In front, Holmes screamed like a falcon diving for a kill. “Don’t stop!” Zhang ordered one more time when the first carriage was almost there. Then his own thrashed wildly as they hit too, and he heard the sound of humans howling as bones broke beneath hooves and wheels. Iowan guns boomed, lightning flashing against the bright day.
“But they have shadows!” Zhang’s driver said breathlessly as they turned to make sure the rest of their line had made it through. “I don’t understand—they have shadows!”
All around, the ones in white behind their front line started closing on the carriages as they crashed through the crowd. The Reds flew into a fury, attacking whatever was closest, Iowan and strange people in white. Still the robed ones came, unstoppable, like some kind of unfeeling, nightmarish hive mind.
Vienna pulled Zhang from the stupor of his terror. “Fire!” she was screaming at him from her horse. “General—the ones in white—they lit one on fire!” She pointed backward as her mare pushed to match Holmes’s sprint. Zhang jerked around, clutching the top of his carriage. The ones in white were howling now, shrieking almost triumphantly.
He saw. Flames licked off the roof of the last carriage in their galloping procession. Dark smoke began to fill the air. What had these strange newcomers done? Why? Around them, the Reds wavered, half resolved to just kill everyone, Iowan or white ghost, the other half mesmerized by the familiar roar of the flames and the ones who had created it. “Malik, the books!” Zhang yelled at him as he rode by again. His entire right half was covered in glistening red syrup from other bodies. The axe shone. He almost looked like the Red King.
Ahmadi was there suddenly as well, eyes wild with terror. “The carriage is on fire!” she cried.
“We can’t stop!” Malik said as his horse strained to keep pace with Zhang. “If we stop, we’ll lose them all!”
Zhang turned around again. The soldier driving the burning cart was yelling frantically at the rest of them, calling for rescue. Zhang started waving him forward, then kicked a white-robed warrior climbing up his seat ladder. A flying knife barely missed his forehead as the man fell to his death. “How many?” Zhang shouted to Malik.
“With these—whoever the fuck they are, ten to one, at least,” he said.
“Can we win?”
Malik swung his axe, flinging a sheet of blood into the wind. “The Red King and these white ghosts should have sent twice as many,” he said. He raised the blade. “For Imanuel!” he roared.
“Imanuel!” the cry returned, from all around the field.
The rally spurred Zhang. He was shit in a fight, but that didn’t matter. Malik protected the soldiers, the General protected the books. “You handle the battle, I’ll handle the fire!”
“No, leave it!” Malik yelled, but the engulfed carriage had almost reached Zhang’s own, close enough that maybe he could do the stupidest thing of his life. “Zhang!” he cried.
“Malik, go! Just keep them away!” Zhang shouted. Malik finally nodded and raised his axe again. Zhang ducked back into his carriage and rummaged around. There was some water, but not enough. Not enough to stop a blaze like that.
“I don’t know how much longer I have!” the soldier driving the burning carriage shouted as he lurched into the empty space where Malik had just been. His horse was soaked, as though it had plunged through rain, sweat streaming off it. It didn’t understand why it couldn’t outrun the flames. The whites of its eyes glinted in terror.
“Stay!” Zhang yelled. “I’m coming over! As long as we can last!”
“What?” the soldier cried, face pale with shock. But he didn’t jump—he kept the reins and gritted his teeth.
“Keep as close as you can,” Zhang said to his own driver, and then turned to the one commanding the carriage on fire. “You watch the horse,” he shouted to him, and pointed at the half-wild beast galloping in front of them. “When we’re out of time, you jump down onto its back, unhook the yoke, and ride off!”
“What about you?” the soldier cried.
“I—” Zhang looked at his driver, struggling to keep their own wagon within reachable distance as they flew at breakneck speed. Behind, the Reds cried out all at once, a shrill and keening scream that purged everything in Zhang’s mind for an instant. It was the sound of what their color meant, if a color could speak—a dedication to a singular, absolute goal. The horses reeled, hysterical. “I’ll jump back to the first carriage!”
