I’m just about to hug my mother, to thank her for saying everything I needed to hear, when Elias comes running into the courtyard. His eyes are wide and he barely catches his breath before panting out: “Catcher came back from the Forest. He says the Recruiters are closer than he thought. They’ll be at the village any minute. He’s going to start tearing down the fences—we have to go now!”
Chapter 39
I jump to my feet, the serenity of the moment with my mother now shattered. Already I hear the moans of the Mudo creeping through the night air. We have to stay ahead of them. I start grabbing supplies, my head spinning as I try to remember what we’ll need.
Odys skitters into the courtyard, his hackles raised and his teeth bared. He paces, a low growl rumbling through him, and then he starts to bark. I keep looking over my shoulder into the night, wondering if he sees something that I don’t. Hears something I can’t. I hold my breath, waiting.
And that’s when I see them, swarming around the remains of the Cathedral. They shamble through the darkness toward us.
“Harry,” my mother breathes, dashing back into the house.
My eyes widen; Elias curses and grabs my hand. He slings a bag over his shoulder and shoves my little pack into my hands. I let him pull me through the village, dodging shadows and listening for the moans. In the distance I hear men shouting but all I can do is run. Follow Elias as he races toward a gate I didn’t see before at the far end of the village.
“My mother!” I scream to him, trying to stop, but he keeps pulling.
“She’ll be okay,” he yells back, and I stumble but keep following him.
We race through what once must have been fields but are now overgrown: vines twisting around stray stalks of corn that whip at my arms as we pass between them. My eyes blur in the night and all I can do is put one foot in front of the other. Our breaths, the sound of our feet hitting the ground, are muffled as we swipe at the tangle of foliage. It makes me afraid that if the Mudo are behind us—if there was a Breaker—we wouldn’t even hear it coming.
I keep looking over my shoulder, waiting. Terrified that the next step could lead me into the arms of slavering Mudo. Hoping to see my mother running behind me. But there’s nothing but shadows trailing us as we run along the fence until we find the other gate.
Elias fumbles with the latch, rust making it almost impossible to flip open. My breathing screams in my ears, the night too quiet, too empty until the Mudo out in the Forest sense our presence and rise, shuffling toward us. They slam into the old chain links, moaning as they try to reach for us.
Finally the gate creaks open and we push through, slamming it behind us. We stand there side by side, staring back into the village. Behind us the trees rustle, branches swaying like the sound of waves on the shore. On either side of us Mudo pound against the fences. In front of us, nothing.
Eventually I can see shapes moving in the dark, stumbling and shuddering. The Mudo filling into the cracks, slowly oozing through the open spaces.
It isn’t fair to have finally realized where I’m from and then to have to leave it so soon. I have memories lost here that I need to find! This is my past, this is who I am.
I think about the other village we walked through, the burned-out husk of what used to be a thriving world. How many other villages like that are there in the Forest? How many lives played out here never knowing there was something beyond?
Figures run in the distance, too many to be my mother and Harry. I squeeze my fingers around the gate, pressing against it, wishing I could go back and grab them and drag them through to safety.
Finally I see my mother, her skirt flying around her legs as she runs toward us. In her arms she carries what looks like the book from earlier, the pages clutched against her chest. It throws off her gait and she trips, almost falling.
Someone cuts toward her and for a moment I think it must be Harry. I realize too late that it can’t be, that the person is too tall, too thin, too fast. There’s no way my mother can see him.
“Mother!” I scream.
She looks up at me, the dim light of the moon illuminating her face for an instant. She smiles, the curve of her cheek soft and smooth. In that moment I see her as a girl. I see her as myself. Running from a breached village, not knowing what her future holds. And then the man behind her rams into her, throwing her to the ground. She tries to keep the book in her hands. She falls awkwardly, legs sprawling. And when her back hits the ground the pages explode around her.
I’m through the gate before I even know what I’m doing. My mouth is open even though I don’t know what words I scream. It’s just pure rage and terror and horror.
