Read The Forest of Hands and Teeth Online

Authors: Carrie Ryan

Tags: #Science Fiction, #Horror stories, #Death & Dying, #Juvenile Fiction, #Fantasy, #General, #Orphans, #Horror tales, #zombies, #Love & Romance, #Social Issues, #Horror & Ghost Stories, #Fiction, #Fantasy & Magic, #Girls & Women

The Forest of Hands and Teeth (23 page)

BOOK: The Forest of Hands and Teeth
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For as long as we've walked along the path the moans of the Unconsecrated have been constant. When the sound is that unceasing the mind must find a place to store the incessant reminder of death. And so the moans become nothing more than a hum, a background rhythm to life.

Perhaps that's why none of us notices when the tenor of that hum changes, intensifies, harmonizes. When it echoes around us and pushes in on us until we are surrounded by the noise.

Instead, we each go our own way, mesmerized by this new and yet empty place. “Food!” Jacob says, his voice tinged with ecstasy. He pulls away from Cass's starved hands and runs toward the nearest building. Cass calls weakly, her voice scratchy from dehydration, and stumbles after him.

No one stops her; the rest of us continue farther into the village. Even though it's empty this place seems more settled than our own village. Here the streets are wide and laid out in a grid. The buildings are larger and more solid. There's a street dedicated to commerce: signs announcing the wares inside hang over each opening, shifting in the breeze.

We walk down what looks to be the main street and Harry and Jed veer off toward a building ringed with weapons, leaving Travis and me alone to stare with wonder at our new surroundings.

I look up and notice that, like our village, this place has platforms in the trees as a refuge from breaches in the fence. But unlike our village, these platforms have structures built in: houses, pathways between platforms, ropes and pulleys. It's as though an echo of the village on the ground exists in the trees. Like a reflection in a pail of water.

I stand there, my head tipped back in wonder as sunlight shifts through the buds on the trees and dapples my face. Fills me with peace. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of air sifting through the branches, knocking knotted ropes against tree trunks and causing a door on a nearby house to bump against a wall ever so subtly.

Even with my senses trained on the world around me, I don't notice the crescendo of the moans.

Until I hear someone yell. Until I hear my brother shout, “Run!” Until I feel Travis's hand grasp my arm, the sound of breaking glass by my head.

They stumble from doorways out into the sun. The downed Unconsecrated that have waited so long in this village for living flesh to arrive push aside crumbling fences break through dusty windows. Anything to get at us.

I move to the closest platform but Travis pulls me back. “The ladder,” he says, his fingers pushed deep into my arm. “My leg. I can't.”

For a moment I don't understand and then he tugs me away from this street and draws me back toward the gate and the path. Back to the known world that's safe and free from the Unconsecrated. Back to where we came from.

I jerk my arm from his, unable to return to that path. To give up on this village and my search for the end of the Forest and the ocean. I know that once we go back to the path we will be trapped, the Unconsecrated barring the gate for days and weeks to come. We will never be able to get back in.

“We'll never make it,” I say to Travis. And I'm right. Already we're too far into the village, and the Unconsecrated between us and the fence are too many to dodge.

I urge Argos from where he cowers at my feet, ears pinned to his head, the low thrum of a growl reverberating against my legs. He looks at me for a moment, his hesitation clear. And then I nudge him with my knee and he's off, his training taking over as he runs from building to building. Backing away and growling when he smells the death of Unconsecrated.

This time it's me pulling Travis along, his gait halting because of the stiffness of his bad leg. He slows me down but I am unwilling to leave him.

I hear the panicked shouts of Jed and Harry but I don't take the time to locate them. I can only assume that they are also seeking refuge, hopefully in the empty world up in the trees.

At every doorway Argos barks and turns back. The Unconsecrated pour from the structures, from every hidden place in the village, and I begin to fear that we may never find a safe haven. That this place is nothing more than a hive of hibernating Unconsecrated.

We move out from the center of the village, away from shops and toward the houses. Unconsecrated drag themselves from the surrounding fields, a mass of them scenting and trailing behind us.

