Requiem (4 page)

He never loved me.

It was all a lie.

“The old Lena is dead,” I say, and then push past him, back down through the gully toward the camp. Each step is more difficult than the last; the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone.

You must hurt, or be hurt.

Alex doesn't follow me, and I don't expect him to. I don't care where he goes, whether he stays in the woods all night, whether he never returns to camp.

As he said, all of that—the caring—is done now.

It's not until I've almost reached the tents that I begin crying again. The tears come all at once, and I have to stop walking and double up into a crouch. I want to bleed all the feelings out of me. For a second I think about how easy it would be to pass back to the other side, to walk straight into the laboratories and offer myself up to the surgeons.

You were right; I was wrong. Get it out.

“Lena?”

I look up. Julian has emerged from his tent. I must have woken him. His hair is sticking up at crazy angles, like the broken spokes of a wheel, and his feet are bare.

I straighten up, swiping my nose on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “I'm okay,” I say, still hiccuping back tears. “I'm fine.”

For a minute he stands there, looking at me, and I can tell that he knows why I'm crying, and he understands, and it's going to be all right. He opens his arms to me.

“Come here,” he says quietly.

I can't move to him fast enough. I practically fall into him. He catches me and pulls me in tightly to his chest, and I let myself go again, let sobs run through me. He stands there with me and murmurs into my hair and kisses the top of my head and lets me cry over losing another boy, a boy I loved better.

“I'm sorry,” I say over and over into his chest. “I'm sorry.” His shirt smells like smoke from the fire, like mulch and spring growth.

“It's okay,” he whispers back.

When I've calmed down a little, Julian takes my hand. I follow him into the dark cave of his tent, which smells like his shirt but even more so. I lie down on top of his sleeping bag and he lies down beside me, making a perfect seashell arc for my body. I curl up in this space—safe, warm—and let the last tears I will ever cry for Alex flow hot over my cheeks, and down into the ground, and away.

Hana

H
ana.”
My mother is looking at me expectantly. “Fred asked you to pass the green beans.”

“Sorry,” I say, forcing a smile. Last night, I hardly slept. I even had little snatches of dream—bare wisps of image that skittered away before I could focus on them.

I reach for the glazed ceramic dish—like everything in the Hargrove house, it is beautiful—even though Fred is more than capable of reaching it himself. This is part of the ritual. Soon I will be his wife, and we will sit like this every night, performing a well-choreographed dance.

Fred smiles at me. “Tired?” he says. In the past few months, we have spent many hours together; our Sunday dinner is just one of the many ways we have begun practicing merging our lives.

I've spent a long time scrutinizing his features, trying to figure out whether he is attractive, and in the end I have come up with this: He is very pleasant to look at. He is not as attractive as I am, but he is smarter, and I like his dark hair, and the way it falls over his right eyebrow when he has not had time to smooth it back.

“She
looks
tired,” Mrs. Hargrove says. Fred's mother often talks about me as though I'm not in the room. I don't take it personally; she does it with everybody. Fred's father was mayor for more than three terms. Now that Mr. Hargrove is dead, Fred has been groomed to take his place. Since the Incidents in January, Fred campaigned tirelessly for nomination and appointment, and it paid off. Only a week ago, a special interim committee appointed him the new mayor. He will be inaugurated publicly early next week.

Mrs. Hargrove is used to being the most important woman in the room.

“I'm fine,” I say. Lena always said that I could lie my way out of hell.

The truth is, I'm not fine. I'm worried that I can't stop worrying about Jenny and how thin she looked.

I'm worried that I've been thinking of Lena again.

“Of course, the wedding preparations are very stressful,” my mother says.

My father grunts. “You're not the one writing the checks.”

This makes everybody laugh. The room is suddenly illuminated by a brief flash of light from outside: A journalist, parked in the bushes directly outside the window, is snapping our picture, which will then be sold to local newspapers and TV stations.

