And I realize that’s the difference. I realize that I still have everything to lose. The possibility of my sister and Elias and Catcher and my future. I’d lose sunrises and stars and the feel of Catcher’s heat against my lips. I’d miss the taste of snow and the smell of the first flower of spring.
I’d miss laughing and crying and all the moments in between.
I stumble back into the darkness and keep walking. Knowing that the pain I’m feeling now is because my body is alive.
I can tell by the echo of sound and the feel of the air when the tunnels open up into stations, when the path branches in front of me. I just keep my hand on the wall and push forward. I fall into such a repetition of steps that I’m stunned when I stumble against a massive pile of rubble.
I don’t even know how to process this information, I’m so surprised, and it takes a moment for me to realize that this is it. I can’t go any farther. I stand in the darkness, the vibration of the air behind me bristling with the ever-constant presence of moans.
I’m sure the Unconsecrated aren’t that far behind me; I’ve barely been able to walk. All I know is that I have to get past this and continue on. I shove the machete into my belt and start to feel my way along the debris, pulling at smaller rocks, when I notice something.
I can hear a slight whistle of air. I lean into it—it feels warmer and smells fresh and clean and like the outside.
A ball of excitement coils in my stomach, energizing me. I run my hands over the cave-in, feeling for loose pieces and prying at them. Sharp corners bite my fingers but I don’t care anymore. I have to keep moving.
It’s agonizing, trying to find a weak spot and dig away at it, and when I’m finally able to clear an opening wide enough to reach my arm through, rubble collapses in on itself. Behind me I hear the Unconsecrated shuffle along the tracks, knowing that soon they’ll stumble around me in the darkness.
I take a shuddering breath and shove my shoulder against a large slab of concrete, trying to shift it away, but my feet slip over the ice-slicked ground and I fall.
It’s impossible in the darkness. I can’t see how the pieces all fit together. Frustration rages through me. I don’t want to take the time to build a fire but I’m afraid that’s my only option. I skitter back down the tunnel, hands sweeping for anything dry, but everything’s still crusted with ice. I press my fists against my temples, trying to figure out what I can burn.
My fingers brush the edge of the hat Catcher gave me and the matching scarf wrapped around my neck. I tear them off and crumple them into a ball by the wall of debris. Over and over again, I strike the flint above it. Sparks dance down but won’t catch.
The moans grow louder, swelling around me. My heart pounds so hard that it feels like the world is pulsing. Quickly, I use the machete to slice a chunk of what’s left of the hair from my head and drop it on top of the scarf.
Breath held, I strike the flint. It sparks but still nothing catches. I strike it again. Nothing. But the third time, one of the sparks falls into the nest of hair and blazes—the flame spreads to the edge of the scarf and ignites. I swallow back the ache of watching Catcher’s present to me burn, the soft bright colors dissolving into ash and smoke.
Once the tiny fire sputters and flares I step back and stare at the debris pile, trying to figure out how to pull it apart. I find a slab of concrete bearing most of the weight and I dive toward it, scratching at the pebbles packed underneath it, digging my way through.
My hand reaches the outside air and I shove harder at the shards of concrete and stone, doing everything it takes to widen the little gap. I just need a bit more space. I squeeze and pry, and then I hear someone call my name.
Chapter XLV
“You’re kidding me, right?” I ask simply, pulling myself back into the tunnel. In the guttering light of the flames I see Ox standing about twenty feet away. He looks terrible, blood soaking his uniform, bites peppered along his hands and arms. Skin pale. “You’re supposed to be dead,” I add.
He smiles. “Not yet. Soon. And then I’ll Return, of course.”
I drop my chin to my chest, not able to believe this is happening. I take a deep breath before facing him again. “You should have turned around and run back there,” I tell him. “You could have saved yourself.”
