21
THREE DAYS PASSED before they saw the city off in the distance. Three long days of walking the hard-packed dust of the road, three long nights of hearing the souls of the dead rush past on their way to Over There. Three days is a long time when you don’t know exactly where you’re going and your surroundings don’t change a bit. They found food, small berries growing in thickets on both sides of the road. They drank from springs that gurgled up about a half day’s walk apart. Leo wondered if they had been spaced deliberately.
The food itself seemed to nourish him on a molecular level, as if it was somehow pure nutrients, the exact stuff his body needed. Not just any body, but his. The spring water tasted slightly sweet, like the sap from a maple tree before it has been reduced down to syrup. They were eating less than they had ever eaten before, but they felt healthier, more nourished.
The first house they saw was just outside the city. It was a small, one-story brick cottage with large windows and a red door. The shutters were black. The air around the house felt a little off—if the rest of the Edge of Over There seemed specifically designed for human life, the house itself felt slightly askew, like the slightest bend in an otherwise perfectly straight wire. Abra walked quietly up to one of the windows and peered inside.
“I don’t think anyone lives here,” she said.
Leo knocked on the door, and when no one answered, he shouted, “Anybody there?”
But no one was there, or at least no one answered. The forest swallowed his voice. When Leo tried to turn the knob, he found it was locked. He reached inside his pocket and felt the lock-picking set, the cold metal, the multiple picks. He decided to leave it in his pocket. If he had been alone, without Abra, he probably would have given it a try, but there was something embarrassing about being someone who could break into places, someone who could undo things not meant to be undone. So he shrugged, and they walked away with many backward glances. The house gave them the feeling that someone was watching them, someone they shouldn’t turn their backs to.
They passed a few more houses built in the woods off the road, but they weren’t paying attention to the houses anymore. The city was closer now, its buildings rising up out of the trees. But there was one building in particular that got their attention, deep in the city, one that rose so high above the others that it looked thin and exposed.
“There’s something strange about that building,” Leo said on the morning of the day they would reach the city. This marked their fourth day inside the grave of Marie Laveau.
“You mean besides the fact that it’s so tall?” Abra asked.
“Yeah. I don’t like the look of it.”
They walked quietly, their feet patting a gentle rhythm against the hard dirt of the road.
“It doesn’t have windows,” Leo said.
“The tall building. It doesn’t have windows.”
They kept walking, the two of them staring up, the way flowers’ faces follow the sun. Abra shielded her eyes from the midday light.
“Are you sure?”
Leo nodded. “You know what else I’m sure of?”
Abra looked at him.
“That’s where my father is,” Leo said.
“How do you know?” she asked.
He looked at her and smiled. “I just know,” he said, shrugging. “That’s where he is. And if he’s there, my sister’s there too.”
Arriving at that city was like arriving at no other city in the world. The woods ran right up to it—no suburbs, no gradual urbanization, no high overpasses that skirted factories and ran over no-man’s-land. This city simply grew right up out of the trees. One minute they were on the dirt road that led from the gateway, and with their next step they were on the first city street, looking up at the tall buildings. It was like emerging from Central Park in New York City, a head-spinning transition from grass and green spaces to concrete and thin slivers of sky.
“Where do you think everyone is?” Leo asked. The quiet of the woods was one thing—the silence of the city under the red sky was something entirely different.
“How do you know there is anyone? Maybe it’s empty. Maybe something happened,” Abra said.
“Do you think the quiet has something to do with the Tree you’re looking for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
A breeze blew from the far side of the city, came rushing through the streets, and passed them by. It moved the branches and the leaves of the forest and made a loud shushing sound. Abra’s hair danced in the breeze.
“Smells kind of like the ocean,” Leo said.
“There’s definitely water out there somewhere, the sea that Mr. Henry told us about. I wonder what it’s like. I wonder how far away it is,” Abra said in a wistful voice. She pointed down the street to their right, the one that ran along the forest. “What’s that?”
Leo squinted. “Is that . . . ?” he began.
“Beatrice?” Abra said.
It looked like her. She was nearly out of view, blending into the shadows on the forest side of the street. She walked fast, sometimes skipping a step, then slowing again to a walk. She didn’t look back.
Leo moved to cross that first street and enter the city at exactly the same time that Abra turned right and started walking the line between the city and the forest.
They both stopped in their tracks.
“Where are you going?” she asked him.
“I have to go to that building,” he said. “I’m sure that’s where my sister is.” He stared at her, and when she didn’t say anything, he asked, “Where are you going?”
“I have to find the Tree of Life. Beatrice knows where it is. I’m positive.”
They stared at each other for a moment, waiting for the other person to change their mind and follow. Leo had grown used to Abra’s company. He didn’t want to walk alone.
