“Gabry, wait!” Daniel calls after me, but I don’t stop and his voice fades behind me. My name with it.
I push through the thick dry sand, my legs screaming with the effort, until I reach the base of the lighthouse. My lungs burn and muscles twitch but still my mind whirs. I look up. Light cuts across the sky, casting my mother’s shadow against the glass. I watch as she stands and stares at the ocean.
This place has always been my home. And yet now I don’t know what it is anymore. I don’t know who I am.
Everything seems too far away, too hopeless, the weight of what I have to overcome too much. In the darkness I see the remnants of my mother’s sailboat and remember days with her out on the water. Suddenly everything becomes clear: I have to find Catcher. And going out into the ocean is the only way.
Chapter 9
I watch my mother from the beach as she paces around the gallery, staring into the darkness. I tap my fingers against my thighs, dig my toes into the sand with impatience, waiting for her to walk away so I can drag the boat to the water without her noticing.
I think about the universal law of gravitation—knowledge that’s always seemed so useless. It was a short winter day when the Protectorate sent a new teacher to our town, a young man who arrived with a light in his eyes that slowly dulled as weeks went on, the cold pressing in tight and the snow falling deep and thick.
All the kids in town from six to sixteen were in one classroom together. The teacher tried to find a way to make the lessons interesting for everyone, and he had the younger children scouring for rocks to represent planets while he tried to walk the older ones through complicated math calculations.
No one believed him when he explained mass, when he tried to teach us what held our feet to the ground. Some of the parents even pulled their kids out of the school—an extra pair of hands at home was more important than learning science that we’d never use.
But Cira stayed because she was an orphan and preferred lessons to chores and I stayed because my mother always thought education was important, especially science, which she’d never had a chance to learn growing up. I remember the desperation on the teacher’s face as he tried to explain it all to us, to prove to us that the earth we knew was a giant mass spinning in space.
He had a small collection of books from before the Return which he shared with us, showing us pictures that looked like drawings, faded photos on yellowed paper of worlds within worlds within worlds.
Cira thought it was all a joke and preferred to look at the pictures rather than try to understand what it all meant. She held out her superhero necklace one day and asked him how superheroes were able to fly if gravity worked all the time. The teacher almost cried at her question, unable to determine if she was serious or playing a prank.
Midwinter he left without saying a word and the Protectorate didn’t send another teacher until after the harvest the next year. Even after all this time I haven’t made up my mind about gravity, about mass and rotation and force.
Until now. Until this moment standing by the ocean when I realize that my body is like the planets, the center holding every other part spinning around it. Remove the center and everything else collides and falls away.
My mother continues to stare toward the Forest and I continue to feel as though every part of me is expanding beyond my bounds. It will serve her right to worry about me, I think. To understand what it must have been like for my other mother.
When she finally disappears from the gallery, I sneak to the side of the house and pull the boat from its rack. It scrapes against the sand as I tug and I cringe, hoping that my mother can’t hear the noise over the crash of the waves. Every time the light cuts across the sky I tense, afraid of it giving me away.
It takes me five tries before I’m able to remember how to run the rotting lines through the mast and boom. The bow of the little boat rests against the edge of the surf and I stand staring at it, my hands on my hips and chest heaving with the effort of having dragged it across the beach.
I nudge the hull with my toe, noticing a few cracks where the wood is warped, but there don’t seem to be any obvious breaches. The sail’s almost useless, though, a giant tear down the middle and a few of the old patches practically threadbare.
I could go back. I could climb the stairs and slip into my bed. I could hold my breath, hoping that my mother will come and trail her fingers through my hair as if nothing’s different. I could forget everything my mother told me earlier. I could try to forget everything that happened last night—bury it all down deep. I could forgive my mother for not telling me the truth.
But she’s not my mother, I remember. I squeeze my eyes closed. She’s everything I’ve ever known, a mother to me in every way. Except that somewhere, some other time, I had a different mother. I had another family I know nothing about.
