Chapter 6
The late-afternoon sky burns my vision. I press my palms against my watering eyes and fill my lungs with clean, bright air.
“The bad news is, we’re still about half a mile from the wall,” Arrin says, sliding the grate back over a rain gutter. “Good news is, I don’t think there’s a hive between us and there. All we’ll have to watch out for is patrolling militia and raiders. But raiders usually don’t come around the militia’s camp, and they never come out before sunset.”
I pull my hands from my face and squint. We stand on the side of a deserted street surrounded by crumbling factories, abandoned cars, and broken traffic lights. Garbage and tumbleweeds blow down the street, the only noise in this arid world of silence.
Arrin starts to run. I lope to her side and for the first time, truly see her.
She is tiny, the top of her greasy head barely as high as my chin. One of her eyes is bruised and nearly swollen shut, and her lip is split. Greasy-looking grime covers every inch of her skin and darkens her pores into a constellation of black dots. Yet, beneath the dirt and filth, she is a child. She glares at me with cold blue eyes.
“Why are you staring at me, Fo?”
“How old are you?” I ask.
She thrusts her square chin and pointy nose forward. “Thirteen.”
“So am I,” I say. I can remember my birthday cake, remember the pink candles. Thirteen of them.
Arrin raises one dark eyebrow and looks me up and down. “Liar. You’re an adult.”
“No. I remember turning thirteen,” I say. My hand wanders up to my throat again, feeling my collarbone for a fine chain. But there is nothing hanging around my neck.
Arrin shakes her head. “What you are is messed up in the head. You have hips. And knockers. And you look like an adult.” Arrin tilts her head to the side, her eyes suddenly alert. She grabs my arm and yanks me toward the nearest building. We dart through a missing door and Arrin dives into the shadows. I crouch beside her, perplexed.
“What’s wrong?” I mouth.
She points toward the doorway, and I peer around the splintered frame. Six men are marching down the street toward us, the bases of long black rifles cupped in their hands, the other ends resting on their shoulders. They wear crisp brown jackets and crisp brown pants, and their hair is slightly long on top but short on the sides of their heads. Above their left ears, each one has horizontal stripes shaved into his scalp, and pinned over each of their hearts is a shiny silver star.
Aside from having different colors of hair, they look like paper dolls, all symmetry and rhythm, even down to their staccato march. Tchaikovsky’s “March of the Wooden Soldiers” echoes in my head, and my fingers begin to move, playing imaginary notes. “Militia,” I whisper.
Arrin tugs me away from the door and presses a finger to her lips. Her nails are ragged and caked with dirt and blood. The creases on her finger are dark-red stripes. I frown and look at her clothes—my old clothes. Blood is spattered on them, like crimson fireworks. She raises one eyebrow and points at me, and I look down. Blood coats my hands, clings to the pale hairs of my arms, and covers my clothing. I gag and my stomach heaves, but nothing comes up. I am too empty. Arrin clasps her hand over my mouth, and the smell of blood makes me dry heave again.
Outside the building, the militia march past, their footsteps a fading cadence. When the evening grows quiet, Arrin removes her hand from my mouth. Silent, she stands and darts out the door. I follow on her heels.
We cling to the shadows, hugging the bases of factories until the sun sets and the entire world is in darkness. And then something changes. My stomach growls, saliva fills my mouth, and I turn my face to the twilight sky and sniff. Images of roast turkey and grilled steak pop into my brain. Clutching my concave stomach, I whimper. I will do anything for food.
Too focused on food to realize she’s stopped, I crash into Arrin. She gasps and hunches over.
“Arrin? What’s wrong?” I put my hands on her shoulders and try to help her stand. She whimpers and pulls away, and my hand comes away wet. Even in the dusky light I can see my palm is coated with something dark. I squeeze my hand shut. When I open it, my fingers are sticky. “Blood,” I whisper, not so hungry anymore.
“I’ll be fine. I’ve had worse,” Arrin says.
“You have?”
“Yeah,” she says, peering up at me with a gleam in her blue eyes. She chuckles and stands tall. “Lots worse. Those guys in the tunnels, they come down and prey on the Fecs all the time. I’ve dreamed about killing them for years. You have no idea how good it felt when I stabbed that one!”
My stomach turns. “You stabbed him?”
