The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [133]
That’s when I let the tears come. I can still feel the fingers of the dead on me, still hear their moans. Every inch of me is bruised and battered, my muscles so fatigued they don’t even protest anymore.
But I survived.
And now it’s time to live.
I scour the horizon. To my left a band of light teases the sky, the smallest hint of morning. But it’s enough that I can see the path of the tracks stretching forward, and I push myself to my feet, determined to find Catcher and the others.
I can barely walk in a straight line after being trapped in the tunnels for so long, the cold eating into me. But the trestle is narrow and some of the boards are rotted, and it takes all my concentration to put one foot solidly in front of the other. A few dead stumble along the ground below me, pawing at the braces, and yet without the horde rumbling after me it feels quiet out here in the fog-coated morning.
The tracks take me past expanses of barren land, charred bricks chewed over by weeds. A long low cemetery fades out of view to be overtaken by a graveyard of rusted-out train cars. From all of these places the dead come, trailing behind on the ground as I make my way past overhead. They moan and reach and I ignore them all.
Eventually, as the sky lightens, a structure begins to rise from the mist in the distance. Elegant curves and twists fading in and out of the tumbling clouds. I rub my eyes, wondering if my mind’s playing tricks on me.
It’s almost too painful to hope. I swallow, pressing my fingers to my lips as tears blur the outline of what has to be the roller coaster from the picture on the map.
The roller coaster Catcher told me about.
I want to call out, to scream for joy as my body aches with the possibility of relief, but I still can’t believe it. I move forward slowly, waiting for the world to crash in around me again.
Because I can’t believe this could be it. I can’t believe I’ve made it this far.
As I draw closer, the trestle branches toward a bridge crossing a vine-choked road, and I climb over it, dodging a few Unconsecrated who wander too close. I stumble through hip-high weeds, tripping over old roots and stones. With every step I want to stop, but I just promise myself one more and then one more again. My eyes never leave the coaster; I crane my neck as I draw closer.
The top of it is shrouded in the early-morning mist, a frozen white fog clinging to the dips and curls of the ride.
Something shifts along the curve of the tallest hump and I freeze. It’s a shadow. A person.
My heart starts to pound.
Just then a breeze blows from the water, curling the mist away from him.
The arch of his neck, the set of his shoulders. Everything inside me stops.
Catcher.
He sits with his back to me, staring out past the beach at the ocean.
It takes me a moment to find my voice. “What are you looking for out there?” I call up. And then I start to climb, a fresh energy sweeping through me.
Catcher jerks and reaches out to steady himself. He looks around and I know the instant he sees me. His body goes still, his eyes wide open and his mouth caught on a sound he can’t force out.
Before I even reach the top he’s grabbing and pulling me up. He runs his hands over my body, along my arms and legs and then over my shoulders and up my neck until he’s cupping my head.
I pull his face to mine and I kiss him, tasting his heat and fire and need.
“You’re alive,” he says.
“You’re here,” I say.
“You’re not hurt or infected?” I see the terror in his eyes.
I shake my head. “Well, not infected anyway,” I say, smiling.
This breaks the tension of the moment. We’re laughing and crying and he crushes me to him, burying his head in my neck, and I tilt my head back as the morning sky swirls around us in a hundred million colors, brighter than any I’ve seen.
He traces a finger along my jaw, the heat of him so familiar now. So much a part of me. “My Annah,” he murmurs, pulling