What happened to her? Why was I left alone in the Forest? Why did she leave me? Why did she let me go? Could she have done it on purpose?
Light and dark swirl around me. Overhead the sky seems limitless, as if nothing’s holding me to the ground. Too many questions. Too many possibilities. I grab a sickle and shove the boat into the water, wanting to escape them all. The hull scrapes across the sand and slaps against a wave, spraying me with water. I toss the weapon into the boat, where it rattles, its blade barely reflecting the moon overhead. And then I push until I’m thigh-deep before leaping into the boat and grabbing the sheet, hoping the old rope isn’t too rotted to tug against the boom. I stare at the reflection of the moon striping across the water almost like a path and wonder what I’m doing. Wonder if I’m really able to do this. Break the rules again. Face the world outside the Barrier.
Heaving a deep breath, I tug on the rope until the sail snaps full of wind and the current against the rudder pulls me diagonal from the beach. I try to pretend that I’m just taking the boat out for fun. That I’m not running away and not about to cross out of Vista.
Drops of surf pelt my face as I gain speed, everything dark. Waves looming, crashing against the boat, making it wobble. Already water’s seeping through the hull, collecting at my feet.
The last lights of Vista wink past, then the dark hulking rocks of the jetty as the boat skips over the water’s surface. It was a mistake to try sailing around the Barrier, I realize. I can’t do this. I can’t break the rules again. I yank the tiller sharply, ducking as the boom snaps across the boat, and turn toward home. But then I see my mother standing on the gallery. Every time the light swings past it illuminates her shadow against the Forest. Where we’re both from.
And I know I can’t go back. Not right now. I can’t forget Catcher the way my mother forgot the people she loved. I shove the tiller putting the lighthouse behind me and holding my breath as I drift past the Barrier. It seems so peaceful—so easy to forget the wall is the cause of so much misery.
I swallow, wipe the salty mist from my face and push back my hair. To my left, past the rows of whitecaps falling against the beach, loom the humps of the amusement park, the moon glinting off its rusted rails. Tightening the sheet, I steer toward land but the current’s stronger than I anticipated, pushing me farther up the coast. The sagging sail can’t battle the tide and my heartbeat pulses in my fingers as I urge the little boat to shore. Finally, well past the rise of the coaster and deep into the old ruins beyond the amusement park, the keel scrapes sand.
For a while I just bob, pushed ashore and then pulled back and pushed ashore again. The water in the hull covers my ankles, making the boat sluggish. But I can’t bring myself to leave it. I’m too scared. I feel as though I could float here forever, just on the edge of where the tide meets the sand, this in-between place.
The beach is unprotected. There could be Mudo anywhere, everywhere. Downed in a quasi-hibernation until they sense a living person.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I jump from the boat and drag it as far away from the surf as I can. I crouch beside it, staring ahead at the thick stripe of dunes as I twist my fingers around the handle of my sickle. On the other side of the dunes are old seawalls from before the town shrank back to its present location. Past those walls hunker rows and rows of crumbling buildings that stretch all the way to the road that separates what’s left of the ruined city and the Forest.
Each sweep of the lighthouse beam illuminates the humps of the coaster rising from the remains of the city down the beach to my left, and I realize just how far off course my boat drifted. I’m much farther past the amusement park than I want to be, but I don’t have any choice but to keep pushing forward. Even though my mind screams at me to shove the boat back into the water and run home, I know I can’t. Not just because Blane will turn me in and because I promised Cira, but also because I owe it to Catcher. He shouldn’t have to face this alone.
Forcing myself to leave the boat behind, I will myself across the beach. I need to get to the other side of the seawall quickly. Out here I’m open and exposed—it’s much more likely that if there are Mudo anywhere they’d have washed ashore and not made it off this beach. The sand is still warm, retaining the heat of the day, and thick with tangles of seaweed and driftwood. When I reach the dunes my feet sink and I stumble, dropping my weapon. I’m on my knees when I hear the moan.