Mrs. Hargrove has arranged for paparazzi to be here tonight. She tipped the photographers off to the location of a dinner that Fred arranged for us on New Year's Eve. Photo opportunities are arranged and carefully plotted, so the public can watch our emerging story and see the happiness we've achieved by being paired so perfectly together.

And I
am
happy with Fred. We get along very well. We like the same things; we have a lot to talk about.

That's why I'm worried: Everything will go up in smoke if the procedure has not worked correctly.

“I heard on the radio that they've evacuated parts of Waterbury,” Fred says. “Parts of San Francisco, too. Riots broke out over the weekend.”

“Please, Fred,” Mrs. Hargrove says. “Do we really have to talk about this at dinner?”

“It won't help to ignore it,” Fred says, turning to her. “That's what Dad did. And look what happened.”

“Fred.” Mrs. Hargrove's voice is strained, but she manages to keep smiling.
Click.
Just for a second, the dining room walls are lit up by the camera's flash. “It really isn't the time—”

“We can't pretend anymore.” Fred looks around the table, as though appealing to each of us. I drop my eyes. “The resistance exists. It may even be growing. An epidemic—that's what this is.”

“They've cordoned off most of Waterbury,” my mother says. “I'm sure they'll do the same in San Francisco.”

Fred shakes his head. “This isn't just about the infected. That's the problem. There's a whole system of sympathizers—a network of support. I won't do what Dad did,” he says with sudden fierceness. Mrs. Hargrove has gone very still. “For years there were rumors that the Invalids still existed, that their numbers were growing, even. You know it. Dad knew it. But he refused to believe.”

I keep my head bent over my plate. A piece of lamb is sitting, untouched, next to green beans and fresh mint jelly. Only the best for the Hargroves. I pray that the journalists outside don't take a picture now; I'm sure my face is red. Everyone at the table knows that my former best friend tried to run off with an Invalid, and they know—or suspect—that I covered for her.

Fred's voice gets quieter. “By the time he accepted it—by the time he was willing to act—it was too late.” He reaches out to touch his mother's hand, but she picks up her fork and begins eating again, stabbing green beans with such force, the tines of her fork make a sharp, clanging noise against the plate.

Fred clears his throat. “Well, I refuse to look the other way,” he says. “It's time we all face this head-on.”

“I just don't see why we have to talk about it at dinner,” Mrs. Hargrove says. “When we're having a perfectly nice time—”

“May I be excused?” I ask too sharply. Everyone at the table turns to me in surprise.
Click.
I can only imagine what that picture will look like: my mother's mouth frozen in a perfect O, Mrs. Hargrove frowning; my father lifting a bloody piece of lamb to his lips.

“What do you mean,
excused
?” my mother says.

“See?” Mrs. Hargrove sighs and shakes her head at Fred. “You've made Hana unhappy.”

“No, no. It's not that. It's just . . . You were right. I'm not feeling well,” I say. I ball my napkin on the table and then, seeing my mother's look, fold it and drape it next to my plate. “I have a headache.”

“I hope you're not coming down with something,” Mrs. Hargrove says. “You can't be sick for the inauguration.”

“She won't be sick,” my mother says quickly.

“I won't be sick,” I parrot. I don't know exactly what's wrong with me, but little points of pain are exploding in my head. “I just need to lie down, I think.”

“I'll call Tony.” My mom pushes away from the table.

“No, please.” More than anything, I want to be left alone. In the past month, since my mother and Mrs. Hargrove determined that the wedding needed to be fast-tracked, to correspond with Fred's ascension to mayor, it seems the only time I can be alone is when I go to the bathroom. “I don't mind walking.”

“Walking!” This provokes a miniature eruption. All of a sudden, everyone is speaking at once. My father is saying,
Out of the question
, and my mother says,
Imagine how
that
would look
.
Fred leans toward me—
It isn't safe right now, Hana
—and Mrs. Hargrove says,
You must have a fever
.

