The Forest of Hands and Teeth Book 1

by Carrie Ryan

  I've gone fifty paces before I allow myself to breathe, to allow hope to squeeze fear out of my heart. I realize I'm actually going to make it. Then the crashes around me grow more intense and I realize that even though I'm covered in muck and mud the Unconsecrated still scent me. And then I remember my knee. Remember falling, the sharp pain, the blood.

  They track me now, the tang of blood oozing through the rain-soaked night. I can hear their moans. Hear their echoes. My mind begins to scream at me to turn back while there is still time. To race back to the gate. To choose a life with Harry and return to our village.

  But instead I push on. The moist air sears my throat and my lungs scream. The muscles in my legs burn and already I feel myself grow weak. The lack of food and racing from the fire over the last few days taking over.

  I grow careless, my arms flailing around me, the ax handle slick in my hand. I feel broken fingers wrap around my wrist and I pull back and shriek. Everywhere I look now I see them coming out of the darkness.

  I am surrounded by Unconsecrated.

  I have to force myself not to panic. Instead, I grasp the ax with both hands and begin to swing, running through the clearing that my weapon creates. Flesh falls around me, the squelch of steel meeting putrefaction mixing with the sound of the rain beating the ground, of my feet slipping in the mud.

  But it's not enough.

  I stumble. Hands grasp at my feet. I roll onto my back. I swing. My arm muscles scream at the effort. I dig my feet in, trying to push myself back along the sodden ground. Everywhere, they are everywhere.

  I am stuck in the mulch of leaves and limbs and sodden earth, my body pulled down by suction. I cannot escape. I am lost. Finally, the Forest, the inevitability of it all, has won.

  And then I can hear the screams. Not of terror but of rage. I hear the voice telling me to run and suddenly the Unconsecrated are gone. A hand reaches down, drags me to my feet. Presses me onward.

  It's Jed and he swings his blade alongside me.

  A new sound emerges through the Forest: the sound of racing water.

  “This way,” I tug at Jed, pulling him toward me as we run in the direction of the sound. And suddenly, the ground slopes sharply away beneath us and we cling to each other as we tumble down a steep incline. I drop my ax and use both hands to halt my fall, scrabbling at the muddled earth. I dig my toes and elbows and knees into the ground, branches digging into the soft skin of the underside of my arms, pebbles scraping the flesh from my legs and a bramble pulling at my cheek. Finally, I come to a stop.

  I take a deep breath, almost choking on the rain. My body throbs in too many places to count.

  All I want to do is rest here, determine how badly I've been injured by the fall. But then I hear the moans and the water raging even nearer and I push myself to my knees.

  I look up and see the horde of Unconsecrated at the top of the hill, watch as they tumble down after us. They slide around me, their arms out and mouths open.

  With so many bodies it's impossible to find Jed. I begin to scream his name, terrified.

  Finally, I see him. He's looking at me, standing where he slid to a stop. Just at that moment a large Unconsecrated man careens down the slick hill, colliding full-force with him.

  I see Jed flip through the air and land on his back with a thud. I begin to sprint. The Unconsecrated man recovers his balance as my feet slip, getting stuck in the muck. I can't find my ax so I grab a branch to fend off the Unconsecrated that crawl around me.

  “Jed!” I shout, “I'm coming, Jed, hold on!”

  My eyes fill with useless tears, blinding me. I swipe at them with my arm but that only makes the problem worse as mud coats my eyelashes.

  Jed isn't moving. The Unconsecrated man crawls closer. He's leaning over Jed as I approach. I'm screaming now, hoping to distract the Unconsecrated, hoping to keep him from biting my brother.

  He bends his head down and I throw the heavy branch I'm holding at him. It careens off his head and he glances at me. For a moment I think I've won. I think that I've enticed him enough.

  But then, with the ferocity of a feral animal, he hunches over Jed and lowers his head.

  I trip then and fall to one knee, the knee I had hit earlier. Pain explodes behind my eyes.

