My room opens into a long, dark hallway, also windowless, also stone. I can hear people talking and laughing, the sounds of chairs scraping and water sloshing: kitchen sounds. Food sounds. The hallway is narrow, and I run my hands along the walls as I move forward, getting a sense of my legs and body again. A doorway on my left, missing its door, opens into a large room, stacked, on one side, with medical and cleaning supplies—gauze, tubes and tubes of bacitracin, hundreds of boxes of soap, bandages—and, on the other, with four narrow mattresses laid directly on the floor, heaped with an assortment of clothes and blankets. A little farther I see another room that must be used entirely for sleeping: This one has mattresses laid from wall to wall, covering almost every inch of the floor, so the room looks like an enormous patchwork quilt.
I feel a pang of guilt. I’ve obviously been given the nicest bed, and the nicest room. It still amazes me to think how wrong I was all those years, when I trusted in rumors and lies. I thought the Invalids were beasts; I thought they would rip me apart. But these people saved me, and gave me the softest place to sleep, and nursed me back to health, and haven’t asked for anything in return.
The animals are on the other side of the fence: monsters wearing uniforms. They speak softly, and tell lies, and smile as they’re slitting your throat.
The hallway takes a sharp left and the voices swell. I can smell meat cooking now, and my stomach growls loudly. I pass more rooms, some for sleeping, one mostly empty and lined with shelves: a half-dozen cans of beans, a half-used bag of flour, and, weirdly, a dusty coffeemaker are piled in one corner; in another corner, buckets, tins of coffee, a mop.
Another right and the hallway ends abruptly in a large room, much brighter than the others. A stone basin, similar to the one in my room, runs along one whole wall. Above it, a long shelf holds a half-dozen battery-operated lanterns, which fill the space with a warm light. In the center of the room are two large, narrow wooden tables, packed with people.
As I enter, the conversation stops abruptly: Dozens of eyes sweep upward in my direction, and I’m suddenly aware that I am wearing nothing more than a large, dirty T-shirt that reaches just to mid-thigh.
There are men in the room too, sitting elbow-to-elbow with women—people of all ages, everyone uncured—and it is so strange and upside down, it nearly takes my breath away. I’m petrified. I open my mouth to speak, but nothing emerges. I feel the weight of silence, the heavy burn of all those eyes.
Raven comes to my rescue.
“You must be hungry,” she says, standing and gesturing to a boy sitting at the end of the table. He’s probably thirteen or fourteen—thin, wiry, with a smattering of pimples on his skin.
“Squirrel,” she says sharply. Another crazy nickname. “You finished eating?”
He stares dolefully at his empty plate as though he could telepathically force more food to materialize there.
“Yeah,” he says slowly, looking from the empty plate to me and back again. I hug my arms around my waist.
“Then get up. Lena needs a place to sit.”
“But—,” Squirrel starts to protest, and Raven glares at him.
“Up, Squirrel. Make yourself useful. Go check the nests for messages.”
Squirrel shoots me a sullen look, but he stands up and brings his plate to the sink. He releases it clatteringly onto the stone—which makes Raven, who has sat down again, call out, “You break, you buy, Squirrel,” and provokes a few titters—then stomps dramatically up the stone steps at the far end of the room.
“Sarah, get Lena something to eat.” Raven has returned to her own food: a pile of grayish mush lumped in the center of her plate.
A girl pops up eagerly, like a jack-in-the-box. She has enormous eyes, and a body as tight as a wire. Everyone in the room is skinny, actually—all I see are elbows and shoulders everywhere, edges and angles.
“Come on, Lena.” She seems to relish saying my name, as though it’s a special privilege. “I’ll fix you a plate.” She points to the corner: an enormous dented iron pot and a warped covered pan are set over an old-fashioned wood-burning stove. Next to it, mismatched plates and platters—and some cutting boards—are stacked haphazardly.
This means actually entering the room, walking past both tables. If my legs felt unsteady before, now I’m worried they’ll actually buckle at any second. Strangely, I can feel the texture of the men’s eyes differently. The women’s eyes are sharp, evaluating; the men’s eyes are hotter, stifling, like a touch. I’m having trouble breathing.
I go haltingly toward the stove, where Sarah is standing, nodding at me encouragingly, as though I’m a baby—even though she can’t be more than twelve herself. I stay as close as possible to the sink—just in case I do stumble, I want to be able to reach out and steady myself quickly.
The faces in the room are mostly a blur, a wash of color, but a few stand out: I see Blue watching me, wide-eyed; a boy, probably my age, with a crazy thatch of blond hair, who looks like he might start laughing any second; another boy, a little older, scowling; a woman with long auburn hair hanging loose down her back. For a moment our eyes meet and my heart stutters: I think, Mom. It hasn’t occurred to me until now that my mother could be here—that she must be here, somewhere, in the Wilds, in one of the homesteads or camps or whatever they’re called. Then the woman shifts slightly and I see her face and realize that no, of course it’s not her. She’s far too young, probably the age of my mother when I last saw her twelve years ago. I’m not sure I’d even recognize my mother if I saw her again; my memories of her are so fuzzy, distorted through layers of time and dream.
“Slop,” Sarah says as soon as I make it to the stove. I’m exhausted from the walk across the room. I can’t believe that this is the same body that used to do six-mile runs on an easy day, sprint up and down Munjoy Hill like it was nothing.
“What?”
“Slop.” She lifts the cover off the tin pot. “That’s what we call it. It’s what we eat when supplies run low. Oatmeal, rice, sometimes some bread—whatever grains we have left. Boil the shit out of it, and there you go. Slop.”
It startles me to hear a curse word come from her mouth.
Sarah takes a plastic plate—with ghostly silhouettes of animals still faintly visible on its surface, a kid’s plate—and piles a big serving of slop at its center. Behind me, at the tables, people have started talking again. The room fills with the low buzz of conversation, and I start to feel slightly better; at least that means some of the attention is off me.
“The good news,” Sarah continues cheerfully, “is that Roach brought home a present last night.”
“What do you mean?” I’m struggling to absorb the lingo, the pattern of speech. “He got supplies?”
“Better.” She grins at me, slides the top off the second covered pan. Inside is golden-brown meat, seared, crispy: a smell that almost brings me to tears. “Rabbit.”
I’ve never eaten rabbit before—never thought of it as something you could eat, especially not for breakfast—but I gratefully accept the plate from her, and can hardly stop myself from ripping into the meat right there, standing. I’d prefer to stand, actually. Anything would be better than having to sit down among all those strangers.