The Book of M (22 page)

“
Wes!
” Intisaar screamed as the axe swung down—

But then Ursula shoved through our line in one smooth step and shot the woman straight in the chest.

The boom shook the field like a bomb. Then all sound was gone.
I could hear nothing until the echo faded. The woman jerked backward from the impact, airborne, red spray exploding out of her back as the bullet punched through—then lightning. She hit the ground hard. She didn't get up again.

“Jesus!” the man who had been running just behind her cried as the corpse collapsed to the grass. A storm of electricity swelled out of the dead woman, burning, flesh blackening, then receded. “Jesus Christ!” The man fell to his knees and cowered as Ursula leveled the gun at him. Two other women within her aim also crumpled, shaking with fear. The rest of the shadowed fled, screaming, leaving them there. “No!” he cried. “We're sorry! We aren't with them! Please don't kill us!”

“Stand up,” Ursula said, with quiet rage.

The man grimaced for the blast. Then he opened his eyes. “What?”

“Stand up,” she repeated.

All three climbed shakily to their feet. I struggled to look like I wasn't also about to faint. From the chest of the dead woman, tiny shocking tendrils continue to crackle, smaller each time. I tried to see Ursula's face, to see if she had done it, or even understood what had happened to her gun, but I couldn't see her expression unless I moved forward, and I didn't think my legs would hold me up if I tried.

“What's your name?” Ursula asked the man.

“Please,” he begged.

“You kill every shadowless you meet?” she asked. “Hunt for them in packs?”

“No, it wasn't like that—it was an accident,” he said. He curled back to the ground unconsciously. Tears were streaming down his face.
They're terrified of us,
I realized.
Of our power.

Ursula cocked the gun. “Bullshit.”

“No!”

“No?” She aimed. “You were going to steal our RV!”

“Only to run faster!” the man wailed.

“Wait,” I said. Ursula stayed the gun. “Run from what?”

“Transcendence,” he whispered. The two women with him shuddered at the word.

We looked at one another, trying to see if any of us recognized that name.

“Transcendence,” one of the women finally repeated. “The people that dress in all white.”

Ursula shook her head. “We haven't run into them.”

“I don't know how,” the man said. Still trembling, he climbed to his feet again. “They're everywhere here. They've been taking over all of the Carolinas, Tennessee, Alabama. We've been moving for days, trying to keep ahead. You ought to do what we're doing and get out of here now. Get north. As far north as possible.”

“We're heading south,” Ursula said.

“That is a very bad idea.” The man shook his head. “Very, very bad idea. Go back north.”

“Are they shadowed or shadowless?” I asked.

The man blinked. “What?”

“Transcendence,” I clarified. “Are they shadowed or shadowless?”

The three strangers stared at me blankly for a few seconds. Then the man's shoulders started shaking. It took me a moment to realize he was laughing, almost hysterical.

“Enough,” Ursula said.

The man continued to cackle until one of the women finally grabbed him and calmed him down. “I'm sorry,” she whispered nervously to us as she wiped his eyes, as if afraid we might shoot them just to make him stop.

“Don't, Lauri—I've got it. I'm okay. I've
got it.
” He pulled away, shrugging her off. He coughed awkwardly, and smoothed his hair and clothes. “I'm sorry.”

Ursula nudged the air in front of them with her gun. “Go,” she said. “Don't come back, and I won't kill you.”

The man nodded grimly. “That's a good deal,” he said. He looked around, trying to get his bearings. His shadow looked with him. We
all tried not to stare, but we were transfixed. I hadn't seen one in so long. “Thank you. I am sorry about your van. We really didn't know you were in it.”

“It's done now,” Ursula said.

“You should come with us,” Lauri interrupted.

“Lauri—”

“What?” she cried. “They're not like most shadowless. They could have shot us! You're not like most shadowless,” she said again, a little embarrassed.

“We're trying,” I said. Who are my people, Ory? The ones I'm with or the ones I want to be? “We're trying very hard not to forget.”

“Come north with us,” Lauri said. “Don't go that way.”

Ursula shook her head. “We have to go south.”

“You'll be heading right into it, then,” the second woman said.

Ursula looked down. We had no choice.