  I feel a hand scrabble at my back and I turn and punch a female Unconsecrated with all my might. She staggers back. Long enough for me to realize that I tripped over Jed's scythe.

  I wrap my fingers around its smooth wooden handle, remembering the heft of it from when I used it to kill Travis, and swing. I take out the Unconsecrated woman and then I stumble toward Jed and swing at the Unconsecrated man.

  It is a messy death and I have no idea if he's bitten Jed. Blood is everywhere, cuts on our arms, faces and legs from our fall down the hill. He is still not conscious but his chest rises and falls.

  I tug at him, shake his shoulder. But a pair of Unconsecrated children advance on us. I leave Jed and approach them, my fingers loose around the hilt of the scythe. The Unconsecrated have no avarice, no skill in the hunt. Their only strength is numbers, wearing down the living. And so the two children shamble toward me and it is easy to swipe the blade at them. To watch as it cleaves through the skulls and they each drop, a pile of clothes surrounding desiccated flesh.

  “Come on, Jed,” I say. I get back to his side and begin to tug at his arms. “We have to move!”

  He opens his eyes again but can't get his legs under his body. His movements are slow, uncoordinated. I keep pulling at his arms, bracing myself in the mud, slipping too much to get us anywhere.

  More Unconsecrated advance on us and I leave him to keep fighting. It's a never-ending stream of them. I look up to the top of the hill to see even more sliding down.

  And I am certain that this is how I will die. That I have chosen wrong. That this was not the path I was supposed to take. The gate was nothing more than a gate. It was not an answer.

  There are too many Unconsecrated bearing down on us. Too many for me to defend against.

  A hand grasps at my waist and I'm about to swing when I realize that it's Jed. The blade barely stops before it would have split his throat. He is hunched over, his face pinched with pain.

  “This way,” he says. I look back over my shoulder, see the horde bearing down on us. It's too dark to see how many but I know it's enough to overwhelm us. “There's a river nearby,” he says. “We'll be safer there.”

  I nod and he leads the way, limping. I try to hold him up, to help him, but my own feet lose purchase and I constantly slip.

  The roar of the water pounds in my ears and eventually Jed slows, sliding his feet out as if he's probing for something.

  “We have to move faster,” I tell him. “They're getting too close again.”

  He holds a hand up and I am quiet.

  “Here,” he says, and I'm about to walk past him to see what he's pointing out and he pulls me back at the last moment, just as I feel my right foot slipping into nothingness.

  He kneels and I follow suit. Both of us scoot forward and then I feel the emptiness with my own hands. There's a canyon, cut by the river. Just up the river I can see a massive waterfall, churning and throwing debris into the darkness. The roar of the water is deafening now, fed by the storm. Waves glint below, the river frothy, foamy, hungry.

  I'm terrified looking down on it, my fingers digging into the mud. Jed swings one foot over the edge of the cliff near the falls.

  I grab his hand. “What are you doing?” I ask. My voice cracks from the strain.

  “It's too high to jump,” he tells me. “There might be rocks we can't see. We have to climb down.”

  I'm already shaking my head. “The ground is too soft, we'll never make it.”

  He grabs my hand, pulls me over the side and wraps my fingers around something firm and slick with rain. “Roots,” he tells me. “We can use them like rope. Be careful of the rocks,” he adds, “the rain may have loosened them.”

  I'm still un
sure. I can't climb with the scythe and I'm unwilling to let it go. But then the Unconsecrated horde descends on us and Jed pulls me over the edge before the first one can get me and I drop the weapon into the darkness below as I clamber for purchase in the soft earth.

  They begin to fall around us, bumping us, grabbing at us as they tumble down the side of the cliff.

  “Hold on!” Jed yells. The stream of Unconsecrated bodies does not stop, their arms reaching for us as they slip past, forcing us to climb lower. We shuffle down until I find a little overhang that protects me from the falling bodies.

  I don't hear them as they crash into the water but I don't dare look down.

  Jed joins me on my tiny ledge and together we press ourselves into the side of the earth wall, digging our fingers into the mud, grasping at the roots and brush.

