The Dead-Tossed Waves (39 page)

“It’s not my choice to make, Gabry,” he says.

“But she’s going to kill herself,” I wail at him. “We’re supposed to protect people. It’s what it means to be human. We’re supposed to take care of them. We can’t …” I choke back the words, trying to control my breathing. “I can’t let her do it,” I say, letting the hot tears trace down my cheeks. “What if it doesn’t work? She’ll be gone.”

Elias wraps his hands around mine, pulling me to him. He’s safe and warm and strong.

“Is this all there is?” I ask him. I’m so tired of this struggle, of trying to survive when it seems like there’s no point to it. When everyone I love dies or changes and I’m left alone. “Is this what life is about? Waiting for death? Looking for it? Inviting it in?”

“No,” he says, his voice barely a whisper against my cheek. “That’s not what life is.”

“Then what is it?” I need him to give me a reason to keep fighting. To keep pushing forward even though it’s so hard. Even though I’m not sure I can.

“This,” he says, and he presses his lips to mine.

His kiss is warm. It’s more full of life than any moment I’ve ever experienced. It’s heat, it’s pressure and need and desire. His fingers tangle in my braid, bringing me closer to him and my hands pull to his back, feeling the flex of his shoulders
under my touch. Sparks shatter in my head and I understand in this moment what he means about this being what life is.

If I could stay here forever, just like this, just the two of us entwined in the darkness, I would.

Elias breaks away first and I lean back in to him but he steps away and my lips only brush the heat of the air. At every spot he touched my skin tingles. I raise my fingers to my lips, feeling dazed. Wanting more. For the first time I’m content with who I am; where I am. I don’t want to go back in time. I don’t want to erase everything that’s happened because I don’t want to erase this moment.

“You don’t know how many times I wanted to call you Abby or Abigail,” he says, his voice hoarse with longing. “All the times growing up when I’d look at Annah and think about you.”

His words strike together in my head, leaving a trail of chills down my back. A thought occurs to me that makes my chest ache. “Did you … do you think about Annah when you look at me?”

His eyes become guarded. “I think about her all the time,” he says. “I’ve spent so many months going from town to town and city to city looking for her.”

“Am I just a replacement for her?” I ask. I think about everything he’s done for Annah, all the things he’s been through, the guilt he feels. I wouldn’t blame him for thinking of her when he looks at me. But I need him to understand that I’m not her. I’m never going to replace Annah.

His face goes white and his mouth opens. He’s shaking his head but still not saying anything. He looks both terrified and angry but most of all sick to his stomach. I wait for him to tell me that I’m crazy, that I’m wrong. But instead he just turns
and walks away, leaving me there in the darkness with the taste of him still on my lips.

The moon is only a sliver in the sky, its sharp edges blurred by the watery heat of the summer night as I walk back to the garden where I left Cira. My mind roars, delighting in the memory of Elias’s kiss and then twisting when I think that he might just want me because I remind him of someone else.

When I get to the courtyard it’s empty and my heart begins to beat staccato. Slowly, I walk over to the bench where Cira last sat. Draped in the middle of it is a small object and I bend over, tracing my finger along the cord of Cira’s superhero necklace. I pick it up feeling the weight of Cira’s hopes and dreams—her belief that someone out there was greater than us and would save us.

Around me crickets whir and a bullfrog grunts but otherwise I hear nothing but the distant Mudo moans. Something shuffles behind me and I turn, dropping my hand to the knife on my hip.

My mother walks out of one of the rooms bordering the garden. She hesitates before coming closer, just a brief momentary pause, and I know something’s wrong.

“What?” I ask her, not ready to bear the weight of something new.

“It’s Cira,” she says.

I close my eyes and let my shoulders fall. She steps closer and places her hands on my arms. “What?” I ask, my voice barely more than the brush of the breeze over water.

“She went to the Forest. She asked her brother to get her something to eat and when he was gone she snuck away.”

“What happened?” I whisper, still a shard of hope left in me that she was right about the possibility of being immune. My mother’s hesitation tells me everything.

My legs go weak and my mother helps me sit. She pulls me against her, wrapping her arms around me and holding me tight.

All I can think about is that it’s my fault. I ran away—I couldn’t face Cira and her pain. If I’d been stronger, if I’d stayed by her side, she wouldn’t have been able to sneak out. She wouldn’t have been able to make it to the Forest.

I was kissing Elias while Cira was sacrificing herself.

“Catcher went after her,” my mother says. “But it’s been a while.” She strokes my hair, tucks a strand behind my ear. I stare at the flower Cira last touched, the edge of its petals turning brown and dry. I never got to tell her good-bye.

“Why is everything dying?” I ask her. “This village. Cira. The entire world. I don’t understand what the point is anymore.”