The soldier stared at Zhang for a stunned moment, but then nodded. “Yes, sir!” he finally yelled back, and saluted with the hand not on the reins. He stuck it out to help try to grab at Zhang once he was in midair.
“On three!” Zhang cried.
WE ARE GOING TO THE PLACE. I DON’T KNOW THE NAME. BUT there is a painting of it on the side of the big moving house. I saw it just now, when we all climbed outside, because we didn’t know why we were in the house or where we were going. Then we saw the painting, and the one who makes the house move said, “We should go there.” So we are going there.
We are going, but I don’t know why. But knowing where is enough, because it is all we have. There are some things that just can’t be known.
Maybe I said this before. It is a strange way to be. To do things because something suggests you might have done them before. There is no way to know reasons this way. You can only do, not understand.
I think before, I used to understand. I don’t know how this could be. But there are too many things we see to be an accident. These shapes, pictures on flat sheets of metal that stick out of the ground—someone made them once, for some reason. But they all look different, which means there must be meaning. Otherwise would they all be the same? Maybe when I looked at them, I never understood. Maybe they are not for us at all.
ORY—
HOW
PLEASE, CAN YOU HEAR ME? I DON’T—
I THINK IT’S HAPPENING NOW, ORY. IT’S HAPPENING.
Ory! My Ory. I have so much to say to you, but no time left to say it. Everything hurts—it’s a horrible, empty stretching. Every moment is a storm, and I’m in the center, unraveling. It’s so hard to breathe now. Do you go to the same place when you forget as when you die? I wish memories were stored anywhere else, anywhere at all—my eyes, my fingertips, the soles of my feet. Everyone is so afraid of losing their body when they die, but a body is worthless. A body remembers nothing at all. Nothing at all. It’s not what’s terrifying to lose.
I have seconds left, I can tell. Just seconds.
I want to say something important for the very last thing I remember, something profound and eternal. But there’s so little left, and I’m scared to think of any of it at all, in case I do damage to its form. Most of all, I’m afraid to think of you, even though I can’t help it. Where did you go, Ory? Why aren’t we together? Was it my fault, or yours? What reason could I have to ever leave you?
I’m not ready. I’m not ready, I’m not ready, I’m not ready. I refuse to forget. It took all of me, but I refuse to let it have the last thing, which is you. Ory. I remember you. I remember your name. I remember I touched your face, on your eyebrow above your scar; I remember a football; I remember night and a mountain; I remember you gave me this speaking machine, but I don’t know why; I remember a dark room, and writing numbered rules by candlelight, and you cried—why did you cry?
I remember there is something we always say to each other when things are good, when things are bad, when the sun comes up in the morning, when one day it won’t. When there’s nothing else left. I want to tell you that I remember what we say.
I REMEMBER, ORY.
FIF—
Part IV
Orlando Zhang
IN TOTAL, THEY LOST NINE SOLDIERS IN THE AMBUSH. AND the last carriage—everything inside but what Zhang had managed to grab and throw to the other driver.
Only one, Zhang kept trying to tell himself, between spells of unconsciousness. Only one carriage. But it felt like they’d lost them all.
W
hen he finally opened his eyes, he realized they had stopped moving. They had stopped a long time ago—the beams across the low wooden ceiling had finished creaking and settled. And there were no flames. It wasn’t the same carriage, he realized then. He was back in his own.
“We won,” Malik’s voice said somewhere near when Zhang tried to focus his gaze. “Killed every last Red, and drove off the rest of the ones in white. We’re safe now.”
Zhang tried to nod. He meant to ask about Ahmadi, if she was all right. “Max?” His lips whispered instead. He faded again before he heard the answer.
THE NEXT TIME HE CAME TO, IT WAS ALMOST DARK. ZHANG was leaning against someone as he sat in the grass, elbows propped on his knees. Ahmadi. He could hear her voice beside his ear, telling him they were almost done. He couldn’t hear the other, the one that had always been there to help him before. Zhang tried to understand what Ahmadi meant about the pain. Then he finally did. Oh, the pain.