To my left the sand begins to shift, a miniature landslide. A hand reaches free, claws at the air. A shock of terror so pure and deep runs through me that I feel as if I’ve been sliced by steel. I fall back, sliding down the dune. Every part of my body seizes, my mind flashing images of last night: Mudo, blood, bites, infection. I’m slow to react, too sluggish to comprehend what’s going on. I scramble, my hands empty, and then I see my weapon lying out of reach.
Clambering against the soft ground, I drag myself toward my sickle as a fat Mudo man struggles to unbury himself. He’s ungainly, even more uncoordinated than I am, but still too close.
I’m choking on screams, gasping for air. Finally my fingers brush the handle of my weapon. I try to find the calm I’ll need to defend myself but all I can think about is last night. Doubts seep in around me, my mind telling me that I’ll fail again.
I’ve forgotten how to stand, how to protect myself. All I see is the blood trailing down Catcher’s arm.
Suddenly I know I’m not going to be able to defend myself. I realize I’m about to be bitten. Infected. Just like Catcher.
I begin to swing wildly, not waiting for the Mudo to be within range. My eyes beg to close, but I force them to stay open. Somehow the blade slices into the dead man’s neck, but I didn’t swing hard enough and it sticks before it can sever his spinal cord.
My hands are sweaty, the wooden handle slipping through my fingers as I try to tug it free. I start to scream, yelling for help even though I know there’s no one else out here. I’m utterly alone.
The sand shifts and I lose my footing again but refuse to let go of my only weapon. I fall down the hill, pulling the Mudo man with me, my sickle still embedded in his neck.
Our legs tangle briefly and I scream again. I’ve never touched a Mudo before, never felt their flesh. It’s like the skin of an apple left outside for weeks to shrivel and sweat. It’s lifeless, pulled too tight and still somehow sagging. Bile rises to my throat and I gag—I can’t believe how stupid I was to come out here. How lonely it will be to die alone.
We land with a thump at the base of the dune and I roll onto my back, pushing myself away from his grasping hands. I can hear other moans now, see other forms moving under the tall mounds of sand where they must have washed ashore downed and been covered.
The only thing I can think to do is to turn, run back to my boat, but the fat Mudo is pulling himself to his feet, my sickle still wedged in his neck. I’m not sure I can drag my boat to the water fast enough. Not sure I’ll be able to escape.
I freeze. The world that seemed so still is now moving in the moonlight. Around me Mudo drag themselves from the dunes, all of them between me and the seawall. I’m trapped against the waves without a weapon.
My mind whirls, thoughts tearing through my head too fast to understand. I need to run. I need to escape. I need to defend myself. I’ll never be able to fight them all.
I realize again that I’ll die here. Be bitten. Infected. Return. No one will know what happened to me. This understanding flashes fast through my mind, flaying open every dark corner of my fears. My legs grow numb, my mind seizes and nothing works.
“Stop!” I shout at myself, driving the senseless foreboding away.
Against every instinct in my body I force myself toward my boat but I know I won’t make it. There are too many of them now. I turn to the fence but they block that exit too. There’s just a narrow gap in the cluster of dead around me and I dive for it and start running. To my right is the ocean, to my left are the dunes and behind me trails a wake of Mudo.
Air rips from my lungs. I only have to outpace the Mudo—that’s what we’ve always been taught. Mudo can’t run. I slow to a jog and suck in a breath. I can do this, I tell myself. I can survive. I repeat this over and over again with each footfall on the water-packed sand.
Until I remember the girl from last night—the Breaker. Which makes me remember Mellie and the sound her neck made as Catcher shattered it. Which makes me remember the timbre of her desperate moaning just before she died.
Mudo is supposed to mean “mute, speechless,” a word passed down from the traders and pirates who used to fill the harbor. But the creatures trailing me, the people-who-once-were, are anything but mute. They’re nothing but noise—moans of hunger.
Sweat drips into my eyes, blurring everything around me except my memories of last night. I glance over my shoulder at the Mudo falling farther behind, and calculate the distance between us, then scan the darkness of beach ahead.