Ruins

Green and the other soldiers wanted to move quickly, hoping to travel another mile before nightfall, but Kira insisted that they bury the two Ivies. She had killed several of them by now, but this one had shaken her. They took the bodies to the nearest residential street, found a pair of shovels in the shed of a small, blocky home, and spent an hour digging a hole: first through the snow, nearly three feet high and frozen into hard-packed ice, and then through the stiff, unyielding soil below. Commander Woolf said a few words, and then Green and Falin performed a Partial ritual Kira had never seen before: They fanned at the body, spreading the link data of DEATH out into the air. If there were other Partials in the area it would give away their position, but Kira didn’t bring that up. It was obviously important to them.

Marcus and Woolf were traveling with a group of forty-seven refugees, including a soldier named Galen. They traveled as far as they could that night, exchanging stories along the way: Marcus and Woolf told of their excursion up to Trimble’s stronghold; Kira told of her journey out west, and of her eventual revelation about the dual cure for RM and expiration. That night they camped in a high school auditorium, tearing down the tall, moth-eaten curtains to build a series of smaller tents among the old rows of chairs. The auditorium had no exterior windows or walls, which helped keep the brutal cold at bay, and the tents helped trap their body heat where it could do the most good. Kira crawled into a small tent with Marcus and Woolf to discuss their plans.

“We’re only a mile outside East Meadow,” said Marcus. “We just follow this same road, but . . . I can’t say how long it’s going to take us to get there. The snow’s been slowing us down too much.”

“I remember this area from some of our salvage runs,” said Kira. “We’re closer here to the hospital than the hospital is to the coliseum. Do we know where the Partial army is stationed?”

“All over the island,” said Marcus. “That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier—the army’s been scattered, hunting down Tovar and Mkele and everyone else. They’ve been distracting the Partials, leading them away from East Meadow so the rest of us could escape.”

“Escape to where?” asked Kira. “The airport? Long Beach? You can’t just hide thirty-five thousand people, they’ll find us again.”

“We’re leaving the island,” said Woolf. “And we’re running out of time to do it.”

“We can’t leave,” said Kira quickly, shaking her head. “We have to stay—we have to work together, like I told you. We have to forget all our hatred and the wars and everything else—”

“Delarosa has a nuke,” said Marcus.

Kira felt like she’d been kicked in the stomach. “What?”

“She’s planning to set it off in White Plains,” Marcus continued. “The odds are against her, and she probably won’t even make it that far, but we have to plan for the worst. We’ve been making our way to East Meadow ever since we escaped, gathering refugees in the wilderness as we go. We have to warn them, and we have to get out.”

“Even if the nuke doesn’t go off,” said Woolf, “it’s still best to leave. Partials and humans are never going to come to a truce—minor exceptions notwithstanding. We can’t live in their shadow anymore.”

“We have to stay together,” said Kira, feeling her whole world slipping away. “We need them—they need us—”

“But who’s going to agree to it?” asked Woolf. “A few stragglers here and there, sure, but that’s not enough.”

“No, it’s not,” said Kira hotly. “We need to convince them, on both sides, that this is the only way any of us can survive. If we run away, we’re just going to put ourselves right back in the same old position again, losing every new child to RM, with no future and no hope for anything.”

“Kira—” said Marcus, but she spoke right over him.

“We need to stop Delarosa,” said Kira. “Warn East Meadow and evacuate and whatever you need to do, but if what you say about her is true, I don’t have a choice. I’m turning around and going after that nuke. We can’t let anyone else die.” She started to rise, but Marcus put a hand on her arm.

“Somebody’s already gone after her.”

She paused in midcrouch, listening tentatively.

“He’s a friend of ours,” Marcus continued. “A Partial soldier named Vinci. Delarosa’s got a two-week lead on you, but only a few days on him. For all we know he’s already stopped her, but we can’t take the chance of not warning everyone, just in case.”

Kira shook her head, fighting back tears. “But what if he doesn’t make it?”

“You wouldn’t even know where to start looking,” said Marcus. “You want to work together with the Partials? Then trust Vinci. Help us warn East Meadow—humans and Partials.”

“We can’t help the humans escape the occupation by telling the occupiers where we’re going,” said Woolf.