by Carrie Ryan
It flickers out, dousing me in nothingness that is so absolute I’m not sure air exists. The darkness amplifies every sound—the scrape of breath up my throat, the whisper of my fingers as I fumble in my coat pocket for the flint, the wheeze of air drifting along forgotten walls.
On my knees, I strike at the flint, my fingers shaking now with urgency. Each failed try is the Recruiters growing closer; every spark that dies, them gaining on me. They can’t be that far back, not anymore. The ground vibrates, traces of the pursuing footsteps thumping like summer rain.
With the lantern finally relit I notice that the tunnel is partially caved in ahead, boulders, rocks and twisted steel beams strewn every which way. I groan in frustration for a moment before I pull myself together. Almost madly I attack the debris, pulling at the smaller stones, wrenching free broken metal rods and digging as hard as I can, knowing that I’m losing time.
Steps volley behind me, any sense of distance lost to the echoes. Moans meld with the Recruiters’ voices calling for me, all lost in the growing thunder of noise.
Finally I’ve dug a narrow path and I shove the lantern through, crawling after it. It’s a tight squeeze in some places, and I have to wriggle, cringing as icy rocks grate over my ribs. At least this will hold back the dead, I reassure myself with each scratch.
Just as I make it through, I catch sight of movement chasing behind me at the edge of my lantern light. I kick at the hole I’ve created, shifting debris until it falls back in on itself, blocking my pursuers.
“Annah,” the man calls out, and it’s Ox. He stops on the other side of the web of broken beams, woven tightly enough to keep him from coming after me but loose enough that we’re standing almost face to face.
“Leave me alone,” I growl, picking up a rock and flinging it at him. He dodges but it hits the Recruiter behind him in the face, scratching his cheek. In the weak light of my lantern I can see there’s already blood dripping from the man’s mangled fingers.
I cough and choke on the frigid air, wondering if any of them got infected when they landed in the sea of dead that is what’s left of the Dark City. I step back once and then again, putting more distance between us.
Ox wraps a massive hand around one of the beams, his knuckles bruised and raw. “You don’t understand, Annah. We need you! The Sanctuary will fail without you and Catcher. They’ll all die.” He tugs at the metal, picking apart the debris, and I kick at the pile again, shifting the rocks to narrow the gaps he’s creating.
Behind them shapes flicker, deeper grays in the black darkness. The dead. My heart stutters and then races. I step back again, the light cast over the Recruiters growing weaker.
“You should have thought of that before,” I shout at him. The two other men start pulling at the boulders, and they’re so much stronger than I am that it won’t be long before they’ve dug a way through.
Not that they have much time before the Unconsecrated will overwhelm them.
I start running. “I know these tunnels,” I yell back at him, following the curve of the tracks as they meet with another set. I stumble over the metal rails but manage to catch myself. “You won’t find me!” It’s a lie but he doesn’t have to know.
My muscles have already cooled and they pull and strain as I run harder, gasping for air. I don’t care about the pain. I can live with that if I can get distance. I need to lose them.
I know the smartest thing would be for me to drop the lantern, that it must be easy for them to follow the light, but then I’d be blind. Every time I tripped they’d draw closer. Every time I had to hesitate over my footing, they’d gain on me.
Besides, I’m not that desperate. Yet.
I lose sense of everything in the almost-darkness: who I am, where I’ve been, how much time I’ve been down here. I just run: one step illuminated, then the next, and always the moans and Ox’s shouting behind, constant, grating.
I think about pressing myself into a crack in the wall and holding my machete tight, waiting for Ox to thunder past and then striking. I’d slice along the back of his leg first, nicking the tendons and hobbling him. Then I’d kick him onto his face and make the final blow against the back of his neck.
My own vicious thoughts make me shudder. Could I really do that? Take his life?
He deserves it, of that I’m sure. But as I run I think about the sound of Catcher’s blade slicing through Conall’s spine.
It was murder. A brutality that still weakens me. Because where do I go when I cross that line? I’m not ready to make such a decision, and so instead I keep careening into the darkness, since as long as I’m moving I’m still safe.
Or at least, that’s the illusion I promise myself.
Eventually, the feel of the air in the tunnel shifts and I notice a glow around the bend ahead that looks almost like daylight. My heart pounds faster. A point of desperate hope spreads through me—it could be a way out.
And then reality crashes down, pulling me to a standstill. If there’s an opening, it will be filled with Unconsecrated. There could be a swarm of them just ahead. Moans already fill the tunnel, making it impossible to figure out whether they’re in front of me or behind.
I hold the machete in one hand and the lantern in the other as I scurry forward, ready for anything. After a dozen more steps the ceiling arches away from me, soaring up in a graceful curve over my head, and the walls swing wide, revealing a short looping platform dusted with snow.
It’s like walking into someplace sacred, the way the ice crystals shimmer in the air. Recessed in the ceiling, windows with intricate patterns gaze down on me, most of them blocked by thick leaden grids but a few still full of colored glass. There’s a hallowed stillness to the station, to the joining and breaking of vaulted domes that collect the sound of my pursuers and dissipate them into a meaningless chorus.
