The Land of the Shadow

by Lissa Bryan

  She collapsed on the tile on the other side but scrambled up, pushing herself across the floor until she could get to her feet. The overlit station was silent, and the only other person inside was a man in a business suit, reading a newspaper as he stood, waiting, by the edge of the platform. He kept glancing down at his watch. A briefcase stood on the floor beside his feet.

  “Sir, please!” Pearl staggered toward him. “Can you call the police?” Even as she said it, Pearl’s fear-fogged brain cleared enough to remind her there were no police anymore, or else they were so busy trying to keep the city from crumbling into anarchy that it amounted to the same thing.

  “Why is the train late?” he demanded. He turned to her, and Pearl saw his face was bright red and beaded with sweat. Fury burned from his icy blue eyes. “I expect the train to be on time! I’m late because of you!”

  “M-me?” Pearl sputtered as she began to back away, her hand coming up to cover her nose. The trains had been shut down a week ago, she remembered. There had been a rumor that the Infection had started due to terrorists putting the virus in the ventilation systems of the trains, so people had kept far away from even the stations. He wasn’t lucid. He was just like—

  At this point, Pearl paused in her narrative to smooth her tiny braids again. She never finished that sentence, and Justin didn’t press.

  “You’ve made me late. You’ve made me late.” The man in the suit had swooped down to grab his briefcase, and Pearl noticed his feet were bare beneath the cuffs of his well-cut suit. He swung the case at her in a low arc. “You’ve made me late. You’ve made me late. You’ve—”

  The floor wasn’t there when Pearl stepped back. With a short scream, she plummeted, landing flat on her back on the cement between the tracks below.

  For a moment, she couldn’t even move, so stunned by the fall. Her wind had been knocked out of her, and she sucked in a harsh breath that made her cough. Dazed, she rolled over and froze, her cheek an inch away from the fatal third rail. Carefully, she backed away, her heart pounding.

  Thunk! The man’s briefcase hit her in the shoulder as he threw it at her. Pearl was so shocked, she turned to gape at him, clutching her stinging shoulder.

  “You’ve made me late!” he shouted. He crouched down like he was going to climb down onto the tracks with her.

  Pearl scrambled to her feet, wincing from her many aches, and made for the tunnel as fast as she could. She veered next to the wall, keeping one hand on it, half as support and half as guidance in the dimness. She could hear the man shouting behind her, getting no closer, thank God.

  If this were a movie, a door would open and a group of good people would pull her inside and protect her. If this were a movie, she would find a weapon lying on the track. If this were a movie, she would have already proven herself nicely and wouldn’t be going through hell again. If this were a movie, she wouldn’t be crying and she wouldn’t have dropped her bag.

  Pearl longed for one of the bottles of water to soothe her raw throat and to pour on her various cuts and scrapes. Maybe the next station would have a fountain. But the tunnel was getting darker instead of lightening as she approached the next station. The power was out, and it was lit only by dim emergency lights. Pearl looked up onto the platform, thinking the water might still be on in one of the bathrooms, but decided not to risk it. Not without her flashlight.

  Wait! She still had her phone. It was in her back pocket, and it was a miracle it hadn’t been damaged by her fall. Pearl punched in the passcode with trembling fingers—she had to do it twice because she kept hitting the wrong number—and unlocked it.

  She glanced at the battery indicator and cursed herself. Why hadn’t she charged it in the car? It was down to forty percent. She turned on the phone’s LED light, and a small pool of bluish light illuminated the cement floor of the narrow walkway.

  Pearl kept an eye on the battery indicator as she walked, watching it tick down faster than she’d hoped. Whenever she approached an area with electricity, she turned it off. Some stations were well lit, while others were dark except for their emergency lights, but even those were starting to dim as their battery power drained.

  What was she going to do? She couldn’t walk all the way out of the city in the dark, could she? Pearl thought of the city above and decided she could. Even in the dark, it was safer down here. If she could make it as far as the suburbs, she could—

  What was that?

  There had been a soft, gritty noise ahead. Pearl stopped and held her breath, but she didn’t hear it again. A rat, maybe, she decided. As horrible as that thought was, it was better than—

  She didn’t finish the thought. She swallowed, wincing at her dry, sore throat, and forced her feet into motion.

  Ahead was an area where the tunnel widened, where a fork in the tracks had once been, but the other tunnel was bricked closed. A dull red emergency light cast long, angular shadows from above the railing of a utility area to the left.

  There it is again! Pearl heard that noise and froze in place. She reached down and turned off her flashlight app and waited. When she didn’t hear it again, she started forward, choosing her steps with care. Maybe it was just the creepy light making her think she was hearing things. It was what she had to tell herself, to keep herself calm.

  And then Pearl heard a giggle, as soft as water trickling over broken stone, so soft that she wasn’t sure she’d heard it at all. Perhaps it was just her imagination. But no. There it was again, soft and childlike, chillingly sweet.

  And then that soft, dragging sound, a gritty shuffle of a step, followed by another.

  Panic made her mind go blank for a long instant. She shook her head and looked around for a place to hide, any place to hide.

