Pandemonium

by Lauren Oliver

Page 29

 

  We go for hours without stopping. Eventually the darkness turns milky. Then I see a bit of light, a long silver stream filtering down from above. There are grates in the ceiling, five of them. Above us, for the first time in days, I see sky: a patchy nighttime sky of clouds and stars. Unconsciously, I cry out. It is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  “The grates,” I say. “Can we—?”

  Julian moves ahead of me, and at last we risk the flashlight. He angles the beam upward, then shakes his head.

  “Bolted tight from outside,” he says. He strains onto his tiptoes and gives a little push. “No way to budge them. ”

  Disappointment burns in the back of my throat. We’re so close to freedom. I can smell it—wind and space, and something else, too. Rain. It must have rained recently. The smell brings tears to my eyes. We’ve ended up on a raised platform. Below us, the tracks are pooled with water and a covering of leaves driven down from above. On our left is an alcove, half-excavated and filled with wooden crates; a flyer, remarkably well preserved, is posted on the wall. CAUTION, it reads. CONSTRUCTION ZONE. HARD HAT AREA.

  I can’t stand up anymore. I break from Julian’s grasp, thudding heavily to my knees.

  “Hey. ” He kneels next to me. “Are you okay?”

  “Tired,” I gasp out. I curl up on the ground, resting my head on my arm. It’s getting harder to keep my eyes open. When I do, I see the stars above me blur into a single enormous point of light, and then fracture again.

  “Go to sleep,” Julian says. He sets my backpack down and sits next to me.

  “What if the Scavengers come?” I say.

  “I’ll stay awake,” Julian says. “I’ll listen for them. ” After a minute, he lies down on his back. There’s a wind sweeping down from the grates, and I shiver involuntarily.

  “Are you cold?” Julian asks.

  “A little,” I say. I can barely get the words out. My throat, too, is frozen.

  There’s a pause. Then Julian rolls over onto his side and loops his arm around me, scooting forward so our bodies are pressed together, and I am cupped in the space around him. His heart beats through my back—a strange, stuttering rhythm.

  “Aren’t you worried about the deliria?” I ask him.

  “Yes,” he says shortly. “But I’m cold, too. ”

  After a while his heartbeat becomes more regular, and mine slows to match his. The coldness melts out of me.

  “Lena?” Julian whispers. I’ve had my eyes closed. The moon is now directly above us, a high white beam.

  “Yeah?”

  I can feel Julian’s heart speed up again. “Do you want to know how my brother died?”

  “Okay,” I say, even though something in his tone of voice makes me afraid.

  “My brother and my dad never really got along,” Julian says. “My brother was stubborn. Headstrong. He had a bad temper, too. Everyone said he would be okay once he was cured. ” Julian pauses. “It just got worse and worse as he got older, though. My parents were talking about having his cure moved up. It looked bad, you know, for the DFA and all. He was wild, and he didn’t listen to my father, and I’m not even sure he believed in the cure. He was six years older than me. I was—I was scared for him. Do you know what I mean?”

  I can’t bring myself to speak, so I just nod. Memories are crowding me, surging from the dark places where I have walled them up: the constant, buzzing anxiety I felt as a child, watching my mom laughing, dancing, singing along to strange music that piped from our speakers, a joy threaded through with terror; fear for Hana; fear for Alex; fear for all of us.

  “Seven years ago, we had another big rally in New York. That’s when the DFA was going national. It was the first rally I attended. I was eleven years old. My brother begged off. I don’t remember what excuse he gave. ”

  Julian shifts. For a second his arms tighten around me, an involuntary gripping; then he relaxes again. Somehow I know he has never told this story before.

  “It was a disaster. Halfway through the rally, protesters stormed city hall—that’s where we were—half of them masked. The fight turned violent, and the police came to break it up, and suddenly it was just a brawl. I hid behind the podium, like a little kid. Afterward, I was so ashamed.

  “One of the protesters got too close to the stage; too close to my dad. He was screaming something—I couldn’t hear what. It was loud, and he was wearing a ski mask. The guard brought him down with a nightstick. Weirdly, I remember I could hear that; the crack of the wood against his knee, the thud as he collapsed. That’s when my dad saw it, must have seen it: the birthmark on the back of his left hand, shaped like a big half-moon. My brother’s birthmark. He jumped off the stage into the audience, tore off the mask, and … it was him. My brother was lying there, in agony, his knee shattered in a thousand places. But I’ll never forget the look he gave my father. Totally calm, and resigned, too, like … like he knew what was going to happen.