“That’s all we can do for now,” Fenton said. “I’ll dress them.”
Zhang opened his eyes and looked at what remained of his hands. They were terrifying. Purple and black, and covered in monstrous, boiling welts. Just the air on them made his eyes sting in agony.
“Are these third degree?” Malik asked.
“I don’t know,” Fenton admitted sheepishly. He was the soldier with the most medical experience, three months of paramedic training before the Forgetting, but it wasn’t very much. He checked the water he’d boiled to see if it was cool. Vienna was carefully opening packages of gauze from one of their first-aid kits. “I think so. Blisters mean third degree, I think.”
“It’ll be okay,” Zhang said, mostly to convince himself. He was wide awake now. His hands looked so bad, he was already starting to panic that a few days from now, when they were infected from the dirt of the road, they’d have to amputate. Or try.
“We just have to keep them clean,” Fenton said.
“You shouldn’t have done it,” Ahmadi murmured.
“I saved sixteen books,” Zhang said helplessly. Sixteen books, two hands. Which was worth more? Sixteen books you could choose, sixteen this mysterious Gathering One might want, that was different from sixteen books chosen at random. The ones Zhang had saved he’d selected not by value, but by proximity—plunging his hands into fire, again and again, grasping for the nearest smoking page. He had no idea what he’d taken. He was just grateful that the carriage that had caught fire wasn’t the one that held Paul’s book. If that had been inside, Zhang probably would have died trying to reach it.
“It was noble,” Malik finally said. “Even if it was stupid.”
ONLY ONE CARRIAGE, ZHANG KEPT REPEATING. HE TRIED TO convince himself it was a victory.
“Only one,” Ahmadi echoed later that evening. They were all trying to do the same thing, it seemed. She sat down beside him and Malik on the grass, holding both Zhang’s and her small portions of dinner.
“There are still four carriages left,” Zhang said to her, and tried to smile.
“Exactly. There are still four carriages left,” she stammered, repeating his words. “Four.” But then she gasped raggedly.
Zhang didn’t understand what had happened at first. It took him a few seconds to realize she’d burst into tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said. She set the plates down quickly and jammed the heels of her palms into her eyes, but failed to stop the sobs. She pressed her face into Zhang’s shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her awkwardly, unable to grip her with his bandaged hands, and held her like that until she quieted. Her tears slowly warmed the sleeve of his shirt as they soaked in, until that side of him didn’t feel cold at all.
“Who were they anyway?” he asked at last, after Ahmadi had settled back onto the grass beside him, hat pulled low over her eyes. “Not the Reds. The other ones, in white.”
Malik sighed. “We’re not sure yet. Still working on making the one we captured talk.”
“We have a hostage?” Zhang asked.
“You need to take it easy,” Ahmadi started, but Zhang was already up, stumbling toward the carriages.
BEHIND THEIR WAGONS, SEVERAL SOLDIERS STOOD GUARD around a small, crumpled shape beneath a tree. The man had been forced into a sit with his back pressed against the bark, and then a rope looped several times around both him and the tree at chest level, binding his arms to his sides. Two bare feet stuck out from beneath his robes, resting limply in the grass. Below them, a shadow lay.
“The hostage,” Malik said when they reached him.
The captured man looked up at Zhang with exhausted, defiant eyes. He was covered in so much blood from the fight that his once-white clothes were red.
“Do you have a name?” Zhang asked.
“Truth,” the man replied.
Zhang sighed. “Fine. All of you, in the white clothes—who are you with?”
“We are all truth.” The man coughed, and recovered. “Truth is Transcendence,” he said grandly. A grin spread across his bloody teeth as he waited for Zhang’s reaction. After a few moments, it began to fade. “A shame that you have not yet heard the news of the joy our enlightened future will bring.”
Malik spat into the grass, near the man’s foot.
The hostage’s eyes narrowed. “Denial of the truth does not stop the truth.”
