by Astor Penn
I don’t say a word when they light it up. I might even step a little closer to the blaze, because it feels nice.
“Are there more of you?” I ask.
He hesitates, marginally. “Yes.”
“Women? Children?”
“Yes.”
I nod. “Are you from the camp?” We’re close, according to what Jackson said. Jackson, now lying stiff in the frost. He can’t still see me. I can still see him.
“No. We’re headed there.”
“For what?” I ask. Maybe they have someone inside too.
“You’ve given us enough of an edge to break in now,” Leader says. He motions with his hand, and I see two men move toward Jackson. I don’t dare protest. I don’t dare look away.
“Why? Are you looting it too?”
“We’re delivering democracy back to the people.” He grins. There’s always that moment when two survivors look at each other and see what they are now and what they might have been in the old world. Leader is a revolutionary now, but I don’t think he was ever anyone’s friend before.
“There’s someone inside I need to get to.”
“Thinking of joining us for a bit?” He doesn’t look pleased or displeased by the thought. Perhaps he sees me more as an asset now, since I can already tell this group of men should be his best, but the young boy doesn’t even hold a gun correctly now that he’s been given one.
“That seems to be where we’re both headed next.”
“Very well.”
The men moving Jackson, one at his head, one at his feet, walk him toward the back of the van, where the doors are still open and curtained by flames. They heave him inside the van, and even if I flinch, I make no noise.
It is their small mercy to their enemy that they burn him rather than leave him to the ravenous wildlife. I know this, but I can’t hide the tear that slips out. It’s the last time I think of Jackson.
Chapter 16
I’M NOT sure if I ever see their group in its entirety, but what I do see after they silently trudge back through the woods is a group of people twenty-some strong. Mostly men, but there are a few middle-aged women and a girl around ten. I am suspicious that there are more of them by the way they catalog their spoils of the day, neatly dividing it into piles, the way they graciously accept food but always rationing.
The girl in particular watches me closely; later on in the day, long after the sun finally rises after an eternity of night, she slides closer to me, her small cup of food in hand. Before she can sit directly next to me, I stand, moving to wash my own recycled tin can out. If she looks upset, I don’t see it. I can’t see anything but the way she braids her hair or her shy smile.
I’m not the girl who can fall in love again. I’ve already given every spare part of me. There’s just one piece missing, and I’ll either collect it or shatter the rest into pieces too small to count.
“Are you clear with the plan?” Leader asks. His name, according to the scant times I’ve heard people address him, is Lyson.
Nodding, I keep to myself that calling the plan any kind of a plan is almost ridiculous. They’ll wait until nightfall, of course, then ambush the gates. They have hazmat suits, so a couple of the men, Lyson included, will scale the walls, which they tell me are not so tall it’s impossible, then blend in until they can take out the guards and open the gates.
“Do you know how much security there will be?” I ask. Even though it’s strange how large a party they seem to me, I know they won’t compare to the amount inside the walls.
“They’ll outnumber us at least three or four times, the armed ones, anyway. Then there will be more doctors and general staff, but they don’t have much resistance training.”
“And you’ll just kill all of them? Just like that?”
“If we could peacefully take the camp, we would. But I think you know as well as I do that they’ll never let us in peacefully.”
Supposedly their group is looking for enough supplies to start their own refugee camp. They doubt their chances of taking over this one and keeping it secure long enough if Invo calls for backup, but if nothing else, it’ll give them an advantage of tents and cots and things to make a permanent home for the winter. So they say. I wonder whether or not Invo, or anyone else if there is anyone else left, would fight this battle right now. With the confusion at their headquarters and the weather turning nasty, I think it’s more likely they’d be safe staying in the camp if they successfully seize control. Instead I don’t say anything.
“I’m not sure I can say I blame them. Desperate people storming in with weapons, the most dangerous one of all invisible to them,” I say. “How do you know you’re all clean?”
“We haven’t seen anyone infected in weeks. Why do you think we let you come with us?”
“I was with the suits. You knew I was clean.”
“I know there’s more to you than meets the eye.” Lyson is the leader because he never stops moving. Always pacing, even at his stillest. “Why wasn’t that man in a suit? Where did you steal that vehicle from?”
“Steal—” But I stop. He thinks Jackson and I were just road travelers, the same as them. He never believed I was some innocent victim.
Was I?
“I told you the truth. He was taking me to the camp.”
“He wasn’t a suit. They lived in those things, never breathed in a real whiff of air if they could avoid it.” We’re standing far enough away from the group that I’m not worried they’ll hear us, but I glance over anyway.
“There were problems at the facility we were in. He saved me.” Versions of the truth are what I do best. “I guess he didn’t have time to suit up. I don’t know. I know that I would have been in trouble if he didn’t help me out when he did. They’re not all monsters.”
If I thought he might show some remorse for killing a man less guilty than originally presumed, I’m wrong. He doesn’t even flinch; instead, his face lights up.
“Which camp were you in?”
