Requiem

they’ll scatter into dust.

Then Julian turns and sees me. “Morning, beauty,” he says. His face is still bruised and swollen in places, but his eyes are exactly the color of early-morning sky. When he smiles, I think he is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

My mom grabs a bucket and stands. “I was going for a shower,” she says.

“Me too,” I say.

As I wade into the still-freezing stream, the wind raises goose bumps on my body. A cloud of swallows skates across the sky; the water carries a slight taste of grit; my mother hums downstream. This is not any kind of happiness that I imagined. It is not what I chose.

But it’s enough. It is more than enough.

On the border of Rhode Island, we encounter another group of about two dozen homesteaders, who are on their way to Portland as well. All but two of them are on the side of the resistance, and the two who don’t care to fight don’t dare to be left alone. We are nearing the coast, and the detritus of old life is everywhere. We come across a massive cement honeycomb structure, which Tack identifies as an old parking garage.

Something about the structure makes me anxious. It’s like a towering stone insect, outfitted with a hundred eyes. The whole group falls silent as we pass under its shadow. The hair on my neck is standing up, and even though it’s stupid, I can’t shake the feeling that we are being watched.

Tack, who is leading the group, holds up his hand. We all come to an abrupt stop. He cocks his head, obviously listening for something. I hold my breath. It’s quiet, except for the usual rustle of animals in the woods, and the gentle sighing of the wind.

Then a fine spray of gravel lands on us from above, as though someone has accidentally toed it out of one of the upper levels of the parking garage.

Instantly, everything is blur and motion.

“Get down, get down!” Max yells as all of us are reaching for weapons, unshouldering rifles, and dropping into the underbrush.

“Coo-ee!”

The voice, the shout, freezes us. I crane my head toward the sky, shielding my eyes from the sun. For a second, I’m sure I’m dreaming.

Pippa has emerged from the dark caverns of the honeycomb structure and stands on a sun-drenched ledge, waving a red handkerchief down at us, grinning.

“Pippa!” Raven cries out, her voice strangled. Only then do I believe it.

“Hey, yourself,” Pippa shouts down. And slowly, from behind her, more and more people edge into view: masses of skinny, ragged people, packed into all the different levels of the garage.

When Pippa finally makes it to the ground, she is immediately engulfed by Tack, Raven, and Max. Beast is alive too; he lopes out into the sunshine directly behind Pippa, and it seems almost too much to believe. For fifteen minutes, we do nothing but shout and laugh and talk over one another, and not a single word gets said that anyone understands.

Finally, Max makes himself heard over the chaos of competing voices and laughter. “What happened?” He’s laughing, breathless. “We heard no one escaped. We heard it was a massacre.”

Instantly, Pippa grows serious. “It was a massacre,” she says. “We lost hundreds. The tanks came and encircled the camp. They used tear gas, machine guns, shells. It was a bloodbath. The screaming—” She breaks off. “It was awful.”

“How did you get out?” Raven asks. We have all gotten quiet. Now it seems horrible that only a second earlier we were laughing, rejoicing in Pippa’s safety.

“We had hardly any time,” Pippa says. “We tried to warn everyone. But you know how it was—chaos. Hardly anyone would listen.”

Behind her, Invalids are stepping tentatively out into the sunlight, emerging from the parking garage—wide- eyed, silent, nervous, like people who have weathered a hurricane and are amazed to see the world still exists. I can only imagine what they witnessed at Waterbury.

“How did you get around the tanks?” Bee asks. It’s still hard for me to think of her as my mother when she acts like this, like a hardened member of the resistance. For now, I am content to allow her to exist doubly: She is my mother sometimes, and sometimes, a leader and a fighter.

“We didn’t run,” Pippa says. “There was no chance. The whole area was swarming with troops. We hid.” A spasm of pain crosses her face. She opens her mouth, as though to say more, and then closes it again.

“Where did you hide?” Max presses.

Pippa and Beast exchange an indecipherable look. For a moment, I think Pippa will refuse to answer. Something happened at the camp, something she won’t tell us.

Then she coughs and turns her eyes back to Max. “In the riverbed, at first, before the shooting started,” she says. “It didn’t take long for the bodies to start falling. We were protected under them, once they did.”

“Oh my God.” Hunter balls his fist into his right eye. He looks like he’s about to be sick. Julian turns away from Pippa.

“We had no choice,” Pippa says sharply. “Besides, they were already dead. At least their bodies didn’t go to waste.”

“We’re glad you made it, Pippa,” Raven says gently, and places a hand on Pippa’s shoulder. Pippa turns to her gratefully, her face suddenly eager, open, like a puppy’s.

“I was planning to get word to you at the safe house, but I figured you had already left,” she says. “I didn’t want to risk it when there were troops in the area. Too conspicuous. So I went north. We stumbled on the hive by accident.” She jerks her chin to the vast parking structure. It really does look like a gigantic hive, now that there are figures, half-shadowed, peering down at us from its different levels, flitting through patches of light and then retreating once again into the darkness. “Figured it was a good place to hide out for a bit and wait for things to settle down.”

“How many you got?” Tack asks. Dozens and dozens of people have descended and are standing, herded together, a little ways behind Pippa, like a pack of dogs that has been beaten and starved into submission. Their silence is disconcerting.

“More than three hundred,” Pippa says. “Closer to four.”

A huge number: still, only a fraction of the number of people who were camped outside Waterbury. For a moment I am filled with a blind, white-hot rage. We wanted the freedom to love, and instead we have been turned into fighters, savages. Julian moves close to me and puts his arm around my shoulder, allowing me to lean into him, as though he can sense what I am thinking.

“We’ve seen no sign of the troops,” Raven says. “My guess is they came up from New York. If they had tanks, they must have used one of the service roads along the Hudson. Hopefully they’ve gone south again.”

“Mission accomplished,” Pippa says bitterly.

“They haven’t accomplished anything.” My mother speaks up again, but her voice is softer now. “The fight isn’t over—it’s only beginning.”

“We’re headed to Portland,” Max says. “We have friends there—lots of them. There’ll be payback,” he adds with sudden fierceness. “An eye for an eye.”

“And the whole world goes blind,” Coral puts in quietly.

Everyone turns to look at her. She has barely spoken since Alex left, and I have been careful to avoid her. I feel her pain like a physical presence, a dark, sucking energy that consumes and surrounds her, and it makes me both pity and resent her. It’s a reminder that he was no longer mine to lose.

“What did you say?” Max says with barely concealed aggression.

Coral looks away. “Nothing,” she says. “It’s just something I once heard.”

“We have no choice,” my mother insists. “If we don’t fight, we’ll be destroyed. It’s not about payback.” She shoots a look at Max, and he grunts and crosses his arms. “It’s about survival.”

Pippa runs a hand over her head. “My people are weak,” she says finally. “We’ve been living on scraps—rats, mostly, and what we could forage in the woods.”

“There will be food up north,” Max says. “Supplies. Like I said, the resistance has friends in Portland.”

“I’m not sure they’ll make it,” Pippa says, lowering her voice.