Chapter 10: Peter

I can't tell you how many days it's been, how long we've been driving for, how long since we left behind anyone who didn't have a latent death wish. If I had to name three people in the world I wanted to talk faction politics with any less... I'm drawing a blank. Other than maybe my father, who's not present to offload about how the faction of the week are a bunch of irresponsible cowards who need an old-fashioned civics lesson, on account of him being dead. Talking world history in a moving vehicle that's slowly filling up with flies; sounds appealing, doesn't it?

"When do we get a turn to steer?" Caleb is pressed flush against the division between driver's seat and passengers, looking like a sweetheart and sounding like a passive-aggressive prick. (His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, awfully free and easy for a buttoned-up prude, and the sun slants through to highlight the blond hairs on the backs of his arms and the complete absence of any tattoos. I don't know why I expect them. It's like he's blank.) "It's only logical that the labor should be divided four ways, not two."

"In the absolute worst case scenario," Four says, slow but blunt like he's talking to a civilian, because in a way he still is. Caleb has his own training to draw on, but it has nothing to do with driving, or shooting. "Labor gets divided according to skills. You can pull your weight some other way."

Or because they still don't trust us, and they know they can't say so without making it real. I chime in from my place on the floor, where I am currently pretending to be dead. It smells like death back here anyway. "Shouldn't we at least be taking a vote? Four, I thought you were all about communal action."

"It's the chain of command. Maybe you've heard of the concept. You're welcome to get out and walk, if the two of you think you can do any better on your own."

It'd be way better for our continued survival than trusting the control of a ton and a half of metal to a massive headcase. It's impossible to tell if Caleb is concerned out of the goodness of his heart or if he's got something he's looking to pull: "No one's questioning your obvious qualification for squad leadership. Just let her take it easy for once."

Tris hasn't spoken up yet in this conversation but the hair must be prickling on the back of her neck. I hope she can see me grinning. "Yeah, seriously. Take a break, put her feet up. Let a big strong man do the thinking."

Tris refuses to be goaded, and good for her for growing something like a spine, but in the rear-view mirror you can see her biting down on her lower lip. She looks thinner than ever, jumpy and even more attached at the hip to her co-pilot. But we're all too tired and too distracted by thoughts of what we're coming up on for real complaints. It isn't a real argument, just the shadow of one, some weird routine where the front seat and the back seats bitch at each other aimlessly to ignore everything else. The meat's starting to turn rancid, even double-bagged in plastic, and it's hot enough that the protection hypothetically afforded by piling into the back of a truck waiting for someone to put a couple bullet holes in the gas tank isn't enough to overcome the disincentives. It's been bone-dry for days, since we crossed the bridge, and that can't last forever. Better to pull over now than fuck up and do it too late.

Everybody's too tired and riddled with muscle cramps to fucking bother establishing real boundaries and the whole shift system breaks down easily when you're only bedding down for maybe six or seven hours at a time, sleeping with one eye open trying not to get mobbed by wild animals or accidentally surprise-knifed by your bedmates. Tris is still plenty cagey about how our campsite gets set up, which has the secondary purpose of making sure nobody wanders off in the night and falls down a ravine to their death, but if you've ever tried sleeping on a plastic tarp it doesn't really accommodate stealthy comings and goings. It manages to accommodate every sharp rock within ten miles but it's still so much better than a cat-nap in the back of a van — stretching out on the grass feeling your legs uncramp is basically better than a thousand orgasms and the long grass is softer than anything Erudite could come up with to sleep on. Wet, yeah, rocky, yeah, filthy, yeah, but not the backseat of a stolen van. Not that any of us will be getting a lot of uninterrupted sleep, and knowing that adds an element of spite that makes the division more bearable. Four shifts, 90 minutes — Tris, Four, me, Caleb. There's nobody I wouldn't kill just for the privilege of waking up and being alone. I want to be entirely alone.

Getting to sleep is easy. Waking up is the only part that's hard. Sweating in the dark, I dream about Caleb. It starts out like a nightmare, but it doesn't end like one, and that's what kicks me awake like an unexpected drop. It would be bad enough dreaming about him in amazingly dirty ways — like my brain's trying to punish me for treating him with perfect civility so far — without having to wake up to him being right there breathing in the dark. Fortunately we're positioned back to back or I don't think either of us would be able to recover. So I lie there for a while with that to think about, and no real way of doing anything about it.

