The Dark and Hollow Places (41 page)

Blood pounds through my body, keeping me warm—but my ears still burn with cold, my throat raw and sore.

“I can’t,” he says, hand clutching his chest. Every breath comes out as a cloud, blurring his features. “I promised the men I’d keep them alive and I need you to do it.”

I’m shaking my head. “Even if you dragged me back I wouldn’t let you have Catcher,” I spit at him.

“That’s not the way it works,” he says. “He’s proven enough times he’ll do what we ask to keep you alive. How do you think we knew which one of you to threaten when we needed to remind him to keep working for us?”

“What?” I stumble over a rotted chunk of wood and pause, ready to run or fight—whichever will keep me alive longer.

He rubs his hand over his bald head, wicking away
glistening sweat. “Throwing you over the wall. The cage. Not that I approve of the way Conall handled himself, but it worked. Before we knew about you we thought your sister would be more useful for controlling him.” He shrugs. “I was wrong. Once you were in the picture we had to figure out which sister he cared about more. Turns out it’s you.”

I think of all they put me through—the torture and agony of it! “You’re worse than the Unconsecrated,” I hiss. “You’re a monster.”

“It worked,” he says evenly. “I told you when we met that I’d do anything for my men. You should have believed me.”

“You’re crazy and stupid.” I wave my machete in the air, dismissing him. “You’re the one who said there was nowhere else to go! You’re the one convinced we’re all that’s left.”

He shakes his head, sliding his hand from the edge of the platform, and takes a step toward me. I square my shoulders, raising my chin, ready to attack. He stops. “It’s not for me to decide,” he says. “I don’t decide we’re the last ones. I just keep the people safe. They’ll determine whether to start a new generation.”

I snort. “There are only men on that island.”

He tilts his head. “We have Souler women too. They’d have learned to make a life with some of my men.”

My stomach lurches at the thought. At creating a generation by force.

“Do you ever wonder about the very first people?” he asks. “About what it must have been like for them? To find themselves so unprepared for this dangerous new world?”

“You mean after the Return hit?” I take another two steps back. It won’t be long before the tide of Unconsecrated sweeps into the station, and every moment we stand here unmoving is a moment they’re drawing closer.

He laughs, the sound out of place in these tunnels. “No, I mean the very first living. What would happen if they’d simply given up?”

“I guess humanity wouldn’t have been worth it then,” I say. Above us more cracks race across the glass, the lead grates shuddering under the weight of so many undead bodies. I retreat farther down the tunnel until it’s as if Ox is just speaking to the empty tomb of a station.

“Does the fact that we ended up here and now with little hope mean that everything that came before was meaningless?” he calls after me. “The rise and fall of empires? The families and wars and loss and growth and knowledge and striving for something better? Is it always about the end and not about the beginning? Is it always about the conclusion and not about the path to it?”

He’s looking for meaning where there is none. He should have learned this by now. “I’m tired of paths,” I shout past the edge of my lantern light. I glance behind me at the endless tunnels beckoning. “Sometimes they lead nowhere.”

My words are drowned by a massive shattering sound, glass splintering against the platform like icicles. I press myself against the wall, far enough into the tunnel that the shards merely scatter at my feet.

Ox, still standing by the curve of the platform, drops into a crouch, throwing his arms over his head as chunks of broken lead latticework crash in from the ceiling. The old windows arching across the station buckle and break, allowing a wash of moans to roll over us. There’s a massive grating sound of metal on metal before something gives and bodies begin to fall.

The first few land with sickening thuds. Their bones crunch, puncturing skin with sharp gleaming fractures of
white. Yet, oblivious to the almost complete destruction of their bodies, they’re still desperate for Ox.

I retreat back along the tracks as the dead crawl forward, leg bones scraping over the concrete with a horrible high-pitched scratch, fingers swiping the air.

Ox’s eyes meet mine for a helpless moment as bodies rain around him. One fractures its thighbone, another splits its head and lies motionless. They just keep coming. More and more, falling on one another, piling up so that those on the bottom cushion the landing of those on the top. They roll and writhe until they find their footing and start to stumble forward.

The sound of so many Unconsecrated becomes deafening.

I turn and run. The last thing I see is Ox standing there, the dead a downpour between us. Already the Unconsecrated move after me, filling the tunnels like water, flooding behind me.

I don’t stop running. If anyone deserved to die it was Ox, but still, to see him there with so many dead—they’d have pulled him apart.

I shake my head, trying to erase the thought, and instead focus on what to do next. I can’t just keep running randomly through the tunnels. The Unconsecrated will continue to pile up behind me, their numbers becoming a tidal wave that will drown me if I don’t stay ahead of them.

If I accidentally hit a dead end or double back … I’ll be in the same situation as Ox. It’s too much of a risk.

At the next station I drag myself up onto the platform, scouring walls for any clue about where I am and where to go. How to make it out of here alive.

I’ve seen maps down here before, back when I used to explore after going to the museum, and I desperately need to find one now. My heart thunders in my chest, panic squeezing my lungs as dingy bare walls stare back at me.

Finally the weak lantern light illuminates dull colors barely visible under layers of dirt and grime. Frantic, I scrub the heel of my hand against the wall until the lines of a map appear. It’s faded, making it almost impossible to distinguish the various twisted lines and tunnels, and my eyes skitter everywhere at once until I see sharp letters stating
YOU ARE HERE
with an arrow pointing at a white circle.

I place a trembling finger over the spot like it’s an anchor holding me firm. I know where I am, now I just have to figure out where I’m going.

Behind me the moans in the tunnel grow stronger, pushing me to move, to run, but I know I have to think first.