  “I can seeee you!” A nightmare of a voice slithered through the darkness. Pearl let out a strangled cry. It came out as a low whine, a sound that would embarrass her at any other time, but now she was just thinking of somewhere to escape. She couldn’t collect her scattered thoughts. They were like papers dropped in the wind, blowing away as she tried to catch them.

  That hideous giggle sounded again, and Pearl spun on her heel, desperate. She could see a dark figure from emerging from the tunnel ahead, coming straight for her with slow, measured steps.

  Pearl looked around for anything to use as a weapon, but there was nothing. Not even a loose stone. She ran for the side of the tunnel, where the track split off and pressed up against the brick that sealed it, trying to merge into the small pool of shadow cast by its edge. Her feet scraped against the gritty concrete floor as she tried to push herself harder, flatter against the brick.

  “I see you!” The figure stopped in the center of the track. His voice reverberated from the walls, echoing louder and louder in her mind until it was an unrelenting scream, a black lightning explosion in her mind that blotted out every rational thought, stripped her of every instinct except that of flight, but there was nowhere to go, no escape, no safety, nothing but the terror which threatened to crush her beneath its unremitting pressure.

  Pearl couldn’t catch a breath—it seemed as though all the oxygen had gone from the room. The red light stained everything with its shade, and it felt like she was drowning in a pool of blood. Her knees lost their strength, and she slid down the wall, crouching in a ball at its base, shaking as though her body might rattle itself to pieces at any moment.

  Those horrible, shuffling steps began again, bringing him closer to her as he followed the V of the track toward where Pearl crouched. A tiny sound slipped through her lips, and she clamped a hand over her mouth to hold it back. Tears flowed over her hand, and she realized she was crying.

  She heard a creak from the phone she clutched so tight it was amazing the case hadn’t shattered. An idea occurred to her. A weak idea, but the only thing she could think of. She had just seconds before he would reach her, and it seemed like her best chance. She turned on the camera.

  Closer. He was a couple of feet from her now.
>
  “I see you. I see everything.”

  Pearl raised the phone and punched at the button with her index finger. The camera clicked and a bright flash of light exploded in his face.

  She had intended to kick him, to roll at the same instant and run for the tunnel. But she was frozen, frozen.

  Her screen showed the same image the flash of light had revealed. A man in a hospital gown, its chest a blackened bib of dried blood.

  “I see you,” he said again. But it was a lie, because where his eyes had been were two ragged black holes, surrounded by red furrows, deep claw marks made by fingernails. His cheeks were ghastly white under the dried rivulets of blood.

  Pearl couldn’t move. Every instinct failed her. Her muscles were frozen, locked by horror and terror so bone-deep that she could feel nothing else, could not think, could not breathe.

  And then he turned. He headed back down the track with those same slow, rhythmic steps. The dim red light revealed the back of his hospital gown gaping open, the ties a listless flutter in his wake.

  As her mind began to clear, Pearl told herself to move. She called herself names and chided herself for her weakness, but she couldn’t force her body into motion. Not until he had disappeared down the tunnel and she could no longer hear that icy giggle.

  At last the silence was unbroken. She remained there longer, just to make sure. And when she was certain, Pearl rose, scrubbing the tears from her cheeks with the heels of her hands. Crying was pointless now. It was another thing she had to leave behind if she was going to survive.

  She looked down at her phone, which had gone dark again. Her last connection with her old life. She could turn it on and punch in the passcode, and the first thing that would confront her eyes was the photo she had taken. Pearl tossed it aside, hearing it clatter across the cement floor as she walked away.

  She kept walking, for how long she did not know. Most of the tunnels had gone dark now, illuminated in places with the red lights, the emergency battery-powered lights having run out of juice. It didn’t bother her. She kept one hand on the wall to guide her as she walked, and the only sound was her own breathing in the stillness.

  She came up too soon, mistaking one station for another. She was stopped at the foot of the stairs by another gate. She picked up a trash can and used it to bash at the edge of the gate. For a moment, she paused, wondering if the loud crash would bring someone running, but she dismissed the thought almost as soon as it came. That was an old thought from the old world. She struck at it again, until she shattered the lock. Pearl tossed aside the trashcan, not bothering to put it back in place, and shoved the gate open.

  When she reached the top of the stairs, she was shocked, though she’d thought she could never be shocked by anything again. The sun had risen, and its pale orange light shown down on a scene of indiscriminate, indifferent slaughter.

  The ground was covered by motionless bodies as far as she could see. Women, men, children. The elderly, the infant. Some curled up together, some piled, as though there had been an attempt to make room at some point. The air was thick with the scent of death.

  Here and there, a few people were still moving. Moaning, coughing. Other than those few still occupied with dying, the only motion was from the curious crows, hopping around on the barricades, beginning to explore the immobile feast before them. It was hard to find a spot to step between the bodies, but Pearl made her way through this macabre crowd toward the police car she saw parked on the far side of the street. There was a hospital a few blocks away—she could see the large sign. This crowd had been waiting to get inside and died where they’d fallen. And there their bones would remain.

