Without fully understanding it, something shifts inside me, a murmur of the anger I felt in the containment centre. I feel myself respond to her words, every muscle tensing, joints locking, my throat swelling.
‘I’m sorry,’ I manage to get out, and there is too much. Too much fear and too much anger and too much guilt and too much everything with nowhere to put it, and suddenly the inside of this tent is too small and its flimsy walls are too close.
I push past her, moving towards the opening of the tent, needing to be out, to be outside. I haven’t worked up the courage to leave the tent since I woke up that first time, afraid of what might be waiting for me outside, but being cramped in there with my thoughts suddenly becomes so much worse than anything I might have to face out here.
The river, the one that almost claimed me only days ago, flows serenely along beside the camp. The camp itself is almost as serene, with about a dozen people milling around, talking and laughing quietly, but they all look up when I burst from the tent.
‘Quincy, are you okay?’ Lacey comes up behind me, leaving her hand on my shoulder. I shrug away from her.
I’m pulled back in time, to things I’ve been trying to push away, push down. To Bea calling me by my name, and me snapping at her, telling her she didn’t know me.
Lacey doesn’t know me either. None of these people knows me.
The only person who ever knew me was Aaron, and now I’ve lost him, too. And now I’ve lost him, too. The words burn themselves into my heart, and I find I can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t exist. Not like this.
Not without him.
Human beings are not supposed to be alone. We are not supposed to be known to no one, cared for by no one, loved by no one. I lived so long on my own. For nine years I was the only one looking out for me, the only one who cared if I woke up in the morning, went to bed at night unharmed. And then Aaron came along. Perfect, beautiful Aaron, holding the answers to everything. In Aaron’s arms the world made sense for the first time in years. I could see the pain of the Dormant, I could watch agony in the faces of those newly assigned to the Outer Sector, and I could cope, because there was Aaron, which meant there was hope. For a new life. A better life.
And now he’s gone. Not only physically gone, but gone every way that mattered. Gone is the gentle boy who wouldn’t hurt me, even as every other one of his kind did. Gone is the trust that linked me to him. Gone is the boy I fell in love with, the one who looked nothing like the monster I saw that night, his hands gripping that gun like a life-line.
The worst thing is, I can’t decide who betrayed whom – if it was me, who was willing to leave Oasis without him, or if it was him, so desperate to have me back he murdered an innocent girl.
But no. It was my fault. Because the old Aaron never would have done that. I was the one who broke his trust. I was the one who ruined everything by getting arrested. And it was me who decided to leave, to run from Oasis without ever telling him anything.
I didn’t pull the trigger, but I might as well have.
All of this is raging on inside me, and my breathing is so short and so fast I can feel myself growing lightheaded, and everyone is just standing there.
Watching me fall apart. Watching the crazy girl grow ever crazier.
And the forest is there, and it might kill me, but at least it’s there. At least I won’t drive it away, so I run to it, and I run blindly for as long as my weakened body will carry me, until I fall hard on my knees, and I cry until there’s nothing left inside me.
But it doesn’t make it better. It doesn’t bring her back and it doesn’t make him here, and none of it makes the hole in my chest any less wide, or any less painful.
10
Eventually, someone comes to find me, and it’s a strange and unfamiliar feeling that wells up in my chest at the sight of her.
Lacey approaches slowly, tentatively, one foot carefully placed in front of the other, eyes wide as she watches me. I only glance up once when I hear her coming, then look back down at my hands. I feel stupid, but the feelings are all still there. I’ve just bottled them up for long enough to stop crying.
She sits down, a bit away from me, and crosses her legs. She cringes a little at the coldness of the ground, but I hadn’t even noticed. I don’t know what I’m expecting her to say, but whatever it is I’m tensed, waiting for it. Waiting for some kind of blow to fall, but it doesn’t.
She doesn’t say anything at all.
She just watches me, breathing gently, her stare neither disinterested nor invasive. She’s just there.
