Pandemonium (7 page)

Possibly. It is also possible he will die, or that his mental functioning will be so severely damaged, he might as well be dead. But he will still have the procedure. His father insists on it. Julian insists on it.

I have never seen him in person before, although I have seen his face on posters and in the back of pamphlets. Julian is famous. He is a martyr to the cause, a hero to the DFA, and president of the organization’s youth division.

He is taller than I expected. And better-looking, too. The photos have not done justice to the angle of his jaw, or the broadness of his shoulders: a swimmer’s build.

Onstage, Thomas Fineman is wrapping up his portion of the speech. “We do not deny the dangers of insisting that the cure be administered earlier,” he is saying, “but we assert that the dangers of delaying the cure are even worse. We are willing to accept the consequences. We are brave enough to sacrifice a few for the good of the whole.” He pauses while again the auditorium is filled with applause, tilting his head appreciatively until the roar fades away. The light winks off his watch: He and his son have identical models.

“Now, I’d like to introduce you to an individual who embodies all the values of the DFA. This young man understands better than anyone the importance of insisting on a cure, even for those who are young, even for those who might be endangered by its administration. He understands that in order for the United States to prosper, in order for all of us to live happily and in safety, it is necessary to occasionally sacrifice the needs of the individual. Sacrifice is safety, and health is only in the whole. Members of the DFA, please welcome to the stage my son, Julian Fineman.”

Clap, clap, clap
goes Lena, along with the rest of the crowd. Thomas leaves the stage as Julian takes it. They pass each other on the stairs, give each other a brief nod. They do not touch.

Julian has brought notes, which he sets on the podium in front of him. For a moment, the auditorium is filled with the amplified sounds of rustling paper. Julian’s eyes scan the crowd, and for a second they land on me. He half opens his mouth and my heart stops: It is as though he has just recognized me. Then his eyes continue to sweep, and my heart comes hammering back against my ribs. I’m just being paranoid.

Julian fumbles with the microphone to adjust it to his height. He is even taller than his father. It’s funny that they look so different: Thomas, tall and dark and fierce-looking, a hawk; his son, tall and broad and fair, with those improbably blue eyes. Only the hard angle of their jaws is the same.

He runs a hand through his hair, and I wonder whether he is nervous. But when he begins speaking, his voice is full and steady.

“I was nine when I was told I was dying,” he says plainly, and again I feel that expectation hanging in the air, shimmering droplets, as though everyone has just leaned forward a fraction of an inch. “That’s when the seizures began. The first one was so bad I nearly bit off my tongue; during the second seizure, I cracked my head against the fireplace. My parents were concerned.”

Something wrenches in my stomach—deep inside, underneath the layers I’ve built over the past six months, past the fake Lena with her shell and her ID cards and the three-pointed scar behind her ear. This is the world we live in, a world of safety and happiness and order, a world without love.

A world where children crack their heads on stone fireplaces and nearly gnaw off their tongues and the parents are concerned. Not heartbroken, frantic, desperate. Concerned, as they are when you fail mathematics, as they are when they are late to pay their taxes.

“The doctors told me a tumor was growing in my brain and causing the seizures. The operation to remove it would be life-threatening. They doubted I would make it. But if they did not operate—if they let the tumor grow and expand—I had no chance at all.”

Julian pauses, and I think I see him shoot a momentary glance in his father’s direction. Thomas Fineman has taken the seat his son vacated, and is sitting, legs crossed, face expressionless.

“No chance at all,” Julian repeats. “And so the sick thing, the growth, had to be excised. It had to be lifted away from the clean tissue. Otherwise, it would only spread, turning the remaining healthy tissue sick.”

Julian shuffles his notes and keeps his eyes locked to the pages in front of him as he reads out, “The first operation was a success, and for a while, the seizures stopped. Then, when I was twelve, they returned. The cancer was back, this time pressing at the base of my brain stem.”

His hands tighten on the sides of the podium and release. For a moment, there is silence. Someone in the audience coughs. Droplets, droplets: We are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path.

Julian looks up. There is a screen behind him on which his image is projected, blowing up his face by a power of fifteen. His eyes are a swirl of blue and green and gold, like the surface of the ocean on a sunny day, and behind the flatness, the practiced calm, I think I see something flashing there—an expression that is gone before I can find a name for it.

“I’ve had three operations since the first one,” he says. “They have removed the tumor four times, and three times it has regrown, as sicknesses will, unless they are removed swiftly and completely.” He pauses to let the significance of the statement sink in. “I have now been cancer free for two years.” There is a smattering of applause. Julian holds up a hand and the room once again goes silent.

Julian smiles, and the enormous Julian behind him smiles also: a pixelated version, a blur. “The doctors have told me that further surgeries may endanger my life. Too much tissue has been removed already, too many excisions performed; if I am cured, I might lose the ability to regulate my emotions at all. I might lose the ability to speak, to see, to move.” He shifts at the podium. “It is possible that my brain will shut down entirely.”

I can’t help it; I am holding my breath too, along with everybody else. Only Thomas Fineman looks relaxed; I wonder how often he has heard this speech.

Julian leans forward another inch toward the microphone, and suddenly it is like he is addressing each and every one of us individually: His voice is low and urgent, a secret whispered in our ears.

“They have refused to cure me for this reason. For more than a year we have been fighting for a procedure date, and finally we have arranged one. On March twenty-third, the day of our rally, I will be cured.”

Another smattering of applause, but Julian pushes through it. He is not done yet.

