When the strangled sobs finally subsided, he sat up as cautiously as he could. His head was pounding. Everything else was numb. He couldn’t tell if he was injured anywhere below his neck yet. His fingers dabbed at the back of his skull and came away warm and wet. He couldn’t see it in the darkness, but it felt like blood. That’s not good, he thought vaguely. Then he pitched over and vomited onto the grass.
MINUTES OR HOURS LATER, ORY WAS SHAKILY ON HIS FEET. There was no way to tell what time it was. It was just dark. So dark he could barely see his hand in front of his face, even with the moon out. Night now was not like night before, navigable in the vague, faint haze of streetlights. Night now was oblivion.
Was it a shadowless that had knocked him out, ripped his pack off his back, and sprinted away? he wondered. Or a shadowed survivor like himself, who had been stalking him since he entered Broad Street? A chill shuddered through his clammy body. Was it the group he’d just met? They were about to set off on a dangerous journey. They’d seen his hunting knife, his backpack. They had plenty of supplies, but why not have a few more? He tried to picture Ursula circling back, her buzzed hair, her solemn face, creeping calmly up behind him, the butt of her gun raised with grim determination. Would she have done it, knowing he had a shadowless of his own to take care of?
Max, Ory thought then. He took a few faltering steps. There was no point in wondering who’d gotten the drop on him. It didn’t matter now. His pack was gone, and the bicycle he wanted to give her, but he was alive. And so was Max. And she’d be panicked out of her mind by now. Ory had never been this late before, ever. Not even the first time he went out and almost got killed, and then got lost trying to get home. He wanted to sit down and close his eyes again. Instead, he kept walking.
HOW HE MADE IT TO THE SHELTER WAS HAZY. HE MUST HAVE retraced his steps from memory, able to navigate the demolished neighborhoods even in darkness. Once or twice he thought he heard something rustling in the bushes nearby, but he was too dizzy to spot it, and in no shape to fight it anyway. It was almost as bad as death to lose that pack, everything he’d had in it, but he might not have made it back at all in his condition if he’d been carrying all that extra weight.
Suddenly he was on the ground floor of the shelter. He’d made it. He leaned over and vomited again, and then almost fell into it.
Just two floors to go, and he’d be home. Please let her still remember how to clean a wound, Ory thought. Please let her still remember everything right now. Tomorrow he could face it, but not now. If he opened the door and it was the moment that Max had forgotten who he was, in his current state Ory doubted he could string together a coherent sentence at all, much less convince her they’d been married for the past five years, and he went out and got himself almost killed like this every week. At least she wouldn’t remember that he’d had a pack to lose.
Ory climbed the stairs slowly, leaning against the wall as he ascended to stop the world from spinning. The back of his head felt freshly wet. He’d need Max to check it to make sure it didn’t need stitches. He grimaced as he imagined the possibility. Her having to shave a patch in the back with their last dull disposable razor, the piercing pop of one of her sewing needles through the skin, over and over, a sensation he knew far too well by now. The back of his scalp tingled in reluctant anticipation. Just don’t fall asleep, Ory thought dimly when he reached their door. He’d read that somewhere once—if you had a concussion, you shouldn’t go to sleep. Otherwise you might never wake up. That was all he wanted now, though. To curl up with Max and close his eyes until everything didn’t blur and tilt.
But as soon as he put his key into the tumbler and started to turn it, everything snapped into humming, crystallized focus.
The door was unlocked.
No.
No, no, no.
Ory shoved the door open and ran inside before he could think about it for another second. Before the terror of all the horrible things that could have happened to her—bandits, robbers, wild animals, her memory—could overwhelm him. Please don’t let something have happened to her in the hours I was gone, he prayed. Please don’t let it be that if he hadn’t gone to Broad Street, if he’d only been home on time, he could have caught her before she forgot. “Max!” he screamed, and tore across the living room to the kitchenette, then the bedroom, then the bathroom, and then farther out, down other halls, into other rooms, searching every inch of the shelter. “Max! Max! MAX!”
She was gone.
WAIT, LET ME TURN IT ON . . . OKAY, SAY IT NOW.
“BLUE.”
FIFTY-TWO.
Part II
Mahnaz Ahmadi