The Dark and Hollow Places (43 page)

“Yeah,” I scoff at him. “The Soulers. You imprisoned them, remember?”

He breathes deep. He’s lost a lot of blood. He may not have long to live but it’s hard to tell. I’m sure he’ll hold on as long as he can.

When I realize he’s not coming closer I crouch back down toward the hole I’ve been working on, shifting and pulling at the rocks again to widen the gap.

“Think about it,” he says, ignoring that I’m not paying attention. “What makes us frail? Stupidity, love, anger, hope. The undead have none of that. All they are is eternal existence.”

“They have no life,” I shout back at him. “Literally,” I add, which makes him smile. His teeth gleam in the darkness and it saddens me that this is what his last moments have come to.

He tilts his head. “That’s the question, isn’t it? What’s life and what’s existence?” He takes another deep breath and another, as if he can’t get enough air. I scramble at the rocks, knowing that once he dies he’ll Return and that behind him even more dead are coming. “Which would you choose?” he asks, his voice gravelly and wet.

I set a rock aside in case I need to use it against him. I
make sure my machete’s within easy reach. The sound of the dead approaching rumbles and roars, making my work take on a frantic edge.

“It’s a fool’s choice, that’s what it is,” I tell him. “One brings you pain and the other numbness.”

He smiles wider, enjoying himself. “Isn’t that the question of life?”

I don’t answer. I dig.

“I know you think I’m a bad person, Annah,” he says softly. I glance back at him. He’s rolled almost onto his side. He’s gulping for air. I’m the last person he’ll ever talk to. The last person he’ll ever see—at least when he’s alive.

“I think we all make choices,” I tell him quietly.

And then he stops breathing.

I scramble for the machete and start running toward him, hoping to end it before he can Return, but when I’m halfway there I realize just how deafening the moaning through the tunnels has become. I recognize the beating under my feet, so constant that I’d grown accustomed to it. The air swells around me, and when I look up I see their eyes first.

They’re coming for me, a wall in the distance. I glance back at Ox, my grip on the machete so tight that my knuckles ache. He’s already twitching; his mouth opens and he screams loud before his vocal cords collapse and he’s struggling to his feet.

Terror wells inside me, as frigid as ice water. It threatens to paralyze me but I break against it, sprinting back to the debris pile.

They come after me, shuffling and stumbling and thundering with their moans. I tear at the rock wall, try again to shove myself through the gap. It’s still too narrow.

I can’t stop glancing back, some sick part of me needing to know just how much time I have left. Ox lumbers toward me, the rest of the horde closing in around him. He raises his arms, reaching for me.

I hack at the stones again with the machete. Anything to make this gap a little wider. For a brief moment I even consider taking the machete to myself—cutting off an arm so that I could fit through the opening—but I know it would be useless. I’d bleed to death before I ever made it outside.

That’s when the last gasping flames of my fire sputter out, plunging me into darkness once again. There’s just a tiny glow of gray light from the gap I’ve made, a shaft of something brighter cutting through the black like a knife.

Something moves next to me and I shout, swinging the machete wildly. At first it only cuts through the air but I swing again and feel it connect with Ox’s flesh.

The moans continue. More bodies stumble along the tracks toward me. They keep coming. There’s no escape. There will never be escape.

They’ll smother me and then I’ll wander aimlessly like them until there’s no flesh left to eat. Trapped here forever.

Screaming in rage at the thought, I slice the machete through the air in a wide arc, feeling it dig into a body. I shove the body back as hard as I can and then I dive through the darkness to the debris.

This time I know it’s my last chance. I either squeeze through the gap or become Unconsecrated. I kick my feet against the ground, not caring about the rocks tearing at my ribs and shredding the skin over my hips.

But I’m still too big. I reach for anything on the other side to hold on to, but all I feel is rock and earth and ice.

Something grabs my foot. Dead fingers wrap around my ankle and I know that any second I’ll feel the hard ridge of teeth and I kick violently, jerking to the side as much as possible.

Around me the rocks shift and give just the tiniest bit. But it’s enough. My hips slide free and I’m pulling myself along the ground. When I get through I run my trembling hands over my body to make sure I wasn’t bitten. To wipe away the feel of those fingers on my cold pricked flesh.