“Yep. One swift slice to the carotid artery.” She grins, and her face looks like it did when she was eating my crackers—filled with greedy satisfaction.
“The what artery?” I ask, slightly sick to my stomach, slightly terrified of this … child.
“Carotid? It’s in the neck. My dad’s a doctor, and he taught me how to kill. Where’d you think all the blood came from?” She looks pointedly at my blood-covered arms and hands, and I cringe. “Come on. We’re almost there.”
Arrin cradles her arm as we continue down the dark street. The smell of food grows stronger, along with other smells that tickle my senses. Wood smoke. Laundry detergent. Sweat and soap. And then the smells are accompanied by sound. Laughing. Singing. Talking. A dog barking.
Suddenly something different floats on the air, and my heart skips a beat. I press my hands to my ears, wondering if my imagination is going wild, wondering if the sound I hear is trapped in my head. But with pressure on my ears, the melody dies. When I uncover my ears, the music returns—Beethoven’s Seventh—the same song I heard in the dripping water as I fell asleep the night before. Only this time, instead of remembering the tune as I played it on the piano, guitar strings sing the melody.
We round the corner of a building and halt, and my eyes grow wide. A wall, taller than all of the factories we just passed, juts up from the sidewalk on the other side of the street, so long it disappears into the night. At the base of the wall sits a village, or rather a camp, swarming with men in brown uniforms. Fires glow orange, making shadows dance on the wall, revealing triangular tents, releasing the scent of cooking meat, illuminating a lone man playing the guitar—playing the song I played a thousand times on the piano before … before everything changed. A spit of meat roasts above the guitar player’s fire, and the music combined with the food … he’s like the pied piper. And I’m a rat. Without thinking, I take a step forward.
“Idiot! You don’t even know the plan yet!” Arrin grabs my hand and stops me. She pulls me toward her and puts her mouth to my ear, explaining how I’m going to pay her back. With each whispered word, my pulse beats a little faster and my palms begin to sweat. When she stops speaking, I stare at her like she’s insane. And judging by the look in her eye, maybe she is.
“Are you serious?” I whisper, glancing at the camp again.
She nods. I look past the men in brown, past the tents and campfires, to two people slouching at the wall’s base, their backs pressed against it. One is small, a pile of bones in a heap of grimy clothes, the other is slightly bigger, a little more filled out but still scrawny. Firelight glints off metal shackles encasing the lower halves of their arms. I look at the men in brown again and realize almost every single one of them holds a gun.
“What if they shoot me?” I ask.
“Then you won’t owe me anymore. We’ll be even,” she says.
I try to take a step away, but she grabs my wrist in an iron-strong hand. “No. I’m not doing that,” I say. “I’ll find another way to pay you—” The tip of Arrin’s knife finds the soft flesh under my chin and all I can think is carotid artery. I don’t dare breathe.
“You can die right now, Fo, or you can help me and have a chance to live,” she warns, her voice a low growl.
Slowly, I put my hand on her wrist, soft and gentle, like I’m trying to pet a dog that wants to bite me. She pushes the knife a little harder so the tip digs into my skin, and I know if I’m not careful, she’ll kill me right here, right now. Releasing her wrist, my hands slowly go up in surrender. She moves the knife so it no longer touches my skin, but barely.
“So will you help me or not?” she asks.
“I’ll do it,” I whisper, my voice trembling. She nods and tucks the knife into a fold of her clothes. I turn and stare at the camp, take a deep breath, possibly my last, and take a step forward.
“Fo,” Arrin says. I jolt to a startled stop and look at her. “If they catch you, say you’re a boy. Since you don’t have the mark, they’ll probably let you go. Might even let you inside the wall if you qualify.”
I glance at the back of my right hand. The mark is still covered, but by blood and grime as much as makeup. I run my ice-cold hands through my butchered hair and sigh.
“Which one’s your brother?” I ask, looking at the two handcuffed people with their backs against the wall.
“The little one. He’s eleven.”
“Wait. Eleven? I thought you said he was nine.”
She gnaws the skin on the side of her thumb and then swallows. “You obviously need to clean the wax out of your ears,” she retorts. “What are you waiting for?”
I clench my teeth and take a deep breath, brace myself to run and—
“Fo?”
I jump again and glare at Arrin. “What?”
“Thanks.”
I nod, like I had a choice in the matter. Facing the camp, I dig my toes into the pavement. And I sprint.