Blaze

33. A Wolf

Austin is gone. Ripped out of my arms like a skin-tight bandage, drawing blood. I still feel the sting of it. (The hair waxed by the swiftness of the motion.) The past hours feel like a dizzying, heat-wave dream.

"You are insane." Jackie's voice carries sharply through the dark room. "We're all insane. I'm insane for coming after you."

"You followed Auz. That's understandable." (Like he followed me.) My voice is low. I can't see her in the dark. Can't tell if the hardness reaches her eyes.

"What if they kill him?"

"They won't," I say simply.

"Because they seemed so friendly when they locked us inside here."

"What do you want me to say?" I sound tired. "Do you want me to say that I don't know?" (Or do you want me to admit that I've been dreaming of you since I joined the Raiders, and now that I'm really with you I have a hard time believing you're the same person I left behind?) "They said they would treat him. We're here because we wouldn't stop interfering." My voice is at its lowest; if it dips below this level my lips will be doing nothing but thinking.

Jackie is relentless. "No. We're here because they think we're crazy. And you are. You're crazy for telling them about the Raiders."

"I had to warn them. They need to know the Raiders might come after us, that they're not safe. We're too close to them here. And what if the Captain—" A ball rises in my throat, making my eyes tense, waiting for the choking to begin. After a short moment, I resume. "The Captain will know where I am. He'll know where we are. If Auz is real bad, chances are we'll be staying here awhile." I don't say it, but this is another reason why we—I—can't go back. Not yet. (Too soon.)

"Why?" And I know Jackie's on her feet, face crimson-bled and hand raised, though she can't find me in the dark (thank God). She's become a network of steel wires, with bits of flesh hanging on. And I know that if I look into her eyes I'll break myself on my own reflection, on the blueness of it. "Why does it matter if they die, if anyone dies, if everyone dies, so long as we survive? Isn't that the point of all this? The point of the Blaze. The Raiders. You. Self-preservation. Isn't that why when I heard you say love—" She stops abruptly here. "Are you really Cameron Lore?"

And she's slapped me.

I don't speak.

"Are you really, truly, Cameron Lore?"

(You blame me. You blame me for everything. You think it's my fault that I left, but it isn't. I had no choice. I had no choice.)

Austin, in my head: You always have a choice.

The dark room swirls then hardens. I don't speak. No hot. No cold. I'm lukewarm.

I'm reminded of an old story. The learning cube read it in a tinny, inflection-less voice, the words like flat paper. Still, Austin and I were so enraptured, blue-eyed from the projection.

I can't remember if Mother could walk then.

Jackie's hard face waits for my answer. I feel it part the air the way granite cliffs part sea waves.

"The Boy Who Cried Wolf." 

"What?"

"I'll be the Boy Who Cried Wolf."

"You'll be dead."

"And full of regrets. I'll become an irony. I'll have deserved it." I look up. I know I'm staring straight at her, though there's no real way to be sure. "Nothing that has happened to me so far has made any sense."

"I know."

"You don't make sense. And I told myself it doesn't matter, and it doesn't—not to me. I love you, anyway. But it does matter to Auz. I know how he used to look at you, and he hasn't looked at you that way since you've appeared."

"Austin never liked me."

"How are you here? How is he here? I want to know the truth."

A sigh. "And if I told you we weren't really here, that you'd dreamed us up, that the bread had fundamentally altered something in you, something the Captain prodded with his thoughts, and tomorrow or the next day you might wake up and discover us both gone? Does this really matter, Cam?"

Back to calling me Cam.

I'm surprised and pleased that my heartbeat remains steady.

It shouldn't matter. And it didn't. Until the villagers took Austin away. Until the very real possibility that the two of them vanished forever, just like that. 

Jackie eaten by the dark. 

Austin by the unknown.

"Yes," I say. 

There's another moral, often overlooked, to the Boy Who Cried Wolf. You can never know. You always need to check. The villagers are as much to blame as the boy. 

"I'm not telling you that. I'm not telling you anything." She's angry. "They're coming, you know. They're close."

I bristle at this. My shield breaks down at her words. It's true. I can hear them. They sound like the wind, far far away, but gaining in strength. They sound like a dust cloud.

YOU ARE MINE YOU ARE MINE YOU ARE MINE!

I snap the shutters closed, gasping. The black room spins and I'm afraid I might pass out. Then Jackie's arms are around me, warm and bony. How did she find me?

She's shaking. "I can't convince you I'm here. No one can. You have to believe it. You have to believe it, knowing it makes more sense for you to be wrong."

I'd be no better than Alaina.

But I believe it, for the moment. I sink into her arms, until she's basically supporting my weight. Fear makes my words flow quickly. "They'll take over the planet. That's what they want. To drain us all. To take back what they had, before the colonists came. There's something inside them, something old and sick that came from the bread. The soul of the first inhabitants. But nothing makes sense. Nothing at all makes sense. Why do they want me? Where is Dad? Does Moth—Mom know?"

And Austin, God, Austin. No doubt writhing in pain in a cold white room, sweating blood—

"How do we end this?" Jackie asks.

"I don't know." She grunts. "Maybe there's a way. The thing, the person I carry, might know. But I need the bread to speak to them."

"You're in luck, then," Jackie says sarcastically. "The Raiders are close. When they come to kill us, if the villagers don't kill us first, we'll ask them nicely for some. Auz will be running and walking by then also, of course."

There has to be a way.

I slide to the ground. Put my head on my knees. 

I try and think.