Requiem

We reach the place where the camp runs up against the city’s southern border wall, a wave of people and tents lapping up against the stone. This part of the wall, and the city beyond it, has been abandoned. Enormous, dark floodlights crane their necks over the camp. Only a single bulb remains intact: It sends a bright white light forward, painting the outline of things clearly, leaving the detail and the depth out, like a lighthouse beaming out over dark water.

We follow the border wall north and finally leave the camp behind. The ground underneath us feels dry. The carpet of pine needles cracks and snaps each time we take a step. Other than that, once the noise of the camp recedes, it is silent.

Anxiety gnaws at my stomach. I’m not too worried about our role—if all goes well, we won’t even have to breach the wall—but Julian is in way over his head. He has no idea what he’s doing, no idea what he’s getting into.

“This is crazy,” Coral says suddenly. Her voice is high, shrill. She must have been fighting down panic all this time. “It’ll never work. It’s suicide.”

“You didn’t have to come,” I say sharply. “No one asked you to volunteer.”

It’s as though she doesn’t hear me. “We should have packed up, gotten out of here,” she says.

“And left everyone else to fend for themselves?” I fire back.

Coral says nothing. She’s obviously just as unhappy as I am that we’ve been forced to work together—probably even unhappier, since I’m the one in charge.

We weave between the trees, following the erratic motions of Bram’s lantern, which bobs in front of us like an overgrown firefly. Every so often, we cross ribbons of concrete, radiating outward from the city’s walls. Once, these old roads would have led to other towns. Now they run aground into earth, flowing like gray rivers around the bases of new trees. Signs—choked with brown ivy—point the way to towns and restaurants long dismantled.

I check the small plastic watch that Beast lent me: eleven thirty p.m. It has been an hour and a half since we set out. We have another half hour before we are supposed to light the rag and send the purse over the wall. This will be timed with a simultaneous explosion on the eastern side, just south of where Raven, Tack, Julian, and the others will be crossing. Hopefully, the two explosions will divert attention away from the breach.

This far from the camp, the border becomes better maintained. The high concrete wall is undamaged and clean. The floodlights become functional and more numerous: enormous, wide-open, dazzling eyes at intervals of twenty or thirty feet.

Beyond the floodlights, I can make out the black silhouettes of looming apartment complexes, glass-fronted buildings, church spires. I know we must be getting close to the downtown center, an area that, unlike some of the outlying residential portions of the city, was not completely evacuated.

Adrenaline starts working its way through me, making me feel very alert. I’m suddenly aware that the night isn’t silent at all. I can hear animals scurrying all around us, the pitter-patter of small bodies rustling through the leaves.

Then: voices, faintly, intermingling with the wood sounds.

“Bram,” I whisper at him. “Turn off the lantern.”

He does. We all stop moving. The crickets are singing, beating the air into bits, ticking off seconds. I can hear the shallow, desperate pattern of Coral’s breathing. She’s scared.

Voices again, and a bit of drifting laughter. We are hugging the woods, concealed in a thick wedge of dark between two floodlights. As my eyes adjust, I see a tiny glowing light—an orange firefly—hovering above the wall. It flares, fades, then flares again. A cigarette. Guard.

Another burst of laughter breaks the silence, this time louder, and a man’s voice says, “No frigging way.” Guards, plural.

So. There are watch points along the way. This is both good and bad news. More guards means more people to sound the alarm, more forces to divert from the main breach. But it will also make it more dangerous to get close to the wall.

I gesture for Bram to keep moving. Now that the lantern is off, we have to go slowly. I check the watch again. Twenty minutes.

Then I see it: a metal structure rising above the wall like an overgrown birdcage. An alarm tower. Manhattan, which had a wall similar to this one, had similar alarms. Inside the wire cage is a lever that will trip security alarms all across the city, summon regulators and police to the border.

The alarm tower is situated, mercifully, in one of the dark spaces between floodlights. Still, it’s a good bet that there are guards working that portion of the border, even if we can’t see them. The top of the wall is bulk and shadow, and any number of regulators could be sheltered there.

I whisper for Bram and Coral to stop. We are still a good hundred feet from the wall, and concealed in the shadow of looming evergreens and oaks.

“We’ll detonate as close to the alarm tower as possible,” I say, keeping my voice low. “If the explosion doesn’t trip the alarm, the guards will. Bram, I need you to take out one of the floodlights farther on. Not too far, though. If there are guards in the tower, I want them pulled away from their position. I’m going to need to get closer before I can toss this thing.” I ease off my backpack.

“What am I going to do?” Coral asks.

“Stay here,” I say. “Watch. Cover me if something goes wrong.”

“That’s bullshit,” she says halfheartedly.

I check my watch again. Fifteen minutes. Almost go-time. I wrestle the bottle out of my backpack. It feels larger than it did earlier, and harder to carry. I can’t immediately find the matchbook Tack gave me, and I have a momentary panic that it somehow got lost in the dark—but then I remember I put it in my pocket for safekeeping.

Light the rag, throw the bottle,Pippa told me. Nothing to it.

I take a deep breath, exhale silently. I don’t want Coral to know that I’m nervous. “Okay, Bram.”

“Now?” His voice is soft but calm.

“Go now. But wait for my whistle.”

He unfolds from his crouch, then moves away from us soundlessly; he is soon absorbed by the greater dark. Coral and I wait in silence. At one point our elbows collide, and she jerks back. I scoot a little away from her, sca

I check my watch, then check it again. Suddenly the minutes seem to be tumbling forward. 11:50. 11:53. 11:55.

Now.

My throat is parched. I can hardly swallow, and I have to lick my lips twice before I manage a whistle.

For several long, agonizing moments, nothing happens. There’s no longer any point in pretending that I’m not afraid. My heart is jackhammering in my chest, and my lungs feel like they’ve been flattened.

Then I see him. Just for a second, as he darts toward the wall, he crosses into the path of the floodlight and he is lit up, frozen, a photographic still; then the darkness swallows him again, and a second later there’s a tremendous shattering, and the floodlight goes dark.

Instantly, I’m up on my feet and ru

“Come on, come on,” I mutter. My hands are shaking. Matches two and three don’t stay lit.

A staccato of gunfire breaks the stillness. The shots sound random—they’re firing blind, and I say a quick prayer that Bram is back in the trees already, concealed and safe, watching to make sure the rest of the plan goes off.