I realize I need to choose my next words carefully. Should I tell them about the facility? Do they know already? Even if they don’t, what can they do? Jackson’s suspicions were that the facility would return to normal functioning shortly after the alarms went off, and it was well guarded. They’d definitely need more than a couple dozen people to overtake it; for that matter, I hope they know exactly what they’re getting into going to the camp. I’ve never been inside one; I don’t know how many armed people there will be, and they might be surprised too.
“Not a camp,” I admit. “They have an old, abandoned hospital they use to treat people.”
“What? Are you telling me they’ve miraculously found a cure?”
“Yes,” I say. There is no joy or elation when I say it. Just a numbness, a detachment to the entire thing. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“And you’ve been cured?” He clearly doesn’t believe, not by the tone of his voice. His poker face is still on, but the tension in his hands tells me he wants to choke me just for telling him the thing he wants to hear most.
“Yes.” What else can I say? “Things are changing. More than you know.”
He nods. We eye each other for a while, and isn’t this a dance I know. We’ve sized each other up, but there are always weaknesses to be found.
“You’re good with a knife,” he says casually.
“Yes.”
“What do you plan to do after you find whoever it is you’re looking for inside?”
“Leave.”
“And go where?”
I shrug. It won’t matter where we go. “Far from you.”
He nods at me, pulling a knife from a sheath on his leg. It’s larger than the ones I have now, jagged. A hunting knife for skinning.
“Take this.”
Testing the weight in my hand, I imagine how easily this could separate skin from muscle. Sinew and gore. It’s been a while since I’ve killed anything, and finding game in this weather will be diffi
cult. There will be things in hibernation, animals hiding. Hard to find, but easy to kill.
“Why are you giving me this?” I ask. “You don’t even trust me.”
“I trust you to leave when the time comes, and think what you will of me, I won’t have a young girl leaving on her own empty-handed.”
“Who did you lose?” Connection is brought through sacrifice and remembrance. It is the only thing that keeps us human, humane, living consciousness. Asking this question seems commonplace, a way to remind each other of the complete and utter destruction. Everyone has lost someone.
“No one.” Words I’ve heard before; they’re never true.
“I don’t believe you.”
“I lost everything before the sickness came. It made me better prepared than anyone.”
I laugh. “Sorry. You remind me of someone.”
“Dead or alive?” he asks.
“Alive.” I think. I don’t need to say it—he knows there is a better chance they are dead than alive if we’re not together. I wonder why he asked at all.
“The one in the camp, then?”
I nod.
“I hope for your sake they’re still there, then.”
“She’s there.”
We have one last meal, all of us together, then the older woman takes the young girl by the hand and walks without prompting into the trees, either to hide on their own, or if my suspicions are correct, join another group. I don’t ask; I have no right to know. The men, and the few women left in the group, all treat me cautiously, but not so cold that they won’t acknowledge me. In fact, while they all outfit themselves in either weapons, or for Lyson and Toothless, scavenged hazmat suits, a few people ask if I have everything I need.
The waiting is the worst part; relying on someone else to advance the plan is something I’ve grown unaccustomed to. The move from where they’d temporarily set up to the camp takes an hour; once there, the majority of us stay hidden in the trees while our hazmat decoys leave on their own. Soon I see nothing, not their backs or any sign of a living settlement. It’s too quiet to think that there are at least a hundred people living together close by; they tell me we’re practically on top of them, but I don’t hear or see anything to prove this. No smoke to indicate a fire or work being done, no sounds of voices collectively appreciating their great fortune that they are alive and well.
No one screaming to be let out.
I’m not sure what I expected—for so long, there were only whispered horror stories, things I only half heard in the shadows. The camps were no better than prison camps, but now that I’ve been a prisoner, I’m not sure. These people are supposedly provided for. Protected. That’s all most people want. I know I want the truth—to know if my loved ones are alive, and that starts with Raven and ends with my family. If I could find them all, know they are safe, I might be willing to put myself into the hands of others. It’s what I did before—it’s just been such a long time since I’ve been able to do so.
We’ve been waiting for maybe a half hour before a few men drop to the ground out of the trees, quietly discussing something. I follow suit, along with the others. A match is lovingly passed from one torch to another until it burns fingers, and then there are a few small blazing fires. Witch fires.
“Won’t they give us away?” I ask.
“By the time we get there, they’ll know we’re coming, honey,” one of the men jeers, not to slight me, but in the friendly coconspirators kind of way.
It occurs to me then that I may not have been included in all the of the plan making, that this time, instead of being in the van, I am outside the van, watching it get flipped with no regard for the people inside. They stand there, pulling out their weapons—guns and knives and a bat and broken glass—and I have to watch, wondering if it is a mistake to be standing among them.
I suppose not—not when I automatically reach for the knife pocketed in my back.
“There it is! That’s the signal! Let’s move out.” The signal is smoke, of course, so thin and opaque it’s nearly impossible to see in the night sky, but someone spots it, and at once it’s like all the planning is for nothing.
