The Book of M. Peng Shepherd

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      THE DAYS MELTED TOGETHER IN THOSE EARLY MONTHS AT Elk Cliffs Resort. Even in the mountains, the heat was oppressive, humid and heavy, like a forest swamp. Do you remember that, Ory? The nights were only barely better. It was as if the breeze had stopped when all the shadows did, the air still and thick between the trees, the grass beneath us so warm that I could barely stand to touch you as we slept, as much as I wanted to feel the comfort of your arms around me, the solidness of your body. I began to dream about air conditioning, vivid hallucinations that made my skin prickle at the imagined chill.

      It almost felt like camping, on the good days. Sleeping in the grass, blankets stretched into tents over our heads. Everyone had agreed it was temporary, just because of the heat, but after a while I couldn’t imagine moving back inside to the ballroom, even if there was frost on the ground. I think it was because we were all inside when we found out the shadowlessness had reached us. Being in there at night brought it all back too vividly. It was like the building itself remembered.

      After a month, things started to change. People began leaving. First three slipped silently away in the night, too cowardly to say goodbye properly, and a fourth ended up sobbing hysterically by the fire as she tried to explain why she had to go. Libby, from Paul’s side of the guest list. They had been on the high school swim team together, you told me later. Paul walked her all the way down the mountain, arm in arm, and came back crying. That night around the fire, I heard more people whispering about when it might be their time to leave, too. When it might be too soon, just right, too late. Whether they lived near enough that it might be worth the risk, or too far. I watched you through the flames as you eavesdropped. Your and Paul’s families were still in Portland, where you both had grown up, but all of mine were in Maryland—a survivable distance from Elk Cliffs. We’d seen reports about Baltimore on television before the signal had gone out, but if there was anything left, maybe they were left, too. We could make it if we tried.

      But how to convince you? I’d been waiting for the right moment for weeks. You hadn’t been ready to hear it. I felt like I had only one chance—and if I blew it, we’d never leave.

      “The second scouting party didn’t come back,” Rabbi Levenson said when Paul and Imanuel brought the idea of going up again. We’d sent the second party out one week after the electricity had gone down at the resort. There had been fierce debate over forming a third one after that—questions about whether we were sending the last survivors on earth to their deaths, or possibly worse, alerting dangerous people, shadowed or shadowless, to our secret haven—but in the end we had to do it. There was nothing—no television, no cell phone network, no internet, no radio—or at least nothing that we could pick up. We had no other way to know what had happened down below. Rhino had led that group too, with one of the shotguns. They never came back.

      “What else are we going to do?” someone argued.

      Rabbi Levenson persisted. “We don’t know what’s out there. We can’t 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 СКАЧАТЬ