The Book of M Page 2

  MAX AND ORY’S RULES

  1—Max doesn’t leave the shelter without Ory.

  2—Max can use the small knives to prepare food unsupervised, but not the fire.

  3—Max can never answer the door.

  Max still knew him, knew his voice, but Ory always carried a key when he left, and had hidden another in the courtyard, inside a false rock he’d scavenged from a deserted housing goods store. He didn’t want to ever get into the habit of knocking and asking her to let him in, no matter how tired or injured he was or how much he was carrying. Because even though it was fine now, later it wouldn’t be. Because later, she might remember that he lived with her, but not that no one else did. That everyone else had left the mountain and the hotel a long time ago. Later, if he was out looking for food and Max was alone, it would be too dangerous to ask her to remember that she let one person in every evening when he came home—Ory—but not another.

  4—Max can’t touch the gun.

  Just in case.

  That one made him sick to think about. He didn’t want to write it down. It felt like betraying her somehow—as if his believing that she’d forget who he was would somehow cause it to happen.

  Max made him write it anyway. Just in case.

  ALL OF THAT MATTERED LESS NOW. THE WINDOWS, THE blood, Ory never asking her to let him inside instead of using a key. But in the early days, it might have saved their lives. The streets were in constant flux then, changed one way from a bad memory and then changed again from another. Ory’d had to check every direction through a pair of binoculars before he could move a step, for fear of being ambushed by shadowed men or mauled by terrified shadowless. But now there were no shadowed ones left, because they’d turned into shadowless, and almost no shadowless either, because they couldn’t remember that they should stay. Now everything was always still. Nothing moved, nothing made noise, nothing changed. There was no one left to change it. Shops became lonely graveyards, houses became monuments.

  There were very few places he was ever worried about running into another living soul anymore. But Broad Street, where he was heading, was one of them.

  When Ory reached the Falls Church neighborhood, he began to jog. He did not follow the roads. Instead, he cut through abandoned backyards in a straight line between the shelter and Broad Street, to make up for the late start. Most of the houses had no fences, and when they did, the wood was long since rotted. Even though he’d stayed in bed with Max for another half hour after they’d finished making love, there would still be enough time to search, Ory reasoned. He pried apart a pair of sagging planks and slipped through into a ruin of tall grass. There was still plenty of time. And even if there wasn’t, it had still been worth it. I need to make Max more presents, he thought. Or—maybe it was just that he was in such a good mood after the sex that the joke struck him as funny instead of horrible—he could just keep giving her the same present over and over, and she’d love it every time.

  Don’t laugh at that, Ory scolded himself. That’s terrible. You’re a terrible person. But he did anyway. Quietly.

  Twenty minutes later, he was a cul-de-sac away from Broad Street.

  MAX HAD BANNED EITHER OF THEM FROM GOING BACK TO Broad Street again after the last time they’d searched there, more than a year past. It also had been the last time they’d run into another person.

  Ory stayed crouched in the undergrowth and watched the weathered row of apartments that lined the infamous road. Beyond the empty stretch of grass and across the asphalt, nothing gave itself away.

  The person they’d met that day had been a shadowless, only a few weeks gone. The man had remembered just enough to know it was bad not to have a shadow, but didn’t remember how it worked. He tried to take Ory’s.

  Ory shuddered at the sudden memory of sharp, dirty carbon steel against his skin. The shadowless had been a firefighter before the world ended, still in his giant flame-retardant coat when they had seen him wandering around. His coat, his helmet, his boots—and his metal fireman’s axe, gripped tightly in his right hand.

  Neither Ory nor Max were doctors, back when there were jobs. It was pure luck that he hadn’t lost the arm or died.

  They’d argued about it a few times before, but Max won after that. Abundant as Broad Street was, Ory promised her that he wouldn’t go again. No matter how desperate, how starving.

  They’d said nothing about what would happen if she forgot the promise, though.

