The Book of M Read online

  On television, helicopter footage cut between downtown Boston and one of the larger highways out of the city beneath a reporter’s voice-over. The National Guard had circled the metropolis and blocked all routes in and out, putting the entire population under indefinite quarantine. There was a mini screen in the bottom right corner running at the same time as the live feed; it was a rerun of the president’s speech that had apparently aired half an hour before, when the news about Boston first broke. He was in the middle of assuring the public that the nation’s top scientists were working around the clock to figure out the cause of the epidemic—the world was still calling it “the epidemic” then, as if it was some kind of simple biological quirk, some twisted proteins or mutated virus that could be solved by the right vaccine—and advised everyone not to travel except in emergency circumstances. “Stay safe, stay inside, limit travel, and limit contact with others whenever possible,” his grainy image repeated. “We are doing everything we can to find a way to neutralize the spread. I promise you, as soon as we discover a cure, we’ll be sending FEMA and Red Cross agents door to door through every neighborhood to distribute it.” His voice was calm, but the message was clear. Do not go to the hospital. Do not go to the grocery store. Do not leave your house. Wait.

  Now, it was clear the Forgetting was not contagious. At least it didn’t seem like it was. The number of times that Ory had been curiously examined or attacked by a shadowless while out scavenging, the number of random survivors he’d tried to help in the early days who later succumbed, and he was still here, still whole. If it had been contagious, he’d have lost his shadow years ago. He still had no idea what it actually was. And he’d given up trying to figure it out. But back then, as they all huddled in the ballroom, terrified, watching nervous soldiers try to say—then yell, then desperately mime—instructions to stop and turn back around at the confused, terrified shadowless man approaching them, no one knew if it was or wasn’t something that could be passed by breath or touch. Everything else in the world had always worked that way. At the time, there was no reason to think this was any different. They couldn’t be blamed for what happened then.

  The president’s little speech box disappeared, and the split screen suddenly dropped the view of downtown to focus on only the highway feed as the commotion started. A shadowless man had wandered away from the city and was now stumbling toward the line of soldiers, crying, but not saying any words or seeming to hear the ones being shouted at him. He looked to be in his fifties—still strong, but balding, and beginning to grow a middle-aged paunch. He wore brown corduroys, a button-down shirt, and a navy blue sweater over it, pristine in the harsh blaze of the emergency floodlights. He looks like a university professor, Ory thought dazedly. A university professor with no shadow.

  The soldiers were screaming now, some waving, some holding an open hand straight out in the universal gesture to stop, to fucking stop, stop or we have to shoot, we have to shoot to kill. The man didn’t seem to recognize or remember any of it at all.

  The station tried to cut away, but they weren’t fast enough. Several guests in the ballroom screamed as the shadowless man on-screen snapped to a halt, frozen upright for one lingering instant, and then crumpled to the ground.

  The news anchor materialized on-screen again, looking disoriented and unprepared, stumbling through a statement that was being fed to him through his earpiece. “We want to apologize for that graphic video clip . . . It was not our intention to air such an upsetting image . . . Unfortunately the nature of live news sometimes . . .”

  “Holy shit, Ory,” Max murmured, her whole body tense. “Do we know anyone in Boston? Do you have friends or family there?” People had started arguing now, some calling for calm, others shouting across the room to each other for any new information they could dig up on their phones. Someone had a laptop out and was connecting it to Elk Cliffs’s Wi-Fi.

  “I don’t think so,” Ory said, but his head was swimming. He felt dizzy.

  “This is really bad,” Max kept saying. “This is really, really bad.”

  Ory tried to refute that, to be the strong, steady one who would keep them both anchored, but he couldn’t find the words. The TV was back on the helicopter camera hovering over Boston city limits, the body of the fallen shadowless man still in the street, this time pixelated into an indiscernible mass. Ory couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like even in death, his shadow hadn’t returned. The thought sent a chill through him.