“But how do you know?” he asked. “I mean, the Tree could be anywhere. It could be a trap.”
“How do you know your sister is in the building?” she replied sarcastically.
Leo clenched his fists and took a deep breath. “We really should stay together,” he said, trying to remain calm. “We don’t know what’s happened to this city. We don’t know where all the people are. We don’t know who’s in that building. I think until we figure some of this stuff out, we should stay together.”
“I agree. We should stay together. So, come on, let’s go. Beatrice might lead us to your sister too!”
“Why do you have to be so stubborn! You don’t know the Tree is that way. It could be anywhere!”
“And you know your father is in that building? How?”
Leo bit his lip and shook his head. “Listen, come with me for today, a few hours. I bet we can be at the building by the time it gets dark. If my sister isn’t there, I’ll come with you.”
“And waste two days walking in and walking back out when your father isn’t there? I’m following Beatrice.”
“Okay,” Leo said. “Whatever.” He threw his hands up in the air and turned to walk away, trying to hide the disappointment and frustration that welled up inside of him. It reminded him of the day his father and sister had gone into Marie Laveau’s crypt. He didn’t think he would ever find Abra again.
“Good luck,” Abra called after him. He turned to look at her, and she looked like a little girl again, small and pale against the backdrop of that immense forest. But there was still something that seemed much older. Maybe it was her eyes—they held a certain kind of sadness, as if she was about to enter a trial she had already experienced before, the kind where she knew the pain before it even started.
“Same to you,” he said, but his voice came out dismissive and curt.
The streets were empty of people, but there were signs of destruction everywhere, a kind of chaos the silence did not explain. Glass windows were shattered and lying in shards on the sidewalk. Doors were bent and mutilated, hanging from hinges. Even the brick and concrete of the buildings bore huge craters, as if someone had gone along with a sledgehammer and randomly taken swings. But it wasn’t only explosive destruction—there were also the marks of time. Long cracks split the sidewalks, and the glass was coated and streaked in dust. It was eerie, the emptiness paired with the destruction.
When he got to the other side of that first street, he turned to look for Abra again. She was farther away than he expected.
“If you get out before we do, give us some time. Leave the gate open,” he called out. “I won’t be long.”
She turned and looked at him. He couldn’t tell if she had heard what he said, but she raised her hand in one final wave, then continued down the street that ran along the edge of the city. She reminded Leo of a tiny balloon, floating higher and higher into the sky until you can’t really see it, even though you think you can.
He turned away and walked faster. The afternoon shadows lengthened. He wanted to be at the building by nightfall.
But that didn’t happen.
The farther into the city Leo went, the stranger it became. At first the only thing that seemed to change was that the forest receded behind him and the sea smell in the air grew stronger. It was unsettling, looking back over his shoulder and discovering he could no longer see the trees. He had walked nearly twenty blocks into the city, twenty blocks of high buildings and broken glass, twenty blocks of the wind howling through the alleyways. Twenty blocks and the only sound were his footsteps on dusty concrete or grinding the occasional shard of glass.
But after twenty blocks or so he realized something else was different too. At first, he didn’t know what it was—he thought it was his imagination. Soon he realized the difference he felt was that, somewhere in all of those darkened office buildings and apartment complexes, someone was watching him. Or more than one someone. He didn’t know why he felt that way—he still hadn’t seen any real live human beings. But he knew he wasn’t alone.
He kept expecting someone to call out to him from one of the glass-shattered lobbies or rooftop terraces. He glanced up the fire escapes, peered down the narrow side roads, glanced quickly over his shoulder. There was no one. As the afternoon waned and he got within ten blocks of the huge building, something changed.
Leo heard a sound.
It started off small and far away. He thought it was only the wind. As it grew louder, he thought it might be some kind of vehicle, a line of traffic or an airplane approaching from another city. By the time he realized what it was, it was too late and they had already seen him.
A huge group of people came jostling onto his street a few blocks ahead, shouting and laughing and arguing. They were his age or slightly older. And they kept coming around the corner, more and more of them. He thought there must be hundreds, maybe even a thousand, and he tried to duck into the building he was walking past, but it was one of the few with intact front glass and locked doors. He had nowhere to go.
“Hey, who’s that?” one of the front-runners called out, and soon the entire throbbing mob was around him and pressing in.
“I only arrived today,” he stammered.
“A newbie!” one of them shouted to the pack, and everyone cheered and some of them leered and their faces were close and loud.
“Are you here by yourself?” someone else screamed, and it unsettled Leo, the way the voices came from people he could not identify. It was like the mob was speaking, and not any one individual.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding quickly. “Yeah, I’m alone.”
The crowd shifted, parted, and a small, brown-haired young man walked through. He had hazel eyes and his face was covered in freckles. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt that seemed remarkably clean in that environment of broken buildings and mobs of people. He smiled, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and held out his hand.
