Alex (3 page)

“How about the other one?”

“He's not moving.”

Holding my breath, willing my muscles not to move, not to twitch even. If my heart was still beating, I couldn't feel it. Time was slowing down, stretching into long, syrupy seconds.

I'd killed only once in my life, when I was ten years old, just before I moved to Portland. Old Man Hicks, we called him. Sixty years old, the oldest person I knew in the Wilds by far, crippled by arthritis, bedridden, cataracts, full-body pain, day in and day out. He begged us to do it.
When the horse ain't no good, you're doing the horse a favor. Put me down
, he used to say.
For the love of God, put me down
.

They made me do it. So I would know that I could. So I would know I was ready.

“Yup.” The man stopped above me. Toed me with one of his boots, right between the ribs. Then squatted. I felt his fingers on my collar, searching for my neck, for my pulse. “Looks pretty dead to me, all r—”

I rolled over, hooked an arm around his neck, and pulled him down on top of me as the second guy brought his gun up and let two bullets loose. He had good aim. The guy I was using like a shield got hit twice in the chest. For a split second, the shooter hesitated, realizing what he'd done, realizing he'd just emptied a round into his partner's chest, and in that second I rolled the body off me, aimed, and pulled the trigger. It didn't take more than a single shot.

Like riding a bike
, I thought, and had a sudden image of Lena on her bike, skidding down onto the beach, legs out, laughing, while her tires shuddered on the sand. I stood up and searched the men for guns, IDs, money.

People do terrible things, sometimes, for the best reasons.

“What's the worst thing you've ever done?”

We were lying on the blanket in the backyard of 37 Brooks, like we always did that summer. Lena was on her side, cheek resting on her hand, hair loose. Beautiful.

“The worst thing I've ever done . . .” I pretended to think about it. Then I grabbed her by the waist and rolled her on top of me as she shrieked and begged me to stop tickling. “It's what I'm thinking of doing right now.”

She laughed and pushed herself off me. “I'm serious,” she said. She kept one hand on my chest. She was wearing a tank top, and I could see one of her bra straps—pale seashell-colored pink. I reached out and ran a finger along her collarbones, my favorite place: like the silhouette of tiny wings.

“You have to answer,” she said. And I almost did. I almost told her then. I wanted her to tell me it was okay, that she still loved me, that she would never leave. But then she leaned down and kissed me and her hair tickled my chest, and when she drew back her eyes were bright and honey-colored. “I want to know all your deep, dark secrets.”

“All of them? You sure?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“You were in my dream last night.”

Her eyes were smiling. “Good dream?”

“Come here,” I said. “I'll show you.” I rolled her down onto the blanket and moved on top of her.

“You're cheating,” she said, but she laughed. Her hair was fanned out across the blanket. “You didn't answer my question.”

“I don't have to,” I said, and kissed her. “I'm an angel.”

I'm a liar.

I was lying even then. She deserved an angel, and I wanted to be hers.

When I was in the Crypts, I'd often sat awake and made a list of things she should know, things I would tell her if I ever found her again—like about killing Old Man Hicks when I was ten, how I was shaking so hard Flick had to hold my wrists steady. All the information I passed on when I was in Portland, coded messages and signals—information used I-don't-know-how for I-don't-know-what. Lies I told and had to tell. Times I said I wasn't scared and I was.

And now, these last sins: two regulators, dead.

And one more for the road.

Because when the fight was over, and I came down from the house to take stock of the damage, I saw someone familiar: Roman, the guard from the Crypts, lying in the leaves with a handle sticking out of his chest, his shirt clotted with blood. But alive. His breath was a liquid gargle in his throat.

“Help me,” he said, choking on the words. His eyes were rolling up to the sky, wild, like a horse's. And I remembered Old Man Hicks saying,
When the horse ain't no good, you're doing the horse a favor
.

So I did. Help him. He was dying anyway, slowly. I put a bullet through his head, so it would go quick.

I'm sorry, Lena
.

We lost three of our group in the fight that day, but the rest of us moved on. We went slowly, zigzagging. Any time we heard rumors of a populated homestead, we scouted for it. Rogers liked the company, the information, the opportunity to communicate with other freedom fighters, restock our weapons, trade for better provisions. I only cared about one thing. Each time we got close to a camp, I got my hopes up all over again. Maybe this one . . . maybe this time . . . maybe she'd be there. But the farther we got from Portland, the more I worried. I had no way of finding Lena. No way of knowing whether she was alive, even.

By the time we made it to Connecticut, spring was coming. The woods were shaking off the freeze. The ice on the rivers opened up. There were plants poking up everywhere. We had good luck. The weather held, we got lucky with a few rabbits and geese. There was food enough.

Finally, I got a break. We were camping for a few days in the old husk of a shopping center, all blown-out windows and low cement buildings with faded signs for
HARDWARE
and
DELI SANDWICHES
and
PRINCESS NAILS
, a place that kind of reminded me of the gallery, and we came across a trader who was going in the opposite direction, heading north to Canada. He camped with us for the night, and in the evening he unrolled a thick mohair blanket and spread out all his wares, whatever he had for sale: coffee, tobacco and rolling papers, tweezers, antibiotics, sewing needles and pins, a few pairs of glasses. (Even though none of the glasses in the trader's collection were the right fit, Rogers traded a knife for a pair anyway. They were better than nothing.)

Then I saw it: buried in a tangle of miscellaneous jewelry, crap no one would use except for scrap metal, was a small turquoise ring on a silver chain. I recognized it immediately. I'd seen her wear it a hundred times. I'd removed it so I could kiss her neck, her collarbones. I'd helped her fasten the little clasp, and she'd laughed because my fingers were so clumsy.

I reached for it slowly, like it was alive—like it might leap away from my fingers.

“Where did you get this?” I asked him, trying to keep my voice steady. The turquoise felt warm in my hand, as if it still carried a little bit of her heat in the stone.

“Pretty, isn't it?” He was good at what he did: a fast talker, a guy who knew how to survive. “Sterling and turquoise. Probably sell for a decent amount on the other side. Forty, fifty bucks if you need some quick cash. What are you giving for it?”

“I'm not buying,” I said, though I wanted to. “I just want to know where you got it.”

“I didn't steal it,” he said.

“Where?” I said again.

“A girl gave it to me,” he said, and I stopped breathing.

“What did she look like?” Big eyes, like maple syrup. Soft brown hair. Perfect.

“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?

Read on for an excerpt of LAUREN OLIVER'S thrilling novel
Panic
, which
Kirkus Reviews
says “will have readers up until the wee hours.”

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.

Thirty-one people had already jumped—all of them Heather's friends and former classmates. Only a small knot of people remained at the top of the ridge—the jagged, rocky lip of shoreline jutting forty feet into the air on the north side of the quarry, like a massive tooth biting its way out of the ground.

It was too dark to see them. The flashlights and the bonfire only illuminated the shoreline and a few feet of the inky dark water, and the faces of the people who had jumped, still bobbing in the water, triumphant, too happy to feel the cold, taunting the other competitors. The top of the ridge was a shaggy mass of black, where the trees were encroaching on the rock, or the rock was getting slowly pulled into the woods, one or the other.

But Heather knew who they were. All the competitors had to announce themselves once they reached the top of the ridge, and then Diggin Rodgers, this year's sportscaster, parroted back the names into the megaphone, which he had borrowed from his older brother, a cop.