by Carrie Ryan
“It’s not that simple,” he protests.
My mouth hovers over his for a moment. “Life is never that simple. And the fact that it’s not that simple to you means only one thing: You’re still alive.”
He presses against me and I push back, tangling around him as he kisses me. “I am because of you,” he whispers in my ear. “Tomorrow I’ll find someplace safe for us. For all of us. I’m not coming back before I figure a way out. I promise.”
I kiss him again. How do I tell him that I already feel safe in his arms?
I don’t even have time to miss Catcher because the next morning my sister becomes crippled with illness, throwing up until there’s nothing left in her body and still she heaves and heaves. Her skin’s scorching and sweaty as she lies limp on the bed groaning, half delirious.
Elias is on the edge of panic. He goes and talks to the Recruiters, asking for herbs or medicines, but he comes back empty-handed with a rage seeping from his pores.
“They don’t care that she’s sick,” he seethes, pacing around the room. He stops and looks at me, his face drawn. “He said they only need one of us alive to keep Catcher coming back with supplies.”
My face drains and I absently raise my hand to tuck my hair behind my ears. Hair that’s no longer there. I let my hand fall to my lap and stare at my sister, pale under the blankets. “Maybe Catcher can bring something for us,” I say, trying not to let my voice shake because he promised last night that he wouldn’t come back until he found someplace safe for us.
And I don’t know how long that will take him.
Elias and I alternate shifts, placing frozen strips of cloth on her face and coaxing her to let snow melt on her tongue. I pace by the window through the night, waiting for the cable car to start its way across the river, but it doesn’t move.
The next morning I’m on the roof staring at the Dark City when Elias joins me. He wrings out a blanket, damp with my sister’s sweat, and shovels fresh snow into a bucket to try to cool her fevered skin. And then he just stops and stands there, red raw hands limp by his sides.
“She hasn’t eaten or drunk anything since yesterday dawn.” He shakes his head slowly as if he’s trying to figure something out. “I’m afraid she might stop fighting.”
I press my lips together, not knowing what to say, wondering if it’s my fault she’s sick since she joined me on the shore during the snowstorm. I hate not being able to make her better. I hate feeling so useless.
I kick my foot against the wall, my snow-numbed toes barely registering the pain. Elias glances up at me, his gaze flitting over the bright new hat pulled low over my head hiding the healing scabs.
He narrows his eyes, frown lines cutting across his forehead. I know this look. It’s the same one he gave me as the scars from the barbed wire were healing. He feels like he failed to protect me. Like it’s his fault. And like it’s happening all over again with me and my sister.
Thinking about her downstairs, how hard I’m struggling to keep her alive, makes me realize what it must have been like for Elias before he left me—the burden of always worrying about someone you care about. It’s exhausting. I don’t know how long I can keep fighting so hard when it always feels like I’m losing. I sit on the wall, shifting until my feet hang over the nothingness. “Do you ever think it’s the dead that have the happy ending?”
He pauses, his head tilted to the side as he thinks, and then he sits next to me twisting a rag between his fingers. “What do you mean?”
I shrug. “Just that they don’t have to worry about surviving.”
“But they’re dead,” he says.
“Yeah. That means they don’t have to remember anything.”
Elias shakes his head. “That means they can’t ever love.”
I snort. “So they don’t know loss.”
He stares off toward the Dark City, thinking about this. “Do you think the dead don’t know what they’ve lost? Don’t you ever wonder why they seek human flesh? That maybe it’s their way of believing again? Of living again—if even for that one pure moment that blood pulses inside their mouths?”
I shudder. “I don’t think they know what they’re missing,” I say. “They don’t have to worry about the people they love and what’s going to happen to them tomorrow or the next day.”
Elias looks confused. “But that’s what makes us alive. We make mistakes. We love and lose. That’s life.”