‘What?’ I snap, and then I release a deep breath. I need to calm down.
‘Nothing.’ She shrugs.
‘Why are you here?’ I demand, and I just sound tired now.
‘It’s dangerous to be out here alone,’ she says, as if that’s an explanation.
‘It’s dangerous to be with other people, too.’ I try to contain the anger in my voice, because it’s not aimed at her. Not really. I was never angry at the Dormants, I am one, so how could I be? But I am angry at the Virus. I am angry that it makes my stomach clench in fear, that every touch, every breath shared is a constantly rising risk of Infection.
‘What do you mean?’ she asks.
‘You’re not … are you Pure?’ My voice is shaky. If she is, if all of those people are and they find out I’m Dormant, they’ll kill me before I have a chance to run.
She looks down at her hands. ‘No. But it doesn’t matter out here.’
‘How could it not matter? It always matters.’
She looks at me strangely for a moment, like she can’t believe I haven’t caught on.
‘Think about it, Quincy. There were hundreds of thousands of you in the Outer Sector, and you were never Infected. There are a handful of us out here. What are the chances of it being one of us, one of a couple of dozen, to activate it first?’
I go silent. I understand what she’s trying to say, but it sounds more like an excuse than an explanation. The Virus is everywhere, in everything, and it’s going to get us eventually, either in there or out here.
‘What good is it worrying?’ she says, like she can read my mind. ‘We can’t do anything about it. If they do find the Cure, which is unlikely, it’s back in Oasis. You gave up on the Cure the moment you stepped outside the Wall.’
My heart stops in my chest. I hadn’t thought of it like that. I had been so caught up in fear of the Labs, fear of the Officers, fear of being a Branded person, that I hadn’t thought of all I was giving up. Aaron, yes, I had considered. But the Cure hadn’t crossed my mind.
For a long time everything is quiet, and all I can hear is the wind rustling in the trees and the river in the distance. The bitter curl of winter is in the air, the frigid air singing past my bare skin, making me shiver.
‘I’m not wearing my uniform,’ I say, pretending to be casual. I noticed this fact a long time ago, but I need something to fill this bruising silence.
‘You were pulled out of a freezing river, if you’ve forgotten,’ she says, smiling gently.
‘I haven’t forgotten.’
But I’m trying to, is what I don’t say. Every time I think about it I can feel the water crushing my lungs, the complete lack of control as my body was swept downstream. And I remember Kole, and the way his eyes sought out mine, made contact, trying to keep me from giving up. He shouldn’t have cared. It shouldn’t have mattered to him, but it did, in too desperate a way, and I can still feel my heart pause when I think about it.
My hand drifts to the Brand on my shoulder, and my eyes snap to Lacey.
‘Don’t tell them,’ I whisper, my eyes wide with fear.
She blinks at me slowly.
‘I won’t,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘And I want you to know you can come, if you want to,’ Lacey says, firmly. ‘I’m not saying everybody’s going to be happy about it or it’s going to be easy. I’m saying you have as much a right to a second chance as anyone.’
&nb
sp; And I think no. I think thank you, and I think no, I don’t. I think, you don’t know me, you don’t know who I am or where I’ve been or what I’ve done. You don’t know the things I’m responsible for, I think, but I don’t say any of those things.
I take a deep breath, too deep and too shaky.
‘I have so many questions,’ I tell her. ‘About everything. I don’t know who you people are. And how did you get out here? And where are you going and what are you doing and since when are there Officers out here and attacking people and what the hell is going on?’
‘We have answers to all of those questions,’ she says, too calm, making me seem even more crazy sitting beside her. ‘And we have so much we want to ask you. But we can’t stay here much longer. We need to get moving. We’re less than a hundred and sixty kilometres from Oasis, and out here in the open, that’s just too dangerous. If you really want answers, then you need to come with us.’
