The Book of M. Peng Shepherd
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were in constant flux then, changed one way from a bad memory and then changed again from another. Ory’d had to check every direction through a pair of binoculars before he could move a step, for fear of being ambushed by shadowed men or mauled by terrified shadowless. But now there were no shadowed ones left, because they’d turned into shadowless, and almost no shadowless either, because they couldn’t remember that they should stay. Now everything was always still. Nothing moved, nothing made noise, nothing changed. There was no one left to change it. Shops became lonely graveyards, houses became monuments.
There were very few places he was ever worried about running into another living soul anymore. But Broad Street, where he was heading, was one of them.
When Ory reached the Falls Church neighborhood, he began to jog. He did not follow the roads. Instead, he cut through abandoned backyards in a straight line between the shelter and Broad Street, to make up for the late start. Most of the houses had no fences, and when they did, the wood was long since rotted. Even though he’d stayed in bed with Max for another half hour after they’d finished making love, there would still be enough time to search, Ory reasoned. He pried apart a pair of sagging planks and slipped through into a ruin of tall grass. There was still plenty of time. And even if there wasn’t, it had still been worth it. I need to make Max more presents, he thought. Or—maybe it was just that he was in such a good mood after the sex that the joke struck him as funny instead of horrible—he could just keep giving her the same present over and over, and she’d love it every time.
Don’t laugh at that, Ory scolded himself. That’s terrible. You’re a terrible person. But he did anyway. Quietly.
Twenty minutes later, he was a cul-de-sac away from Broad Street.
MAX HAD BANNED EITHER OF THEM FROM GOING BACK TO Broad Street again after the last time they’d searched there, more than a year past. It also had been the last time they’d run into another person.
Ory stayed crouched in the undergrowth and watched the weathered row of apartments that lined the infamous road. Beyond the empty stretch of grass and across the asphalt, nothing gave itself away.
The person they’d met that day had been a shadowless, only a few weeks gone. The man had remembered just enough to know it was bad not to have a shadow, but didn’t remember how it worked. He tried to take Ory’s.
Ory shuddered at the sudden memory of sharp, dirty carbon steel against his skin. The shadowless had been a firefighter before the world ended, still in his giant flame-retardant coat when they had seen him wandering around. His coat, his helmet, his boots—and his metal fireman’s axe, gripped tightly in his right hand.
Neither Ory nor Max were doctors, back when there were jobs. It was pure luck that he hadn’t lost the arm or died.
They’d argued about it a few times before, but Max won after that. Abundant as Broad Street was, Ory promised her that he wouldn’t go again. No matter how desperate, how starving.
They’d said nothing about what would happen if she forgot the promise, though.
Ory put his hand on the butt of his knife in its holster, and crept across the street toward the entrance of the apartment complex. The wind picked up and a gust of dead leaves swept past, hissing. He cleared the communal front lawn as fast as he could, aiming straight for the first door. He didn’t stop until he was crouched against the front wall, shoulder scraping the brick facade. He pressed his ear to the wood and listened: for footsteps on rotting floorboards, whispered instructions between family members or reluctant allies, the zip of a travel pack, light snoring. Nothing.
Ory took out the knife and tried to steady his grip. He hated this part the most.
“Do it, Ory,” he murmured, for courage. He always tried to imagine Max’s voice was saying those things. “There’s no one in there. There hasn’t been for a long time.” He heaved himself against the door.
The rotted wood gave way, and he slipped into the lobby of the building, knife pointed.
The room was empty.
Ory closed what was left of the door behind himself so he couldn’t be seen from the street. Waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim glow of weak sun on glittering dust, and for the pounding in his rib cage to ease. The knife slid slowly back into its leather sheath.
There were scuff marks on the wood floor. Deep grooves that had been there long enough to have healed over from the odd rain through the shattered windows. He cleared the lobby and leasing office and began his search, but all the units on the ground floor were bare. Someone had made good use of whatever furniture had been there. The kitchens were similarly picked over; the doors of the cupboards were gone, drawers missing. Ory stared at the empty open shelves in one apartment, trying to imagine what they used to look like full of boxed food. The silver faucet fixtures on the sink had vanished, too.
The next floor was just as empty, and the one after. On the fifth floor, he couldn’t go past the doorway of most units, because the stench was too strong. The remains of whoever had lived in those were still inside. Ory cleared the first tower block and moved to the second. Fire, then flood damage. A gym where all the exercise machines resembled gleaming metal horses, posed mid-gallop. The vending machines played music, even though there had been no electricity for years. Elevator shafts gaped, doors jammed open.
The third block still had a front door. Ory went much more slowly, encouraged. All the furniture, but no food, no clothes. One of the units reminded him a little of their own apartment, back in D.C.—if it was even still there. It had the same sort of classic modern style of Max’s that had impressed his parents when they’d come to visit. He checked the walls for hollow places, where something might have been hidden inside. In the bedrooms, he saw the names.
In the early days, when there were more wedding guests still hiding with Ory and Max at Elk Cliffs Resort and they took more group trips down the mountain to brave Arlington, seeking supplies or information, he had seen them. Written on shelves in stores where the aisles had been picked clean, spray-painted onto the backs of buildings. People who still trusted others enough to talk whispered from the narrow mouths of alleys. Have you heard about the Stillmind? The One Who Gathers? They traded food for information, rallied curious crowds to make mass pilgrimages into the strange lands to see if they could find out more. Someone in this apartment had scrawled The One with a Middle but No Beginning in charcoal over where the bed should have been. Ory touched the tail of one smudged letter softly, powdering his fingertip in dark gray. Those few left with shadows were just the opposite, he thought. All beginning, no middle. Middle had become an ever-shifting, never-ending apocalypse.
A soft crack broke the silent complex. Ory flinched, ducked instinctively to the floor before he’d breathed. His knife was out again.
He counted to five. The sound had been dull, as if it had come from outside, some ways off. He peeked over the edge of an overturned dresser, toward the open wall that should have been a glass sliding door to a small back deck. There was some struggling grass, and another looming dead apartment tower beyond the sagging wooden fence.
“Trees,” he said to himself. “Just trees.” The area was wildly overgrown. It reeked of rotting mulberries. When he looked closer at the ground, he could see the white ones that had dropped from overhead before they were ripe, like little pale maggots. “Keep going, Ory. Do the upstairs bedrooms,” he ordered himself. He pried his hand away from the hunting knife and crept down the hall toward the steps.
He stayed away from the windows, half kneeling on the floor. His heart jumped as he peeled back the dirty carpet in the closet and found a section of wood floor had been cut into a tiny trapdoor—but someone else had already discovered it. Whatever had been in there, it was empty now. Ory left the carpet rolled and didn’t bother putting the door to the little hiding spot back. Save someone else the same letdown. If there was anyone left in the city. It had been so long, Ory had started to think he and Max might be the only two left in Arlington, maybe farther.
He might be the only one, soon.
The soft crack sounded again, and he threw himself to the floor. The