Breathe (15 page)

Maude grabs my arm again. “How are you holding up?” I ask. She nods rather than making the effort to speak. She doesn’t disgust me anymore, old Maude Blue. I pity her, that’s all. “Be careful in the snow. It could get icy.”

Alina turns. “Soon,” she tells us, “you’ll see what’s possible.” I don’t ask. I was curious for a while, but now I don’t care. As she walks, Alina continues to reach out now and again to allow snowflakes to settle on her palm. I watch her and am about to reach out too when a low murmuring sound, impossible to mistake, stops me.

“Tank!” I shout. Alina reacts quickly. She points at a solid building with faces carved into its stonework. We all pound our way through the heavy door.

“Do you think they saw us?” Alina wonders aloud. “We have to stay hidden.” She glances at the gauge on her airtank and looks at me seriously.

“You’re low on fuel,” I guess. Alina shrugs.

“We all must be,” she says. I look at my own gauge and see she’s right. Our air is running out. When I turn to check Maude’s gauge she isn’t there. She’s somehow managed to scoot to the other side of the room where she is looking up at the walls.

“Amazing!” she calls out. “Amazing and horrible.” I move to where she is standing and look up, too.

“Are they real?” I ask.

“Books,” Maude says. “Books and books and books. Paper.” She laughs and reaches out to touch them. She pulls one from the shelf and opens it. The pages are black and moldy in the corners. A few Premiums own books, but most paper products were left in The Outlands to rot, and I’ve only ever seen pictures and videos of them.

“‘In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.’ It sounds different reading from paper, doesn’t it?” she says. I don’t recognize the words Maude is reading, but I can hear the difference in her voice: it is tender now, and light. “I’m keeping this one,” she says, slipping the book into her coat. “Choose one,” she demands. “Go on.” I run my hand along the spines.

“What’s this one?” I ask.

“
Pride and Prejudice
. Don’t you know it? What
are
they teaching you in school?”

“Shakespeare, mainly. Our teacher says all literature is in Shakespeare.”

“Yes, well, maybe it is. Anyway, I’ll take that one.” She grabs
Pride and Prejudice
from my hands and slips it into her coat before retrieving the first book and tossing it to me. “
Great Expectations
would be better for you. Pip would be right up your alley.” I slip the book into my own jacket, letting the hard edges rest against my stomach.

Alina has climbed onto a table and is peering outside. “They’re getting closer,” she warns. The rumbling is louder and the ground beneath us starts to tremble. I stand next to Alina on the table. The tank is almost outside the building. Gradually the treads stop turning and the engine lulls to a complete silence. A figure emerges from the tank holding a rifle that he points into the air and fires.

“What’s he doing?” I whisper.

“I have no idea,” she says.

“They’re playing,” Maude says, despite the fact that she can’t see what we’re seeing. “They’re bored, so they’re playing. That’s what we did. Bang-bang-bang. Fun and games.”

“Are you sure?” Alina asks. Maude doesn’t answer. She is busy reading. When I look back at the tank, the soldiers are climbing out of the hatch. They start to saunter down the street, gazing up at the sky as they go.

“They’ve stopped to enjoy the snow,” I tell Alina. A smile of relief appears as she sees I’m right: the soldiers are crouching down to touch the snow. They both push up the black visors of their helmets. One of the soldiers is a woman with a pointy chin, while the other is a man with a thin beard. In a strange way, they look alike. They are younger than I would have expected: no more than twenty. They gaze back up at the sky again and laugh before moving toward each other.

“They’re normal. They look like completely normal people,” Alina says. “How’s that possible?”

“They’re in love,” I add. I look at Maude, who is scratching the nape of her neck and muttering as she reads.

The soldiers continue to laugh, but now they are apart, backing away from each other. They gather up handfuls of snow and pat it into tight, cold bullets. Still laughing, they throw the balls of snow at each other. The female soldier screams and runs. Around and around the tank they run, screaming and laughing and throwing snow. The female soldier abruptly stops running, and when the male soldier catches her, she points toward the building opposite and the two of them make a dash for it.