Four shoves me into full wakefulness and I roll over to rub the sleep-grime out of my eyes and do my turn keeping watch. In the dark, by extra-dim lantern light. Once Four's resumed his place wrapped in a stranglehold around passed-out Tris — and wow, fuck him for that, nobody needs to see that — I'm up in the dark with a flashlight and a real headache. Nothing to write home about. Dear mom, having a great time, we gutted a deer and Tris shaved her head like a crazy person, I made a friend... I'm just going nuts out here with nothing to do, that's all this is. Lying here under the open sky makes me want to eat a bullet. If that meant I'd never have to leave here, never have to fuck it up, I'd do it.

Tris whimpers in her sleep. Four hangs over her like a dog with a bone, protecting her with his body. Protecting her from me, probably. Caleb, on the other hand, sleeps like a stone. Why should he look so peaceful? There's nothing I've done that he wouldn't do, and what's his excuse?

It's a peaceful face but not an innocent one. You can get a lot done with a pretty face, and even drooling into his rolled-up jacket his is as wholesome as it gets, with a dimple flickering in his soft cheek. There are freckles across his hooked nose and everything that makes his sister look like a twelve-year-old boy or a stray dog has been broadened, strengthened, amplified. I know this in the dark now, and I wish I didn't. If he were to open his eyes and propose we cut the other two's throats in their sleep, it wouldn't surprise me exactly. But traitor or not, he sleeps like a baby.

Caleb Prior's got a pretty face, but he'd sell his sister for a pretty uniform and high-tier access privileges. He would, and he has, and he'd do it again. If he was my brother I'd have cut his pretty throat for that before he could see a tribunal and he'd be grateful I hadn't done it sooner. He wouldn't have made it out of the cradle.

Out in the dark there's nothing. No animals, no ambushes, nothing. I don't know what they think they're going to find out here — some magical hidden city that's going to welcome them with open arms. There's no answers. There's no satisfaction of knowing you've been on the right track this whole time. Outside the wall there's two kinds of people, people who are dead and people who are waiting to get killed. There's absolutely nothing out here to suggest anybody who wants to meet us. If they didn't kill each other, then they were killed by cabin fever or a serum leak or somebody else's little raiding party — if we got past the walls, so could they, a bunch of Factionless on a power trip. That's about a million times more likely than a massive conspiracy leading us to safety and salvation on the other side of the river. They're leading us out here to die.

Finish it now and get it over with. Get rid of the temptation. It wouldn't even be hard to eat a bullet out here. It would be easy. Could take the rest of them with me, even. One, two, three, four, two shots each and one for me. That's what's wrong with me. Nobody else thinks like this.

When it's Caleb's turn I don't bother waking him. Instead I watch the sun rise, and pretend I'm alone.

The sun finally comes in thin and bluish through the clouds. Caleb sits up and starts peeling off his faded navy-blue shirt. That's just about my cue to avert my eyes. Four shoots me a look, but before he can say anything about my not waking Caleb he's getting cornered; Tris shoves his boots into his hands (like he couldn't walk the extra two feet to get them himself?) and barks a few short words about the day's itinerary. Whatever she's saying doesn't leave a lot of room for negotiation — secretly she must love getting to play the petty tyrant with him, it must be gratifying to push him around. But Four has a leaf sticking out of his hair and Tris reaches up to pluck it out like she's preening him — just like that, she goes soft on him, and he's rubbing her skinny shoulders. Everybody's just going to pretend like they haven't been all over each other this whole time. Isn't this embarrassing for them? Aren't they ashamed? It's disgusting. Even half-starved and filthy, Four looks at her like she's the moon and stars. We're all pretty hungry, and we don't talk about it much; it's hard to bitch about my own empty stomach knowing if we don't get where we're headed in record time it might kill me.

(Why shouldn't I have what they have? Don't I get an ally out here? That's just fair. I don't even want what they have.)

There's a fucking snake hanging out sunning itself on the tarp by the time we're collectively clean, dressed, and ready to pack up. Tris must not see me watching her from the backseat; she nudges the snake lightly into the grass with the toe of her shoe, and it slinks off unbothered. The city used to be crawling with snakes every summer, harmless ones even — I remember cutting the head off one to see if the body still wiggled.

