The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [5]
I want to find my way back home, to my sister and my family and my village in the Forest of Hands and Teeth.
There are only two ways off the island: boat or bridge. The boat docks sit on the southeast side, deep in the protected range of the Dark City. A series of gates and fences blocks the City from the docks, and Recruiters patrol with dogs that can smell infection to ensure that no vessels carry it into the City.
The few boats remaining after people fled during the Recruiter Rebellion are fiercely guarded, and I know it would be almost impossible for me to book passage on one. Which means that if I’m going to really do this—leave—I’ll have to travel by foot like everyone else who wants to get off the island. And the only bridges in and out are far north in the Neverlands.
I start my journey in the late morning after a sleepless night standing on the roof of my empty building waiting for dawn. I stared at the few remaining lights flickering in the skyscrapers along the bottom edge of the island and tried to find the strength to leave it behind. Elias fought so hard for our flat in the Dark City, scraping together the exorbitant rent just for the promise of safety, and I feel wrong abandoning it.
What if he comes home tomorrow and I’m not here? What if he’s just over the edge of the horizon, dreaming of me, fighting his way back to me?
But then I remember that woman. Her falling through the air. If I only had a few days left to live would I spend them like her, huddled on a roof, waiting for a stranger to stumble upon me?
And the answer is no.
By the time I arrive at the Palisade wall it’s early afternoon. No one challenges me as I make my way through the series of gates separating the Dark City from the Neverlands. It’s only those coming the opposite direction—those trying to gain access into the Dark City—they care about. People leave every day.
The journey through the Neverlands is uneventful as I stick to the well-traveled avenues, keeping safe in the crush of people scurrying about. Streets of broken buildings spread out around me, dark alleys with sinister promises that I walk past gripping my knife tightly, promising a fight if anyone tries to mess with me.
There’s already a line at the bridge when I arrive in the late afternoon, the process of leaving the island a slow and sometimes arduous one. No one meets my eyes. No one glances at me or cares, even when they brush past to shove their way forward, knocking against me as if I’m invisible. It’s easiest when I keep my hair pulled over my face, my head tilted forward as if I’m examining the ground.
My scars make me stand out—they mark me as a distinct individual, and I’ve learned well enough that it’s better to stay inconspicuous, especially since the Rebellion. The Recruiters like to make examples of people, and their methods have grown crueler and harsher day by day. It used to be their cruelty was a form of keeping order, but now with the Protectorate no longer around to hold them in check, it seems more like some sort of sick pleasure.
I’ve heard rumors of Recruiters enslaving women who catch their eye and taking anything that isn’t theirs. There have been even worse murmurings: black-market dealings in the dead, people disappearing, heads staked throughout the City as proof of Recruiter power. Things I choose not to contemplate but that have convinced me to avoid causing trouble as much as possible.
Around me people shuffle anxiously. Some of them carry bags and one or two push a cart piled with crates. Those are the ones I try to stay away from—they’ll only attract attention from the Recruiters interested in looting, and there’s no one to stop them.
The main bridge