The Reaping (16 page)

“Mmm. Me too.”

I’m not ready for today.
I feel his breath in my hair. It pauses for a second before resuming its rhythm.

“Me neither.”

I’m scared for them.
Nell and Red are by my feet. She’s already awake, and she strokes through Red’s gray hair.

Jack’s whispered voice drops even quieter, and I have to strain to hear him. “I don’t know if Red can make it.”

He’s said it, the thing I feared: that one of us is incapable of meeting the sub. My heart speeds up, and it feels like a panicked bird trying to escape my chest. Jack holds me tighter.

“But don’t worry about it yet. We’re not there.”

We will be soon.

Jack lets out a breath and it ruffles through my hair. “I know. I’ve been trying not to think about it.” He burrows his head closer against me. “I don’t know what I’d do if we lost one of them.”

I grip his hand tightly in mine. I don’t know what I’d do either. I watch Nell playing with Red’s hair. I watch his eyes open and watch the smile spread across his face as he focuses on her. She leans down and kisses him gently on the lips, and he snatches the ends of her silver hair to keep her there longer. She laughs against his mouth and bats his hand away.

I don’t know what they would do if they lost each other.

I won’t let it happen.

“I know you, Terra. And I know that’s true.” He hesitates. “But there’s only so much you can do.”

In a few minutes everyone around us is waking up. The woman steps over a few still-sleeping bodies and crouches down next to us.

“Come on over. We’ll walk you through what’s going to happen today.”

We help Red to his feet. His coloring looks a lot better than it was, and having enough to eat and drink for just a day has already started to fill in his cheeks. He’s still too frail though, all jutting bones. He’s a twig that could snap at any second. I exchange glances with Jack, but neither of us says anything. There’s nothing to say. We
are
going to try this impossible thing. I don’t think Nell and Red would have it any other way.

We sit down with the man and the woman. They give us more granola bars and water.

“Lana and I are going to the med drop. Everyone in the city will start making their way to the med drop this morning. Five others are going with us—all of us with trackers. We want to bring back as many supplies as we can. I think that’ll be enough of us that you can fall in with us. Having Red there might even help. No one will question bringing him to the med drop. People might think he’s going to the free clinic.”

The man takes out a faded, worn map of the city. He smoothes it open, careful not to tug on the edges. It’s so thin along the folds that it looks like it will fall apart if you breathe on it too hard.

“The supply drops happen here.” He points to a round blob on the map. “It’s a baseball stadium. You can see the water is close. It’s an industrial area—most of this has been converted into work places.”

“Will we be closely watched?”

The man frowns. “I don’t know. We’ve always just worried about the drop part of it. We’ve never tried to go to the water. I don’t think very many people go over that way at the time of the drop, so you might stick out.”

“They could pretend to be workers,” Lana says, chewing on a strand of hair.

“Maybe.”

“There isn’t any other option that will get them to the water if someone sees them.” Lana looks at me, and her eyes are shining. “It’s so dangerous. Are you sure you want to do this?”

Nell looks at Red and then squeezes my hand. I nod. There’s no other choice. Jack hasn’t said so, but I really don’t think Red can get better on his own, not with the way things are now. He doesn’t stand a chance.

“Yes,” Red says in a raspy voice. He turns to me. “I trust you, Terra. I’ve trusted you since you first came to us. That’s not going to stop now.”

Tears fill my eyes. I’ve hurt so many people because of the lies I’ve had to tell on the Burn. But Nell and Red don’t care about where I come from. They just care about
me
.

Thank you.

“What time is your sub coming?”

No idea.
Dread fills my gut. I have no idea. I look at my hands.
Usually comes at midnight.

“You’ll have to find a place to hole away. The supply drop starts at noon and lasts until four or five. You can’t wait around after that, or the agents will take you into custody for loitering.”

Is there anything they don’t take you into custody for? But of course I don’t ask it. I don’t have to—they’re probably all thinking the exact same thing.

Nell smoothes her hair back away from her face and twists it into a neat bun at the nape of her neck. “Then we should probably go. Are you ready, Red?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be, I’m afraid.”

“We’re going to slow you down,” Jack says to the man. He puts a hand on the back of his neck as he watches the man and Nell lift Red up. “If anything goes wrong, I don’t want to be the one who got you into it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the man says, patting Red on the back. “We’re all in this together.”

We make our way through the building. Sunlight filters in through the windows and glints off the shards of glass littering the floor. The whole building seems to sparkle. How could something so run down seem so beautiful? I linger at a window and look over the city. Out there, though, the sun shines harshly and there’s litter in the street. People are starting to trickle out of the buildings. They look around them and scurry away like rats. The man said it was illegal to live in these buildings, so anyone in this part of the city must fear the agents.

When we make it to the bottom floor, the man opens the door, and the warm breeze sweeps over me. I can smell the ocean on it. I stand on tip-toe, waiting until he motions us out, and then we creep from the cover of the building and we’re back on the street. I feel exposed out here with all the windows watching us.

We inch along, and Red stumbles with us. He curses as he tries to get his legs moving one after another, step by step.

“What did you say?” Nell asks. She has a stern look on her face, and Red knows he’s in for a scolding.

“I said this is never going to work.”

“So help me, Red, if you say something like that again—”

He grips her hand. “I know, I know. I won’t.”

But I’m not convinced. I can see the round bowl of the stadium ahead of us. We’re not even halfway there yet, and his limbs are already trembling with exertion.

