I think about Travis and Harry and this endless path and I realize that sometimes death comes before you expect it. That while we are rarely prepared for our friends, family and loved ones to die, we are never prepared for our own deaths. Never prepared to reconcile our own regrets.
I storm down the path, tears blinding me. When I rejoin the others I go straight to Harry and hold out my arm, the Binding rope dingy and dangling. “Cut it,” I tell him. “With the ax.”
He takes my hand in his, lifts the rope away from the delicate white skin of the inside of my wrist. The blade of the ax is cold and sharp and slices easily through the thin rope.
He still grasps my forearm in his hand while the tatters of the delicate Bindings float to the ground. I feel him tug at me slightly but I resist. He then raises my wrist to his mouth and kisses the raw skin chafed by the rope. Harry's eyes are not on me but on his brother as he lets me go, a small possessive smile on his face.
There seems to be no end. In the mornings we lick dew from the leaves. We try to find shade in the heat of the day, sleep to conserve energy. But still we are slowly dying. Our steps have become shallow and lethargic. Travis's limp is more pronounced, as if he doesn't have energy except to simply drag his leg behind him. Argos trails along after us, no longer bounding ahead to explore but panting with the effort of existence.
One afternoon, two days after burying Beth and five days after the breach, a storm rolls around us and we are almost giddy with excitement. But it only drizzles, enough to dampen our clothes and tongues but not nearly enough to refill our water bladders.
We are barely living. With each step we mirror the Unconsecrated that pace along beside us on the other side of the fence. Some days I wonder what the difference between us really is.
As the days wear on I feel the weight of responsibility on my shoulders. Travis's question echoes in my mind: are we the only survivors? And if so, have I killed us by insisting we continue through the Forest? If we had returned to the village could we have made a difference in the fight against the Unconsecrated? Should we have turned back? Taken a different branch in the path?
Am I responsible for the final fall of mankind?
Ten days after the breach, as the morning sun burns away the fog, we come to another break in the path. This time, rather than two diverging paths, we come to a square clearing with a different gate on every side. Cass collapses, pulling Jacob to her and offering him the last of her rations—the food that she herself has not been eating but saving for him.
She closes her eyes and rests her sharp cheek on his head as he slips the small bit of dried meat past his lips.
I have lost count of the number of forks in the path we have traveled through. At first I tried to keep it all in my head like a map. Tried to remember which paths were marked with which letters. I would spend our days walking trying to puzzle it all together, trying to find the pattern.
But then I began to forget, the mental images I had preserved of each path and each metal bar began to grow hazy and fade so that sometimes I was sure that the letters were repeating themselves. That we would end up crossing paths we'd already come across, just like a true maze.
I am ready to give up. To admit defeat. To tell them about Gabrielle's letters and beg for forgiveness that I've brought us to this place when Harry reads off the letters from the bars attached to the gates as he has done at every branch we've come to.
“X-X-X-I,” he says, before dragging himself to the next. “X-I-X,” he says. “And finally, X-I-V.”
My head snaps up. My heart pounds in my chest as if I have come up for air after too long underwater. I scramble to where Harry leans against the last gate, looking down the path with his face pressed against the rusty links.
I run my hand over the metal bar and then trace my fingers over the letters: XIV. In my mind I'm tracing my fingers over a pane of glass in the Cathedral, following the path that Gabrielle laid out for me: XIV.
These are her letters. This is her path.
“We should rest before going farther,” Harry says, but already I'm tugging on the lever, pulling open the gate. I hear them protesting behind me but my ears rush with blood. I cannot wait for them. I can't rest.
I trip down the path, my legs still weak but my mind pushing them forward. I can hear the others behind me, hear Cass yelling that she doesn't want to keep going. To leave her alone.
But I do not wait.
The afternoon sun is slipping through the sky when I'm forced to my knees, my breath heavy in my chest—my body protesting, spent and exhausted. The others finally catch up, panting.
“It has to be here,” I tell them.
And that is when I see the village through the trees.