I think about what it felt like to have the Recruiter pulling on my hair, almost drag me over the wall. The terror inside that Catcher won’t make it back. Or that if he does we’ll still be stuck on this island forever, however long that lasts. “Don’t you think it would be easier without that?”
Elias doesn’t answer right away. He climbs off the wall and walks to my drawing of Catcher, staring at it. He raises his hand to his neck, and now the gesture reminds me of Catcher. Now it’s somehow Catcher’s and not Elias’s. “Do you ever think about the night before I joined the Recruiters?”
His back is to me so I can’t see his expression, and suddenly I’m a bit unsteady with this conversation. “What do you mean?” I finally ask.
He pauses. “The night you and I …” He waves his hand around as if he can’t say the word kissed.
I swallow, uncomfortable. “Yes.” My answer seems too brash. “Maybe.”
He turns to look at me, his eyes so intensely light. I’d forgotten how blue they are. How they can almost disappear. “Would you give that up?”
My cheeks are burning, my breath a little ragged. “What?” I don’t understand what this has to do with anything. I turn and jump off the wall, start toward the door. But Elias blocks my path.
“Did it hurt?” he asks, stepping closer. “When I left the next day?”
I want space to clear my head and gather my thoughts and stop the spinning. I back away until there’s nowhere to retreat to. “No. Yes. Maybe. Maybe it hurt later.”
He comes closer so that there’s hardly any space between us. And I notice that his nearness brings none of the heat that Catcher’s does and nothing inside me wants to draw nearer. “Would you give it up?” he whispers.
Would I give it up? Isn’t it the moment I first felt beautiful?
“I don’t know.” It’s the only honest answer I can give.
His expression changes, just a little, as if he’s scored some small victory. “If you’re willing to give that up and everything else—leaving your sister on the path, struggling in the Dark City, even your scars—everything that makes you you, that makes your life yours … that’s when you walk out into the horde and give yourself over to them.”
“It’s not that easy,” I whisper.
He pulls away from me, giving me distance. “Why isn’t it?”
“Because that’s not all the same. Those are all different things—different parts of me and my past.”
He shrugs. “Exactly. That’s what makes you, you. Don’t you think you lose all of that when you become one of the Unconsecrated?”
I start to shake my head but he grabs my chin. “The Unconsecrated aren’t the winners because they died,” he says. “We’re the winners because we get to live. Because we get to survive. Despite the pain of this life, we get to feel.”
He lets me go and walks over to the edge of the roof, where the Sanctuary is laid out below, cushioned in a blanket of white. “I know you still blame me for bringing us here. But don’t you understand that I was only trying to make sure we had a chance to live? I wasn’t betraying you or Catcher. I just …”
His jaw tightens and I walk toward him, stand next to him looking at the Sanctuary and the City beyond the river.
He takes a deep breath. “We’ve struggled so hard—both of us. I couldn’t have it be for nothing. I had to fight for us—even if that meant bringing us here. It was the only thing I knew to do.”
I place my hand over his. His skin feels warm and damp. I glance up and notice his cheeks are flushed.
“Ma
ybe I should be sorry,” he says, lifting one shoulder. “I’m not.…” He shakes his head a little, raises his other hand up to press against his eyes. Clearing his throat, he goes on. “I’m not going to apologize for having more time with Gabry. And you.”
His fingers clutch mine. “We’ll find a way to be safe,” he says. He sounds so sure that I can’t bear to force him to recognize the reality of our situation. It’s easier to let him believe in hope.
A breeze lifts the edges of my scarf, trailing them over my shoulders and flapping them behind me. “If only we could fly,” I whisper.
“I flew once,” Elias says. His eyes have lost focus and his shoulders hitch as he draws in tight little breaths. “In the Forest. I found a plane—it was the middle of winter and all the Unconsecrated were downed and I sat in it for hours. Below were clouds, above blue sky.”
He lets go of my hand and wavers on his feet, then grips the wall to catch his balance. I let him lean into me and realize that he’s scorchingly hot. Sweat rolls down the back of his neck even in the frigid air.
