“Black hair,” he said. No. Wrong. “Probably early twenties. Had a funny name—Bird. No, Raven. She was from up this way, actually. Came south last year with a whole crew.” He lowered his voice and winked. “Traded the necklace and a good knife, just for a Test. You know what I mean.”
But I’d stopped listening. I didn’t care about the girl, Raven, or whatever her name was—I knew she might have taken it off Lena. I knew this might mean that Lena was dead. But it could mean that she had made it, joined up with a group of homesteaders, made it south. Maybe Lena had traded with the girl, Raven, for something she needed.
It was my only hope.
“Where was she?” I stood up. It was dark already, but I couldn’t wait. It was my first—my only—clue about where Lena might be.
“Big warehouse just outside of White Plains,” he said. “There was a whole big group of ’em. Two or three dozen.” He frowned. “You sure you don’t want to buy it?”
I was still holding on to the necklace. “I’m sure,” I said. I put it down carefully; I didn’t want to leave it behind, but I had nothing but the gun Rogers had given me and a knife I’d taken off one of the regulators, plus a few IDs. Nothing I could trade.
Rogers figured we’d made it ten miles west of Bristol, Connecticut; that meant, roughly figuring, New York City was another one hundred miles and White Plains thirty less than that. I could do thirty miles a day if the terrain was good and I didn’t make camp for more than a few hours each night.
I had to try. I had no idea whether Raven was on the move and whether Lena, if she was with them, would soon be moving too. I’d been asking, praying, for a way to find her, for a sign that she was still alive—and a sign had come.
That’s the thing about faith. It works.
Rogers gave me a pack with a flashlight, a tarp for bedding down, and as much food as he could spare, even though he said it was craziness starting out right away, in the dark, all alone. And he was right. It was craziness. Amor deliria nervosa. The deadliest of all deadly things.
Sometimes I think maybe they were right all along, the people on the other side in Zombieland. Maybe it would be better if we didn’t love. If we didn’t lose, either. If we didn’t get our hearts stomped on, shattered; if we didn’t have to patch and repatch until we’re like Frankenstein monsters, all sewn together and bound up by who knows what.
If we could just float along, like snow.
That’s what Zombieland is: frozen, calm, quiet. It’s the world after a blizzard, the peacefulness that comes with it, the muffled silence and the sense that nothing in the world is moving. It’s beautiful, in its own way.
Maybe we’d be better off.
But how could anyone who’s ever seen a summer—big explosions of green and skies lit up electric with splashy sunsets, a riot of flowers and wind that smells like honey—pick the snow?
Excerpt from Panic
Read on for an excerpt of LAUREN OLIVER’S thrilling novel Panic, which Kirkus Reviews says “will have readers up until the wee hours.”
heather
THE WATER WAS SO COLD IT TOOK HEATHER’S BREATH away as she fought past the kids crowding the beach and standing in the shallows, waving towels and homemade signs, cheering and calling up to the remaining jumpers.
She took a deep breath and went under. The sound of voices, of shouting and laughter, was immediately muted.
Only one voice stayed with her.
I didn’t mean for it to happen.
Those eyes; the long lashes, the mole under his right eyebrow.
There’s just something about her.
Something about her. Which meant: Nothing about you.
She’d been planning to tell him she loved him tonight.
The cold was thunderous, a buzzing rush through her body. Her denim shorts felt as though they’d been weighted with stones. Fortunately, years of braving the creek and racing the quarry with Bishop had made Heather Nill a strong swimmer.
The water was threaded with bodies, twisting and kicking, splashing, treading water—the jumpers, and the people who had joined their celebratory swim, sloshing into the quarry still clothed, carrying beer cans and joints. She could hear a distant rhythm, a faint drumming, and she let it move her through the water—without thought, without fear.
That’s what Panic was all about: no fear.
She broke the surface for air and saw that she’d already crossed the short stretch of water and reached the opposite shore: an ugly pile of misshapen rocks, slick with black and green moss, piled together like an ancient collection of Legos. Pitted with fissures and crevices, they shouldered up toward the sky, ballooning out over the water.