Chapter 22
There are no people. No smoke rising from the houses. The elaborate platforms in the trees are empty, the ladders lying in the dirt, their rungs covered in weeds. The world here is silent. Still. Barren.
For as long as we've walked along the path the moans of the Unconsecrated have been constant. When the sound is that unceasing the mind must find a place to store the incessant reminder of death. And so the moans become nothing more than a hum, a background rhythm to life.
Perhaps that's why none of us notices when the tenor of that hum changes, intensifies, harmonizes. When it echoes around us and pushes in on us until we are surrounded by the noise.
Instead, we each go our own way, mesmerized by this new and yet empty place. “Food!” Jacob says, his voice tinged with ecstasy. He pulls away from Cass's starved hands and runs toward the nearest building. Cass calls weakly, her voice scratchy from dehydration, and stumbles after him.
No one stops her; the rest of us continue farther into the village. Even though it's empty this place seems more settled than our own village. Here the streets are wide and laid out in a grid. The buildings are larger and more solid. There's a street dedicated to commerce: signs announcing the wares inside hang over each opening, shifting in the breeze.
We walk down what looks to be the main street and Harry and Jed veer off toward a building ringed with weapons, leaving Travis and me alone to stare with wonder at our new surroundings.
I look up and notice that, like our village, this place has platforms in the trees as a refuge from breaches in the fence. But unlike our village, these platforms have structures built in: houses, pathways between platforms, ropes and pulleys. It's as though an echo of the village on the ground exists in the trees. Like a reflection in a pail of water.
I stand there, my head tipped back in wonder as sunlight shifts through the buds on the trees and dapples my face. Fills me with peace. I close my eyes and listen to the sound of air sifting through the branches, knocking knotted ropes against tree trunks and causing a door on a nearby house to bump against a wall ever so subtly.Even with my senses trained on the world around me, I don't notice the crescendo of the moans.
Until I hear someone yell. Until I hear my brother shout, “Run!” Until I feel Travis's hand grasp my arm, the sound of breaking glass by my head.
They stumble from doorways out into the sun. The downed Unconsecrated that have waited so long in this village for living flesh to arrive push aside crumbling fences break through dusty windows. Anything to get at us.
I move to the closest platform but Travis pulls me back. “The ladder,” he says, his fingers pushed deep into my arm. “My leg. I can't.”
For a moment I don't understand and then he tugs me away from this street and draws me back toward the gate and the path. Back to the known world that's safe and free from the Unconsecrated. Back to where we came from.
I jerk my arm from his, unable to return to that path. To give up on this village and my search for the end of the Forest and the ocean. I know that once we go back to the path we will be trapped, the Unconsecrated barring the gate for days and weeks to come. We will never be able to get back in.
“We'll never make it,” I say to Travis. And I'm right. Already we're too far into the village, and the Unconsecrated between us and the fence are too many to dodge.
I urge Argos from where he cowers at my feet, ears pinned to his head, the low thrum of a growl reverberating against my legs. He looks at me for a moment, his hesitation clear. And then I nudge him with my knee and he's off, his training taking over as he runs from building to building. Backing away and growling when he smells the death of Unconsecrated.
This time it's me pulling Travis along, his gait halting because of the stiffness of his bad leg. He slows me down but I am unwilling to leave him.
I hear the panicked shouts of Jed and Harry but I don't take the time to locate them. I can only assume that they are also seeking refuge, hopefully in the empty world up in the trees.
At every doorway Argos barks and turns back. The Unconsecrated pour from the structures, from every hidden place in the village, and I begin to fear that we may never find a safe haven. That this place is nothing more than a hive of hibernating Unconsecrated.
We move out from the center of the village, away from shops and toward the houses. Unconsecrated drag themselves from the surrounding fields, a mass of them scenting and trailing behind us.
Travis stumbles and his hand slips from mine. I turn and see a small boy coming toward us. His clothes are tattered and his arms hang loose by his sides. I'm mesmerized by his eyes—a fathomless milky blue against pale white skin and a shock of red hair. Freckles splatter across his nose and over his cheeks and the tips of his ears.
