The Book of M. Peng Shepherd
put any of us in such danger. It isn’t fair to ask.”
“Then we’ll only accept volunteers, like the first time.”
“The risk is too great. We’re all we have left.”
“So we should just stay up here forever?” Paul’s voice was loud, on the border of threatening. Just weeks ago, he’d been smiling, tears of joy streaming down his face as he stood trembling with Imanuel before the old man. To watch him face off against the rabbi now, red-eyed, was deeply unsettling. Some of us were trying to calm him down; some of us were already shouting over him, demanding the third scouting party be formed.
“We have to figure out why it’s happening!”
“It’s too dangerous!”
“We’re going to die up here if we just wait, then!”
“What are we even waiting for?”
“The last group didn’t come back!”
“I’ll go again,” Marion said. Everyone fell silent. I looked down before she could make eye contact with me, ashamed that I wasn’t brave enough to volunteer once more as well. The fire hissed as it ate a fresher twig of pine, then quieted again.
“Me too,” Jae-suk said, and rose from the grass. On the other side of the flames, Lauren and Pierce also stood.
They returned a week later; all had survived. I almost didn’t believe it when I heard until I ran back to the courtyard and saw them cresting the summit, climbing over the low decorative stone wall. You, Paul, and Imanuel were already there, pressing glasses of boiled river water into their hands. Jae-suk’s wife was sobbing with joy, clinging to him.
“Did you see any signs of the second group?” I asked after they’d finished hugging everyone.
Jae-suk shook his head. “After the mountain—just, nothing.”
“We did bring back a bunch of first-aid kits, though, from some of the abandoned stores,” Marion said. “And a jacket. We found one jacket. For later, I guess.” She had her right arm tucked tightly against her, as though sprained or fractured somewhere.
I took off your button-down that I had been wearing over my T-shirt for sun cover and wrapped it around her arm protectively, like a sling. “Imanuel needs to look at that,” I said to her. Imanuel was an obstetrician, but he was the closest thing we all had to a paramedic.
“It’s an arm, not a baby.” She smiled. Everyone burst out laughing, it seemed so funny. We were all just so relieved they’d made it back.
There wasn’t much more to the third team’s report. They’d walked until they reached downtown Arlington and then gone through every home and shop, cautiously at first, then desperately, then hopelessly, searching for survivors. Buildings were burned or emptied out, windows smashed, doors crushed in. If there were any shadowed survivors in hiding, they must have been too afraid to make contact. The group was late back because they got lost a few times, because there inexplicably seemed to be streets through the city that hadn’t been there before. At that early time, none of us understood how that could have been possible.
The camp began to divide that afternoon, around the embers of the fire that was about to be lit for the evening. Half of us thought it was still too early and too dangerous, and the other half maintained that the worst of it had happened. If there was a time to go, that time was now. Sweat trickled down the small of my back and soaked into the waist of my pants. I watched you watch the rest of them argue, trying to determine which side you were on. And I watched Imanuel. You and Paul’s families were too far away to hope to reach, but Imanuel was originally from Philadelphia—and Baltimore was on the way to Philadelphia. The four of us together, at least until Maryland, was the best plan we were ever going to get. I’d seen the way Imanuel had watched the ones who were leaving lately. He was growing more and more ready to leave too, just like I was.
Maybe I will talk to him and Paul, I thought. See if together, the three of us could convince you that we should go with them.
That was when we heard the screaming.
I sat outside as you, Paul, Imanuel, Rabbi Levenson, and Gabe talked quietly in the ballroom. I’d been invited, but I refused to participate. Instead I watched the darkness, listened to the wood creaking as the trees shifted in the breeze. For once, I couldn’t feel the sauna-thick night air. I couldn’t feel anything at all.
“What do we do?” I heard you ask faintly through the closed glass doors.
Marion’s shadow had disappeared.
The rest of the search party was all right so far, but the guests were too terrified to take any chances. They had been with Marion. Jae-suk was quarantined in room 382 of the resort—with his wife, Ye-eun, who refused to be separated from him—and Pierce and Lauren in rooms 390 and 392 respectively. They had to be persuaded at gunpoint. Marion went willingly into room 300.
“Marion—” I said in the moment before Gabe, a T-shirt wrapped around his face, pulled the door shut on her and locked it. Her eyes jerked up to mine for a single instant. There was something terrifying in them, a desperate ferocity to hang on to that name. “Marion,” I said again, leaning against the smooth, silent wood on the outside of the door.
I never told you what I did during those three long days, Ory, while the camp debated what to do. Not because I wanted to hide it from you, but because you would’ve convinced yourself that I had been “contaminated,” but been too afraid to say anything, because you’d never be able to consign me to the same fate. I just didn’t want you to worry.
“What’s your name?” I asked quietly through the door.
“Marion,” Marion replied, slightly muffled. I imagined her sitting in the same position as me.
“Where are you?”
“The honeymoon suite, I think,” she said.
I laughed despite the grim situation. It came out like a snort.
“Going okay so far, I guess,” she continued after a few minutes. “It’s only been a day, though.”
“A day and a night,” I countered.
“How are the others doing?” she asked hesitantly.
I chewed my lip.
“Max,” she said.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I haven’t visited. Their rooms are all too close together. Easier to be seen.”
“Is there a guard?”
“Sort of. Just Gabe, at the main door. I keep coming in the back, through a door in the lounge. No one else wants to get too close, so no one’s really checking the inside of the building.”
I imagined her mulling it over on her side of the door. Wondering why I was just inches away from her then. “So you don’t know if … if any of them have lost their shadows yet.” It was both a question and a wish, that they were still all right.
I left and found you after a short while, so you didn’t notice I’d been gone, but I was back with her after dinner, saying I was going to help the cooking crew with the washing-up at the river.
Do you know what’s a horrible, dehumanizing thing to have to do, Ory? To wait for someone to squish food so flat it can fit through the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor, and then eat it off the carpet like that, licking the dirty, shoe-stained