by Carrie Ryan
He looks over at me, his chest heaving. “You were a member of the Sisterhood, did you know about this?” There is fire in his eyes and I take a step back.
“The Sisters kept secrets,” I tell him. “And it appears as though the Guardians did as well.” I cannot look them in the eyes as I say this. We all keep secrets.
Harry thrusts his hands into his dark hair, his cheekbones appearing even sharper in the morning light. “They forbid us from this path, and yet they keep supplies here? Would I have ever been told?”
Jed shrugs. “What does it matter?” he asks.
Harry stays silent for a moment. “Then where does the path lead? If you know about the supplies, why don't you know where it leads?”
“Because even though I was chosen as a Guardian, I was not a member of the Guild. I doubt the Guild would even know. It's the Sisterhood that keeps the knowledge. We just do their bidding.” Jed turns to me. “That's where I was the day that Mother was … infected. I was out on the paths, checking supplies, making sure the fences still held. That's why I couldn't return before she … turned.”
I think back to my first day with the Sisters, to the hidden tunnel under the Cathedral that led to the clearing in the middle of the Forest. Of the little room where the Sisters had kept Gabrielle. I wonder again what was behind all the other thick doors and if the rest of them also hid rooms or if some concealed other tunnels that led to other paths. If right now the Sisters and the Guardians locked in the Cathedral had found their own way out of the village and were starting over again.
Leaving the rest of us behind to die.
“The Sisters and the Guardians no longer matter. What's important,” Jed says, interrupting my thoughts, “is that we can survive on this path. At least for a little while. But we need to start moving now.”
Harry is still scowling. He distributes the few bags of food that we have, bends to pick up his ax and says, “Since I'm the only one with a weapon, I will take the lead.” He commands Argos to his side and together they stride down the path, Cass and Jacob close behind him. Travis takes Beth's hand and walks with her, each supporting the other as they make their way carefully down the center of the path to avoid the looming fences. Jed and I trail behind.
We travel in silence the entire morning, picking our way through the brambles and over fallen branches. Finally, Jed stops walking and I do the same. The others continue down the path, curving away from us until we can no longer see them and we are alone. He seems anxious, jittery. He keeps shifting from one foot to the other as if he can't get comfortable.
Finally he speaks, his voice low. “Mary, I…” He hesitates and I watch as the muscles along his jaw twitch. Tears begin to spill down his cheeks, his face crumbling. “I don't know what to do,” he says.
I have never seen my brother cry and my heart begins to race. I step forward to comfort him but he holds up a hand, keeping me at bay.
“What is it, Jed?” I ask. “What's wrong?”
He turns toward the fence at his side, shakes his head.
“Jed?” I prod.
“She's infected, Beth is…” He chokes on his words. He scrapes a hand over his face as if it's the only thing holding his body together.
I stumble back, away from him. All this time she has been among us. All this time and he hasn't told us.
“You must kill her!” I say before I can think better of it. I am about to apologize when he falls to his knees in front of me. He grasps at my shirt, begging, and I am too stunned to speak.
“You don't understand,” he says. “You don't know. It's a small bite. It's nothing. Maybe she isn't sick … maybe …” His voice trails off.
I crouch down in front of him so that we're face to face. “Jed,” I say, trying to make my voice soft and soothing. “You are a Guardian. You know what a bite means. You know what infection means.”
He nods but I don't think my words have truly penetrated.
I take a deep breath. “You know there is no hope.”
“I cannot kill my wife,” he pleads with a hoarse voice, helpless, falling back on his heels. He beats at the ground and roars in anguish, causing the downed Unconsecrated nearby to rise, sensing our presence. I hear the moans as they begin the process of scenting us out. The first one hits the fence, not two arm's lengths away, and then another and another.
I listen to them rattle around us and then I say, “You can always let her go. You can turn her loose into the Forest.”
