Delirium (Delirium #1)(54)
I find a flattened cardboard box sitting behind a Dumpster and drag it over to Riley’s body, covering him completely. I try not to think of the insects that will tear into him by morning. I’m surprised to feel tears prick at my eyes. I wipe them away with the back of my arm. But as I start off toward Deering all I can think is, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, like a mantra, or a prayer.
One good thing about raids: They’re loud. All I have to do is pause in the shadows and listen for the footsteps, the static, the bullhorn voices. I switch directions, choose the side streets, the ones that have been skipped over or raided already. Evidence of the raids is everywhere: overturned garbage cans and Dumpsters, trash picked through and spilled out onto the street, mountains of old receipts and shredded letters and rotting vegetables and foul-smelling goop I don’t even want to identify, red notices coating everything like a dust. My shoes get slick from clomping over it, and in the worst places I have to keep my arms out like a tightrope walker just to stay on my feet. I pass a few houses marked with a big X, black paint splashed across their walls and windows like a black gash, and my stomach sinks. The people who live in these houses have been identified as troublemakers or resisters. The hot wind whistling through the streets carries sounds of yelling and crying, dogs barking. I do my best not to think about Riley.
I stick to the shadows, slipping in and out of alleys and darting from one Dumpster to the next. Sweat is pooling at the base of my neck and under my arms, and it’s not just from the heat. Everything looks strange and grotesque and distorted, certain streets glittering with glass from smashed windows, the smell of burning in the air.
At one point, I come around a corner onto Forest Avenue just as a group of regulators turns onto it from the other end. I whip back around, pressing flat against the wall of a hardware store and inching back in the direction I’ve come. The chances any of the regulators saw me are slim—I was a block away and it’s pitch-black—but still, my heart never goes back to its normal pace. I feel like I’m playing some giant video game, or trying to solve a really complicated math equation. One girl is trying to avoid forty raiding parties of between fifteen to twenty people each, spread out across a radius of seven miles. If she has to make it 2.7 miles through the center, what is the probability she will wake up tomorrow morning in a jail cell? Please feel free to round pi to 3.14.
Before the shakedown, Deering Highlands was a nicer part of Portland. The houses were big and new—at least for Maine, which means they were built within the past hundred years—and set back behind gates and hedges, on streets with names like Lilac Way and Timber Road. There are a few families still clinging on in some of the houses, dirt-poor ones who can’t afford to move anywhere else, or haven’t gotten permission for a new residence, but for the most part it’s totally empty. Nobody wanted to stay on; nobody wanted to be associated with the resistance.
The weirdest thing about Deering Highlands is how quickly it was abandoned. There are still rusting toys scattered among the grass and cars parked in some of the driveways, though most of them have been picked apart, cleaned of metal and plastic like corpses scavenged by enormous buzzards. The whole area has the forlorn look of an abandoned animal: houses drooping slowly into the overgrown lawns.
Normally I get freaked out just being in the vicinity of the Highlands. A lot of people say it’s bad luck, like passing a graveyard without holding your breath. But tonight, when I finally make it there, I feel like I could dance a jig on the sidewalk. Everything is dark and quiet and undisturbed, not a single raider’s notice to be seen, not a whisper of conversation or the brush of a heel on a sidewalk. The raiders haven’t come yet. Maybe they won’t come at all.
I speed quickly through the streets, picking up the pace now that I don’t have to worry so much about sticking to the shadows and moving soundlessly. Deering Highlands is pretty big, a maze of winding streets that all look weirdly similar, houses looming out of the darkness like ships run aground. The lawns have all gone wild over the years, trees stretching their gnarled branches to the sky and casting crazy zigzag shadows on the moonlit pavement. I get lost on Lilac Way—somehow I manage to make a complete circle and wind up hitting the same intersection twice—but when I turn onto Tanglewild Lane I see a dull light burning dimly in the distance, behind a knotted mass of trees, and I know I’ve found the place.
An old mailbox is staked crookedly in the ground next to the driveway. A black X is still faintly visible on one of its sides. 42 Tanglewild Lane.
I can see why they’ve chosen this house for the party. It’s set back pretty far from the road, and surrounded on all sides by trees so dense I can’t help but think of the dark and whispering woods on the far side of the border. Walking up the driveway is creepy. I keep my eyes focused on the fuzzy pale light of the house, which expands and brightens slowly as I get closer, eventually resolving into two lit windows. The windows have been covered with some kind of fabric, maybe to hide the fact that there are people inside. It isn’t working. I can see shadow-people moving back and forth inside the house. The music is very quiet. It’s not until I make it onto the porch that I hear it at all—faint, muffled strains that seem to vibrate up from the floorboards. There must be a basement.
I’ve been rushing to arrive, but I hesitate with my hand on the front door, my palm slick with sweat. I haven’t given much thought to how I’ll get everyone out. If I just start screaming about a raid it will cause a panic. Everyone will stream into the streets at once, and then the chances of getting home undetected go to zero. Someone will hear something; the raiders will catch on, and then we’ll all be screwed.