by Carrie Ryan
I won’t be safe here long.
Far off in the distance to the south I see a thin plume of smoke. Catcher. My eyes blur thinking about him out there, expecting me to come flying toward him. I know he’ll look for me when he finds out what I did, but I also know I can’t wait for that to happen.
Not if the Recruiters are still crossing the river. It would be stupid of them not to turn back. Crazy.
Except that something moves in the distance—a figure lumbering across a roof several blocks down. I squint, trying to make out who or what it is, hoping it’s just Unconsecrated shuffling after me.
But the figure runs hunched over, weaving around obstacles. Others follow, their black uniforms almost blending in with the dull morning light. I let out a long low breath like a hiss as I watch the Recruiters race for a bridge to the next building, making their way toward me.
Somehow they made it into the City. They’ve found access to the roofs and they’re coming after me.
A frozen wind needles into me. All I have is the small knife in my pocket—no real weapon—which means my only option is to run. Dread fills my blood. I drop my sister’s books and am headed toward the closest bridge when something flutters from the pages.
I plan to ignore it, the need to escape overpowering, except that I recognize the bright yellow banner, the block letters spelling out NEW YORK CITY across a photo of this city as it used to be.
It was the object that gave my father hope when he was lost in the Forest as a child. Something my sister carried with her when she came looking for me. The last remnant of my life from the village.
I can’t leave it and I stoop to pick it up, to slip it into my pocket, when I remember standing on the roof in the Sanctuary with my sister as she tried to locate landmarks in the picture. When she told me about the secret histories of the buildings in the photo—underground rooms with hidden access to the tunnels.
Over my shoulder the Recruiters bear down on me, finding a way through the maze of broken bridges that leads to where I stand. Already I can hear snatches of them shouting for me.
The streets are filled with dead. The bridges will never take me across the island—too many of them have been cut and I’ll always be in sight of the Recruiters. If I want any hope of escaping them, there’s only one option: the subway.
I have to make it to the tunnels.
Sacrificing even a few moments is stupid, but even so I hold the postcard up, turning it back and forth. With each thump of my heart my fingers waver, panic-fueled blood racing through my body.
And then everything lines up perfectly. There’s the skeleton of what used to be a tall glass skyscraper and beyond that the building with the green roof and the arching windows.
But which one has the secret rooms? I clench my eyes shut, trying to put myself back in time with my sister as she was telling me about these places, but all I can recall is my frustration and skepticism.
I drop to my knees, tossing my sister’s books around me and flipping frantically for anything that will give me a clue as to which one has the access. Nothing.
The Recruiters race toward me but there’s no direct route; they keep having to detour when they encounter cut bridges. There are only a handful of them, and even though I might be able to take them, it would be insane to try. If I got hurt, if they overpowered me—I’d have no hope of finding Catcher again.
I’m about to give up and start running when I notice tiny numbers imprinted on the postcard, so small they almost fade into the background. I hold the card up to the sky, tilting it toward the morning sun until I can make some of them out: page numbers.
My sister made a key.
Trying to keep my breath steady, I turn to the corresponding pages in the book that held the postcard. I scour the history of three buildings and want to scream in frustration when something catches my attention.
A diagram of the subway. A picture of a rusted-out sign over an old metal door. An arrow pointing to the green-roofed building that’s just down the street from me. A footnote about a ghost station in the basement.
I tuck the postcard into my shirt and start running across the roof to the next building and then the next, vaulting the short walls in between. I might be a fool for believing what the book says. It’s my sister who believes parts of this city have truly survived since the Return—that there are still places rooted in the before time.
But it’s a chance I have to take. If I stay up here the Recruiters will eventually catch up to me, overpower me. Take me back to the Sanctuary, where Catcher and I will be trapped forever.
I can’t do that to him. I’d rather risk myself than see him turned back into their lackey.
The morning wind gathers around me, pushing balloons lazily across the sky high over my head. All of them chasing a strip of smoke on the horizon leading to Catcher and safety. All of them so close but beyond my grasp.
Under my feet the bridge jostles and jumps as I cross, one of the boards splitting when I land on it, my leg breaking through. I grapple with the rope railings, twisting my wrist through one to stop my fall.
My breath comes in jerks and I close my eyes for just a moment, the muscles of my arm straining to hold me up. Slowly I ease my way onto the next board, testing its strength before transferring my weight.
Already I can hear the Recruiters shouting behind me, closing the distance. My body begs to run, but I force myself to take even steps, testing each section of the bridge before moving across it, agonizingly slow.
I can’t stop glancing over my shoulder, watching the uniform-clad bodies weave their way nearer and nearer. Unable to keep the need to run from taking over, I leap from the end of the bridge onto the roof of the green-roofed building, my feet slipping on a patch of ice when I land.
Without pausing, I sprint to the fire escape and bolt down the stairs two at a time. In the street below the plague rats sense me and turn their faces up, their mouths gaping wide. There are so many it’s like looking at a writhing mass of maggots twisting and wriggling in the body cavity of a dead animal. They scratch at the old bricks, pressing against brittle-looking wood blocking the large entrances on the ground level.