Jed starts to laugh, the sound low and bitter. He is on me before I can move, his fingers around my throat as he pushes me back and back. My legs tangle in my skirt and I fall against the fence, feel its rusty metal links digging through my clothes. “I see, Mary. You take pleasure in this, don't you.” His black hair is wild around his face. He bares his teeth. “I get mad at you for allowing our mother to become one of them and so now you can be smug that my wife will become one as well?”
I feel Unconsecrated fingers through my hair and I buck against the fence and try to scream but Jed has cut off any sound I can make. I thrash against him, my eyes rolling back in my head as all I can smell is death and decay and I'm desperate. Suddenly, he seems to realize what he's doing, what he's done, and he drops his hands.
I push away from him, away from the fence, and stumble down the path clutching the pinched skin of my neck. My breath comes in ragged gasps, tears burn my eyes and my body shakes with rage born of the terror I just experienced.
I've taken only a few steps when I hear him. “Mary, please.” His voice has lost its wild edge. “Please, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.” He is sobbing now, sounding like the little boy I grew up with. I stop but don't turn back.
“I cannot lose her,” he says to me. “If you had ever been in love you would understand.”
I spin around. “Don't tell me about love!” I roar. “Don't ever tell me what I know and do not know about love. Your situation is not about love. You are a Guardian. Killing the Unconsecrated is what you are trained to do. You've put us all in danger by keeping her alive. You know the rules.”
He rubs a hand over his face. He's sitting in the middle of the path, his knees bent, one arm wrapped around his legs.
“Love is not something our village has ever cared about,” he says, looking out into the Forest. “It's always been about the bloodlines, about preserving ourselves and taking care not to intermarry.” He tosses his hand at the Unconsecrated scraping at the fence. “It has always been about surviving them.”
I think about Harry and the Sisterhood's edict that I marry him and I cross my arms over my chest.
“The Sisterhood has it wrong,” he says. “It's not about surviving. It should be about love. When you know love … that's what makes this life worth it. When you live with it every day. Wake up with it, hold on to it during the thunder and after a nightmare. When love is your refuge from the death that surrounds us all and when it fills you so tight that you can't express it.” He rocks forward and backward as tears stream down his face. Around us the Unconsecrated continue their moaning.
I think about Travis. About the way he said he would come for me. “I have known love,” I whisper, as much to myself as to my brother.
He lifts a corner of his lips, almost smiling. “You can't ever have known love.” I am about to protest when he holds up a hand to stop me and continues, “Because if you had you wouldn't be telling me to kill my wife as if it were an easy choice. You would realize that you don't let love go like that. And you would realize that you certainly never kill it. Never.”
I take a step forward but I'm still wary of this wounded man, afraid that I may say the wrong thing and he will lash out again. I'm torn between fearing him and wanting desperately to comfort him. “Jed, you don't have a choice,” I tell him. “She's a risk to all of us.”
It's as if he doesn't hear me, doesn't comprehend. “I just wanted another day with her,” he pleads. “One day to forget. To pretend there is no infection, no such thing as the Unconsecr
ated. One day to memorize her.”
“But the infection—”
“It's a small bite, Mary,” he tells me, his face folding in on itself as he says the words. “She has another two days at least, if not three.” His voice turns hollow. “Her infection is spreading slowly. If I have learned one thing as a Guardian it's how the living turn. I know the signs. I know what to look for.” He swallows. “She has time left.”
I stare out into the Forest. I cannot imagine Beth becoming one of them. Becoming Unconsecrated.
“Please, Mary. Let me have this day and night with my wife. If you know love, then you understand what this means to me.”
I nod before I realize what I'm doing. He rushes to me and wraps his arms around me. But I'm still thinking about what he said about love. Even as he runs down the path to rejoin the others, to rejoin his wife.
I cradle my face in my hands, Jed's words grinding in my head. Guilt tears through my veins and I wonder if I ever did truly love Travis since I allowed myself to give up on him. To be bound to Harry. My betrayal sinks heavy in my skin.
