by Carrie Ryan
Ahead of us Catcher is like a dim ghost, a figure barely perceptible in the darkness. I’m terrified to take my eyes off him again. Terrified I’ll lose sight of him and our only hope. I feel the Mudo around me, feel their moans against my ears. So far we’ve been able to outrun them but we can only sprint for so long.
The Mudo will catch up eventually. They always do.
And then something wrenches me back, causes my skirt to tangle and tighten around my legs. I go down hard, pivoting as I fall so that my hip slams the ground. Undead fingers pull at my hem. A Mudo without legs tries to haul himself closer. I kick at him. My heel rams into his arms and head again and again.
His fingers crumple but still hold tight to the folds of my skirt. I drag myself across the ground, trying to get away. Elias runs toward me and doesn’t even hesitate before driving his foot into the Mudo’s skull with a sickening crunch. At last the fingers relax. Elias hauls me to my feet. More arms and fingers grab for me in the darkness as I hold what’s left of the skirt close to my body.
Catcher shifts Cira in his arms and slows. I worry that maybe he’s gotten turned around, that maybe he’s lost and we’ll run in circles in this dark Forest until we can’t run anymore. Elias grips my arm and I pant as we stumble behind Catcher.
And then I see it: the gate hulking in the darkness, the bare edge of it gleaming in the rising moon. Hope shivers inside me but I’m afraid to reach for it, afraid that by hoping I’ll lose focus. Stretching away from the gate are fences bordering a narrow path. Vines twine through the links, absurd flowers blooming in the night.
Catcher tugs, the gate swings open and we race inside. The first Mudo hits the fence just as Catcher throws the latch behind us. I stumble backward from the force of the Mudo, from the sound of it wrenching itself against the metal. More and more join the first, tugging and pulling.
I turn in a circle, afraid that we might have just trapped ourselves in an even worse position. I stagger down the path a bit, holding my torn skirt close to my side so that I’m nowhere near the fences that line the trail. The grass is high and thick here but I see no signs of Mudo inside the path.
Outside, though, they twist and writhe against the old chain links. I make my way back to where Catcher and Elias stare through the gate, back the way we came. We all gasp for air.
“Will it hold?” I whisper.
No one answers me. We just stand there staring at the Mudo slowly piling against the other side of the thin metal, which groans and shifts under their weight.
Catcher sets Cira on her feet and she sways but is able to stand while sagging against him. He presses his palm to her cheek and she leans in to him.
“You’re alive,” she says, her pale lips bright in the moonlight. “I thought you were dead.”
He smiles and presses a kiss to her forehead. I have to turn away from it, the burning joy of seeing them finally together. I can’t stand that I’m the one who told Cira her brother was lost and the reason she almost died.
“I’m alive,” he murmurs. “Everything’s going to be okay now. I promise.”
My throat tightens as if he’s talking to me. As if he’s promising me that we’ll be okay. I want to believe it. I want to hold on to his words but they dissipate in the darkness.
Elias is the one to break the moment. “We should keep going,” he says. He glances at the fence straining under the onslaught of the Mudo and I know what he’s thinking: that even though we’re on the fenced-in path we’re still at risk. That as long as we’re in the Forest we’re always at risk.
Back the way we came I can still hear shouts. I close my eyes, begging that just this once we’ll have some luck and they won’t choose to come after us. That we’re not worth the risk.
Catcher hands Cira a canteen and she drinks hungrily. “Where are we going?” she asks between gulps.
I look at Elias and he back at me. I think about my mother, about her village somewhere on this path. Is it still there? Is she somewhere out there ahead of us? I’m afraid of hoping for either one, afraid to want something that might not be true.
“First we get away from Vista,” Elias says before I have a chance to respond. “And then we figure out what’s next”
The path in front of the gate is wide enough for us to stand in a small group but it narrows quickly so that it’s almost impossible to walk side by side. Cira’s still a little woozy on her feet but the water has fortified her some and she’s able to take a few steps with Catcher’s help.
I try to stay back and help them but I quickly get in the way. I try to walk nearby to hear what they’re saying but they tilt their heads close, their voices a low murmur. A few times I hear them giggle and I ask them what about, hoping to join in the conversation. But soon I realize that they’re so wrapped up in their own reunion that I’m getting in the way.
I’m left to walk behind Elias, helping to cut back thorny vines and tamp down the taller grass. I don’t say anything to him as night falls even deeper around us. I’m still stinging from our earlier conversation. Instead I think about my mother.
Did she make it this far? Are my feet falling where hers recently tread? Did she stop and stare into the Forest and think about turning around? Think about coming back for me? I shake my head, positive that she wouldn’t have. In my mind I picture her striding down the path, her steps long and sure and her chin held high.
She wouldn’t tremble the way I am. She wouldn’t wince at every branch that cracks the way I do. She wouldn’t want to claw her ears off at the incessant moaning from the Mudo that always pull at the fence on either side of us.
My eyes water and I swipe at them with the palms of my hands, feeling even weaker for the tears. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Trying to find some sort of strength.