Arms reach after me through the opening—Ox’s arms, with fresh bites still marking the skin—but he’s too big to get out. He’ll be stuck there reaching for me until eventually they all down or the force of so many bodies against the debris shifts it, pushing back the barrier and spilling them out into the world.

I stare at Ox’s hand. Minutes ago he was alive. Three days ago I pressed my palm against his chest to stop him from fighting Catcher. And now this is all that’s left.

Outside the night glimmers, the darkness just before dawn so much brighter than the emptiness of the tunnels that I can see a few shapes stumbling toward me in the shadows.

As much as I’d love to collapse and weep, I’m not safe. Not yet.

Beside me a trestle of the track juts from the ground, and I test my weight on its braces before starting to climb. At the top, the rails from the tunnel continue into the distance. It’s deserted up here, and I sit, pulling my knees to my chest, allowing myself a moment of rest.

That’s when I let the tears come. I can still feel the fingers of the dead on me, still hear their moans. Every inch of me is bruised and battered, my muscles so fatigued they don’t even protest anymore.

But I survived.

And now it’s time to live.

I scour the horizon. To my left a band of light teases the sky, the smallest hint of morning. But it’s enough that I can see the path of the tracks stretching forward, and I push myself to my feet, determined to find Catcher and the others.

I can barely walk in a straight line after being trapped in the tunnels for so long, the cold eating into me. But the trestle is narrow and some of the boards are rotted, and it takes all my concentration to put one foot solidly in front of the other. A few dead stumble along the ground below me, pawing at the braces, and yet without the horde rumbling after me it feels quiet out here in the fog-coated morning.

The tracks take me past expanses of barren land, charred bricks chewed over by weeds. A long low cemetery fades out of view to be overtaken by a graveyard of rusted-out train cars. From all of these places the dead come, trailing behind on the ground as I make my way past overhead. They moan and reach and I ignore them all.

Eventually, as the sky lightens, a structure begins to rise from the mist in the distance. Elegant curves and twists fading in and out of the tumbling clouds. I rub my eyes, wondering if my mind’s playing tricks on me.

It’s almost too painful to hope. I swallow, pressing my fingers to my lips as tears blur the outline of what has to be the roller coaster from the picture on the map.

The roller coaster Catcher told me about.

I want to call out, to scream for joy as my body aches with the possibility of relief, but I still can’t believe it. I move forward slowly, waiting for the world to crash in around me again.

Because I can’t believe this could be it. I can’t believe I’ve made it this far.

As I draw closer, the trestle branches toward a bridge crossing a vine-choked road, and I climb over it, dodging a few Unconsecrated who wander too close. I stumble through hip-high weeds, tripping over old roots and stones. With every step I want to stop, but I just promise myself one more and then one more again. My eyes never leave the coaster; I crane my neck as I draw closer.

The top of it is shrouded in the early-morning mist, a frozen white fog clinging to the dips and curls of the ride.

Something shifts along the curve of the tallest hump and I freeze. It’s a shadow. A person.

My heart starts to pound.

Just then a breeze blows from the water, curling the mist away from him.

The arch of his neck, the set of his shoulders. Everything inside me stops.

Catcher
.

He sits with his back to me, staring out past the beach at the ocean.

It takes me a moment to find my voice. “What are you looking for out there?” I call up. And then I start to climb, a fresh energy sweeping through me.

Catcher jerks and reaches out to steady himself. He looks around and I know the instant he sees me. His body goes still, his eyes wide open and his mouth caught on a sound he can’t force out.

Before I even reach the top he’s grabbing and pulling me up. He runs his hands over my body, along my arms and legs and then over my shoulders and up my neck until he’s cupping my head.

I pull his face to mine and I kiss him, tasting his heat and fire and need.

“You’re alive,” he says.

“You’re here,” I say.

“You’re not hurt or infected?” I see the terror in his eyes.

I shake my head. “Well, not infected anyway,” I say, smiling.

This breaks the tension of the moment. We’re laughing and crying and he crushes me to him, burying his head in my neck, and I tilt my head back as the morning sky swirls around us in a hundred million colors, brighter than any I’ve seen.