In the end, my parents decide that Tony will drive me home and return for them later. This is a decent compromise. At least it means I'll have the house to myself for a bit. I stand up and bring my plate to the kitchen, despite Mrs. Hargrove's insistence that the housekeeper be allowed to do it. I scrape food into the trash, and flash back to the smell of the Dumpsters yesterday, the way that Jenny materialized from between them.

“I hope the conversation didn't upset you.”

I turn around. Fred has followed me into the kitchen. He leaves a respectful distance between us.

“It didn't,” I say. I'm too tired to reassure him further. I just want to go home.

“You don't have a fever, do you?” Fred looks at me steadily. “You look pale.”

“I'm just tired,” I say.

“Good.” Fred puts his hands in his pockets, dark, creased in front, like my father's. “I was worried I'd gotten a defective one.”

I shake my head, sure that I've misheard him. “What?”

“I'm kidding.” Fred smiles. He has a dimple in his left cheek, and very nice teeth; I appreciate that about him. “I'll see you soon.” He leans forward and kisses my cheek. I draw back involuntarily. I'm still not used to being touched by him. “Go get your beauty sleep.”

“I will,” I say, but he's already pushing out of the kitchen and returning to the dining room, where soon, dessert and coffee will be served. In three weeks, he will be my husband, and this will be my kitchen, and the housekeeper will be mine too. Mrs. Hargrove will have to listen to
me
, and I will choose what we eat every day, and there will be nothing left to want.

Unless Fred is right. Unless I am a defective one.

Lena

T
he argument continues: where to go, whether to split up.

Some members of the group want to loop south again, and then east to Waterbury, where there are rumors of a successful resistance movement and a large camp of Invalids flourishing in safety. Some want to head all the way out to Cape Cod, which is practically unpopulated and will therefore be a safer place to camp out. A few of us—Gordo, in particular—want to continue north and try to make a break across the U.S. border and into Canada.

In school we were always taught that other countries—places without the cure—had been ravaged by the disease and turned into wastelands. But this, like most other things we were taught, was no doubt a lie. Gordo has heard stories from trappers and drifters about Canada, and he makes it sound like Eden in
The
Book of Shhh
.

“I say Cape Cod,” Pike says. He has white-blond hair, ruthlessly trimmed down to the scalp. “If the bombing begins again—”

“If the bombing begins again, we won't be safe anywhere,” Tack interrupts him. Pike and Tack are constantly butting heads.

“We're safer the farther we are from a city,” Pike argues. If the resistance turns into a full-on rebellion, we can expect swift and immediate reprisals from the government. “We'll have more time.”

“To what? Swim across the ocean?” Tack shakes his head. He is squatting next to Raven, who is repairing one of our traps. It's amazing how happy she looks here, sitting in the dirt, after a long day of hiking and trapping—happier than she did when we lived together in Brooklyn, posing as cureds, in our nice apartment with shiny edges and polished hard surfaces. There, she was like one of the women we studied in history class, who laced themselves up in corsets until they could barely breathe or speak: white-faced, stifled. “Look, we can't outrun this. We might as well join forces, build our numbers as best we can.”

Tack catches my eye across the campfire. I smile at him. I don't know how much Tack and Raven have deciphered about what has happened between Alex and me, and what our history is—they've said nothing to me about it—but they have been nicer to me than usual.

“I'm with Tack,” Hunter says. He tosses a bullet into the air, catches it on the back of his hand, then flips it into his palm.

“We could split up,” Raven suggests for the hundredth time. It's obvious she doesn't like Pike, or Dani, either. In this new group, the lines of dominance haven't been so clearly drawn, and what Tack and Raven say doesn't automatically pass for gospel.

“We're not splitting up,” Tack says firmly. But immediately he takes the trap from her and says, “Let me help you.”

This is how Tack and Raven work: It's their private language of push and return, argument and concession. With the cure, relationships are all the same, and rules and expectations are defined. Without the cure, relationships must be reinvented every day, languages constantly decoded and deciphered.

Freedom is exhausting.

