The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [61]
He bangs at the fences, screaming in terror. His fingers rip at the metal, not caring when the flesh tears from his palms or his pinky snaps. He races around and around, trying to keep clear of the Unconsecrated woman as he begs for help or mercy—for anything.
There’s no way for him to escape. He’s trapped. My body becomes nothing more than a thumping pulse, my heart pounding as I watch her pursue him slowly around the little cage. She’s dead, she’s uncoordinated, so he can easily out-maneuver her, and he jumps from her reach and dodges around her, always a step ahead.
At first it looks easy the way he stays away from her—he’s faster and way more agile than she could ever be. But as the urgent minutes drag and multiply he begins to look worn out. Sweat causes his shirt to stick to his back even though cold winter air whistles into the auditorium from a broken skylight.
I realize just how sunken his cheeks are, and I wonder when he last ate or drank. How long he can fight before his body buckles in on itself.
And of course the woman keeps going. The man could run for days and she’d never stop. Eventually he’ll collapse from exhaustion or starvation or dehydration—things that will never bother the Unconsecrated woman.
It’s impossible to know how long she’s been dead—days? Weeks? Months? The tunic she wears marks her as a Souler—a member of the cult that worships the Unconsecrated as the ultimate resurrection. The cult Elias infiltrated rather than coming home. Elias said the Recruiters had been rounding them up, and I remember how they’d been after the girl—Amalia—and the boy in the street the other day.
My stomach turns with disgust as I think about Elias being somehow a part of what’s going on below. If he’s somehow responsible for this Souler woman being here. For her being dead.
Soon the crowd gets antsy and begins to boo. They start chatting with one another, their attention waning, and I hunch under the windows, afraid one of them will glance my way. I want to crawl back down the hallway. I want to race out into the night and climb into the cable car and let it carry me away from this awful island and these horrible people.
Except that escape isn’t an option, and even if it were I can’t move. I’m stuck in place, unable to abandon this man’s final brutal moments. I can only crouch here, listening to the moans and screams of the man as he begs for help.
Every time he pleads for mercy I shudder, bile burning the back of my throat. I can’t believe the cruelty of what’s going on. I can’t believe anyone would consider this entertainment.
The timbre of the crowd below shifts, falls into chants and cheers. When I glance back over the ledge I watch as Conall motions to a man by the far wall, who ducks through a narrow door. Just as it’s falling closed I catch a glimpse of what’s beyond and it makes my body go numb. Lashed to the wall are more Unconsecrated—dozens of them straining and pulling against chains, their jaws tied shut with strips of cloth.
The Recruiter walks down the hall, strolling between the gathered dead as if he’s a commander inspecting his troops, and then he stops and points and two other ashen-faced Recruiters scramble to pull an Unconsecrated from its restraints and wrangle it into the auditorium.
It’s disgusting and horrifying and stupidly dangerous, but the rest of the men cheer at the sight of the new Unconsecrated, their voices reverberating off the walls as Conall grins maliciously and the plague rat is stuffed into the cage. It’s two dead against one living.
Now it’s harder for the man to get away. His movements become frantic and I dig my fingers into my thighs as I watch him try to dodge their stumbling attacks.
Slowly, inevitably, the two Unconsecrated pin the man against the fence. His desperate whimpers fill my head but there’s absolutely nothing I can do to help him, which makes me feel complicit in this horrid