My body shaking from the cold and strain of the day, I start tracing the lines that spread away from where I’m standing, tunnels curving and twisting back under the Dark City or out past the island, sometimes doubling back or just ending.

It’s like a maze, and I keep getting lost and tangled where the lines intersect into knots before untangling and breaking out again. There are too many options. I don’t know where to go. I beat my fist against the wall, pouring out my frustration and forcing myself to focus.

I refuse to die down here alone. I didn’t give up when I fell into a pit of barbed wire and I won’t do it now. There’s always a way to survive. The trick is finding out how. Survivors aren’t always the strongest; sometimes they’re the smartest, but more often simply the luckiest. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, clearing the panic from my mind, and then I open
them and start tracing the lines on the map again, knowing there’s something I’m missing.

That’s when I see, at the edge of the map, a picture of a roller coaster, and I almost laugh at the simplicity of the solution. Catcher told me about a roller coaster—he said that was how he found the boat.

Now I just have to find where that is. With the lightness of hope screaming through my body, I rub more of the grime away and uncover an arrow pointing from the picture of the coaster to a round dot at the bottom edge of the map—another station.

My teeth chatter, the cold closing in around me as I track the lines on the map, figuring out how the tunnels connect and how to get there. It’s far away, and my body wants to sag at the thought of covering such distance, but it’s still hope. At least now I know where to go so that I’m not running in aimless circles, waiting for the dead to bury me.

For the briefest moment I allow myself to think about Catcher waiting for me. To think of the boat and the water and my sister and the sky. These are the thoughts that drag me back to the edge of the platform. That propel me down to the tracks and push me to stumble through the tunnels.

The moans wash behind me, almost a physical force that screams at my body to move faster, but I know better. This time I don’t run. It’s a long way to the roller coaster and I can’t exhaust myself. I’m more cautious with my steps, keeping the lantern in front of me so I don’t fall—I can’t afford any more scrapes or cuts. Any more blood.

The only problem is that my body doesn’t generate as much heat walking, and soon I start to lose feeling in my fingers and toes. I pull my new coat tight, try to remember the
feel of the fire on the roof earlier, when we were inflating the balloon.

Try to remember the heat of Catcher’s skin against mine.

I shiver just thinking about it.

I feel like a tiny lightning bug lost over the ocean—a tiny bright light surrounded by dark so deep the world might as well not exist. Time and distance become distorted and I find myself counting steps just to know that I’m moving forward.

I can’t remember the last time I ate. I find myself pulling ice from the walls for water. It’s nearly impossible to raise my feet, so I drag them along, the Unconsecrated thundering after me.

Eventually, the ground becomes slick, and I press my hand against the ice-coated wall to keep steady. My footsteps alternately crunch and slip, making it easy to lose my balance. Every time I crash to my knees it takes longer for me to push myself up again, and the dead get closer.

Every time I hesitate, that’s distance lost between me and the dead.

I’m so tired. My body’s exhausted. Spent.

This is the true brutality of the Unconsecrated. My body tires and theirs don’t. My muscles cramp and lock up and theirs don’t. My mind screams to rest for just a moment and they know only the hunger that will keep them stumbling after me forever.

Every heartbeat I’m not moving, the Unconsecrated are.

And eventually I
will
have to stop. To sleep. To eat. To drink. To catch my breath.

I can’t walk forever. The dead can.

Knowing this should break me. It should have broken all of us long ago.

But it didn’t. Not my mother or my father. Not their parents or the generation before that.

And if I’ve learned anything surviving on my own it’s that I can take another step. That’s all I have to promise myself: one more step, and then I can worry about the one after that.

One more morning: that’s all I have to focus on.

So that’s what I do. Behind me the dead follow, the empty sound of their moaning making me nauseated and dizzy. I begin to hum, a wavering sound as the muscles in my arms and across my chest clench from the cold.

My throat’s sore, mouth parched dry, so I run my hands across the ice on the wall, bringing the drops of water to my lips to keep them from cracking. It tastes old and stale. Metallic, like blood.

A minute or an hour or a day or a week may have passed, for all I know. I just know one foot and then the other. I know the feel of the frozen wall under my half-numbed hands to keep balance. I know the feeling of my feet sliding—that moment I think I’ll catch myself just before I slam to the ground.

And I know pushing myself back up, bruises blooming on bruises. Moans chase me, the sound such a constant that it feels as necessary as breathing.

The tunnel slopes deeper underground, which makes the ice underfoot grow thicker. It starts to fill the tunnel until I’m forced to walk stooped over so I don’t hit my head on the ceiling. Keeping my balance on the slick surface becomes difficult, and finally I fall with a thud that forces the air from my lungs and sends the lantern flying.

As I lie there trying to coax myself to breathe again, shadows whisper at the edge of the feeble light.

I roll to my knees, recognizing the shapes: twisted arms, splayed fingers, gaping mouths. Eyes still open, sightless. Ice burns on my knees and palms. My teeth chatter and I have to clench my jaw hard to make them stop.

Bits of the bodies jut from the ice, frozen in time. Fingers like blades of grass coating a field, an elbow like a broken tree branch. They’re everywhere, surrounding me. My lantern’s trapped in a nook a few arm’s lengths away, and slowly, careful to avoid the snags of protruding bodies, I crawl toward it.

The ceiling grates against my back, the space so narrow I almost have to lie flat on my stomach to reach the lantern. I’m forced to rest my cheek on the ice, facing the bared teeth and clawing hands.

Some of the dead look like they’re asleep—like they collapsed down here, with no more living flesh to tempt them, and have been trapped ever since.