I was a kid then. Anyone else could say they were different then, that they'd grown up.

The view coming down is — I shouldn't be the person to describe it. Light pours through a gash in the sky, illuminating a massive stripe across the rocks below and silhouetting where there's still dead pine trees sticking out at unnatural angles. But the storm clouds are a black-and-blue mass overhead like a deep bruise.

The weather turns fast as we come down out of the hills. By the time there are buildings on the horizon, the sky is black. The rain is pelting down in sheets, flooding out the already shit pavement — and you can feel the queasy strain filling the truck like water flooding into a tank, all that built up unease and doubt. The vehicle is sagging on its frame already, like it's just as disheartened as we are — at irregular intervals there's a sound like metal going on metal and the car frame shudders, jolting all of us forward where we sit. The bolted panels rattle on top of us like they're about to peel off.

The tension finally ends up splintering. Tris smacks the steering wheel with the palm of her hand. "We can't drive in this."

("Agreed," says the backseats. Even Four agrees, through some freak coincidence, but I guess he'd have to if it's his close personal friend making the call.)

Tris drives us right off the road, pulling over sharply underneath a cluster of trees whose branches hang so low you can hear them snap and scrape along the roof of the truck. From the looks of the broken-up pavement this place used to be a neighborhood of its own, can you imagine? Now it's as wild as anywhere else. A neighborhood in the middle of a marsh, with a street of its own and everything. The houses are arranged in a ring like a cluster of broken teeth. Four tosses his gun across the passenger side seat and dismounts first. This place is a wasteland of petrified fences and broken windows. It looks like a bomb hit it. Maybe a bomb did hit it. The grass and the bushes are covered in reddish gray ash, caking like sand on fat white flowers, and wild turkeys rummage brazenly through the undergrowth. They don't even scatter at our approach, and they've shit everywhere. Turkey shit and wild roses. There's a smell in the air, and it's not just the wildlife - a chemical stink that leaves me with my face pressed into the crook of my arm, trying not to gag.

"This place must be just like old times for you guys. Hey, Tris did you have any genius plans for dealing with chemical fallout, or are we just going to wade on in?"

Prior's mouth is a flat line. Hey, at least she doesn't look like she's about to cry, and at any rate it's true. Abnegation had the shittiest living compound even before Jeanine swept the place clean. Tris passes her eyes over me in a disinterested flicker. "Try holding your breath, Peter."

Was that a joke? A joke out of Beatrice Prior? She slithers out of the car, boots hitting the ashy ground, and the two of us follow.

More fat ugly birds graze aimlessly in the center median, like they don't even see us through the drizzling rain, which is finally starting for real right around now. Caleb's turning up his coat collar against the weather, and then he raises his arm in a nonspecific gesture.

"Hey, look. Lunch." His expression is unreadable and I can't tell if he's actually made a semi-funny joke or if he's in deadly earnest. First Tris and now her brother, today is full of surprises.

I'm tempted to take one down just to teach him a lesson. (What lesson? Just for the fuck of it, more accurately. It'd be easy.) "Don't even talk to me about food right now. Now look what you did, they're splitting." My elbow collides with the soft place just underneath his ribs. Caleb's bookbag slithers to the ground off his shoulder and the ugly things bolt — they can barely fly but they're streaking off into the stand of trees that used to be somebody's yard. Caleb yelps and scoops up his worldly possessions before they can get soaked.

No one's lived here for years. Maybe longer. Even the Factionless wouldn't stoop to living here; staring through the dark you can make out the busted windows overgrown with dead gray weeds, the paint on the houses bleached out to pastels. Some of the doors are hung with rusty padlocks, but they dangle uselessly, flaking away in chips of plastic. Four lifts one lock up with a rattle, and it just about breaks off in his hands. He and Tris exchange a look. Who knows what passes between them in that look.

"We need the gear to patch a tire with. It should hold out a while, but not for long, and not if we lose more than one at a time."

"So are we supposed to start knocking on doors, or what? This used to be somebody's front yard. You think they'll let us borrow a cup of sugar?"

(Bad choice of reference. Stiffs don't cook with sugar, they're afraid they might like it.) I might be a liar, but I'm not a thief. I wouldn't dream of appropriating anything for our use that wasn't mine.

