I continue talking Catcher step by step across the gap but in my head a thousand thoughts roar as I try to find a way to stop them from following us, to keep us safe. And I keep coming to the same conclusion: the only way to cross the gap is the fence; the only way to stop the Recruiters is to find a way to break it.
When we finally reach the other side of the gap, Catcher almost kneels to kiss the crumbling concrete. On this end of the bridge there are cars piled against the fence, so the Mudo can’t reach me. But already I can feel how the bridge tilts at a steep angle, making it harder for me to keep my toes gripping the ledge. The metal of the chain links bites harder into my fingers as I’m forced to bear more and more of my weight with my hands.
Behind me the Recruiter is almost to the gap, the hooks he’s using to grab the fence making it easier for him to move along the ledge. “We’re not going to hurt you,” he calls out to me. “You’ll be safe with us, I promise.”
I shake my head and wedge my toes into the links, trying to hold on. With each step Catcher takes, I feel a small rumble through my legs, the bridge shuddering under his new weight. Suddenly my grip feels even more precarious.
“Catcher,” I wheeze, my arms screaming with the effort. “The cars.” I take another breath. “On the other side of the bridge.” Sweat drips into my eyes, blurring everything. “See if you can roll them against these other ones.” I shift my hands. “The bridge is unstable—we have to throw off the weight and if we pile enough up maybe they’ll break the fence.”
His eyes widen. “Are you kidding me? The fence is the only thing keeping you on this bridge.”
I nod my head and wipe my face against my shoulder. “I know,” I tell him. “But, it’s the only way. I’ll keep going. But you have to break it.”
He jumps onto the car closest to me and rests his fingers on my own. “It’s too much of a risk,” he says. “We can just keep going, try to put distance between us.”
I taste salt, not knowing if it’s tears or sweat. “I can’t let them get you, Catcher. I can’t spend the rest of my life watching them use you. Knowing that it’s because of me.”
“Gabry,” he says again, my name a plea. But I just shake my head.
“I’ll be okay. I can make it,” I tell him, trying to sound convincing. I start moving away, slipping my fingers out from underneath his.
Behind us the Recruiters keep making progress, starting to run for us. I struggle along the fence, the sharp tilt of the bridge making it harder and harder to hold on. I close my eyes and try not to think about the horde. Try not to think about how destroying the bridge erases the only link between me and Elias. Between me and my mother. Hoping that Elias was right and there will be another path out of the Forest. A way to find the Dark City.
Behind me I hear the screech of metal as Catcher pries open the door to a car. I hear a horrific scraping sound as the car grinds across the bridge and then the fence shudders as the car collides with it and I try not to scream. Already I feel the concrete under my toes moving and straining; the bridge groans with the sudden shift of weight.
The Recruiter grunts and I look up to see him lose his footing. He’s frantic as he dangles, trying to crawl back up onto the narrow ledge. But he can’t. The only things keeping him from falling are the hooks, and even from here I see his hands weakening.
“Please,” I hear him utter. His eyes bounce everywhere: the sky, the Mudo, the other Recruiters on the bridge, me. In that instant he isn’t a Recruiter—a monster—he’s just like Elias and Cira and the others. Just someone who left his family and maybe his friends to serve and find a better life.
Then I hear a loud screech as another car crumples against the others. The fence bulges under the weight of them. The bridge lists at an even sharper angle. And the Recruiter lets go, his black shirt fluttering around him. Even as he falls through nothingness, his arms scramble for something to grab, some way to save himself.
His eyes lock on mine. I see the terror. The realization of what’s to come. I bury my head in my shoulder but I know when he hits the ground—I can tell from the crescendo of moans, the horde’s voices growing louder, a tidal wave of noise and need.
I’m almost to the end of the bridge when I hear a loud crack and the whip sound of metal tearing. The fence pulls tight under my fingers and then seems to disintegrate. I shuffle as fast as I can along the ledge and scramble for the road just as an enormous rumbling tears through me.
Catcher’s running as behind him everything dissolves at once. A high-pitched squeal turns to screeches as cars shift and pile up on top of each other. What’s left of the bridge tilts farther and farther to the side at an impossible angle and then starts to crumble in on itself.
A huge section tears free and crashes down into the valley, the sound so loud it’s like thunder breaking in my head. Catcher reaches me and shoves me on top of the brick wall bordering the road and we stand there panting, feeling the reverberations along the ground.
