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Back Malorie Save as PDF
Chapters (40)
  1. The Jane Tucker School for the Blind
  2. Ten Years On
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. The Blind Train
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. Safer Rooms
  29. TWENTY-FIVE
  30. TWENTY-SIX
  31. TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. TWENTY-NINE
  34. THIRTY
  35. THIRTY-ONE
  36. Dedication
  37. AFTERWORD/ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  38. BY JOSH MALERMAN
  39. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  40. What’s next onyour reading list?

“Yes,” Tom says.

“Yes,” Olympia says.

Malorie tries to close her eyes a third time. Tries to shutter her imagination to what lurks outside.

A lot.

She tries to close her eyes a fourth time, a fifth, a sixth. She wants to say something about how unfair this is. She wants to tell someone her age. Someone raised before the creatures came. How it shouldn’t be that a mother and her children have to flee the place they call home, so suddenly, to enter a world where the threats are worse than those they leave behind.

She grips the hands of her children and takes the first step away from the Jane Tucker School for the Blind.

This is the new world. This is how things are and how they have been for many years.

From hysteria to the complete unknown.

The three of them, blind, draped in cloth, setting out.

Alone.

Again.

Ten Years On

TEN YEARS ON

ONE

Tom is getting water from the well. It’s something he’s done every other day for the better part of a decade, the three of them having called Camp Yadin home for that long. Olympia believes the camp was once an outpost in the American frontier days. She’s read almost every book in the camp library (more than a thousand), including books on the history of Michigan. She says the camp lodge was most likely once a saloon. Cabin One was the jail. Tom doesn’t know if she’s right, though he has no reason not to believe her. It was a Jewish summer camp when the creatures came, that much is for sure. And now, it’s home.

“Hand over hand,” he says, taking the rope that connects Cabin Three to the stone lip of the well. He says it because, despite the ropes that tie every building to one another (and even link Cabin Ten to the H dock on the lake), he’s trying to come up with a better way to move about.

Tom loathes the blindfolds. Sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly lazy, he doesn’t use one at all. He keeps his eyes closed. But his mother’s never-ending rules remain firm in his mind.

Closing your eyes isn’t enough. You could be startled into opening them. Or something could open them for you.

Sure. Yes. In theory Malorie is right. In theory she usually is. But who wants to live in theory? Tom is sixteen years old now. He was born into this world. And nothing’s tried to open his eyes yet.

“Hand over hand.”