Z 2135 (7 page)

Ana was living inside pain that was blooming to full articulation.

Her eyes watered and her head felt like it was about to explode. Not like a migraine— migraines didn’t willfully attempt to chew through her body. Pain singed her ears; she wasn’t sure if they were bleeding, but they felt like they could be. Horrible prickles erupted from her every cell. Ana’s shredded wrist sent fire through her body, so hot she might have been glowing. All of her bubbled—except for her throat, which felt clawed by something in her windpipe.

Ana didn’t think she could go on much longer, but she was unwilling to stop a second before then. When she closed her eyes—which she could only do for seconds without Liam wanting to stop and make sure she was okay—Ana could feel where everything started: the wrist that promised her rotting end.

She kept her face from Liam as they stepped through a pack of decomposing bush dogs. The sky was slowly pulling layers of charcoal onto its long sweep of blue. There was nothing unusual, seeing fallen dogs. Animals were usually faster than zombies, but the undead traveled in larger packs, and were sometimes fast enough—depending on weather and recent diet—to surround packs of wild animals, close in on them, and feed. That was the oddity: there was flesh left to rot on the dogs—as if the zombies had scattered before they could finish. Ana wanted to wonder why and hoped Liam could do it for her; she could barely keep her head straight through the pain.

“How are you doing?” Liam looked over, knowing the answer, but clearly unsure what else he could say.

Ana said nothing, afraid she might cry if she opened her mouth. She tried not to wince and shook her head, hoping Liam got it:
I’m fine as long as we keep moving.

“Ana?”

I’m dying.

“Yes?”

The single word, a syllable, seemed to take everything she had.

“Would you like to stop? We can stop.”

“No,” Ana shook her head and gathered everything she had. They had to keep walking, had to reach Hydrangea, and her father. She bit her bottom lip. “I’m good for now. Let’s walk until dark.”

Liam, clearly hating the idea, simply said “OK.” They kept trudging, past the dead dogs. They were three or so miles outside of Paradise, following the route told to them by Decker, who had been in a hurry for them to leave.

Ana still wanted Liam to ask about the dogs. Wanted him to say something, to act like he used to.
Before
. But like everything else since leaving camp, the subject was a silence between them.

If she had the will, Ana would want to talk about what would happen if she turned before reaching Hydrangea. There was slim hope waiting at the camp: maybe tolerance, temporary solace, or—the best possible scenario—medicine, but her cut was a ravine, deep enough to itch her blood. Mostly Ana wondered how long she had—part of her thought the change could happen at any time, and the weakest part figured she would change any second, with nothing she could do to stop it. It was awful, —a summons to Hydrangea and a chance to see her father—and knowing it could be destroyed before being realized.

So close and yet so horribly far.

They had managed another few minutes before Liam said, “If we stop for the night, we’ll go twice as fast in the morning.”

“I’m OK, really,” Ana said, measuring words to make sure each had its usual rhythm. “I just need to keep my mind from the pain. Keep talking. Tell me a story.”

Liam looked helpless, like he wanted to reach out and soothe her, but couldn’t, and didn’t know what to say or do to make everything better. Her eyes pleaded, though, saying more than her violated throat could, and although it clearly pained him, he played along. “What sort of story?”

“Anything.” Ana’s smile was barely a crack. “Just don’t make me answer any questions.”

“Okay,” Liam didn’t like his assignment, but he was a willing companion. He opened his mouth, then closed it, as if undecided. Finally, he brightened. Smiling he said, “Want to hear about the first time I had steak?”

Ana looked at Liam curiously. Steak was an uncommon meal. She’d had it a few times because her father was a City Watch Major, and his rations covered red meat on most holidays, except for Fertility and a few of the other less celebrated days.
Ana nodded.

