Pandemonium

by Lauren Oliver

Page 23

 

  When you consider how society may persist in ignorance, you must also consider how long it will persist in delusion; all stupidity is changed to inevitability, and all ills are made into values (choice turned to freedom, and love to happiness), so there is no possibility of escape.

  Three words have been forcefully underscored: You. Must. Escape.

  I flip forward another few chapters and find another dog-eared page where words have been circled, seemingly sloppily and at random. The full passage reads:

  The tools of a healthy society are obedience, commitment, and agreement. Responsibility lies both with the government and with its citizens. Responsibility lies with you.

  Someone—Tack? Raven?—has circled various words in the paragraph: The tools are with you.

  Now I’m checking every page. Somehow, they knew this would happen; they knew I might be—or would be—taken. No wonder Tack insisted I bring The Book of Shhh; he left clues for me in it. A feeling of pure joy wells up inside of me. They didn’t forget about me, and they haven’t abandoned me. Until now, I haven’t realized how terrified I’ve been—without Tack and Raven, I have no one. Over the past year, they have become everything to me: friends, parents, siblings, mentors.

  There is only one other page that has been marked up. A large star has been drawn next to Psalm 37.

  Through wind, and tempest, storm, and rain;

  The calm shall be buried inside of me;

  A warm stone, heavy and dry;

  The root, the source, a weapon against pain.

  I read through the psalm several times as disappointment comes thudding back. I was hoping for some kind of encoded message, but no deeper meaning is immediately apparent. Maybe Tack only meant for me to stay calm. Or maybe the star was penned in earlier, and is unrelated; or maybe I’ve misunderstood and the markings are random, a fluke.

  But no. Tack gave me the book because he knew I might need it. Tack and Raven are meticulous. They don’t do things randomly or without purpose. When you are living on a razor’s edge, there is no room at all for fumbling.

  Through wind, and tempest, storm, and rain…

  Rain.

  Tack’s umbrella—the one he pushed into my hands, and insisted I bring, on a cloudless day.

  My hands are shaking as I pull the umbrella onto my lap and begin to examine it more closely. Almost immediately, I spot a tiny fissure—imperceptible, had I not been looking for it—that runs the length of the handle. I slide my fingernail into the miniscule crack and try to pry the handle apart, but it won’t budge.

  “Shit,” I say out loud, which makes me feel a little better. “Shit, shit, shit. ” Each time I say it, I try to pull and twist the umbrella apart, but the wood handle stays cleanly intact, polished and pretty.

  “Shit!” Something inside me snaps—it’s the frustration, the waiting, the heavy silence. I throw the umbrella, hard, against the wall. It hits with a crack. As it lands, the halves of the handle come neatly apart, and from between them a knife clatters to the ground. When I pull it from its leather sheath, I recognize it as one of Tack’s. It has a carved bone handle and a viciously sharp blade. I once saw Tack gut an entire deer with it, cleanly, from throat to tail. Now the blade is polished so brightly that I can see my reflection in it.

  Suddenly there is noise from the hallway: clomping footsteps, and a heavy grating sound, too, as though something is being dragged toward the cell. I tense up, gripping the knife, still in a crouch—I could make a run for it when the door opens; I could lunge at the Scavengers, swipe, swipe, take out an eye or get in at least one cut, make a run for it—but before I have time to plan or choose, the door is swinging open and it’s Julian who comes toppling through, half-conscious, so bruised and bleeding I recognize him only by his shirt, and then the door slams shut again.

  “Oh my God. ”

  Julian looks as though he has been mauled by a wild animal. His clothes are stained with blood, and for one terrifying second I am jettisoned back in time, back to the fence, watching red seep across Alex’s shirt, knowing he will die. Then the vision retreats and it’s Julian again, on his hands and knees, coughing and spitting blood onto the floor.

  “What happened?” I slip the knife quickly under my mattress and kneel down next to him. “What did they do to you?”

  A gurgling sound emerges from the back of his throat, followed by another round of coughing. Julian thuds onto his elbows, and my chest is full of a winging fear. He’s going to die, I think, and the certainty is carried on a wave of panic.

  No. This is different. I can fix this.

  “Forget it. Don’t try to talk,” I say. He has now slid onto the ground, almost in a fetal position. His left eyelid flutters, and I’m not sure how much he hears or understands. I slide his head onto my lap gently and help him roll over onto his back, biting back the cry that rises to my lips when I see his face: undifferentiated flesh, a beaten, bloody thing. His right eye is swollen completely shut, and blood is flowing rapidly from a deep cut above his right eyebrow.

  “Shit,” I say. I’ve seen bad injuries before, but I’ve always been able to get some kind of medical supplies, however rudimentary. Here, I’ve got nothing. And Julian’s body is making strange, twitchy motions. I’m worried he might have an attack.

