“So the Recruiters took Gabry when she crossed into the Neverlands?” he asks, and I nod.
“One of them said she’d be taken to the Sanctuary,” I add.
Elias kicks at the wall, growling with frustration.
“But aren’t you a Recruiter?” I ask him. “Can’t you just demand to see her?”
Elias takes a deep breath, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t what I expected to happen. It’s just that if we go to the Sanctuary …” He pauses and looks at Catcher. “We’ll be trapped.”
I frown, confused. The Sanctuary is a smaller island out in the river, and because of its size and location it’s safer and easier to protect and defend. The Protectorate used to control it, and it’s where the most important people lived until the Rebellion, when the Recruiters infiltrated and took it over.
Only the most elite members of society have ever been allowed on that island, even now. “What do you mean, trapped?” I ask, the possibility of going someplace safe making my heart pound with hope. “Wouldn’t the Sanctuary be safer than the Dark City? We’d have a better chance there.”
Calmly and evenly, Elias says, “The only way we’d be able to get on that island is if we had something to trade.”
I look back and forth between Catcher and Elias. Something’s going on that I don’t understand; some sort of silent battle of wills.
“I have some tokens,” I start to say, “and I might have some other valuable stuff if I just—”
Elias shakes his head. “That’s not what they want.”
“I don’t understand,” I tell him, frustrated. “What else could they want?”
Elias just looks at Catcher and finally Catcher says, “Me. They want me.” He turns back to the window, placing his hands on the sill. His fingertips dig into the rotten wood.
Elias slumps to the bed, distractedly rubbing one of his legs as if it bothers him. Their silence is too much.
“Someone has to explain to me what’s going on here,” I demand.
Catcher doesn’t move. Doesn’t say anything.
“How much do you know?” Elias asks.
“Nothing!” I snap back at him.
He sighs, stretching his neck in an attempt to relax the muscles. “Catcher’s very valuable,” he says. “The Recruiters desperately want him because he’s immune, which means he can go anywhere. Do anything. Get anything.”
I nod. “He told me about that.”
“Right. Well, they were chasing us—me; Catcher; Gabry; her mom, Mary; and her friend Harry—because they wanted Catcher. But it’s not just him they want because they can’t really control him. His whole value is in going out and getting supplies, but they need a reason for him to come back. So the way they’d control him is by imprisoning people he loves. It’s a guarantee that he’ll always return.”
I stare at Catcher’s back. His shoulders are hunched, his body curved over itself. Once again I realize how much of a burden his immunity really is.
“So you’re saying they’ll let us on the island and into the Sanctuary because of Catcher?” I ask quietly.
Elias doesn’t respond at first but then says, “Yes. Catcher’s our only way to get to Gabry.”
“But you’re a Recruiter,” I protest, because it can’t be true. “They have to let you into the Sanctuary.”
Elias shakes his head. “They don’t. I mean, they might if I bargain with them, but they don’t have to accept you. They won’t accept you unless …” He swallows, refuses to look me in the eye. “They’ll only let you on the island because you’re a woman and they’d want to take advantage of that. I wouldn’t let that happen to you.”
“Oh.” I stare down at the floor, understanding. A layer of dust coats the scarred wooden boards. I was never very good at keeping the place clean. It makes the room feel abandoned.
The sound of the Dark City raging filters through the open window along with the smell of smoke. We’re running out of time to figure out what to do next. I think about my sister alone at the Sanctuary with no one to protect her—not only from the dead but from the living as well.
“There has to be something we can do,” I murmur. I feel so useless, my mind spinning but finding no solutions.
Catcher lets out a long breath. “Let’s go,” he says. He steps onto the fire escape, his feet on the rusted metal a loud rattle in the quiet room. “Let’s make the trade.”
I wait for Elias to protest but instead he slumps in relief, pressing his hands to his face. Frowning, I stare at him as I hear Catcher climbing to the roof. A part of me wants to comfort Elias but he’s not the one who just agreed to hand himself over as bait to the Recruiters.
I turn and chase after Catcher, still trying to figure out a way to work everything out and failing. Around us the City continues to fall apart: billowing smoke clouds hovering over the Neverlands, alarm bells blaring. The crowds pushing at the docks to the east have swelled and we can hear the shouting from here.
Catcher stands surveying it all. I want to tell him he doesn’t have to do this, but I know that would be a lie. We both need my sister safe, and handing him over is the only way. And so I ask him, “Are you okay?” even though it’s a stupid question.He shrugs. “It’s like I said before. We do what it takes to survive.” He sounds so emotionless that it makes the air around us feel that much colder.
“We can try to figure out another way,” I offer.
He turns to face me, his expression resigned. “There’s no other option, Annah. They have Gabry and they have safety from the horde. The only way we can all survive is if I trade myself to them.”
I take a step toward him. “Maybe you should worry about yourself more than us.”
He looks at me for a moment, his eyes tracing along my scars. I raise my chin, refusing to glance away.
“Maybe I am,” he says.
His words make me shiver, but before I can ask what he means there’s a tremendous crash and a chorus of wails behind us. I spin around and see a massive section of the Palisade wall only a few blocks away crumbling, debris from its collapse spiraling up to the sky and tangling with the broiling smoke from the fires.
And then they come, stumbling from the cloud of dust and dirt: Unconsecrated. At first it’s just a few, but then there are more and more, struggling across the rubble and flooding into the streets. Slow but steady they flow like blood from a seeping wound.
Some are short and some are tall. Some men and others women. Some wear clothes from olden times and some are naked, their bodies striped with wounds. But all moan with gaping black mouths. All claw at the air, reaching and needing. Some of them shuffle on broken limbs, arms gnawed away, with stringy gray tendons swinging with each step.
