The Dark and Hollow Places - Carrie Ryan [85]
She tilts her head. “And that’s all you want? To survive?”
I shrug, jumping up and down a bit to push the blood through my body. “Seems like a good idea right now,” I say, jerking my chin at our surroundings.
She’s silent, dancing from foot to foot to stay warm.
“What about you? What would you do?” I tuck my hands up in my sleeves.
Raising one eyebrow, she says, “Nope. I’m not telling you my dreams until you tell me yours.” She crooks a smile. “It’ll give you incentive to make sure we both survive this mess.”
I laugh and lean against her. “We’ll survive,” I tell her. “I promise you that.”
The storm intensifies, making it hard to stay standing and difficult to hear the moans of the Unconsecrated or see if any have washed ashore. My sister and I continue to huddle together in the nook of the wall, arms wrapped around each other as we try to stay out of the wind.
My breath comes out in pants, and each inhalation is like ice, its sharpness stinging my lungs. “We need to go back,” I shout at my sister. “They can’t keep us out here like this.”
She nods, her face buried in her thick coat. We struggle down the wall, letting the storm push us against it. I try to hold the shovel out in front of me in case any of the dead are still moving in this weather, but my muscles are so exhausted they shake, trying to wring out what little warmth they can. I’m barely able to keep myself upright. Everything’s just so cold. So cold and so hard.
Inside I feel empty. I can’t even remember the last time I ate. The last time I slept I cycled through nightmares, feeling my hair being torn from my body over and over again.
A figure stumbles toward me from the direction of the water and it takes me a moment to remember where I am. What I’m supposed to be doing. I swing. Sloppy and uneven, the motion throws me off balance. I take two steps. Three. Fall to one knee and use the shovel to pick myself back up again.
The body lurches, slow and jerky. I can just barely hear the moan. Out of the darkness hair whips through the night, tangled around a woman’s face so that it’s hard to see anything but her mouth.
She’s barely walking—barely moving—but still she almost grabs me. I kick her back, which makes my own footing unstable. I fall, the shovel skittering out of my grasp.
The Unconsecrated woman comes for me again, stuck in time so slow it’s like her body’s full of half-frozen water. I know I should be frantic—my mind tries to be—but my body won’t obey. My hands search the frozen shore, digging through snow to find the shovel, but soon I realize I can’t feel anything.
My sister staggers to my side, crossbow jolting as she tries to hold it steady with her shivering arms. The first bolt goes wide and the second only tears into the Unconsecrated woman’s shoulder. She lumbers toward me, intent.
My hands are nothing more than lumps. I have no way to defend myself. Except to run. The Unconsecrated woman swings at me, her body jerking at the movement, and I push myself away.
And then her head whips back, the left side of it crushed in on itself. My sister stands with my shovel in her hands, pulling it up for another swing.
It takes all my reserves of strength to get to my feet. I totter a moment, pressing my arm against the wall to steady myself. The world tilts and sways, sparks jumping through my vision as dark spots threaten to swallow me.
“You go!” I shout at her, pulling the weapon from her hands. She starts to shake her head but I shove her forward. “Get help!” I cry. She turns and struggles toward the platform, a black shape in the dark evening.
The Unconsecrated behind me moans and I remember that that sound is bad. Really bad. I shove away from it, stumbling down the beach. I lose my footing more than once. I forget where I’m going. Why.
Nothing seems like a better idea than simply lying down. Curling up. Riding out the storm wrapped around my poor frozen hands, which don’t even burn anymore.
Then I hear the moan and I remember again. Moan. Death. Bad.