  The National Guard were still shoulder to shoulder, a wall across the road. They looked shaken, as if they were clinging to one another instead of forming a blockade. One was holding a black body bag in his hands, gun strapped back across his shoulders, but he was held by orders in the line, unable to go forward and lay it over the dead man, in case whatever was causing the Forgetting was transmissible through the air. The soldiers suddenly tensed, and guns rose from their downward angle to point straight forward with agonizing dread. More shadowless were approaching. Some running, some screaming, some silent.

  This time the station didn’t waste any time. The screen cut back to the anchor at the desk, who was scrambling through freshly scribbled papers and a blaring earpiece, trying not to listen for the sound of impending gunfire through the tiny speaker. Mid-speech he stammered. A long, horrible pause. He closed his eyes involuntarily. Then he opened them and kept going.

  Ory glanced around the room and swallowed hard, to try to calm himself down, and looked back at the screen. Then he heard the anchor say something about Denver. He pulled Max closer, wrapped his arms around her, and squeezed with everything he had as the news cut to a reporter in Colorado. Someone had begun to sob.

  “Hey,” he said as he crushed her into the hug. The shocked, rising hum of too many voices at once echoed off the stone walls of the ballroom. Shouts and ring tones blended into an eerie, doomed musical harmony. He wanted to say something comforting, to sound like he was there for her, to make it feel like it was all going to be okay soon, but the fear had numbed his mind. “Blue,” he finally managed, no more than a whisper.

  “Fifty-two,” she whispered back.

  I CAN’T REALLY AVOID IT ANY LONGER, I GUESS. NOT TALKING about it isn’t going to change that it happened, so I might as well say something before I forget how it went. I don’t know if I believe you yet, Ory. If recording things will really make a difference at all. But if it does—well, I don’t really know what are the most important things to get down on tape yet, so I figure I should probably just say everything I can think of. Including this.

  So. The day I lost my shadow.

  It was two weeks ago now. Which is a pretty long time for me to still remember as much as I do, judging by past cases. Everyone’s different, though, they say. Hemu Joshi started losing his memories so quickly, just a few days in, but there were reports of some people in Mumbai who took a month to forget anything significant. I think the longest one I ever heard about before the electricity went out was about a month and a half. So hopefully I’m more toward that side of the average. These past two weeks have felt like a year, in some ways. To have a month and a half left before it all goes, it might feel like an eternity.

  This is strange, talking to myself and you like this. Especially since I’m not there with you anymore. I have a confession: I actually wasn’t going to use the tape recorder, even though I promised you I would. But then I got out here, alone, and I just—it feels good to talk. It makes me feel real still.

  I know I’m the one who left and that you’ll never hear this, but before I start, I want to say, just in case: Ory, if you’re listening to this—somehow, some way—it didn’t hurt. So don’t worry about that part, at least. I hardly felt it.

  There was nothing about that morning two weeks ago that seemed different. I’m sure you’d say the same. I looked normal, felt normal. We split a can of corn from our dwindling cupboard supply, and then you left to check the trap and then the city. I’ve racked my brain for anything. A sign,
a twinge, a premonition. But there was nothing.

  After you left, I went into the kitchenette to do the counting for us. How many matches. How many shotgun shells. How many pills of found Tylenol, amoxicillin, doxycycline. I felt like a squirrel, counting how many nuts we’d managed to store in the hole in our tree to see if it was enough to last through the winter.

  You know this already—the kitchenette was my favorite room in the shelter, because the window was so small and our floor was high enough up that a person couldn’t see in from the ground, so the glass there could stay uncovered. At first you wanted to block it like the rest of them, just to be safe, but I managed to convince you to leave just that one open. I don’t think you have any idea how much time I spent in that room on days you were out scavenging for supplies or skinning a mouse from our trap. Some mornings, I just lay on the floor there, sunbathing.