That’s the real problem, I think as I slide my thumb along the flat side of my knife, feeling the ridges of the pattern. It’s not that my mother lied to me about who I am and where I’m from. It’s that I always thought I could be like her. That something in her—what made her so sure and strong—could be in me as well. I just had to find it.
But the fact that I’m not hers means that I really am nothing like her. And that I have no hope of ever being like her.
I almost run into Elias’s back before I realize that he’s stopped. His head’s thrown back and he’s looking up. “What’s wrong?” I ask, my body tensing for some unseen enemy.
He doesn’t say anything, just points up into the sky. I stare at him. “Look,” he says.
I take a deep breath, suspicion clouding around me. And then I slowly tilt my head back. The evening sky let go its last grasp a while ago and the darkness has settled in deep. The night smells like flowers and dirt. Like death and blood. The heat of the day rises from the soggy ground and wraps around my ankles.
“What is it?” I ask, feeling impatient and dirty and exhausted and scared.
Elias moves closer, standing behind me, and leans forward until his cheek is almost against my own. I have to catch my breath from the feel of him so near. Anger toward him still simmers inside me but I also can’t help flashing back to that moment on the beach and I can’t help but realize that if he turned his head and I turned mine, our lips would touch.
I don’t want to like him. I don’t want to care about him. It’s so much easier to hate, to dismiss what he says so that I don’t have to think and question the world and everything I’ve been taught.
Before I can shift away he takes my hand in his, the feeling jolting down my arm, and raises it with his to point into the sky. I turn my head, looking back down the path behind us, wondering just how far back Catcher and Cira are. Wondering if they can see us standing here.
And then Elias whispers in my ear, “Look in the stars.” My breaths shudder slightly and I swallow; my vision pulses the same beat as my heart. I follow to where both of our fingers now point. It’s hard to concentrate on anything but him, but finally I see it—a tiny bit of light moving steady thr
ough the stars. “What is it?” I ask.
“A satellite,” he tells me.
I have a hard time focusing on what he’s saying and I scan back through everything I learned in school, trying to place the word. He drops our arms from the air but keeps our fingers twined. I want to push him away and pull him closer at the same time. Instead I just concentrate on breathing, watching the trace of light through the sky.
“It’s from before the Return,” he says. And I remember it now. I remember the teacher telling us about them when he taught us about gravity and the solar system. Elias’s thumb skids over my knuckles and my thoughts scatter. Was it just a tic or did he do it on purpose? My heart is racing and I’m sure he can feel my pulse pounding just under every inch of my skin.
“I’ve never looked for them before,” I tell him. “I guess I thought they were gone by now. Like everything else.” My voice feels scratchy, my tongue thick. It’s hard for me to think about anything other than how close he is. How nice it feels to be holding hands, to have someone to lean on.
“Anything that flies fascinates me,” he says softly. I hold my breath, wanting him to say more. Wanting more of this glimpse into who he is. “It’s just strange to think about them still up there, still going round and round when everything down here has collapsed and they’ve become useless. They just …” He searches for the word as the wind slides over us. “They just keep going. As if nothing’s changed.”
I think about how much our entire lives are like that. We’re set in motion and then we spend our lives maintaining that motion, but to what end? For what purpose? It never bothered me before. I was happy.
A twig snaps behind us and I jump away from Elias. Catcher and Cira’s voices unravel up the path in the darkness and I turn my head, my entire face burning, hoping they didn’t see Elias and me together. I cough in the darkness and glance at Elias. He still stands where I left him but he’s no longer looking up at the sky.
He’s staring at me and the expression on his face causes my breath to hitch. It’s like regret and pain and desire. I have to look away, afraid of what my own face shows in return. I’m too confused; I don’t know how to feel or what to want.
He steps closer to me and I tense. “I wish I knew how to make it right for you,” he says. His voice is so quiet that I can almost believe it’s the wind speaking and that he’s not saying anything at all. “I wish I knew what you wanted.” He turns and continues up the path into the darkness.
I look back where Catcher and Cira draw nearer and close my eyes. So do I, I think.
We keep walking, Elias pulling food and water from his pack to pass around. The moon rises and sets and just before dawn we find a small clearing in the path where we try to rest. Catcher and Cira continue to murmur until their voices fade into sleep and Elias snores lightly. That leaves me, staring up at the sky, trying to find a glimmer of a shooting star or a satellite. I keep trying to remember: Have I walked this path? Do I remember these trees? This smell? Those sounds? Memories dance just out of reach until dreams lead me under to twirl away the thoughts.
The next morning is muddy and gray, the air hot and still. Cira has bruises under her eyes but she’s able to stand on her own. She eats and drinks some water, a little color returning to her cheeks. She’s able to walk a bit without leaning on Catcher, but still, our progress is slow and the Mudo continue to press against the fence on either side of us, pounding and pulling and moaning.
It’s impossible to mark the passage of time, impossible to tell how far we’ve walked. We just continue, one foot in front of the other, the pack on my back chafing at my shoulders.
I don’t even notice when Elias stops walking and again I trip into him, stumbling and catching myself by grabbing on to the fence. I’m not used to the fences, to being so near the Mudo. I’m not used to having them press against me until it’s almost impossible to breathe. I feel Mudo fingers tug at my own and I scream and fall, clutching my hand to my chest. My heart pounds and I close my eyes to calm my breathing.
