The Forest of Hands and Teeth

by Carrie Ryan

  I realize that I have tears in my eyes and I feel a little embarrassed as they run down my cheeks. “Everyone would welcome me with open arms and I would ask them about the ocean and they would lead me to it. I would be free from the Sisterhood and the Unconsecrated and all the rules and oaths and pledges and vows.” Even now I can see it so clearly in my mind—I can feel their arms around me. I can taste the salt in the air.

  “I would have escaped,” I whisper. “But then when we got here I understood.” I knock my head back against the door, the old resentment surfacing. “I realized she left because her own village was overrun. She was no hero, no explorer. She was like me—forced from her home and scared, without any options.”

  I bite my lip and then add, “It makes me wonder if I would have left if the fences had never been breached. Or if I would have stayed in the village waiting for you forever.”

  Travis sits, watching me. I'm waiting for him to protest, to tell me I'm wrong. But then I hear an odd noise. Travis hears it too; we both turn our heads and try to pinpoint the origin.

  A creak growing so high-pitched that I can no longer hear it—then a pop and a splinter. Argos begins to bark and I feel the door shudder under my hands.

  Travis is at my side. He pulls me to the stairs. Argos circles us, nudging us onward. Always at our backs, protecting us. We are halfway up the stairs when there is a crash so loud that I raise my hands over my ears. I hear the sound of Argos's toe-nails as he scrabbles up the stairs.

  The moans echo behind him, reverberating off the walls of the house. There are more crashes and splinters, the sound of furniture scraping across wood.

  Then the Unconsecrated are upon us.

  I push Travis up the rest of the stairs and look down to see the Unconsecrated swarming. The wood reinforcing the door is in splinters, half of it missing, and they seep through the hole like blood from a wound.

  A thousand thoughts run through my head. How to stop them. How to fight them. Where to go. How to hide. How to survive. Travis's leg and Argos and the ladder and the attic.

  Travis stumbles down the hallway, his gait unwieldy as he tries to run on his bad leg. “Sheets!” I tell him. “Grab sheets!”

  He doesn't question but turns into one of the bedrooms. I rush into another bedroom and pull the mattress from the bed. It's heavy and bulky and I waste a few moments maneuvering it out the door. But then I'm back in the hall and I push it down the stairs, creating an obstacle to the Unconsecrated's advance on our position.

  But they'll find a way past. They'll build up against it with a pressure that will finally spill over, their awkward bodies piling up the stairs until they reach the floor and come for us again.

  I run back down the hall to Travis and take the sheets from his hands. I drape one over Argos who still growls and whines and shudders. Without bothering to console him, I pull the ends of the sheets together and knot them until I have Argos captured, a squirming mass of teeth and nails.

  I sling the package over my shoulder and muscle my way up the ladder and into the attic where I dump the dog onto the floor. He spills out with his hackles raised and backs into a corner, his eyes wide and ears flat.

  I look down to see Travis standing at the base of the ladder. It is as if time narrows and focuses on this point, my heartbeat the only indication that time still passes. I can hear the sound of the Unconsecrated as they pool around the mattress and slide down the hallway. Slowly wending their way toward Travis, toward the ladder.

  He has one hand on a rung, his fingers loose around the wood. He glances over his shoulder as the Unconsecrated bear down on him.

  I move to swing my legs around so that I can go back down to help him. He shakes his head once, a sharp no.

  Not knowing what else to do, I scramble for the rows of weapons on the wall and grab a long-handled ax with a sharp double-edged blade. I drag it back to the trapdoor and lower it down to Travis.

  He looks up at me, his hand no longer on the rung. I've forgotten how green his eyes can be. How the edges of his irises are rimmed with a light brown. How there is a scar hidden under his left eyebrow.

  How he can look at me and make me feel whole.

  Before he can stop me I jump from the trapdoor, not bothering with the ladder. I land with a thud next to him, going down on one knee from the force of the landing.

