I want to tell him no, that the Forest terrifies me. But at this point I think it’s our only hope and so I nod and we start running.
Chapter 25
As we wind through town toward the bridge over the waterfall we begin to hear murmurs that the breach was a hoax, a drill of some sort. People begin to throw open the shutters on their houses and we hear shouts from the direction of the Barrier to our right. We work our way to the left, weaving through the streets northward until we reach a band of woods separating the town from the river.
The sound of rushing water begins to drown out everything, even our breathing. We stop at the near side of the bridge and lower Cira to the ground. She stares up at us with deep eyes but says nothing. Elias continues to sweep the area with his gaze, constantly looking over his shoulder. Everything’s dark, shadows hiding shadows, the trees overhead blocking out any hint of the moon or stars. The sound of the waterfall pounds around us.
Every outline of a tree or flash of leaves makes my heart leap. My eyes play tricks on me, conjuring figures in the shadows that never materialize.
Catcher crosses the bridge over the waterfall and hesitates only a moment at the gate on the other side before pushing through into the Forest. I stand on the near side of the river, my fingers laced through the fence that borders the water before it plummets over the falls.
When I can no longer see Catcher moving through the trees anymore I turn and face Elias, the sharp metal links of the fence cool against my back. I feel uncomfortable around him after this evening, after we almost kissed. Just thinking about it causes my skin to burn.
The silence between us, touched only by the pounding of the waterfall, seems full, like a cloud about to burst. Part of me wants to apologize again but part of me is still angry at the way he seemed to brush it off so easily. Finally I decide upon the safest thing to say. “Thank you,” I tell him, gesturing toward Cira leaning against the tree with her eyes closed. He slices a hand through the air, cutting me off.
I wish I could pull the words back into myself, pull back every instant I’d ever trusted Elias or thought about him. I start to walk away from him but he grabs me, holding me still. I open my mouth but he puts his hand over it.
“Shhh,” he whispers into my ear. And even though the night is hot I shiver at the touch of his breath.
He cocks his head to the side, listening. I think I hear something, the barest hint of a noise I can’t quite put my finger on, but he stiffens. I feel him move, his hand ever so slowly lowering to his knife.
I do the same as I become instantly aware of everything in the night around us. Before it was just darkness, the pounding of the waterfall and Elias’s touch but now I find the subtleties underneath: the shallow rise and fall of Cira’s breath, the slight tang of her blood in the air. The feel of a soft breeze over my cheeks, the weight of the knife in my hand.
A bush rustles down the path and I tense. Elias steps forward and I pace behind him so that I’m guarding Cira. There’s a hint of movement and then a long low moan. I drop to a crouch, my heart thudding and erasing every other thought or feeling. I grab for Cira’s arm, trying to pull her around my shoulder, trying to help her stand.
Just then a Mudo stumbles into view, her steps jerky, one foot crooked and a gleam of white bone jutting from her ankle. Her hair is long and blond, lanky in her face, and her shoulders are bare. In the moonlight I can just see a spray of freckles over her chest, see that the nails of her right hand have been torn free and that her pinky is hanging by nothing but tendons and strips of skin.
She moans again, reaching for us as she shambles closer. Panic rings through my veins. I have to get Cira, I have to get across the bridge. But she’s dead weight; I can’t rouse her. I want to call for help, to scream but I choke back the urge.
“Cira, honey, come on, we have to go,” I plead, grabbing her face in my hands, trying to wake her.
“No,” she mumbles, “sleep.”
“Cira!” I can hear the panic in my voice, the tone rising shrilly.
“It’s okay,” Elias says calmly. He’s walking toward the Mudo, his steps slow and careful. “She’s one of ours.”
I swallow back bile as he gets closer to the woman. “Just kill it, Elias,” I tell him, but he circles her. She turns and reaches for him, stumbling and tripping and then pushing herself back to her feet, her ankle crunching as it ratchets at an even more severe angle.
