There’s a faint rustling sound, as though someone is kicking through the tents. “Look at how they live out here. Packed together. Mucking around in the dirt. Animals.”
“Careful. It’s all contaminated.”
So far, I’ve counted six voices.
“It smells, doesn’t it? I can smell them. Shit.”
“Breathe through your mouth.”
“Bastards,” Pike mutters.
“Shhh,” I say reflexively, even though anger has gripped me, too, alongside the fear. I hate them. I hate every single one of them, for thinking that they are better than us.
“Where do you think they’re headed?”
“Wherever it is, they can’t have gone far.”
Seven distinct voices in all. Maybe eight. It’s hard to tell. And we are about two dozen. Still, as Raven said, it’s impossible to know what kind of weapons they’re carrying, whether there are reinforcements waiting nearby.
“Let’s wrap it up here, then. Chris?”
“Got it.”
My thighs have started to cramp. I ease my weight backward to get some relief, pressing up against Alex. He doesn’t pull away. Once again, his hand brushes my arm, and I’m not sure if it’s accidental, or a gesture of reassurance. For a second—despite everything else—my insides go white and electric, and Pike and the regulators and the cold zoom away, and there is only Alex’s shoulder against my shoulder, and his ribs expanding and contracting against mine, and the rough warmth of his fingers.
The air smells like gasoline.
The air smells like fire.
I jolt into awareness. Gasoline. Fire. Burning. They’re burning our things. Now the air is popping and crackling. The regulators’ voices are muffled behind the noise. Ribbons of smoke stream down over the hillside, float into our view, writhing like airborne snakes.
“Bastards,” Pike says again, his voice strangled. He starts to rocket out of the hollow and I reach for him, try to pull him backward.
“Don’t. Raven said to wait for her signal.”
“Raven’s not in charge.” He breaks away from me and slides onto his stomach, holding his rifle in front of him like a sniper.
“Don’t, Pike.”
Either he doesn’t hear me or he ignores me. He begins inching up the hill on his stomach.
“Alex.” Panic is filling me like a tide. The smoke, the anger, the roar of the fire as it spreads—all of it is making it impossible to think.
“Shit.” Alex moves past me and starts to reach for Pike. By now, only his boots are still visible. “Pike, don’t be a goddamn idiot—”
Bang. Bang.
Two shots. The noise seems to echo and amplify in the hollow space. I cover my ears.
Then: bang, bang, bang, bang. Gunshots from everywhere, and people screaming. A shower of dirt rains on me from above. My ears are ringing, and my head is full of smoke.
Focus.
Alex has already pushed out of the hollow and I follow him, trying to wrestle the gun off my shoulder. At the last second I shrug off the backpacks. They’ll only slow me down.
Explosions from all sides, and the roar of an inferno.
The woods are full of smoke and fire. Orange and red flames shoot between the black trees—stark, stiff-necked, like witnesses frozen in horror. Pike is kneeling, half-concealed behind a tree, shooting. His face is lit orange from the fire, and his mouth is open in a roar. I see Raven moving through the smoke. The air is alive with gunshots: so many of them that it reminds me of sitting at the Eastern Prom with Hana on Independence Day and watching the fireworks display, the rapid staccato and the flashes of dazzling color. The smell of smoke.
“Lena!”
I don’t have time to see who calls my name. A bullet whizzes past me and lodges itself in the tree directly behind me, sending off a spray of bark. I unfreeze, dart forward, and position myself flat against the large trunk of a sugar maple. Several feet ahead of me, Alex has taken refuge behind a tree as well. Every few seconds he pokes his head around the trunk, fires off a few rounds, then ducks back into safety.
My eyes are watering. I crane my head cautiously around the trunk, trying to distinguish the figures grappling in the dark, backlit by the fire. From a distance, they look almost like dancers—pairs swaying, wrestling, dipping, and spinning.
I can’t tell who is who. I blink, cough, palm my eyes. Pike has disappeared.
There: I see Dani’s face briefly as she turns to the fire. A regulator has jumped her from behind, has an arm thrown around her neck. Dani’s eyes are bulging, her face purple. I bring my gun up, then lower it again. Impossible to aim from here, not as they stagger back and forth. Dani is twisting and bucking like a bull trying to shake its rider.
There’s another chorus of gunshots. The regulator withdraws his arm from Dani’s neck, clutching his elbow, shouting in pain. He turns toward the light, and I can see blood bubbling between his fingers. I have no idea who fired or whether the bullet was aimed at Dani or the regulator, but the momentary release gives Dani the advantage she needs. She fumbles at her belt for her knife, heaving and gagging. She is obviously tired, but she moves with the dumb persistence of an animal being worked to death.
She swings her arm up toward the regulator’s neck; metal flashes in her fist. After she stabs him, he jerks, a huge convulsion. His face registers surprise. He totters forward onto his knees, and then onto his face. Dani kneels next to him, wedges a boot under his body, and uses the purchase to bring her knife out of his neck.