We come to an enormous metal fence topped with curls of barbed wire.

“It’s the border between where
they
want us to live and where
we
want to live,” the man says.

“Is it guarded?” Jack says.

“Not usually. Only when there’s been some kind of infraction and they want to make a point of it. Then we’re cut off from the rest of the city until it eases up a bit.”

“How long does that last?”

“Depends on the infraction. A month was the longest it’s ever gone.” The man looks down. “We lost a few of the old ones then. They gave up their rations to the kids.”

“If they know you’re here why even bother with the fence?” Jack asks. His face is troubled.

“I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself that. They don’t really see us as a threat, and I think they just like to see us suffer.”

Yup, sounds about right.

We near the fence, and the group in front of us stoops through a hole cut through the wire. All of us bunch up here, waiting our turn to funnel through. We come through in a steady stream, filing down the wide street. On this side of the fence, more people pour from the buildings. The difference in the buildings on this side of the fence is drastic. The windows are all intact, trees line the streets, and only an occasional scrap of trash skitters down the concrete on the breeze. The people are entirely different, too.

Most of them look like empty shells.

Every single person that we stayed with last night had determined faces and fierce eyes. But everyone filling in the gaps around us look like they’re on autopilot.

Loyalty serum?
I ask Jack.

He shakes his head. “I have no idea.” He turns to the man. “Are they all like this?”

The man frowns and adjusts Red’s arm over his shoulder. Red opens his mouth to curse, but Nell glares at him.

“No, not all of them. But it seems like after a while they all get this way.”

“Why?”

Lana shrugs her shoulders. “All of these people work for the government. Nothing glamorous, of course. No ‘normal’ citizen gets a glamorous job. They’re street sweepers or shelf stockers or janitors or cafeteria workers. In exchange they get barely enough food at supply drops and an apartment the size of a postage stamp. They’re told their jobs are essential to the city and that they’re doing their country a great service. They either lap it up or completely snap. You can guess which ones these are.”

Lappers?

She nods. “I’ve seen a few completely snap. I’ve never seen them again.”

Jack looks askance at an older woman next to him whose eyes stare straight ahead. Her hair is combed stick-straight and her clothes are neatly pressed. She actually looks like she could be right at home in the colony. Except for the blank expression on her face. At least in the colony everyone looked alive.

“I wonder if they have the loyalty serum here?” Jack whispers.

Nell’s eyes harden. “If they’re subjecting these poor people to that awful stuff. . .” She pauses for a long moment. “I don’t know if I can go to the sub with you, Terra.”

What?
I’m sure she can see the shock all over my face.

“What are you saying, Nell?” Red says, straining to lean toward her.

“Look at them all.” She waves her hand at them. “We can’t just run away. We have to help them.”

We will help them
, I write to her.
Let’s get to the colony first.

“So you’re coming with us?”

I hadn’t really thought about it. In my mind I had only gotten as far as the sub. What happens after that is nebulous. I just assumed it would be what happened after any other sub rendezvous: the nomads get on, and I disappear again. But the more I do think about it, the more it’s the only way for this to work. Nell’s right—we have to help these people, and to do that, we have to get rid of the serum. But that’s not something I can do by myself. I don’t know if it’s something this man or this woman can do.

I don’t think a handful of nomads would have the resources I need—but the colony might. I think I have to ask my father for help. The idea makes my stomach churn. I shake my head to clear the fear away. My mouth is dry.

“Will you come with us?” Nell asks again.

I can feel Jack’s eyes on me. He has a vested interest in my decision. I know he’ll follow me, and that’s not something I take lightly. Taking him back to the colony would keep him safer. But then when I come back to the Burn—because I will come back to the Burn, there’s no question about that—I’ll be throwing him right back into it again. I have a headache coming on.

“Terra?”

Finally, I nod. My decision takes away a burden but adds a hundred more.

“I’m glad for that,” Nell says, looking forward again. We’re almost to the stadium. “I don’t know if I could go down to this colony of yours if you weren’t coming with us.”

Red chuckles. “An odd thought, isn’t it? Going to an ocean colony? If we had ever had children, Nellie girl, that would have been one bedtime story I would have loved to tell.

Nell has a wistful look on her face. “We’ll see.”

We’re still half a block away, and now there are people pressing in on us from all sides. Most of them have the ghost look, but some of them have watchful eyes. When our eyes meet, they linger and then flick away, always wary. There are soldiers standing at attention around the stadium, and an agent with a scanner. He waves the machine over people’s forearms as they come in. As I watch, the agent scans someone’s arm. The scanner lights up red. The agent motions, and two soldiers pounce on a middle-aged man. He kicks and screams as they drag him to an unmarked black truck.

“We can’t go that way,” Jack says.

“No trackers?” Lana asks.

I shake my head. Not a chance.

“What about them?” the man asks, nodding to Nell and Red.

“Yes,” they both say in unison. Of course. That would have been one of the first things the government did when they were captured.

“That makes it trickier. There’s scanners and soldiers all over this place. We could cut them out.”

“We don’t have the right supplies,” Jack says.

“Don’t need to,” the man says, and Jack makes a horrified face.

“We’ll make it work,” Jack says. He drifts to the edge of the surge of bodies, so slowly no one would notice it. We’re pressed up against the front of a building. A red-and-white-striped awning shades us, and the window is crystal clear. There are books lined up inside. Every book is exactly the same, but still—a bookstore? I had no idea such a thing existed here.