I step away from Cira, holding my knife in front of me. “What are you doing?” I yell at Elias. “Kill it!”
But he doesn’t. He lets the thing touch him, pull at him. Just like the others her lower jaw is missing, her teeth gone as well. Her moan is pitiful and hollow.
“Her name was Kyra,” he says. “She thought this would be eternal life.” He pushes her away from him, his touch almost gentle. I want to throw up.
“What are you doing, Elias, just kill it,” I tell him again. Seeing him like this terrifies me. “You said you’re not a Souler. I thought you didn’t believe what they did.” I inch closer, preparing myself to kill the thing if he won’t.
He moves so fast that it’s a blur. He grabs her, presses his fingers into her cheeks and pulls her around until she faces me. I stumble back and tighten my grip on the knife. My heart thrums, pounding hard in my head, and it’s difficult to catch my breath. Even though these Mudo aren’t supposed to infect I don’t trust it.
I don’t trust Elias.
The Mudo girl’s moans sweep through the air around us, her anguish something I can almost touch. “This is who we all really are,” he tells me. “This is all we’ll ever be. Shells. Meat. Existing.”
I stare at the girl. I think about my own blond hair, so similar to hers. I think of how plain I always felt it made me look. Of all the ways I tried to dress it up for Catcher. I wrap my arms over my chest and cup my sharp elbows. “I’m nothing like her,” I whisper.
I wait for him to tell me I’m right. That he could never think of me the way he thinks of the Mudo. But he says nothing, just draws the blade sharp and deep across the Mudo’s throat, severing the spine. He lays her gently on the ground and kneels next to her.
The night goes back to what it was before and I glance over my shoulder across the bridge, wondering where Catcher is. Wondering if we’ve made the right decision to come this way. The trees on the other side of the river shiver and groan and I have to bite my lips to keep my teeth from chattering with fear.
Seeing Elias like that, everything about the past few moments, makes me anxious. I thought I was beginning to understand this boy. “You don’t really believe in all that Souler stuff, do you?” I ask him evenly. I want him to tell me no. I need him to tell me no.
He looks at me from the corner of his eye and sighs, sitting back on his heels. “I don’t know what to believe,” he says. His voice is so heavy, so sad, that I take a step closer to him.
“They’re dead,” I whisper. “They’re monsters. They only want to kill us and eat us and infect us.”
He shakes his head, reaches out a hand to touch the Mudo’s face but then pulls back. I cringe, horrified at anyone wanting to touch one of them, even one that’s dead. “Then what happens to who they were?” he asks.
“It’s gone. They’re just like anyone else who dies,” I tell him. I don’t want to think about the Mudo being anything but monsters. What would that mean? That there’s something left of who they are trapped in a body that wants only to consume us? That every time we kill a Mudo we’re killing a soul? I refuse to believe it.
“How can you know?” he asks simply.
“Because that’s the way it is,” I say, louder than I mean to. My shoulders tense. I don’t want to hear his argument, don’t want to think that there’s any way I could be wrong. If there’s anything in this world that’s clear—that is black-and-white—it’s that the Mudo are dead. There’s nothing left of who they used to be.
Elias stands and walks over to me. “I just don’t know if it can be that easy,” he says.
Frustration blooms and spreads like a rash up my chest and neck. “They’re dead,” I say more firmly. “They get infected, they die and something causes them to stumble around. Something causes them to chase us. But it’s not them. When they die everything that used to be them is gone. It just …” I search for the right word. “It just disappears.”
“What about the Breakers?” he asks. “Why are they different just because there aren’t other Unconsecrated around when they turn? How do they know?”
“I don’t know—it’s just what happens,” I say, aggravated by his ability to twist my words. Around us the night hushes, holding its breath, and I purse my lips. I’m tired of this conversation, tired of Elias making me second-guess something I’ve known my entire life in the same way I’ve known that the tides would never fail.
“It’s the way it’s always been,” I tell him. “They die. That means they stop being who they were.”