“It will be a historic day, even though it may prove to be my last. Don’t think I don’t understand the risks, because I do.” He straightens up, and his voice becomes louder, thunderous. The eyes on the screen are flashing now, dazzling, full of light. “But there is no choice, just as there wasn’t when I was nine. We must excise the sickness. We must cut it out, no matter what the risks. Otherwise it will only grow. It will spread like the very worst cancer and put all of us—every single person born into this vast and wonderful country—at risk. So I say to you: We will—we must—cut away the sickness, wherever it is. Thank you.”

There; that’s it. He has done it. He has tipped us over, all of us in our teetering expectancy, and now we are pouring toward him, coursing on a wave of sound, of roaring shouts and applause. Lena claps along with everybody else until her palms burn; she keeps clapping until they go numb. Half the audience stands, cheering. Someone starts a chant of “DFA! DFA!” and soon we are all chanting: It is earsplitting, a deafening roar. At a certain point Thomas joins his son onstage again and they stand solemnly, side by side—one fair, one dark, like the two sides of the moon—watching over us as we keep clapping, keep chanting, keep roaring our approval. They are the moon; we are a tide, their tide, and under their direction we will wipe clean all the sickness and blight from the world.

S
omeone is always sick in the Wilds. As soon as I am strong enough to move out of the sickroom and onto a mattress on the floor, Squirrel has to move in; and after Squirrel’s turn, it is Grandpa’s. At night, the homestead echoes with the sounds of coughing, heaving, feverish chatter: noises of disease, which run through the walls and fill us all with dread. The problem is the space and the closeness. We live on top of one another, breathe and sneeze on one another, share everything. And nothing and no one is ever really clean.

Hunger gnaws at us, makes tempers run short. After my first exploration of the homestead, I retreated underground, like an animal scrabbling back into the safety of its lair. One day passes, then two. The supplies have yet to come. Each morning different people go out to check for messages; I gather that they have found some way to communicate with the sympathizers and resisters on the other side. That is all there is for me to do: listen, watch, stay quiet.

In the afternoons I sleep, and when I can’t sleep, I close my eyes and imagine being back in the abandoned house at 37 Brooks with Alex lying next to me. I try to feel my way through the curtain; I imagine if I can somehow pull apart the days that have passed since the escape, can mend the tear in time, I can have him back.

But whenever I open my eyes I am still here, on a mattress on the floor, and still hungry.

After another four days, everyone is moving slowly, as though we’re all underwater. The pots are impossible for me to lift. When I try to stand too quickly I get dizzy. I have to spend more time in bed, and when I’m not in bed I think that everyone is glaring at me, can feel the Invalids’ resentment, hard-edged, like a wall. Maybe I’m just imagining it, but this is, after all, my fault.

The catch, too, has been poor. Roach traps a few rabbits and there is general excitement; but the meat is tough and full of gristle, and when everything is dished up there is barely enough to go around.

Then one day I am in the storeroom, sweeping—Raven insists we go through the motions, insists on keeping everything clean—when I hear shouts from aboveground, laughter and running. Feet pound down the stairs. Hunter comes swinging into the kitchen, followed by an older woman, Miyako. I have not seen them—or anyone—so energetic in days.

“Where’s Raven?” Hunter demands breathlessly.

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

Miyako lets out an exasperated sound, and both she and Hunter spin around, prepared to dart up the stairs again.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“We got a message from the other side,” Hunter says. That’s what people here call the bordered communities: the other side, when they’re feeling generous; Zombieland, when they aren’t. “Supplies are coming in today. We need help taking delivery.”

“Can you help?” Miyako asks, sizing me up. She is broad through the shoulders, and very tall—if she had enough to eat, she would be an Amazon. As it is she is all muscle and sinew.

I shake my head. “I—I’m not strong enough.”

Hunter and Miyako exchange a look.

“The others will help,” Hunter says in a low voice. Then they pound up the stairs again, leaving me alone.

Later that afternoon they come back, ten of them, bearing heavy-duty garbage bags. The bags have been placed in half-full wooden crates in the Cocheco River at the border, and the crates have floated down to us. Even Raven can’t maintain order, or control her excitement. Everyone rips the bags to shreds, shouting and whooping as supplies tumble onto the floor: cans of beans, tuna, chicken, soup; bags of rice, flour, lentils, and more beans; dried jerky, sacks of nuts and cereal; hard-boiled eggs, nestled in a bin of towels; Band-Aids, Vaseline, tubes of ChapStick, medical supplies; even a new pack of underwear, a bundle of clothes, bottles of soap and shampoo. Sarah hugs the jerky to her chest, and Raven puts her nose in a package of soap, inhaling. It’s like a birthday party but better: ours to share, and just for that moment I feel a rush of happiness. Just for that moment, I feel as though I belong here.

Our luck has turned. A few hours later, Tack takes down a deer.

That night we have our first proper meal since I’ve arrived. We dish up enormous plates of brown rice, topped with meat braised and softened with crushed tomatoes and dried herbs. It’s so good I could cry, and Sarah actually does cry, sitting and sobbing in front of her plate. Miyako puts her arm around her and murmurs into Sarah’s hair. The gesture makes me think of my mother; a few days ago I asked Raven about her, with no luck.

What does she look like?
Raven had asked, and I had to confess I didn’t know. When I was younger she had long, soft auburn hair, and a full-moon face. But after over ten years in Portland’s prison, the Crypts—where she had been my whole life, while I believed her dead—I doubt she resembles the woman from my hazy childhood memories.

Her name is Annabel
, I told her, but Raven was already shaking her head.