The Dark and Hollow Places

Page 28

It will happen to me one day. I wonder why I fight so hard against the inevitability of it. What’s another day? What’s the day after that? Slowly, I walk around the room, trailing my fingers over the wall.
My thumb stops, resting at a green pin. “Vista,” I read aloud. My sister’s town by the sea. Where Catcher grew up, became infected. Where he survived, broken. There’s a thick black line etched along the map just to the west of Vista leading up the coast, and beyond the line there’s nothing, but I know it represents the Forest.
And somewhere in that void is the village where I was born, and raised for a few years. I press my hand over it, the scope of the Forest extending past my fingers.
“It’s not there anymore,” a deep voice says behind me. “Your village.”
I cringe, already knowing it’s Ox, and reach for the machete at my hip. He doesn’t make a move to stop me or even flinch when I pull it from my belt and hold the long blade between us.
“What do you mean, my village?” I ask, cold inside. “How do you know anything about where I’m from?”
Ox leans against the wall by the door, arms crossed casually over his chest. Other than his bulk he appears nonthreatening. But I know better.
He shrugs as if he’s not talking about a village. About people. About my father and neighbors. “It’s gone.”
My eyes go wide, the machete trembling between us. It shouldn’t matter, I think. Elias and I had tried to find the village before and we’d failed. We’d given up on it a long time ago. But I’d always preserved that tiny bit of hope that maybe someday we’d make our way back. Everyone we’d left behind would be there with arms outstretched to meet us.
Ox has to see the despair on my face. He has to see how unsettled I am, but he just stays where he is, breathing slowly in and out, face showing no emotion.
“Maybe there was something left of it—the fences were still up and a few buildings looked like they were being maintained. But your friends took care of all that—tearing down the fences to slow Conall and his men.” He shrugs again and I want to slap him. “Didn’t work,” he adds. “And of course they regretted it when they had to fight their way back through to get to Vista.”
He squats, riffling around on the floor until he finds a black pin. He stands, knees creaking a little, and walks past me to the map, shoving the pin into it.
I’m staring at the very tip of the machete shaking in the air in front of me. What would it feel like to swing it around, slice it through Ox’s neck? I’ve decapitated enough Unconsecrated by now to know how much force it takes—what it’s like trying to saw through the muscle and cartilage and bone.
A part of me would love to hear this man scream. To make him hurt. To see if there’s any emotion left inside. But it would be murder, pure and simple, and I’m not sure I’m ready to cross that line.
I’m not sure I’m ready to become a monster like him.
As if he knows what I’m thinking, he smirks but doesn’t move out of range of my knife. He just stands there, fingers still hovering over the black pin that represents my village.
“You know”—he smiles, predatory—“Catcher’s not the only Immune out there. They’re rare, but they exist. We’ve got people looking—men like Elias infiltrating the Soulers. They know more about Immunes than we do—they worship and protect them, collect them like gods. We bring the Soulers here and eventually one of the Immunes will come to beg for their release. Ask us to trade the lives of all the Soulers—set them free—in exchange for the Immune staying to supply us. It’s happened before.”
I grip the machete tighter but his glance doesn’t waver.
“The second we find a new Immune, you become a whole lot less important. Catcher becomes less valuable and your life becomes about my mercy.” He tilts his head to the side. In the small room I can smell his sweat. “And you already know how merciful I can—”
Before he even finishes the statement I swing the machete, aiming for his throat, and then, just as I’m about to feel the blade slice through flesh I stop, letting it hover over his skin. “What about my mercy?” I ask through clenched teeth.
I’d wanted a reaction, wanted to see fear, but instead he laughs. “You and I are too much alike for that,” he says. “It’s that fire I admire in you. If we ever had to teach Catcher a lesson, I’d be sad to see you be the one to go.”
He places two fingers on the blade, pushing it away. I resist and the razor-sharp edge cuts into him, thin lines of blood appearing. I know exactly the feel of that pain. It makes my empty stomach turn but he doesn’t even flinch. Instead he smiles, hesitating long enough before pulling his hand away that he makes his point.
“We had another Immune once, a few years ago,” he says. “We controlled him with his mom—he was a mama’s boy, always coming back to her and bringing what we wanted.”
My heart begins to beat heavily, my grip on the machete slipping a little as my palms sweat. He pauses, forces me to ask: “What happened?”
This makes him smile as I knew it would. “He felt bad that it was his immunity that made his mom a prisoner, though I thought we treated her fairly well, all things considered.
“Then one day he threw himself off a seven-story building.” Slowly, he raises his hand between us, rubbing his thumb over the thin cuts on his fingers, smearing the blood. He considers it a moment before continuing.
“I guess he forgot that, being an Immune, he was still infected. And being infected, he Returned. He couldn’t really walk too well, but he could still infect others.”
It’s silent as Ox wipes his bloody hand over the maps, smearing red across the Forest. I drop my arm to my side, the flat of the machete resting against my knee.
My throat feels tight, making the air in the room that much harder to breathe. “What did you do to him?” My voice cracks.
Ox looks at me hard, his eyes slightly narrowed. “We scraped him up and tossed him in a cage. And then we put his dear old mother in with him.”
Even though my stomach lurches at his words, I only clench my teeth—I won’t give him the satisfaction of a response. He smiles all the same and then leaves me alone to stare at the bloody maps, trying to figure out what to do next.
Chapter XXXI
The next morning I wake up to find a package sitting in the chair by the window. It’s wrapped in a worn woven cloth. I look around the room, wondering who was here. The air is freezing and I tug a quilt around me as I climb from bed and pull the bundle into my lap, unwrapping it.