“But what about people who die and come back to life who aren’t infected?” he asks. “People who drown and their heart stops and then it starts again. It happens—they die and come back. But they’re still the same person. They don’t lose anything from having died.”
I tug on my braid with exasperation, not understanding why he won’t let the discussion go. “That’s different. Those people who drown aren’t infected. If they were they’d come back Mudo. Probably Breakers if they turn underwater.”
“You really think it’s that simple?” he asks.
“Yes, it is,” I tell him, trying to squelch my own hesitation. “Infection leads to death. Death leads to Mudo. Mudo leads to hunger. It’s been that way since the Return and it’s the way it always will be.”
I turn to walk away from him, to go check on Cira, hoping he understands that I’m done talking to him. But I still hear his next question.
“Then what about Catcher?”
I stop, my back ramrod straight and my hand clutching my knife. I let my head fall back on my shoulders as I stare up at the night sky.
He walks closer to me, until I can almost feel him in the darkness. “He’s infected,” he says softly. “Are you saying he’s not the same person?”
My heart pounds in my chest, my mind circling over and over our conversation. I want to tell him he’s wrong, that nothing’s changed with Catcher. I want to be furious with Elias for twisting my words but I can’t. Because there’s no logic to the Return, to the Mudo. There’s never been a way to understand it.
“I hate you,” I tell him simply. Because right now that’s the only way to describe the way I’m being eaten inside, the pain that rips through me.
Elias reacts as if I’ve slapped him. I know I should take it back. I know I’ve gone too far and I’m just opening my mouth to apologize when another voice cuts in. Catcher steps off the edge of the bridge toward Cira and I wonder how long he’s been there. How much he’s seen and heard.
“I’ve found the path,” he says, his chest rising and falling as he struggles to catch his breath. “It’s not too far but we’re going to have to run as fast as we can.” He kneels in front of Cira and pulls her into his arms.
I’m just walking over to him to help when I hear a new noise. This one is a deeper hum than the moan of the Mudo woman earlier. It takes me a moment to realize what it is: the braying of a dog. And then a man’s shout laces through it. It’s behind us, coming from the path that leads down to Vista. Through the trees I see a spark or two of light and I know they’re after us.
Chapter 26
Catcher doesn’t hesitate but jumps to his feet with Cira in his arms.
I can hear the rustling of leaves, of the men on the path closer and closer. I grip my knife tighter and stare across the bridge at the Forest. In my mind I know it’s our best hope but my body won’t move. It’s against everything I’ve ever been taught, everything I’ve ever known.
“She has fresh blood all over her. It won’t take long for the Unconsecrated to track us,” Elias says, nodding toward Catcher and Cira.
Catcher doesn’t stop, just walks across the bridge, the glow of the water underneath him highlighting his bare arms that grip his sister. “We’ll make it,” he says, and I wish I felt his confidence.
I look back over my shoulder. Maybe we could go downriver a bit, climb down the edge of the falls and cut back to the beach by the estuary. Maybe there’s another way we can hide from the Militia and Recruiters. And that’s when the first dog bolts from the path, running toward us with teeth bared, and I know we’re out of choices.
The simmer of panic explodes. “Go!” I shout. “Run!” The old bridge sways under our weight and pounding feet as we sprint across it. In the gaps between the wooden planks the waterfall churns and roars, racing into the black emptiness below. I can almost feel the flames of the torches behind us as we reach the other side of the bridge, as Elias slams against the gate and struggles with the latch.
The old boards beneath us buck as more feet pound on it. Their shouts for us to stop sear up my spine and finally Elias shoves through the gate, swinging it open until it snaps wide against the fence. We pile through, slamming it shut behind us, and then we’re in the Forest.
We don’t stop. Catcher holds Cira tight as he races through the trees and brush. Elias and I follow, tripping over roots and fallen limbs. I glance back over my shoulder and see the men pausing at the fence. I see their mouths moving but I can’t hear their shouts.