by Carrie Ryan
“But what?” I prod.
“Sometimes they took them away and never brought them back,” she finishes. She crosses her arms, shivering at the memory. “I never asked what they were doing with all those people. I didn’t want to know.”
I think back to the death cages I’d seen my first night here. The frightened man they’d thrown to the Unconsecrated. “Catcher’s the one bringing them over,” I admit to her.
She winces. “I wondered.” She doesn’t elaborate.
Which only frustrates me. “I don’t understand how he can do it. How he can bring those people here knowing they’ll likely die.” I push away from the window, walk back over to the bed and stare down at the scarf draped over my pillow.
How can Catcher be both the thoughtful person I care about and the person who gives people a false hope?
“He’s doing what he has to.” She sounds almost resigned.
“Yeah, but what about their survival? Why are we allowed on this side of the wall and they aren’t?”
She shrugs. “I guess we’re lucky.”
Nothing in my life’s ever seemed lucky before, but then again, here I am standing inside with food down the hall while Soulers are out there in the cold keeping me safe. “It’s not fair,” I say, wishing there were something I could do.
My sister crosses the room, takes my shoulders and turns me to her. “It’s not fair at all. We’re going to find a way off this island and we’re going to take them with us.” She tilts her head, meeting my eyes, and I nod.
“Now,” she says, her voice lighter. “Catcher left books about the Dark City from before the Return. I want to see if we can match up the landmarks and figure out if maybe there’s something in there that will help us get off the island and find someplace safe.”
“Good idea,” I tell her. “I’ll meet you up there.”
She smiles and bounds from the room.
It takes me a while before I follow, and when I climb to the roof I find my sister standing by the wall at the edge. She’s holding up a photograph at arm’s length, looking between it and the Dark City spread out before her across the river. Books lie scattered on a blanket at her feet, pages fluttering in the morning breeze.
“What’s that?” I ask, pulling my new coat tight around me and retying the soft scarf wrapped around my neck. It’s a bright morning, the kind that reflects off the ice and snow and burns the eyes.
She turns back to me, a flush across her cheeks. A small breeze teases the hair along her temples as she holds the little card out to me.
Surrounded by a yellow border is a photograph of a city. Gleaming buildings stretch to the sky, an impossible monstrosity of steel bones. Written across the top in thick yellow letters are the words New York City.
There’s something about it that tickles in my mind, like I’ve lived this moment before somewhere else. A flash of a memory when I feel as if I’m in two places and two times at once. “This was …” I’m trying to find the words and my sister finds them for me.
“It was our father’s,” she says. “In our cottage growing up. Don’t you remember?” She seems so hopeful but when I try to picture that home all I can see is the crumbling village. All I can hear is the echo of voices hazy around the edges. I shake my head.
“I didn’t either,” she says. “Until I went back. It was still on the wall. My mother—Mary, who raised me—told me it was hers. Something she’d found a long time ago when she’d fled to the ocean. It was the first real proof that there was an outside world, and she’d given it to our father so he could have something to hold on to. To give him hope.”
I close my eyes, desperate to remember. But all I can see are the photos in the makeshift museum I saw when I was younger—similar snapshots of a bright world now dim.
“Anyway,” my sister says, a forced brightness to her voice. “I’m trying to line up the landmarks.” She pulls me next to her. “See here”—she points at one of the tallest buildings in the picture—“I think that’s what that over there used to be.” She motions to the stump of a skyscraper in the middle of the Dark City that fell years before either of us was born. Crooked spikes of metal twist from a debris pile, rust turning everything a russet red like dried blood.
“And this,” she says, pointing at another set of low buildings in the photo, “is over there.” She sweeps her hand back along the island. “In the middle you can see how this green-roofed building lines up along that row where there’s the shell of an old glassed one.”
She kneels, grabbing one of her books. “And then you can look them up in here and see what they used to be like. Some of them have pretty crazy histories of hidden bars and secret entrances to the underground tunnels, like that green—”
My frown cuts her off as I take the picture from her, twisting it and turning it, squinting and trying to see the city that used to be. “I’m not sure,” I tell her. “I don’t think it’s the same at all.” I examine the photo. “What about this one?” I ask, pointing out a slender tower with a dagger-sharp tip. “This has never been there.”
She looks up and shrugs. “Maybe it was an old picture even when the Return hit,” she argues. “But the river matches up along the side there,” she says. “And it just feels right. Don’t you get the same feeling looking at this picture as you do looking at the City?”
I can’t help it, I laugh. “This?” I ask, flicking the picture against her nose before handing it back to her. “There’s nothing the same between them. One’s new and bright and shiny and the other’s old and dead and forgotten.”
She frowns. “Not forgotten,” she says.
My breath catches a little at how serious she sounds when she says that. “No, not forgotten,” I say, even though I don’t believe my words. We forget too fast. Sometimes it’s probably a gift, though—we forget the pain also.
She shakes her head, her eyes glistening. “It wasn’t supposed to last this long, you know.”
“Us?” I ask, confused.
