Requiem

“So what are you going to do?” Raven asks.

Pippa spreads her hands. “What can I do? I can’t force them to get involved, and I can’t tell people what to do. This isn’t Zombieland, right?”

I must be making a face, because she looks at me sharply.

“What?” she says.

I look at Raven for guidance, but her face is impassive. I look back to Pippa. “There must be some way . . .” I venture.

“You think so?” Her voice gets a hard edge. “How? I have no money; I can’t bribe them. We don’t have enough force to threaten them. I can’t convince them if they won’t listen. Welcome to the free world. We give people the power to choose. They can even choose the wrong thing. Beautiful, isn’t it?” She stands abruptly and moves away from the fire. When she speaks again, her voice is composed. “I don’t know what will happen. I’m waiting for word from higher up. It might be better to move on, leave this place to rot. At least we’re safe for the moment.”

“What about fears of attack?” Tack says. “You don’t think that the city will retaliate?”

Pippa shakes her head. “The city was mostly evacuated after the riots.” Her mouth quirks into a small smile. “Fear of contagion—the deliriaspreading through the streets, turning us all into animals.” Then the smile fades. “I’m telling you something. The things I’ve seen here . . . They might be right.”

She takes the stack of blankets and passes them to Raven. “Here. Make yourself useful. You’ll have to share. The blankets are even harder to keep around than the pots. Bed down wherever you can find the space. Don’t wander too far, though. There are some crazies around here. I’ve seen it all—botched procedures, loons, criminals, the lot. Sweet dreams, kiddies.”

It’s only when Pippa mentions sleep that I realize how exhausted I am. It has been more than thirty-six hours since I’ve slept, and until now I have been fueled primarily by fear of what will happen to us. Now my body is leaden. Julian has to help me to my feet. I follow him like a sleepwalker, blindly, hardly conscious of my surroundings. We move away from the three-sided hut.

Julian stops by a campfire that has been allowed to burn out. We are at the very base of the hill, and here the slope is even steeper than the one we came down, and no path has been beaten in its side.

I don’t care about the hardness of the ground, the bite of the frost, the continued shouts and hoots from all around us, a darkness alive and menacing. As Julian settles behind me and wraps the blankets around us both, I’m already somewhere else: I am at the old homestead, in the sickroom, and Grace is there, speaking to me, saying my name over and over. But her voice is drowned out by the fluttering of black wings, and when I look up I see that the roof has been blown apart by the regulators’ bombs, and instead of a ceiling there is only the dark night sky, and thousands and thousands of bats, blotting out the moon.

Hana

I wake up as the dawn is barely washing over the horizon. An owl hoots somewhere outside my window, and my room is full of drifting dark shapes.

In fifteen days, I will be married.

I join Fred to cut the ribbon at the new border wall, a fifteen-foot-tall, concrete and steel-reinforced structure. The new border wall will replace all the electrified fences that have always encircled Portland.

The first phase of construction, completed just two days after Fred officially became mayor, extends from Old Port past Tukey’s Bridge and all the way to the Crypts. The second phase will not be completed for another year, and will place a wall all the way down to the Fore River; two years after that, the final wall will go up, co

At the ceremony, Fred steps forward with a pair of oversized scissors, smiling at the journalists and photographers clustered in front of the wall. It’s a brilliantly su

“I want my future wife to usher in this landmark day!” he calls out, and there is a roar of approval as I come forward, blushing, feigning surprise.

This has all been rehearsed, of course. He plays his role. And I am very careful to play mine, too.

The scissors, manufactured for show, are dull, and I have trouble getting the blades through the ribbon. After a few seconds, my palms begin to sweat. I can feel Fred’s impatience behind his smile, can feel the weighted stare of his associates and committee members, all of them watching me from a small, cordoned-off area next to the pack of journalists.

Snip.At last I work the scissors through the ribbon, and the ribbon flutters to the ground, and everyone cheers in front of the high, smooth concrete wall. The barbed wire at its top glistens in the sun, like metal teeth.

Afterward, we adjourn to the basement of a local church for a small reception. People snack on brownies and cheese squares off paper napkins, and sit in folding chairs, balancing plastic cups of soda on their laps.

This, too—the informality, the neighborhood feel, the church basement with its clean white walls and the faint smell of turpentine—was carefully pla

Fred receives congratulations and answers questions about policy and pla

I drift through the crowd, smiling, making polite conversation when I am needed. Underneath the laughter and chatter, I am pursued by a snake-hiss of sound, a name that follows me everywhere.

Prettier than Cassie . . .

Not as slender as Cassie . . .

Cassie, Cassie, Cassie . . .

Fred is in a great mood as we drive home. He loosens his tie and unbuttons his collar, rolls up his sleeves to the elbow, and opens the windows so the breeze sweeps into the car, blowing his hair across his face.

Already he looks more like his father. His face is red—it was hot in the church—and for a second I can’t help but imagine what it will be like after we are married, and how soon he will want to get started on having babies. I close my eyes and visualize the bay, let the image of Fred on top of me break apart on its waves.

“They were eating it up,” Fred says excitedly. “I threw out a couple hints—here and there—about Finch and the Department of Energy, and you could just tell everyone was going ape shit.”

All of a sudden, I can no longer keep the question down: “What happened to Cassandra?”

His smile falters. “Were you even listening?”

“I was. They were eating it up. Going ape shit.” He winces a little when I say the word shit, even though I’m only parroting his words back to him. “But you reminded me—I’ve been meaning to ask. You never told me what happened to her.”

Now the smile is completely gone. He turns toward the window. The afternoon sunshine stripes his face in alternating patterns of light and shadow. “What makes you think something happened?”

I keep my voice light. “I just meant—I wanted to know why you got divorced.”

He swivels quickly to look at me, eyes narrow, as though hoping to catch the lie on my face. I keep my face neutral. He relaxes a little.

“Irreconcilable differences.” The smile returns. “They must have made a mistake when they evaluated her. She wasn’t right for me at all.”

We stare at each other, both of us smiling, doing our duty, keeping our respective secrets.

“You know one of the things I like best about you?” he asks, reaching for my arm.