  The rain still beats on our backs, the thunder mixing with the sound of the rapids and echoing around us. In the flashes of lightning I can see the Unconsecrated thrashing in the water so far below.

  I realize that Jed has been talking to me and I have to strain to hear his voice.

  “—sorry, Mary.”

  “What?” I yell at him.

  “I said I'm sorry,” he says. And this time I hear him.

  “Why did you come through the gate?” I ask.

  “Because I'm your big brother.” He smiles, then laughs. “And I want to believe in hope.” I cannot help but smile a little as well. At the two of us stuck here on the side of a cliff during a storm, unable to see anything around us but Unconsecrated that fall with the rain.

  For a moment it's just the two of us, the way it used to be back before there was Beth or Harry or Travis. Before our father and mother turned and we turned on each other.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  He's about to respond when an Unconsecrated bounces down the cliff, knocks into him and sends him tumbling away from me, out into the nothingness.

  “Jed!” I scream. Over and over again I yell for him as I scrabble down the cliff grasping at roots and branches and rocks, sometimes losing my grip and skidding down until I can stop my fall.

  Finally, I'm close enough to the water. It churns with branches and bodies. Whitecaps roiling over each other. No order, just chaos.

  Sometimes a head will break the surface but never long enough for me to see the face. Arms flail but it's impossible to tell whether the arms belong to Jed or an Unconsecrated. Bodies continue to fall into the water, creating splashes that mix with the waves.

  I realize that the current is impossibly fast in places and so I start to move sideways down the cliff, trying to make it downstream. Hoping that Jed was able to find something to grab on to, to pull himself out of the water.

  As the night wears on my searches grow more frantic, more desperate. I find a tree that has fallen over the water and I inch my way out onto it, gripping the rough bark with my thighs. The rain continues to pound my back as I move forward, gusts of wind rip down the canyon, making me hug the tree so that I don't fall in.

  When I'm out over the water I scan the surface below. The river clogs as a massive log jams into a narrow part of the canyon and the water begins to back up. Waves crash over my position.

  I back down the tree, concentrating so hard that I don't see it coming. An arm reaches out of the water. Grabs me. Yanks me in. Pulls me under.

  I kick and thrash and turn. Something tugs at my hair. My head breaks the surface and for a heartbeat I believe that my rescuer is Jed. That he's the one who has dragged me to the surface.

  But then I see the face, the hunger, the teeth. I lash out, push against the water with all my might. The current slips past me as I fight it. Lightning splits the sky and I can see my surroundings clearly.

  See the bodies like so much debris, a part of the swirling mess.

  And then nothingness.

  In my dream I'm back in the clearing in the Forest, the one Sister Tabitha took me to through the tunnels under the Cathedral. The Forest is silent. No mosquitoes humming, no birds singing and I am alone. Suddenly, everything around me collapses. Sound clamors back and it's my mother screaming as she turned. I see the Unconsecrated rushing at me from the Forest, all of them fast, all of them wearing bright red vests. My mother is there and Jed and Cass and Harry and Jacob. Over and over and over I see the same faces coming at me, hungering for me.

  Panic wells inside me until I remember the fences. I am protected by the fences. I scrabble to find the entrance to the tunnel but it's not there. The ground is smooth; I can't find a single stick to use as a weapon. The Unconsecrated hit the metal links of the fence and they push and pull. My head swells with their moans.

  They're calling my name. “Mary… Mary… Mary,” like a chant, like a prayer. Blood pools from their mouths. Every Unconsecrated is my mother, Harry, Jed, Cass or Jacob.

  They raise their hands toward me, their fingers like claws, pointing at me. I can feel their accusations like a blow, like a ferocious wind pushing against me. And then the fence dissolves. There's nothing between us. They crawl toward me. Crawl like Gabrielle the last time I saw her. My only hope is that their strength will give out before they reach me. But I feel them on my legs, pulling me down. I'm surrounded, smothered. I can't breathe.

