“I just want the color. I’ll mix it when I get back.” He pauses. “Can I have one of you?”
“What for?”
“So I can ping it through to the Ministry and pick up my reward. Your capture is very valuable.” He laughs, but that there could be a fraction of truth in what he’s said makes me turn away. Not before he’s managed to take a picture of me.
“Delete it!” I try to snatch the pad.
“No,” he says.
“What if someone sees it and recognizes me?”
“It’s as smudged as the other one. And anyway, no one’s interested in the photos artists take.” He studies the picture and then looks at the real me. “Why are you out here, Bea?” he asks.
“Because your father wanted my head on a plate,” I remind him.
“But why did you join the Resistance in the first place? Are things really so bad in the pod for auxiliaries?” he asks. Can Premiums be so self-involved they completely fail to notice how ninety-five percent of us live?
“Have you ever even been to Zone Three?”
“A couple of times,” he says sheepishly.
“If I could have changed things from inside, I would have,” I tell him.
He is silent for a long time, looking through the few pictures he’s just taken. “There has to be a way to make things fair. Nothing’s impossible,” he says finally.
“You can try working on things in the pod. I’m never going back. Anyway, I’m waiting for someone.” I still haven’t mentioned Quinn. As far as the Ministry knows, he’s dead, and no one should think otherwise.
Ronan gazes into the distance, then closes his eyes. His eyelids twitch and the lashes flicker as sleep comes for him. And then he opens one eye and peers at me. “Are you going to get some rest or just watch me?”
My cheeks get hot. “Out here? It’s below zero.”
He reaches down and pulls a lightweight blanket from his backpack, which he throws at me. “Try that,” he says. I pull it over my chin and tuck my feet under my butt. “Better?” he asks. I nod and close my eyes.
I wake to find Ronan shaking me. “Bea, wake up,” he whispers. “Bea.” I yawn.
“How long did I sleep?”
“Never mind that. Move!” he says.
“What’s happening?” I try to stand and stretch but he takes hold of my thighs, so I can’t.
“They’ll see you!” he says.
I slide off the chair and onto the balcony floor. “Is it the Ministry?”
Ronan shakes his head. “I have no idea who they are. They must have spotted us.”
I suddenly feel less cold. My aching limbs lighten. It must be Quinn and Alina and Sequoia come to save me. “At last, they’re here!” I say, trying to get a glimpse of the road.
“I’m pretty sure you don’t know these people,” he says. “This way.” Reluctantly I slither through the balcony doors behind him and into the restaurant, which is strewn with dozens of chairs like the ones outside. “Stay low,” he says, remaining hunched. We go to a window.
“Do you know them?” he asks. It isn’t easy to see through the grimy window. I rub the glass with my sleeve and put my face to it. Three bearded men dressed in rags are inspecting the station. Each is armed: one with a broken pitchfork, one with a baseball bat, and another with a thick metal pole. And they have bulky solar respirators on their backs. “Drifters,” Ronan says. He pulls out his gun and loads it with a handful of bullets.
“What are you doing? They aren’t monsters.” Certainly not Maude, and not those who Jazz said helped defend The Grove. I grab for Ronan’s gun, but he pushes me away so hard I fall, landing on my arm and twisting it. I groan, but he doesn’t apologize or try to help me up.
“Shh,” he says, finding a broken windowpane and taking aim.
“Give them a chance,” I say. I crawl to the window. The men skirt the station, all the time peering up.
“They look like they’re on their way to a lynching. Don’t be naïve, Bea.” The condescension in his voice makes me well up with anger.
“You’ve been out of the pod two seconds and think you know everything. Watch and learn.”
“Where are you going? Come back. Come back.”
I march out of the restaurant, down the staircase, and outside, where I stand by the exit.
I’m about to speak to the men when the one carrying the baseball bat turns his back on the station and shouts. “Oi, Brent, you sure it was this building? I can’t hear nothing.” He shuffles away and leans against a van on the other side of the road.
“Chill your boots, Earl. There’s definitely meat in there. I heard it squalling last night,” Brent says, using his metal pole as a kind of walking stick.
“Yeah, well if there ain’t, maybe I’ll just eat you.”
Brent jabs Earl in the stomach with his pole and cackles. Even from a distance I can see his black teeth.
Earl quickly recovers, and when he does, he bashes Brent’s knees with his baseball bat. “Watch it, or next time I’ll use your head for batting practice.” This doesn’t seem like bravado; I’m sure they’d happily kill one another.
I’ve made a mistake.
I back away from the road and through the station doors, but when I spin around the third man, the one with the pitchfork, is standing staring at me. “Well, well, well. Look at the treat we’ve got here,” he says, and rubs his belly.
I dip to the side as the man swings for me. Luckily he’s half-starved and carrying a solar respirator and isn’t fast enough. I hurtle up the stairs and into the restaurant. “Ronan! Ronan?” I call.
But he’s disappeared.
“Get back here, you stupid cow,” one of the men hollers. The others hoot.
I jump over broken chairs and overturned tables, smashed plates and glasses, and when I get to the kitchen door, push on it. I expect it to swing open, but it doesn’t budge. Something’s blocking it on the other side. I scan the restaurant. There’s no other hiding place or way out unless I dive off the balcony. I find a broken bottle and hold it by the neck as the men saunter in, their eyes gleaming.
Earl swings his baseball bat, and they all grin. He comes closer and I try dodging him, but he’s quicker than the man with the pitchfork. He leaps at me and knocks me to the ground. Earl pulls me up straight using my hair. His face is flecked with scars and his thinning hair is greasy and matted. “Annoying,” he says, “but comely. What do you think, Getty?”
The man with the pitchfork throws down his weapon and steps up. “She’ll do,” he says. He unbuttons my coat and ogles me.
Brent shuffles forward. “Dibs on her airtank,” he says, loosening it from its belt.
“Leave that ’til we’re finished,” Getty says, shoving him.
I try to thrash free, but when I do, Earl, who’s standing behind me, pulls my hair harder. “Settle down,” he croaks.
It’s obvious what these savages are planning, and I can’t endure it. Anything but this. Anything.
I whimper, wishing I’d let Ronan shoot them. Where is he now? And where’s Quinn?
Getty holds my face next to his, and licks my cheek. Even through the mask I can smell his rotten breath. I cry out, and they laugh. “Please don’t,” I say, looking into his eyes, but he’s too far gone to see my humanity.
He throws off his heavily stained jacket and scrapes his finger along my collarbone. “I’m first,” he says. And I decide, in that moment, that I will shut down and think of Quinn and my parents and Maude and anything else that is not this, is not now.
“Ready?” Earl asks.
I shut my eyes. “Quinn!” I shout. “Quinn!”
But he doesn’t hear me.
No one does.