“No, this city. One of the books Catcher brought me talks about what would happen if everything shut down. It says the city would crumble in a few months. Maybe last it out for a few years—a decade or two perhaps. But no one thought it would ever last this long.” She’s staring at the remains of the city. The steel and glass and concrete still struggling to hold on.
“It’s been decades,” she whispers. “Over a century and then some. It’s stayed alive.” She stands to face me. “Don’t you see? Don’t you understand that if this city that no one had any hope for can do it, then we can too? Look at this,” she says, grabbing my hand and pressing it against the photo.
“We’ve been looking at what’s not in this picture. At everything that’s fallen. But what about what’s still there? What about what’s made it through? What about the ones that survived?”
I want to tell her that buildings aren’t as fragile as people are. They can’t get infected. They don’t need to eat and breathe and sleep and love.
“After we’re gone this city will still be here, and maybe …” She takes in a deep breath. “You know, maybe they can build something we didn’t. Maybe they can find a way to make it work that we couldn’t.”
My sister seems so fierce in that moment that it almost takes my breath away. I realize I’ve been thinking about her as being my opposite. But seeing her up here like this shows me that she’s a fighter as well.
“How can I help?”
She looks at me for a long moment and then glances over my shoulder at the stairwell. Her eyes widen and focus, her lips parting. Wondering what’s captured her attention, I turn, hand dropping to the machete at my waist.
“What is it?” I ask, muscles tensed to attack or defend. She takes a step past me and I grab her shoulder, holding her back, not understanding.
“It’s amazing,” she says, kicking through the snow toward the wall of the structure encasing the stairwell. She presses her fingers gingerly to the charcoal-stained bricks.
&n
bsp; Parts of the drawing have been blasted clean by the wind but much of it is still there on the section sheltered from the worst weather.
“Who did this?” she asks, her voice soft as a whisper.
I stare at my feet, cheeks burning, unable to take credit. But she knows—just from seeing me squirm she figures it out.
“I had no idea,” she says, mesmerized, her eyes taking in the flow of lines.
I shrug. “It’s nothing. Really.”
She turns back to me. “No, it’s good, Annah. Really good. I could never do anything like this.”
I blush harder. “I just …” I shrug again, trying to figure out how to explain the night on the roof after the infected woman jumped and I found her powders and stains. How something welled in me like a scream that dulled with the color and movement.
“I guess I never really knew I could do it either,” I finally say, just to fill the silence. “I never took the time before.”
She presses her hand against the wall. “It’s beautiful,” she says, staring back at me.
It takes everything I have not to duck my head. Instead I smile and accept the compliment: “Thank you.”
That night I pull the covers over my head and try to will away the darkness. I’m tangled in nightmares when some part of me feels the mattress sag, feels a body slipping under the blankets.
The Recruiter on the platform immediately rears in my mind and I’m about to lash out when the bright heat of Catcher’s body pushes up against my back, his arms wrapping around my waist and his face pressing the nape of my neck.
Before I can say anything, before I can even utter his name, his lips move against my skin. “I can’t do it, Annah, I can’t,” he murmurs, his breath whispering over the tiny hairs along my spine.
“Catcher, what’s going on?” I try not to let fear creep into my voice as I turn to face him, but he holds me in place, wrapped around me. He feels so hot, and I can’t tell whether it’s the natural heat of him or if there’s something else causing it.
He weaves his fingers through mine, holding them so tight it’s like he’d be lost if he let go. “I can’t save them,” he finally says.
“Catcher—” I start to respond, but his body begins to tremble and his voice cracks.
“I tried. I’ve done everything I know how to do. But they keep dying. The survivors in the Dark City keep dying, and it’s my fault. I can bring some here and give them a chance but even that—”
“Shhh, it’s okay,” I tell him, pulling our hands up until I can press my lips to his burning knuckles. His wrists feel dangerously thin. Every part of him seems fragile.
“It’s not okay. I’m the only one who can save them. I’m the only one who can get supplies to them—food and blankets and wood and I just can’t. I can’t do it. I can’t handle it. I’ve tried and tried and …”
He takes a deep shuddering breath. “I don’t know what to do anymore. The City’s going to die and it’s all going to be my fault.”
“Oh, Catcher.” I grasp his hand tighter, my heart aching for him. “You can’t save them all. You’re only one person.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like,” he says. “What it sounds like when they see that I have food. When I carry it to the cable car to bring here. How they call out to me and the desperation in their eyes. You don’t know what it’s like to watch them die and know that if you’d just tried harder … if you’d just been better …”
He swallows whatever he was going to say next. I don’t know what to tell him to make it okay. I don’t know how to fix this. “You haven’t been eating,” I say and he doesn’t answer me, just presses his face against my back, his tears hot on my skin.
“There was a girl,” he finally says. “This morning there was a girl on a fire escape and she called out to me. She had a baby. This skinny little boy who clutched at her legs when she cried for me to stop.” He pauses, as if seeing it all in his mind.
Taking a deep breath, he continues. “She told me they were out of food. She said she’d heard about me. That I could cross the horde and bring supplies. She begged me.…” His voice breaks. “She begged me,” he says again.
