Pandemonium

by Lauren Oliver

Page 13

 

  Next week, groups of homesteaders—scouts—will leave on preliminary expeditions. Six will trek to our next big camp, which is eighty miles south, carting food and supplies in backpacks strapped to their bodies. When they reach camp, they will bury half the food in the ground, so it will not be consumed by animals, and mark the place of burial with a group of stones. Two will return to the homestead; the other four will go on another sixty miles, where they will bury half of what remains. Two of the four will then return to the homestead.

  The fifth scout will wait there while the last scout pushes a final forty miles, equipped with the remaining portion of food. They will return to the homestead together, trapping and foraging what they can. By then we will have made all the arrangements and finished packing up.

  When I ask Raven why the camps get closer and closer together as they wind southward, she barely glances up from what she’s doing.

  “You’ll see,” she says shortly. Her hair is plaited into dozens of small braids—Blue’s work—and Raven has fixed golden leaves and dried red baneberries, which are poisonous, at their ends.

  “Isn’t it better to go as far as we can every day?” I press. Even the third camp is a hundred miles from our final destination, although as we move south we’ll find other homesteads, better trapping, and people to share their food and shelter with us.

  Raven sighs. “We’ll be weak by then,” she says, finally straightening up to look at me. “Cold. Hungry. It will probably be snowing. The Wilds suck the life out of you, I’m telling you. It’s not like going on one of your little morning runs. You can’t just keep pushing. I’ve seen—” She breaks off, shaking her head, as though to dislodge a memory. “We have to be very careful,” she finishes.

  I’m so offended I can’t speak for a moment. Raven called my runs “little,” as though they’re some kind of game. But I’ve left bits of myself out there—skin, blood, sweat, and vomit—bits of Lena Haloway, flaking off in pieces, scattered in the dark.

  Raven senses she’s upset me. “Help me with these, will you?” she asks. She’s making small emergency pouches, one for every homesteader, filled with Advil, Band-Aids, antibacterial wipes. She piles the supplies in the center of squares of fabric, cut from old sheets, then twists them into pouches and ties them off with wire. “My fingers are so fat I keep getting everything all tangled. ”

  It’s not true: Raven’s fingers are thin, just like the rest of her, and I know she’s trying to make me feel better. But I say, “Yeah, sure. ” Raven hardly ever asks for help; when she does, you give it.

  The scouts will be exhausted. Even though they will be weighed down by food, it is for storing, not for eating, and they have room to carry only a tiny bit for themselves. The last scout, the one who goes all one hundred and eighty miles, has to be the strongest. Without conferring or discussing it, everyone knows it will be Tack.

  One night, I work up the courage to approach him. He is in a rare good mood. Bram brought four rabbits from the traps today, and for once we have all eaten until we were completely full.

  After dinner, Tack sits next to the fire, rolling a cigarette. He doesn’t look up as I approach.

  “What?” he asks, abrupt as ever, but his voice has none of its usual edge.

  I suck in a deep breath and blurt out, “I want to be one of the scouts. ” I’ve been agonizing all week about what to say to Tack—I’ve written whole speeches in my head—but at the last second these eight words are all that come.

  “No,” Tack says shortly. And just like that, all my worrying and planning and strategizing have come to nothing.

  I’m torn between disappointment and anger. “I’m fast,” I say. “I’m strong. ”

  “Not strong enough. ”

  “I want to help,” I press, conscious of the whine that is creeping into my voice, conscious of the fact that I sound like Blue when she is throwing one of her rare tantrums.

  Tack runs his tongue along the rolling paper and then twists the cigarette closed with a few expert turns of his fingers. He looks up at me then, and in that second I realize Tack hardly ever looks at me. His eyes are shrewd, appraising, filled with messages I don’t understand.

  “Later,” he says, and with that, he stands and pushes his way past me and up the stairs.

  now

  The morning of the rally is unseasonably warm. What little snow has remained on the ground and the roofs runs in rivulets through the gutters, and drips from streetlamps and tree branches. It is dazzlingly sunny. The puddles in the street look like polished metal, perfectly reflective.

  Raven and Tack are joining me at the demonstration, although they’ve informed me that they won’t actually stay with me. My job is to keep close to the stage. I’m to watch Julian before he heads uptown to Columbia Memorial, where he will be cured.

  “Don’t take your eyes off him, no matter what,” Raven has instructed me. “No matter what, okay?”

  “Why?” I ask, knowing my question will go unanswered. Despite the fact that I am officially part of the resistance, I know hardly anything about how it works, and what we’re supposed to be doing.

  “Because,” she says, “I said so. ”

  I mouth the last part along with her, keeping my back turned so she won’t see.

  Uncharacteristically, there are long lines at the bus stops. Two different regulators are distributing numbers to the waiting passengers; Raven, Tack, and I will be on bus 5, whenever that arrives. The city has quadrupled the quantity of buses and drivers today. Twenty-five thousand people are expected to show up at the demonstration; about five thousand members of the DFA, and thousands of spectators and onlookers.