“What do you think, Lena?” Raven asks, and Pike, Dani, and the others swivel around to look at me. Now that I've proven myself to the resistance, my opinion carries weight. From the shadows, I can sense Alex looking at me too.

“Cape Cod,” I say, feeding more kindling into the fire. “The farther we are from the cities, the better, and any advantage is better than none. It's not like we'll be alone. There will be other homesteaders there, other groups to join with.” My voice rings out loudly in the clearing. I wonder if Alex has noticed this change: I have gotten louder and more confident.

There's a moment of quiet. Raven looks at me thoughtfully. Then, abruptly, she turns and shoots a glance over her shoulder. “What about you, Alex?”

“Waterbury,” he answers immediately. My stomach knots up. I know it's stupid—I know the stakes are higher than the two of us—but I can't help but feel a flash of anger. Of course he disagrees with me. Of course.

“It's no advantage to be cut off from communication and information,” he says. “There's a war on. We can try to deny it, we can try to bury our heads in the sand, but that's the truth. And the war will find us either way eventually. I say we meet it head-on.”

“He's right,” Julian pipes up.

I turn to him, startled. He hardly ever speaks in the evenings around the campfire. I don't think he feels comfortable yet. He is still the newbie, the outsider—and even worse, a convert from the other side. Julian Fineman, son of the late Thomas Fineman, founder and head of Deliria-Free America, and enemy to everything we stand for. It doesn't matter that Julian turned his back on his family and cause—and nearly gave up his life—to be here with us. I can tell that some people don't trust him.

Julian speaks with the measured cadence of a practiced public speaker. “There's no point in using avoidance tactics. This won't blow over. If the resistance grows, the government and the military will do anything they can to stop it. We'll have a better chance of fighting back if we put ourselves in the middle of things. Otherwise we'll just be rabbits in a hole, waiting to be flushed out.”

Even though Julian agrees with Alex, he is careful to keep his eyes trained on Raven. Julian and Alex never speak to or even look at each other, and the others are careful not to comment on it.

“I say Waterbury,” Lu puts in, which surprises me. Last year, she didn't want anything to do with the resistance. She wanted to disappear into the Wilds, make a homestead as far as possible from the Valid cities.

“All right, then.” Raven stands up, brushing off the back of her jeans. “Waterbury it is. Any other objections?”

We're all silent for a minute, looking at one another, our faces consumed by shadow. No one speaks. I'm not happy with the decision, and Julian must sense it. He puts a hand on my knee and squeezes.

“Then it's decided. Tomorrow we can—”

Raven is cut off by the sound of shouting, a sudden flurry of voices. We all rise—an instinctive response.

“What the hell?” Tack has shouldered his rifle and is scanning the mass of trees that surround us, a tangled wall of branches and vines. The woods have fallen silent again.

“Shhh.” Raven holds up a hand.

Then: “I need help out here, guys!” And then, “Shit.” There is a collective release, a relaxation of tension. We recognize Sparrow's voice. He wandered away earlier to do his business in the woods.

“We got you, Sparrow!” Pike calls out. Figures race into the trees, turning to shadow as soon as they leave the small circumference of brightness cast by the fire. Julian and I stay where we are, and I notice that Alex does too. There is a confusion of voices and instructions—“Her legs, her legs, grab her legs”—and then Sparrow, Tack, Pike, and Dani are emerging once again into the clearing, each pair saddled with a body. At first I think they are each hauling an animal, bundled in tarps, but then I see a pale white arm, dangling toward the ground, starkly illuminated by the fire, and my stomach turns.

People.

“Water, get water!”

“Grab the kit, Raven, she's bleeding.”

For a moment, I'm paralyzed. As Tack and Pike place the bodies down on the ground, near the fire, two faces are revealed: one old, dark, weather-beaten; a woman who has been in the Wilds for most of her life, if not all of it. Saliva is bubbling at the corners of her mouth, and her breathing is hoarse and full of fluid.