There are more than I could ever count and I know this is just the beginning. Soon the entire City will fall to them. I stare and wonder how we’ve survived as long as we have against such an inevitable destruction.
Chapter XIII
Elias scrambles onto the roof. “We have to go,” he says, a little breathless. “Now.”
I nod, unable to take my eyes from the sight of so many Unconsecrated only a few blocks away.
“This way.” Elias grabs my hand and tugs me toward a rickety bridge spanning the alley to the next building. Through grimy windows I see families shoving clothes and belongings into bags and reaching for weapons.
I struggle to remember the names of the terrified faces, of the little girl screaming as she clutches a ragged doll and her brother sharpening blades while their parents race to pack. These people are my neighbors—faces I see almost every day and yet never talk to. It seems too easy to leave them behind, which feels wrong and unsettling.
But I’m not sure I can save myself, much less anyone else.
The Dark City explodes around us as we run, news of the horde fording the river spreading everywhere. I hear screaming mixed with the shrill sirens alerting residents of the breach. Everywhere is panic, no one knowing what to do or where to go.
The bridges are chaos, people shoving one another as they flee the dead. I watch people tumble off roofs and scream for help as the Unconsecrated slowly fill the streets. They claw at windows and brick walls and moan and snatch at everything around them.
Elias runs in front of me, a strange, awkward, limping stagger, and Catcher follows behind as we scamper along the tops of crumbling buildings. Families climb fire escapes, joining us in a flow of refugees streaming toward the docks on the southeast side of the island. It becomes more difficult to keep track of Elias and Catcher and not to get lost in the crush of panic.
Long lines begin to crowd at the bridges, which are too narrow and fragile to take that many people at a time. The bridges were constructed long ago out of whatever material could be scavenged and are for people to travel back and forth between the roofs of buildings, to avoid the potentially dangerous streets. They weren’t made for this. Some snap and fall apart, spilling people to the ground, stories below, where hungry dead attack them, tearing at their limbs as they scream and fight. Any survivors may as well be dead. It will only take one bite to turn them Unconsecrated.
It’s hard to avoid looking, impossible not to watch the struggle taking place so many flights beneath us. I try to focus on Elias’s back and the feel of Catcher and his heat behind me, but the sounds and the smell are too much—the metal taste in my mouth and the screaming of the living.
Someone pushes up against me, knocking me down, and someone else steps on my hand, the weight grinding my knuckles. I scream and lash out. A third person reaches for me and at first I think he’s trying to help me up but then he wrestles for my machete, trying to pry it from my belt.
As I’m twisting away from the man’s grasp, Catcher swings at him, fist slamming into his jaw without hesitation. The man stumbles back and Catcher lifts me up as we press forward into the crowd.
In some places children stand motionless, wailing for mothers they can’t find. In others men stand along the edges of roofs and stare at the Neverlands as if they can’t believe what’s coming. As if they can’t fathom so many dead.
People beg for help, wanting to know what they should do and where they should go, but I don’t know what to tell them and so I say nothing. It’s like being caught in a deluge, following the crowd east as the buildings around us grow taller, some of them only rusted-out husks of what they used to be. Old steel beams spire above, their ragged ends sharp and broken.
Midway across the island, the bridges snake erratically around obstacles, weaving several blocks south before turning back east. Most everyone is heading for the docks farther south, but the Sanctuary is on an island directly east of the Dark City, which means we’re forced to shove across the crowds to head in that direction. It’s impossible. People scream at us, one man even swinging at Elias before we give up and descend a fire escape to the street. Down here it’s easier to move faster, fear driving the masses to the air.
A few blocks away I hear the pounding scrape of Unconsecrated feet. There are so many of them that the ground shudders, their moans so many voices that it creates a discordant vibration through the air. It’s louder than the most violent rainstorm, a thundering hissing mass of bodies and need.
Elias tries to run but he’s clearly in pain, his steps more like lurches. I offer to let him lean against me, but he refuses. Even though it’s cold outside, especially in the shadows of the towering buildings, sweat drips down his face and darkens the back of his uniform.
There are fewer people on the streets but still they stream around us, some heading in the same direction we are and others away, making for the docks farther south. Every face is pinched tight, and above I notice frightened eyes watching us from behind tattered curtains gripped tight in white-knuckled hands. People willing to stay and fight, taking their chances in the City rather than running like the rest of us.
There’s only one access point to the Sanctuary—an old cable-car line—and the closer we get, the more crowded the streets become with voices shouting for help.
At the base of the cable car the mob thickens, people shouting and pushing toward the gates blocking access to the platform and the car itself. Recruiters line up along the fence stretching to either side of the gates, indiscriminately shooting bolts or lashing out with wicked-looking blades at anyone who gets too close.
Tension coils in the air, the smell of blood and bodies thick. People pump their fists, scream for access to the Sanctuary or for the Recruiters to do something to stop the tide of dead creeping through the streets.
Elias slips through the gaps in the mass and I follow, pressing between bodies. I try not to think that in a short while all of them will be dead. Most of them turned Unconsecrated. They’ll be husks of what they are now: the same fierce yearning turned sinister. Though a part of me wonders how thin the distinction between living and dead is in this mob—how quickly they’d turn and kill for the chance at survival.
Catcher trails after me through the crowd, the tips of his fingers pressing my lower back lightly so that he doesn’t lose me—a reassurance that he’s still there. Elbows dig into my ribs, and some people hiss as I force my way through, but I ignore them. When we near the front of the pack the Recruiters guarding the gate brandish loaded crossbows and yell for us to step back.
There are already a dozen dead bodies littering the gap between the mob and the fence, and a handful of people hover over the injured. I stop in place but my body keeps vibrating. Everyone’s so frantic it’s only a matter of time before the panic ignites.