I hold her stare for a beat, two, three, four, and then look away. Rip a blade of grass from root to tip. Nod slowly. Keep my eyes drilled to the ground.
‘Good,’ she says, and I can hear her smiling, and she sounds like she knew I was going to agree all along, but she’s pleased to hear me say it anyway.
She gives me a hand up from the ground, and I take it after hesitating for only a second, and we brush ourselves off and start walking, slowly, silently, back towards the camp.
And I wonder how people like this exist out here. I wonder how I never knew about them before. I wonder who hacked the messaging system at the power station, and if they’re in this group. I wonder where Aaron is now, if he misses me, if he regrets what he did. I wonder about Bea’s father. I wonder what he knew, who he knew. I wonder if I knew what he did, would I be better prepared to deal with this mess, this maze of unregulated territory full of people who shouldn’t exist?
But I never let myself really think of Beatrice. My mind shies away from her memory, swerving around it like the pool of blood on the floor of the Dorms that first day I saw her. And I do it because I need to keep moving, keep pushing forward, keep breathing, and I know if I think of her I won’t be able to do any of those things, not even for a moment.
11
When we got back to the camp, Lacey gave me a pile of warm clothes to change into before we left. She offered to help me change, but I insisted I could do it myself.
Half the group left to go ahead of us this morning, Clarke leading the way, and the camp felt relatively quiet when we returned, with only thirty people left behind. Kole wants us to follow them as soon as possible, and everyone but me is ready to go.
It turns out it’s harder to get changed than I expected. Most of the clothes are mismatches, worn and ill-fitting, and my balance is off, making it hard to get my legs through the too-big trousers. When I have the top pulled over my head, and a warm hoodie over that, I have to sit down for a moment to regain my equilibrium.
After a few minutes I walk outside, breathing in the fresh, chilled air. I didn’t notice it before, maybe because I was too scared, but this place is beautiful. It’s somehow brighter, greener, more alive than anything ever was inside Oasis, even with winter rolling in.
‘Eat something,’ Kole says, thrusting more soup into my hands as he walks past, startling me.
I’m beginning to think this is all they eat.
Kole didn’t make eye contact with me, and hasn’t since I overheard his conversation with Clarke. Almost everyone just ignores me, acts like I’m not even here. The only exceptions are tall, broad-shouldered Mark, who throws me a sympathetic smile every now and again, and Lacey, who won’t stray far from my side, as if I need a bodyguard. The rest of them just look at me with irritation, because I’m slowing them down.
And I am slow. Everything feels sluggish. All the energy that forced me on when I was escaping has drained from my body, leaving me exhausted.
I drink the last of the soup, and Lacey takes the can from me, washing it in the river before placing it in her backpack. Everyone is finished eating now, and by the time Lacey makes her way back up the bank, we are all on our feet.
‘Okay,’ she says, smiling at us once her pack is securely strapped on. ‘Ready!’
We start walking at a brisk pace, and despite my recuperation over the past few days, I’m finding it hard to keep up with them. Kole is at the front of the group, making his way through the forest with a careful eye, practically twitching as he waits for something to jump out at us.
‘Why does he look so edgy?’ I ask Lacey quietly, pulling my sweaty hair from the back of my neck in annoyance.
‘He’s just nervous. It’s not safe to be out here in the open. We’re too vulnerable.’
‘But why is he the only one acting like that?’ I watch Mark talking to him up ahead, and while Kole is obviously responding, his eyes never leave the surrounding area.
She shrugs. ‘He’s our leader. It’s kind of his job.’
‘What?’ I look over at her to make sure she’s serious. But her blue eyes are sincere when she looks back at me, her hands tucked beneath the straps of her pack. ‘But he’s the same age as us!’
‘He’s nineteen, but yes, lots of people react like that at first. The guy who was there before him said that if he ever died, Kole was to take over, and …’ Lacey trails off, shrugging again.
‘He died.’ I nod. Of course.
