Because all I can hear now are the moans. The Mudo have scented us. They know we’re here. And they’re coming for us. Closing in slowly around us, stumbling from the darkness.
At first I’m convinced we won’t make it. That we’ve just made the biggest mistake possible. Anything—being sent to the Recruiters, facing execution, being jailed—all of it would be better than this.
Anything would be better than being ripped apart by Mudo.
I hold my knife tight. At every leaf that turns in the blackness, at every twig that pops, I swing. Cold terror seeps through my bones, tightens my muscles. In my head I’m just screaming pure panic, trying to swallow it back and focus on what needs doing. Trying to put one foot in front of the other. Not lose sight of Catcher since he’s the only one who knows where the path is.
As the ground rises sharply beneath me I stumble and trip, my hands skidding out in front of me. Elias calls out my name. Then he’s there by my side, hauling me to my feet. He pulls me behind him, twisting us through trees and brush. Thorns and vines tug at my face and hair and scratch my skin as I push forward.
Ahead of us Catcher is like a dim ghost, a figure barely perceptible in the darkness. I’m terrified to take my eyes off him again. Terrified I’ll lose sight of him and our only hope. I feel the Mudo around me, feel their moans against my ears. So far we’ve been able to outrun them but we can only sprint for so long.
The Mudo will catch up eventually. They always do.
And then something wrenches me back, causes my skirt to tangle and tighten around my legs. I go down hard, pivoting as I fall so that my hip slams the ground. Undead fingers pull at my hem. A Mudo without legs tries to haul himself closer. I kick at him. My heel rams into his arms and head again and again.
His fingers crumple but still hold tight to the folds of my skirt. I drag myself across the ground, trying to get away. Elias runs toward me and doesn’t even hesitate before driving his foot into the Mudo’s skull with a sickening crunch. At last the fingers relax. Elias hauls me to my feet. More arms and fingers grab for me in the darkness as I hold what’s left of the skirt close to my body.
Catcher shifts Cira in his arms and slows. I worry that maybe he’s gotten turned around, that maybe he’s lost and we’ll run in circles in this dark Forest until we can’t run anymore. Elias grips my arm and I pant as we stumble behind Catcher.
And then I see it: the gate hulking in the darkness, the bare edge of it gleaming in the rising moon. Hope shivers inside me but I’m afraid to reach for it, afraid that by hoping I’ll lose focus. Stretching away from the gate are fences bordering a narrow path. Vines twine through the links, absurd flowers blooming in the night.
Catcher tugs, the gate swings open and we race inside. The first Mudo hits the fence just as Catcher throws the latch behind us. I stumble backward from the force of the Mudo, from the sound of it wrenching itself against the metal. More and more join the first, tugging and pulling.
I turn in a circle, afraid that we might have just trapped ourselves in an even worse position. I stagger down the path a bit, holding my torn skirt close to my side so that I’m nowhere near the fences that line the trail. The grass is high and thick here but I see no signs of Mudo inside the path.
Outside, though, they twist and writhe against the old chain links. I make my way back to where Catcher and Elias stare through the gate, back the way we came. We all gasp for air.
“Will it hold?” I whisper.
No one answers me. We just stand there staring at the Mudo slowly piling against the other side of the thin metal, which groans and shifts under their weight.
Catcher sets Cira on her feet and she sways but is able to stand while sagging against him. He presses his palm to her cheek and she leans in to him.
“You’re alive,” she says, her pale lips bright in the moonlight. “I thought you were dead.”
He smiles and presses a kiss to her forehead. I have to turn away from it, the burning joy of seeing them finally together. I can’t stand that I’m the one who told Cira her brother was lost and the reason she almost died.
“I’m alive,” he murmurs. “Everything’s going to be okay now. I promise.”
My throat tightens as if he’s talking to me. As if he’s promising me that we’ll be okay. I want to believe it. I want to hold on to his words but they dissipate in the darkness.