The man finally nodded. “I hope you make it, wherever you're going.” He gestured at the women to get a head start, and they began to jog again. “Stay away from the water.” He turned back to us one last time. “I know you won't, but remember that: they're always by water. If you see a lake, run.”

We camped there. We had no choice—it would be dark before we could make any meaningful distance. Not a single one of us slept, but there was no sign of Transcendence, or any more shadowed survivors fleeing it.

The next morning, we drove until almost noon before I spotted another fossil of a sign. “There's one!” I cried as soon as its weathered, industrial-blue face glinted into shape against the horizon. We'd been between major towns for days, only trees and road, and I was in desperate need of something to help me pin us exactly to our map. I
leaned down in my seat, then sideways, but the sun was too strong to see the words. “Stop us here,” I said to Ursula. “I need to get out. The glare's too bright from inside here.”

She coasted to a slow halt and cut the ignition. I climbed out of the RV and jogged over the gravel along the side of the road to the base of the sign, hand to my brow to cut the sun. Ursula followed with her rifle. A few feet away, the glazed surface finally gave up the blinding glow and I saw why it had been so hard to read. It was the back of the sign, an empty blue sheet, not the front.

“This side!” I said, darting around its tall metal legs. “This side, it says—”

REST STOP, 1 MILE AHEAD

I dropped my hand. “It's not a sign for New Orleans,” I said, disappointed.

“Are we going the wrong way?”

“No, no. It's just a sign for a rest stop.” Ursula's waiting expression told me she'd forgotten what that was. “A small area off the main highway with a gas station, a few restaurants, and some other small stores. Travelers gather there.”

“We'd probably best avoid that, then. If we can help it, I don't want to run into any more runners. Or the ones they were fleeing.” Ursula replied. “But we're still going the right way?”

“I think so,” I said.

She laid her rifle across her shoulder. “What's a restaurant?” she finally asked.

“It's—” I paused. I realized I didn't know what that word meant anymore either.

“Doesn't matter,” Ursula said.

As we walked away, I was seized by an almost desperate feeling to turn around and look at the sign again. Not the front, but the back. The empty, sapphire space.

“Wait just a minute,” I said.

Ursula stopped, but pointed toward the RV with the tip of her gun. “The others.”

“It's okay,” I said. “Go back in. I'll be right here.”

“Max.” She frowned.

“Please. I just need a minute.”

I thought Ursula would refuse. Yesterday had us all spooked. She squinted at the sign for a few minutes. Finally she nodded. “Quickly then.”

I went to the blank side of the tired metal plate again as she picked her way back to the vehicle through the gravel.
Quickly
. I didn't have any of Zachary's paints, but there were rocks around my feet. I picked up a pointed one and put it against the metal, dragging it slowly in a small line. The blue coating came away in tiny chips, leaving a silver scar. I pressed harder, did it again. And again. When I finished, I let the stone drop back to the ground and shaded my eyes with one hand.

You would have smiled if you could have seen it, Ory. It wasn't perfect, but it was clear enough—two thickly scratched numbers against a blue background.

I haven't said it for a long time, but I still remember. Part of me is afraid to say it, in case that time is the last time. But I still remember. I wanted to prove it to you.

Ursula was squinting out the windshield when I finally opened the side door and climbed back into the passenger seat. Through the glass, I could just barely make out the curves of the 5 and the 2 scratched there, glinting in the sun. Ursula could no longer read it, but she could tell that it was writing.

“To remember?” she asked.

“To remember,” I said.

She started the RV.

The road was smoother for a while. Victor kept watch, his expression as sharp and predatory as the lion on his arm, and I fell in and out of sleep as we drove, lulled by the engine's hum. I may have dreamed about you. I'm not sure. It worries me sometimes—whether I could forget you in a dream—but there's nothing I can do about it. There's no way not to sleep. And who knows how much longer I'll have dreams anyway? After I've forgotten enough, maybe I won't dream at all.

An hour went by with only trees and more trees, worrying Ursula further, until finally another sign appeared ahead of us. She nudged me and gestured out the windshield. I sat up and rubbed my face, ready to do my job. She must have woken me up mid-slumber—I blinked several times to clear my eyes, yet the sign ahead of us remained a jumbled blur. But on the surrounding trees, I'd never seen the little green leaves withering in the late autumn air so vividly as then.

