Requiem

Lu has heard that the Invalid camp is almost like a city itself: Everyone pitches in, everyone helps repair shelters and hunt for food and gather water. It has so far been safe from retaliation, partly because no one has remained who canretaliate. The municipal offices were destroyed, and the mayor and his deputies were chased out.

There, we’ll build shelters out of branches and salvaged brick, and finally find a place for ourselves.

In Waterbury, everything will be okay.

The trees begin to thin, and we pass old, graffiti-covered benches and half-shell underpasses, speckled with mold; a roof, intact, sitting on a field of grass, as though the rest of the house has been simply suctioned underground; stretches of road that, leading nowhere, are now part of a nonsense-grammar. This is the language of the world before—a world of chaos and confusion and happiness and despair—before the blitz turned streets to grids, cities to prisons, and hearts to dust.

We know we’re getting close.

In the evening, when the sun begins to set, the anxiety comes sweeping back. None of us wants to spend another night alone, exposed, in the Wilds, even if we have managed to put the regulators off our trail for now.

From ahead, there is a shout. Julian has circled away from Tack and fallen into step beside me, although we have been mostly walking in silence.

“What is it?” I ask him. I’m so tired I am numb. I can’t see past the people ahead of me. The group is fa

Julian cranes onto his tiptoes. “I think . . . I think we’re there.” Even before he finishes speaking, I am pushing through the group, angling for a look.

At the edge of the old parking lot, the ground drops away suddenly and cuts sharply downward. A series of switchback trails leads down the hillside to a barren, treeless portion of land.

The camp is not like I’ve envisioned it at all. I’ve been imagining real houses, or at least solid structures, nestled between trees. This is simply a vast, teeming field, a patchwork of blankets and trash, and hundreds and hundreds of people, pushing almost directly up against the city’s wall, stained red in the dying light. Fires burn sporadically across the great, dark expense, winking like lights from a distant city. The sky, electric at the horizon, is otherwise stretched dark and tight, like a metal lid that has been screwed shut over waste.

For a moment I flash back to the twisted underground people Julian and I met when we were trying to escape the Scavengers, and their grimy, smoky, underground world.

I’ve never seen so many Invalids. I have never seen so many people, period.

Even from here, we can smell them.

My chest feels like it has caved in.

“What is this place?” Julian mutters. I want to say something to comfort him—I want to tell him it will be okay—but I feel weighted down, dull with disappointment.

“This is it?” Dani is the one to voice what we must all be feeling. “This is the big dream? The new order?”

“We have friends here, at least,” Hunter says quietly. But even he can’t keep up the act. He shoves a hand through his hair so it sticks up in all directions. His face is white; all day, he has been hacking as he walked, his breath coming wet and ragged. “And we had no choice, anyway.”

“We could have gone to Canada, like Gordo said.”

“We wouldn’t have made it there without our supplies,” Hunter says.

“We would still haveour supplies if we had headed north in the first place,” Dani fires back.

“Well, we didn’t. We’re here. And I don’t know about you guys, but I’m thirsty as hell.” Alex pushes his way through the line. He has to sidestep down the hill to the first switchback trail, sliding a little on the sleep slope, sending a spray of gravel skidding down toward the camp.

He pauses when he reaches the path and looks back up at us. “Well? Are you coming?” His eyes slide over the whole group. When he looks at me, a small shock pulses through me, and I quickly drop my eyes. For a split second, he had looked almost like my Alex again.

Raven and Tack move forward together. Alex is right about one thing—we don’t have a choice now. We won’t make it another few days in the Wilds, not without any traps, or supplies, and vessels to boil our water. The rest of the group must know this, because they follow Raven and Tack, sidestepping down toward the dirt path one after another. Dani mutters something under her breath, but follows at last.

“Come on.” I reach for Julian’s hand.

He draws back. His eyes are fixed on the vast, smoky plain below us, and the dingy patchwork of blankets and makeshift tents. For a moment, I think he’s going to refuse. Then he jerks forward, as though pushing his way through an invisible barrier, and precedes me down the hill.

At the last second, I notice that Lu is still standing on the ridge. She looks tiny, dwarfed by the enormous evergreens behind her. Her hair is nearly down to her waist now. She is staring not at the camp, but at the wall beyond it: the stained-red stone that marks the begi

“You coming, Lu?” I say.

“What?” She looks startled, as though I’ve woken her up. Then, immediately: “I’m coming.” She casts one more look at the wall before following us. Her face is troubled.

The city of Waterbury looks, at least from this distance, dead: no smoke floats up from the factory chimneys; no lights shine from the darkened, glass-enclosed towers. It is the empty husk of a city, almost like the ruins we pass in the Wilds. Except this time, the ruin is on the other side of the walls.

And I wonder what about it, exactly, makes Lu afraid.

Once we reach the ground, the smell is thick, almost unbearable: the stink of thousands of unwashed bodies and unwashed, hungry mouths; urine; old fires and tobacco. Julian coughs, mutters, “God.” I bring my sleeve to my mouth, trying to inhale through it.

The periphery of the camp is ringed with large metal drums and old, rust-spotted trash cans, in which fires have been lit. People crowd around the fires, cooking or warming their hands. They look at us with suspicion as we pass. Immediately, I can tell that we are not welcome.

Even Raven looks uncertain. It’s not clear where we should go, or who we should speak to, or whether the camp is organized at all. As the sun is finally swallowed by the horizon, the crowd becomes a mass of shadows: faces lit up, grotesque and contorted by the flickering light. Shelters have been constructed hastily from bits of corrugated tin and scraps of metal; other people have created makeshift tents with dirty bedsheets. Still others are lying, huddled, on the ground, pressing against one another for warmth.

“Well?” Dani says. Her voice is loud, a challenge. “What now?”

Raven is about to respond when suddenly a body rockets into her, nearly pushing her over. Tack reaches out to steady her, barks, “Hey!”

The boy who catapulted into Raven—ski

“You filthy pig!” he spits. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

“Are you crazy?” Bulldog’s voice is surprisingly shrill. “What the hellare you—”

“You stole my goddamn can. Admit it. You stole my can.” Bits of spit are collected at the corners of the old man’s mouth. His eyes are wide, wild. He turns a full circle, appealing to the crowd. Then he raises his voice. “I had a whole can of tuna, unopened. Sitting right with my things. He stoleit.”