We’re striking out mostly blind, using a compass and a series of old sketches that have been passed back and forth among other traders and Invalids, filled in a little at a time, showing a random scattering of landmarks: rivers; dismantled roads and old towns, bombed by the blitz; the borders of the established cities, so we know to avoid them; ravines and impassable places. Direction, like time, is a general thing, deprived of boundaries and borders. It is an endless process of interpretation and reinterpretation, doubling back and adjusting.
We come to a stop while Pike and Raven argue it out. My shoulders are aching. I unload my pack and sit on top of it, take a swig of water from the jug I have looped to the belt around my waist. Julian is hovering behind Raven, red-faced, his hair dark with sweat and his jacket tied around his waist. He’s trying to see beyond her, to the map that Pike is holding. He is getting skinnier.
At the periphery of the group, Alex is sitting, like me, on his pack. Coral does the same, inching closer to him so their knees are touching. Over the course of a few short days, they have become practically inseparable.
Even though I want to, I can’t bring myself to look away from him. I don’t understand what he and Coral have to talk about. They talk while they hike, and while they set up camp. They talk at mealtimes, sequestered in the corner. Meanwhile, he hardly speaks with anyone else, and he has not exchanged a single word with me since our confrontation with the bear.
She must have asked him a question, because I see him shake his head.
And then, just for a second, both of them look up at me. I turn away quickly, heat rushing to my cheeks. They were talking about me. I know it. I wonder what she asked him.
I squeeze my fists until my nails dig into the flesh of my palms, inhale deeply, and will away the thought. Alex and what he thinks of me are irrelevant.
Pike is saying, “I’m telling you, we should have gone east at the old church. It’s marked on the map.”
“That isn’t a church,” Raven argues, snatching the map back from him. “It’s the tree we passed earlier—the one split by lightning. And it means we should have continued north.”
“I’m telling you, that’s a
“Why don’t we send out scouts?” Julian interrupts them. Startled into silence, they turn to him. Raven frowns, and Pike stares at Julian with open hostility. My stomach starts squirming, and I silently pray in his direction:
But Julian continues calmly, “We move more slowly as a group, and it’s a waste of our time and energy if we’re headed in the wrong direction.” For a second I see his old self float to the surface, the Julian of conferences and posters, the youth leader of the DFA, self-assured. “So I say two people head north—”
“Why north?” Pike breaks in angrily.
Julian barely misses a beat. “Or south, whichever. Hike for half a day, look for the highway. If it isn’t there, hike in the other direction. At least we’ll get more of a sense of the terrain. We can help orient the group.”
“We?” Raven parrots.
Julian looks at her. “I want to volunteer,” he says.
“It’s not safe,” I burst out, climbing to my feet. “There are Scavengers patrolling—maybe regulators, too. We need to stick together. Otherwise we’re easy prey.”
“She’s right,” Raven says, turning back to Julian. “It isn’t safe.”
“I’ve dealt with Scavengers before,” Julian argues.
“And almost died,” I fire back.
He smiles. “I didn’t, though.”
“I’ll go with him.” Tack spits a thick wad of tobacco onto the ground and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. I glare at him. He ignores me. He has made no secret of the fact that he thinks it was a mistake to have rescued Julian and a liability to have him with us. “You know how to shoot a gun?”
“No,” I say. “He doesn’t.” Now everyone’s looking at me, but I don’t care. I don’t know what Julian’s trying to prove, but I don’t like it.
“I can handle a gun,” Julian lies quickly.
Tack nods. “All right, then.” He extracts another bit of tobacco from a pouch he wears around his neck and balls it into his mouth. “Let me unload some of my pack. We’ll leave in half an hour.”
“Okay, everyone.” Raven raises her arms in a gesture of resignation. “We might as well camp here.”
The group, as one, begins to shed packs and shake supplies out on the ground, like a single animal molting its skin. I grab Julian’s arm and draw him away from everybody else.
“What was that about?” I’m struggling to keep my voice down. I can see Alex watching us. He looks amused. I wish I had something to throw at him.
I take Julian and swivel him around, so he blocks Alex from my view.
“What do you mean?” He shoves his hands in his pockets.
“Don’t play dumb,” I say. “You shouldn’t have volunteered to scout. This isn’t a joke, Julian. We’re in the middle of a war.”
“I don’t think it’s a joke.” His calmness is infuriating. “I know better than anyone else what the other side is capable of, remember?”
I look away, biting my lip. He has a point. If anyone knows about the tactics of the zombies, it’s Julian Fineman.
“You still don’t know the Wilds,” I insist. “And Tack won’t protect you. If you get attacked—if anything happens, and it’s a question of you or the rest of us—he’ll leave you. He won’t endanger the group.”
“Lena.” Julian puts his hands on my shoulders and forces me to look at him. “Nothing’s going to happen, okay?”
“You don’t know that,” I say. I know I’m overreacting, but I can’t help it. For some reason, I feel like crying. I think of the quietness of Julian’s voice as he said
“The others don’t trust me,” Julian says. I open my mouth to protest, but he cuts me off. “Don’t try and deny it. You know it’s true.”
I don’t contradict him. “So what? You need to prove yourself?”
He sighs and rubs his eyes. “I chose to make my place here, Lena. I chose to make my place with you. Now I have to earn it. It’s not about proving myself. But like you said, there’s a war on. I don’t want to sit on the sidelines.” He leans forward and kisses my forehead once. He still hesitates for just a fraction of a second before he kisses me, as though he has to shake out that old fear, the terror of touch and contamination. “Why are you so upset about this? Nothing will happen.”
“We’ll be back in a few hours,” Julian says, and cups my chin briefly. “You’ll see.”
But they aren’t back by dinnertime, and they aren’t back by the time we rake dirt over the fire, extinguishing it for the night. It’s a liability now, and even though we’ll be colder, and Julian and Tack will have trouble finding their way to us without it, Raven is insistent.
I volunteer to stay up and stand watch. I’m too anxious to sleep. Raven gives me an extra coat from our store of clothing. The nights are still edged with a hard chill.
A few hundred feet from the camp is a slight incline, and an old cement wall, still imprinted with ghostly loops of graffiti, that will shield me from the wind. I huddle up with my back against the stone, cupping the mug of hot water Raven boiled for me earlier to help warm my fingers. My gloves were lost, or stolen, somewhere between the New York homestead and here, and now I have to do without.
The moon rises and touches the camp—the slumbering forms, the domed tents and makeshift shelters—with a fine white sheen. In the distance, a water tower, still intact, hovers over the trees like a steel insect, perched on long, spindly legs. The sky is clear and cloudless, and thousands of stars float out of the darkness. An owl hoots, a hollow, mournful sound that echoes through the woods. From even this short distance, the camp looks peaceful, wrapped up in its white haze, surrounded by the splintered wrecks of old houses: roofs collapsed into the ground, a