‘And he’s okay with it? Being a leader?’ I ask, hoping Lacey doesn’t notice how many questions I’m asking about him. I just can’t get that image out of my head, the dark-haired boy at the bottom of the river. He could have been the last thing I ever saw.
‘It’s hard.’ She shrugs again, trying to sound light. ‘Everything’s hard. But he’s a good leader. He cares about the group.’
There’s a pause in the conversation, and I listen to the crunch of footsteps on the frozen ground until I work up the courage to ask another question.
‘How did he die?’ I ask, fiddling with the straps of the pack Lacey gave me, which is cutting into my shoulders. Inside, safely stowed away, is Bea’s bag, which Lacey gave back to me this morning.
‘Rob? In a raid earlier this year. It was a smaller attack, and we didn’t lose many, but when we lost Rob … it was hard. Hard for everyone, but especially for Kole.’
‘Were they close?’
‘Close enough for Rob to trust Kole with the group.’
‘And what about you? Did you know him well?’
‘Not as close as some,’ she says. ‘But Rob was a special person. Everyone misses him.’ Her voice gets tight, and she says no more.
I wonder how they do this. Get ambushed, lose their friends, their mothers and fathers and children and siblings, and they just have to pull themselves up and keep moving, because if they don’t, it’s only going to get worse.
I take a shaky breath.
‘You okay?’ Lacey asks, glancing sidelong at me. ‘I’m fine,’ I murmur.
I just need to get through today. Lacey said it should only take a few hours to complete our journey, and then I can figure out what’s going on in my head. Then I can try to make sense of this mess, and how I keep seeing faces between the trees that aren’t there.
I just need to get through today.
12
We step out into the clearing, and my eyes travel up the tall building looming above us, three stories high with half the windows smashed in and ivy crawling across every inch of it.
It looks dead.
It looks hollow.
It looks like its eyes have been ripped from its face.
A gangly teenage boy bounds out of its mouth, jumping around like a hyperactive rabbit.
‘MARK!’ he yells, full-body slamming into Mark before dragging himself away almost immediately, pointing at the house and talking so fast his mouth looks like a blur.
The sun is setting, and Lacey leans over to me in the half-light.
‘That’s Walter, Mark’s younger brother,’ she explains.
I drop back a step as the group starts filing into the building, Kole, Walter and Mark up ahead, talking rapidly, heads bent together. I stand at the door, my boot on the threshold as I run my eyes across the interior.
The front door leads into a wide, grey room, the roof hung low over a strangely three-legged table, one corner leaning towards the floor. I take a tentative step inside the door, eyes flicking around the room, not sure what to expect. There are four doors, but two of the interior doors are missing, hinges hanging loose against the wall. The room I’m standing in now seems to be some kind of kitchen, judging by the dented stove in the corner.
I watch Kole step over a ceramic sink that somehow ended up smashed to pieces on the floor, running his hands through his hair as he surveys the place with a calm expression.
I’m staring at his reaction to this place, at once panicky and in control, when Lacey appears behind me.
‘How are you?’ she asks.
‘Fine,’ I say, pulling back a step.
Just as the words are out of my mouth, Kole whispers something to Mark, who runs upstairs and comes back a few minutes later, the rest of the group on his heels. Walter’s smiling face stands out against the grim expressions of almost everyone else filing into the room.
Once everyone is here, Kole starts talking, and though he never raises his voice, I can hear him perfectly from the other end of the room. The room drops into silence the moment he starts speaking.
‘I need everyone to settle down as quickly as possible, and then we can eat. Walter, take half the group and start setting up the second floor for tonight. Everyone else, take all the supplies to the top floor and unpack.’
People start nodding, and everybody starts moving towards the door at the back of the room. Kole motions Lacey over beside him and I hang back, unsure who to follow. Kole whispers something to Lacey, and I can’t hear what they’re saying, but Lacey looks serious. She nods once, and moves back towards me.
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