His body shakes and he has a hard time catching his breath. I press my lips to his palm, to his wrist, to anywhere I can find to give him comfort.” But I didn’t have anything. I could have scavenged for her first but I wanted to find a way to get you off the island.
“It took me longer than it should have to search and when I finally came back …” He struggles away from me and sits on the edge of the bed. I turn to see his head in his hands as he tugs at his hair. “When I came back she was dead. And the boy …”
I move to sit behind him, circling my arms around his shoulders, holding him together.
“The boy was just sitting there pulling at her and crying for her to wake up. He was tugging at her dead body, sobbing, and I didn’t know what to do. They were the only ones in the building. They’d already cut their bridge and there was nothing. No one else around to help them or take the boy.”
The moonlight outside casts sharp shadows under his eyes and along his jaw. He gets out of the bed and kneels in front of me, twisting the blankets violently in his fingers. “I didn’t know what to do, Annah. I didn’t know. I gave him food but he wouldn’t stop crying and I didn’t know what to do with him. I couldn’t leave him there alone. Not without his mother.”
He grabs my hands, everything about him desperate. “I tried to save him. I tried to carry him away. To somewhere they could take care of him. But the Mudo …”
And suddenly I know what he’s going to say and my heart skips.
“It was so cold I thought they’d be slowed. I thought I could make it. I thought I could run with him and bring him here.” Tears course down his face.
“It’s been so long since I’ve had to deal with the Mudo. You have to understand, I’m so used to them ignoring me. I’d forgotten …” He shakes his head. “They were on me too fast. There were too many for me to get away. I tried to hold him away from them.”
He’s shuddering uncontrollably. “Oh, God, he was screaming and crying and I was trying to keep him safe. That’s all I was doing was trying to save his life and they got him. They got him.”
He buries his head in my lap, sobbing. “I couldn’t save him, Annah.” His voice is tortured and muffled. “How can I take care of you and Elias and Gabry if I couldn’t save that child?”
I bend over him and press my lips to his temples. “It’s okay, Catcher, we’re safe,” I lie.
He raises his head, shaking it slowly. “All I could think is what if it were you? What if you were the one I’d killed?”
He places his hands on either side of me on the bed, pushing himself up. But not away. His chest presses against my knees and then he’s leaning over me.
I start to fall back, to shift away but he puts his hand behind my neck, his fingertips grazing my pulse.
“I can’t lose you, Annah.” His face hovers in front of me. “I won’t lose you.”
And then his lips are on mine.
It’s the warmth I feel first. The pure heat of him when he opens his mouth as if to devour me. There’s such urgency—such a hunger between us—born of a need to be something to someone.
His other hand scorches down my back, pressing between my shoulder blades to pull me to him until there’s nothing between us, no air or breath to separate us.
I taste who he is and was and together we fall back onto the bed. I shove my hands into his hair, pulling him tighter—always tighter. We breathe each other. We are the other person in that moment—nothing distinct about us except the same desire.
He pulls back and we both gasp for air as he rolls to his side, still pressed against me. With the pad of his thumb he follows the curve of my cheek, the angle of my jaw.
Not my scars, but everything else. Everything whole.
I realize he’s shaking. I cover his hand with mine. “What’s wrong?” I ask him.
He looks at me, really looks at me. “I’m terrified,” he whispers. “Of us. Of hurting you.”
I lick my lips. “I’m terrified of being hurt,” I admit.
Before I can stop him he pushes away and walks to the window, grabbing the back of his neck as he always does when he’s worried and afraid. I perch on the edge of the bed, looking at him. At his reflection in the night sky.
“My sister Cira was infected.”
Surprised, I suck in a deep breath. “I didn’t know,” I whisper.
“She was beautiful and I thought she was strong, but then she lost hope and that was it. The end.” I can hear the pain in his memory. “Getting infected was just the way she killed herself.”
“I’m so sorry.” I don’t know what else to say.
“And you.” He turns to face me. “You’re alive. Uninfected. I can’t watch the same thing happen to you. I can’t go through that again.”
“Catcher—” I jump up from the bed but the stiffness in his back stops me from touching him.
“You don’t understand,” he says. “I exist in this in-between place. In between you and Cira. In between life and death. I don’t even know who I am anymore. What I am.” He turns and leans against the window so that he’s facing me.
“You’re not in between,” I tell him. He starts to shake his head but I interrupt him. “Do you care about me?” I ask. His eyes go wide. “Me and Elias and my sister. Do you care about us?”
He wrinkles his forehead. “You know I do, but—”
“And the Soulers you brought to the island? And that little boy—the people in the Dark City you take food to?” Now I’m right in front of him.
He flushes red, looking trapped. “I’m doing the best I can with them. I can’t—”
“Don’t you see?” I cut him off, my voice fervent. “Caring is a trait of the living. Not of the dead.”
His expression turns dark. “It’s not that easy, Annah.”
I lean forward and place my palms on the window on either side of him. “No, it is that easy. You’re alive. You’re only in that in-between state because you choose to be. Because you’re afraid to actually live.”