  I wrench the ax from Travis and turn to face the Unconsecrated. I yell to Travis, “You had better find a way to make it up that ladder and quick!” When I sense him start to protest I lunge down the hallway, gripping the handle of the ax in both hands.

  Never in my life have I killed a human being. It's one thing to sit on a porch and sling arrows at the Unconsecrated below. It's another to feel the slice of a blade cut through flesh. Because even though the conscious mind knows that the Unconsecrated are no longer living human beings, there's still a part of the mind that rebels against the truth. That insists the woman, man, child coming toward you must still have some semblance of humanity.

  Especially for those Unconsecrated that are recently turned. That haven't lost limbs and flesh to time and the Forest. That haven't broken their fingers trying to reach through fences and doors. To see a pregnant woman, her body still large and firm, her eyes still clear, walk toward you and to know she's dead and must still be killed takes a force of will that is almost unfathomable.

  And yet I swing. With all my strength I pull that ax across the hallway, severing heads from necks, decapitating them in order to end their desperate existence. I don't even realize that I am yelling until I have to suck in gulps of air. The ax lodges in the wall and I tug it free and swing again, blood slinging from the blade. Again and again I swing, cutting down the Unconsecrated that fill the hallway.

  The ax lodges in the wall on the other side of the hall and as I pull on it again, the handle slick with blood, I am distracted.

  A girl my age crests the top of the stairs. She wears a bright red vest just like Gabrielle's. My hand slacks; I lose focus and momentum.

  And I hesitate a little too long.

  Something tugs at my foot. I stumble back, kicking. My hands slip from the ax. Without that anchor my balance falters.

  I fall.

  A hand grasps my ankle.

  I scream and kick and begin pulling myself back down the hall with the heels of my hands. More hands on my feet, my legs. Tugging relentlessly. Unconsecrated continue to swarm up the stairs, stumbling toward me. Tripping over the bodies of the true dead that I killed but coming for me nevertheless.

  All I can see is a wave of Unconsecrated cresting over me and I feel helpless, at their mercy. Ready to be tossed in the tides of their will. In that moment I wonder if I'll feel pain. If there will be anything left of me to turn. And if the hunger for human flesh will be the same as my hunger for the ocean.

  I want to close my eyes and let it come. Let the end take me and sweep me away, drown me in the sea of Unconsecrated. But I hear my name as the shock of a thousand bee stings travels up my legs. I refuse to look at the source of the pain, don't want to see the Unconsecrated teeth that might be piercing my flesh, sending the infection deep into my body. Instead, I look up and I see Travis on the ladder, his mouth open in a scream, his eyes wide.

  He reaches a hand to me and I am stretching toward him, desperate for the feel of his fingertips, when I see movement in the attic. Before I understand I'm engulfed in a frenzy of fur and fangs. I hear the sound of claws finding purchase on wood and then a ferocious growl reverberates down the hallway as Argos attacks the Unconsecrated at my feet.

  He is nothing but action, tearing at the Unconsecrated flesh with his jaws, ripping them apart.

  Suddenly free, I scrabble for the ladder, my hand connecting with Travis's. He is only halfway up and I take the rungs two at a time until I am directly underneath him. Then, with the strength of having faced death and survived, I throw my weight against him, almost catapulting him into the attic.

  Beneath me I can still hear A
rgos battling the Unconsecrated, the moans growing more intense as their numbers multiply. I hear a yelp and I look down to see Argos backing toward me. Without thinking, I slide down the ladder and grab him by the scruff. Instantly he goes slack, as if knowing that struggling might make me drop him. Together we make it into the attic.

  Travis slams the heavy trapdoor shut and then throws the thick bolts to secure it. Argos, covered in blood and shivering, begins to lick my legs and Travis must push him away to get to me.

  He kneels in front of me and I sit with my knees bent, my weight back on my hands. I am afraid to meet his eyes. Instead, we both look at my feet and legs, which are covered in blood, my skirt in tatters.

  “Were you bitten?” His voice cracks on the word. His fingers frantically prod my skin, trying to find the wounds.