“Elias, you have to rest. You have to let me take over for a while. You can’t keep pushing yourself.” I try to help him sit but he stumbles away from me.
“No,” he mumbles, looking around the roof as if he can’t remember what he was doing there. “No, I have to take care of Gabry.” He finally meets my eyes, his face pale. “She’s everything to me.” And then he collapses.
I try to catch Elias but only manage to buffer his fall as he slumps against a deep pile of iced-over snow. I shake him and call his name and his eyes roll in his head for a moment before he finally focuses on me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“What are you sorry for?” I ask, trying to get him sitting, running my hand over his face and feeling the fever of him seep into me.
“I wanted to love you,” he mumbles. “I really did.…” His voice trails off as I freeze in shock. “Promise me you’ll take care of her.”
“Elias,” I say but he doesn’t respond. I shake him again but nothing happens. “Elias!” I scream but he just lies there motionless, lips parted and chest rising and falling rapidly.
I can’t get him to wake up and the ice begins to melt under him, soaking his clothes. I look around in a panic and then I run to the edge of the roof.
“Catcher!” I scream even though I know it’s useless. Even though I know there’s no way he can hear me wherever he is. Below me a few Recruiters hesitate on their way to patrol the wall and glance up. I back out of their line of sight, suddenly wary of drawing their attention.
I rush back to Elias and try to lift him but he’s deadweight and my feet slide on the ice. “Elias, please,” I whisper to him. “Please please please wake up.” He groans and shifts a little and then he starts to heave and I just barely roll him to his side before he begins to retch.
Frustration tears under my skin as I wash his mouth with snow and he tries to push me away but he still won’t wake up. He won’t listen to me. He starts to retch again and his body shakes as groans tumble from his mouth. I grab the blanket he brought up and wrap it around him and for the moment he stops shuddering.
I know I can’t keep him up here. I try to lift him again and manage to half-stumble, half-slide across the roof to the stairwell. Getting him down the steps is almost impossible. I brace myself underneath him and let him slump down each stair in a barely controlled fall. I wince when his elbow slams into the railing but he barely registers anything.
“You can do it, Elias,” I murmur to him with each flight, hoping he can hear me but knowing he’s probably so deeply lost in fever that my words are meaningless. But I say them anyway because they comfort me and keep me focused.
When I finally get him to our flat I spread a few blankets on the floor and roll him onto them. He retches again but his stomach’s empty and nothing comes up. As carefully as possible I peel the frozen clothes from his body, his skin now a chilly pale blue.
He pulls himself into a ball, shivering, and I pile more blankets on top of him and drag him closer to the stove. For now he seems content to let sleep draw him under and I toss wood on the fire and then just stand there, staring at my sister and Elias, wondering what to do next.
Wondering how I’m going to keep them alive.
There’s always been sickness in the City. Several years ago a flu raged through, decimating the population. I’d been one of the afflicted and Elias traded almost everything he had—food credits, blankets, his nice boots, oil and a lantern—for the herbs to bring down my fever. He later told me he sat by my bed for a week, his hand against my chest when he slept to make sure I kept breathing.
I look at his body now, at the way his cheekbones angle under the skin. My sister’s the same way, skin wan and hair lank. I wonder how either of them can be strong enough to survive this kind of fever for a week.
I let myself fall into a chair and sit, counting the number of times their chests rise and fall. I watch their eyelids flutter and lips mumble words that never become clear. The moaning of the horde swims through the window, wrapping around us all—calling to me.
All I can think is, What happens if I can’t save them? What if it’s just me in this building alone until I can’t survive any longer? Of all the ways I imagined the world would end, this was not one of them.
I lean over, tucking my forehead into my knees, and cover my ears with my hands. I can no longer hold back the tears and I cry, letting the fear shake through me.