Elias is the one to break the moment. “We should keep going,” he says. He glances at the fence straining under the onslaught of the Mudo and I know what he’s thinking: that even though we’re on the fenced-in path we’re still at risk. That as long as we’re in the Forest we’re always at risk.
Back the way we came I can still hear shouts. I close my eyes, begging that just this once we’ll have some luck and they won’t choose to come after us. That we’re not worth the risk.
Catcher hands Cira a canteen and she drinks hungrily. “Where are we going?” she asks between gulps.
I look at Elias and he back at me. I think about my mother, about her village somewhere on this path. Is it still there? Is she somewhere out there ahead of us? I’m afraid of hoping for either one, afraid to want something that might not be true.
“First we get away from Vista,” Elias says before I have a chance to respond. “And then we figure out what’s next”
The path in front of the gate is wide enough for us to stand in a small group but it narrows quickly so that it’s almost impossible to walk side by side. Cira’s still a little woozy on her feet but the water has fortified her some and she’s able to take a few steps with Catcher’s help.
I try to stay back and help them but I quickly get in the way. I try to walk nearby to hear what they’re saying but they tilt their heads close, their voices a low murmur. A few times I hear them giggle and I ask them what about, hoping to join in the conversation. But soon I realize that they’re so wrapped up in their own reunion that I’m getting in the way.
I’m left to walk behind Elias, helping to cut back thorny vines and tamp down the taller grass. I don’t say anything to him as night falls even deeper around us. I’m still stinging from our earlier conversation. Instead I think about my mother.
Did she make it this far? Are my feet falling where hers recently tread? Did she stop and stare into the Forest and think about turning around? Think about coming back for me? I shake my head, positive that she wouldn’t have. In my mind I picture her striding down the path, her steps long and sure and her chin held high.
She wouldn’t tremble the way I am. She wouldn’t wince at every branch that cracks the way I do. She wouldn’t want to claw her ears off at the incessant moaning from the Mudo that always pull at the fence on either side of us.
My eyes water and I swipe at them with the palms of my hands, feeling even weaker for the tears. I take a deep breath, trying to calm myself. Trying to find some sort of strength.
That’s the real problem, I think as I slide my thumb along the flat side of my knife, feeling the ridges of the pattern. It’s not that my mother lied to me about who I am and where I’m from. It’s that I always thought I could be like her. That something in her—what made her so sure and strong—could be in me as well. I just had to find it.
But the fact that I’m not hers means that I really am nothing like her. And that I have no hope of ever being like her.
I almost run into Elias’s back before I realize that he’s stopped. His head’s thrown back and he’s looking up. “What’s wrong?” I ask, my body tensing for some unseen enemy.
He doesn’t say anything, just points up into the sky. I stare at him. “Look,” he says.
I take a deep breath, suspicion clouding around me. And then I slowly tilt my head back. The evening sky let go its last grasp a while ago and the darkness has settled in deep. The night smells like flowers and dirt. Like death and blood. The heat of the day rises from the soggy ground and wraps around my ankles.
“What is it?” I ask, feeling impatient and dirty and exhausted and scared.
Elias moves closer, standing behind me, and leans forward until his cheek is almost against my own. I have to catch my breath from the feel of him so near. Anger toward him still simmers inside me but I also can’t help flashing back to that moment on the beach and I can’t help but realize that if he turned his head and I turned mine, our lips would touch.
I don’t want to like him. I don’t want to care about him. It’s so much easier to hate, to dismiss what he says so that I don’t have to think and question the world and everything I’ve been taught.
Before I can shift away he takes my hand in his, the feeling jolting down my arm, and raises it with his to point into the sky. I turn my head, looking back down the path behind us, wondering just how far back Catcher and Cira are. Wondering if they can see us standing here.
And then Elias whispers in my ear, “Look in the stars.” My breaths shudder slightly and I swallow; my vision pulses the same beat as my heart. I follow to where both of our fingers now point. It’s hard to concentrate on anything but him, but finally I see it—a tiny bit of light moving steady through the stars. “What is it?” I ask.
