The Dead-Tossed Waves Read Online Free PDF Page A

As if his lips never brushed mine. As if I were nothing and no one to him.
    I want to drop to my knees and press my mouth to the wound. I want to take the infection into myself, to fill the void that seems to be taking over everything.
    But I don’t. I just stare at the bite and think about how I swung too early. If I’d just waited. If I hadn’t been so afraid. I’d known to wait and I couldn’t. It’s my fault he’s infected.
    “What about Cira?” I ask. “I can’t leave her.” I feel around my neck for the necklace she’d given me. It was supposed to protect us and it didn’t.
    He shakes his head but desperation bubbles inside me. I call out to my friend, “Cira!” She looks at me and even from here I can see the splash of blood across her face. She stands over the mutilated body of the dead boy, a long knife clutched in her hand so tight that her knuckles glow white under the moon.
    I wave for her to come. But it’s as if she doesn’t see me. “Cira!” I shout again. “Cira, over here!”
    She screams and brings the blade down into the boy’s body again and again. As if she can punish him for having been infected. For having turned Breaker.
    My throat convulses and I press my hands to my mouth, my fingers digging into my cheeks as my eyes water. I whimper.
    Catcher pulls my attention back. “Please, Gabry” is all he says. His voice is filled with such anguish that it slices into my heart. I glance at everyone else, their heads in their hands, their faces streaked with tears, their mouths open, wailing.
    “For me,” Catcher adds.
    It’s as though he’s giving me permission to do the one thing I’m desperate for. So I turn and run, leaving everyoneelse behind. Back through the ruins, crossing in and out of shadows and hiding from the Militia until I hit the Barrier and pound at it with my fists. My knuckles rub raw and still I hammer at the old worn wood that’s so thick it swallows up every sound.
    As if it’s the Barrier’s fault for everything that happened. And maybe it is, I think, sinking down to the ground, my eyes shut tight. We never should have crossed it.
    I keep seeing Catcher; I keep seeing the blood. Tears crowd my eyelids but they can’t blur the memories that ache inside me with such a sharp fierceness.
    I almost turn around. I almost go back. By leaving I’m abandoning them and it’s not fair. In the distance I hear the Militiamen as they shout and run toward the amusement park. The bells in the town still ring their slow steady rhythm. My heart beats in time with each hit of the hammer to metal and I press my forehead to the Barrier, the dry wood smelling faintly of rot.
    There could be other Mudo out here. I know I should climb back over the wall and run home. Even though I want nothing more than to hide in the night shadows here. To be absorbed into this nightmare and disappear.
    The world’s shrunk too fast. What was only hours before a new horizon of possibility opening in front of me has collapsed in on itself. I was right to fear the other side of the Barrier. I was stupid to allow myself to be lulled into believing it could be any better outside Vista. That there could be any place for me away from my mother and the lighthouse and the safety of town.
    I climb the thick wall and don’t pause at the top before dropping to the other side. Shadows move through the town,the dull moonlight swimming around them. I melt into the chaos of it all, keeping my head down to stay invisible to the panicking people scattering about.
    Men flow from the houses with their weapons, shouting to one another. Women barricade windows and doors. But their sense of urgency doesn’t touch me. I’m hollow and numb—nothing but a ghost.
    A few times I stop and stand in the street, the town streaming past. I wonder if I should go back. I wonder how I was able to just leave Catcher like that. Leave Cira and the rest of them to face the wrath of the Militia and the Council. How I could think