  Ory put his hand on the butt of his knife in its holster, and crept across the street toward the entrance of the apartment complex. The wind picked up and a gust of dead leaves swept past, hissing. He cleared the communal front lawn as fast as he could, aiming straight for the first door. He didn’t stop until he was crouched against the front wall, shoulder scraping the brick facade. He pressed his ear to the wood and listened: for footsteps on rotting floorboards, whispered instructions between family members or reluctant allies, the zip of a travel pack, light snoring. Nothing.

  Ory took out the knife and tried to steady his grip. He hated this part the most.

  “Do it, Ory,” he murmured, for courage. He always tried to imagine Max’s voice was saying those things. “There’s no one in there. There hasn’t been for a long time.” He heaved himself against the door.

  The rotted wood gave way, and he slipped into the lobby of the building, knife pointed.

  The room was empty.

  Ory closed what was left of the door behind himself so he couldn’t be seen from the street. Waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim glow of weak sun on glittering dust, and for the pounding in his rib cage to ease. The knife slid slowly back into its leather sheath.

  There were scuff marks on the wood floor. Deep grooves that had been there long enough to have healed over from the odd rain through the shattered windows. He cleared the lobby and leasing office and began his search, but all the units on the ground floor were bare. Someone had made good use of whatever furniture had been there. The kitchens were similarly picked over; the doors of the cupboards were gone, drawers missing. Ory stared at the empty open shelves in one apartment, trying to imagine what they used to look like full of boxed food. The silver faucet fixtures on the sink had vanished, too.

  The next floor was just as empty, and the one after. On the fifth floor, he couldn’t go past the doorway of most units, because the stench was too strong. The remains of whoever had lived in those were still inside. Ory cleared the first tower block and moved to the second. Fire, then flood damage. A gym where all the exercise machines resembled gleaming metal horses, posed mid-gallop. The vending machines played music, even though there had been no electricity for years. Elevator shafts gaped, doors jammed open.

  The third block still had a front door. Ory went much more slowly, encouraged. All the furniture, but no food, no clothes. One of the units reminded him a little of their own apartment, back in D.C.—if it was even still there. It had the same sort of classic modern style of Max’s that had impressed his parents when they’d come to visit. He checked the walls for hollow places, where something might have been hidden inside. In the bedrooms, he saw the names.

  In the early days, when there were more wedding guests still hiding with Ory and Max at Elk Cliffs Resort and they took more group trips down the mountain to brave Arlington, seeking supplies or information, he had seen them. Written on shelves in stores where the aisles had been picked clean, spray-painted onto the backs of buildings. People who still trusted others enough to talk whispered from the narrow mouths of alleys. Have you heard about the Stillmind? The One Who Gathers? They traded food for information, rallied curious crowds to make mass pilgrimages into the strange lands to see if they could find out more. Someone in this apartment had scrawled The One with a Middle but No Beginning in charcoal over where the bed should have been. Ory touched the tail of one smudged letter softly, powdering his fingertip in dark gray. Those few left with shadows were just the opposite, he thought. All beginning, no middle. Middle had
become an ever-shifting, never-ending apocalypse.

  A soft crack broke the silent complex. Ory flinched, ducked instinctively to the floor before he’d breathed. His knife was out again.

  He counted to five. The sound had been dull, as if it had come from outside, some ways off. He peeked over the edge of an overturned dresser, toward the open wall that should have been a glass sliding door to a small back deck. There was some struggling grass, and another looming dead apartment tower beyond the sagging wooden fence.

  “Trees,” he said to himself. “Just trees.” The area was wildly overgrown. It reeked of rotting mulberries. When he looked closer at the ground, he could see the white ones that had dropped from overhead before they were ripe, like little pale maggots. “Keep going, Ory. Do the upstairs bedrooms,” he ordered himself. He pried his hand away from the hunting knife and crept down the hall toward the steps.

