Carrie Ryan - The Dark and Hollow Places

ALSO BY CARRIE RYAN

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

The Dead-Tossed Waves

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2011 by Carrie Ryan

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ryan, Carrie.
The dark and hollow places / Carrie Ryan 1st ed.
p. cm.
Sequel to: The dead-tossed waves.
Summary: Alone and listening to the moaning of the Dark City dying around her, Annah wants to find her way back home, to her sister and family and their village in the Forest of Hands and Teeth.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89559-3
[1. Horror stories. 2. Fantasy.] I. Title.
PZ7.R9478Dar 2011 [Fic]dc22 2010045776

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v3.1

For my sisters, Jenny and Chris

Well have each other, always

T his city used to be something once. Ive seen pictures of the way it gleamedsun so bright off windows it could burn your eyes. At night, lights shouted from steel like catcalls, loud and lewd, while all day long white-gloved men rushed to open doors for women who tottered about on skyscraper heels.

I wonder sometimes what happened to those women when the Return hithow they were able to run and survive with such absurd contraptions strapped to their feet. How different the world must have been beforesafe and comfortable.

The Citys nothing like that anymore. Now, bare beams scrape the sky like splintered finger bones. Half the high-rises have fallen, and scavengers pilfered the intricately scrolled ironwork long ago. Theres not much of anything left anymore, just the fear that seeps foglike through the streets.

Fear of the Recruiters. Fear of the Unconsecrated. Fear of tomorrow.

Even so, this citys been my home. Other than the village I lived in as a child, this is the only world Ive known. Its sharp-cornered and raw but its a refuge for those with a burn to survive. You pay your rents, you follow the rules and you do what it takes to keep living.

Which is why I find myself on the Neverlands side of the Palisade wall that cordons off and protects the Dark City as the last dregs of evening slide across the sky. This is the place where Elias would go when he was desperate for money, desperate to trade so we could pay our rent and stay in our tiny flat for another year. Its the place where anything can be found for the right trade, and where, after the blade of my only knife broke this afternoon, Ive come for help.

Clutching the replacement blade tightly, Ive started to cross over one of the bridges strung between two buildings when I hear a deep rumbling cough. Its approaching dusk and storm clouds hover over the river, causing the light to drip a dull green. I shuffle faster toward the next roof, determined to get back to my flat in the Dark City before full night, but as soon as my foot lands on the rickety bridge connecting the buildings a voice calls out, Wouldnt do that if I were you.

I freeze, the frayed rope railing in one hand. Ive been alone long enough to have learned to look out for myself, yet something about the warning makes me hesitate. Just as I start to take another step the voice says, Look down, and I do.

The alley a dozen stories below is dim and choked in shadows, but even so I see something moving. A moan floats up, echoing softly between the buildings as it rises. The sun breaks through a narrow gap in the clouds and the light reflects down the alley, glinting briefly off what looks like eyes and a row of cracked teeth.

As my gaze adjusts I can make out dozens of clawing fingers reaching for me amid a pile of broken bodies that should have died from their fall but didnt. Or maybe they did die and infections brought them back as plague rats. I shiver, disgust rolling through me.

Carefully, I inch back onto the roof, noticing how the wooden boards I was just about to walk onto are rotten. One step more and Id have been down on that heap as well.

Youre the first one to listen to me and not take a dive, the voice says, and I spin, pulling my new knife between us. A woman sits tucked between two crumbling stone chimneys. In her hand she clutches a charred wooden pipe that feebly chokes out smoke.

I glance around the roof, expecting some sort of trap. The woman gestures toward my knife. Dont bother, she says. Just me up here.

She puts the pipe back in her mouth, the end of it burning a bright red, and in that instant I get a clear look at her face: thick dark lines painted around eyes smudged by tears or sweat or both. Then the ember fades, pulling her back into shadow.

But not before I see the raw circle around her wrist, festering with infection. The flesh edging the wound puffs and oozes, and I recognize it as a bite. I pull my knife back up between us, refusing to let it shake.

Im usually pretty good at avoiding any confrontation with the Unconsecrated. No matter how careful you are, theres always the risk that something will go wrong and theyll get their teeth into you one way or another.

The woman shrugs and inhales. The light makes her skin glow again and I watch how her hand trembles. Cracks etch through the powder she used to make her old skin appear blushing and freshit looks like a fractured mirror instead.

I think of my own face, the scars overlaying the left side of my body like a thick spiderweb. Her cracks can be washed away. Mine cant.

Its easy to see that shes close to the endwhen the infection will kill her. I glance down again at the pile of bodies below, their feeble moans filtering into the night. Shell be one of them soon. If shes lucky someone will take care of her before she turns. If she isnt

I swallow.

With a sickening heaviness in my stomach I realize Im the one whos going to have to kill her. It makes me feel off balance and I take a few steps away from the edge of the building, suddenly unsettled by such height.

The last of the evening light slides down my body, a final brush of heat, before disappearing for what will be yet another night of forever. The womans eyes arent on my knife; instead they focus on my face.

She inhales but her chest barely moves. She considers me a moment, staring at my scars. There are men who like em like youmessed up, she says, nodding. Her gaze slips past me back down the island toward the ruins of the bigger buildings of the Dark City in the distance.

No they dont, I think.

She exhales a wavering line of smoke. But more n likely, theyre the ones that want to do the messing. She pushes a thumb into the corner of her mouth, as if tidying up a lip stain that shes no longer wearing, the gesture a habit of so many years thats become useless.