  “I don't know,” I say.

  “Were you bitten?” he screams at me and I yell back, “I don't know!”

  He pauses, still looking at all the blood, some of it dripping onto the floor.

  He cups my calves with his hands, his fingers wrapping themselves around the muscle. He closes his eyes as if somehow he can sense whether the infection of the Unconsecrated is even now eating away at my system. Killing me.

  “I love you, Mary,” he says and that is when I let the tears come. The great heaving sobs of terror and pain that shake my body until I can do nothing but grab on to Travis to anchor me to this spot.

  He pulls me toward him and I curl around his body as I weep. I fall into darkness with his fingers trailing through my hair, my cheeks still wet and my body heaving.

  In my dreams I feel hands pulling at me from every direction, tearing at the flesh that falls from my bones, and everywhere I look it's my mother clawing for me.

  “Mary.” Someone is tugging at my arm and I jerk awake, my dream still vivid deep in my mind.

  “Mary, we don't have time now for sleep.”

  I dredge open my eyes to find Travis crouched by my side. I feel heavy and achy and then a memory sparks and I'm wide awake, tearing my skirt away from my legs.

  They are wrapped in delicate fabrics, a few with spots of crimson betraying the wounds underneath. “Were there bite marks?” The words tumble from my mouth.

  He stands and walks away from me to where the trunks are cast open, their contents spread across the floor. All the beautiful clothes I had tried on are now tossed aside, some of them ripped for my bandages.

  “I couldn't tell,” he says, one hand in his hair as if he's searching for something.

  I watch his back, watch the way the muscles along his jaw contract when I see his face in profile. I wonder if I would know if I'd been bitten. I run my tongue over my teeth, wondering what death tastes like. Wondering what eternal hunger is like.

  With trembling fingers I fiddle with the bandages, peeling their edges up. They stick to my skin for a moment before giving way with a sharp sting. Travis is right—it's impossible to tell if the wounds are bites.

  But as I come fully awake I know. I know that every heartbeat isn't pushing the infection deeper into my body, killing me with every breath. I know that these wounds come from fingernails and broken bones, not teeth.

  I know that I'm okay. That I have survived being tossed in a sea of Unconsecrated.

  Travis kneels and digs through the clothes spread out near the trunks, inspecting each garment and then pitching some over his shoulder and others into a dark corner. Every now and then Argos will take an interest and chase the discarded fabrics as they flutter to the ground, growling and tearing at them with his powerful jaws.

  Underneath me I can feel the vibrations of the Unconsecrated piling down the hallway, almost thrumming like a heartbeat. They will keep coming until there are so many they can reach the ceiling, reach the trapdoor by standing on the bodies of each other. I rub my hands over my legs at the thought.

  I hear a thump as the book with the photographs skids across the ground. Travis is tearing through the trunks and tossing anything that isn't useful.

  “What's happening, Travis? What are you doing?” I ask. I crawl to the books. Photos are scattered everywhere, the little girl's progression through life now a jumbled mass. He tosses another book, one I hadn't seen before, and paper explodes from it as it careens across the floor, yellowed pages fluttering down around us. I reach for one with the words USA Today written in large block letters across the top. Travis interrupts me before I have a chance to read more.

  “We have to find a way to get out of here, Mary. We don't have much time.”

  I look back to the door to the porch. It's still closed.

  “Have you spoken with Harry?” I ask.

  “Just to let him know we're still alive,” he says. I can tell that the fear is eating away at his patience.

  I stand and walk to the door. When I open it I see that it's covered in arrows and a breeze blows through the attic, sending the papers into flight again. I look past the edge of the porch to where Harry and Jed stand and they wave frantically at me. They've watched as our house was breached. Watched and wondered what happened to me and Travis.

  I turn back to Travis and an arrow whizzes past my head into the attic. I hear a sharp yelp and Travis storms out of the dark inside, his hand on his arm, blood seeping through his fingers.