When I open them Elias has dropped his pack and is standing over me holding out a hand to help me up. “You okay?” he asks and I nod as I get up, pulling my hand away quickly as Catcher and Cira round the bend behind us.
I step back and focus on adjusting the straps of my pack.
“What’s going on?” Catcher asks, and my cheeks flame red, thinking he’s talking about me and Elias. That he sees something that isn’t there. I glance sharply up at Elias but he’s not looking at me.
“There’s a gate in the path,” Elias says, pointing.
If possible my face burns even hotter. I feel stupid that my first thought jumped to Elias. I twist my fingers tighter in the straps of my pack and step toward the gate, hoping to hide my expression from everyone else. Why should I even feel guilty that Elias helped me stand up? Why should I think that Catcher would mind?
I clear my throat, pretending to examine the gate that spans the width of the path. An object gleams under the handle and I brush at it with my fingers. “I think there’s something here,” I say. The others have been passing around water and they pause as I squat to get a better look.
There’s a small bar attached to the fence and etched onto it are the letters IV. “I think it’s like the numbers my mother taught me when I was younger,” I say, glancing back at them. “It says IV, which means four.”
“Does the path keep going past it?” Cira asks.
I squint through the links into the distance. “Seems to.” I wrinkle my forehead, studying the letters. Something tugs at me, pulls at the edge of my mind. But trying to catch it is like trying to capture snow and I’m left with nothing solid.
“Our options are to go forward or turn back,” Catcher says. “So long as the path’s clear I say we take it.”
They walk through the gate and I’m left squatting on the ground, still trying to figure out what feels so familiar. If I came through the Forest with my mother I must have passed through this gate. I’m startled when Elias reaches down for me again and this time I ignore his hand and stand up on my own.
The contents of my pack shift a bit and I press my hands into the small of my back to ease the ache.
Elias tilts his head. “Everything okay?” he asks, and the expression on his face seems to show genuine concern.
I turn and follow the others down the path. “Fine,” I tell him as I keep walking away and he closes the gate behind us.
Our day is cut short when Cira can’t walk any more, her legs trembling and face pale with sweat. Catcher helps her to the ground and Elias lights a small fire and we spend the early dusk swatting at mosquitoes and saying little. None of us knows what to talk about.
It feels as if we’re strangers, too terrified to discuss our current situation yet also too scared to talk about anything else. Finally the moan of the Mudo and the buzz of the cicadas become too much for me to handle and my legs begin to tighten with the need to move. I’m not used to being constantly surrounded by people, my every gesture and sound and movement scrutinized.
“I’m going to walk a bit, see what’s ahead,” I tell them, and then I pull out my knife and start up the path before anyone responds. I’m not too far away when I hear a familiar footstep crunching through the dry grass and Catcher calls out my name. I stop and wait for him to catch up.
“It’s stupid for you to be walking alone, Gabry,” he says. My shoulders tense. I want to tell him that that was my point, that I want some time away from everyone to think. To figure out what’s going on. But I don’t say any of that because it’s been so long since we’ve talked, since I’ve been near him, and it feels good to have it be just the two of us in the dusk.
I reach out and take his fingers in mine. “How are you doing?” I ask him.
He looks at the ground, at our hands, at the fence—everywhere but into my eyes. He shrugs, a wash of emotions blurring over his face. “I don’t know,” he finally says.
It’s not the answer I’m exp
ecting. I want him to confide in me; I want to feel as close to him now as I did the moment we kissed. I know that everything else has changed since then but he’s alive, he’s survived being bitten. His immunity shouldn’t change anything between us and yet somehow I feel it has. I wish I could find some way to make him talk to me but instead I just hold his hand tighter.
“Did you tell Cira about everything?” I ask him. “The immunity?”
He nods. “I’m not sure she really understands it. But she was so happy she cried.” He smiles a little at this and I’m reminded how much I love to see him smile. How much we used to tease each other. I try to smile back but it’s strained and feels wrong. He stares at our hands, at the way our fingers are interlaced. “I’m not sure I really understand it either,” he says softly.
“What’s it like?” I ask him, hoping to understand what he’s feeling.
He breathes deep against me, his chest almost brushing my arm. “Physically, it’s like …” He pauses. “It’s like fire. It’s like being in a room with no windows and no door and the heat just builds and builds and builds until you can’t breathe.”
“Does it hurt?”
He’s silent. And then he says, “I think the worst part is not understanding. Not knowing if I’ll suddenly turn. What would happen if I died …” He trails off and the silence stretches between us again.
I’m afraid of breaking the quiet but I have to know. “It’ll be okay, won’t it?” I ask, tilting my head up to his, trying to recapture that closeness we had before it all changed. That hope and future. He pulls his fingers from mine and starts to walk down the path. The evening air pools around me where his body had been and I feel desperate and alone.
I don’t understand what I’ve done wrong and I chase after him but the path is too narrow for us to walk side by side. He crushes through the tall grass, his hands swiping out in front of him.