Somewhere, beyond the wall of smoke, a woman screams. I track my rifle helplessly from one side of the burning camp to the other, but everything is confusion and blur. I have to get closer. I can help no one where I am.
I break into the open, staying as low as possible, and move toward the fire and the chaos of bodies, past Alex, who is tracking the action from behind a sycamore.
“Lena!” he shouts as I dart by him. I don’t respond. I need to focus. The air is hot and thick. The fire is leaping from tree branches now, a deadly canopy above us; flames braid themselves around the trunks, turning them a chalky white. The sky is obscured behind all the smoke. This is all that is left of our camp, of the supplies we gathered so carefully—the clothing we hunted for, scrubbed in the river, wore to tatters; and the tents we mended so painstakingly, until they were crisscrossed with stitches: this hungry, all-consuming heat.
Fifteen feet from me, a man the size of a boulder has brought Coral to the ground. I start toward her when someone tackles me from behind. As I’m falling, I jab hard behind me with the butt of my rifle. The man spits out a curse and pulls back several inches, giving me time and space to roll onto my back. I use my gun like a baseball bat, swinging it toward his jaw. It connects with a sickening crack, and he slumps sideways.
Tack was right about one thing: The regulators aren’t trained for combat like this. Almost all their fighting has been done from the air, from the cockpit of a bomber, from a distance.
I scramble to my feet and sprint toward Coral, who is still on the ground. I don’t know what happened to the regulator’s gun. But he has his hands coiled around her neck.
I raise the butt of my rifle high above my head. Coral’s eyes flick to mine. As I’m bringing the rifle down on the regulator’s head, he whips around toward me. I manage to graze the side of his shoulder, but I’m carried off balance by the force of my swing. I stumble, and he sweeps an arm at my shins and sends me sprawling flat. I bite down on my lip and taste blood. I want to turn onto my back, but suddenly there’s a weight on top of me, knocking me flat, crushing the air from my lungs. The gun is ripped from my hand.
I can’t breathe. My face is pressed to the dirt. Something—a knee? an elbow?—is digging into my neck. Bursts of light explode behind my eyelids.
Then there’s a thwack, and a grunt, and the weight is released. I twist around, sucking in air, kicking away from the regulator. He is still straddling me, but he is now slumped sideways, eyes closed, a small bit of blood trickling from his forehead, where he was hit. Alex is standing above me, gripping his rifle.
He leans down and grabs my elbow, hauls me to my feet. Then he picks up my rifle and passes it to me. Behind him, the fire is still spreading. The swaying dancers have dispersed. Now I can’t see anything but a huge wall of flame and several forms huddled on the ground. My stomach lurches. I can’t tell who has fallen, whether they are our people.
Next to us, Gordo lifts Coral and slings her over his back. She moans, eyelids fluttering, but doesn’t wake up.
“Come on,” Alex shouts. The noise of the fire is tremendous: a cacophony of cracking and popping, like a slurping, sucking monster.
Alex leads us away from the fire, using the butt of his rifle to swipe a clear path through the woods. I recognize that we’re heading in the direction of a small stream we located yesterday. Gordo pants loudly behind me, and I’m still dizzy, and not very steady on my feet. I keep my eyes locked on the back of Alex’s jacket, and I think of nothing but moving, one foot in front of the other, getting as far from the fire as possible.
“Coo-ee!”
As we draw close to the stream, Raven’s call echoes to us through the woods. To our right, a flashlight cuts through the darkness. We shoulder through a thick tangle of dead growth and emerge onto a gentle slope of stony land, through which a shallow stream is pushing resolutely. The break in the canopy above us allows moonlight to penetrate. It streaks the surface of the stream with silver, makes the pale pebbles lining the banks glow slightly.
Our group is crouching, huddled together, a hundred feet away on the other side of the stream. Relief breaks in my chest. We’re intact; we survived. And Raven will know what to do about Julian and Tack. She will know how to find them.
“Coo-ee!” Raven calls again, angling a flashlight in our direction.
“We see you,” Gordo grunts. He pushes ahead of me, his breathing now a hoarse rasp, and sloshes across the stream to the other side.
Before we can cross, Alex whirls around and takes two steps back to me. I’m startled to see that his face is twisted in anger.
“What the hell was that about?” he demands. When I can only stare at him, he goes on, “You could have died, Lena. If it wasn’t for me, you would be dead.”
“Is this your way of asking for a thank-you?” I’m shaky, and tired, and disoriented. “You could just learn to say please, you know.”
“I’m not kidding.” Alex shakes his head. “You should have stayed where you were. You didn’t need to go charging in there like some kind of hero.”
I feel a flicker of anger. I hold on to it and coax it into life. “Excuse me,” I say. “If I hadn’t charged in there, your new—your new girlfriend would be dead right now.” I’ve rarely had occasion to use the word in my life, and it takes me a second to remember it.
“She’s not your responsibility,” Alex says evenly.
Instead of making me feel better, his response makes me feel worse. Despite everything that has happened tonight, it’s this stupid, basic fact that makes me feel like I am going to cry: He didn’t deny that she was his girlfriend.