I stay true to my promise: I don't tell the others about Beth. But I still watch her. I watch to make sure that Jed never leaves her side. Even without a weapon, I am ready to kill her, whether he is or not.
That evening, just as the sun is setting fire to the treetops, the path finally bulges wider, giving us relief from the constant overwhelming nearness of the fence and the fear that one wrong step will send us clattering against the links and into Unconsecrated fingers. Sitting in the middle of the clearing is a wooden trunk held together with metal bands. It's long and wide and has a large rusty lock hanging from one end. Argos sniffs at it, tail swinging back and forth as he dances around excitedly.
We gather around it and I notice that letters are branded onto the top. I wipe my hand over them, clearing away rotted leaves. XVIII.
I think back to the letters that Gabrielle traced into the window in her room: XIV. “What do these letters mean?” I ask Jed.
He shrugs. “Does it matter?”
“Did the Guardians put them here?” I prod.
“No, the chest has always been here. It was the Sisters that told us about it and asked us to keep the supplies fresh.”
“What about the key?” Harry asks.
Jed shrugs again. “Somehow I didn't think to bring it with me.”
I turn and hide my face against my shoulder, stifling laughter.
Harry swings at the lock with his ax, busting it on the third try. Inside are two water bladders, two bags of food and two more double-sided axes. Jed takes one and Travis the other.
“We should camp here tonight, where there is space,” Harry says. We all agree, relieved to be out of the narrow gap between the fences, and the men begin to pull the boards off the trunk to start a fire while Cass and I prepare a meager meal.
We say little that evening as we eat. I watch as flames consume the letters once branded into the wood of the trunk and I think about Gabrielle and how she looked that night when I saw her through the window in the Cathedral. Her long black hair framing skin that was both pale and dark, like the moon as it hangs just over the horizon. Before she became Unconsecrated. When she was just a girl like me, staring through a locked window at the promise of the path through the Forest, the promise of another world.
That night, as I fall into a broken sleep, Argos tucked in my arms, I dream of Cass and Jacob straining through the fence for me. Except they are not Unconsecrated. They're on one side of a locked gate and I'm on the other and the sounds of the Unconsecrated fill my ears but I don't know if they are coming for me or for them.
Cass opens her mouth and screams and I am jolted awake only to find that her screams still echo in my ears. Under my hand I can feel the reverberation of Argos growling and I sit up and turn to where Cass is still screaming and pointing.
My first thought is that Jed was wrong and Beth has turned, but then out of the corner of my eye I see a flash of red and my heart stops beating. I choke on my own breath as I see Gabrielle coming for us. I brace myself for the impact, for the clash of teeth, but then I hear the rattle of the fence as Gabrielle slams into it. Three arrows protrude from her torso and one arm hangs at an odd angle, but that doesn't stop or even slow her down.
Other Unconsecrated stumble behind her, eventually joining her at the fence, all clamoring for us.
Travis throws dirt on the embers of last night's fire while Harry and Jed stand ready with their axes. But the fence holds the Unconsecrated back and we are merely assaulted by the smell of their fetid flesh and the sounds of their desperate moans.
We leave our little campsite without a word, slipping back into single file as the path narrows. We walk quickly, leaving the slow Unconsecrated dragging behind after us, unable to keep up. But Gabrielle is with us at every turn. She is like Argos, running ahead along the fence, pushing against it, testing for weakness, running back to us, trying to get through.
“How did she get out of the village?” I hear Beth wail. “How did she find us?”
Jed draws his wife against him, the path barely wide enough for them to walk side by side. He meets my eyes over her head. “She must have made it back through the breach,” he says.
“That means there must be nothing left in the village for her,” I hear Harry say. “That means the village must be totally gone. If they couldn't kill her …” His voice trails off, allowing the rest of us to draw our own conclusions.