  He stayed away from the windows, half kneeling on the floor. His heart jumped as he peeled back the dirty carpet in the closet and found a section of wood floor had been cut into a tiny trapdoor—but someone else had already discovered it. Whatever had been in there, it was empty now. Ory left the carpet rolled and didn’t bother putting the door to the little hiding spot back. Save someone else the same letdown. If there was anyone left in the city. It had been so long, Ory had started to think he and Max might be the only two left in Arlington, maybe farther.

  He might be the only one, soon.

  The soft crack sounded again, and he threw himself to the floor. The animal part of the brain that built blueprints was racing, searching for an escape: there was a bed frame, but no mattress to hide under. A closet with no door. Window too high. To be upstairs was bad. Too far from a way out.

  Then a pealing scream, high-pitched, hysterical. Ory froze.

  He knew that sound.

  He was down the stairs, out the back door of the unit, into the grass, dashing toward the shriek in an instant.

  It was a rabbit, and that was its unmistakable dying cry.

  A fox or coyote would bolt, maybe drop its prey if he could get close enough. There had been no food in the apartments, but damn it if he was going to go home with nothing at all. He and Max would eat rabbit tonight, fresh, succulent meat that hadn’t been dried and salted and sitting in their cupboard for three months. If he could give Max the memory of a delicious, freshly cooked meal for as long as she had left, maybe that was worth more than five cans of tasteless, cold non-perishables, now or ever.

  Ory sprinted past the second row of apartment buildings to the back courtyard where the community pool was, hands already outstretched to spook an animal. But as soon as he rounded the corner, he stopped dead.

  “Oh, shit,” he finally managed. It came out like a squeak.

  Thirty feet ahead of him, gathered in a casual circle on the empty pool’s cool deck, was an entire crowd of people watching the one in the center take a rabbit out of a makeshift trap. They turned to him one by one, eyes calmly sliding from their prey to Ory cowering in the middle of the grass.

  “Oh, shit,” he repeated, dumbstruck.

  There were so many of them. He hadn’t seen so many people at once for so long. He hadn’t even seen a single other person but Max for at least a year.

  And they were all armed.

  Do something, he thought wildly. Some looked surprised, others amused. They were all healthy, all clean. Their hair looked washed, their clothes mended. There were no hollow cheeks, no bones jutting out. The men’s arms were nourished enough to have muscle. More muscle than his own. Run, Ory. Fucking run. But he couldn’t move. He just stood there staring at them all.

  The one in the center finally stood up. It was an older woman, with a worn face and graying hair shaved close to her skull. Ory watched, petrified, as she gently let go of the rabbit wriggling in her iron grip, as if it was nothing, as if there were still three grocery stores at every intersection, and didn’t even cast a glance after it as the terrified creature shot off into the weeds to safety. Silently, she stepped through the group to the front. Her eyes were hard-lined, mouth frowning. And now in her hands was a bolt-action hunting rifle, already cocked. Slowly she lifted the long dark barrel and pointed it at him.

  “You’re too late,” she said.

  Orlando Zhang

  ORY STARED AT THE WOMAN IN SHOCK. AT THE WEATHERED hunting rifle swaying gently in her easy, sure grip. The muzzle hovered just south of his sternum.

  “You’re too late,” she repeated.

  Too late? Too late for what?

  “He’s gone,” another of them said, and spat.

  “He’s not gone, he’s got a shadow. Look.” The woman pointed at the ground behind Ory with the neck of her gun, like it had always been part of her arm. His shadow was huddled on the grass, a withered shape of terror.

  “Too late for what?” Ory finally managed. It had been so long since he’d talked to another person besides Max that it felt strange to speak to them, as if he’d forgotten what language was and accidentally made sounds that weren’t words. His hunting knife felt pitifully light on his belt now as he cowered.

  They all looked at one another, as if trying to decide what he’d meant by that.

  “To join us,” the man next to the woman with the gun said. The smoke from his homemade cigarette was bitter. “No seats left. The group’s already long been set.”

  “I—” Ory glanced nervously between them, trying to glean the man’s meaning from their faces.

