t have to believe me. You’ll be able to see it for yourself. I’ve got no people left, Song Jie. The people here don’t want me, and the City never did in the first place.”
The only people I have left are Asleep. June on the island. Sev in the garrison. So close.
The darkness doesn’t change when I emerge from the cave, evening stars blocked by a shell of clouds, the air suffocating in a haze of heavy snowflakes. No moon to cut through the night. Tomorrow’s the first day of the new year. But tonight is the night the moon disappears from the sky and we’re supposed to huddle inside with our families, waiting for monsters to pass.
Perhaps it’s good that I’m not with the people I love. Tonight, I am the monster.
* * *
The heli sits there waiting for us like a promise in the snow. I have to duck under the tarp, the stairway lowering to greet us underneath. Reifa starts talking the second I put a foot to the stairs, her voice a quarrel of sparrows.
“She wants to know if you found out where the Chairman’s son is going to be.” Song Jie bumps my shoulder from behind me, translating.
“We both know that isn’t what you’re here for,” I reply. “The Chairman’s son is dead, and you’re here to kill everyone who had a hand in it.” I turn to look at Song Jie, still brushing the snow from his shoulders and coat, shivering as if his last drop of heat was already swallowed by the storm. He looks up slowly, finally sharing what I said.
Reifa’s eyes fall, her face crumpling.
Is it possible she really did believe Sun Yi-lai was out here somewhere? Her expression cracks my sternum, grief a ghost that chills us all as she cries. Promises are hard when you want to find reasons to keep them, but it’s no different from the hundreds of other promises I’ve made with words paper thin, no matter how beautiful they look from the outside.
There never was going to be a living boy at the end of this hunt.
There never was a cure. There never was a world that let people live because they were good, only a frozen wasteland that will kill you if you let it.
I turn away from the tears pouring down Reifa’s wrinkled cheek and Gein’s hand on her shoulder even as he shoots me a doughy approximation of a venomous look. It hurts to see that much hope, that much wanting, being crushed into nothing at all. I know the pain of watching your world be stripped of all its light.
Song Jie continues in Port North’s nonsense words, pointing to the sky, the maps on Gein’s screens, the buttons and lights. Reifa’s back straightens, and she wipes the tears from her cheek as she looks down at Song Jie and his new mask. He looks more the part of a City Red than he ever did before with his metallic snout.
I’ve already told Song Jie about the Reds congregating near the southern garrison, a bunker meant to withstand bombs. How Dr. Yang is keeping the cure inside, and I need a distraction to get it out. The trail of soldiers will lead the heli back to Dazhai. What better distraction than a fight? Menghu and Reds alike will eat it up. Blame it on each other, feeding the fire dividing them.
I shed my wet coat and help myself to Gein’s, where it’s folded over the back of his chair. Go to Song Jie’s pack and extract a pair of dry pants and socks. Promises of Mantis go far when dealing with so
meone newly infected. Instead of tucking it away with the rest of my amassed knowledge on how to get people to do what I want, the thought remains a dull ache behind my eyes.
By the time I’m changed, the propellers are rotating in their creepily silent fashion and the aircraft is jolting into the sky.
I retreat from the main cockpit and edge into the weapon cache, my heart thumping hard. This is the fastest way to get to Sev. The only way to get there before Kasim and Mei do. Inside, I focus on the shelves where Song Jie said I’d find a parachute. Once it’s out, I check the cords and pull the way he told me to, the long tubes I know to be bombs pulsing behind me like warning lights. This is the only way to get to Sev on time.
Since there’s no cure, the lives that will be lost are the same ones that will be taken over by SS within weeks, months, maybe years if they’re lucky. Would the soldiers on the ground think it a fair compromise? My life and Sev’s for theirs?
I promised Song Jie we’d meet back up twelve miles to the south, that with enough medicine to keep him well, we could go to the City, to Dazhai, to every farm in these Mountains if he wants. By the time they’ve waited long enough to know I’m not coming, Song Jie will have spread SS to Reifa and Gein, and then that will be the end of the black Islander heli wreaking vengeance on the people who have wronged them. SS will be their king. Same as the Reds they’re going to bomb tonight. Same as the rest of the world.
Even so, I can’t stop myself turning to look at those long boxes. So small. So boring looking, as if it isn’t soldier’s lives piled up in front of me, waiting to be burned.
Deep breath. Another, until my ribs threaten to pop, Gein’s roomy jacket drowning me. I pick up Song Jie’s pack and turn it over, dumping the bags of rice, dried meat, and fruit so they skitter across the floor at my feet. Once it’s empty, I press a button alongside the first bomb, the couplings disengaging so I can wrestle it free. I shove it into my pack, then go down the brackets, stuffing bomb after bomb into the empty mouth of the pack, cramming them in until the fabric strains. Only eight fit.
Even if I could fit them all, it wouldn’t be enough. My heart feels so cold inside me as I look up and down the wall, not knowing which of the things in this little room are weapons and which aren’t. I might not have even taken the worst of it.
“What are you doing?” Song Jie’s head pops in just as I tie the pack’s top down, the sides comically stretched.
“I found the parachute.” I pull the chute’s straps over my shoulders, buckle them in place, then pull the bag of bombs over my front, holding it close like a bellyache. “Show me again how to open it?”
He takes me to the heli’s side door. “No time. We’re coming up on the base you told me about.”
My feet tap impatiently against the metal floor waiting for Song Jie to open the door. How do the bombs know to explode? Mines you have to step on or walk through a tripwire. Chemical bombs from City helis sometimes hit the ground, sometimes explode above a target, pouring SS over Menghu heads in a shower of sick. But with these… is there a fuse? Is it impact that sets them off? Or is it somehow the distance they are from the ground, and I’ll be a human firework show for the Menghu and Reds to enjoy?
