The Dark and Hollow Places (10 page)

I was a kid, lost in the Forest with Elias after leaving my sister. I remember how much my feet hurt, how sore my legs were and how proud Elias kept saying he was of me because I was still walking, because I was trying so hard to be a big girl. I remember him holding my hand, helping me up the mountain path, and the fences on either side, always the fences that went on and on and on.

I remember when we got to the top. How Elias froze, holding me behind him. It made me angry. He’d told me I was a big girl so I peeked my head around him until I saw what he did. It was beautiful, mountains stretching out in front of us for as far as you could see.

But that wasn’t why Elias stopped. He was looking down. Into the valley. I followed his gaze and saw the path winding into the trees, the hint of a road wrapping around the mountain partway down. He tried to turn me away before I saw the rest. He even grabbed me, pushing his hand over my eyes, but it was too late. I’d seen them in the valley. The people strewn like wilted flowers. There were so many that a line from a song we’d been taught came to mind, about the lilies in the valley.

“How are there so many?” I’d asked Elias. I’d never known
that such a massive number of people could have ever existed in the world.

His face was white, his fingers cold and shaking. “We have to turn around, Annah. We have to go back. Now.” His voice was low.

I swallow as I remember that feeling, that shock as I realized the scope of the Unconsecrated. Until that moment I’d never comprehended that many in one place. I’d seen them against the fences, pawing against the metal links trying to get into the village. They’d followed us along the path, always moaning and reaching.

But never had there been so many. There were more bodies in that valley than stars in the night sky.

Elias had grabbed my hand, but to comfort me or him I still don’t know. “They’re downed. We can’t let them sense us or they’ll wake up and then I don’t know if we’ll be able to get away.”

I sat, refusing to move. “We can’t go back, Elias,” I had whined. I was tired and hungry and sad and upset. So disappointed. I’d felt like we were close but here was another obstacle that meant we’d be trapped in the Forest forever. My lip began to shake. “We already tried all those other paths. They were locked and you said this was the only way.” I began crying, I couldn’t help it.

Elias sat down next to me. Pulled me to his side, tucking my head to his chest, where I could hear his heart pounding and the way his breathing hitched, so I knew he was crying too.

It was afternoon and dark clouds pushed around the horizon. He sighed. “If it rains hard enough, maybe we can make it without them sensing us and waking up,” he finally said. “We’ll just have to wait here for a few days and see.”

So we’d spent two days on the top of that mountain, trying not to stare down into the sleeping horde. Then on the third evening a storm gathered and started out small but by morning was so furious that we could hear the crack of trees falling and the groan of the metal fences shifting.

The mountain edge was crumbling beneath us as we climbed down to the road. When we got to the bottom, we ran along a brick wall and then sprinted over the bridge that bucked and swayed from the wind howling down the valley. Thunder and lightning raged around us, the rain so heavy we could barely breathe. It felt like the entire world was tearing apart.

The last I’d seen of the horde had been when a crack of lightning struck the bridge, buckling it just as we reached the other side. Cars exploded in sparks and fell into the valley, illuminating the slumbering bodies below before crashing to the ground.

I drop my hands and square my shoulders—shoving the memory from my mind. I’d escaped them once before and now I would have to do it again. “We’re trapped in the tunnels.” Already I can hear the moans filtering down the stairs. “It won’t be long until they’re everywhere.”

“You said you knew where Gabry is and we can’t leave her. We have to make sure she’s okay,” Catcher says, as if he thinks I’m on the verge of giving up.

It takes a heartbeat for me to remember, again, that Gabry is my sister. That she’s no longer Abigail. Thinking about her being out there somewhere with the dead flooding the streets causes my throat to close up. I’ve left her defenseless once before and I won’t do it again.

My mind whirs over what to do next. I pace along the edge
of the platform, the fire behind shifting and sending sparks into the air. “Even if we surfaced here we’d still be in the Neverlands, and the bridges don’t connect the entire island anymore,” I think out loud. “We’d have to cross the Palisade wall on foot, and I don’t trust the Recruiters to let us through or for it not to be overrun already.”

“Can we take the tunnels?” Catcher asks, and of course it’s the obvious question.

I stop and stare at him for a moment. The tunnels connect the entire island like underground rivers. The Protectorate used to keep them patrolled and used wheel walkers to keep the pumps running so they didn’t flood. The tunnels have always been off-limits and dangerous but have only gotten worse since the Rebellion: aside from the caved-in sections I’ve heard that some areas are underwater. It’s a labyrinth that might just swallow us whole.

I remember the last time I came underground and feel my scars tighten—each one a reminder of just how dangerous these tunnels can be.

“It would be a risk,” I finally say. “A huge one. I’d be guessing which way to go. There could also be Unconsecrated down here, and unless smugglers still use this tunnel a lot, the dead could be downed and we won’t even know until we stumble onto them.”

Catcher winces and I realize belatedly that the Unconsecrated wouldn’t sense him. They’d only sense me. I open my mouth to apologize but he waves his hand to brush it away.

“Would there be fewer in the tunnels than up in the streets?” he asks.

I stare into the darkness and then back over my shoulder
to the stairs. Already the moans are sounding louder, as if they’ve breached the outer door. “It’s impossible to know,” I tell him honestly.

