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And it was a mistake: the kissing, the way we touched.
Wasn’t it?
The van lurches forward, sending me tumbling onto an elbow. The van floor rattles and shakes as we bump along the pitted road. I try to mentally chart our progress: We must be near the dump now, headed past the old train station and toward the tunnel that goes into New York. After ten minutes we roll to a stop. I crawl to the front of the truck bed and press my ear against the pane of glass—painted black, completely opaque—that separates me from the driver’s seat. The woman’s voice filters back to me. I can make out a second voice, too: a man’s voice. She must be talking to Border Control.
The waiting is an agony. They’ll be running her SVS card, I think. But the seconds tick away, and stretch into minutes. The woman is silent. Maybe SVS is backed up. Even though it’s cold in the cab, my underarms are damp with sweat.
Then the second voice is back, barking a command. The engine cuts off, and the silence is sudden and extreme. The driver’s door opens and slams shut. The van sways a little.
Why is she getting out? My mind is racing: If she is a part of the resistance, she may have been caught, recognized. They’re sure to find me next. Or—and I’m not sure which is worse—they won’t find me. I’ll be trapped here; I’ll starve to death, or suffocate. Suddenly I’m having trouble breathing. The air is thick and full of pressure. More sweat trickles down my neck and beads on my scalp.
Then the driver’s door opens, the engine guns to life, and the van sails forward. I exhale, almost a sob. I can somehow feel it as we enter the Holland Tunnel: the long, dark throat around the van, a watery, echoey place. I imagine the river above us, flecked with gray. I think of Julian’s eyes, the way they change like water reflecting different kinds of light.
The van hits a pothole, and my stomach lurches as I rocket into the air and down onto the floor again. Then a climb, and through the metal walls I can hear sporadic sounds of traffic: the distant whirring of a siren, a horn bleating nearby. We must be in New York. I’m expecting the van to stop at any minute—every time we do stop, I half expect the doors to slide open and for the woman in the mask to haul me into the Craps, even though she told me she was on my side—but another twenty minutes passes. I have stopped trying to keep track of where we are. Instead I curl up in a ball on the dirty floor, which vibrates under my cheek. I am still nauseous. The air smells like body odor and old food.
Finally the van slows, and then stops altogether. I sit up, heart pounding in my chest. I hear a brief exchange—the woman says something I can’t make out, and somebody else says, “All clear. ” Then there is a tremendous creaking, as of old doors scraping back on their hinges. The van advances forward another ten or twenty feet, then stops again. The engine goes silent. I hear the driver climb out of the van and I tense, gripping my backpack in one hand, preparing to fight or run.
The doors swing open, and as I slide cautiously out of the back, disappointment is a fist in my throat. I was hoping for some clues, some answer to why I’ve been taken and by whom. Instead I am in a featureless room, all concrete and exposed steel beams. There is an enormous double door, wide enough to accommodate the van, in one wall; in another wall is a second single door, this one made of metal and painted the same dull gray as everything else. At least there are electric lights. That means we are in an approved city, or close to one.
The driver has removed her gas mask but is still wearing a tight-fitting nylon cloth over her head, with cut-away holes for her mouth, nose, and eyes.
“What is this place?” I ask as I straighten up and swing the backpack onto one shoulder. “Who are you?”
She doesn’t answer me. She is watching me intently. Her eyes are gray, a stormy color. Suddenly she reaches out, as though to touch my face. I jerk backward, bumping against the van. She, too, takes a step backward, balling up her fist.
“Wait here,” she says. She turns to leave through the double doors, the ones that admitted us, but I grab her wrist.
“I want to know what this is about,” I say. I am tired of plain walls and closed rooms and masks and games. I want answers. “I want to know how you found me, and who sent you to get me. ”
“I’m not the one who can give you the answers you need,” she says, and tries to shake me off.
“Take off your mask,” I say. For a second, I think I see a flash of fear in her eyes. Then it passes.
“Let go of me. ” Her voice is quiet, but firm.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll take it off myself. ”
I reach for her mask. She swats me away but not quickly enough. I manage to lift a corner of the fabric back, peeling it away from her neck, where a small tattooed number runs vertically from her ear toward her shoulder: 5996. But before I can wrangle the mask any higher, she gets hold of my wrist and pushes me away.
“Please, Lena,” she says, and again I hear the urgency in her voice.
“Stop saying my name. ” You don’t have a right to say my name. Anger surges in my chest, and I swing at her with my backpack, but she ducks. Before I can go at her again, the door opens behind me and I spin around as Raven strides into the room.
“Raven!” I cry out, running to her. I throw my arms around her impulsively. We’ve never hugged before, but she allows me to squeeze her tightly for several seconds before she pulls away. She’s grinning.
