The words sting. I want to argue with him, but I can’t because that’s exactly what we did.
Bishop’s hand slams into O’Malley’s chest: this time O’Malley hits the wall and falls to the floor. Bishop steps forward, points a finger down at O’Malley’s face.
“You weren’t there,” Bishop says. “You didn’t see, so you shut your mouth. We all know you heard Em’s scream for help—everyone did—but you stayed where you were because you were afraid!”
O’Malley springs to his feet far faster than I expected. Faster than Bishop expected, too, because before he can react, the tip of O’Malley’s knife is pressed against the base of Bishop’s throat.
I feel my hands move the spear, move it as if they aren’t a part of me, as if they act on their own. I see the bloody blade hovering a finger’s width from O’Malley’s belly.
“Put the knife away,” I say. “Right now.”
He stares at me, astonished, maybe even a little betrayed. I know how this looks—like I am willing to hurt him to protect Bishop.
O’Malley lowers the knife. He stomps off to the rear, shoving people out of his way.
I hear Spingate’s voice: “No…no, it’s not possible.”
She is farther forward, standing by the bones and the footprints. Tears stream down her face. Her lower lip quivers.
“Not possible,” she says again.
I rush to her side. “It is possible, Spin. They were monsters, I saw them.”
She looks at me with those big, watery green eyes. She shakes her head.
“I’m not talking about monsters.”
She points down at the dusty bones.
“It’s impossible for those to be here, Em. Don’t you see? These can’t be here because we walked in a straight line.”
One of the bones is mostly free of dust, as if it was picked up, brushed off, and set back down. It is a skull with a jagged, triangular hole smashed through the top.
Six sets of footprints lead away from the bones, down the long, white hallway. The footprints seem to begin at an archway on my left.
An open archway.
I know what that door leads to. Inside are coffins. Six empty, six with little corpses inside. And one of those empty coffins is where I first woke up, screaming in agony, trapped in the dark.
We are right back where we started.
TWENTY-EIGHT
This doesn’t make any sense.
I walk to the coffin room. I know exactly what I’m going to see, but I must be missing something. I have this wrong, somehow, and so does Spingate.
I enter—two rows of six coffins, a well-trampled aisle of dust between them. At the end of the right-hand row, I see the broken lid of my coffin, sticking straight up into the air.
This is impossible….We worked so hard….
I walk to Brewer’s coffin. The little corpse dressed in big clothes is still inside, the dried flesh flaked away from the skull right where Spingate touched it.
A boy at my side: O’Malley.
“We walked in a straight line,” he says. He doesn’t sound mad anymore. He sounds stunned, like it’s hit him as hard as it’s hit me. “We walked straight so we wouldn’t get lost.”
Doing so was my decision. Mine. I don’t understand what happened.
The hope we felt in the Garden, it’s gone. I feel numb again.
“I did something wrong,” I say. “I…I don’t know what happened. I tried to get us out.”
I tried. And all I did was bring us back to the same spot. Yong is dead. So is Latu. I lost Bello. No, I left Bello. I ran away so we could wind up right back where we started?
We’re never going to get out of this place.
We will all die here.
O’Malley puts his hand on my shoulder. I know he’s trying to be nice, but it feels awkward. He senses it, too, takes his hand away.
“Em, Bello wasn’t your fault.”
I look at him. Those blue eyes, the shape of his face…how did he know I was thinking about Bello? I wish O’Malley and I were somewhere else, together, the two of us, some place without the fear and the confusion.
“Not your fault,” he says again. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I wasn’t in the woods, I didn’t see what you saw. If you say we had to run, I know you had a good reason.”
The good reason? I was afraid, that was the good reason.
O’Malley is sincere, but his sincerity doesn’t change anything. Reality is what it is. I was voted the leader. Everyone did what I told them to do, and we wound up here. O’Malley is wrong—this is my fault.
I don’t want this stupid spear. I rest the butt in the dust. The blade—the blood on it tacky and half-dried—points to the carved ceiling. I could let go of it, just let it fall. Someone else should carry it for a while.
Gentle fingertips caress my temple. It stings, but not because of O’Malley’s touch.
“You’re hurt,” he says.
I reach up and feel the spot. A lump, from when the monster slammed me against the tree. It’s sticky there, and also down my cheek, my neck. I crane my head to look at my shoulder—spots of blood dot the white fabric.
I am clean no longer.