Lauren Oliver: Alex

I’d thought I would never see the sky again. Anything, anything is possible, if you can just see the sky.

The attack came sooner than we were expecting.

It was just after noon when we heard them. I knew right away they were untrained—they were making way too much noise.

“You”—Rogers pointed at me—“up there.” He jerked his head toward a small embankment; at the top were the ruins of a house. “Everyone, split. Spread out. Just let ‘em pass.” But he shoved a gun in my hand, one of the few we had.

It had been a long time since I’d held a gun. I hoped I’d remember how to shoot.

The leaves crunched under my shoes as I jogged up the hill. It was a clear day, cold, and my breath burned in my lungs. The old house had the rotten smell of an unwashed sock. I pushed open the door and crouched in the dark, leaving the door cracked open an inch so I could keep watch.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The voice made me spin around and nearly topple over. The man was filthy. His hair was long, wild, and reached below his shoulders.

“It’s all right,” I started to say, trying to calm him down. But he cut me off.

“Get out.” He grabbed my shirt. His fingernails were long and sharp, and he stunk. “Get out. Do you hear me? This is my place. Get out.”

He was getting louder and louder. And the zombies were close—would be on top of us any second.

“You don’t understand,” I tried again. “You’re in danger. We all are.”

But now he was wailing. All his words ran together into a single not. “Getoutgetoutgetout.”

I shoved him down and tried to get a hand over his mouth, but it was too late. There were voices from outside, the crackle-crackle of feet through the dry leaves. While my attention was distracted, he bit down on my hand, hard.

“Getoutgetoutgetout!” He started up his screaming as soon as I drew my hand back. “Getoutgetoutget—“

He was cut silent only by the first volley of bullets.

I’d rolled off him just in time. I threw myself flat on the ground and covered my head. Soft wood and plaster rained down on me as they emptied twenty rounds into the walls. Then there were other shots, this time farther off.

Our group had broken cover.

The door squeaked open. A band of sunlight grew around me. I stayed still, on my stomach, hardly breathing, listening.

“This one’s dead.” The floorboards creaked; something skittered in the corner.

“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, alr—“

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.