My mother sighs. “I used to daydream about the world,” she says softly. Even though I can’t see her face, I know she has a faraway look about her. “About all the possibilities that existed past the Forest. I used to dream about the ocean. It was all I wanted to see.”

“How did you know that what you wanted was the ocean?” I ask her, my voice thick with tears.

She shrugs. “I don’t know. I’d felt it inside, ever since I was a child. Ever since my mother first told me stories about it.”

I think about Catcher and Elias. About how I wanted to stay at the lighthouse, safe inside the Barrier. How I still want to remember and forget.

I close my eyes tight. “What if I don’t know what I want?”
I ask her, voicing the fear that rages through me. “What if I never know? What if I’m wrong?”

She places a hand on my cheek. “It will be okay,” she says.

I hold my breath, waiting for her touch to bring me comfort. And then I realize that that’s been my problem all along. Not only wanting comfort and security and safety, but looking to others to find it when I need to find it inside myself.

I’ve spent every moment I can remember scared: scared of the Forest, scared to break the rules, scared of the world outside the Barrier. Scared of life. I’ve always looked at everything as black-and-white: alive or dead, safe or savage.

But then how do I explain Catcher, who will always be infected? Elias, who is both a Souler and a Recruiter? My being born in the Forest but growing up beyond? I could have lived my entire life inside the lighthouse but what kind of life would that have been?

I realize that life is risks. It’s acknowledging the past but looking forward. It’s taking a chance that we will make mistakes but believing that we all deserve to be forgiven.

I wipe the tears from my face and push myself up to look at my mother. I feel as though she’s a stranger to me in so many ways. Seeing this village—seeing where she grew up, how she lived—makes me understand even more how little I know about her.

“Are you happy?” I ask her.

“Gabrielle.” She takes my hands in hers and smiles a little. “Life is life,” she says. She shrugs, looking up at me. “You choose to live it or you do not.”

I stare at her, wanting to laugh at the simplicity of what she’s saying. But her words sink into me. It’s as if I’ve been waiting for permission to live my life and she’s given it to me.

I’m just about to hug my mother, to thank her for saying everything I needed to hear, when Elias comes running into the courtyard. His eyes are wide and he barely catches his breath before panting out: “Catcher came back from the Forest. He says the Recruiters are closer than he thought. They’ll be at the village any minute. He’s going to start tearing down the fences—we have to go now!”

I
jump to my feet, the serenity of the moment with my mother now shattered. Already I hear the moans of the Mudo creeping through the night air. We have to stay ahead of them. I start grabbing supplies, my head spinning as I try to remember what we’ll need.

Odys skitters into the courtyard, his hackles raised and his teeth bared. He paces, a low growl rumbling through him, and then he starts to bark. I keep looking over my shoulder into the night, wondering if he sees something that I don’t. Hears something I can’t. I hold my breath, waiting.

And that’s when I see them, swarming around the remains of the Cathedral. They shamble through the darkness toward us.

“Harry,” my mother breathes, dashing back into the house.

My eyes widen; Elias curses and grabs my hand. He slings a bag over his shoulder and shoves my little pack into my
hands. I let him pull me through the village, dodging shadows and listening for the moans. In the distance I hear men shouting but all I can do is run. Follow Elias as he races toward a gate I didn’t see before at the far end of the village.

“My mother!” I scream to him, trying to stop, but he keeps pulling.

“She’ll be okay,” he yells back, and I stumble but keep following him.

We race through what once must have been fields but are now overgrown: vines twisting around stray stalks of corn that whip at my arms as we pass between them. My eyes blur in the night and all I can do is put one foot in front of the other. Our breaths, the sound of our feet hitting the ground, are muffled as we swipe at the tangle of foliage. It makes me afraid that if the Mudo are behind us—if there was a Breaker—we wouldn’t even hear it coming.

I keep looking over my shoulder, waiting. Terrified that the next step could lead me into the arms of slavering Mudo. Hoping to see my mother running behind me. But there’s nothing but shadows trailing us as we run along the fence until we find the other gate.

Elias fumbles with the latch, rust making it almost impossible to flip open. My breathing screams in my ears, the night too quiet, too empty until the Mudo out in the Forest sense our presence and rise, shuffling toward us. They slam into the old chain links, moaning as they try to reach for us.

Finally the gate creaks open and we push through, slamming it behind us. We stand there side by side, staring back into the village. Behind us the trees rustle, branches swaying like the sound of waves on the shore. On either side of us Mudo pound against the fences. In front of us, nothing.

Eventually I can see shapes moving in the dark, stumbling and shuddering. The Mudo filling into the cracks, slowly oozing through the open spaces.

It isn’t fair to have finally realized where I’m from and then to have to leave it so soon. I have memories lost here that I need to find! This is my past, this is who I am.

I think about the other village we walked through, the burned-out husk of what used to be a thriving world. How many other villages like that are there in the Forest? How many lives played out here never knowing there was something beyond?