  Sometimes, on particularly bright days when the wind was very still, two little gray sparrows would land on the branches of the tree outside that window. I think they might even have been mates. A few weeks ago, even though it was already getting cold, one of them came back with some sticks, and I was so excited that they might be building their nest there that I forgot to do anything I was supposed to do that day, which was quite a bit: I had at least three of your shirts to sew because you kept ripping the seam where the sleeve joined the shoulder, and I was supposed to repair the cardboard covering on one of the first-floor windows where it had peeled loose and was flapping against the cracked glass in the breeze. You were afraid the movement might attract passersby that otherwise wouldn’t have noticed or considered the building. I agreed that this made sense. I just completely forgot, because of the birds. We got in a pretty big fight about that when you got home, I remember. That was before my shadow disappeared and you started handling me with kid gloves. Now, when I forget to do something, you barely say anything at all, or sometimes even tell me it’s fine, that you’re just happy I’m still doing well and had a good day. But the look on your face now is so much worse. I’d rather have a hundred thousand fights than see that look on your face again. Well, I guess I won’t have to anymore.

  Okay, stop being grim. I’m off topic.

  I remember grabbing a jar of spaghetti sauce mid-count when I first noticed it. The strange stillness in the room. It was always so still when only I was home, but this was stillness of a different quality. It was full of something, rather than absent.

  I looked down at my shadow there on the floor, and because of the light from that little window, it was perfectly stretched out in front of me. We were the exact same height and shape. There was no distortion from the angle of the sun or a bump in the floor or a wall that might have cut into the silhouette. We matched exactly. Perfectly. Down to the eyelash.

  I lifted up the jar, and so did my shadow. We both leaned over and set the sauces on the counters, and returned our hands to rest at our sides. It was like I could feel that something was about to happen. Like I shouldn’t look away.

  Then something did. This is going to sound absolutely crazy, but I swear it’s true.

  I was holding perfectly still, under the spell of that feeling, just watching my shadow. It was looking back at me, in the same pose, waiting.

  Then I saw it tilt its head ever so slightly to the side, all by itself.

  There was a moment of coldness, like the entire room had dropped twenty degrees. I tried to take a breath, but I couldn’t move. Then it was gone.

  I didn’t cry. Not that whole afternoon. Instead, I kept busy, taking inventory of our first-aid supplies, cleaning, making sure the window coverings were still secure, double-checking that we had sufficient shotgun ammunition, cleaning and resetting the game trap. I felt like there were so many things to make sure of, and so little time. Like it was all going to end that same night, and I’d just vanish too, forever. I kept spinning around to look behind me, to see if maybe I’d been mistaken, that the sun had just disappeared behind some clouds for a second, or I simply had cabin fever. But it didn’t matter how many times I looked or how many different directions I shone our spare flashlight on my hand. I couldn’t make a silhouette against any surface. In the light on the wall, the plastic cylinder looked like it was floating in midair all by itself, careening wildly about, pointing every which angle. As soon as I noticed, I put it down immediately. I couldn’t touch it again.

  I forgot to start dinner. Instead, I shook out the winter clothes in the storage trunk so they wouldn’t have moth holes in them by the time we needed them. I still didn’t cry.

  Even when I went back in the kitchen and saw that jar still sitting on the counter, and its own twin still painted darkly on the floor, I still didn’t cry.

  Not until after it had gotten dark, and I heard your key in the door.

  Mahnaz Ahmadi

  THAT NIGHT, THE NIGHT THE FORGETTING REACHED BOSTON, Naz had spent the afternoon out on the range with her coach, but every shot was terrible. She bungled them one after another for so many hours that finally he cut the practice short, and told her to head home and go to sleep early. Naz knew something was really off when she didn’t argue with him about getting soft on her, for once. Her mind just wasn’t there. It was like she knew something was coming. It’s in your DNA, her mother would have said. They say that DNA has a memory, too. That the things that happen to a people are passed down. Naz would have told her that was nonsense. If they hadn’t disowned each other so long ago.

