The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [28]
“What happened up there?” I ask after he’s tied off the bandage and pulled away from me. “I’ve never seen that many Unconsecrated before.” I walk closer to the stairs, wondering how long it will be before the pressure of so many dead against the metal doors at the top causes them to buckle and collapse.
“The horde.” He sounds indifferent as he sits and rubs a chunk of ice between his fingers to wash away the blood.
I move back to the tiny fire, huddling in close to chase away the damp cold, hoping the light will erase the terrors floating at the edge of my thoughts. “Horde?”
Water drips from the bony knob of his wrist, leaving a trail of pink across his skin. “The horde. The one from the valley in the Forest.” He’s speaking as if what he’s saying makes sense but it doesn’t.
“They didn’t warn you?” he asks, incredulous.
“Who warn us?” The air down here is frigid and each exhalation puffs like a cloud from my lips.
He pushes to his feet and starts to pace. “Millions of Mudo headed for the City. Already here apparently. How did the Recruiters not prepare you for this? They had to have known.” His eyes are wide, the ice forgotten in a puddle.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I tell him, my chest fluttering with fear.
“Annah, those dead up there—that’s just the beginning. There are millions, more than you can even imagine could exist. That’s why Gabry and I were in such a hurry to get to the City and find you—so we could get you out before the horde hit.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.” I’m shaking my head. “I was just at the bridge to the mainland—we were just there and there weren’t Unconsecrated. How did they get across the river? How did they get over the walls? It’s only been a few hours.”
He crouches in front of me, rests two fingers on my knee, two bright points of heat seeping through the layers of my clothes. “You were knocked out for a long time, Annah—you slept even longer. It’s been more than a day since the bridge.”
I push away from him, an explosion of movement, and stalk to the edge of the platform. “Okay, fine. So it’s been a day. That’s still not enough time for what we saw up there. Those streets were almost overrun. That can’t happen that fast. It just can’t.”
He doesn’t say anything to contradict me. He doesn’t have to. His expression says everything and I spin to the darkness of the tunnels, reeling. There were so many dead. It was like walking into a swarm of gnats on a hot summer evening. They were everywhere.
Slowly Catcher walks over to me. “There are enough of them that they can almost fill the river—clamoring over each other before there’s time for them to sink. They’ve probably already overrun the bridges. They’ll overrun anything in their path.” His voice is gentle but his words are not. “They pile on top of each other against the walls—they’ll push any barriers down. A horde that big … it’s like pouring the ocean into a jar except the island is the jar. There’s nothing that can hold it back. It’s impossible to comprehend unless you’ve seen it.”
But what I don’t tell him is that I have seen a horde. I press my palms into my eyes until it hurts, trying to erase the memory, trying to push it down but still it comes.
I was a kid, lost in the Forest with Elias after leaving my sister. I remember how much my feet hurt, how sore my legs were and how proud Elias kept saying he was of me because I was still walking, because I was trying so hard to be a big girl. I remember him holding my hand, helping me up the mountain path, and the fences on either side, always the fences that went on and on and on.
I remember when we got to the top. How Elias froze, holding me behind him. It made me angry. He’d told me I was a big girl so I peeked my head around him until I saw what he did. It was beautiful, mountains stretching out in front of us for as far as you could see.
But that wasn’t why Elias stopped. He was looking down. Into the valley. I followed his gaze and