  “Stick with me,” I say, trying to keep my voice low and calm, just in case he’s conscious and listening. “I need to get you out of your shirt, okay? Stay as still as you can. I’m going to make you a compress. It will help with the bleeding. ”

  I unbutton Julian’s filthy shirt. At least his chest is unmarked, apart from a few large and mean-looking bruises. All of the blood must be from his face. The Scavengers have worked him over, but they haven’t tried to do serious harm. When I ease his arms out of the sleeves he moans, but I manage to get the shirt off. I press it tightly to the wound on his forehead, wishing I had a clean cloth. He moans again.

  “Shhh,” I say. My heart is pounding. Waves of heat are radiating from his skin. “You’re okay. Just breathe, all right? Everything’s going to be fine. ”

  There’s a little bit of water left in the bottom of the cup they brought for us yesterday. Julian and I were making it last. I dampen Julian’s shirt and blot his face with it; then I remember the antibacterial wipes the DFA was distributing at the rally. For the first time, I’m grateful to the DFA for their obsession with cleanliness. I still have the wipe folded into one of my back jeans pockets; as I unwrap it, the astringent smell of alcohol makes me wince, and I know it’s going to hurt. But if Julian gets an infection, there’s no way we’ll make it out of here.

  “This is going to sting a little bit,” I say, and bring the wipe into contact with Julian’s skin.

  Instantly he lets out a roar. His eyes fly open—as much as they can, anyway—and he jerks upright. I have to wrestle him by his shoulders to the ground again.

  “Hurts,” he mutters, but at least he’s awake now, and alert. My heart leaps in my chest. I realize I’ve barely been breathing.

  “Don’t be a baby,” I say, and continue cleaning his face while he tenses his whole body and grits his teeth. Once I’ve cleaned most of the blood away, I get a better sense of the damage they’ve done. The cut on his lip has opened up again, and he must have been hit repeatedly in the face, probably with a fist or a blunt object. The cut on his forehead is the most trouble some. It’s still bubbling blood. But all in all, it could be much worse. He’ll live.

  “Here,” I say, and lift the tin cup to his lips, supporting his head on my knees. There’s a half inch of water left. “Drink this. ”

  When he’s finished with the water, he closes his eyes again. But his breathing is regular now, and his tremors have stopped. I take the shirt and rip off a long strip of fabric, trying to will away the memories that are pressing and resurging: I learned this from Alex. At one point, in another lifetime, he saved me when I was hurt. He wrapped and bandaged my leg. He helped
me escape from the regulators.

  I fold the memory carefully inside of me. I bury it down deep.

  “Lift your head a little,” I say, and Julian does, this time soundlessly, so I can work the fabric around it. I tie the length of shirt low on his forehead, knotting it tightly close to the gash, so it forms a kind of tourniquet. Then I lower his head back onto my thighs. “Can you talk?” I ask, and Julian nods. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  The right corner of his lip is so swollen that his voice sounds distorted, like he’s having to squeeze the words past a pillow. “Wanted to know things,” he says, then sucks in a deep breath and tries again. “Asked me questions. ”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “My family’s apartment. Charles Street. Security codes. Guards—how many and when. ”

  I don’t say anything. I’m not sure Julian realizes what this means, and how bad it is. The Scavengers have grown desperate. They’re trying to launch an attack on his house now, use him to find a way in. Maybe they’re planning to kill Thomas Fineman; maybe they’re just looking for the typical goods: jewelry, electronics that might be bartered on the black market, money, and, of course, weapons. They are always amassing weapons.

  This can only mean one thing: Their plan to ransom Julian has failed. Mr. Fineman didn’t bite.

  “Wouldn’t tell them anything,” Julian huffs out. “They said … a few more days … more sessions… I’d talk. ”

  There’s no longer any doubt. We have to get out as soon as possible. Whenever Julian decides to talk—which he will, eventually—neither he nor I will serve any purpose to the Scavengers. And they are not known for their policy of catch-and-release.

  “All right, listen. ” I try to keep my voice low, hoping he won’t read the urgency there. “We’re getting out of here, okay?”

  He shakes his head, a tiny gesture of disbelief. “How?” he croaks out.

  “I’ve got a plan,” I say. This isn’t true, but I figure I will have a plan. I’ve got to. Raven and Tack are counting on me. Thinking of the messages they left me, and the knife, fills me once again with warmth. I am not alone.

  “Armed. ” Julian swallows, then tries again. “They’re armed. ”

  “We’re armed too. ” My brain is skipping ahead now, into the hallway: Footsteps come down, they go back up, one at a time. One guard only at mealtime. That’s a good thing. If we can somehow get him to unlock the door… I’m so consumed with the planning, I don’t even pay attention to the words coming out of my mouth.

  “Look, I’ve been in bad situations before. You’ve got to trust me. This one time in Massachusetts—”

  Julian interrupts me. “When … you… Massachusetts?”

  That’s when I realize I’ve screwed up. Lena Morgan Jones has never been to Massachusetts, and Julian knows it. For a moment I debate telling another lie, and in that pause Julian struggles onto his elbows, swiveling around and scooting backward to face me, grimacing the whole time.