Four states the obvious. "Nobody lives here, and they look like they left in a hurry. We might as well scavenge for supplies and make a few repairs until the roads clear up."

Tris puffs up into the shoulders of her coat, huddled like a bird but looking sharp. If she weren't bald her wet hair would be plastered down to her head like a helmet. "We're looking for anything like a garage, a toolshed, anything. Anybody who needs to take a moment of privacy, this is as good a time as you're going to get."

Glad we're all of like mind. There's some stuff nobody wants to do by the side of the road. Getting rained on isn't so bad, but the sudden humid dark anywhere outside of our headlights' spill is something else. It's smothering. The tree branches provide a little cover, but everything is weird shadows, weird half-light. Posted around the circle are big bar street lamps, broken now, but they look just like the ones that marked out neighborhoods in Candor — buildings where people like my dad often worked late. Other neighborhoods got the real dark. Anything else was wasteful, whatever petty little woman was in charge of how energy got parceled out decided some blocks got round-the-clock light and others didn't. I was never really afraid of the dark until I left Candor.

Caleb stretches, linking his long arms above his head, damp coat sticking to the muscles in his back. Being this close to him is going to drive me insane. Just put a bullet in my head already.

Tris and Four set off through the snarls of long grass to the still fenced backyard of one of the houses — the gate rattles a couple times but Tris is already tramping through the thick snarl of overgrown rose bushes and vaulting over the wall. We'll meet them back there, I guess. The front door's swollen shut, but a few good kicks loosen it up. The humidity inside is like a slap in the face — if you thought it was bad outside, it's got to be a couple degrees warmer in here, like walking into an armpit. There's carpet on the floor, but it's rotted flat and squishes wetly underfoot.

They can have the yard, I'll take the cover — or at least I would if the ceiling in here wasn't leaking worse than the clouds outside. The plaster's rotted away entirely and sags down like something from the floor above made a strong enough impact to bow it like a net.

Squinting in the dark, but there's not a lot to see. There's nothing in here. The plastic frame of a flat computer screen lies on the floor in the main room, in pieces. Somebody put their foot through it. I pull open desk drawers just in case, but there's nothing good in here. Broken glass. Overturned picture frames. An overturned table with its back to the wall. Behind the table there's a pile of sports equipment and two packed bags, but dumped out on the blackened carpet they're just clothes. I rummage for anything that looks like it might fit.

The walls are plastered in patterned paper and caked in yellow mold — there's pictures on the walls, or hanging on the floor, but nobody looks at that stuff anyway. Over top of the mold and stains somebody has spray-painted two letters in red, a couple of block capitals: a G and a D. GD.

Next room over is the kitchen. The windows are boarded up and plastered over. I lean around the doorframe to shout, and the tile echoes, tile walls and floor and everything. "Tris? Hey, Tris, you're going to want to take a look at this."

It's Caleb who comes instead after me, stepping in the doorway and casting the beam of a pen light over the warped plaster and paint.

The rain's stopped. Why would the rain stop? Caleb takes a step back, surveying the spray-painted letters. "Somebody's initials?"

The sharp crack of a gunshot rings out, rippling with echo, and then another. Another makes contact — that hard wet sound you can't really forget, and suddenly I can feel my heart pounding at the back of my mouth, I can feel the hurt of it like it's me it hit and for a moment it feels so real I think it did. Bone splintering like rotten wood. And then the pain. Not me. Not me. I'm fine.

A male voice snags in a short, cut-off gasp. From the back yard Tris calls to Four by name — his real name, it must be, no wonder he prefers a number if he's been slapped with a classic Stiff name like that one — but it's almost a scream.

Somebody nailed boards over the kitchen windows, but even those have been busted through. A stray bullet shatters through in a hail of splinters, making me jump back, hauling Caleb by his sleeve.

"Who's shooting at us?" He knows well enough not to raise his voice. Now, I don't carry a huge fucking high-powered murder rifle everywhere like Four does, but I don't leave my gun in the truck either. It's up and out in a second flat and Caleb puts his bare hand out to force the barrel down, exactly like he wouldn't if he knew what one of these could do.