At the first open window I come across, I duck inside, grateful to be away from the sound of the dead. I’m met with a long narrow hallway, the floor stained and walls cracked. The only light filters in from the window behind me and for a moment I don’t want to leave its safety.
Ahead of me is nothing except dim shadows, but I know the Recruiters are behind me. I have no other option but to press forward. Taking a deep breath, I square my shoulders and start throwing open every door I come across, looking for a stairwell. I desperately want some sort of weapon larger than my little knife—my hands feel useless with out one.
Most everything’s picked clean, though, and I spiral down the staircase at the end of the hall, barely noticing the remnants of the before time—old wallpaper clinging to plaster, a painting tacked up here and there.
Finally, toward the bottom floor I find an apartment that looks like it was lived in not too long ago, the smell of stale food hanging in the air. I bust open the door and it’s a room with a crude table and bench under a window. A machete’s casually propped against the far wall. I step inside and grab it, happy to have the heft and weight of it in my hand.
I’m about to leave when something makes me pause, a tingling on the back of my neck. I tilt my head, listening. From outside I hear only the moans of the dead, the shuffling of their feet. There’s nothing to indicate the Recruiters have made it to this building yet.
“Hello?” I ask the emptiness. I push farther into the flat, knocking open a cracked door. It swings slowly, revealing a sagging bed with a pile of blankets on top, a lump clearly visible. Everything’s coated with dust and a thin layer of grime, the boarded window admitting barely any light at all.
A lantern and flint rest on a crate next to the bed, and carefully I move into the room and reach for them. But I can’t sto
p staring at the bed and something makes me grasp the edge of the blanket and tug—unveiling the tip of a skull, the remains of hair and tattered clothes.
Two long-dead corpses, more desiccated skeleton than anything else, lie intertwined, the arm of one over the other as if they lay down one night to sleep and never woke up.
My eyes burn and I hold back tears. I toss the blanket back over their bodies, giving them peace. They already gave me what I needed anyway. Shoving the flint into my pocket and taking the lantern in one hand, the machete in the other, I race back down the hallway and start down the stairs to the ground level, wondering what it would be like to die in the arms of the one you love most.
The bottom floor is a chaos of noise: the sound of so many bodies beating against the walls, the wails and moans, the creaking of old wood about to give way. There are thousands of dead surrounding the building now, clawing and beating and shoving—all sensing me. All needing me.
Brick and mortar are only so strong. Already I can feel the vibrations through the building, hear the strain of it trying to stay standing. It’s just a matter of time before they force themselves inside.
I find my way to a huge empty room. Thin streams of light filter through boarded windows, over enormous faded pictures of half-clad boys and girls in sunnier days that crumble from the walls. My only thought as I race past them is how vulnerable they look—how naive to be so unprotected in a world with so much danger.
Frantically, I search for another stairwell leading down, figuring that any access to the tunnels has to be underground.
Against the back wall I find a narrow door blocked by a web of rusted bars. I growl with frustration as I yank at them, the sharp end of one slicing along my forearm when I pull it free. I fling the bars over my shoulder; they make a hollow sound when they clatter to the floor.
I can barely squeeze through into a dark hallway that smells of mold and decay. I fumble with the lantern I took from upstairs, lighting a low flame that sputters and sways.
All around, shadows threaten to swallow me whole, and once again I have to remind myself that I can survive—I can find my way out of this mess.
There are a dozen doors lining the hallway and I throw open each one. Every time my heart freezes, terrified something’s trapped behind it. My mind conjures up the worst sort of nightmares, until I’m almost convinced that just by thinking them true they’ll exist: bodies with nothing but mouths and teeth and infection.
I want to take a moment for a deep breath, to ease the thundering of my heart and calm the images racing through my mind. I know that acting frantic is an easy way to end up dead or infected, but my body screams at me that I don’t have any time to spare.
The Recruiters will find me soon. They can’t be that far away.
I’m drenched in sweat and my breath is shaky as I reach for the last doorknob. This one’s stuck, the wood swollen, and I kick at it several times until there’s a crack wide enough for me to see inside.
Holding my breath, I hope for stairs only to find a tangle of bones draped in stained strips of tattered cloth. What used to be fingers and teeth are scattered across the floor. Their tomb is my dead end. I spin away, needing to figure out where to search next.
For a heartbeat I think about crawling through that last door and hiding behind the skeleton. Just wishing the Recruiters would never find me. But I know that even if they didn’t, the dead would. The Unconsecrated will inevitably push their way inside.
I sprint down another dark hallway, the wrinkled and rotting carpet tearing underfoot as I run. There are several more tiny empty rooms, and as I race past I wonder if this is what the rest of my life will be: dark hallways, empty rooms, terror.
Just then I stumble into an alcove and find a large metal door with rust spots bubbling up through flaked white paint. I throw all my weight against it. I shout at it as if it were human, as if it can grant me mercy and let me in.
With a loud protest of rusted hinges, the door pops open. I’m greeted with a gust of cold musty air. The darkness is deeper here, older, and my lantern fights to illuminate it. There’s a set of stairs leading down, and just as I’m about to follow them I hear a loud crack. A cascade of shattering follows.