He shrugs. “I got infected the moment I stepped off the cable car.” He stumbles over to the wall and slides down until he’s sitting on the tracks. The light of my tiny fire barely reaches him. He removes his shirt and tosses it toward the flames, making them burn even brighter. His chest is covered in scars—some thick and ropy and others tiny flecks of white.
I don’t want to think about what caused them. What the pain must have been like. I don’t want to feel sympathy for this man.
“Stupid,” I mutter. “What a waste. I wasn’t worth the hassle, you know.” I kick at more of the debris to clear it.
He looks up at me, his eyes big and dark. “There are people who believe the undead are eternal life. That they are a higher form of existence.”
“Yeah,” I scoff at him. “The Soulers. You imprisoned them, remember?”
He breathes deep. He’s lost a lot of blood. He may not have long to live but it’s hard to tell. I’m sure he’ll hold on as long as he can.
When I realize he’s not coming closer I crouch back down toward the hole I’ve been working on, shifting and pulling at the rocks again to widen the gap.
“Think about it,” he says, ignoring that I’m not paying attention. “What makes us frail? Stupidity, love, anger, hope. The undead have none of that. All they are is eternal existence.”
“They have no life,” I shout back at him. “Literally,” I add, which makes him smile. His teeth gleam in the darkness and it saddens me that this is what his last moments have come to.
He tilts his head. “That’s the question, isn’t it? What’s life and what’s existence?” He takes another deep breath and another, as if he can’t get enough air. I scramble at the rocks, knowing that once he dies he’ll Return and that behind him even more dead are coming. “Which would you choose?” he asks, his voice gravelly and wet.
I set a rock aside in case I need to use it against him. I make sure my machete’s within easy reach. The sound of the dead approaching rumbles and roars, making my work take on a frantic edge.
“It’s a fool’s choice, that’s what it is,” I tell him. “One brings you pain and the other numbness.”
He smiles wider, enjoying himself. “Isn’t that the question of life?”
I don’t answer. I dig.
“I know you think I’m a bad person, Annah,” he says softly. I glance back at him. He’s rolled almost onto his side. He’s gulping for air. I’m the last person he’ll ever talk to. The last person he’ll ever see—at least when he’s alive.
“I think we all make choices,” I tell him quietly.
And then he stops breathing.
I scramble for the machete and start running toward him, hoping to end it before he can Return, but when I’m halfway there I realize just how deafening the moaning through the tunnels has become. I recognize the beating under my feet, so constant that I’d grown accustomed to it. The air swells around me, and when I look up I see their eyes first.
They’re coming for me, a wall in the distance. I glance back at Ox, my grip on the machete so tight that my knuckles ache. He’s already twitching; his mouth opens and he screams loud before his vocal cords collapse and he’s struggling to his feet.
Terror wells inside me, as frigid as ice water. It threatens to paralyze me but I break against it, sprinting back to the debris pile.
They come after me, shuffling and stumbling and thundering with their moans. I tear at the rock wall, try again to shove myself through the gap. It’s still too narrow.
I can’t stop glancing back, some sick part of me needing to know just how much time I have left. Ox lumbers toward me, the rest of the horde closing in around him. He raises his arms, reaching for me.
I hack at the stones again with the machete. Anything to make this gap a little wider. For a brief moment I even consider taking the machete to myself—cutting off an arm so that I could fit through the opening—but I know it would be useless. I’d bleed to death before I ever made it outside.
That’s when the last gasping flames of my fire sputter out, plunging me into darkness once again. There’s just a tiny glow of gray light from the gap I’ve made, a shaft of something brighter cutting through the black like a knife.
Something moves next to me and I shout, swinging the machete wildly. At first it only cuts through the air but I swing again and feel it connect with Ox’s flesh.
The moans continue. More bodies stumble along the tracks toward me. They keep coming. There’s no escape. There will never be escape.
They’ll smother me and then I’ll wander aimlessly like them until there’s no flesh left to eat. Trapped here forever.
Screaming in rage at the thought, I slice the machete through the air in a wide arc, feeling it dig into a body. I shove the body back as hard as I can and then I dive through the darkness to the debris.