We continue to watch for several minutes. Alina looks at me and raises her eyebrows. “Well, that’s one way to keep warm,” she says. I laugh. Alina checks her gauge. “Right. That’s it. We’re taking the tank.” I stare at her. She has to be joking.

“No way!” I say.

“No way what?” Maude calls, interested now there’s a dispute.

“You’re helping me to steal that tank,” Alina tells her.

“You’re damn right I am!” Maude yells, throwing the book she’s holding high into the air and letting it fall, with a crash, right back down on top of her own head.

It’s ridiculously easy. Maude clambers through the hatch and starts to power up the tank. I’m in front of the door the two soldiers disappeared through, and I’m wielding a knife, which I’ll use if either of the lovebirds come sauntering out of the building early. Bea is sitting on the turret; her job is to grab me and pull me aboard when the time’s right. I’m not sure that Bea even has the strength to haul me up, but I wasn’t going to give
her
the knife: if one of the soldiers appeared she’d likely collapse with guilt and slit her own throat.

The tank hums to life and Bea calls out. “She’s ready. Come on! Come on!” I run and she grabs my hands. “They’re coming. Oh. My. God. They’re coming!” I look back. The soldiers are scrambling down an external fire exit several steps at a time. Bea pulls me up and within seconds we are both tumbling into the tank.

It’s not as sophisticated as I’d expected—rudimentary knobs and levers, the space cramped and dirty. I peer through the periscope. The two soldiers are on the street and running hard, fighting to get back into their jackets, slipping on the snow as they charge toward us. “Fire!” Maude shouts, pointing to some levers she can’t reach and wielding Quinn’s tiny mallet.

“Get that thing!” I shout at Bea, who quickly grabs it.

“Fire at the scoundrels! Fire the guns!” Maude shouts again, looking for a way to control the guns herself.

“Stop it,” Bea demands, slapping Maude’s hand away. The tank is rolling forward but the soldiers are close. Could they climb aboard with the tank moving? They don’t appear too keen to try, edging away as we growl forward. They are screaming at each other and waving. One of them pulls out a radio, pushes a few buttons, and yells something.

“Why are we stealing it?” Bea wants to know.

“Oh, it’s a clever move, girlies. Now that lot really know they have a war on their hands,” Maude declares. I shake my head, about to say no, that we need to move faster and save air, that’s all. But as I think about what Maude’s just said, it dawns on me that she’s right: I’ve started a war.

You know those films where a guy wakes up next to some girl, then creeps out of bed and kind of skulks off because he doesn’t want to have to have an awkward conversation? Well, it’s not exactly the same thing, but I still have that awkward feeling when I wake up next to Silas and Inger. Anything I say, even if I try and say it casually, is going to sound all weird and forced, so I get up and crawl out of the tent, trying not to wake them.

Everything is covered in a thick layer of white. “Come and look,” I say, poking my head back into the tent. Silas sits up and yawns. Inger is still on his side, asleep.

“Oh God, it’s completely light. Wake up, Inger,” Silas grumbles. He crawls out of the tent. “Wow,” he says when he sees the snow. “Wow.”

The fine sheet of sparkling whiteness makes the ruins around us look less like mounds of destruction and more like spectacular monuments. If Bea were here, I could say something like that without feeling embarrassed. But I stay quiet.

“The world doesn’t seem so bad when it looks like this, does it?” Silas says, looking at me. I don’t know if he wants me to respond. I sigh, which could mean anything. “You know what I mean?” he says. I look at him carefully. He rolls his eyes and crouches down, skimming his hand across the surface of the snow.

Before long, Inger materializes. “Time to go,” he says.

The roads are even worse today. The snow isn’t simply hiding the danger but making everything slick, too. Inger and Silas trek ahead, scrabbling over mounds of rubble, using their hands as well as their feet. It’s embarrassing: they’re ten times fitter than I am, yet I’ve had more air than them my whole life.

