The Dark and Hollow Places

Shouts echo after me, bounding from the walls so that it’s almost impossible to tell which direction they’re coming from. I ignore the pain in my legs and lungs and try to run faster. I fall and skin my knee but I get up and go on.

Time in the darkness is meaningless, measured in gasping breaths and pumping heart. The sound of men shouting morphs into the noise of the dead: moans of every timbre combining into an almost-choir.

Sweat rolls down my face; I don’t know how long I can push. But I also don’t know what else to do.

The walls holding me in splay open, the ceiling soaring as I scramble into another station. The platform stretches along next to me and I slow my steps. If I climb up, can I hide?

But then what? I’m still faced with the same impossible scenario: I can hide from the Recruiters, but no one can hide from the dead.

So I keep running, the tunnel beginning to curve to the right. My lantern swings with each step, the light bobbing almost like a boat on water as I race past marks on the wall—some of them official-looking stamps designating locations and emergency exits, others bright puffy scrawls and pictures.

An emergency exit sounds like the perfect thing right now. Climb a ladder, find a hole, escape from this life.

The reality is that I’d just end up in the streets facing the horde. They’d find me. So many would devour me I wouldn’t even get a chance to Return.

The moaning becomes like a tidal wave behind me, a wall of water pressing me forward. I just have to let it push me, not get dragged under. The cold numbs my ears, radiating down my neck and trailing under my clothes.

Something catches my foot and I fall, dropping the lantern. I stare at it as it rolls to a stop, cursing my stupidity for not being more careful. “Come on,” I grumble, watching the flame choke and sputter.

It flickers out, dousing me in nothingness that is so absolute I’m not sure air exists. The darkness amplifies every sound—the scrape of breath up my throat, the whisper of my fingers as I fumble in my coat pocket for the flint, the wheeze of air drifting along forgotten walls.

On my knees, I strike at the flint, my fingers shaking now with urgency. Each failed try is the Recruiters growing closer; every spark that dies, them gaining on me. They can’t be that far back, not anymore. The ground vibrates, traces of the pursuing footsteps thumping like summer rain.

With the lantern finally relit I notice that the tunnel is partially caved in ahead, boulders, rocks and twisted steel beams strewn every which way. I groan in frustration for a moment before I pull myself together. Almost madly I attack the debris, pulling at the smaller stones, wrenching free broken metal rods and digging as hard as I can, knowing that I’m losing time.

Steps volley behind me, any sense of distance lost to the echoes. Moans meld with the Recruiters’ voices calling for me, all lost in the growing thunder of noise.

Finally I’ve dug a narrow path and I shove the lantern through, crawling after it. It’s a tight squeeze in some places, and I have to wriggle, cringing as icy rocks grate over my ribs. At least this will hold back the dead, I reassure myself with each scratch.

Just as I make it through, I catch sight of movement chasing behind me at the edge of my lantern light. I kick at the hole I’ve created, shifting debris until it falls back in on itself, blocking my pursuers.

“Annah,” the man calls out, and it’s Ox. He stops on the other side of the web of broken beams, woven tightly enough to keep him from coming after me but loose enough that we’re standing almost face to face.

“Leave me alone,” I growl, picking up a rock and flinging it at him. He dodges but it hits the Recruiter behind him in the face, scratching his cheek. In the weak light of my lantern I can see there’s already blood dripping from the man’s mangled fingers.

I cough and choke on the frigid air, wondering if any of them got infected when they landed in the sea of dead that is what’s left of the Dark City. I step back once and then again, putting more distance between us.

Ox wraps a massive hand around one of the beams, his knuckles bruised and raw. “You don’t understand, Annah. We need you! The Sanctuary will fail without you and Catcher. They’ll all die.” He tugs at the metal, picking apart the debris, and I kick at the pile again, shifting the rocks to narrow the gaps he’s creating.