The other face is unexpectedly lovely. She must be my age or even a little younger. Her skin is the color of the inside of an almond, and her long, dark-brown hair is fanned out behind her in the dirt. For a moment I am jettisoned back to my own escape to the Wilds. Raven and Tack must have found me exactly this way—more dead than not, beaten and bruised.

Tack swivels around and catches me staring.

“A little help, Lena,” he says sharply. His voice snaps me out of my trance. I go and kneel beside him, next to the older woman. Raven, Pike, and Dani are taking care of the girl. Julian hovers behind me.

“What can I do?” he asks.

“We need clean water,” Tack says, without looking up. He has his knife out and is cutting away her shirt. In places it seems almost melded with her skin—and then I see, horrified, that her lower half is badly burned, and her legs covered with open sores and infection. I have to close my eyes for a second and will myself not to be sick. Julian brushes my shoulder once with his hand, then goes off in search of the water.

“Shit,” Tack mutters, as he uncovers yet another wound; this one a long, ragged cut along her shin, deep and welling with infection. “Shit.” The woman lets out a gurgled moan and then falls silent. “Don't tap out on me now,” he says. He whips off his wind breaker. Sweat glistens on his forehead. We are close to the fire, which the others are stoking higher.

“I need a kit.” Tack grabs a hand towel and begins ripping it into strips, expertly and quickly. These will be tourniquets. “Someone get me a
damn
kit.”

The heat is a wall next to us. The dark smoke blots out the sky. It weaves its way into my thoughts, too, distorting my impressions, which begin to take on the quality of dream: the voices, the movement, the heat and the smell of bodies, all fractured and senseless. I can't tell whether I am kneeling there for minutes or hours. At some point Julian returns, carrying a bucket of steaming water. Then he leaves and returns again. I am helping to clean the woman's wounds, and after a time I stop seeing her body as skin and flesh, but as something twisted and warped and weird, like the dark pieces of petrified wood we turn up in the forest.

Tack tells me what to do and I do it. More water, cold this time. Clean cloth. I stand, move, take the objects that are given to me and return with them. More minutes pass; more hours.

At some point I look up and it is not Tack next to me, but Alex. He is sewing up a cut on the woman's shoulder, using a regular sewing needle and long, dark thread. He is pale with concentration, but he moves fluidly and quickly. He has obviously had practice. It occurs to me that there is so much I never knew about him—his past, his role in the resistance, what his life was like in the Wilds, before he came to Portland, and I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.

Our elbows touch. He draws away.

The smoke is coating my throat now, making it difficult to swallow. The air smells like ash. I continue cleaning the woman's wooden legs and body, the way I used to help my aunt polish the mahogany table once a month, carefully and slowly.

Then Alex is gone, and Tack is next to me again. He puts his hands on my shoulders and draws me gently backward.

“It's okay,” he's saying. “Leave it. It's all right. She doesn't need you anymore.”

For a second I think,
We did it, she's safe now
. But then, as Tack pilots me toward the tents, I see her face lit up in the glow of the fire—white, waxen, eyes open and staring blindly at the sky—and I know that she's dead, and everything we did was for nothing.

Raven is still kneeling by the younger girl's side, but her ministrations are less frantic now, and I can hear that the girl is breathing regularly.

Julian is already in the tent. I'm so tired, I feel as though I'm sleepwalking. He moves over and makes a space for me, and I practically collapse into him, into that little question mark formed by his body. My hair reeks of smoke.

“Are you okay?” Julian whispers, finding my hand in the dark.

“Fine,” I whisper back.

“Is
she
okay?”

“Dead,” I say shortly.

Julian sucks in a breath, and I feel his body stiffen behind me. “I'm sorry, Lena.”

“You can't save them all,” I say. “That's not how it works.” That is what Tack would say, and I know it's true, even if, deep down, I still don't quite believe it.

Julian squeezes me, and kisses the back of my head, and then I let myself tunnel down into sleep, and away from the smell of burning.