The man is a Recruiter, his black shirt rolled up at the sleeves and dusted with red dirt. He stands over my mother, a knife in his hand. She tries to roll from underneath him but he places his feet on either side of her legs, standing on her skirt and trapping her.
Paper floats around them, the thin edges catching and reflecting what little light exists. It makes time seem too slow. As if gravity has let go for just this moment and we could all float away.
I raise my arm, the air feeling thinner and lighter. If I could run faster, if I could run harder, I could get there. I could stop the Recruiter with the knife.
He doesn’t even care that I come at him. He doesn’t even crouch and prepare for the impact.
Mudo begin to crowd in the periphery of my vision like clouds against the sun. She’s too bright, my mother. Too much to stare at directly.
I don’t even see the other figure sprinting out of the distance and neither does the Recruiter. One moment he stands above my mother and the next he’s floating, entwined with the pages of her book. As if he’s of no more substance than they are.
Sound hits me all at once. The moans, the screams, the shouts of men.
Harry reaches for my mother, his face purple with rage and fear. She grasps for the pages but he grabs her and pulls her to him. Odys lunges at the Recruiter on the ground, his teeth bared and back arched. None of them sees me running toward them.
“The Scripture!” she yells as the Recruiter struggles to stand back up and Odys growls even louder.
Harry circles her wrist with his hand. He’s stronger than she is. I don’t understand what’s going on, why she’s resisting. My body screams with the desire to grab her and pull her back.
“It’s who we are!” she yells again, struggling against Harry. “It’s our history!”
“Those stories aren’t as important as our lives!” he shouts, dragging her to the fence. I watch as they struggle; then finally together they sprint past me and through the gate, not noticing me in the shadows, Odys at their heels. I look back at the cover of the book on the ground a few yards away from where the Recruiter staggers to his feet. There are still pages stuck inside, remnants of the whole. I glance at the fence, at the Mudo swarming toward us.
And then I hold my breath as I run and slide to the ground. As I get closer I reach out and hook the edge of the book with my fingers, pulling it toward me. The Recruiter lunges, swiping at the air, but he misjudges the distance and misses me.
I vault to my feet and just when I’ve found my balance something pulls my braid, snapping my head back. I stumble and the book slips from my grip as I fall, my other hand going for the knife on my belt. But I land on top of it, trapping it underneath me.
I hear the moans as I blink the dirt out of my eye. I feel warmth spraying over my face and I turn to see a Mudo woman sinking her teeth into the Recruiter, her mouth a rictus of terror. He screams and swings his arms, pushing her off him.
Mudo are not predators. They don’t hunt. They don’t kill and eat. They’re not satisfied once they’ve tasted the blood of one if there are more around.
They want to infect. They need to infect. Which means that if they sense another living, an Uninfected, that becomes their new target. And that new target is about to be me.
The Mudo releases the Recruiter, infection already burning through his body, and turns toward me, blood smeared along her lips and chin.
And that’s when I recognize her. That’s when I realize that the Mudo is Cira.
Time is nothing. Space irrelevant. I wait for the spark of recognition between us. For the haze of memories to fall over her eyes. Something inside her to say no, to make her hesitate, to shatter the horror of this moment.
There must be something of humanity left inside Cira. How can death erase it all? How can the same body walk, the same brain exist and retain nothing of who it used to be? I want so badly to believe that the Soulers are right, that there’s something left behind.
I kick back. Drag myself across the ground. I dig my fingers into the dirt. Anything to get away from her.
She lumbers toward me, reaching out her hands. Hands that used to thread through my hair. Hands that used to trace over my own.
My best friend is really gone. Every part of her, every memory, idea, dream.
Gone. Dead.
Forever.
The tips of her fingers brush my face. So familiar. But cold. I jerk back. I swing at the air. Kick. But I’m off balance. The night swims around me and Cira lurches closer.
And then she stops, her head snapping back. Teeth gleaming in the night, hands clawing.