Behind them shapes flicker, deeper grays in the black darkness. The dead. My heart stutters and then races. I step back again, the light cast over the Recruiters growing weaker.

“You should have thought of that before,” I shout at him. The two other men start pulling at the boulders, and they’re so much stronger than I am that it won’t be long before they’ve dug a way through.

Not that they have much time before the Unconsecrated will overwhelm them.

I start running. “I know these tunnels,” I yell back at him, following the curve of the tracks as they meet with another set. I stumble over the metal rails but manage to catch myself. “You won’t find me!” It’s a lie but he doesn’t have to know.

My muscles have already cooled and they pull and strain as I run harder, gasping for air. I don’t care about the pain. I can live with that if I can get distance. I need to lose them.

I know the smartest thing would be for me to drop the lantern, that it must be easy for them to follow the light, but then I’d be blind. Every time I tripped they’d draw closer. Every time I had to hesitate over my footing, they’d gain on me.

Besides, I’m not that desperate. Yet.

I lose sense of everything in the almost-darkness: who I am, where I’ve been, how much time I’ve been down here. I just run: one step illuminated, then the next, and always the moans and Ox’s shouting behind, constant, grating.

I think about pressing myself into a crack in the wall and holding my machete tight, waiting for Ox to thunder past and then striking. I’d slice along the back of his leg first, nicking the tendons and hobbling him. Then I’d kick him onto his face and make the final blow against the back of his neck.

My own vicious thoughts make me shudder. Could I really do that? Take his life?

He deserves it, of that I’m sure. But as I run I think about the sound of Catcher’s blade slicing through Conall’s spine.

It was murder. A brutality that still weakens me. Because where do I go when I cross that line? I’m not ready to make such a decision, and so instead I keep careening into the darkness, since as long as I’m moving I’m still safe.

Or at least, that’s the illusion I promise myself.

Eventually, the feel of the air in the tunnel shifts and I notice a glow around the bend ahead that looks almost like daylight. My heart pounds faster. A point of desperate hope spreads through me—it could be a way out.

And then reality crashes down, pulling me to a standstill. If there’s an opening, it will be filled with Unconsecrated. There could be a swarm of them just ahead. Moans already fill the tunnel, making it impossible to figure out whether they’re in front of me or behind.

I hold the machete in one hand and the lantern in the other as I scurry forward, ready for anything. After a dozen more steps the ceiling arches away from me, soaring up in a graceful curve over my head, and the walls swing wide, revealing a short looping platform dusted with snow.

It’s like walking into someplace sacred, the way the ice crystals shimmer in the air. Recessed in the ceiling, windows with intricate patterns gaze down on me, most of them blocked by thick leaden grids but a few still full of colored glass. There’s a hallowed stillness to the station, to the joining and breaking of vaulted domes that collect the sound of my pursuers and dissipate them into a meaningless chorus.

To run feels profane but I have no choice. I press my back against the inner curved wall and shuffle my way along it, my gaze sliding over the brown and green tiles interlocked along the arches and then fixing on the windows above.

Already I see them straining. See the cracks. Who knows how many hands pound against them? Ahead of me another tunnel looms, a black abyss ready to swallow me, but before I step into it Ox calls my name.

It’s not that he’s there that surprises me. What surprises me is that he’s alone, one hand pressed to the edge of the platform and the other to his chest. He just stands there as if he’s sure that I won’t run.

Or that even if I do, he’ll catch me.

Chapter XLIII

“Go away!” I scream as I keep walking backward from him. Drifts of snow shimmer in piles around the platform and along the tracks, fallen through the broken windows above.

Blood pounds through my body, keeping me warm—but my ears still burn with cold, my throat raw and sore.

“I can’t,” he says, hand clutching his chest. Every breath comes out as a cloud, blurring his features. “I promised the men I’d keep them alive and I need you to do it.”

I’m shaking my head. “Even if you dragged me back I wouldn’t let you have Catcher,” I spit at him.

