Pandemonium

Page 31

At the far end of the platform there’s a tunnel, so low Julian and I have to stoop to enter. After ten feet, we reach a narrow metal ladder, which takes us down into a broader tunnel, this one studded with old train tracks but free, thankfully, of running water. Every few feet Julian pauses, listening for the Scavengers.
Then we hear it, unmistakably, and closer now: a voice grunting, “This way.” Those two words knock the breath out of me, exactly as if I’d been punched. It’s Albino. I mentally curse myself for putting the handgun in the backpack—stupid, stupid, and no way of getting it now, in the dark, while Julian and I are pushing forward. I squeeze the handle of the knife, taking some reassurance from the smooth grain of its wood, from its weight. But I’m still weak, dizzy, and hungry, too; I know I won’t do well in a fight. I say a silent prayer that we can lose them in the darkness.
“Down here!”
But the voices grow louder, closer. We hear feet ringing against the metal ladder, a sound that makes my blood sing with terror. Just then I see it: light zigzagging against the walls, flashing yellow tentacles. They’re using flashlights, of course. No wonder they’re coming so fast. They don’t have to worry about being seen or heard. They are the predators.
And we are the prey.
Hide. It’s our only hope. We need to hide.
There’s an archway on our right—a cutout of even blacker darkness—and I squeeze Julian’s hand, pulling him back, directing him through it, into another tunnel, a foot or so lower than the one we’ve been traveling, and this one dotted with puddles of stagnant, stinking water. We grope our way through the dark. The walls on both sides of us are smooth—no alcoves, no piled wooden crates, nothing to conceal us—and the panic is building. Julian must be feeling it too, because he loses his footing, stumbles, and splashes heavily into one of the narrow beds of still water.
Both of us freeze.
The Scavengers, too, freeze. Their footsteps stop; their voices fall silent.
And then the light seeps through the archway: a creeping, sniffing animal, roving the ground, ravenous. Julian and I don’t move. He pulses my hand, once, then releases it. I hear him shift the backpack from his shoulder and know that he must be fumbling for a weapon. There’s no longer any point in running. There’s no point in fighting, either—not really—but at least we can take a Scavenger or two down with us.
My vision goes suddenly blurry and I’m startled. Tears sting my eyes, and I have to wipe them away with the inside of my wrist. All I can think is—Not here, not like this, not underground, not with the rats.
The light widens and expands; a second beam joins it. The Scavengers are moving silently now, but I can feel them taking their time, and enjoying it, the way a hunter draws his bow back the last few inches before releasing an arrow—those final moments of quiet and stillness before the kill. I can feel the albino. Even in the dark, I know he is smiling. My palms are wet on the knife. Next to me, Julian is breathing heavily.
Not like this. Not like this. My head is full of echoes now, fragments and distortions: the heady smell of honeysuckle in the summer; fat, droning bees; trees bowed low under the weight of heavy snowfall; Hana running ahead of me, laughing, her blond hair swinging in an arc.
And strangely, what strikes me then—in that exact second, as I know with solid certainty that I am going to die—is that all the kisses I have ever had are behind me. The deliria, the pain, all the trouble it has caused, everything we have been fighting for: for me it is done, washed away on the tide of my life.
And then, just as the beams of light grow to headlights—huge, blinding, bearing down on us, and the shadows behind them unfold and become people—I am filled with desperate rage. I can’t see; the light has dazzled me, and the darkness has melted into explosions of color, spots of floating brightness, and dimly, as I leap forward, thrusting blindly with my knife, I hear shouting and roaring and a scream that bursts through my chest, whines through my teeth like the reverberation of a metal blade.
Everything is chaos: hot bodies and panting. There’s an elbow in my chest and thick arms encircling me, choking out my breath. I get a mouthful of greasy hair, a blade of pain in my side; foul breath in my face, and guttural shouts. I can’t tell how many Scavengers there are—three? four?—and don’t know where Julian is. I am striking without looking, struggling to breathe, and everything is bodies—hardness and enclosure, no way to run, no way to break free—and the slashing of my knife. I hit flesh, and flesh, and then the knife gets wrenched from my hand, wrist twisted until I cry out.
Enormous hands find my neck and squeeze, and the air goes out of the tunnel, and shrivels to the point of a pen in my lungs. I open my mouth to gasp and find that I can’t. In the darkness above me I see a tiny bubble of light, of air, floating high above me—I am reaching for it, fighting my way out of a thick, consuming murk—but there is nothing but mud in my lungs and I am drowning.
Drowning. Dying.
Faintly I hear a tiny drumming, a constant pitter-patter, and think that it must once again be raining. Then there are lights blazing again on either side of me: dancing, mobile light, twisting and live. Fire.
Suddenly the circle around my neck breaks. The air is like cold water washing into me, making me gasp and splutter. I sink to my hands and knees, and for one confused second I think I must be dreaming—I fall into a stream of fur, a blur of tiny bodies.
