He chose another street, but it didn’t matter. The few other people he found were the same.
Rocks, hammers, axes, tree branches shaved down into spears and clubs. People were terrified Ory wanted to steal their food or kill them, and others couldn’t remember whether they knew him or were afraid of him. They either ran him off or stared at him in silent terror until he gave up. One old woman with no shadow finally offered him a dried fish she’d caught in the Potomac.
“How many days?” he asked between ravenous bites.
“Nine,” she said. She smiled. “I should go now, in case I forget I gave you that.”
Ory finished and licked his fingers clean of the pungent oil. His stomach was already cramping from what was his first real food in days. “You haven’t seen a woman, have you?” he asked her as she turned to leave. “I have her photograph.”
“Honey, I can’t even remember my own name anymore,” she said. “I hope you find her.”
“Me too,” Ory said. “I think she headed east from here. We used to live near Dupont Circle before.”
“Oh, no,” the old woman scolded. She took hold of his face. “Don’t go deeper in. Bad things, very bad things. You stay on the coast, like the rest of us. Better yet, into Arlington, or farther. That’s what the young ones are doing.” She shook her head. “If your dear went into the city, you won’t find her. You likely won’t come back either.”
“What bad things?” Ory asked. But her face went blank, then twisted in fear. He left before she could attack him for the fish.
THE CLOSER TO THEIR APARTMENT ORY DREW, THE LOUDER the streets became. He started to see snatches of movement. Smoke. Dust billowing from damaged buildings. Fresh blood. Screams down long alleyways. And shadowless, running across intersections between breaks of eerie silence. Running in straight lines.
Ory had seen a lot of people run in his early scouting days, before they all vanished. There was a difference between someone who was running next to someone, coincidentally in the same direction, and someone who was running with them. He watched the streets nervously. It wasn’t like in Arlington. These shadowless ran like they knew where they were going—and like they were going there together. Straight lines, sharp turns. He didn’t know what to make of it. He just knew it could be nothing good.
“I’m coming, Max,” Ory whispered. He was almost there. On the side of the next building, in red dye of some kind, the words The One Who Gathers gleamed. He turned the corner at a sprint. Home.
I FOUND ANOTHER DRAWING YESTERDAY, AT ANOTHER ABANDONED camp. It looks like it’s by the same artist as the one who drew the signs at the school in Oakton. I feel like I’m on the right track, Ory. I don’t know to what yet, but the right track to something. This one—this one was the strangest of all.
The first thing I noticed were the ashes. They were from a campfire that had been put out earlier that morning, I realized as I squatted over it. All around, bare spots on the ground, where people had slept. Then I saw the drawing. Just behind the camp, on a section of the sidewalk that was still mostly intact, there was a painted shadow on the cement. A shadow, and no person. It looks even stranger than a person with no shadow.
I stood above it, in the exact same position—one arm raised as if talking, the other on my hip—and stared. I stood there for hours like that. It was such an odd thing to do. I didn’t even feel particularly connected, like some part of me that was missing felt whole again. I wanted to so badly, Ory, but I just didn’t. Instead, it was eerie, like putting on clothes that aren’t yours, or going with it when someone at a crowded party mishears your name and calls you something slightly different for the rest of the loud, buzzing night.
Maybe I didn’t feel anything because it wasn’t a drawing of my own shadow. It was of the blue-eyed man’s.
The One Who Gathers
THE NEXT DAY, WHEN DR. ZADEH BROUGHT THE AMNESIAC back to Maharashtra Regional Hospital for another session, Dr. Avanthikar’s assistants were printing reams and reams of zigzagging lines on graph paper. Brain waves, he figured when she stepped away from supervising them long enough to embrace him warmly and shake Dr. Zadeh’s hand.
“So much data,” she said to them. “Hopefully there’s good news hiding inside it. You did a great job. Hemu hasn’t had the patience to talk to someone for that length of time since before he was admitted.”
“They understand each other.” Dr. Zadeh smiled.
“I think he just feels comfortable,” the amnesiac said. “We’ve both forgotten some things. We’re equals. Maybe, even, friends.”