They marched us past the exhibits quickly, nudging me along when I wanted to stop and gawk. And then some girl started screaming about something, throwing a tantrum, and it distracted everyone else and held up the line so that I suddenly could take all the time I wanted wandering from room to room, examining what existed before.
The walls were covered with photographs: shiny bulletlike machines that sped through the tunnels called subways, sloping parks with families picnicking while kids clutched balloons. Buildings that stood tall, the glare of light bouncing off them so bright that even from the dingy picture I wondered how people back then didn’t go blind.
Every detail of the museum awed me. After that visit I became obsessed with trying to understand what this city had been. I wanted a museum of my own—artifacts to decorate our flat’s bare depressing walls. But most of all I wanted to know what happened to this place when the Return hit. What did it smell like? What did it sound like? How did any of it survive?
That was when I first went down into the subways, hoping there’d be clues of what came before, lost in the darkness. I pushed farther and deeper than I had any right to go—than was reasonably safe if you could ever call the tunnels safe at all.
The pit of barbed wire was a trap from the Return—a tangle of razor-sharp wire strung up to catch and maim Unconsecrated, not a little girl so many generations later.
I shudder, remembering the penetrating bite of each keen edge. The sound of Elias’s panic when he came searching and found me bloody and broken.
Now, standing on the roof and looking down, I understand just a taste of what the Return must have been like. The fires that gutted rows of buildings and tore a gash through the old park. The sound of terror as people screamed and the dead moaned. The sight of people running through the streets that could never be safe again.
Without thinking, I slip my hand into Catcher’s. Just needing something human to anchor me in the horror of the moment. His fingers wrap around mine, squeezing tight.
The north end of the island, the Neverlands past the Palisade wall a few blocks away, is almost impossible to see through the haze of thick roiling smoke. The wind twists and pulls flames into the sky, trailing dark clouds out over the river. The bridges leading to the mainland are stuffed with what must be Unconsecrated—so full that bodies tumble over the railings, careening down onto the river below.
But they don’t strike water because the river is a frothing mass—dead churning and sinking only to be replaced by another and then another. The bodies packed so tightly they form almost a solid platform for the ones behind to walk across. They crash against the shore, the walls on either side of the bridge breached and crumbled, not even slowing the onslaught. The far mainland shore writhes with them all, trees snapping and crashing under the barrage of so many arms and legs and hands and feet.
Streams of the living force themselves south along the bridges strung from roof to roof. Even from here I can see how they push and shove, trying to make it to the Palisade wall so they can cross into the Dark City where Catcher and I stand.
Except the bridges aren’t meant for so much weight—for such panic. They sway, some of them snapping, and spill their occupants into the rolling sea of dead below.
And that’s what it’s like in the streets: an ocean of dead. Bodies tumble over and around each other. In some places they pile against the buildings, trying to push their way toward the people they sense inside. Others group under the bridges, their arms raised, waiting for the living to rain down.
The worst part is the tidal wave of dead surging toward the Palisade wall—slowly and inevitably. Recruiters line the top of the thick wall, shooting at any body that tries to cross over, be it living or dead. The Unconsecrated shove against it, their moans a roar of desperation.
Suffusing everything are the screams of the people. Shouts for mercy as the Recruiters fire bolt after bolt into the crowd swarming the wall, trying to find any weakness to make it across. More Recruiters join the fray, their faces pinched in concentration.
Catcher tugs my hand, trying to pull me from the edge of the roof. No place is safe in this city—anywhere on the island—at this point. The Unconsecrated can’t climb the wall, but their numbers are piling against it so deep that they just crawl over one another. Like a rushing river hitting an obstacle, soon they’ll crest the top and flood into the Dark City, if they don’t push the wall down first.
We may be out of harm’s way now, but that won’t last long.
Yet I can’t take my eyes off the chaos of the Neverlands. Fires consume the bridges, eating along old ropes leaping from building to building, tearing through box-shaped structures and blowing out the few windows left. Flames pepper and snap as they find old tinder.
I look behind us down the length of the Dark City and it’s like a mirror of the Neverlands: bridges stuffed with people pushing toward the docks, which are already swollen and overwhelmed. Boats dot the river, some of them half empty and others capsizing under the barrage of too many trying to climb aboard. People dive into the half-frozen water, swimming desperately toward anything that floats.
My stomach tightens and acid eats up my throat as I realize just how dire the situation is. The main bridges to the mainland in the north are already drowning in Unconsecrated, panicked escapees folding under the onslaught. The water underneath churns with the dead, the bodies so numerous they can almost walk on top of one another before sinking.
“We have to find my sister,” I finally say, the thought of her kick-starting my mind away from the horror of what’s going on, giving me a goal—something to focus on so that I’m not pulled under in the tide of panic.
“How?” Catcher stands facing me. He looks as helpless as I feel.
“I don’t know.” I start jogging across the roof, dodging around old barren gardens thick with dead weeds. I vault a low wall onto the next building and thread my way toward the bridge at the end of the block.
“Where are you going?” Catcher shouts, following me across the spindly bridge, the boards under my feet almost rotten.
“Home,” I call over my shoulder as I race south. This corner of the City was practically abandoned even before the horde hit, and most everyone who tried to scrape out an existence here already left after the Rebellion, when it became pointless to pay such high rents to live in a city that no longer promised safety and order.
We cross past a few panicked families, their backs loaded with bags of supplies as they rush from roof to roof toward the docks to the southeast, the only hope of an escape. “What do we do?” they ask, their eyes wide and terrified, but I don’t know what to tell them and so I just keep running.
All they have to do is look around them to see how hopeless the situation is.