Folded inside is a thick wool coat that looks like it’s never been worn before. An intricate pattern is stitched around the edges and I run my finger over it. There’s something else tucked inside and I pull free a brightly knit scarf and a matching knit hat. The material of both is so thick and soft that I can’t help pressing my face against them, feeling the soft woolen hairs brush my cheeks.
It’s too perfect a gift. I look up to find my sister nudging open the door to my room. She sees me clutching the bundle in my hands.
“Was this you?” I ask, wondering how she could have ever pulled it off. I never saw her knitting and don’t know where she could have found such amazing materials.
She smiles, eyes bright, and shakes her head. “It was Catcher. He came by in the night and said a woman in the Dark City begged for a way to repay him for bringing her food and keeping her alive. He thought you’d want something.” She waves toward my closely cropped hair.
I put on the hat, pulling it down over my ears and luxuriating in the sensation of soft warmth.
“He brought me something as well.” She holds out a thick book. I take it from her, running my fingers over the cracked plastic that once protected the cover. I flip through pages of diagrams of buildings and structures that make no sense.
“Architecture,” she says, unable to hide the excitement in her voice. “It’s about building things.” She takes the book from me and sits on the bed, feet tucked underneath her. “I’ve always wanted to build things and he remembered.”
I wrap the scarf around my arms, lift the edge of it to my nose as if I could still catch a trace of Catcher. “He’s thoughtful like that.” I wonder how he found these things. How long he must have searched. I wonder why he didn’t wake me up. Why he didn’t say anything to me. I think about him sneaking into my room in the night, of me asleep and never knowing.
He was right here, could have stood at the end of my bed, and he said nothing. It’s clear he’s avoiding me. I pull the coat on, huddling into the heavy folds as if they could protect me from these feelings.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” she says, swiping at my shoulder. “Finish getting dressed—meet me on the roof! We can see how warm that keeps you.”
I’d planned on exploring more of the buildings on this end of the island again, hoping that we missed something in one of the basements. That maybe there’s an entrance to the tunnels after all.
I slide from bed and walk to the window. As if she senses my hesitation my sister comes to stand next to me. Beyond the river the Neverlands smolder and the Dark City lies gray and dormant. Dead continue to spill through the streets. They flounder from the docks into the water and eventually will wash ashore on the Sanctuary island.
“Where do you think they’re housing the Soulers?” I ask, staring at the wall and wondering how many Sweepers were just on the other side last night, protecting us and getting nothing in return.
“I don’t know,” my sister whispers softly. “There were a lot of rooms in the basement of the headquarters,” she says. “That’s where they kept me.” She hasn’t talked about the time she was imprisoned before the rest of us got here. Even now her face is drawn thinking about it.
“There were others down there too. I knew there were, but …”
“But what?” I prod.
“Sometimes they took them away and never brought them back,” she finishes. She crosses her arms, shivering at the memory. “I never asked what they were doing with all those people. I didn’t want to know.”
I think back to the death cages I’d seen my first night here. The frightened man they’d thrown to the Unconsecrated. “Catcher’s the one bringing them over,” I admit to her.
She winces. “I wondered.” She doesn’t elaborate.
Which only frustrates me. “I don’t understand how he can do it. How he can bring those people here knowing they’ll likely die.” I push away from the window, walk back over to the bed and stare down at the scarf draped over my pillow.
How can Catcher be both the thoughtful person I care about and the person who gives people a false hope?
“He’s doing what he has to.” She sounds almost resigned.
“Yeah, but what about their survival? Why are we allowed on this side of the wall and they aren’t?”
She shrugs. “I guess we’re lucky.”
Nothing in my life’s ever seemed lucky before, but then again, here I am standing inside with food down the hall while Soulers are out there in the cold keeping me safe. “It’s not fair,” I say, wishing there were something I could do.
My sister crosses the room, takes my shoulders and turns me to her. “It’s not fair at all. We’re going to find a way off this island and we’re going to take them with us.” She tilts her head, meeting my eyes, and I nod.
“Now,” she says, her voice lighter. “Catcher left books about the Dark City from before the Return. I want to see if we can match up the landmarks and figure out if maybe there’s something in there that will help us get off the island and find someplace safe.”
“Good idea,” I tell her. “I’ll meet you up there.”
She smiles and bounds from the room.
It takes me a while before I follow, and when I climb to the roof I find my sister standing by the wall at the edge. She’s holding up a photograph at arm’s length, looking between it and the Dark City spread out before her across the river. Books lie scattered on a blanket at her feet, pages fluttering in the morning breeze.
“What’s that?” I ask, pulling my new coat tight around me and retying the soft scarf wrapped around my neck. It’s a bright morning, the kind that reflects off the ice and snow and burns the eyes.
She turns back to me, a flush across her cheeks. A small breeze teases the hair along her temples as she holds the little card out to me.
Surrounded by a yellow border is a photograph of a city. Gleaming buildings stretch to the sky, an impossible monstrosity of steel bones. Written across the top in thick yellow letters are the words New York City.
There’s something about it that tickles in my mind, like I’ve lived this moment before somewhere else. A flash of a memory when I feel as if I’m in two places and two times at once. “This was …” I’m trying to find the words and my sister finds them for me.
“It was our father’s,” she says. “In our cottage growing up. Don’t you remember?” She seems so hopeful but when I try to picture that home all I can see is the crumbling village. All I can hear is the echo of voices hazy around the edges. I shake my head.
“I didn’t either,” she says. “Until I went back. It was still on the wall. My mother—Mary, who raised me—told me it was hers. Something she’d found a long time ago when she’d fled to the ocean. It was the first real proof that there was an outside world, and she’d given it to our father so he could have something to hold on to. To give him hope.”