  “Twelve is the most,” he continued. “Only have room for twelve.”

  Ory didn’t know what to do. He edged his hands up even higher over his head, trying to show he wasn’t a threat.

  The woman in front finally lowered the barrel of her rifle slightly. “You haven’t been out much, have you?” she asked.

  Ory shook his head.

  They all looked from one to another silently again. Ory snuck a glance at the cracked, weathered cool deck where they were gathered. Twelve bodies, four shadows. Four shadows. He stared. Four. Shadows.

  Finally they all looked back to the woman at the front, one by one, waiting for her verdict.

  “You have anyone?” the woman asked. She was one of the four.

  “Yes,” Ory said. “She, uh . . .” He gestured lamely to his own silhouette.

  That seemed to soften them. The wrinkles in the woman’s face deepened, and she scratched the short velvet buzz on her head with the back of her hand. “How long?”

  “Seven days.” He tried not to think of how many were left. How many more days that she’d still talk in funny voices when he was upset until he laughed. How many more days that she’d bravely attempt to make meals out of their scant ingredients, even though she was the worst cook they’d both ever met. How many more days that she’d sit in silence with him in the mornings and watch the sun come up through their tiny kitchenette window. He loved those sunrises with her.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Ory shook his head, refusing to accept the sympathy. Sympathy made things real. “She’s very strong. She’s only really just started forgetting,” he said. He tried not to stare at the group of shadowless at their center. He wanted to ask them what to do. How far gone were they? Did they have rules? How were they making it work? Most of all, how were the ones with shadows not afraid of the ones without? At what they might do at any moment—like the deer, or maybe worse—if they forgot something?

  “That’s pretty impressive for seven days,” one of the shadowless ones whistled. His blue eyes were unnaturally clear.

  “He doesn’t even remember which one of us he’s related to,” a woman next to him joked, and a couple of them laughed. The shadowless man grinned sheepishly. After they quieted, two women with jet-black skin muttered, “Tell him already,” to the one with the gun.

  “You ought to head south, to New Orleans,” she said at last. “Something’s happening there.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “We don’t know,” s
he confessed. “But something. Everyone’s heading for it. Arlington’s almost emptied out; we’re the last group that we know of. We were waiting for—” She cut off abruptly, but Ory knew the tone. He’d heard it often in the beginning. It was the tone of someone who’d refused to give up a hope she shouldn’t have anymore. “We’ve heard a lot of stories,” she finally continued. “A lot of names.”

  Ory thought of the ones he knew. The One with a Middle But No Beginning. The One with No Eyes. The Stillmind. “They’re rumors,” he said. “Just a bunch of rumors.”

  “But they’re all about the same place,” the woman replied. “Whatever the names mean, they’re all about someone or something in New Orleans. That can’t mean nothing.”

  That much was true. Whenever one of the names came up, almost always so too did the city. But what it meant, if anything at all—that was the part that mattered to Ory.

  The woman cleared her throat. “Besides, we’ve heard rumors about D.C., too. Bad things are happening there. And it’s spreading. We waited as long as we could.”

  “Bad things?”

  “I don’t know what they are,” she said. “But the few people that have come through here, before they stopped coming altogether, they said it’s bad. And they were saying the same names, and all heading for New Orleans. So that’s what we’re doing, too.”

  Ory looked from person to person in the group. He was suddenly keenly aware of how many of them were studying him—his watch, his knife, his pack. Or perhaps they were just looking at his shadow. “You trust what they say?” He asked.

  “I’ve been in this complex a long time,” she said. “You learn to watch, not to listen. I’ve ignored what they said and watched what they did. And it’s what I told you—people are leaving. They’re coming from Arlington and they’re coming from D.C., and they’re all going south, to Louisiana. Something’s happening out there.”

  “If the names are all real, I’m not sure I’d want to go.”

  The woman shrugged. “Then don’t. But I’d rather be running toward than away from something.” The others behind her nodded.