“Hey, kid. ” She runs a finger lightly along the cut on my neck, and scans my face for other injuries. “You look like shit. ”
Tack is behind her, leaning in the doorway. He’s also smiling, and I can barely keep myself from flying at him, too. I settle for reaching forward and squeezing the hand he offers me.
“Welcome back, Lena,” he says. His eyes are warm.
“I don’t understand. ” I’m overwhelmingly happy; relief makes waves in my chest. “How did you find me? How did you know where I would be? She wouldn’t tell me anything, I—” I turn around, gesturing to the masked woman, but she is gone. She must have ducked out the double doors.
“Easy, easy. ” Raven laughs, and slings an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get you something to eat, okay? You’re probably tired, too. Are you tired?” She’s piloting me past Tack, through the open door. We must be in some kind of a converted warehouse. I hear other voices, talking and laughing, through the flimsy dividing walls.
“I was kidnapped,” I say, and now the words bubble out of me. I need to tell Tack and Raven; they’ll understand, they’ll be able to explain and make sense of everything. “After the demonstration I followed Julian into the old tunnels. And there were Scavengers, and they attacked me—only I think the Scavengers must have been working with the DFA, and—”
Raven and Tack exchange a glance. Tack speaks up soothingly. “Listen, Lena. We know you’ve been through a lot. Just relax, okay? You’re safe now. Eat up, and rest up. ” They’ve led me into a room dominated by a large metal folding table. On it are foods I haven’t had in forever: fresh fruit and vegetables, bread, cheese. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. The air smells like coffee, good and strong.
But I can’t sit and eat yet. First, I need to know. And I need them to know—about the Scavengers, and the people who live underground, and the raid this morning, and about Julian.
They can help me rescue Julian: The thought comes to me suddenly, a deliverance. “But—,” I start to protest. Raven cuts me off, laying a hand on my shoulder.
“Tack’s right, Lena. You need to get your strength up. And we’ll have plenty of time to talk on the road. ”
“On the road?” I repeat, looking from Raven to Tack. They are both smiling at me, still, and it makes a nervous prickling feeling in my chest. It is a form of indulgence, the smile doctors give children when they administer painful shots. Now I promise, this will only pinch for a second. . . .
“We’re heading north,” Raven says in a too-cheerful voice. “Back to the homestead. Well, not t
he original homestead—we’ll spend the summer outside of Waterbury. Hunter has been in touch. He heard about a big homestead by the perimeter of the city, lots of sympathizers on the other side, and—”
My mind has gone blank. “We’re leaving?” I say dumbly, and Raven and Tack exchange another look. “We can’t leave now. ”
“We have no other choice,” Raven says, and I start to feel anger rising in my chest. She’s using her singsong voice, like she’s speaking to a baby.
“No. ” I shake my head, ball my fists against my thighs. “No. Don’t you get it? I think the Scavengers are working with the DFA. I was kidnapped with Julian Fineman. They locked us underground for days. ”
“We know,” Tack says, but I barrel on, coasting on the fury now, letting it build.
“We had to fight our way out. They almost—they almost killed me. Julian saved me. ” The rock in my stomach is migrating up into my throat. “And now they’ve taken Julian, and who knows what they’ll do. Probably drag him straight to the labs, or maybe throw him in prison, and—”
“Lena. ” Raven puts her hands on my shoulders. “Calm down. ”
But I can’t. I’m shaking from panic and rage. Tack and Raven must understand; they need to. “We have to do something. We have to help him. We have to—”
“Lena. ” Raven’s voice turns sharper, and she gives me a shake. “We know about the Scavengers, okay? We know they’ve been working with the DFA. We know all about Julian, and everything that happened underground. We’ve been scouting for you around all the tunnel exits. We were hoping you would make it out days ago. ”
This, at last, makes me shut up. Raven and Tack have finally stopped smiling. Instead they are looking at me with twin expressions of pity.
“What do you mean?” I pull away from Raven’s touch and stumble a bit; when Tack draws a chair out from the table, I thud into it. Neither of them answers right away, so I say, “I don’t understand. ”
Tack takes a chair across from me. He examines his hands, then says slowly, “The resistance has known for a while that the Scavengers were being paid off by the DFA. They were hired to pull off that stunt you saw at the demonstration. ”
“That doesn’t make any sense. ” I feel like my brain is covered in thick paste; my thoughts flounder, come to nothing. I remember the screaming, the shooting, the Scavengers’ glittering blades.
“It makes perfect sense. ” Raven speaks up. She is still standing, keeping her arms wrapped around her chest. “Nobody in Zombieland knows the difference between the Scavengers and the rest of us—the other Invalids. We’re all the same to them. So the Scavengers come and act like animals, and the DFA shows the whole country how terrible we are without the cure, how important it is to get everyone treated for deliria immediately. Otherwise the world goes to hell. The Scavengers are the proof. ”
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