He traces a finger along my jaw, the heat of him so familiar now. So much a part of me. “My Annah,” he murmurs, pulling my head back so that he can look into my eyes.

I’m so happy at that moment that I don’t know what else to do or say. I just know that I love this man. And more than anything, I want to live my life with him—truly live.

“Mine,” I whisper, twining my fingers through his, holding him closer. Knowing that this is what it means to live. That this love, this need is what drives us to push and fight and build and grow. That as long as there’s hope and love in this world, there will always be the living.

For this moment it’s just us and the breaking day, the promise of something new. We sit pressed against each other and stare out at the limitless horizon.

“What now?” I ask him.

He smiles, an excited flicker in his eyes. “That,” he says, turning and pointing. I follow his gaze and draw in a sharp breath that I let out with a laugh. Down the coast a peninsula juts into the water with a fenced field teeming with hot-air balloons of all different colors and sizes. They’re like wild-flowers bobbing and twisting in the breeze. People huddle around them in groups, shaking hands and hugging.

“And there,” he says, pointing toward the shallows, where a large ship sits serenely, deck bustling with activity as smaller boats ferry back and forth from the shore. “Gabry and Elias are already on board, making sure there’s enough room and supplies for everyone. We’ll go to Vista first and then …” He pauses, pulling me tighter, fitting us together as one. “Then we’ll search for other survivors. If we can survive, others have as well.”

I shake my head, not ready to believe it.

“You made it,” Catcher whispers into my ear. He draws back, his forehead resting against mine.

I think about the moment in the tunnel when I didn’t believe I’d make it out. When I was willing to just curl up in the ice and sleep—let the dead take me because it was too hard to keep fighting against them. “I almost gave up,” I admit, unable to put force in my words because it makes me feel weak.

He pulls away, his gaze serious as he meets my eyes. He trails his finger along my cheek, following the path of a tear. “But you didn’t.”

I stare past him at all the people in the field, at those on the boat scrambling to fill it with supplies. They didn’t give up either. Not in the face of the Recruiters or the Rebellion or the horde. All those sparks of light, stars burning brightest in the darkness.

“And I won’t,” I reassure him, knowing it deep inside as truth.

Catcher pulls me to him and I feel his heart thrumming through me, matching the rhythm of my own. I close my eyes, listening to the sound of the ocean, the constant brush of water against shore.

My father, Jacob, used to tell me about the ocean when I
was a child. Stories whispered to him on the endless path through the Forest when desperation lay thick like ash. He said it was a place where possibilities were endless and hope stretched as far as the horizon. And now, staring at the pure endlessness of it, I know it to be true.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I’m incredibly grateful that I’m lucky enough to spend every day doing what I love: making up stories and writing them down. Thank you to all the readers, booksellers, librarians, teachers and book lovers who have made my dream a reality!

There are so many people involved in getting a book from idea to shelf, and I’d be lost without each of them. A huge thanks to my agent, Jim McCarthy, who is just fantastic beyond words, and to my editor, Krista Marino, whose insight and patience continue to astound me. Beverly Horowitz and the entire team at Delacorte Press have been wonderfully supportive in every way imaginable: Meg O’Brien, Jessica Shoffel and Kelly Galvin, my publicists, have worked tirelessly on my behalf with amazing results. I’m so thankful to Jocelyn Lange and the subsidiary rights department, as well as all the sales associates who’ve shown such enthusiasm for my books: Lauren Gromlowicz, Deanna Meyerhoff, Tim Mooney and Dandy Conway. Once again my book designer, Vikki Sheatsley, has outdone herself creating a
gorgeous package, and Colleen Fellingham and Barbara Perris showed such patience combing through the details.

I feel so lucky to have the support of so many amazing friends who were willing to brainstorm, give advice, critique and procrastinate with me. A massive thanks to Diana Peterfreund, Saundra Mitchell, Sarah MacLean, Aprilynne Pike, Sarah Cross, Sarah Rees Brennan, Ally Carter, Kami Garcia, Margaret Stohl, Holly Black, Jackson Pearce, Maggie Stiefvater, Kristin Finlon, the 2009 Debutantes and everyone else who has been so generous with their time and support.