Delirium - Lauren Oliver [76]
More snapshots. A movie—only a movie. Not happening, could never really happen. A boy and a girl, fighting to make it into one of the side rooms, maybe thinking there’s an exit that way. The door is too small for both of them to enter at once. He is wearing a blue shirt that reads PORTLAND NAVAL CONSERVATORY, and she has long red hair, bright as a flame. Only five minutes ago they were talking and laughing together, standing so close that if one of them had even tipped forward accidentally they might have kissed. Now they wrestle, but she is too small. She locks her teeth on his arm like a dog, like a wild thing; he roars, rages, grabs her by the shoulders, and slams her back against the wall, out of the way. She stumbles, falls, slipping, trying to stand up; one of the raiders, an enormous man with the reddest face I’ve ever seen, reaches down, knots his fingers around her ponytail, and hauls her to her feet. Naval Conservatory doesn’t get away either. Two raiders follow him, and as I run by I hear the thud of their clubs, the mangled sound of screaming.
Animals, I think. We’re animals.
People are shoving, pulling, using one another as shields as the raiders keep gaining, surging forward, swinging at us, dogs at our heels, batons whirling so close to my head I can feel the air whooshing on my neck as the wood twirls, twirls near the back of my skull. I think of searing pain, I think of red. The crowd is thinning around me as the raiders advance. One by one people are screaming next to me—crack!—and dropping, getting wrestled to the ground by three, four, five dogs. Screaming, screaming. Everyone screaming.
Somehow I’ve managed to avoid being caught, and I’m still rocketing through the narrow, creaking hallways, passing a blur of rooms, a blur of people and raiders, more lights, more shattered windows, the sound of engines. They’ve got the place surrounded. And then the open back door rises up in front of me—and beyond it dark trees, the cool and whispering woods behind the house. If I can make it outside . . . if I can hide from the lights for long enough . . .
I hear a dog barking behind me, and behind that, a raider’s pounding footsteps, gaining, gaining, a sharp voice yelling, “Stop!” and I suddenly realize I’m alone in the hallway. Fifteen more steps . . . then ten. If I can make it into the darkness . . .
Five feet from the door and sudden, shooting pain rips through my leg. The dog has got its jaws around my calf, and I turn and that’s when I see him, the regulator with the massive red face, eyes glittering, smiling—oh, God, he’s smiling, he actually enjoys this—club raised, ready to swing. I close my eyes, think of pain as big as the ocean, think of a blood-red sea. Think of my mother.
Then I’m being jerked to the side, and I hear a crack and a yelp, the regulator saying, “Shit.” The fire in my leg stops and the weight of the dog falls off, and there’s an arm around my waist and a voice in my ear—a voice so familiar in that moment it’s like I’ve been waiting for it all along, like I’ve been hearing it forever in my dreams—breathing out: “This way.”
Alex keeps one arm around my waist, half carrying me. We’re in a different hallway now, this one smaller and totally empty. Every time I put weight on my right leg the pain flares up again, searing all the way into my head. The raider is still behind us and pissed—Alex must have pulled me to safety at just the right second, so the raider cracked down on his dog instead of my skull—and I know I must be slowing Alex down, but he doesn’t let me go, not for a second.
“In here,” he says, and then we’re ducking into another room. We must be in a part of the house that wasn’t being used for the party. This room is pitch-black, although Alex doesn’t slow down at all, just keeps going through the dark. I let the pressure of his fingertips guide me—left, right, left, right. It smells like mold in here, and something else—fresh paint, almost, and something smoky, like someone’s been cooking here. But that’s impossible. These houses have been empty for