Requiem

won’t share her plans with us.

In the end, Pippa decides that smaller is better: The fewer people we involve, the less chance of a screwup. The best fighters—Tack, Raven, Dani, and Hunter—will be responsible for the main action: getting to the dam, wherever it is, and taking it down. Lu insists on going with them and so does Julian, and even though neither one is a trained fighter, Raven relents.

I could kill her.

“We’ll need guards, too,” she says. “Lookouts. Don’t worry. I’ll bring him back safely.”

Alex, Pippa, Coral, and one of Pippa’s crew, nicknamed Beast—I can only assume because of his tangle of wild black hair and the dark beard that obscures his mouth—will form one diversionary force. Somehow I get roped into heading up the second one. Bram will be my support.

“I wanted to stay with Julian,” I tell Tack. I don’t feel comfortable complaining directly to Pippa.

“Yeah? Well I wanted bacon and eggs this morning,” he says, without glancing up. He’s rolling a cigarette.

“After all I did for you,” I say, “you still treat me like a child.”

“Only when you act like one,” he says sharply, and I remember a fight I had with Alex once, a lifetime ago, after I had first discovered that my mom had been imprisoned in the Crypts my whole life. I haven’t thought about that moment, and Alex’s sudden outburst, in forever. That was just before he told me he loved me for the first time. That was just before I said it back.

I feel suddenly disoriented and have to squeeze my nails into my palms until I feel a brief shock of pain. I don’t understand how everything changes, how the layers of your life get buried. Impossible. At some point, at some time, we must all explode.

“Look, Lena.” Now Tack raises his head. “We’re asking you to do this because we trust you. You’re a leader. We need you.”

I’m so startled by the sincerity of his tone, I can’t think of a response. In my old life, I was never a leader. Hana was the leader. I got to follow along. “When does it end?” I say finally.

“I don’t know,” Tack says. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him admit to not knowing something. He tries to roll up his cigarette, but his hands are shaking. He has to stop, and try again. “Maybe it doesn’t.” Finally he gives up and throws the cigarette down in disgust. For a moment we stand there in silence.

“Bram and I need a third,” I say at last. “That way if something happens, if one of us goes down, the other one still has backup.”

Tack looks up at me again. I’m reminded that he, too, is young—twenty-four, Raven once told me. In that second, he looks it. He looks like a grateful kid, like I’ve just offered to help with his homework.

Then the moment passes, and his face goes hard again. He removes his pack of tobacco, and some rolling papers, and begins again. “You can have Coral,” he says.

The part of the mission that frightens me the most is the journey through the camp. Pippa gives us one of the battery-operated lanterns, which Bram carries. In its jerky glow, the crowd around us is broken into pieces and fragments: the flash of a grin here; a woman, bare-breasted, nursing a baby, staring at us resentfully. A tide of people barely break apart to let us through, then reform and refold behind us. I have a sense of their sucking need: Already, the moans have started, the whispers of water, water. From everywhere, too, comes the sound of shouting; stifled cries in the darkness; fists into flesh.

We reach the riverbank, now eerily quiet. There are no more people teeming in its depths, fighting over water. There is no more water to fight over—only a tiny trickle, no wider than a finger, black with silt.

It’s a mile to the wall, and then another four northwest along its perimeter, to one of the better-fortified areas. A problem there will bring the most attention and pull the largest number of security forces away from the point Raven, Tack, and the others need to breach.

Earlier, Pippa opened the second, smaller fridge, revealing shelves packed with weapons she had been sent by the resistance. Tack, Raven, Lu, Hunter, and Julian were each provided with guns. We’ve had to make do with a half-empty bottle of gasoline, stuffed with an ancient rag: a beggar’s purse, Pippa called it. By silent consensus I have been elected the one to carry it. As we walk, it seems to grow heavier in my backpack, bumping uncomfortably against my spine. I can’t help but imagine sudden explosions, being blown accidentally to bits.

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.