"Who gives a shit? We need to shoot back—"

"This is the first sign of recent habitation since the Bureau building. We shouldn't be shooting them, we don't even know who they are. At least we shouldn't shoot to kill." His eyes aren't looking at me, but they're more — exhilarated, than anything. "Want to make a break for it?"

Caleb Prior's got a pretty face, but he's a real piece of work.

"Like fuck we're not. You're sticking with your sister or I'll snap your fucking neck, now cover me."

We're going to die out here. If they take the truck we're going to die out here anyway no matter what. We'll just starve in the garbage instead of bleeding out. How many guys? Four? Five? The gate Tris vaulted so nimbly over is flung open wide and the truck is right there, getting raided. One of them has torn back the canvas and you can hear them shoveling out webbed bags of dry goods like they're trash — looking for a gun, maybe, or something to trick the ignition with. They're dressed like Factionless, all in mixed-up black and blue and dirty brown, and the way they scatter without regrouping is a sure sign that they're not trained for this. It's not a battle; it's not even a fight. None of us are ready to fight. This is going to be a shitshow.

Through the window everything is just half-silhouettes, half in the dark. I can see skinny shoulders, the shapeless outlines of a coat. Tris is frozen. Her gun hangs at her side from its strap. She is frozen. She's useless.

Two men. Skinny guys but big. Filthy, ragged. They're not even dressed for the weather, let alone armored — you could drop them with a bullet each. But at this distance? Tris takes a step backward with the heels of her boots scuffing, and they circle up on her, front and back, like stray dogs sniffing. It's impossible to tell if she's that stiff because she's scared, or if it's something else.

It's something else.

One of them reaches out without the slightest shred of self-preservation instinct to touch her gun. He fingers at the plastic casing like he desperately desperately wants some broken fingers. "You two boys lost?"

"We're not looking for trouble," Tris says, raising her voice enough for the rest of us to hear — clearly and calmly like she's being broadcast on a screen somewhere. "We were just leaving. If you need food or help, we'll help."

Like we're not dead anyway?

"That's real sweet of you, but we're gonna need to take a look at what you've got first." You can see the exact moment when it dawns on the first guy that Tris is a girl and not a really ugly boy. His scraggly beard is caked with blood, too thick for the rain to wash away, and even from this distance you can see his lips part to show a grin full of broken teeth. "Keys," he barks. "You've got keys? Hand 'em on over."

His friend has a bat, and his grip on it shifts. Both of them look impatient. Both of them look hungry. Tris' finger is far off the trigger, and she digs in her coat pockets for something she can't find. It's taking too long. This guy is going to knock that gun out of her arms and bust her fucking teeth in.

Wood and tile clatter as Caleb scrambles, trying to bust loose the door past a rotten-out lock; she can't turn, but from the motion of her head it's obvious Tris hears the noise. She reaches back, like she's going for her back pocket. Behind her back she holds up a hand sign: stop. Don't advance. Stay put.

Four must see it too. Even Caleb must know what it means.

It's taking too long. She's got a gun, and she's quick, she's quicker on the draw than both these guys, so why's she hesitating? There's no clear line of sight and every nerve in my body is screaming drop him, drop him, drop him, not because I can but just because I really want to, so much I'd even let her do it. He thinks he's a big man. She better make him bleed.

Pressed hard against the boards, gun pressing into my shoulder, waiting for the next bullet to come through and pulp my brain. Peter Hayes, coward.

"You got keys?" the guy with the beard repeats again in a questioning tone. "Or are you going to take all day?"

Tris says something too quiet to hear. Her head is down. She looks so small like this.

The guy with the bat is swinging it for fun, sliding it back behind his head like he's scratching his neck. He thinks he's being reasonable. He thinks she's just a kid. "Come on, sweetheart, don't make this hard. Nobody's gonna hurt you."

That hand comes out from behind her back. Tris makes a motion like she's going to toss the keyring to him, but her hand must be empty — because the back of her balled-up fist slams into the middle of the bat guy's face, right in the nose. Metal pings on bricks. He drops the bat. What kind of dumbfuck move is that? But Tris is on him hard and fast.

From the window you can't quite see it, but you can hear it, and you'd know if you heard it. Fist to the face, elbow to the throat, twice each. Tris drops the two of them without firing a shot. I wouldn't have thought she had it in her.