With the moon a dead thing in the sky, perhaps we all need the extra light.
Song Jie stands next to me as the door slides open, a hand on my shoulder as if we are comrades, though neither of us believes it. He thinks his journey is just beginning, full of anger and blood and righting the wrongs done to him. Mine’s watery and left over, full of regret.
“How long do you think it will take you to bomb the camps and get to our rendezvous?” I ask. There’s a steely glint in his eye, despite the tongue-lashing he just took from Reifa. I can feel it welling up inside him, the prospect of revenge. That he’ll somehow be able to prove to Reifa and Gein he’s an Islander same as them.
But I can’t find it in me to be angry or disgusted with him. There’s no room even for pity inside me. Song Jie isn’t my enemy, because I am nothing. I’m not from the City or Mountain. Not a Wood Rat, and not a Seph. I’m something else that never did quite fit.
“Probably an hour,” Song Jie replies. “We’ll wait another forty-eight for you to show up before we come looking.”
“That should be plenty of time.” There are lights in the distance, the garrison waiting under our silent propellers. It won’t be hard to get in. The Menghu could have gotten in any time they wanted before. They just wouldn’t have gotten back out. Not with the kind of numbers it would have taken to push the stronghold over.
Me and Sev alone, though? That is manageable.
The serum weighs in my pocket. Sev’s only been Asleep for weeks at best, not the eight years that left this serum with no choice but to kill her mother. We’ll escape.
We’ll be free.
I wish the word didn’t taste so bloody where I hold it under my tongue. Wish I didn’t wonder if Sev will only see the cost and walk away.
I am strong. I command myself to believe it, an echo of what Sev said to me once when we were sitting outside in the dark. Right before I kissed her the first time and Sole told her to run from the monster inside me, the one that’s all she can see now. Sev was the only person who saw strength when she looked at me instead of brutality.
I won’t give up, and that isn’t wrong. It’s not perfect, but I can’t cram myself into someone else’s box of right and wrong.
But the real reason, the one that hides underneath, is that I know what I am, no matter how much I wanted to believe that I’ve changed. I’m the one capable of sending a heli with bombs to camps crammed with soldiers. I’m the one who saw an entire tent full of supplies, and when Song Jie came in, the thing I chose to pick up was a knife.
I’m the one who drew Sev along behind me to the Mountain on promises and dreams. It was me who knew she was going to die, and I didn’t say anything.
If I can’t save myself, at least I can save her.
With that thought, I jump.
CHAPTER 37 June
THE SUN IS UP AND so are the people eating from the Post’s burned remains by the time I gather myself enough to climb down from the tree. I can’t see them, but I can hear their scraggled breaths, feel their hot eyes on my shoulders and neck as I walk by Loss’s body. Small flurries of snow fall all around me to dust over the dirty ice on the ground.
Everyone in the area must have known about Loss using the cave, so going back there would be dumb. The thought of Luokai still lying there drugged sinks like a rock in my stomach, nothing between him and scavengers who will take everything down to his shoelaces. The gore growls the thought away.
I can’t take Luokai with me. It was like with Dad. I didn’t want to leave him with no sure way to get food even after everything that happened, but I’ve got to focus on keeping my own guts inside me. I don’t want to be dead.
Maybe Luokai was really like Loss anyway. Like Tian and Cas. He infected me. He followed me. Took care of me, but only because he had to. He wanted the cure, and I was the way he was going to get it.
All the people who matter are dead. Dad. Mom. Now Cai Ayi and the rest of the Post. My throat closes over the next ones on the list: Lihua, Peishan.
Howl.
Sev.
My whole new family. The thought grits in my teeth as I run. It was the three of us against everyone else, and three stones against a whole bag just isn’t enough.
I stumble toward the river, not sure where I’m supposed to go now. Step one: Find shelter. Step two: food. I’ve got to live through this so I can…
So I can what?
I stop, looking up into snow as it falls from the clouds, the image of Loss in my head a bloody mess. Sometimes it’s between you and someone else… and no one really wants to be the one that stops breathing. The gore’s voice huffs to finish the sentence the way Tian used to before sending me out for supplies.
Just use your elbows if they get close. Those Sephs’d kill us if they knew we we
re here. They’d take our tent, our food, our pots and pans. Might even eat that old Pa of yours if they’s hungry enough. She used to get down on the ground, try to look level into my eyes, but I’d always keep them to myself. Looking straight into anyone’s eyes makes them think they know you. Lets them see things they shouldn’t, so they can use the secrets inside you like strings on a puppet, moving your arms and legs even if you don’t want to go. If it gets bad, use the knife. They won’t expect it from you. You’re so little, with the face like a spring flower. Somehow people forget that little folk get just as hungry as the big ones.
I sink down, my arms clasped around my knees as I try to keep my breaths steady, keep myself moored here on this side of the circle where I belong. Snowflakes thunder down from the sky like an avalanche, ready to bury me alive. I wasn’t supposed to stay dead forever. I wasn’t supposed to sink Underneath with SS still inside me. Sev and Howl had the cure. They were going to bring it to me. Fix me. Be with me forever.
But they are gone, and I am here. There’s not a single breath of wind in all this snow.
That wind isn’t your mom taking care of you, June. It’s just wind. The thoughts press hard on me until I can’t think, can’t feel anything but the gore inside me tearing me to ribbons.
That day in the river, Dad showing me how to tie a float, I still remember the way his eyes glazed over. I started away before he even came at me, knowing it was time to run.
It’s just that he was much faster. And I left him, dead under that dirty Menghu’s gun. Dead like Loss, even though they’re supposed to be different. How are they different? How are they different from the world chasing after me because I’m the last one left to kill?
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