I raised the map to compare as we neared. Shapes swam in front of me, the same meandering colored lines I'd been staring at snaking back and forth across the paper through little dots. The splotches of green in places where the lines were rarer and thinner. Wide ribbons of light blue.

Very slowly, I put the map back down in my lap. A fold was wrinkled. I smoothed it out as gently as I could with my hand until it laid flat again.

“Ursula,” I said, “I need to tell you something.” I was surprised at how calm I sounded. Or perhaps it was shock. The RV's engine droned in the background. “I don't remember how to read anymore.”

“LAST RESORT,” AHMADI SAID AS SHE HANDED ORY AN ALUMINUM
baseball bat. “Life or death. If you kill one of them, they'll burn hundreds of books.”

Ory nodded as he peeked over the barricades. They were back on the front lines again, shivering under the freezing drizzle. A deep hum of thunder rolled slowly overhead. On the other side of the street, he could see tufts of crimson hair pop up, then disappear again. Beyond, the Red King's library gleamed grotesquely under the dim silver light. It looked freshly wet, as if the sky had bled down onto the building.

Malik pointed at half the team. “You five with me, and you five—including Ory—with Ahmadi. We stay together unless there's a reason to divide. If we split up, you follow the commander I just assigned you.”

“Yes, sir.” They saluted. Ory followed an instant afterward, shyly.

“You ready?” Malik asked him.

He gulped and nodded. “I just—one thing,” he asked. “Before I die. Why
is
everyone doing this?”

“Saving books?” Malik asked.

“Yeah. It's nice to read them until we all lose our shadows too, but then what?” He glanced at the patrolling Reds. “I understand Imanuel—the General's—reasons, but everyone else here knew Paul only a short time.
This
kind of risk, just to have literature for a little while longer?”

“The books aren't for reading,” Malik said.

Ory blinked. “What are they for?”

“You let the General worry about that,” he replied, and then his
voice boomed. “On my command!” he cried. The soldiers shifted, ready.

“Survive this, and the General will explain later,” Ahmadi said to Ory. “For now, you stay close to me, and you do nothing unless Malik or I tell you to do something. Then you do it immediately, whether or not you understand it. Got it?”

“Got it,” Ory said.

“At least you listen.” Ahmadi stifled a chuckle. “You're nothing like Paul.”

“Here we go!” Malik shouted. He stood up slowly, his hands up.

Immediately, the Red side burst with color. From out of nowhere, a dozen flaming shapes erupted and dashed toward the no-man's-land between the two forces, whooping and screaming. Red-streaked hair, red scraps of fabric tied to elbows, red handprints pasted onto the fronts of chests—swirled together in an angry storm.

“Stand up,” Ahmadi ordered, and then rose slowly, her hands up as well. Ory copied her actions. He tried to ignore the feeling that something sharp was going to sail through the air and puncture a hole straight through him at any moment. Ahmadi started moving forward.

“Wait,” he hissed.

“Walk,” Ahmadi ordered. “We have to meet them in the center.”

His feet disobeyed his terror and followed her, picking their way over the rocks. His eyes darted from Red to Red frantically. “Where's the Red King?”

“He won't come out,” Ahmadi answered. “He never comes out—not unless they need something very, very badly. The General is the only one who's ever seen him up close.”

As they neared the center, Ory jumped as a few of the boldest Reds darted suddenly past them. “Where do they get this paint?” he asked, raising his voice over the clamor.

“We have no idea,” Ahmadi said. “Look for a giant!”

“What?”

“A giant!” Malik yelled. “A huge Red negotiates the trades.”

As soon as he said it, from across the no-man's-land on the Red side, a monster of a man with a shaved head began to lumber forward. He was a giant in every sense of the word: tall, wide, built like a tank. He looked like he might have been a bodybuilder or sumo wrestler before he lost his shadow. The Reds had painted him in stripes, wide red bars that started at the crown of his head and wrapped sideways around him down to his ankles. He was clothed in some kind of awkward long loincloth, likely the only thing they could devise to fit him. It was more than some others had.

“There he is!” Ahmadi yelled, and raised her arms higher to attract the big man's attention. The Reds started hooting. The soldiers pushed them back with the butts of their shotguns when they got too close, but they just kept coming.