Tris strikes the second one, the bearded one, for a final third time — he takes a swing and the butt of her gun comes down like a club on the fallen man's face and the guy's arms spasm in the mud. Tris is bent double from the effort, and when she turns around she's wheezing like an animal. Wood splinters and Caleb is out the door, running to his sister's side.

Four calls to Tris, and she calls back, her voice is sharp and almost choked but his doesn't sound too breezy either. His dark gray shirt is dark with blood dripping from the side of his face, but he must have repulsed one of the adults successfully — I don't envy any guy who tries to jump Four, even with a gun in his hand. He's still struggling with another combatant. You can see it in his face the moment Four notices that the skinny arm he holds is that of a boy no older than twelve. He's lost his weapon, but hasn't stopped struggling — Four restrains him in what amounts to a bear hug, but the kid's spitting and kicking like an animal. There's the shooter. A barefoot kid.

Tris gets the other adult by her hair, dragging her back through the gate away from the truck and all but throwing her on the ground. She drops her with a strike to the shoulder, but the woman doesn't even whimper. Tris isn't even trying to hurt her, she's trying to listen.

For a while there there's only breathing, the thin reedy sound of hard breath and the animal moan of the other two guys in the mud. The woman's voice comes out from somewhere in her chest, rusty like she rarely uses it.

"Fuck the Bureau." The woman spits a glob of blood right in Tris' face; to her credit she doesn't even flinch. "Fuck your Bureau men."

"How many of you are there? How many more are here?" Tris is stunned white; the rain makes it look like she has no eyebrows and no eyelashes, pale as an egg. Somebody tries to shoot her boyfriend in the face and she still wants to take a sociological study of their group behaviors, very helpful. "Where did you come from?"

I need a shot. My arms are steady now and my heart's still beating hard; let the rest of them run around like idiots if they want to. I'm staying put. I'm not a coward for staying covered if it's tactics.

The sun's coming out. It shines on Caleb, crouched useless in the dirt and concrete between the two prone men, fumbling with ammo; it shines on Four, ashy pale and rigid and marked in blood like an already-dead man. It illuminates Tris from behind, bent low and gripping tight; her little remaining hair is plastered to her skull, and she looks like she could burn the whole world. The sun's coming out, and it glints on the blade of a knife, pressed into the ragged woman's palm.

"Tris—" Caleb must see it too, he wheels, ready to launch himself. Why would he do that? He doesn't even like her. Four lets the boy drop and lunges for the woman hard, forcing them apart but not soon enough.

The first swing slices at Tris' arm, and misses. The second time around the blade bites into Tris' side, and her whole body jerks back; Tris loses her soaking-wet hold on her opponent, there's no scream but a nasty sound of surprise. Tris staggers. The blade rips up and in.

The ragged woman lets Tris drop and bolts, running like a half-downed animal with her busted arm hanging limp. She's old, and not too quick, but her unsteady gait is a real pain in the ass. I aim for the back of her head and squeeze the trigger. My whole world narrows to just that one spot, the base of her skull. There's no rain, no trees, no Tris, no Four, no her, no me. There's just that one spot.

The old woman drops like a stone, easy as pie. When I come back to the world, the shot's still buzzing in my ears.

[Author's notes: The natural scene Peter's trying and failing to describe in this chapter is inspired by 19th century American landscape painting like Albert Bierstadt's "A Storm In The Rocky Mountains - Mt. Rosalie". It's a fucking gorgeous painting and I don't blame him for feeling like he can't describe a view like that accurately, because I sure can't. One of my biggest issues with visualizing this fic is figuring how the stuff outside of isolated urban enclaves would return to nature when most cities have been wiped off the map - Tris and co. have found a lot of the relics of places where it hasn't yet, or stuff other people have left behind upon withdrawing, but for the most part American land has been left to its own devices. So animal populations are changing, and the landscape's adjusting to no longer being used for human habitation.

Some of the scenery of the cul de sac is influenced by the beautiful film adaptation of the beautiful book How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. (Probably not in any way that was actually noticeable, I just love HILN to death.)

Sorry for the huge delay on this chapter! I just started a new job and it's really enjoyable but it gives me next-to-no time in which to write. Everybody's comments have been really wonderful and are hugely appreciated.]