The Book of M. Peng Shepherd

      Ory looked from person to person in the group. He was suddenly keenly aware of how many of them were studying him—his watch, his knife, his pack. Or perhaps they were just looking at his shadow. “You trust what they say?” He asked.

      “I’ve been in this complex a long time,” she said. “You learn to watch, not to listen. I’ve ignored what they said and watched what they did. And it’s what I told you—people are leaving. They’re coming from Arlington and they’re coming from D.C., and they’re all going south, to Louisiana. Something’s happening out there.”

      “If the names are all real, I’m not sure I’d want to go.”

      The woman shrugged. “Then don’t. But I’d rather be running toward than away from something.” The others behind her nodded.

      Ory tried to read her face for some kind of tell, but the woman looked earnest. She was tired, and too wise to hope for too much, but there was no lie there. Whatever the rumors were, that they existed and that people were heading for New Orleans, at least, was true.

      “Then why are you still here?” he asked.

      “We aren’t,” she said. She rested the butt of the rifle gently on the ground. “We leave today. As soon as this one finishes his goddamn cigarette.”

      The smoke trailed out between the tiny gaps in his teeth as the man beside her grinned. “Helps me remember,” he said.

      They all waited in the silence as the man exhaled and put the roll of embers to his lips again. Against the cool deck, its tiny shadow floated in midair, attached to nothing. After a last long drag, he pushed the remains into the ground and then placed his shoe slowly over it, snuffing the life out. It was time to go.

      “How are you getting there?” Ory asked when they all looked at him again.

      “We can’t—” she started.

      “No, I know. I didn’t mean … I just meant, how are you getting there?”

      The woman crossed her arms. “We’ve been saving. There are still cars that run if you look for them. Victor here was an engineer before everything went to shit. He calculated it for us. How much food, water, gas. We want to survive, but we want to travel light. We’ve been building our group for a year, and have just enough to get the twelve of us there, no more. That’s why I said you were too late,” she said, an explanation as an apology.

      “There are only two of you,” the shadowless man with the blue eyes said. The wind pushed his pale yellow hair in front of his cold stare for a moment. “You’ll travel fast as such a small unit.” His face was grimly determined. “Find a car. You’ll make it.”

      “I just …” Ory shook his head. He looked at the ground-floor unit closest to the pool that had obviously been theirs. There were bicycles propped up against the railings in the back, a grill chained to the wall, clothes hanging to dry. Here they were, sitting around the empty pool in the last warmish sun of the season, smoking cigarettes they had made themselves. It was almost a normal life. “You’re leaving all this—you’re going to go out there—for a rumor?”

      “We have to,” the woman said. She looked at the shadowless man, and they watched each other for a long moment. “Or there won’t be anything left anyway.”

      IT WAS A LONG WAY BACK, BUT AS SOON AS ORY GOT AWAY from Broad Street and was cutting through backyards again, it was quiet once more.

      The older woman’s name was Ursula, she’d said. Ursula. The first shadowed person Ory had met since the Forgetting took Arlington. And probably the last.

      Ursula told him he was welcome to everything they’d left in their unit—which wasn’t much, but it was still better than what he’d hoped to find at all. They had finished packing a few days ago, and were leaving what was there behind. “We’d rather you have it than anyone else, I guess,” she’d said. Ory scrounged around every corner and crack. There was no food, but in the end, he was dragging back to their shelter two of the bikes, four small knives that were still fairly sharp, a bottle of vinegar, three glass jars, and the curtains from every window. He knew the bikes were too cumbersome, but he took them anyway—one looked just like Max’s old roadster, and he wanted to see her face light up when she saw it. Maybe they could ride them around the grass outside the shelter once or twice, like the old days. By the time he finished packing and went back outside, the pool area was empty. They were already gone.

      The return took longer, with such a heavy bag and guiding two bikes with a hand on each of their handlebars. It was later than usual—the sun had already almost disappeared beneath the horizon, and the last dying rays backlit everything into a dark shade of greenish-blue. Ory had to make good time to get home to Max by when he said he’d be there. He looked down between his boots as he stepped. His shadow lurched with him, slithering jaggedly over the overgrown lawns, fragmenting around tangled weeds. Still there.

      They were crazy to leave Arlington, he thought. Just when things had finally started to get quiet. Just when it was finally starting to get safe enough that he could walk around to the back of their shelter to check the game trap without fear, no longer needing to jump at every single little snap of a twig or rustle of leaves in the overgrowth. They’d finally gotten to a place where they were almost safe.

      And honestly, now that he knew almost everyone with or without a shadow had emptied out of Arlington, and the only things left he’d have to contend with were the last straggling shadowless and the odd wild animal that had moved in from the lurching woods, it made Ory want to hole up in their shelter and stay even more. Maybe society had been nice before, but he wasn’t sure it would be great again. Maybe after everything was settled there in New Orleans, after they’d figured out some way to control the place. Maybe years from now, he’d consider it. But with what was coming for Max, they couldn’t move now. They needed to stay, and be safe, when the time came. Max would agree with him.

      Ory had just about convinced himself that the last thought was true when a strange ripple in his shadow caught his gaze. But it wasn’t his shadow, he realized—just as something heavy and metallic smashed into the back of his head.

      THE BUZZING SLOWLY FADED. CONFETTI GLITTERED AS IT fell, everywhere, golden. Candles, sunset. Overhead, a wrought-iron elk, leaping over a wrought-iron cliff. The guests raised their party noisemakers to their lips again and blew.

      “Champagne?” Max slipped her arm into Ory’s. She shouted over the squealing chorus. The soft, brown coils of her hair spilled across the sleeve of his suit as she leaned to him. Lavender, warmed by the summer air. Bubbles popped against the crystal.

      “Here they come!” someone cried. The band roared. Felix Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March.” Another hand clapped his shoulder. “Best man! You’re up!” Streamers exploded above.

      “Ory?” Max asked. He turned to look at her—and everything froze. Things suddenly moved as if underwater. The piano echoed, time-stretched. Twirling slivers of gold imprisoned, floating in midair. He loved her so much. “Ory?”

      Ory’s eyes opened. Everything was gone. The music, the sound. The world was black. He was blind.

      He felt the cool, wet grass beneath him then. No. He wasn’t blind. It was just night. Then he knew his pack was gone.

      Of course. That and the supplies were what he’d been attacked for. He shivered at the absence of it against his back. Naked, as if the clothes were stripped off him. The blackness blurred, and he realized he was crying. All gone. His knife, his watch, the canteen, his first-aid kit, the flashlight. His pack. His pack. Every precious thing it had taken so long to collect. Everything that kept him alive when he scouted. All gone. Ory clutched at the shoulder straps for comfort as he hugged himself, realized they weren’t there either anymore, and started to cry harder.

      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