The building with my flat is an old high-rise. It used to occupy an entire block until half of it crumbled a few years ago, leaving me the only occupant after everyone else moved away. Trees already struggle up through the rubble pile, winter-burned vines twisting through rooms now exposed to the elements.
I race across the roof, skirting the edges of my garden as if it matters whether I trample the fragile buds. Once at the fire escape I make my way down to the fifth floor, not even pausing before I step through the window.
My mistake is in thinking that things would be the same as I left them only a few days ago. My mistake is in not checking to see if the flat is empty. In barging in without a weapon drawn.
For assuming that the panic of the horde would mean that people were consumed with tasks more important than breaking into places that are not their own.
I see the figure standing by the bed at the back of the long narrow room and my heart skips. I pause, and the sudden change in my momentum causes me to stumble, my balance thrown off.
His body is wrapped in shadows, the meager winter light from the window not penetrating deep enough to illuminate his features. He stands with all his weight on one leg, and his once-black shirt is now frayed and gray, the cuffs at his hands ragged. His fingers clutch into fists.
“Annah?” White clouds slip through the frozen air as he exhales my name.
I close my eyes. I will my heart to stop beating and my blood to stop pumping so that nothing can distract me from the full measure of the sound of him calling my name, his voice soft as his lips form around the sounds and syllables.
It can’t be true. It can’t be him. I know this deep inside, and I understand the realization that this person in my flat is really a stranger will be one of the most painful I’ll have to endure.
But for just this moment I want to believe. I want to imagine that even while the City falls apart outside, something can still be hopeful.
“Elias,” I breathe.
Chapter XII
His eyes grow wide and mine fill with tears. In an instant, I see all the ways he’s changed over the past three years, every feature hazily familiar. Where his hair used to be long enough to tuck behind his ears, now it’s short, as if his head’s been shaved recently. Three faint remnants of scratches run down his cheek, so light I’d probably not have seen them if I weren’t staring at him, examining him so closely.
My heart quickens as the reality of the situation washes over me.
Elias. This is my Elias. He’s here, right in front of me. I stare at him, at the curve of muscle over bone that protrudes too far. The way his cheeks seem a little sharp, and barely visible lines furrow between his eyes. He’s at once the boy who left me behind and yet someone else entirely. Someone new and almost scary.
Suddenly I wonder what changes he sees in me—if I’m the girl he remembers or if I’ve changed as he has. My stomach feels fluttery at the way he stares at me, taking me in.
In all my dreams of him coming home again, this is how it happens—me and him alone in the flat. Safe together.
He’s just moving toward me when Catcher stumbles into the room, placing his hand on my back to avoid knocking into me. I know the instant he senses someone else in the flat because he steps forward and in front of me, his fingers reaching for my arm to push me toward the window and safety.
Elias halts, taken aback. “Catcher?” Confusion spreads across his features and Catcher stiffens.
And then before anything else happens, before I can touch Elias and pull him into a hug to make sure that it’s really him and he’s really here safe and alive, he grabs Catcher. “Where’s Gabry?” he demands, looking out the window past both of us as if expecting her to follow.
It’s like I don’t exist, hidden behind Catcher’s back. I step around him and watch as Elias grips Catcher’s shoulders hard. Catcher winces, the wound on his upper arm fresh under the bandage. He eases out of Elias’s grasp.
“Where is she?” Elias asks again, his voice taking on an edge of hysteria. I’m stunned by the look on his face, the barely controlled panic.
I move forward, place my hand on his arm. “I have to find her,” he says to Catcher as if I’m not even there. “I promised her I’d find her.”
The tension between them almost crackles. They’re squared off, facing each other, and I brace myself.
“The Recruiters have her,” I tell Elias.
He stares at me a moment as if he doesn’t understand and then shoves a hand in his hair and wraps the other behind his neck. Such a painfully familiar gesture that my chest burns. He paces back toward the shadows of the room.
I follow, hovering behind him. “It happened yesterday.” I look back at Catcher for confirmation. After being knocked out and spending so much time in the darkness of the tunnels, I’m still confused about how much time has passed.
“The day before,” Catcher corrects me.
“I was on the bridge and saw it happen. They were both coming into the City and the dogs smelled his infection. The Recruiters had him, but she distracted them long enough for him to get away and they took her.”
Elias faces the wall at the back of the flat, his forehead pressed against it. I’m just about to lay my fingers on his shoulder—anything to try to comfort him—when he lashes out, swinging at the wall so hard his fist crashes through it.
Jolted, I shout his name and reach for his hand. Blood already trickles over his knuckles and smears along the cracked plaster. I’ve never seen Elias violent before, not like that. I’ve seen him fight Unconsecrated and fight to protect me but never violence just for the sake of it.
Something cold tightens inside me as I realize how much a person can change in three years.
“Elias.” I say his name the way I would to a wounded animal, trying to soothe. He looks up at me, the pain in his eyes deep. “We’ll find her,” I tell him, because I don’t know what else to say to make it better.
He takes a step toward me and then I’m in his arms, his hands pulling me tightly to him as if we can erase the time and distance of the past. “I missed you, Annah,” he says, his voice muffled against my hair.
I tilt my face into the crook of his neck. He is everything familiar and yet I can tell how our bodies have changed and grown. How we don’t fit quite like we used to.
“I missed you so much,” he adds, and all I can do is nod, because if I say anything my voice will crack and he’ll know I’m barely able to control the emotions building up in me.
Catcher clears his throat. He’s standing by the window looking out into the narrow alley between our building and the row over. “We should figure out what the next step is, because that Palisade wall won’t hold back the Mudo for long.”
I pull away from Elias, feeling suddenly out of place. The narrow room seems small and cramped with two large men in it. Elias looks around, his gaze lingering here and there, making me wonder what memories are playing out in his mind.