Then my head begins to clear and the world returns from the fog and I realize the tunnel is filled with rats. Hundreds and hundreds of them: rats leaping over one another, wriggling and writhing, colliding with my wrists and nipping at my knees. Two gunshots explode; someone cries out in pain. Above me there are shapes, people, grappling with the Scavengers; they have enormous, smoldering torches, stinking like dirty oil, and they scythe through the air with their fire like farmers cutting through fields of wheat. Various images are frozen, briefly illuminated: Julian doubled over, one hand on the tunnel wall; one of the Scavengers, face contorted, screaming, her hair lit up with fire like one of the torches.
This is a new kind of terror. I’m frozen on my knees as the rats rush around me, drumming me with their bodies, squeaking and slithering and whipping my skin with their tails. I’m sickened and paralyzed with fear.
This is a nightmare. It must be.
A rat crawls up onto my lap. I shout and swat it away, nausea rising in my throat. It hits the wall with a sickening thud, squeaking; then it scrabbles back to its feet and joins the stream again, blurring past me. I’m so disgusted I can’t even move. A whimper works its way out of my throat. Maybe I’ve died and gone to hell, to be punished for deliria and all the terrible things I’ve done—to live in squalor and chaos, just like The Book of Shhh predicts for the disobedient.
“Stand up.”
I raise my head. Two monsters stand above me, holding torches. That’s what they look like: beasts from the underground, only half-human. One of them is enormous, practically a giant. One of his eyes is milky white, blinded; the other is as darkly glittering as an animal’s.
The other figure is hunched over, back as crookedly swollen as the warped hull of a boat. I can’t tell if it’s a man or a woman. Long, greasy hair mostly conceals the person’s face. She—or he—has twisted Julian’s hands behind his back and bound them with a cord. The Scavengers are gone.
I stand. The bandage on my neck has come loose, and my skin feels slick and wet.
“Walk.” The rat-man gestures with his torch toward the darkness behind me. I see that he is slightly doubled over and is clutching his right side with the hand not holding the torch. I think of the gunshots and hearing someone shout. I wonder if he was hit.
“Listen.” My voice is shaking. I hold up both hands, a gesture of peace. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but we’re just trying to get out of here. We don’t have much, but you can take whatever you want. Just—just let us go. Please, okay?” My voice breaks a little. “Please let us go.”
“Walk,” the rat-man repeats, and this time jabs so close to me with his torch I can feel the heat from the flames.
I look at Julian. He gives a minute shake of his head. The expression in his eyes is clear. What can we do?
I turn, and walk. The rat-man goes behind me with his torch, and in front of us, hundreds of rats disappear into the darkness.
then
No one knows what to expect at the third encampment, or whether there will even be a third encampment. Since Tack and Hunter never made it home, we can’t know whether they successfully buried supplies just outside of Hartford, Connecticut, roughly 180 miles south of Rochester, or whether something happened to them along the way. The cold has buried its claws in the landscape now: It is relentless, and will not let go until spring. We are tired, hungry, and defeated. Even Raven can’t maintain the appearance of strength. She walks slowly, head bowed, not speaking.
I don’t know what we’ll do if there is no food at the third encampment. I know Raven is worried too, although she won’t talk about it. None of us talk about it. We just push blindly, obstinately forward.
But the fear is there. As we approach Hartford—threading through the ruins of old towns, bombed-out shells of houses, like dry insect husks—there is no sense of celebration. Instead there is anxiety: a hum of it, running through all of us, making the woods feel ominous. The dusk is full of malice; the shadows are long, pointed fingers, a forest of dark hands. Tomorrow we will reach the third encampment, if it is there. If not, some of us will starve before we make it farther south.
And if it is not there, we can stop wondering about Tack and Hunter: It will mean that in all probability they are dead.
The morning dawns weakly and is full of strange electricity, like the waiting feeling that usually precedes a storm. Other than the crunching of our shoes in the snow, we move in silence.
Finally we reach it: the place where the third encampment should be. There is no sign that Tack and Hunter have been here: no gouges in the trees, no tattered pieces of fabric looped over tree branches, none of the symbols we’ve been using to communicate, and no indication that any goods or supplies have been buried here. This is what we’ve all feared, but still the disappointment is almost physical.
Raven lets out a short exclamation of pain, as though she’s been slapped; Sarah collapses, right there in the snow, and says, “No-no-no-no-no!” until Lu tells her to shut up. I feel as though my chest has caved in.
“There must be a mistake,” I say. My voice sounds too loud in the clearing. “We must be in the wrong place.”
“There’s no mistake,” Bram says in a low voice. “This is it.”
“No,” I insist. “We took a wrong turn somewhere. Or Tack found a better place for the supplies.”
“Be quiet, Lena,” Raven says. She’s rubbing her temples, hard. Her fingernails are ringed with purple. “I need to think.”
“We need to find Tack.” I know I’m not helping; I know I’m half-hysterical. But the cold and the hunger have turned my thoughts dull too, and this is the only one that stands out. “Tack has our food. We need to find him. We need to—”