I spend the day waiting for Catcher and trying to coax Elias and my sister to drink slushy snow, trying to feed them broth they can’t stomach. A few times they wake up but when I talk to them, they don’t seem to recognize me.
My sister cries out for her mother, moaning the name Mary, and all I can do is hold her hand and tell her it will be okay even though I’m not sure it will be.
After a while, the flat feels too hot, a sickly sweet smell that mixes with the odor of damp blankets drying by the fire, and I can barely handle it anymore. I was able to haul a mattress into the room and get them onto it and they’re both deep asleep, her arm tucked in his.
I drag myself up to the roof, welcoming the freezing air that refreshes my lungs. The night’s deep and clear, the moon not yet risen to hide the scattering of stars beating a rhythm of light from millions of years ago.
There are fewer survivors’ fires burning on roofs around the City. I try not to think about what this means and light my own small fire, then pull a tub of snow near. As it melts I run my hands over the blankets and quilts I brought to wash, most of the seams frayed and so worn they fall apart in my fingers. I just sit there staring at the scraps, wondering if it’s worth trying to rework them into another quilt. Wondering if any of this will even matter in a few days.
Is this what it was like in all those other cities and towns when the Return hit? All the half-finished products of people’s lives: laundry still hanging on someone’s line, a half-read book tucked into the corner of an old chair, a letter partially written or a painting almost but not quite finished.
I think back to my sister asking me what I’d do if I knew this was the end. I close my eyes and remember the feel of Catcher’s lips against mine. That instant when he gave in and let himself fall into me.
I want that moment again. Over and over. I want that to be my life.
I stare at the picture I drew of Catcher on the shed wall, mostly washed away now from the wind and snow. There are still some parts left—the outline of a flower, a hand clutching a bunch of balloons that have all run together.
Pulling a charred stick from the fire, I draw in some of the faded pieces, tracing the edge of a face here, mending the fence there. I start to outline the mass of balloons, to give each one shape again, when I pause.
The charcoal at the end of my stick crumbles under the pressure of my hand, leaving a long dark smudge. If only we could fly, I think.
It seems way too stupid to be a possibility, but even
so, I walk back to the fire and the blankets scattered about, running the fabrics through my hands. When I find one with a tight weave that isn’t too heavy, I rip apart the seams until I have a decent-sized square.
I pull down the wire we’d used to hang laundry and twist it into an approximation of a ball. After tying the fabric to the wire frame I balance it in my hand, a little hollow balloon open on one end.
Figuring out how to get the hot air inside and keeping it there is more difficult. I stare at the charred embers of the fire for a while and finally I just make a small basket from the leftover wire and stuff a bit of fabric in the bottom. On top of that I pile a few embers and twigs. The entire concoction begins to smolder and spew smoke into the dome of fabric.
I hold my breath, waiting. Slowly at first and then faster and faster the balloon lifts from my hand. The breeze from the river catches it, carrying it through the night sky, and I give a whoop as excitement buzzes through my veins.
It hovers there, a bright spark in the sky like a star. A burst of light in the darkness of the City before the little flame powering it extinguishes and the entire contraption tumbles into nothingness.
Feeling hopeful for the first time in weeks—years!—I gather the unwashed blankets and carry them back down to the flat, plans for getting off the island floating through my mind.
In the middle of the night my sister stops breathing. I grab her shoulders and shake her and scream at her that she’s not allowed to die, that she promised me she’d survive. As if obeying my command, she sputters and coughs and chokes and resumes her ragged inhalations.
But I can’t sleep again. I can’t stop staring at her chest, watching the rise and fall of it. Afraid that somehow I’m the one in charge of whether she takes her next breath and terrified that if I look anywhere else, even for a moment, she’ll slip away from me.
I pull my chair closer to the mattress, scraps of old clothes and blankets littering the floor around me. Using my sister’s quilting box, I sew the lengths of fabric together, stitching the seams as tight as I can, my movements keeping time to the pattern of her breaths.