This time I know it’s my last chance. I either squeeze through the gap or become Unconsecrated. I kick my feet against the ground, not caring about the rocks tearing at my ribs and shredding the skin over my hips.
But I’m still too big. I reach for anything on the other side to hold on to, but all I feel is rock and earth and ice.
Something grabs my foot. Dead fingers wrap around my ankle and I know that any second I’ll feel the hard ridge of teeth and I kick violently, jerking to the side as much as possible.
Around me the rocks shift and give just the tiniest bit. But it’s enough. My hips slide free and I’m pulling myself along the ground. When I get through I run my trembling hands over my body to make sure I wasn’t bitten. To wipe away the feel of those fingers on my cold pricked flesh.
Arms reach after me through the opening—Ox’s arms, with fresh bites still marking the skin—but he’s too big to get out. He’ll be stuck there reaching for me until eventually they all down or the force of so many bodies against the debris shifts it, pushing back the barrier and spilling them out into the world.
I stare at Ox’s hand. Minutes ago he was alive. Three days ago I pressed my palm against his chest to stop him from fighting Catcher. And now this is all that’s left.
Outside the night glimmers, the darkness just before dawn so much brighter than the emptiness of the tunnels that I can see a few shapes stumbling toward me in the shadows.
As much as I’d love to collapse and weep, I’m not safe. Not yet.
Beside me a trestle of the track juts from the ground, and I test my weight on its braces before starting to climb. At the top, the rails from the tunnel continue into the distance. It’s deserted up here, and I sit, pulling my knees to my chest, allowing myself a moment of rest.
That’s when I let the tears come. I can still feel the fingers of the dead on me, still hear their moans. Every inch of me is bruised and battered, my muscles so fatigued they don’t even protest anymore.
But I survived.
And now it’s time to live.
I scour the horizon. To my left a band of light teases the sky, the smallest hint of morning. But it’s enough that I can see the path of the tracks stretching forward, and I push myself to my feet, determined to find Catcher and the others.
I can barely walk in a straight line after being trapped in the tunnels for so long, the cold eating into me. But the trestle is narrow and some of the boards are rotted, and it takes all my concentration to put one foot solidly in front of the other. A few dead stumble along the ground below me, pawing at the braces, and yet without the horde rumbling after me it feels quiet out here in the fog-coated morning.
The tracks take me past expanses of barren land, charred bricks chewed over by weeds. A long low cemetery fades out of view to be overtaken by a graveyard of rusted-out train cars. From all of these places the dead come, trailing behind on the ground as I make my way past overhead. They moan and reach and I ignore them all.
Eventually, as the sky lightens, a structure begins to rise from the mist in the distance. Elegant curves and twists fading in and out of the tumbling clouds. I rub my eyes, wondering if my mind’s playing tricks on me.
It’s almost too painful to hope. I swallow, pressing my fingers to my lips as tears blur the outline of what has to be the roller coaster from the picture on the map.
The roller coaster Catcher told me about.
I want to call out, to scream for joy as my body aches with the possibility of relief, but I still can’t believe it. I move forward slowly, waiting for the world to crash in around me again.
Because I can’t believe this could be it. I can’t believe I’ve made it this far.
As I draw closer, the trestle branches toward a bridge crossing a vine-choked road, and I climb over it, dodging a few Unconsecrated who wander too close. I stumble through hip-high weeds, tripping over old roots and stones. With every step I want to stop, but I just promise myself one more and then one more again. My eyes never leave the coaster; I crane my neck as I draw closer.
The top of it is shrouded in the early-morning mist, a frozen white fog clinging to the dips and curls of the ride.
Something shifts along the curve of the tallest hump and I freeze. It’s a shadow. A person.
My heart starts to pound.
Just then a breeze blows from the water, curling the mist away from him.
The arch of his neck, the set of his shoulders. Everything inside me stops.
Catcher.
