“If the designers only made one Arc, why would they call it 1409? Wouldn’t it be just ‘The Arcology’?”
“Whoa…” Lark went wide-eyed. “That’s like… wow.”
“Never thought about it that way.” Lark offered a blasé shrug. “Makes sense that they wouldn’t have trusted one shelter with a couple thousand people to preserve us as a species.”
Trenton rolled his eyes. “Come on. Everyone knows there aren’t any other people.”
“Everyone also ‘knows’ topside is a toxic mess,” said Shaw.
Raven decided she’d much rather have this discussion back at the Arc and stooped to pick up the filter bundle.
A tall, blurry-brown figure dashed by the opening at the far end of the aisle, growling.
“Shit!” shouted Raven.
Lark and Trenton both jumped in shock—and wiped out as their sandals shot out from under them.
Too startled to think, Raven stood there staring at the end of the aisle, dreading the monster would return at any second.
21
Critter
There is a perfectly logical explanation for everything. However, it’s impossible to have a rational conversation with a child who’s screaming in terror. – Ellis Wilder.
Shaw raised the giant pipe wrench in a two-handed grip, moving to put himself between the unknown creature and everyone else. Trenton screamed and scrambled through the empty shelves where the filters had been into the next aisle before sprinting away. Lark also shrieked and ran, heading to the nearer end of the aisle toward the back of the building.
Tinsley yelled, “Monster!” and bolted in the same direction as Lark—who crashed into something out of sight to the left.
As soon as Lark rounded the corner past the shelf row, she stopped short, screamed again, and backtracked to the left.
The child dashed past the end of the aisle, jumped away from something to her right, flailing her arms as she tried to avoid wiping out. Her plastic sandals slipped out from under her, dumping her to the ground flat on her side. Still screaming in panic, the tiny child slid into a display of plastic tubing and crawled into the narrow space under the shelf.
“Tins!” shouted Raven. Any fear she might’ve had about a creature died, crushed under the need to protect her daughter.
Raven ran after her. The instant she left the aisle, a huge, furry dark shape on her right let out a growl and lunged at her. Caught off guard, Raven screamed. She ducked a furry limb swinging at her face, then darted around the creature, hoping to lead the mutant away from her child. The fleeting second didn’t give her much of a look at it, so her mind filled in a bear-human hybrid more than a head taller than her. Bile rose in the back of her throat as she passed within inches of the hairy monstrosity. Not until she’d taken five or six steps into a run did she realize she gagged on a stink similar to broken sewer lines.
The creature took the bait, chasing her rather than trying to drag Tinsley out from her hiding place. Huffing and growling rushed up behind her. She rapidly approached corner of cinder block walls, but the thing would be on her before she could make it to the turn. Desperation mutated into confidence.
Shouting a war cry, Raven grabbed the katana handle and yanked the blade from its sheath. Two steps later, she spun into a swing—that sank the blade into a plastic bag of dirt. She stood stock-still, breathing hard, staring at the empty corridor behind her. Dribbles of dark brown earth fell from a gash in the side of the plastic bag that had absorbed the front third of the sword.
Faint grunting and the clap of large bare feet distanced down a nearby aisle.
“What the shit was that?” whispered Raven.
The storage building had fallen under an eerie silence, making her fast, raspy breaths seem loud. Everyone else had stopped screaming. No one ran. After a moment, she extracted the sword from the bag, swatting the flat of the blade against her boot to knock dirt off it. Despite having a monster chase her seconds ago, the bizarre sight of dirt in bags left her speechless. Why would the ancestors, who lived above ground, feel the need to stockpile dirt in a storage facility?
Oh, I guess maybe they were saving clean dirt when stuff outside started to be more contaminated than not.
“Mommy?” whispered Tinsley.
She fast-walked down the corridor behind the aisles, passing shelves of flower pots and planter boxes on her way to the display of plastic tubes. “I’m here.”
“Chewie almost got me,” said a small voice from beneath a shelf.
Raven crouched and peered in at Tinsley, flat on her chest, crammed as far back against the wall as possible. “Are you okay?”