  Many of the groups that oppose the DFA, and the idea of early procedure, will also be there. This includes much of the scientific community. The procedure is just not yet safe for children, they say, and will lead to tremendous social defects: a nation of idiots and freaks. The DFA claims the opposition is overly cautious. The benefits, they say, far outweigh the risks.

  And if need be, we will just make our prisons larger, and stick the damaged ones there, out of sight.

  “Move up, move up. ” The regulator at the front of the line directs us onto the bus. We shuffle forward, showing our identity cards and swiping them, again, as we board, and I am reminded of a bunch of herd animals, heads down, trundling ahead.

  Raven and Tack have not been speaking; they must be fighting again. I can sense it between them, a tight electricity, and it’s not helping my anxiety. Raven finds an empty two-seater in the back, but Tack, surprisingly, slides in next to me.

  “What are you doing?” Raven demands, leaning forward. She has to be careful to keep her voice down. Cureds don’t really fight. That is one of the benefits of the procedure.

  “I want to make sure Lena’s okay,” Tack mutters back. He reaches out and grabs my hand, a quick pulse. A woman seated across the aisle looks at us curiously. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I say, but my voice sounds strangled. I wasn’t nervous at all earlier in the morning. Tack and Raven have made me jumpy. They’re obviously worried about something, and I think I know what it is: They must believe the rumors of the Scavengers are true. They must believe the Scavengers are going to stage an upset, try to disturb the demonstration in some way.

  Even crossing the Brooklyn Bridge doesn’t have its usual calming effect. The bridge is, for the first time ever, clogged with traffic: private cars, and buses transporting people to the demonstration.

  As we approach Times Square, my anxiety increases. I’ve never seen so many people in my life. We have to get out at 34th Street because buses cannot progress any farther. The streets are swarming with people: a massive blur of faces, a river of colors. There are regulators, too—volunteer and official—wearing spotless uniforms; then there are members of the armed guard, standing stiffly in rows, staring fixedly straight ahead, like toy soldiers lined up, about to march.
Except these soldiers, these real ones, carry enormous guns, barrels gleaming in the sunlight.

  As soon as I descend into the crowd I’m pushed and jostled from all sides, and even though Raven and Tack are behind me, I manage to lose sight of them a few times as people flow between us. Now I see why they’ve given me my instructions early. There’s no way I’ll be able to keep sight of them.

  It is shatteringly loud. The regulators are blowing their whistles, directing foot traffic, and in the distance I can hear drumbeats and chanting. The demonstration doesn’t officially start for another two hours, but even now I think I can make out the rhythm of the DFA’s chant: In numbers there is safety and for nothing let us want…

  We move north slowly, penned in on all sides, in the endless, deep chasms between the buildings. People have gathered on some of the balconies to watch. I see hundreds and hundreds of waving white banners, signs of support for the DFA—and just a few emerald-colored ones, signs of opposition.

  “Lena!” I turn around. Tack shoves his way through the mass of people, presses an umbrella into my hand. “It’s supposed to rain later. ”

  The sky is a perfect pale blue and streaked with the thinnest clouds, like bare white tendrils of hair. “I don’t think—,” I start to say, but he interrupts me.

  “Just take it,” he says. “Trust me. ”

  “Thanks. ” I try to sound grateful. It’s rare for Tack to be this thoughtful.

  He hesitates, chewing on the corner of his lip. I’ve seen him do that when he’s working on a puzzle at the apartment and can’t quite get all the pieces aligned. I think he’s about to say something else—give me advice—but at the last second he just says, “I need to catch up with Rebecca. ” He stutters, just barely, over Raven’s official name.

  “Okay. ” We’ve already lost sight of her. I go to wrestle the umbrella into my backpack—getting dirty looks from the people around me, since there’s barely room to breathe, much less maneuver the bag from my back—when it suddenly occurs to me that we haven’t made a plan for after the demonstration. I don’t know where I’m supposed to meet Raven and Tack.

  “Hey—” I look up, but Tack has already gone. All the faces around me are unfamiliar; I’m entirely surrounded by strangers. I turn a full circle and feel a sharp jab in the ribs. A regulator has reached out and is prodding me forward with his nightstick.

  “You’re holding everybody up,” he says flatly. “Move it. ”

  My chest is full of butterflies. I tell myself to breathe. There’s nothing to worry about. It’s just like going to a DFA meeting, but bigger.

  At 38th Street we pass the barricades, where we have to wait in line and get patted down and searched by police officers carrying wands. They check our necks, too—the uncureds will be in their own special segregated section of the demonstration—and scan our IDs, though fortunately, they don’t call everything into SVS, the Secure Validation System. Even so, it takes me an hour to make it through. Beyond the security barricades, volunteers are distributing antibacterial wipes: small white packages printed with the DFA’s logo.