Travis stumbles and his hand slips from mine. I turn and see a small boy coming toward us. His clothes are tattered and his arms hang loose by his sides. I'm mesmerized by his eyes—a fathomless milky blue against pale white skin and a shock of red hair. Freckles splatter across his nose and over his cheeks and the tips of his ears.

He looks almost alive, as if he's just woken from a nap to find his world abandoned and shifted. Before I realize it, I have extended my hand as if to welcome him to me. To tell him that everything is okay, that he's only awoken into a nightmare and that this will pass into sweeter dreams.

He's almost in my arms, his head turning toward my hand, his mouth opening to expose teeth when a boot-clad foot flashes in front of my eyes, connects with the boy's head and sends him spinning back.

It's Travis and he clutches his bad leg. He grabs me and pulls me away from the boy, saving his ire until we're safe.

I can't resist looking back over my shoulder at the boy, who is now struggling to stand. Spots of blood mix with the freckles on his face, and his nose is now concave, pushed back into his head from the kick.

But still he comes for me. His eyes locked on to me.

Argos nips at my heels, his teeth insistent on the flesh of my calves. He uses his body to push me, to herd Travis and me toward a large thick three-story house that dominates the end of the street.

The Unconsecrated are now within touching distance and as we close in on the door to the house we have to push them aside, their mouths gaping open as they grope for us. They lean toward us and I smell their death and then we are inside and Travis pushes at the door until it clicks shut.

The stillness of the house spurs me to action and I run to the windows, throwing closed the shutters, using the thick boards propped against the walls to reinforce them. When we have the first floor safe and secure I run upstairs and am faced with a long hallway lined with closed doors on each side.

Argos's nails click against the wood of the floor as he sniffs at the cracks under each door. The air up here is close and heavy with must. At the last door Argos begins to tremble, a low and long growl shaking his frame.

I press a hand against the door, place my ear against the wood. I can hear a soft thump over and over again. Like the sound of a cat locked in a cupboard—it echoes my pounding heart. Even though I know I should wait for Travis, I swallow the fear in my throat and ease the door open a crack, ready to push back against Unconsecrated hands.

But there is nothing. Just the continued thump that is louder now that there is no barrier between us.

I allow the door to swing the rest of the way open and I'm surprised by the brightness of the room. A large window allows sunlight to slant across a faded rug. Against one wall is a small bed with a patchwork quilt done in blues and yellows. Above that, hanging on the wall, is a painting of a tree with lush green leaves.

I turn to look behind the door and then I see the origin of the thumping. Tucked into the corner is a white crib with a white lace skirt. I don't want to know more, but still I'm compelled to walk closer, to look over the edge.

There is a child—a baby—who long since kicked off her blankets. Her skin is ashen and her mouth open in a perpetual yet silent scream. She isn't old enough to roll over, to sit up, to climb. So she lies there kicking her fat legs against the footboard of the crib, eternally calling for her mother. For food.

For flesh.

Her eyes are crinkled shut and yet I know that she is Unconsecrated. I can tell by the fact that no blood pumps through her body, the soft spot at the top of her head no longer pulsing. By the fact that her skin sags. By her smell.

And because no child could have survived in this village for this long were it living. She thrusts one bare foot in the air and I see the bite marks, the ring of wounds that circle her ankle and that have led her to this place.

I stand and stare at her. I have never seen an Unconsecrated infant. I should feel compassion. I should feel something inside me tugging me toward this helpless child, some sort of dormant maternal instinct. I should want to change her soiled clothing, to care for her.

My legs begin to quiver from exhaustion, the world around me tilting so that I have to clutch at the rails of the crib to keep standing. Argos paces in the doorway, whining, his scruff raised and teeth bared. The room reeks of death, engulfing my senses, invading my head—he doesn't like me being so close to the danger of the Unconsecrated.

And still the child with its silent, openmouthed wail, its kicking fervor. Its blatant need.

I am so tired of the need. The need for survival and food and safety and comfort. All I want is silence and sleep. Peace.