To run feels profane but I have no choice. I press my back against the inner curved wall and shuffle my way along it, my gaze sliding over the brown and green tiles interlocked along the arches and then fixing on the windows above.
Already I see them straining. See the cracks. Who knows how many hands pound against them? Ahead of me another tunnel looms, a black abyss ready to swallow me, but before I step into it Ox calls my name.
It’s not that he’s there that surprises me. What surprises me is that he’s alone, one hand pressed to the edge of the platform and the other to his chest. He just stands there as if he’s sure that I won’t run.
Or that even if I do, he’ll catch me.
“Go away!” I scream as I keep walking backward from him. Drifts of snow shimmer in piles around the platform and along the tracks, fallen through the broken windows above.
Blood pounds through my body, keeping me warm—but my ears still burn with cold, my throat raw and sore.
“I can’t,” he says, hand clutching his chest. Every breath comes out as a cloud, blurring his features. “I promised the men I’d keep them alive and I need you to do it.”
I’m shaking my head. “Even if you dragged me back I wouldn’t let you have Catcher,” I spit at him.
“That’s not the way it works,” he says. “He’s proven enough times he’ll do what we ask to keep you alive. How do you think we knew which one of you to threaten when we needed to remind him to keep working for us?”
“What?” I stumble over a rotted chunk of wood and pause, ready to run or fight—whichever will keep me alive longer.
He rubs his hand over his bald head, wicking away glistening sweat. “Throwing you over the wall. The cage. Not that I approve of the way Conall handled himself, but it worked. Before we knew about you we thought your sister would be more useful for controlling him.” He shrugs. “I was wrong. Once you were in the picture we had to figure out which sister he cared about more. Turns out it’s you.”
I think of all they put me through—the torture and agony of it! “You’re worse than the Unconsecrated,” I hiss. “You’re a monster.”
“It worked,�
�� he says evenly. “I told you when we met that I’d do anything for my men. You should have believed me.”
“You’re crazy and stupid.” I wave my machete in the air, dismissing him. “You’re the one who said there was nowhere else to go! You’re the one convinced we’re all that’s left.”
He shakes his head, sliding his hand from the edge of the platform, and takes a step toward me. I square my shoulders, raising my chin, ready to attack. He stops. “It’s not for me to decide,” he says. “I don’t decide we’re the last ones. I just keep the people safe. They’ll determine whether to start a new generation.”
I snort. “There are only men on that island.”
He tilts his head. “We have Souler women too. They’d have learned to make a life with some of my men.”
My stomach lurches at the thought. At creating a generation by force.
“Do you ever wonder about the very first people?” he asks. “About what it must have been like for them? To find themselves so unprepared for this dangerous new world?”
“You mean after the Return hit?” I take another two steps back. It won’t be long before the tide of Unconsecrated sweeps into the station, and every moment we stand here unmoving is a moment they’re drawing closer.
He laughs, the sound out of place in these tunnels. “No, I mean the very first living. What would happen if they’d simply given up?”
“I guess humanity wouldn’t have been worth it then,” I say. Above us more cracks race across the glass, the lead grates shuddering under the weight of so many undead bodies. I retreat farther down the tunnel until it’s as if Ox is just speaking to the empty tomb of a station.
“Does the fact that we ended up here and now with little hope mean that everything that came before was meaningless?” he calls after me. “The rise and fall of empires? The families and wars and loss and growth and knowledge and striving for something better? Is it always about the end and not about the beginning? Is it always about the conclusion and not about the path to it?”
He’s looking for meaning where there is none. He should have learned this by now. “I’m tired of paths,” I shout past the edge of my lantern light. I glance behind me at the endless tunnels beckoning. “Sometimes they lead nowhere.”
My words are drowned by a massive shattering sound, glass splintering against the platform like icicles. I press myself against the wall, far enough into the tunnel that the shards merely scatter at my feet.
Ox, still standing by the curve of the platform, drops into a crouch, throwing his arms over his head as chunks of broken lead latticework crash in from the ceiling. The old windows arching across the station buckle and break, allowing a wash of moans to roll over us. There’s a massive grating sound of metal on metal before something gives and bodies begin to fall.
The first few land with sickening thuds. Their bones crunch, puncturing skin with sharp gleaming fractures of white. Yet, oblivious to the almost complete destruction of their bodies, they’re still desperate for Ox.
I retreat back along the tracks as the dead crawl forward, leg bones scraping over the concrete with a horrible high-pitched scratch, fingers swiping the air.
Ox’s eyes meet mine for a helpless moment as bodies rain around him. One fractures its thighbone, another splits its head and lies motionless. They just keep coming. More and more, falling on one another, piling up so that those on the bottom cushion the landing of those on the top. They roll and writhe until they find their footing and start to stumble forward.
The sound of so many Unconsecrated becomes deafening.
I turn and run. The last thing I see is Ox standing there, the dead a downpour between us. Already the Unconsecrated move after me, filling the tunnels like water, flooding behind me.
I don’t stop running. If anyone deserved to die it was Ox, but still, to see him there with so many dead—they’d have pulled him apart.