  He glares across the gap to where Harry still holds the crossbow. Harry shrugs with a sheepish look. “It's too bad that Argos is over here,” Travis says, gritting his teeth. “I would feel much safer with him at the crossbow.”

  I try to pull his hand away and look at the wound. “Only a scratch,” he says, batting me away. He goes back to sorting the clothes and I can't help but smile when he rips a strip of fabric from a frilly pink dress and wraps it around his arm to stanch the blood.

  I pluck the arrow from the floor and unwind its note. What now? it asks in shaky handwriting. I don't know the answer and so I cast the arrow aside and join Travis by the trunks. I kneel next to him, place my hand on his shoulder.

  His sits back on his heels and rubs at his thigh as if it hurts. When he raises his head to meet my eyes I can see the weight of his sorrow there.

  “We will make it,” I reassure him. But we both know that we may not. That this attic may be our tomb.

  Argos yelps as another arrow careens into the attic and sticks into the flooring. “I should have closed the door while Harry was still trying to send his messages,” he says.

  “They're worried,” I say. “They want to help.”

  Travis plucks the arrow from the floor and tosses it into a dark corner without bothering to read the note. “We don't have time to deal with them. We must get ourselves out of here.”

  All at once he slumps against the trunks and I catch a glimpse of his profile, of the strain that he's been trying to keep from me.

  “Mary.” He looks down at his hands clenched into fists, the knuckles a bright white. “Can you tell anything? I mean …” I watch his throat convulse as he swallows. “Can you feel it?”

  He is terrified of the question and it hangs in the air like a horrid smell.

  “I'm not infected,” I answer him, my voice firm and strong. He doesn't look convinced. “Don't you think I would know if I was infected? Don't you think the Infected can feel death eating at their veins?”

  He thinks about what I've said and then seems to accept it. “Would you tell me if you were?” he asks, turning to look at me.

  I am about to tell him that of course I would but I can't. “Not until close to the end,” I say. Because I can't bear the thought of breaking his heart before I have to.

  He opens his mouth to protest but then closes it and looks around at the clothing splayed across the floor. The thumping of the Unconsecrated pulses against the floor beneath us and his face falls into a hard tight expression of terror and purpose.

  “Never mind about them,” he tells me and I don't know whether he means the Unconsecrated or the others out on the platforms. “Help me tear these sheets and
clothes and knot them. Braid them if it's not sturdy enough. We'll use them as rope.”

  I nod and take my place by a pile of clothing. I rip the sheets, tying them in sturdy knots. The first dress I pick up is the green one I wore so many weeks ago and I must tamp down thoughts of the woman who wore this dress as I pull it apart, the fabric protesting as it tears.

  Travis goes back to the porch and begins pulling the thick ropes that dangle uselessly to the ground. They used to be part of a bridge and he kicks out the wooden slats with his good leg as he coils the rope into a rough heap.

  “Will it reach them?” I call out.

  “We'll make it reach, somehow or another,” he answers, not looking up from his task, his fingers a blur as he knots the various pieces of rope into one.

  I feel the floor shudder beneath me and I know that Argos feels it too because he growls low in his throat, his tail tucked between his legs. He comes and leans against me, his warm body positioned between me and the trapdoor. Like water filling a bucket the Unconsecrated flow into the space beneath us. I wonder how much time we have before they force their way up through the trapdoor and these thoughts make me even more diligent about my task.

  When I have ripped apart every dress and knotted the strips together I rise from the floor and stretch, wincing at the pain in my legs, and join Travis on the porch. I ask him what more I can do and he grunts.

  I stand there watching him, twisting my hands together and feeling useless. A wind blows around us, sweeping through the attic, pulling paper from the floor out to float toward the Unconsecrated below.

  I try to catch them, to save them, but the paper crumbles in my hand, turning to dust. One page lands on my foot and I carefully pick it up. The edges are rough, as if it was torn from a larger page. Across the top The New York Times is written in large letters. Below that, in equally large letters, it says: INFECTION SWEEPS THROUGH CENTRAL STATES: CITIZENS URGED NORTH.