Cass, near the front of the line, stops at these words, and when I approach she slips Jacob's hand into mine and falls in line behind us. I can hear her sobs, hear her body shuddering as she struggles to breathe. I want to stop and hold her, to comfort her, but instead I grasp Jacob's hand tighter.
“Why is that one so different?” he asks me in his small voice tinged with a slight little-boy lisp. He points to Gabrielle in her bright red vest.
I shake my head. I think of Gabrielle being locked in the Cathedral with the Sisters, of the last time I saw her and how I searched and searched but could never find her. I think of the tunnel, the doors set off it, the little room, the handwriting in the Scripture. I cannot help but wonder again what the Sisters did to Gabrielle, how they must have caused this destruction.
A bright puffy cloud has just doused the harsh sunlight directly overhead when the path widens again and we come across the gate bisecting the fences. Situated above the lever is a small metal bar with the letters XIX inscribed in it. For a brief moment it reminds me of the doorways in my village and how the Sisters inscribe every door with words from the Scripture. I slide my hand over the letters the way I was taught to acknowledge the Scripture verses when I enter a room.
But instead of thinking about God, as we are supposed to, I think about Gabrielle.
I wonder what the relationship is between the letters Gabrielle wrote on the window, those burned into the trunk we found earlier and these, but I can't figure out a pattern. I look over to where Gabrielle pounds at the fence with an insane passion we have never seen in the Unconsecrated before. I wish I could ask her these things, comfort her, tell her to hush and then ask for her help.
Instead, I grasp the burning metal of the lever and am about to pull it when Cass gasps and steps forward from the others.
“What are you doing?” She shouts to be heard over Gabrielle. “You don't know what's out there. What that gate is for. What if there are Unconsecrated on the other side? Mary, you would kill us.”
“We don't have a choice,” I answer her as I pull the lever and the gate glides open, barely emitting a creak. I'm surprised at how heavy it is and I stand and hold it as the others slowly slip through.
Jed walks with a protective arm around Beth and already I notice how her eyes have sunk into her skull, how her footsteps have become less sure, how her brown hair hangs lank around her face. I try to grab my brother, to tell him that tonight he must take care of her. That she is too dangerous. But he shakes his head before I can sp
eak and tells me that everything is under control.
I wonder, as Harry and Travis walk through the opening, if they see these changes in their sister. If they know what waits for her at the end of this day. The inevitability of it all.
I know that Jed still hasn't told them that Beth is infected, even though with every step we grow closer to her death.
I let the gate close softly once everyone is through. As I set the latch I find another small metal plate on this side of the gate. Etched in it are the letters XVIII—the same letters that were burned into the trunk. I struggle to put it all together, to figure out what these letters mean, but I can come to no conclusions. I shake my head and rub my finger along the metal. Its sharp edges cut into the pad of my thumb.
I suck the blood away as I turn to rejoin the others. We don't walk much farther before the path branches and we face a decision. Argos trots down each one, sniffing furiously before coming to sit at my feet, tongue lolling from the side of his mouth.
“We can either separate, scout them out or just choose one,” Harry says, his hands on his hips as he peers down the path that branches to the right. There's a small clearing where the three paths meet and Beth has taken the opportunity to curl up on her side in the dirt, her shawl tight around her shoulders and her head resting on Jed's outstretched legs.
Cass sits with Jacob, her hand wrapped around his as she helps him trace his numbers in the dirt.
“It's an easy choice,” she says without looking up. “We should take the path that leads us away from her.” She points at where Gabrielle throws herself at the fence with the same furor as the first time she found us. She is the reason we've been forced to walk single file down this narrow path, fearful that if we walked side by side she would be able to reach one of us.
“Cass makes a good point,” Travis says. “If we take the left branch, there's no way she can follow us.”
Everyone in agreement, Jed helps Beth from the ground and we trudge down the path to the left, leaving Gabrielle mauling the fence behind us. The path almost feels empty without her constant presence and a small part of me realizes that I miss her.