After a few hours, I stop. I can’t walk any farther without eating. I take a few bites of a nutrition bar, then split the rest and hand the pieces to Silas and Inger. Silas pushes it into his mouth without saying thank you. Inger nods gratefully at least.

“How much farther?” I ask.

“You worried about your air?” Silas asks. He checks the display. “Two hours, if that gauge is accurate. Are you an efficient breather?”

I don’t know what he means by “efficient breather.” I breathe in and out and that usually works fine: I’m still alive.

“I’m efficient,” I say, finding myself inhaling deeply and exhaling a long breath.

“Hey,” Silas warns. “Enough of the heavy breathing.” Before I get a chance to answer, Inger puts his fingers to his lips.

“Can you hear that?” he whispers.

“What?” I whisper back.

Silas holds up his hand and scans the road behind us. Then he looks up at the sky and squints through the snow.

“Zips,” Inger hisses. “Damn it.”

“We need a building. A tall building,” Silas says. He darts across the road and pushes through a revolving door. After a moment he reappears, opens his coat, and fills it with snow before going back into the building again.

“Let’s go,” Inger says. “Bring snow.” He opens his backpack, shovels snow into it, and bolts through the revolving doors behind Silas. I gaze up at the towering structure. If it’s a tank they’ve heard and it starts firing, none of us will survive being buried alive by this building. Silas’s face appears in a second-floor window. “Quinn! Get in here. Now!” he shouts.

“I don’t want to get buried alive, Silas!” I yell. “You can call me a wimp if you like, I don’t care.” Rusted cars line the street, many abandoned right in the middle of it. I’ll hide in one of those.

“
I’ll
bury you alive if you don’t quit your sniveling and get your backside in here. Use the stairs.”

I don’t know why, but I race after them, into the building and up the stairs. I run and run, expecting to meet Silas and Inger, but I’m met with more stairs. “Not far now!” Silas calls from somewhere above. I keep climbing and eventually there he is, staring at me.

“Come on,” he says. We dash along a darkening corridor past empty offices, the desks and chairs overturned, some with the computer screens smashed. “Inger?” he calls out.

“I’m fine! Don’t worry!” Inger shouts.

“Right,” Silas says when we are in almost complete darkness. “Take off your clothes,” he says. I stare at him as he starts to pull his coat and sweater over his head. He rips off his boots and socks and hurls them down the corridor. “Oi! Did you hear me or what?” His facemask has come loose and he struggles to refit it, holding the airtank under his arm.

“Silas, I think …” I begin.

“You’re too warm. They’ll detect the body heat. You need to get cold. Take off your bloody clothes or we
will
get buried alive,” he shouts, which he has to, because I can hear it now—not the low murmur of tank treads but the slicing of the air around us. Close to us. In the sky. I get out of my clothes. Silas throws snow at me and then tips his water bottle over my head. I cry out. Silas is already dripping wet. When I look down I see that he’s kept on his underpants whereas I’m stark naked. I cover myself with one hand and with the other keep a tight hold of the airtank.

“You told me to strip,” I say.

Silas shakes his head and turns away. The noise is deafening. I wrap one arm around my head to protect my ears and feel myself start to shrivel up from the cold—I’m glad Silas has his back to me.

When the noise dissipates, I lower my hands and put on my underpants. Silas turns around.

“There’ll be more,” Silas says. He’s right. Within a minute, the sky is thundering again, and all we can do is stand shivering and wait. I don’t want to look at Silas’s body, but I can’t help noticing how strong he is. I look down at myself. I’m lean and muscular, girls have never complained, but Silas is huge. He’s got the kind of body women want. He looks like a man. And this is what I’m thinking as life-threatening zips whir overhead. It’s stupid. I’m standing freezing and half naked and close to death, and all I can think about are Silas’s muscles.

“That’s probably the last of them,” Silas says, retrieving his clothes from the floor.