“That’s not the way it works,” he says. “He’s proven enough times he’ll do what we ask to keep you alive. How do you think we knew which one of you to threaten when we needed to remind him to keep working for us?”

“What?” I stumble over a rotted chunk of wood and pause, ready to run or fight—whichever will keep me alive longer.

He rubs his hand over his bald head, wicking away glistening sweat. “Throwing you over the wall. The cage. Not that I approve of the way Conall handled himself, but it worked. Before we knew about you we thought your sister would be more useful for controlling him.” He shrugs. “I was wrong. Once you were in the picture we had to figure out which sister he cared about more. Turns out it’s you.”

I think of all they put me through—the torture and agony of it! “You’re worse than the Unconsecrated,” I hiss. “You’re a monster.”

“It worked,” he says evenly. “I told you when we met that I’d do anything for my men. You should have believed me.”

“You’re crazy and stupid.” I wave my machete in the air, dismissing him. “You’re the one who said there was nowhere else to go! You’re the one convinced we’re all that’s left.”

He shakes his head, sliding his hand from the edge of the platform, and takes a step toward me. I square my shoulders, raising my chin, ready to attack. He stops. “It’s not for me to decide,” he says. “I don’t decide we’re the last ones. I just keep the people safe. They’ll determine whether to start a new generation.”

I snort. “There are only men on that island.”

He tilts his head. “We have Souler women too. They’d have learned to make a life with some of my men.”

My stomach lurches at the thought. At creating a generation by force.

“Do you ever wonder about the very first people?” he asks. “About what it must have been like for them? To find themselves so unprepared for this dangerous new world?”

“You mean after the Return hit?” I take another two steps back. It won’t be long before the tide of Unconsecrated sweeps into the station, and every moment we stand here unmoving is a moment they’re drawing closer.

He laughs, the sound out of place in these tunnels. “No, I mean the very first living. What would happen if they’d simply given up?”

“I guess humanity wouldn’t have been worth it then,” I say. Above us more cracks race across the glass, the lead grates shuddering under the weight of so many undead bodies. I retreat farther down the tunnel until it’s as if Ox is just speaking to the empty tomb of a station.

“Does the fact that we ended up here and now with little hope mean that everything that came before was meaningless?” he calls after me. “The rise and fall of empires? The families and wars and loss and growth and knowledge and striving for something better? Is it always about the end and not about the beginning? Is it always about the conclusion and not about the path to it?”

He’s looking for meaning where there is none. He should have learned this by now. “I’m tired of paths,” I shout past the edge of my lantern light. I glance behind me at the endless tunnels beckoning. “Sometimes they lead nowhere.”

My words are drowned by a massive shattering sound, glass splintering against the platform like icicles. I press myself against the wall, far enough into the tunnel that the shards merely scatter at my feet.

Ox, still standing by the curve of the platform, drops into a crouch, throwing his arms over his head as chunks of broken lead latticework crash in from the ceiling. The old windows arching across the station buckle and break, allowing a wash of moans to roll over us. There’s a massive grating sound of metal on metal before something gives and bodies begin to fall.

The first few land with sickening thuds. Their bones crunch, puncturing skin with sharp gleaming fractures of white. Yet, oblivious to the almost complete destruction of their bodies, they’re still desperate for Ox.

I retreat back along the tracks as the dead crawl forward, leg bones scraping over the concrete with a horrible high-pitched scratch, fingers swiping the air.

Ox’s eyes meet mine for a helpless moment as bodies rain around him. One fractures its thighbone, another splits its head and lies motionless. They just keep coming. More and more, falling on one another, piling up so that those on the bottom cushion the landing of those on the top. They roll and writhe until they find their footing and start to stumble forward.

The sound of so many Unconsecrated becomes deafening.

I turn and run. The last thing I see is Ox standing there, the dead a downpour between us. Already the Unconsecrated move after me, filling the tunnels like water, flooding behind me. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">