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.
I gesture for Bram to keep moving. Now that the lantern is off, we have to go slowly. I check the watch again. Twenty minutes.
Then I see it: a metal structure rising above the wall like an overgrown birdcage. An alarm tower. Manhattan, which had a wall similar to this one, had similar alarms. Inside the wire cage is a lever that will trip security alarms all across the city, summon regulators and police to the border.
The alarm tower is situated, mercifully, in one of the dark spaces between floodlights. Still, it’s a good bet that there are guards working that portion of the border, even if we can’t see them. The top of the wall is bulk and shadow, and any number of regulators could be sheltered there.
I whisper for Bram and Coral to stop. We are still a good hundred feet from the wall, and concealed in the shadow of looming evergreens and oaks.
“We’ll detonate as close to the alarm tower as possible,” I say, keeping my voice low. “If the explosion doesn’t trip the alarm, the guards will. Bram, I need you to take out one of the floodlights farther on. Not too far, though. If there are guards in the tower, I want them pulled away from their position. I’m going to need to get closer before I can toss this thing.” I ease off my backpack.
“What am I going to do?” Coral asks.
“Stay here,” I say. “Watch. Cover me if something goes wrong.”
“That’s bullshit,” she says halfheartedly.
I check my watch again. Fifteen minutes. Almost go-time. I wrestle the bottle out of my backpack. It feels larger than it did earlier, and harder to carry. I can’t immediately find the matchbook Tack gave me, and I have a momentary panic that it somehow got lost in the dark—but then I remember I put it in my pocket for safekeeping.
Light the rag, throw the bottle, Pippa told me. Nothing to it.
I take a deep breath, exhale silently. I don’t want Coral to know that I’m nervous. “Okay, Bram.”
“Now?” His voice is soft but calm.
“Go now. But wait for my whistle.”
He unfolds from his crouch, then moves away from us soundlessly; he is soon absorbed by the greater dark. Coral and I wait in silence. At one point our elbows collide, and she jerks back. I scoot a little away from her, scanning the wall, trying to make out whether the shadows I see are people, or just tricks of the night.
I check my watch, then check it again. Suddenly the minutes seem to be tumbling forward. 11:50. 11:53. 11:55.
Now.
My throat is parched. I can hardly swallow, and I have to lick my lips twice before I manage a whistle.
For several long, agonizing moments, nothing happens. There’s no longer any point in pretending that I’m not afraid. My heart is jackhammering in my chest, and my lungs feel like they’ve been flattened.
Then I see him. Just for a second, as he darts toward the wall, he crosses into the path of the floodlight and he is lit up, frozen, a photographic still; then the darkness swallows him again, and a second later there’s a tremendous shattering, and the floodlight goes dark.
Instantly, I’m up on my feet and running for the wall. I’m aware of shouting, but I can’t make out any words, don’t focus on anything but the wall and the alarm tower behind it. Now that the floodlight is out, the tower’s silhouettes have come into starker relief, backlit by the moon and a few scattered lights from the city. Fifteen feet from the wall, I press myself against the trunk of a young oak. I put the beggar’s purse between my thighs and struggle to get a match lit. The first one sputters out.
“Come on, come on,” I mutter. My hands are shaking. Matches two and three don’t stay lit.
A staccato of gunfire breaks the stillness. The shots sound random—they’re firing blind, and I say a quick prayer that Bram is back in the trees already, concealed and safe, watching to make sure the rest of the plan goes off.
Match four catches. I move the bottle from between my thighs, touch the match tip to the rag, watch it flare up, white and hot.
Then I move out from the shelter of the trees, breathe deep, and throw.
The bottle spins toward the wall, a dizzying circle of flame. I brace myself for the explosion, but it never comes. The rag, still flaming, detaches from the mouth of the bottle and floats to the ground. I am temporarily mesmerized, watching its path—like a fiery bird, listing and damaged, collapsing into the undergrowth massed at the base of the wall. The bottle shatters harmlessly against the concrete.
“What the fuck? Now what’s the problem?”
“Fire, looks like.”
“Probably your damn cigarette.”
“Stop bitching and get me a hose.”
Still no alarm. The guards are probably used to vandalism from the Invalids, and neither a damaged floodlight nor a dinky fire is enough to cause them concern. It’s possible it won’t matter—Alex, Pippa, and Beast’s diversion is more important, closer to where the action is—but I can’t shake the fear that maybe their plan hasn’t worked either. That will leave a city full of guards, prepped, primed, attentive.
That will be sending Raven, Tack, Julian, and the rest of them into slaughter.
Without consciously deciding to move, I’m on my feet again, sprinting toward an oak close to the wall that looks like it will support my weight. All I know is I have to get over the wall and trigger the alarm myself. I wedge my foot against a knot in the tree trunk and haul myself upward. I’m weaker than I was last fall, when I used to climb to the nests quickly, daily, without a problem. I thud back down to the ground.