He looks almost alive, as if he's just woken from a nap to find his world abandoned and shifted. Before I realize it, I have extended my hand as if to welcome him to me. To tell him that everything is okay, that he's only awoken into a nightmare and that this will pass into sweeter dreams.
He's almost in my arms, his head turning toward my hand, his mouth opening to expose teeth when a boot-clad foot flashes in front of my eyes, connects with the boy's head and sends him spinning back.
It's Travis and he clutches his bad leg. He grabs me and pulls me away from the boy, saving his ire until we're safe.
I can't resist looking back over my shoulder at the boy, who is now struggling to stand. Spots of blood mix with the freckles on his face, and his nose is now concave, pushed back into his head from the kick.
But still he comes for me. His eyes locked on to me.
Argos nips at my heels, his teeth insistent on the flesh of my calves. He uses his body to push me, to herd Travis and me toward a large thick three-story house that dominates the end of the street.
The Unconsecrated are now within touching distance and as we close in on the door to the house we have to push them aside, their mouths gaping open as they grope for us. They lean toward us and I smell their death and then we are inside and Travis pushes at the door until it clicks shut.
The stillness of the house spurs me to action and I run to the windows, throwing closed the shutters, using the thick boards propped against the walls to reinforce them. When we have the first floor safe and secure I run upstairs and am faced with a long hallway lined with closed doors on each side.
Argos's nails click against the wood of the floor as he sniffs at the cracks under each door. The air up here is close and heavy with must. At the last door Argos begins to tremble, a low and long growl shaking his frame.
I press a hand against the door, place my ear against the wood. I can hear a soft thump over and over again. Like the sound of a cat locked in a cupboard—it echoes my pounding heart. Even though I know I should wait for Travis, I swallow the fear in my throat and ease the door open a crack, ready to push back against Unconsecrated hands.
But there is nothing. Just the continued thump that is louder now that there is no barrier between us.
I allow the door to swing the rest of the way open and I'm surprised by the brightness of the room. A large window allows sunlight to slant across a faded rug. Against one wall is a small bed with a patchwork quilt done in blues and yellows. Above that, hanging on the wall, is a painting of a tree with lush green leaves.
I turn to look behind the door and then I see the origin of the thumping. Tucked into the corner is a white crib with a white lace skirt. I don't want to know more, but still I'm compelled to walk closer, to look over the edge.
There is a child—a baby—who long since kicked off her blankets. Her skin is ashen and her mouth open in a perpetual yet silent scream. She isn't old enough to roll over, to sit up, to climb. So she lies there kicking her fat legs against the footboard of the crib, eternally calling for her mother. For food.
For flesh.
Her eyes are crinkled shut and yet I know that she is Unconsecrated. I can tell by the fact that no blood pumps through her body, the soft spot at the top of her head no longer pulsing. By the fact that her skin sags. By her smell.
And because no child could have survived in this village for this long were it living. She thrusts one bare foot in the air and I see the bite marks, the ring of wounds that circle her ankle and that have led her to this place.
I stand and stare at her. I have never seen an Unconsecrated infant. I should feel compassion. I should feel something inside me tugging me toward this helpless child, some sort of dormant maternal instinct. I should want to change her soiled clothing, to care for her.
My legs begin to quiver from exhaustion, the world around me tilting so that I have to clutch at the rails of the crib to keep standing. Argos paces in the doorway, whining, his scruff raised and teeth bared. The room reeks of death, engulfing my senses, invading my head—he doesn't like me being so close to the danger of the Unconsecrated.
And still the child with its silent, openmouthed wail, its kicking fervor. Its blatant need.
I am so tired of the need. The need for survival and food and safety and comfort. All I want is silence and sleep. Peace.
I think of the choice my mother made to join my father in the Forest. I used to believe that she became infected by mistake, in a wild burst of passion at seeing my father along the fence line. Now I'm not so sure. Now I wonder if she simply gave up, if the struggle of life and hope finally overwhelmed her.