“Over here!” Malik's shout rallied them. The big man stumbled to a halt in front of him and pointed at Malik in recognition. The other Reds around him whooped.

“How do we know what they want to trade?” Ory yelled to Ahmadi.

“We don't,” she yelled back. “We just keep guessing until we get it!”

Inside the Red King's front courtyard, wounded Reds were everywhere—Reds who hours before had been running around, throwing rocks. Now they lay in various injured poses on the concrete, moaning.

The big man began grunting and waving his arms at the stricken Reds. He put his hands together in balls and then dragged them apart from each other again, over and over. It took Ory a moment to realize he was miming bandages.

“Figures,” Ahmadi said, and waved over another soldier to open his backpack. “They want first aid today, since we just beat the shit out of them.” She held out a roll of homemade cloth bandages, and the big man's gestures grew more frenzied—she was right.

“Book, you huge red bastard,” Malik said, and withdrew the roll
in his hand and put out his other empty hand. “Show us the books first.”

There was much hissing and dancing. The Reds around them closed tighter. The big man snarled at the others, and some of them skittered up the steps into the Red King's library. From where they were standing, Ory could make out only a dim marble floor, the shadowy outline of several still-standing bookshelves, and yet more bodies, moving inside. The red paint on all the windows had made it too dark inside to see farther.

“Book!” Ahmadi was also chanting now. Several Reds burst back out of the half-open front doors, each one of them holding a hardcover. The hairs on Ory's skin stiffened when he saw them.

“That's it,” Malik said and waved gently to them, but the Reds took them all to the big man first instead.

“Is Paul's book there?” Ahmadi yelled.

Malik was struggling to make out the titles as the big Red jostled the books around. “No!” he finally cried.

“Fuck,” Ahmadi sighed. “This is going to take us a decade.”

“Wait,” Ory asked in disbelief. “
They
choose the books?”

“It's like goddamn Russian roulette,” another soldier answered.

“What does he have this time?” Ahmadi called.

Malik was trying to get as close to the big Red as he could to read the titles without entering striking distance. The Red, not remembering that books had to be still for the titles to be read, kept jerking the pile around, afraid Malik was going to reach for it. “Hold still!” Malik snapped. The big man hissed angrily, baring his sharp yellowed teeth, but the books were still for a second as he did it. “
Encyclopedia of Insects
,” Malik called. “Something about diet, a detective novel, Quran study guide, vampire stories!”

“Get the novel and the Quran study guide!” Ahmadi shouted. “Anything but insects!”

“Do it backward this time,” someone else yelled. “Pretend we want the shit ones so they'll give us the good ones instead!”

“Try it,” Ahmadi agreed. “See if we can trick them!”

“This better work,” Malik replied, and pointed at the
Encyclopedia of Insects
and the book about vampires. The big man hissed and jerked them away, and then folded those two protectively underneath the massive bulge of his arms. The diet book, detective novel, and Quran study guide remained.

Ahmadi began arguing nonsense at him, gesturing at the books he'd hidden away as if those were the ones they truly wanted. The Reds jumped at them; someone shoved one back; a brief skirmish ensued that startled Ory into a corner of the courtyard.

“Enough!” Malik was yelling at the same time that the big man roared. Ahmadi was working to separate a soldier and a Red without getting hurt. She smacked it in the face when it went to bite her arm and sent it howling, and then thrust her hands up in the air in a gesture of peace.

“Okay, no more!” she said. “No more!” She stared them down.

“Fuck me,” Ory gasped, cowering. “This is fucking insane.” How had they managed to get any books at all like this?

Malik and the big man haggled with each other, Malik acting as though he wanted the two books he really didn't want and the Red trying desperately to keep them squirreled away against his chest for a more valuable trade. Eventually Malik got the Quran study guide and the diet book.

“Here.” Ahmadi pressed them into Ory's hands. “Pack them up and keep them safe, and then keep out of the way until we're done. If a Red tries to touch your backpack, you run straight for the Iowa. Don't stop, even if you see one of us go down. Got it?”

“These two are that important?” Ory asked, scrambling to put them into the reinforced backpack he'd been loaned.

“Lots of memories in the Quran,” she said gravely.