  “We finally made it out—had a police escort all the way home. My brother was stretched out in the back of the van, moaning. I wanted to ask him whether he was okay, but I knew my dad would kill me. He drove the whole way home without saying a word, without taking his eyes off the road. I don’t know what my mom was feeling. Maybe not much. But I think she was worried. The Book of Shhh says that our obligations to our children are sacred, right? ‘And the good mother will finish discharging her duties in heaven…’” Julian quotes softly. “She wanted him to see a doctor, but my dad wouldn’t hear of it. My brother’s knee looked bad—swollen to the size of a basketball, practically. He was sweating like crazy, in so much pain. I wanted to help. I wanted to—” A tremor passes through Julian’s body. “When we got home, my dad threw my brother into the basement and locked it. He was going to leave him there for a day, in the dark. So my brother would learn his lesson. ”

  I picture Thomas Fineman: the clean-pressed clothing and gold cuff links, which must give him such satisfaction; the polished watch and the neatly trimmed hair. Pure, clean, spotless, like a man who can always count on a good night’s sleep. I hate you, I think, for Julian’s sake. Julian has never gotten to know those words, to feel the relief in them.

  “We could hear my brother crying through the door. We could hear him from the dining room when we ate dinner. My dad made us sit through a whole meal. I’ll never forgive him for that. ” The last part is spoken in a whisper. I find his hand and lace my fingers in his and squeeze. He gives me a small pulse back.

  For a while we lie there in silence. Then, from above, there’s a soft rushing sound: then the sound separates, becomes thousands of raindrops hitting the pavement. Water drums down through the grates, pinging off the metal rails of the old tracks.

  “And then the crying stopped,” Julian says simply, and I think of that day in the Wilds with Raven, taking turns mopping Blue’s head while the sun broke in a wave over the trees, long after we had felt her grow cold under our hands.

  Julian clears his throat. “They said afterward it was a freak accident; a blood clot from his injury that migrated into his brain. One-in-a-million chance. My dad couldn’t have known. But still, I—”

  He breaks off. “After that, you know, I was always so careful. I would do everything right. I would be the perfect son, a model for the DFA. Even once I found out the cure would probably kill me. It was more than fear,” Julian says, a sudden rush of words. “I thought if I followed the rules, things would turn out all right. That’s the thing about the cure, isn’t it? It isn’t just about deliria at all. It’s about order. A path for everyone. You just have to follow it and everything will be okay. That’s what the DFA is about. That’s what I believed in—what I’ve had to believe in. Because otherwise, it’s just … chaos. ”

  “Do you miss him?” I ask.

  Julian doesn’t answer right away, and I know, somehow, that nobody has ever asked him this before. “I think so,” he says finally, in a low voi
ce. “I did for a long time. My mom—my mom told me it wouldn’t be so bad after the cure. I wouldn’t think about him that way anymore, she said. ”

  “That’s even worse,” I say quietly. “That’s when they’re really gone. ”

  I count three long seconds of silence, and in each one of them, Julian’s heart drums against my back. I’m not cold anymore. If anything, I’m too hot. Our bodies are so close—skin sticking to skin, fingers entangled. His breath is on my neck.

  “I don’t know what’s going on anymore,” Julian whispers. “I don’t understand anything. I don’t know what’s supposed to happen next. ”

  “You’re not supposed to know,” I say, and it’s true: The tunnels may be long, and twisted, and dark; but you are supposed to go through them.

  More silence. Finally Julian says, “I’m scared. ”

  He barely whispers it; but I can feel his lips moving against my neck, as though the words are being spelled there.

  “I know,” I say. “Me too. ”

  I can’t stay awake any longer. I’m carried back and forth through time and memory, between this rain and rains before it, as though climbing up and down a spiral staircase. Julian has his arm around me, and then Alex does; then Raven is holding my head in her lap, and then my mother is singing to me.

  “I’m less scared with you,” Julian says. Or maybe it is Alex who speaks, or maybe I’ve only dreamed the words. I open my mouth to respond but find I can’t speak. I’m drinking water, and then I’m floating, and then there is nothing but sleep, liquid and deep.

  then

  We bury Blue by the river. It takes us hours to break through the frozen ground and make a hole big enough to accommodate her. We have to remove her jacket before we bury her. We can’t afford to lose it. She feels so light as we lower her into the ground, just like a baby bird, hollow-boned and fragile.

  At the last second, as we’re about to cover her with dirt, Raven pushes forward, suddenly hysterical. “She’ll be cold,” she says. “She’ll freeze like that. ” Nobody wants to stop her. She strips off her sweater and slides into the makeshift grave, taking Blue in her arms and wrapping her in it. She’s crying. Most of us turn away, embarrassed. Only Lu steps forward.

  “Blue will be okay, Raven,” she says softly. “The snow will keep her warm. ”

  Raven looks up, her face wild, tear-streaked. She scans our faces once as though struggling to remember who we are. Then she jerks, suddenly, to her feet, and climbs up out of the lip of the grave.

  Bram steps forward and starts to shovel the dirt over Blue’s body again, but Raven stops him.

  “Leave her,” Raven says. Her voice is loud and unnaturally high-pitched. “Lu’s right. It’s going to snow any minute. ”

  It does start to snow as we’re packing up camp. It continues to snow all day, as we make our way silently through the woods in a long, ragged line. The cold is a constant pain now, a fierce ache in my chest and fingers and toes, and the snow is mostly driving ice, and burns like hot ash. But I imagine that for Blue it falls more gently, and covers her like a blanket, where it will keep her safely until spring.