“My Uncle Malcolm is a master griller. That’s his job—he cooks for all the bankers at The Fidelity, except for when they loan him to Legal downstairs. His station wouldn’t normally permit rations for steak, but I guess The State can only be so cruel, making a man cook every day of his life and never having any steak for himself. So four times a year, they grant him the pleasure. He gets enough to share, and Uncle M’s a man who likes company. He’s my dad’s brother. The two of them were total opposites. Uncle M loved everyone, my dad hated them all—he was a miserable fuck a long time before he killed himself. Anyway, I think Uncle M always felt bad that The State wouldn’t grant him guardianship over me and that I wound up at The Rock. So when I was 11, he started inviting me to some of his cookouts. The piece was
this
big,” Liam squeezed his fingers together so they were about the size as an easy-to-throw rock, “and I couldn’t wait to see it on the grill.”

Ana tried not to picture her searing wrist as pictures of cooking flesh entered her mind. She wondered how long into the story Liam would be before realizing he probably should’ve chosen an alternate tale. She smiled, though, quietly urging him to continue.

Liam smiled back. He said, “Uncle Malcolm says we’re animals, and that all animals love to eat meat. But we’re the
only
animal that knows how to cook what we eat, some better than others. My uncle says grilling’s an art. Starting with the right meat is everything. The bankers and legal had fancy cuts—filets, rib eyes, and strips. Uncle M’s rations never covered those cuts, so he cooked something called chuck. He said the cut didn’t matter so much if you knew what to do with the meat.”

Liam looked over again. Ana tried cracking her smile wider, not wanting him to know how much she hated his story.

“He would get the fire hot, season the steak with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then tell us how the more sear he could get on the meat, the more flavor he’d be locking in. He was always proud. He always looked you in the eye when he spoke, or at least he made you feel like he was. No matter who Uncle M was talking to, he never let his attention drift away from the meat. He never let anything burn.”

“Anyway, he’d let the meat sit until perfect, then we’d all get our piece. And we could pretend we were bankers, businessmen, or directors, living in the highest floors of the tallest apartments, eating the best meats from the fanciest cuts, sipping real wine from actual glasses, and feasting on the kinds of desserts we could only dream of.” Liam looked far off. Ana sensed he had told the story many times before. He looked at her, raised his eyebrows, and added, “That’s where I first met Duncan, you know—at one of M’s steak parties.”

“Oh?” Stories about Duncan beat searing meat, even if they were arguably more painful.

“Duncan was a friend of my uncle. One rotation, M took the party to a few guys in The Underground. He invited me to the cookout, though I didn’t know why at the time. M was like that, after my dad was gone, there for me in ways I didn’t expect or know I needed. I was like the meat: M never took his eyes from me even when it seemed like he wasn’t looking. I was about 12 or 13 then, so it was a couple of years before I knew more about The Underground.”

While she was grateful for Liam’s stories, he had now woken something in her. Same characters, dramatic change of subject. Ana asked, “How long do you think Duncan was infected?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, seemingly not surprised by the question. “But I hate that he kept it from us. We could have helped him, we could have changed things.
This
didn’t have to happen.” Liam paused, turned, and gestured toward Ana’s bandaged wrist.

Even pained, she had to make her point: “Duncan was honest about everything—how could he lie about this?”

“Are you kidding? That’s easy. You’re honest, too. But you would’ve kept it a secret if you were infected.”

Ana fell silent, saying nothing, knowing Liam was right. Knowing that she was in too much pain to argue even if he wasn’t. She thought of all the many secrets that Liam had kept from her, including his worst—the one where he ratted her father to City Watch, and got him sent outside to The Barrens, which led to her getting thrown to the wrong side of The Walls, leaving behind a brother who needed her, back in City 6.

It had taken time for her to forgive him. Duncan had seen to her doing so, explaining that Liam’s seeming betrayal was his only real play at the time. And she might have done the same to protect her family.

So while she’d been able to forgive him, she couldn’t forget.

And she wasn’t entirely certain she could count on him if things went to hell again.

She wondered how Adam was doing, and how he would be doing if he had made it out with them. Life outside City 6 was nothing like Ana expected. The State made it sound like nothing but empty and barely varied topography. Even its name, The Barrens, spoke of dusty nothingness. But The Barrens teemed with life, and were heavily populated, though the population spread thin across the landscape. Darwin orbs showed only The Games, and outsiders were never broadcast, as if they didn’t exist. But they definitely existed, and Ana could barely get her head around what was slowly surfacing as inarguable truth: there were more people outside the cities than in them.