  She had a moment’s regret for them. No one would ever carve their name on a stone and bring flowers to mourn them. No one would tuck little mementos and notes into their coffin before it closed for the last time. They would not have the privacy of a vault and concealing earth in which to decay. Instead, their bones would be bleached by the sun and scattered by predators, and no one would ever know what had become of them. Marked down as a likely victim of the Infection, assuming anyone ever made a record.

  There was a policeman lying back across the hood of his cruiser, his chest blackened with dried blood. His hat had fallen off his head and lay upside down on the hood beside him, next to the hand thrown back over his head, half-concealing what she sought. His service pistol. She pushed the hat aside and picked up the gun, black, sleek and lethal, a dull gleam in the early morning sunshine. He had a second, still in its holster, the same type.

  Pearl took both. She examined the gun and found a small button that caused the cartridge in the butt to pop down. She took it out and counted the shells in the clip before putting it back. She took aim at the speed sign beside the road and pulled the trigger. The shot rang loud and caused the birds to scatter before drifting back down to their sentinel posts. She had clipped the edge of the sign. Not bad for the first shot she’d ever fired. She would get better.

  She found the safety on both and slipped the guns down into her waistband. She felt a crinkle as she did so and frowned. She reached into her pocket and found the picture of herself, her mother, and her sister. But that was of the old world, too. She slid it back into her pocket.

  She was already making plans to find a gun store and get herself a holster and more ammunition. She made her way through the street, still heading east, out of the city.

  Pearl had no desire to head back down into the tunnels to continue her dark journey where it had seemed safer. The fear was gone. She supposed there were only so many times a person could face fear so intense they thought they would go mad with it before it was burned out of them, a fire that consumed but did not destroy. And she would never be afraid or helpless again.

  Pearl arched up from the porch swing and reached into her back pocket, pulling out a crumpled photo. Justin could just make it out in the darkness. Three women on a beach, the sun shining on their shoulders, their faces stretched in grins. The surface of the photo was scratched and rubbed white in some spots. Pearl took it back and traced her finger over the bare places.

  “It will be worn blank in a few years,” she said. “And all I’ll have is my memories, but maybe that’s best. I’m not this girl anymore. She died with all the rest of them. When she died in that tunnel, so did my fear, but that wasn’t the only part of me that went. Sometimes, I worry what I’m changing into. It’s as though I’m watching myself emerge from a cocoon, and I have no control over what I’ll become.”

  Justin nodded, though she wasn’t looking at him. “You evolved. You evolved to meet the needs of your environment. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “Then I look at someone like Carly, and I’m—” Pearl bit off the last of her words and stared out at the darkened yard.

  “Don’t let Carly fool you,” Justin said with a slight smile. “She may look soft, but she can do what she has to do. And she struggles with it, just like you do. The problem both of you have is that you’ve managed to let go of so much to become who you needed to be, but you can’t let go of notions from the dead world. Not all of them have to go, of course. But they do need to adapt.”

  He stood. He paused beside her and gave her shoulder a small pat before he departed, heading off into the night the same way that he’d come. He’d gotten what he came for.

  What he wished for, more than anything, was that Lewis were here. Lewis, who had been the one to talk to Justin when he had the similar struggles. He hadn’t been much of a counselor, because his words were often harsh and cold as the cut of a knife, but he knew how to get to the heart of the matter and somehow always knew what needed to be said.

  But, then again, Lewis would have said to Pearl the same thing he’d said to Justin, that their emotions were the source of their weakness. And over the last couple of years, Justin had come to realize the strength and value of emotions, especially love. He’d once made some bad decisions based on his emotions, but since those days, he’d mad
e some pretty good ones, too.

  Love. He smiled to himself and turned his path toward home. Home, where people loved him.

  Carly was still awake when he came up to their bedroom, reading by a kerosene lamp. She smiled at him and held her arms out. Happy to go into them, he gave her a kiss, sitting down beside her on the bed.

  “Home from prowling?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t prowling tonight. I was talking with our newest resident.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think she’s going to fit in fine.”

  Carly laughed. “Is that all you’re going to say?”

  He nodded. “It’s all that’s important.”

  He stood and went to undress, hanging up his clothes—they weren’t able to wash everything after one wearing like the old days. He pulled on a T-shirt and shorts, then climbed into his warm bed next to his wife. This was one of his favorite parts of the day, when he felt most content. This was a place where he belonged. Though he hadn’t realized it, he’d been searching for this all his life, and he had it at last.

  “I guess it is.” Carly plumped up his pillow before he lay down beside her. “I’m glad you’re home. I always worry when you’re out there, you know.”

  “I know. I worry about you, too. ‘Safe’ doesn’t really exist anymore. There are so many things—”

  “Chicken thieves … alligators.”

  “Don’t remind me.” He groaned and pulled up the sheet. It was all the covering they could stand in the heat.

  “I feel safe with you.” She snuggled up against his side. “And I know you’ll do your best to keep our community safe. And your best is pretty darn good.”

  “I’ll do anything I can to protect you and Dagny,” he said. “ ’Til my dying breath.”

  “And the new world we’re building … it feels strange to think this is the beginning of someone’s history book. Like, we’re the Pilgrims, the new settlers.”