The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [100]
I know I can’t keep him up here. I try to lift him again and manage to half-stumble, half-slide across the roof to the stairwell. Getting him down the steps is almost impossible. I brace myself underneath him and let him slump down each stair in a barely controlled fall. I wince when his elbow slams into the railing but he barely registers anything.
“You can do it, Elias,” I murmur to him with each flight, hoping he can hear me but knowing he’s probably so deeply lost in fever that my words are meaningless. But I say them anyway because they comfort me and keep me focused.
When I finally get him to our flat I spread a few blankets on the floor and roll him onto them. He retches again but his stomach’s empty and nothing comes up. As carefully as possible I peel the frozen clothes from his body, his skin now a chilly pale blue.
He pulls himself into a ball, shivering, and I pile more blankets on top of him and drag him closer to the stove. For now he seems content to let sleep draw him under and I toss wood on the fire and then just stand there, staring at my sister and Elias, wondering what to do next.
Wondering how I’m going to keep them alive.
There’s always been sickness in the City. Several years ago a flu raged through, decimating the population. I’d been one of the afflicted and Elias traded almost everything he had—food credits, blankets, his nice boots, oil and a lantern—for the herbs to bring down my fever. He later told me he sat by my bed for a week, his hand against my chest when he slept to make sure I kept breathing.
I look at his body now, at the way his cheekbones angle under the skin. My sister’s the same way, skin wan and hair lank. I wonder how either of them can be strong enough to survive this kind of fever for a week.
I let myself fall into a chair and sit, counting the number of times their chests rise and fall. I watch their eyelids flutter and lips mumble words that never become clear. The moaning of the horde swims through the window, wrapping around us all—calling to me.
All I can think is, What happens if I can’t save them? What if it’s just me in this building alone until I can’t survive any longer? Of all the ways I imagined the world would end, this was not one of them.
I lean over, tucking my forehead into my knees, and cover my ears with my hands. I can no longer hold back the tears and I cry, letting the fear shake through me.
I spend the day waiting for Catcher and trying to coax Elias and my sister to drink slushy snow, trying to feed them broth they can’t stomach. A few times they wake up but when I talk to them, they don’t seem to recognize me.
My sister cries out for her mother, moaning the name Mary, and all I can do is hold her hand and tell her it will be okay even though I’m not sure it will be.
After a while, the flat feels too hot, a sickly sweet smell that mixes with the odor of damp blankets drying by the fire, and I can barely handle it anymore. I was able to haul a mattress into the room and get them onto it and they’re both deep asleep, her arm tucked in his.
I drag myself up to the roof, welcoming the freezing air that refreshes my lungs. The night’s deep and clear, the moon not yet risen to hide the scattering of stars beating a rhythm of light from millions of years ago.
There are fewer survivors’ fires burning on roofs around the City. I try not to think about what this means and light my own small fire, then pull a tub of snow near. As it melts I run my hands over the blankets and quilts I brought to wash, most of the seams frayed and so worn they fall apart in my fingers. I just sit there staring at the scraps, wondering if it’s worth trying to rework them into another quilt. Wondering if any of this will even matter in a few days.
Is this what it was like in all those