Delirium: The Complete Collection (97 page)

“You wouldn’t believe the shit I’ve seen around here,” she says. “Last week someone was killed over a goddamn cigarette. It’s crazy.” She shakes her head. “No wonder the zombies didn’t bother bombing us. Waste of ammunition. We’ll kill each other off just fine at this rate.” She gestures for us to sit on the ground. “Might as well park here for a bit. I’ll get some food on. There isn’t a lot. I was expecting a new delivery. We’ve been getting help from the resistance. But something must have happened.”

“Patrols,” Alex says. “There were regulators just south of here. We ran into a group of them.”

Pippa doesn’t seem surprised. She must have already known that the Wilds have been breached. “No wonder you all look like shit,” she says mildly. “Go on. Kitchen’s about to open. Take a load off.”

Julian is very quiet. I can feel the tension in his body. He keeps looking around as though he expects someone to leap out at him from the shadows. Now that we are on this side of
the campfires, encircled by warmth and light, the rest of the camp looks like a shadowy blur: a writhing, roiling darkness, swelling with animal sounds.

I can only imagine what he must think of this place, what he must think of
us
. This is the vision of the world that he has always been warned against: a world of the disease is a world of chaos and filth, selfishness and disorder.

I feel unjustifiably angry with him. His presence, his anxiety, is a reminder that there is a difference between his people and mine.

Tack and Raven have claimed one of the benches. Dani, Lu, Hunter, and Bram squeeze onto the other one. Julian and I take a seat on the ground. Alex remains standing. Coral sits directly in front of him, and I try not to pay attention to the fact that she is leaning back, resting against his shins, and the back of her head is touching his knee.

Pippa removes a key from around her neck and unlocks the large refrigerator. Inside it are rows and rows of canned food, as well as bags of rice. The bottom shelves are packed with bandages, antibacterial ointment, and bottles of ibuprofen. As Pippa moves, she tells us about the camp, and the riots in Waterbury that led to its creation.

“Started in the streets,” she explains as she dumps rice into a large, dented pot. “Kids, mostly. Uncureds. Some of them were riled up by the sympathizers, and we got some members of the R in as moles, too, to keep everybody fired up.”

She moves precisely, without wasting any energy. People
materialize out of the dark to help her. Soon she has placed various pots on one of the fires at the periphery. Smoke—delicious, threaded with food smells—drifts back to us.

Immediately there is a shift, a difference in the darkness that surrounds us: A circle of people has gathered, a wall of dark, hungry eyes. Two of Pippa’s men stand guard over the pots, knives drawn.

I shiver. Julian doesn’t put his arm around me.

We eat rice and beans straight out of a communal pot, using our hands. Pippa never stops moving. She walks with her neck jutting forward, as though she constantly expects to encounter a barrier and intends to head-butt her way through it. She doesn’t stop talking, either.

“The R sent me here,” she says. Raven has asked her how she came to be in Waterbury. “After all the riots in the city, we thought we had a good chance to organize a protest, plan a large-scale opposition. There are two thousand people in the camp right now, give or take. That’s a lot of manpower.”

“How’s it going?” Raven asks.

Pippa squats by the campfire and spits. “How does it look like it’s going? I’ve been here a month and I’ve found maybe a hundred people who care about the cause, who are willing to fight. The rest are too scared, too tired, or too beat down. Or they just don’t care.”

“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
deliria
spreading 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.

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 the 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, connecting the two, and the modernization and strengthening of the border will be complete, just in time for Fred’s reelection.

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 sunny morning—a day of promise and possibility. He raises the scissors dramatically toward the thick red ribbon strung across the concrete. At the last second he stops, turns, and gestures me forward.

“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 planned.

Fred receives congratulations and answers questions about policy and planned changes. My mother is glowing, happier than I have ever seen her, and when she catches my eye across the room, she winks. It occurs to me that this is what she has wanted for me—for us—all my life.

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.

“What?”

He jerks me suddenly close to him. Surprised, I cry out. He pinches the soft skin on the inside of my elbow, sending a sharp zip of pain down my arm. Tears prick my eyes, and I inhale deeply, willing them back.

“That you don’t ask too many questions,” he says, and pushes me away from him roughly. “Cassie asked too many questions.”