My heart stumbles, breath catching. I look past and see her braid wrapped around the Recruiter’s hand. Blood smears his wrist and arm; his face is warped with pain.
“Go,” he says, barely audible over Cira’s moans. “Go!” he says louder.
I don’t know why he’s letting me escape; why he’s holding Cira back from me. Maybe he had a younger sister with blond hair like me, maybe he grew up in Vista and I don’t remember him. But his reason doesn’t matter as I scramble away, dragging the book with me. I don’t look over my shoulder as I run to the gate. Don’t want to see Cira, don’t want to see her turning back to the Recruiter and sinking her teeth into his flesh once more. Don’t want to hear the sound of him killing her.
Chapter 40
My fingers shake as I push the remnants of the book into my waistband, letting the back of my shirt flutter over it. I slip through the gate and my mother rushes to me, takes my face in her hands and stares into my eyes. As if with a glance she can know if I’m okay, if I’m hurt.
I want to tell her that I’m hurting more than I ever have in my life. That my body’s fine but the rest of me is lost. My best friend is gone—a monster.
How can any of us expect anything in the face of so much death, of a world overrun with it?
My mother rubs her thumb down my temple, tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, presses my braid flat against my shoulder. Her hands tremble.
“We should go,” Harry says, coming to stand beside her. But my mother just continues to look at me. As if she’s trying to tell me everything I need to know to understand this moment. Where to put it in my life.
And then Harry very gently takes my mother’s hand in his and brings it to his lips. Her mouth twitches at the edges, the harsh angle of her shoulders relaxing.
She turns to him. “The village,” she says. “The breach. I can’t make you leave it again,” she whispers, raising her hand to his cheek. If I knew the sound of someone breaking this would be it. “Everything it took from us the first time …” Her voice quavers. “I don’t know if we can survive the path again. Not knowing …”
Behind us the moans of the Mudo stretch and swell, interspersed with men shouting. I want to turn away. It’s my fault it’s come to this. I’m the reason the Recruiters are here—why Harry has to leave everything he’s ever known. I swallow back acrid self-hatred, realizing just how wide the ripples of my actions have spread.
“But this time we know there’s more out there, Mary,” Harry says. He places his hand over hers on his cheek. “Sometimes you have to chase the idea of something more.”
She smiles and catches her breath on a laugh.
“We have to go,” he whispers. She closes her eyes and nods and I look away.
Elias leads us down the path away from the village and I trail, glancing back only once. Mudo beat at the gate behind us, the hulk of the burned Cathedral’s dull blackness against the dark sky, the houses long abandoned.
This village died long before we ever arrived.
We push through the dawn, through the thick afternoon heat, into the evening. Shadows blossom under our eyes, our feet trudging and dragging through the dusty red clay. Odys runs ahead and circles back, his nose turned to the air and his tail low. The path twists and forks and every time we choose one direction over another I wonder where Catcher is, if he’ll find us, if the Recruiters will bother beating their way through the village after us.
I try not to think of the possibility that they could have captured him. That he could be hurt.
With every step I feel the weight of the book I’ve hidden in my bag. I think about pulling it out and giving it to my mother but something holds me back. I want it for myself. She said it contains the history of the village and I want to know what that is. Because it’s my history as well as hers.
As the light fades and distances blur we’re forced to stop. The path becomes rutted with roots and rocks and it’s too hard to navigate, our steps becoming too clumsy and dangerous. We find a spot where the path widens between three gates.
With the excuse that I’m trying to create a false trail to throw the Recruiters off in case they follow us, I walk farther down one of the paths until it bends and I’m hidden from the others. I sit on a rock and pull the remnants of my mother’s book from my pack.
The cover’s worse for the wear, what was once perhaps just a series of cracks now almost dissolving into dust. The pages are yellow and thin, the edges curling in the humid air. They’re numbered, the first part of the binding still intact, its pages in order. But it’s clear that hundreds more are missing and the handful tucked in loosely are badly out of order.