“Forget truth for a moment,” Zhang said. Terrible images from the fight flooded over him—the Reds, their own desperate sprint to escape, seeing an army of alabaster robes appear on the horizon, hoping for help, and then the horror of realizing they were sweeping down to attempt the exact opposite. “Why did you attack us?”
“Because you were attacking the Transcended.”
Zhang blinked. He looked at Ahmadi, then Malik, then back to the hostage. “You mean the Reds? The crazed shadowless horde that chased us across the countryside to murder us?” He checked again, in case he had been mistaken, but he had been right—the hostage still had his shadow. “Why would you try to kill shadowed survivors?”
“We do not kill shadowed people,” the man said. “We welcome them to journey with us toward Transcendence. We only kill enemies of the Transcended.”
Malik breathed out, a long slow gust. “These guys are the real deal,” he said.
“Insults from the ignorant mean nothing.”
Zhang shook his head. “You all . . .” It sounded too crazy. “You all are trying to lose your shadows? You’re trying to forget?”
“We’re trying to transcend,” the hostage said.
For a moment, all of them were too stunned to speak. Finally Ahmadi crossed her arms. “Well, if the Red King is what transcending looks like, count me out,” she said.
“The Red King?”
“A violent, terrifying shadowless that took over D.C. and made all those others,” Zhang answered. “Don’t worry about it now,” he added when he saw the thrill in the hostage’s expression overwhelm his exhaustion. “No point to head north to swear fealty to him. He’s dead.”
“Sacrilege,” he hissed.
“Should have told him the Red King was still alive and kicking so they’d leave their stronghold and run off to their deaths,” Malik smiled at the hostage.
“This isn’t our stronghold,” the hostage said. “Transcendence’s spread is unstoppable. But our forces are far beyond our currently settled borders. We’ve been traveling south for months, after an omen told us to go. A perversion of the Great One’s work—shadowless that betrayed us. The false rumors have gone on long enough, and something must be done about them. We march for salvation.”
“You mean war,” Zhang said. Again.
“I mean salvation. The last showdown.”
“Do all of your people so easily reveal your battle plans?” Ahmadi asked. “We didn’t even have to hit you yet.”
“Oh, I’m not revealing anything,” the hostage said. “It’s obvious we’re heading to the same place. Where else could any of us be going this far south, except New Orleans?”
Hearing him say the name made Zhang shudder.
“What should also be obvious is how much more quickly we’ll reach the city than your massive, slow force,” Ahmadi said. “And how much forewarning that will mean for them.”
The hostage shrugged as best he could with the ropes around him. Pain lined his face for a moment. “It doesn’t matter. If this false prophet is even half as strong as the lies claim, they already know we’re coming. There’s nothing they can do to stop Transcendence. When you see what they’re doing there, you’ll understand. You’ll beg to join us.”
Zhang had no idea how many people were in New Orleans—if New Orleans was there at all—or how many of Transcendence there were, but judging by the number of troops they sent to help the Reds, and how unconcerned with their loss the hostage seemed to be, there was a greater chance that they were a credible threat to the city than not.
“Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree,” Zhang finally said. The phrase struck Malik and Ahmadi as funny, and they chuckled behind him. Zhang tried to ignore how utterly convinced the man in death-splattered white robes before him seemed. We’re right, he told himself. We are. It was true that none of the stories he’d heard about New Orleans quite matched up, but it was also true that none of them had been warnings either. That had to mean something. It meant more than nothing, at least. “From what we’ve heard from other survivors, and we’ve heard quite a bit, this ‘false prophet’ doesn’t sound like such a bad guy.”
“That’s because all you’ve heard are ignorant rumors. We know the truth. The Creature must fall, for the good of the world.”
“The Creature,” Zhang repeated. “There’s one I haven’t heard before.”
“It’s the true one. The only name that matters,” the hostage replied. His eyes began to dim. That all-too-familiar faraway look. It was only then that Zhang realized some of the carnage on his clothes was the man’s own, not remnants from the fight.
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