“A satellite,” he tells me.
I have a hard time focusing on what he’s saying and I scan back through everything I learned in school, trying to place the word. He drops our arms from the air but keeps our fingers twined. I want to push him away and pull him closer at the same time. Instead I just concentrate on breathing, watching the trace of light through the sky.
“It’s from before the Return,” he says. And I remember it now. I remember the teacher telling us about them when he taught us about gravity and the solar system. Elias’s thumb skids over my knuckles and my thoughts scatter. Was it just a tic or did he do it on purpose? My heart is racing and I’m sure he can feel my pulse pounding just under every inch of my skin.
“I’ve never looked for them before,” I tell him. “I guess I thought they were gone by now. Like everything else.” My voice feels scratchy, my tongue thick. It’s hard for me to think about anything other than how close he is. How nice it feels to be holding hands, to have someone to lean on.
“Anything that flies fascinates me,” he says softly. I hold my breath, wanting him to say more. Wanting more of this glimpse into who he is. “It’s just strange to think about them still up there, still going round and round when everything down here has collapsed and they’ve become useless. They just …” He searches for the word as the wind slides over us. “They just keep going. As if nothing’s changed.”
I think about how much our entire lives are like that. We’re set in motion and then we spend our lives maintaining that motion, but to what end? For what purpose? It never bothered me before. I was happy.
A twig snaps behind us and I jump away from Elias. Catcher and Cira’s voices unravel up the path in the darkness and I turn my head, my entire face burning, hoping they didn’t see Elias and me together. I cough in the darkness and glance at Elias. He still stands where I left him but he’s no longer looking up at the sky.
He’s staring at me and the expression on his face causes my breath to hitch. It’s like regret and pain and desire. I have to look away, afraid of what my own face shows in return. I’m too confused; I don’t know how to feel or what to want.
He steps closer to me and I tense. “I wish I knew how to make it right for you,” he says. His voice is so quiet that I can almost believe it’s the wind speaking and that he’s not saying anything at all. “I wish I knew what you wanted.” He turns and continues up the path into the darkness.
I look back where Catcher and Cira draw nearer and close my eyes. So do I, I think.
Chapter 27
We keep walking, Elias pulling food and water from his pack to pass around. The moon rises and sets and just before dawn we find a small clearing in the path where we try to rest. Catcher and Cira continue to murmur until their voices fade into sleep and Elias snores lightly. That leaves me, staring up at the sky, trying to find a glimmer of a shooting star or a satellite. I keep trying to remember: Have I walked this path? Do I remember these trees? This smell? Those sounds? Memories dance just out of reach until dreams lead me under to twirl away the thoughts.
The next morning is muddy and gray, the air hot and still. Cira has bruises under her eyes but she’s able to stand on her own. She eats and drinks some water, a little color returning to her cheeks. She’s able to walk a bit without leaning on Catcher, but still, our progress is slow and the Mudo continue to press against the fence on either side of us, pounding and pulling and moaning.
It’s impossible to mark the passage of time, impossible to tell how far we’ve walked. We just continue, one foot in front of the other, the pack on my back chafing at my shoulders.
I don’t even notice when Elias stops walking and again I trip into him, stumbling and catching myself by grabbing on to the fence. I’m not used to the fences, to being so near the Mudo. I’m not used to having them press against me until it’s almost impossible to breathe. I feel Mudo fingers tug at my own and I scream and fall, clutching my hand to my chest. My heart pounds and I close my eyes to calm my breathing.
When I open them Elias has dropped his pack and is standing over me holding out a hand to help me up. “You okay?” he asks and I nod as I get up, pulling my hand away quickly as Catcher and Cira round the bend behind us.
I step back and focus on adjusting the straps of my pack.
“What’s going on?” Catcher asks, and my cheeks flame red, thinking he’s talking about me and Elias. That he sees something that isn’t there. I glance sharply up at Elias but he’s not looking at me.