A few Recruiters stand at the edge where the bridge now ends, staring at us across the massive gap. It’s as if we’re holding our breath as we face each other over the horde. One of the Recruiters, a large man with a red slash of fabric over his chest, points toward Catcher and me—whether in a salute, a farewell or a vow to find us, I don’t know. But I do know that there’s no way for them to follow us and for now we’re safe.
Eventually they turn and start making their way back, the man with the red the last to leave.
I trace the line of the path up the mountain until I see the cliff where Elias fell, see the rest of the Recruiters clustered like black beetles. But I can also see my mother and Harry standing apart from them, holding each other, the small form of Odys sitting by their side.
And then I see another figure next to them, leaning on them for support: Elias. He raises a hand toward me and I raise my hand like an echo. A promise that I’ll do whatever it takes to be with him. To find Annah and wait for him in the Dark City.
“We made it,” I tell Catcher, still in shock. Still amazed that we were able to survive crossing the bridge over the horde.
“Where?” he asks.
I turn to him, feeling myself try to smile. “Here,” I say. “Alive.” It feels strange to stand here on the wall, to not be running. A few Mudo struggle against cars dotted along the road, try to shamble toward me. But for this moment we’re safe.
Catcher starts to smile as well. “What’s next?”
I stare at where the bridge has dissolved. There’s no way for us to ever go back. “We keep going,” I tell him. “We find a way out, make our way to the Dark City, look for Annah and wait for Elias.”
He nods, still grinning, and when we’ve caught our breath and our legs have stopped shaking we meander along the top of the wall along the road until we find the path again. As on the other side of the valley, the two fences dead-end against the wall, the safe space in between leading up into the mountains and away from everything we’ve known before.
Catcher climbs down first and holds his hand up to me. I pause for a moment, thinking about another wall and another time. Thinking about how afraid I felt that night and how I pushed myself forward anyway. I reach up and touch Cira’s superhero and Elias’s metal disk resting against my heart. And then I jump down from the wall and start up the path toward the Dark City.
Epilogue
Catcher and I spend the afternoon walking in easy silence, the rumbling of the horde falling away behind us. We’re both exhausted and finally reach the summit as the sun falls into the trees. I wonder for a moment if we’ll see the lighthouse or the glint of the sun’s reflection off the ocean in the distance but I know we’re too far away for that, too deep in the Forest.
As darkness settles around us a thousand memories race through my mind: I’m a child climbing the stairs to the top of the lighthouse and my mother is teaching me to light the lamp …. She’s holding me against her during a storm ….
She’s teaching me how to pound bread dough, how to name the stars.
But the one that freezes in my head, that stops the spinning, is of her standing at the edge of the ocean, her toes digging into the sand as she stares at the horizon.
That’s who my mother will always be to me. Fierce against the edge of the world. I push my feet into the dirt of the mountain, listening to the trees sway overhead like waves against the shore. That’s who I am now as well, I realize.
I stare out into the darkness. Somewhere out there, somewhere back down the path, is my village. Beyond that is Vista, the lighthouse that will continue to turn, and the waves and the coaster, and beyond that is the Dark City.
There is a world eking out a living at the edge. Clinging on to more than survival. They love and believe and question and hope.
I press my hands into the grass around me, feeling the blades tickle my palms and fingers. Elias was right. Survival is not enough. There has to be more.
There was more for my mother. She pushed past the edges. She tempted the ocean. She wandered the coast. She kept the lantern in the lighthouse burning for anyone else out there to see and find.
I tilt my head back and watch the stars shimmer in the night. I hold my breath and wait and then I see it, the dot of a satellite humming through them all. I hold up my hand and follow it with my finger. Wanting to touch the before time. I wonder if somewhere across the valley Elias is doing the same, touching the same memory and thinking of me.
I close my eyes and think about the feel of him next to me, the way he traces his thumb over my knuckles when he holds my hand. The way my name sounds on his lips. The promise we made to find each other. The belief that we’ll be together again—that this can’t keep us apart. Not anymore.
I understand now that we’ll never live life as it was before the Return. We’ll never recapture that time. The satellites will fall from the sky, the ruins will crumble to the earth and eventually the roller coaster will collapse. We’ll all die and the Mudo will continue to hunger.
It’s the nature of our world.
Maybe, though, it’s time we learned that we don’t have to live within the boundaries we set up. Maybe we have to learn to push those barriers. To reclaim some of what was lost. And to build a new world.