“I’m Jeremiah,” he said. “Do you have a name?”
A ripple of laughter spread through the mob.
“I’m Leo.”
The two shook hands, and Leo was surprised, almost alarmed, at how quickly he was welcomed into the group. Jeremiah was also an enigma. The strength in his handshake didn’t fit with his boyish looks. His fingers may have been small but they felt like wire traps. His forearms were thin, steel cables. Leo thought Jeremiah was probably about his age, maybe slightly older.
“You’re welcome to join us.”
Leo nodded, glancing down at the cracked sidewalk, amazed at the crowd of feet and legs and bodies in front of him. What he wanted to do was say, “No thanks, I’ll keep traveling alone,” but that didn’t feel like an option. He decided to go along with it for now. His eyes went from the ground up to the red sky. He nodded again.
“We only have a few rules,” Jeremiah said.
“Okay.” Leo felt less and less comfortable, more and more like a prisoner.
“Three, mostly, although we have to add some from time to time. Don’t steal anything from anyone else in the group—there’s plenty to go around. That’s probably the most important one. Stay with the group—that’s number two. If for some reason you have to head out on your own, and I can’t think of a good reason you would ever do that, let me know. Number three—if one of us fights, we all fight. We stand up for each other. Always.”
Leo nodded, the second rule sticking in his mind. Stay with the group. How did he even become part of this group? It had all happened way too fast, but he couldn’t shake the strong sense that to separate himself from the group at that point would only lead to them devouring him.
“Don’t steal, stay with the group, all for one,” Leo repeated in a monotone voice, now staring at Jeremiah. He hadn’t come all this way to get waylaid by a punk. His sister was in the city somewhere. Abra would find the Tree and leave them all behind if he didn’t hurry.
But for now, he had to bide his time.
“You got it?” Jeremiah asked.
“Yeah.” Leo shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He wished they would get on with whatever it was they had been doing. He didn’t like being the center of attention.
“Good.”
Jeremiah smiled and turned to face the rest of the crowd. Leo doubted his initial estimate of hundreds. There were definitely at least a thousand. He wondered how this small young man had managed to become the leader of such an unruly, disorganized bunch.
The crowd cheered, and some of them gave him a welcoming slap on the back. A few of the girls even leaned in and hugged him. Leo went from feeling defensive to slightly, and surprisingly, emotional. They seemed really happy to have him. In that moment, when everyone was hooting and hollering and clapping, Leo felt like he could become part of something.
He had never had that before. He had to remind himself why he was there in the first place.
“We’re staying here tonight,” Jeremiah shouted, and the group erupted in cheers again.
Moments later Leo heard an explosion of shattering glass, and he ducked his head. But no one else looked alarmed, so he turned and saw a large portion of the group smashing the first-floor glass walls of the building behind them. The glass was destroyed in seconds. They kicked the larger shards out of the way, and the group moved into the building like a virus entering its host. They swarmed through, everyone looking for a comfortable place to sleep. Leo hung back, watching in amazement at the efficiency of their chaotic destruction. In less than a minute, the building had been taken over.
He felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Get used to it,” Jeremiah said. “This city is ours.”
Leo nodded and watched quietly as Jeremiah walked toward the building, surrounded by six or seven others. Leo assumed they were his inner circle. There were a few girls, a few guys. They dressed the same as everyone else but carried themselves with a certain air that separated them. They seemed to be above the fray, better than the chaos. They waited until all the glass was broken before they walked in.
“Find a spot,” Jeremiah said. “The Wailers are coming.”
Leo walked through the glass, and it ground under his feet, coarse and threatening. He ducked under the jagged edge of a glass wall that had not been completely cleared and brushed off the bottom of his shoes on a carpet inside. A hundred or so of the group had already settled there in the lobby, away from the broken glass, sitting in small circles, talking.
Leo found some stairs and followed them up a few floors. He wanted to find a place where he could be alone and think for a minute. He wanted to find a floor where he might be able to separate himself from the group. He opened a door and walked into a mostly dark level. There were some desks—it looked like an office building that had never been used. He found an unoccupied desk and pushed it against the wall, then crawled beneath it and stretched out, staring through the glass side of the building that stretched from the floor to the ceiling.
He felt very lonely lying there in the darkness. He listened to the sound of the Wailers, and soon they flashed past the window, white and black and every shade of gray in between, and the song they made was haunting but also a little beautiful. It reminded him of walking through the forest with Abra, of the nights they had spent together in the trees that lined the dirt road. They hadn’t really said much on those few nights, but he had become used to her presence.
He wondered where she had taken refuge that night. He wondered if she had found Beatrice or her Tree.