They rush all at once like a mad herd of cattle instead of an organized group; this is a mob, I realize, and nothing more. They may have appeared to me as some kind of threat, but this is a threat that will be eliminated easily once the proper tools and people are in place. Standing behind them as their backs recede, I know I will follow them into the camp, but once inside I must make myself invisible. I cannot be one of them, cannot aid them in any way, and that’s all right. They mean nothing to me. I’m just as cold as any of them, and it’s their own fault that they did nothing to warm me to them.
I quietly run behind them, knife in hand, and for the first time in a long time, I feel right. I feel like myself—not a girl who sits behind desks and studies or a girl who quietly bides her time during revolution and a world reborn—but a girl on the run, a girl with a weapon in her hand. Perhaps I am not as evolved, sophisticated, or even humane as I once assumed; after all, who would suspect the girl in the school uniform, riding the subway every day with her cell phone and a map pulled up because she’s prone to getting lost, to be the one to pick up a knife and learn to throw it straight enough to hit a target from nearly forty feet away?
The people I’m with underestimate me, and if they get in my way, I’m not afraid to show them. But no—I’m not with them. I’m with no one. And Lyson understands that. I doubt he’d be surprised if I used the knife he so generously offered to me to stab him in the back. That’s why I can’t trust him or any of the people who follow him.
The trees don’t grow sparse—they just end, in what is clearly a manmade hole in the middle of a forest. It’s almost a perfect circle cut through the heart of the woods; one moment you’re gasping for breath in dewy air, the next you’re standing in still air, nothing in front of you except smoke, and a tall wall, complete with barbed wire on top. It really does look like a work camp from a faded black-and-white photo.
The walls, whatever they’re made of, must have been constructed hastily. They’re something thicker than plaster but nothing that would stand against massive attack. There’s a gate, barely visible to us from where we exit the trees, made of crisscrossed wires like you’d see in front of a dog pen. Not exactly what I’d call secure in the best of situations, to be sure, and as the first members of the group approach it, I see that while it’s not wide open, it is unlocked. They push through it like a wild bunch of animals. They snarl and bark like dogs, even, and as they disappear inside, I hear screams of frightened people.
There’s a moment of hesitation before I step inside the camp—the truth will finally be known. Is the camp a horror story, like the people on the road always claimed it was, or is it a place of salvation, like Wyles promised? Is she here, or is she not?
At first glance I think horror story. The people inside clearly belong to the camp because they’re dressed in matching clothes—like prison wear—and have no personal items to distinguish each other. None of them are armed, of course, and the looks of despair and fear on their faces are almost comical until I watch an older man stumble backward as one of Lyson’s men approaches him, falling over and crawling over the frosty earth with a groan because he can’t get back up. He yells as Lyson’s man maliciously rubs a hand over him, just to frighten the man, because even though these people are confident they aren’t affected by the illness, these people inside have no greater fear than the contamination coming inside.
A few adult members of the camp struggle against the invaders; I see the bodies of some fallen guards, their guns stripped from them. I see Toothless’s body too, his eyes and mouth wide open like big dark caverns. There are gunshots and screaming and more people than I had ever imagined inside, most of them running from tent to tent, holding hands and darting to wherever they think safety is left. I walk slowly through the chaos, and no one seems to mind me. Underneath my coat, after all, is t
he same soft pajama-like clothing they wear, not suitable for winter at all, and even if it’s a different color, it is decidedly different from the rugged wear of those trying to hurt them. I quietly pass through them all, outside them, part of neither party. I don’t feel pity when one of Lyson’s women gets shot in the arm, a nonfatal blow for now, or when one of them takes a blow to the back with a blunt object.
Keeping my knife clutched low to the ground, I try to remain unseen. Maybe because I’m not screaming in rage or fear or maybe because I once knew how to disappear, I’m able to move quickly through the camp. The organization is easy to identify—there’s a dining area with tables and chairs, all plastic and worn with mud and constant moisture, and a rec space where a steel pole remains erected with a rubber ball hanging from a shabby robe, an image from a playground I’d long forgotten. At the heart of the camp, there’s a massive fire pit, currently lit but in a quick manner, maybe by Lyson himself. The fire is unmanaged and spreading outside of the stone circle. There is no one there to tend it, and even though it’s not quite in range of any tents yet, I quickly kick some dirt onto the outermost flames as I pass through.
Finally, I see a hazmat run by, and I realize my fear of them has long passed. They are no longer the ones to watch for on the roads—it’s people like Lyson, the ones who might prefer the world as it is now, and damn anyone who might want to rebuild it in the image it once held. Wyles was right.
The suit’s not alone—I see one of the younger men running after him. Must be out of bullets or maybe he never had a gun—he’s carrying a bat in his hand instead.
Standing close to the fire for a moment, I let the warmth fill me with purpose and give me the last reserve of hope. It’s a moment where I’m afraid to move, much like at the gate, because either my worst fears or greatest hopes are about to be uncovered, and there will never be another moment when I have both. Either Raven is alive and here, or she’s not here, dead or gone, which is as good as dead. If she’s not in this camp somewhere, I will surely never see her again.