I hesitate, trying to locate the noise, and then I hear men shouting. Moans filter through, no longer muffled by the hasty barriers over the windows and doors. A deep voice booms, “Run! They’ve breached.”
My throat closes. They’re here. The Unconsecrated and the Recruiters, both catching up. I have to push forward, it’s my only hope. I throw myself into the dark, forcing the door closed behind me. I practically fall down the steps and stumble into a smaller room. As I turn the corner a figure clutching a lantern lunges at me from behind a long gleaming slab of wood.
I cry out, stumbling over a broken table as I wave my machete wildly.
The figure falls back as well, disappearing, and I blink several times before I realize there’s a mirror. I clutch my chest, trying to ease the terror-fueled pain. When I stand back up I see my reflection, hunched and small, my hair spiked short and wild around the bright band of the hat Catcher gave me.
My eyes are fierce and determined. Almost feral. And in the mirror I see another door behind me, intricately carved, with raised paneling. I spin around and race to it. This one opens smoothly, easily, to another stairwell. My heart pounds with each step and the air grows thicker as I descend.
Shouts and the sound of feet hammering against stairs chase me. I propel myself faster, stumbling and sliding over the steps until I hit the landing and slam into another door. I’m panting, not even caring that the sound of my choked breathing echoes loudly, giving me away.
I’m trapped.
My heart screams as I wrap sweaty fingers around the knob, the metal of the door freezing cold. It rattles uselessly and I jerk at it, trying to force the lock to catch, and finally it clicks. The door swings open. A blast of frozen air hits me in the face along with a darkness so pure it seems as if it’s never known light.
Taking a deep breath, I push the lantern through the opening and am greeted with the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen: blackness that goes on forever.
Escape.
I jump out onto the subway platform, the chasm of two long black tunnels stretching out to either side. The desire to cry with relief is so strong that I have to swallow again and again, pushing the stinging fear back into my stomach.
I feel rather than hear the footsteps of someone chasing after me and I throw the door closed, banging at the knob with my machete, hoping to bend it out of place. Someone slams against it from the other side and I leap back.
He pounds and screams for me, shouting my name over and over again like a howl and I recognize the fury of Ox’s voice.
For a moment I’m still, my breath clouding around me. Of course it would be Ox coming to claim me and drag me back to the Sanctuary to lure Catcher. He would never let me go that easily. Which makes my escape that much more desperate.
In ten steps I’m at the edge of the platform and I shimmy over, dropping to the tracks below. The darkness spreads to either side of me and I don’t know which way to go.
I close my eyes, trying to concentrate. Trying to think. Softly, I feel the trace of dank air along the left side of my body, skimming over my scars. The draft has to be from somewhere—there has to be an opening in that direction.
My muscles shout that I have to go. Now. I have to run run run. Behind me the pounding grows louder and then I hear a different noise. I look up to see fingers reach through a grate in the wall next to the door. My lantern glistens off eyes and I stumble back.
Out of time, I turn to my left and start running.
It’s freezing down here, each breath searing my lungs with what feels like ice-cold fire. My body protests as I struggle to go faster, my feet stumbling along the rotted wood spaced along the tracks.
Usually the worst thing you can do when you’re being chased by Unconsecrated is run. It
wears you out fast, and any distance you might gain is only lost while you recover and they keep coming.
But that’s the problem. I’m not being chased by Unconsecrated. At least, not just them. And the living can move much faster than the dead.
Shouts echo after me, bounding from the walls so that it’s almost impossible to tell which direction they’re coming from. I ignore the pain in my legs and lungs and try to run faster. I fall and skin my knee but I get up and go on.
Time in the darkness is meaningless, measured in gasping breaths and pumping heart. The sound of men shouting morphs into the noise of the dead: moans of every timbre combining into an almost-choir.
Sweat rolls down my face; I don’t know how long I can push. But I also don’t know what else to do.
The walls holding me in splay open, the ceiling soaring as I scramble into another station. The platform stretches along next to me and I slow my steps. If I climb up, can I hide?
But then what? I’m still faced with the same impossible scenario: I can hide from the Recruiters, but no one can hide from the dead.
So I keep running, the tunnel beginning to curve to the right. My lantern swings with each step, the light bobbing almost like a boat on water as I race past marks on the wall—some of them official-looking stamps designating locations and emergency exits, others bright puffy scrawls and pictures.
An emergency exit sounds like the perfect thing right now. Climb a ladder, find a hole, escape from this life.
The reality is that I’d just end up in the streets facing the horde. They’d find me. So many would devour me I wouldn’t even get a chance to Return.
The moaning becomes like a tidal wave behind me, a wall of water pressing me forward. I just have to let it push me, not get dragged under. The cold numbs my ears, radiating down my neck and trailing under my clothes.
Something catches my foot and I fall, dropping the lantern. I stare at it as it rolls to a stop, cursing my stupidity for not being more careful. “Come on,” I grumble, watching the flame choke and sputter.