Ana wondered how she had willingly lived blind to the truth her entire life. Sure, her family had been happy when her father was City Watch. They didn’t get to live in the high apartments or eat steak, but they had harbored no fear of the Dark Quarters, and celebrated every state holiday. Ana had friends, and though she didn’t like her job, it was a fair assignment, better than many of her peers had managed to land. But she had also seen how easily that could be snatched away.

Now, everything was different, and it always would be.

Especially not now that Ana was dying.

To punctuate her thought, a searing pain shot up Ana’s arm, starting at her wrist, then screaming to her shoulder. She cried out, involuntarily, a sharp and angry whimper, which fell out worse for her trying to hide it.

Liam stopped walking and turned to Ana. “No more,” he said, “we have to stop.” He looked up at the sky, for show. “It’ll be dark in minutes and we still have to find a place to stop. We need shelter and you need rest.”

“Okay,” she agreed, too weak to do anything else and wanting to stop so Liam could care for her … and maybe a little because she just wanted him to shut up about it.

He accepted surrender with a smile. He walked three steps toward Ana, softly grabbed her left hand, and gently pulled her after him. He was pointing them in the direction of a copse of trees she could just make out in the distance, at the base of some hills.

“Liam,” she said after a minute of walking, curious, needing distraction, and knowing Liam wouldn’t be as standoffish with her in such pain
.
“Tell me a story about Chelle.”

His sweaty fingers twitched, and she wondered if he would refuse her. Liam was embarrassed, though Ana didn’t know if that was for his sake or hers.

Finally, he asked, “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

Ana thought, then pushed her answer through the pain. “No,” she said. “I don’t think I do.”

“Well, neither did I. I’m usually pretty cynical, though I don’t really mean or even want to be. I can’t help it, though. I think people are sheep and leaders are evil—I’m as far from a hopeless romantic as you can get. But with Chelle, it
was
love at first sight. This isn’t retrospective pondering, and I’m not blurring love and lust. Not then and not now. It was what it was, and I couldn’t deny its reality. I knew I loved Chelle the second I saw her. She asked me if I wanted to meet at The Social for a drink, but only because she was the first to make her mouth open. If she hadn’t, I would have, and both of us knew it. I saw it, seconds after setting sight on Chelle: there was something special about her. We didn’t have to talk before I felt how much I wanted to know her. I’m a cynic, Ana, not an idiot. I know love when I see it.”

Liam went on and on about Chelle … and Ana wished she hadn’t asked. She tried not to feel hurt, but she couldn’t help but wonder how he felt about
her
. Over the past few months, Ana had felt Liam giving her many of the same looks he had described giving to Chelle, but how much was in her mind and how much was true? She wondered if he would sacrifice everything for her as he had for Chelle.

But in a way, he already had. He’d thrown himself into The Games in order to “make things right” and protect her as long as possible. So he had paid his penance, she figured. But did he do it out of obligation to her father, or because he truly felt something for her?

She supposed it no longer mattered.

Her life was over. It might happen in a few days, or even as she slept. Borrowed time meant nothing mattered, and love probably even less.

They stopped under a large tree, with huge drooping branches that looked like tentacles, ten feet from a cave. Before Liam could speak, Ana said, “Thanks, Liam. For everything. I know how lucky I am to have you.”

Ana was sure his cheeks filled with color she couldn’t quite see in the almost dark. He said, “Don’t worry about it, Ana. It’s the least I can do … after everything.” He pointed to the cave’s open mouth and nodded at the tree. “Any preference between getting trapped in a cold, dark cave with only one exit, or up in a tree with nowhere to go if danger finds us below?”

Ana found her evening’s first laugh. The scant cackle left her lips as a whisper. “I guess the tree,” she said.

Liam smiled, climbed onto the first branch, then pulled Ana up gently beside him. Despite his intentions, it felt as if her skin were ripping beneath the bandage. She cried out as he reached down beneath her armpits, and pulled her up the rest of the way. She couldn’t help but notice his hands brushing over her breasts, but neither of them acknowledged such as she shifted onto the branch beside him.