I think of the choice my mother made to join my father in the Forest. I used to believe that she became infected by mistake, in a wild burst of passion at seeing my father along the fence line. Now I'm not so sure. Now I wonder if she simply gave up, if the struggle of life and hope finally overwhelmed her.

And this realization sparks deep inside my body, heat raging through me until I feel as though my fingertips are on fire. Fury pulses through me. At my mother, at myself, at our very existence that has always been constrained by the Unconsecrated.

I take a deep breath and then pull a blanket from the basket by the crib and lay it on the floor. Gently I pick up the baby, supporting her head, and for the briefest moment she turns her face to me as if she were healthy, as if I were her mother, and I feel tears begin to slip down my cheeks.

This child could be my brother's. It could be my mother's. It could be Travis's and mine. Someone was her father. Someone once held her as I do now.

I kneel next to the blanket and place her in the middle, my tears creating dark circles as they fall on the fabric. I am humming as I carefully fold the corners tight, swaddle the infant and hug her to me, trying to give her comfort.

Once, back in the village, I imagined my children with Travis. They would have my dark hair and his green eyes and they would be strong and healthy. They would be nothing like this child and yet the feel of her, heavy in my arms, is just as I imagined.

I run my finger down her forehead and over the bridge of her nose. Cass taught me this with her younger sister, this trick to make an infant sleep. But this child will never sleep, will never dream, will never love.

I am shaking as I hear Travis limp down the hallway. “The others made it to the platforms and are safe,” he's saying as he enters the room. He stops when he sees me, sees what's in my arms. His face constricts in horror as the reality of the situation sinks in.

“Mary,” he says, holding a hand out, beckoning me into the hallway. His tone is taut though he tries to sound gentle and soothing. I can feel his hesitation, almost hear him screaming for me to come to my senses.

But I cradle the child to me and hum and rock her and she wails her silent scream.

“Mary,” he says again, this time a plea. He steps toward me to take her from my arms.

But before he does I walk to the window, pressing her soft weight against me. I tuck her in the crook of my arm as I use my free hand to push open the sash. I let the cool fresh air roll over me, wash the stench of death from the room. I lean out, let the sun burn at my skin, scorch my tears.

And then I let the newborn drop.

It falls into the mass of Unconsecrated below and I don't see or hear it hit the ground. I hope that its delicate head didn't survive the two-story drop and that it's finally, fully dead. But I also know that even if the creature survived that it won't be a threat to us any longer.

A deep shiver presses through my body.

Travis comes up behind me and places his arms around my shoulders, his hands shaking.

I raise my fingers and place them against his cheek, feeling the strong pulse of his heart thrumming under his skin. The warmth. “We're safe now,” I tell him.

“Tell me a story, Mary,” he murmurs against my ear, his breath tender and moist and alive. He pulls me to the small bed against the far wall.

“I'm not sure I remember any.” I'm still crying and he sits and pulls me down next to him.

“Tell me about the ocean,” he prods. His hand covers mine and he pulls my fingers to his mouth. His lips close over the flesh of my thumb. I remember the first night he came to the Cathedral and how I fed him snow and the feel of his searing mouth against my frigid fingers. I remember the feeling of my body thawing for the first time. Of truly feeling alive. I allow myself to let go of the tension and fear and pain of the past few days as I slump against his strong body.

I allow myself to fill with hope again.

“I'm afraid it might not exist.” My voice cracks.

He slides to the other side of the bed and pulls me down next to him until I'm cradled against him, his breath hot on the back of my neck, his lips trembling against my skin. His arms hold me tight, my hands grasped in his, his thumb caressing the inside of my wrist.

I allow myself to forget about the world that we live in. I forget about our village and this new village and the Sisterhood and the path and the Forest. I don't think of the Unconsecrated or of my brother, of being bound to Harry or of my best friend.

We are alone in a house that could have existed before the Return and could exist after. It exists in a time that is normal and not burdened by death and survival and fear.

For just this moment I want to think about life and us and nothing else.

BOOK: The Forest of Hands and Teeth
9.37Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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