“Starting fights with our own troops isn’t going to help us free New Hobart,” Piper said. “And we still have a long way to go.”
Xander began to mutter, echoing the words he’d heard, as if they were bouncing off him. “Long way,” he said, again and again. “Long, long way.” His hands rose and fell. He was often like this when he sensed that others were angry, and I moved away while Sally pressed his cheeks with both hands and bent her head to his, to talk him down from the precipice of his anxiety. When Sally had managed to calm him, she looked over her shoulder to Piper and spoke in a low voice.
“You’ll need to deal with the troops at some stage. They need to be fighting for you, not against you.”
He gave her a quick smile. “Let me pick the time,” he said.
Ω
The resistance might have been hard-pressed since the attack on the island, but under Simon’s leadership it was still substantial and well organized.
Within two nights we’d crossed McCarthy’s Pass, a narrow gap in the mountain range at the base of the central plains. The night was clear, and from the top of the pass we could look down to the south and see the sea again. We dismounted to let the horses drink from a spring. Piper followed me when I stepped away from the group to stare down at the coast.
“It’s always said that everything’s broken, since the blast,” he said. “And we both know there’s plenty that’s broken enough.”
There were so many different kinds of brokenness to choose from. The broken-down mountains, slumped into heaps of slag and scree. The towns and cities from the Before, the bones of a world. Or the broken bodies he’d seen, too many to count.
“But look at that.” He waved down at the view below us. The rocks of the mountain pass gave way to the hills. Farther down, the sea hugged the curves of the shore like a sleeping lover.
He turned to face me. His look was always like this: direct, unabashed. “It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that what’s left isn’t all ugliness.”
It was impossible to argue with him. Not in front of the ocean, unconcerned with us. And not in front of Piper himself. His eyes, their clear, pale green startling in his dark face. The ledge of his cheekbones, and the clean jut of his jaw. The world had always taught me that we were broken. But when I looked at Piper, I could see no brokenness in him.
He touched my face. I could feel the calluses on his fingers, from handling rabbit snares and knife blades. The softer skin of his palm, yielding when I pressed my face against it. Soft as Kip’s cheek.
I jerked backward.
“What do you want from me?” I said.
“I don’t want anything from you.” His eyebrows drew together. “I see you struggling with your visions. And I know it’s not easy for you to see what’s become of Xander. I’m only trying to comfort you.”
I didn’t know how to say to him that there was no comfort for me. That he had refused the brokenness the world had thrust on him, but I was broken in ways he couldn’t understand. That if you cut me open, all that would tumble out would be fire, and visions of Kip in the tanks, and of Kip falling to the silo floor. That there were some things that could not be put right.
I left him on the hillside, among the stones of the shattered mountain.
Ω
It took us a week to get to New Hobart. At first we were traveling through Alpha territory, but Simon’s scouts kept us well clear of the Alpha villages and patrols. We moved mainly at night, until we reached the arid plains to the south of New Hobart, where the Alpha settlements withdrew, and we could travel in daylight again. The winds that ripped through these plains were ferocious, leaving my eyes red and my lips dry and chapped. Nothing grew but the wiry, tall grass, and our tracks were blown away as soon as we made them. Winter was beginning to establish its stranglehold on the land now.
When we passed the small town of Twyford, the fires were lit, smoke blurring the sky. In our tent, Xander whimpered with the cold and slept close between Zoe and Piper. It wasn’t his moans or muttering that kept me awake,