OVER THE NEXT WEEK, THEY BROUGHT BACK AN AMERICAN
history textbook, a murder mystery, and a book on Egyptian gods.
Ory sprained an ankle, but not badly. A soldier they all called Smith Tres—because they had three Smiths in the army: Original Smith, Smith Dos, and Smith Tres—was stabbed. Imanuel checked his dressings almost every hour, even at night. He stitched him up using thread carefully pulled out of the sleeve of a coat and then lightly boiled to sterilize it.

“Hold this so it doesn't tangle,” Imanuel told Ory after he'd washed his hands. The thread was still warm in his palms. “Feed it to me slowly.”

Ahmadi watched from the corner, biting the end of one of her nails. It was unnerving to see her so shaken. Behind her, Malik's daughter, Vienna, hovered, trying to steal a glance. Malik came up behind her and gave her a reassuring squeeze. Ory's heart swelled for the two of them as they watched Imanuel work—that they both still had their shadows, that they were both still together.

It had been a bloody day, and a fiery one. They'd almost caused a retaliatory burning, but managed to calm the Reds at the last moment—they had just given them everything they brought in exchange for not putting any books into the flames. They came home with nothing.

“That's the other reason we don't just charge in and try to take the place by force,” Imanuel said to Ory later, as they watched Smith Tres sleep. “All they have to do is just light a fire, and smile as we call off the troops.” He ran his hands through his hair and sighed. It was the first moment they'd really had alone since Ory arrived—now that the shock had worn off, he could see Imanuel looked twice the age he did at Elk Cliffs. “I still think about the first one, almost every day.”

“The first burned book?”

“It haunts my dreams,” Imanuel said. “Because I'll never know what it was.”

They watched the flames in the fireplace in front of them crackle, licking at charred wood. “Imanuel,” Ory finally said, “we need to talk.”

“You want to know why the books,” he replied. “I mean, what they're for, once we have Paul's. Ahmadi told me.”

“No. I mean, I do. But this isn't about that.” He took a deep breath. “It's about Max.”

Imanuel's face softened. “Ory.”

“A few soldiers, some food. Just give me that.” Ory took him by the shoulders, to stop him from turning away. “And when I find her, we'll come back. I'll help you get all the goddamned books you want. I don't even care about the reason. I'll get you the whole library, if you do this for me.”

“Ory, she—”

Ory cut him off. “Don't say it.” He didn't know if he could bear to hear it out loud. Not from Imanuel. “Don't you say it.”

Imanuel sighed. “Even if she still remembers, you've seen the city. What she would have walked into. Your apartment is gone. Paul and I went to see it when we first got here. To see if there was something left to—remember you by. The whole thing was concrete powder.”

“I know.”

“Even if she made it here, what then? Then where would she go? The Reds aren't—”

“She's not a Red,” Ory said.

“I know she's not. That's my point. The Reds don't just take any shadowless. They're not a charity. Most of the time they just kill them like they kill shadowed survivors.” He stopped himself suddenly, eyes wide. “I'm not saying that's what happened to her. Christ. Sorry.”

Ory put his face in his hands. “Imanuel, please. I can't give up on her.”

“Ory—”

“No,” Ory cut him off. There was a high, desperate pitch in his voice that scared them both. “Okay, what about after, then?” he asked frantically. Everything—reaching D.C., finding Imanuel, all the hope—was streaming through his hands like sand in a sieve. “What
if I agree to help until we get Paul's book? Would you lend me soldiers then?”

They stared at each other for a moment until Ory finally looked away.

“Ory,” Imanuel said. “Look at me.”

Ory couldn't meet his eyes. He knew it was a pointless thing to ask for. If there was almost no chance that Max was still alive in D.C. now, there'd be even less chance she would be here once he found Paul's book days, weeks, months from now. When he finally looked up, he could see it in Imanuel's face. That Imanuel understood that somewhere deep down, Ory knew Max wasn't in D.C. That he'd never find her, no matter how long he tried. But that it wasn't so much about actually finding Max as just not stopping the search. As long as he kept looking for her, she was still real.

“Do you sometimes feel like—” Imanuel paused. “Like you don't even know who you are without her?”

Ory watched him, not moving.

“I did, when the Forgetting first happened in Boston—during the wedding,” he continued. A faint smile flickered. “The wedding. Those terrible tuxedoes.”