Then he leans back, and we drive the rest of the way in silence.

Late afternoon used to be my favorite time of day—mine, and Lena’s. Is it still?

I don’t know. My feelings, my old preferences, are just out of reach—not eradicated completely, as they should have been, but like shadows, burning away whenever I try to focus on them.

I don’t ask questions.

I just go.

The ride to Deering Highlands already feels easier. Thankfully, I don’t encounter anyone. I deposit the supplies of food and gasoline in the underground cellar that Grace showed me.

Afterward, I make for Preble Street, where Lena’s uncle used to have his little corner grocery store. As I suspected, it is now closed and shuttered. Metal grates have been drawn over its windows; beyond the latticed steel, I see graffiti scrawls across the glass, now indecipherable, faded by rain and weather. The
awning, a royal blue, is torn up and half-dismantled. One thin, spindly metal support, like the jointed leg of a spider, has come free of the fabric and swings pendulum-like in the wind. A small placard fixed to one of the metal grates says
COMING SOON! BEE’S SALON AND BARBER
.

The city no doubt forced him to close his doors, or the customers stopped coming, worried that they would be guilty by association. Lena’s mother, Lena’s uncle William, and now Lena…

Too much bad blood. Too much disease.

No wonder they’re hiding in the Deering Highlands. No wonder Willow is hiding there as well. I wonder whether it was by choice—or whether they were coerced, threatened, or even bribed to leave a better neighborhood.

I don’t know what possesses me to go around back, to the narrow alley and the small blue door that used to lead to the storeroom. Lena and I used to hang out here together when she was stocking shelves after school.

The sun slants hard over the sloped roofs of the buildings around me, skipping right over the alley, which is dark and cool. Flies buzz around a Dumpster, droning and then colliding with the metal. I climb off my bike and lean it against one of the beige concrete walls. The sounds from the street—people shouting to one another, the occasional rumble of a bus—already seem distant.

I step toward the blue door, which is streaked with pigeon shit. Just for a moment, time seems to fold in two, and I imagine
that Lena will fling open the door for me, as she always did. I’ll grab a seat on one of the crates of baby formula or canned green beans, and we’ll split a bag of chips and a soda stolen from stock, and we’ll talk about…

What?

What did we talk about then?

School, I guess. The other girls in our class, and track meets, and the concert series in the park and who was invited to whose birthday party, and things we wanted to do together.

Never boys. Lena wouldn’t. She was far too careful.

Until, one day, she wasn’t.

That day I remember perfectly. I was still in shock because of the raids the night before: the blood and the violence, the chorus of shouting and screaming. Earlier that morning, I had thrown up my breakfast.

I remember Lena’s expression when he knocked on the door: eyes wild, terrified, body stiff; and how Alex had looked at her when she finally let him into the storeroom. I remember exactly what he was wearing, too, and the mess of his hair, the sneakers with their blue-tinged laces. His right shoe was untied. He didn’t notice.

He didn’t notice anything but Lena.

I remember the hot flash that stabbed through me. Jealousy.

I reach out for the door handle, suck in a deep breath, and pull. It’s locked, of course. I don’t know what I was expecting, and why I feel so disappointed. It
would
be locked. Beyond it, the dust will be settling on the shelves.

This is the past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you. This is half the reason for the cure: It clean-sweeps; it makes the past, and all its pain, distant, like the barest impression on sparkling glass.

But the cure works differently for everybody; and it does not work perfectly for all.

I’m resolved to help Lena’s family. Their store was taken away and their apartment reclaimed, and for that I am partly responsible. I was the one who encouraged her to go to her first illegal party; I was the one who always egged her on, asking her about the Wilds, talking about leaving Portland.

And I was also the one who helped Lena escape. I got the note to Alex informing him she had been caught and that her procedural date had been changed. If it weren’t for me, Lena would have been cured. She might be sitting in one of her courses at the University of Portland, or walking the streets of the Old Port with her pair. The Stop-N-Save would still be open, and the house on Cumberland would be occupied.

But the guilt goes even deeper than that. It, too, is dust: Layers and layers of it have accumulated.

Because if it weren’t for me, Lena and Alex would never have been caught at all.

I told on them.

I was jealous.

God forgive me, for I have sinned
.