Page 51 of Delirium

The rainforest had grown thicker while we talked. I brushed aside a thicket of vines to catch up to Nash and Camp. When we both stepped through, we found them standing, unmoving.

I had forgotten my nerves while I spoke to James, but seeing the two of them, still as statues, my heart sunk. “Nash? Camp?”

Nash turned around to face me, his usually tanned face quite pale. “Well, I think we found the city.”

I cautiously took a step forward. “Okay, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? Why does your face look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

James pushed past me, rushing past Nash and Camp. “Clancy?” he called. “Clancy, you better get your sorry ass out here this instant.”

Nash only shook his head and waved me forward.

My feet moved without my control, because my brain was gone, lost in a deep train of thought I wasn’t sure I could ever dig myself out of. I moved past Nash, pushing through leaves, until I saw the city, in all its glory, nearly entirely preserved just as it would’ve been a hundred years ago.

Completely and utterly devoid of people.

Chapter

Nineteen

SCARLETT

There should’ve been people.

Right?

There should’ve been at least one person, or if James was to be believed, quite a few.

But there were none.

We stood on a slight hill, overlooking the edges of the city. The buildings closest to us barely showed any age or wear, their mud and clay constructions carefully smoothed out. There were probably at least fifty homes, spread out in a uniform circle, all surrounding a larger building in the center.

It still looked perfect.

I caught my breath, realizing what made the whole situation even weirder was that it looked like they werejustthere. They were there, and now they were gone. The people who lived here. The workers James hired. Vanished.

All of them. Gone, leaving their lives behind.

That wasn’t normal, no matter what textbook you went by.

Closer than the buildings, in a small clearing stood a dozen or so cloth tents, the fabric snapping in a breeze I could see but not feel.

A bead of sweat dripped down my back, inch by inch. I whipped my head back and forth to look at the men around me. Nash stared wide-eyed at the city, blinking slowly, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He took a few steps forward, running his hands over the low rock wall that surrounded the buildings, and then disappeared into the small collection of tents.

My head throbbed, my brain struggling to make sense of the scene laid out in front of me.

Camp stood back, still at the edge of the trail, clinging to a thick vine so tightly his knuckles were white. And James…I wasn’t sure James knew how to process what he was seeing. He was the deepest into the city, storming from building to building, his fury palpable even from a distance.

“Clancy?” he called. “Clancy this isn’t fucking funny. The guys’ tools are right there. If you didn’t want to face me, then you should’ve thought about that before you took all my fucking money and ran.”

James stormed from one collection of buildings, across the small street to the other, where a bunch of excavating tools sat piled around a small hole in the ground. “Clancy, I swear to fucking God you will never see the light of day again if you’ve run off! Fuck!” He kicked the tools in front of him, only managing to stir up dust.

A small part of me felt sorry for him, a grown man who had no idea where to put all the feelings that were obviously drowning him.

I couldn’t focus on my sympathy for him, because my senses were overwhelmed. This waswrong. Something about this entire situation waswrong.

We shouldn’t be here. We should have never left the boat.

My gut feelings were confirmed when Nash called over, “James.”

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