  When the Forgetting hit, after dark, it surprised Naz that her mother was who she thought of first. Then she thought, I can’t. She’d kept her promise never to speak to her again—since the last time she’d visited Tehran. Her mother had, too. Outside, on the street below, she could hear people screaming in the night.

  Naz picked up her cell phone. She had started seeing someone recently, maybe seriously. She didn’t know. She scrolled to his number, but her finger stalled, hovering over the screen. What did two and a half months mean, really? Fourteen dates, five lays, eighteen glasses of wine, one drive to the airport for a weekend trip. He hadn’t reached out for Naz. There was no message flashing urgently in the blue glow of her screen. It was all right, though. Naz understood. There were other people who mattered more, to them both.

  The call didn’t go through the first time. Naz was sure everyone who hadn’t lost their shadow was busy calling everyone who had. She hung up and immediately dialed again. She was ready to leave a voice mail. I just wanted to say I’m okay, that’s all. Something like that. She was surprised when her mother picked up.

  “Are you safe?” Her mother was sobbing. It was disorienting—to listen as things that used to matter so much evaporated. What filled their empty places to justify all that lost time? Naz was scrambling for her shoes and wallet. Would a $15,000 charge even go through on her credit card? She couldn’t remember how to get to the airport, what freeway.

  It didn’t matter. They’d closed Boston airport, her mother told her. She’d seen it on the news. Naz couldn’t go home. “Are you safe? Tell me you’re safe,” her mother pleaded.

  Naz told her she was okay. Everything was slowly draining out of her. When she’d needed to be brave for someone else a moment ago, it was one thing. But it was hard to be brave for just herself. She backed away from the windows, sank to the carpet. Red and blue alternating flashes passed on the street outside, casting ghostly streaks across the ceiling. I have to get out of the city, Naz thought, at the same moment that her mother was telling her they’d quarantined it, that they were shooting people trying to break the line. “Turn on your damn TV, Mahnaz!” she shouted.

  The president’s face flashed up in front of her, alongside helicopter feeds of various neighborhoods. Naz even saw her own.

  “What should I do?” she asked her mother. “Should I go upstairs or go in the basement?”

  “No!” her mother cried. “You have to leave the house. Now. Anyone could find you there, because that’s where you’re supposed to be.” />
  Boston was a place where her mother’s paranoid advice had stopped terrifying Naz long ago. It was a place where no one made two extra turns on the way anywhere, to lose a tail. Where no one memorized license plates. Where no one had a secret hiding place in the hall closet. It was a place where Naz had all the answers, and her mother would flounder embarrassingly on the sidewalk, gaping at the things teenagers carelessly shouted, the crop tops, the virtual reality demos at pop-up game booths on Newbury Street. But this wasn’t the Boston Naz knew anymore, and her mother had lived this life before. She had learned a world where one had to know what to do if people were being killed, if someone might be coming to find you. Naz felt herself nodding vigorously at her mother’s words.

  “Where can you go that no one will think to look? Somewhere that wouldn’t be worth checking.”

  That’s how Naz ended up living in her perhaps-boyfriend’s music studio.

  SHE FIGURED, NO SERIOUS STORES OF FOOD, NO WEAPONS, no camping or survival supplies. A vacant, soundproof studio inside of a nondescript commercial warehouse was about as unattractive a target as possible. Why would anyone go there to try to wait out the chaos that was happening outside?

  Naz dumped everything in her pantry, everything in the top drawer of her dresser, her toiletries, and her bow and quiver into a duffel bag.

  “Do you see anyone? Are you there yet?” her mother asked.

  “Please stop talking,” Naz begged. She’d put the Bluetooth earpiece in her ear and clipped the phone to her belt holster so her mother could stay with her as she sprinted down every side street she could find to reach the studio. The intersection ahead exploded in a hail of bullets. Naz threw herself to the ground, flat against the sidewalk behind a battered parked car. Ahead, a person fell, and someone whooped, as if it was a game. More bodies came sprinting down the street, just on the other side of the car. They moved too fast for her to see if they had shadows or not.