  Their hands dig into me. It's as if they're all trying to crawl inside me at once.

  I can't stop them and they keep coming and coming and coming until I drown under them.

  I wake to the sound of wind rushing through the trees. I'm on my back, water swirling around my toes. The earth feels different. Soggy. Soft. Smooth.

  I try to open my eyes but the bright sun blinds me, sending sharp daggers of pain deep into my head. The rest of my body screams in pain as well and I let out a low moan.

  For a while I just lie there. Breathing, remembering my dream and allowing the guilt of losing Jed to wash over me. I want to curl in on myself, to tear at my hair. But my body hurts too much and so I let the water tickle my feet, let the sun warm my cheek, let my body stop its throbbing. The air through the trees is calming, soothing, and I almost slip back into nothingness, grateful to forget about the Forest and Jed and hope and the Unconsecrated and my dream.

  The sound of someone digging sifts through my head. The sound of a spade breaking through a root, burying itself into the soft earth, being pulled out again.

  It's a familiar sound and makes me smile. Harvest season. Time to celebrate the sun and spring. The sound grows closer and its repetition joins the rhythm of the air through the trees like a lullaby.

  A shadow falls over my face and I open my eyes just in time to see a man standing over me with a shovel in his hands. He raises the blade above his head.

  On instinct I roll to my right. The shovel misses my throat and buries itself in the sand where my neck used to be.

  The man stands there slightly off balance, his blade buried very deep in the sand.

  I fall back on my heels and as he yanks against the handle I raise my hands. “Wait, wait!” I shout at him, and he stops. His grip loosens and he looks at me with an odd and curious expression.

  “You're …” He pauses. “You're not dead,” he finally says.

  “I would have been, had you had your way,” I say. I keep my hands up and start to scoot away from him.

  Something past his shoulder catches my eye—an Unconsecrated woman with stringy hair is lurching at his back. “Watch out!” I yell. He turns and decapitates her with a practiced stroke. She falls to the ground slowly.

  He returns his gaze to me and starts to speak but his words don't penetrate my haze. I'm suddenly dizzy as I take in the world around me. At the expanse of water stretching out forever beside me.

  “The ocean,” I whisper. And then the night before breaks fresh into my mind again. “Jed,” I gasp.

  I stand, wobble and then start to run down the beach, examining the bodies washed ashore. Most of their heads have been severed, no doubt the handiwork of the man who's calling after me.

&
nbsp; “What are you looking for?” he yells.

  “My brother!” I shout. “He was with me and now …”

  There are hundreds of Unconsecrated littering the beach and I am about to turn one over to see its face when the man catches up with me and pulls me back.

  “Whoa there,” he says. “Watch what you're doing. Some of these Mudo are still dangerous.”

  He pushes me aside and flips the body with his shovel. I clasp my hands in front of my face, peering around my fingers. But it isn't Jed. We repeat this with all the bodies on the beach. My stomach lurches every time and I pray that I haven't caused my brother's death. The man patiently leads me from body to body, turning them so that I can see and then swiftly cutting their heads as casually as he would dig into the earth.

  We look at every body on the beach. We never find Jed.

  “There's a lot of shoreline,” the man says finally. “Maybe he washed up somewhere else. It's dangerous to leave this cove but I could take you if you wanted. Or he could still wash up here. Never know, usually after a storm like last night we'll have stuff comin' up for days.”

  I walk to the edge of the water and he follows.

  “Why do you call them Mudo?” I ask him.

  He seems taken aback by my question. Even blushes a little.

  “I guess I like it better,” he says, his voice a little mumbled. “It's what the pirates who hunt along the coast call them. It means speechless.” He shrugs. “Seems to fit.”

  “Where am I?” I ask, keeping my gaze fixed on the line where the water meets the sky.

  “This beach doesn't really have a name. Not since the Return, anyway. “

  I dig my toes into the fine sand. Another wave crashes around my ankles, causing my feet to sink into the ground a little. A few cuts on my calves protest as the salty water probes the wounded flesh.