The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [25]
For one moment I wonder if this absence of feeling is what it means to be Unconsecrated. If this is death. And then the body on top of me shudders again and I scramble from underneath him, pushing myself as far away as possible across the ice-slicked ground.
My back hits a wall and I shove myself standing. The storming wind pauses and its absence is filled with moaning everywhere at once, ripped from mouths and carried away as the howling wind rises again. Bodies and bodies and bodies stumble down the street, a trickle around me, a river several blocks away and a flood in the distance. They push against rotted doors and crumbling walls that keep the living sequestered, and start to pile beneath windows, fingers reaching up and up.
At first it doesn’t make sense—I can’t comprehend it. I’ve seen outbreaks before but nothing like this. There are too many of them.
To the north a building roars with fire while people run over trembling bridges to safety. The air’s thick with panic—the sound of it all whipped together by the rising storm so that the only noise is a screeching wind.
The true tidal wave of dead is blocks away, but rivulets of Unconsecrated have already pooled through the streets around us, stumbling and straining for the living.
A line of crumbled bodies arcs around me like a barrier. I stare back at the man who attacked me and there’s a wooden bolt jutting from his head. Another flies through the air, catching an Unconsecrated child midstride. It collapses only a few feet away, and I follow the trajectory of the arrow up to a narrow window high in a building several doors away, where I can just see the tip of a crossbow.
I raise my hand in thanks just as Catcher emerges from the growing tide of Unconsecrated, reaching for my hand. A bolt slams into his upper arm, throwing him against me. I open my mouth in horror as blood splatters from the wound, frosting the snowy ground red.
His weight pushes me against the wall with a thud and Unconsecrated ooze around us. There’s a sound like the scraping of metal and I realize Catcher has dropped a machete at my feet. Blood runs across his elbow and over his empty fingers from the bolt still lodged in his upper arm.
“Let me help—” I try to tell him, reaching to pull it free, but he shakes his head and twists the wound away from me.
“The machete,” he pants, and I shift my weight underneath him, reaching for the large blade. Catcher’s eyes are bleary, wide with pain and shock. He blinks rapidly, trying to focus on me. “The tunnels.” His teeth are clenched and the words come out clipped and harsh. “We can get back to the tunnels.”
He breaks off the length of bolt, tossing the spiked chunk of wood to the ground before lurching toward the Unconsecrated lumbering our way. I press against the wall and lash out with my machete as he shoves the dead back, grunting from the impacts that jar the remnants of the bolt still protruding from his arm.
There are so many of them creeping around us, all I can do is swing the machete indiscriminately. I scream, fight raging through me, as I take off fingers, slice through flesh, kick at knees. Anything to keep them away from me. We make it back into the alley just as the current threatens to overwhelm us and we find that it’s still clear, no living around to draw the dead in. Catcher pushes me toward the tunnel entrance and I sprint, feet skidding through frozen slush as the wind tries to throw me back.
I fight the buffeting air, clutching building walls for traction until I get to the dead end. I throw open the doors leading down into darkness and hesitate. “Come on, Catcher!” I shout at him. I can barely see the top of his head in the throng of Unconsecrated pooling around the intersection of the alley and the main road. At first I think the Unconsecrated have him. That they won’t let him go.
“Catcher!” I yell. The Unconsecrated are already stumbling toward me, following the trail of blood