“How?” Julian asks. “Because of the deliria?” I know if I say yes he’ll feel good. See, he’ll think. We’re right. We’ve been right all this time. Let people die so that we can be right.
“You,” I say. “Your people.”
Julian sucks in a quick breath. When he speaks again, his voice is softer. “You said you never had nightmares.”
I wall myself up inside. From the tower, the people on the ground are no more than ants, specks, punctuation marks: easily smudged out.
“I’m an Invalid,” I say. “We lie.”
In the morning my plan has hardened, clarified. Julian is sitting in the corner, watching me the way he did when we were first taken. He is still wearing the rag around his head, but he looks alert now, and the swelling in his face has gone down.
I wrestle the umbrella apart, pulling the nylon shell away from its hinged metal arms. Then I lay the nylon flat and cut it into four long strips. I tie the strips together into a makeshift cord and test its strength. Decent. It won’t hold forever, but I don’t need longer than a few minutes.
“What are you doing?” Julian asks me, and I can tell he’s trying hard not to seem too curious. I don’t answer him. I no longer care what he does, or whether he comes with me or remains here to rot forever, as long as he stays out of the way.
It doesn’t take me long to remove the hinges from the flap door, just some wiggling and working with the point of the knife: the hinges are rusted and loose anyway.
Once the hinges are off, I manage to push the door outward, so it falls, clattering into the hall. That will bring someone, and soon. My heart speeds up. It’s showtime, as Tack used to say, right before heading out on a hunt. I pull The Book of Shhh onto my lap and tear out a page.
“You’ll never fit through that space,” Julian says. “It’s too small.”
“Just stay quiet,” I say. “Can you do that for me? Just don’t speak.”
I unscrew the mascara that made its way into my backpack, silently send a message of thanks to Raven—now that she is on the other side, in Zombieland, she can’t get enough of its little trinkets and comforts, its well-lit stores stocked with rows and rows of things to buy.
I can feel Julian watching me. I scrawl out a note on the blank side of the page.
The girl is violent. Worried she might kill me. Ready to talk if you let me out NOW.
I slip the note through the cat-flap door and into the hallway. Then I repack my backpack with The Book of Shhh, the empty water bottle, and pieces of the dismantled umbrella. I grip the knife in my hand, stand by the door, and wait, trying to slow my breathing, every so often flipping the knife into my other hand and wiping sweat from my palms onto my pants. Hunter and Bram once took me deer hunting with them, just to watch, and this was the part I couldn’t stand: the stillness, the waiting.
Fortunately, I don’t wait long. Someone must have heard the flap door fall. Pretty soon I hear another door close—more information; information is good; that means there’s another door somewhere, another room underground—and footsteps coming toward me. I hope it’s the girl who comes, the one with the wedding ring threaded through her nose.
I hope, above all, it’s not the albino.
But the boot steps are heavy, and when they stop just outside the door, it’s a man who mutters, “What the hell?”
My whole body feels wound up, coiled like an electrical wire. I’ll have only one shot to get this right.
Now that I’ve disabled the flap door, I have a solid view of mud-splattered combat boots and baggy green trousers, like the kind lab techs and street sweepers wear. The man grunts, and moves the flap door a few inches with a boot, as though toeing a mouse to see whether it is alive. Then he kneels down and snatches up the note.
I tighten my grip on the knife. Now my heart feels as though it is barely going at all. I am not breathing, and the space between heartbeats is an eternity.
Open the door. Don’t call for backup. Open the door now. Come on, come on, come on.
Finally there’s a heavy sigh, and the sound of keys jingling; a clicking, too, as I imagine him sliding the safety off his gun.
Everything is sharp and very slow, as though funneled through a microscope. He’s going to open the door.
The keys turn in the lock and Julian scrabbles, alarmed, to his feet, letting out a short cry. For a second the guard hesitates. Then the door begins to push inward, inward, toward me—toward where I am standing, pressed up against the wall, invisible.
Just like that the seesaw has swung: The seconds are banging together so fast I can hardly keep track of them. Everything is instinct and blur. Things happen in one collapsed moment: The door swings fully open, just a few inches from my face, as he takes a step into the cell, saying, “All right, I’m all ears,” and as he does I push against the door with both hands, slamming it toward him, hear a small crack and his short exclamation, a curse and a groan. Julian is saying, “Holy shit, holy shit.”
I leap out from behind the door—all instinct now, no more thinking—and land on the Scavenger’s back. He is staggering on his feet, clutching his head, where the door must have hit him, and my momentum carries him off his feet and onto the ground. I drive a knee into his back and press the knife into his throat.
“Don’t move.” I’m shaking. I hope he can’t feel it. “Don’t scream. Don’t even think about screaming. Just stay where you are, nice and easy, and you won’t get hurt.”