“Are you willing to take the risk?” I can tell that Catcher doesn’t know how I’ll answer the question and it reminds me that we’re strangers to each other. I wonder how much of my personality he thinks he understands because of my sister.

I wonder if when he sees the smooth side of my face he forgets that I’m not her.

“I’ll do anything to save my sister,” I tell him. And when I say it out loud I know it’s true. It’s the only way I can think to finally forgive myself.

C
atcher breaks off a thick shaft of wood from one of the subway ties and wraps the remnants of my quilt around it. He lights the tattered cloth from the fire, creating a makeshift torch. It glows a warm red, not giving much light but enough for us to see our feet and avoid the debris scattered along the old tracks.

I hold the machete Catcher found aboveground tight in my chapped hand as wind swallowed by the tunnels moans like the dead. I huddle deeper in my clothes, bracing against the cold, almost positive the Unconsecrated have broken down the door to the stairs and are shambling after us, their footsteps lost in the echo of our own.

With every step I think about the bodies that could be strewn about in the darkness. The forgotten dead, now in a quasi-hibernation, just waiting to sense me and wake up. Chills chase each other up the back of my neck and along my arms. It’s better down here than out there, I remind myself, to stop the fear paralyzing my mind.

“What’s she like?” I ask Catcher, trying to distract myself from the way the tunnel furls tightly around us, forcing us to move forward into the possibility of more danger than what we’re leaving behind. “My sister,” I add.

Catcher walks slightly ahead, torch held high. “Gabry’s …” He trails off for several steps and I glance at the way his shoulders tense as he concentrates. “She’s strong. Dedicated and loyal.”

There’s admiration in his tone but also an underlying current of melancholy.

“Were you good friends with her?” My voice trembles through my chattering teeth.

He stumbles and because I’m following so close behind I press my hands against his lower back to keep from careening into him. His heated skin blazes through his clothes—so delicious in this freezing darkness. Before I can stop myself I press my palms harder against him, curling my fingertips into the warmth and smiling.

“You okay?” I ask when he doesn’t resume walking. There’s an odd expression on his face and he looks away from me before I can figure out what it is.

“There’s something you need to know,” he says.

I realize I’ve pushed tighter against him. It’s like leaning toward a fire on a frozen day—the way it eases through you, unwinding muscles and loosening joints.

I’m surprised at how comfortable I am with him already, how he doesn’t quite feel like a stranger anymore. “What?”

And then he twists away from me, taking his heat and the glowing ember of the torch with him. The meager light glistens from rivulets of water wandering along the old tracks on the ground.

“You need to know that I’m broken,” he says.

It’s not at all what I’m expecting. I frown, showing him I don’t understand what he’s saying.

“I just …” He seems to struggle with the words. “I need you to know that I’ll help you find Gabry. I’ll make sure you’re both fine and safe but that’s all. After that I’m gone. I can’t …” He runs his hand through his hair, making it spike up like a halo. “I can’t be or do anything more.”

His pronouncement makes me feel cold and ugly. Unwanted. And this infuriates me because I promised myself that I’d never put myself in this position again—a place where I could hurt because of someone else’s decision.

Not after Elias joined the Recruiters and abandoned me.

I stare at him, to the point where he seems to become uncomfortable. I want to ask him why he thinks that would matter to me. I want to tell him that we’re all broken, that
I’m
broken. But instead I shrug like I don’t care and say, “Okay.”

I realize as the word falls from my lips that it’s a lie, which only fuels my irritation at both him and myself. I stomp past him, brushing his shoulder with mine as I take off down the tunnel. His steps echo behind me when he follows, the feeble light from the torch he carries just barely tempering the black emptiness in front of me.

I’ve always liked the darkness anyway.

The longer we’re underground, the more heightened my senses become. When we near an abandoned platform at a station the pressure of air whispering over my exposed face changes, lightens. In the depths of the tunnels the air is a searing cold, the forgotten warmth of fall leaching from the walls, heating everything just enough to keep water trickling around us, not yet frozen solid into ice.

Even so, I press as close to Catcher as I dare because of his radiating warmth and the meager glow from his torch. When the flame threatens to sputter out I rip lengths of material from my skirt—the extra layer of clothes a nice defense against the cold but not as important as light.

Sound down here is also tricky. Sometimes there’s a shuffle that could be feet sliding over old concrete and other times there’s the hurried chirping of animals that have made their home in the dark passages.

Every noise makes me jump, turn my head. My heart beats louder than any of it and I have to constantly tell myself that we’re okay. That we’ll be to the surface soon enough. That I’ve survived in this city alone for three years and I’ll make it through this as well.

But all that does is keep the panic from taking over completely—it still itches around the perimeter of my mind.

“Think this is far enough?” Catcher asks as the ceiling thrusts up, curving into the blackness of a gaping station.

I shake my head, my arms wrapped tight around my chest from the cold, my teeth chattering. I imagine the island above, the warren of twisty Neverlands streets crowded with buildings trailing toward the broad bare expanse of the Palisade wall. It doesn’t feel like we’ve walked far enough to have crossed fully underneath it.

“One more, I think. Just to be safe.”

Catcher nods and keeps pushing forward. Out of the corner of my eye I think I see something shifting deep on the platform, uncurling and stretching toward us. I tighten my grip on the machete. Running would only drain our strength—as long as we keep walking we can outpace the dangers down here.