I shake my head, trying to erase the thought, and instead focus on what to do next. I can’t just keep running randomly through the tunnels. The Unconsecrated will continue to pile up behind me, their numbers becoming a tidal wave that will drown me if I don’t stay ahead of them.
If I accidentally hit a dead end or double back … I’ll be in the same situation as Ox. It’s too much of a risk.
At the next station I drag myself up onto the platform, scouring walls for any clue about where I am and where to go. How to make it out of here alive.
I’ve seen maps down here before, back when I used to explore after going to the museum, and I desperately need to find one now. My heart thunders in my chest, panic squeezing my lungs as dingy bare walls stare back at me.
Finally the weak lantern light illuminates dull colors barely visible under layers of dirt and grime. Frantic, I scrub the heel of my hand against the wall until the lines of a map appear. It’s faded, making it almost impossible to distinguish the various twisted lines and tunnels, and my eyes skitter everywhere at once until I see sharp letters stating YOU ARE HERE with an arrow pointing at a white circle.
I place a trembling finger over the spot like it’s an anchor holding me firm. I know where I am, now I just have to figure out where I’m going.
Behind me the moans in the tunnel grow stronger, pushing me to move, to run, but I know I have to think first.
My body shaking from the cold and strain of the day, I start tracing the lines that spread away from where I’m standing, tunnels curving and twisting back under the Dark City or out past the island, sometimes doubling back or just ending.
It’s like a maze, and I keep getting lost and tangled where the lines intersect into knots before untangling and breaking out again. There are too many options. I don’t know where to go. I beat my fist against the wall, pouring out my frustration and forcing myself to focus.
I refuse to die down here alone. I didn’t give up when I fell into a pit of barbed wire and I won’t do it now. There’s always a way to survive. The trick is finding out how. Survivors aren’t always the strongest; sometimes they’re the smartest, but more often simply the luckiest. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, clearing the panic from my mind, and then I open them and start tracing the lines on the map again, knowing there’s something I’m missing.
That’s when I see, at the edge of the map, a picture of a roller coaster, and I almost laugh at the simplicity of the solution. Catcher told me about a roller coaster—he said that was how he found the boat.
Now I just have to find where that is. With the lightness of hope screaming through my body, I rub more of the grime away and uncover an arrow pointing from the picture of the coaster to a round dot at the bottom edge of the map—another station.
My teeth chatter, the cold closing in around me as I track the lines on the map, figuring out how the tunnels connect and how to get there. It’s far away, and my body wants to sag at the thought of covering such distance, but it’s still hope. At least now I know where to go so that I’m not running in aimless circles, waiting for the dead to bury me.
For the briefest moment I allow myself to think about Catcher waiting for me. To think of the boat and the water and my sister and the sky. These are the thoughts that drag me back to the edge of the platform. That propel me down to the tracks and push me to stumble through the tunnels.
The moans wash behind me, almost a physical force that screams at my body to move faster, but I know better. This time I don’t run. It’s a long way to the roller coaster and I can’t exhaust myself. I’m more cautious with my steps, keeping the lantern in front of me so I don’t fall—I can’t afford any more scrapes or cuts. Any more blood.
The only problem is that my body doesn’t generate as much heat walking, and soon I start to lose feeling in my fingers and toes. I pull my new coat tight, try to remember the feel of the fire on the roof earlier, when we were inflating the balloon.
Try to remember the heat of Catcher’s skin against mine.
I shiver just thinking about it.
I fe
el like a tiny lightning bug lost over the ocean—a tiny bright light surrounded by dark so deep the world might as well not exist. Time and distance become distorted and I find myself counting steps just to know that I’m moving forward.
I can’t remember the last time I ate. I find myself pulling ice from the walls for water. It’s nearly impossible to raise my feet, so I drag them along, the Unconsecrated thundering after me.
Eventually, the ground becomes slick, and I press my hand against the ice-coated wall to keep steady. My footsteps alternately crunch and slip, making it easy to lose my balance. Every time I crash to my knees it takes longer for me to push myself up again, and the dead get closer.
Every time I hesitate, that’s distance lost between me and the dead.
I’m so tired. My body’s exhausted. Spent.
This is the true brutality of the Unconsecrated. My body tires and theirs don’t. My muscles cramp and lock up and theirs don’t. My mind screams to rest for just a moment and they know only the hunger that will keep them stumbling after me forever.
Every heartbeat I’m not moving, the Unconsecrated are.
And eventually I will have to stop. To sleep. To eat. To drink. To catch my breath.
I can’t walk forever. The dead can.
Knowing this should break me. It should have broken all of us long ago.
But it didn’t. Not my mother or my father. Not their parents or the generation before that.
And if I’ve learned anything surviving on my own it’s that I can take another step. That’s all I have to promise myself: one more step, and then I can worry about the one after that.
One more morning: that’s all I have to focus on.
So that’s what I do. Behind me the dead follow, the empty sound of their moaning making me nauseated and dizzy. I begin to hum, a wavering sound as the muscles in my arms and across my chest clench from the cold.
My throat’s sore, mouth parched dry, so I run my hands across the ice on the wall, bringing the drops of water to my lips to keep them from cracking. It tastes old and stale. Metallic, like blood.