“I hit my knee on the floor.”
“C’mon outta there.”
“Is he gone?”
Raven stood, looking left and right. The storage building remained silent, no trace of anything moving. It worried her that the creature appeared to be smart enough to understand the concept of a sword, breaking off the chase as soon as she pulled it out. “Think so.”
Two small hands reached out from under the shelf. Raven set the katana on the floor, and dragged the girl out on her belly. Tinsley rolled over to sit up, pulling her poncho off her legs to examine her knee. She had a minor bruise, which she rubbed while making an annoyed face.
“These shoes aren’t good to run in.”
“Not on tile, no. Fine outside. We have boxes of old useless sneakers. I’ll make some soles for them.” Raven took her sword in one hand, the girl’s arm in the other, and stood, listening to silence for a little while before returning to the line of half-loaded carts.
Shaw twisted to look at her as she entered the aisle, still in the same spot he’d been standing in when the monster appeared. “You okay?”
“Yeah. Thing took off as soon as I pulled the sword.”
“The hell was it?” Trenton appeared at the opposite end of the aisle, visibly trembling, clutching a crowbar in both hands.
“Damn fine question.” Shaw rested the big wrench across his shoulder.
Lark crept around the corner and hurried up behind Raven. “Huge. Furry.”
“Ghost?” asked Trenton.
“Don’t be silly.” Lark threw a small filter at him. “Ghosts aren’t real and that thing was definitely solid.”
“Except when it vanished.” Trenton wagged his eyebrows.
“It didn’t vanish.” Raven attempted rather awkwardly to put the katana away with the sheath still on her back. “It ran down an aisle before I spun around to swing at it.”
“Plution?” asked Tinsley.
Raven snarled in frustration, took the sheath off her back, and slid the sword into it. “I don’t think so… that thing smelled bad, but not as bad as the Plutions are supposed to. Whatever chased me stank like an overflowing toilet.”
“Eww.” Tinsley pinched her nose. “Plutions smell worse than toilet?”
“According to the old stories.” Lark shrugged. “Never seen one up close so I can’t say for sure, but they supposedly smell so bad your throat burns and your eyes water. Can’t see or breathe if you’re too close.”
“Is it gonna come after us again?” Tinsley clung to her mother’s side.
Everyone exchanged looks, no one having much of an answer for that.
Shaw nodded to the side in a ‘come on’ manner. He led the group around the building, peering down aisle after aisle, then checking an area full of rotted lumber and a half-outdoor section full of plants run wild. That room had plenty of hiding places, so they took their time searching, everyone holding their weapons at the ready.
Lark’s abrupt sneeze caused Trenton to scream and flail his crowbar wildly about, smashing a large clay flowerpot to ruin. Upon realizing he’d killed a bit of ceramic, he stood there with a sheepish expression.
“Pretty sure the critter’s gone.” Shaw hung the wrench on his belt. “Why don’t we finish grabbing the filters and get the hell out of here.”
“I’m sorry.” Raven looked down. �
�I thought it was safe.”
“You did warn us of the critter.” Shaw smacked his lips under the filter mask. He pulled it down, took a water bottle out, and drank most of it.
Watching him made Raven thirsty. She gave Tinsley a bottle and drank from another. Lark and Trenton also removed their filter masks to drink.
“You’re not wearing a mask?” Lark gestured her bottle in Raven’s direction.
“It didn’t seem necessary. The air out here is fine.” She put a hand on Tinsley’s shoulder and pulled the girl close against her side. “You guys notice she’s not trying to spit up her lungs anymore?”
Trenton stopped drinking to come up for air. “So that’s a bear, huh?”
“An animal wouldn’t have recognized a sword.” Shaw tapped his boot into the floor.
“That’s impossible. They all died.” The younger man paced. “Why would they teach us in school that no other people survived if it’s not true?”
“Why tell us it’s ridiculously toxic out here?” Raven brushed her hand over Tinsley’s hair. “Because they don’t know any better.”
Shaw shrugged and resumed loading filters. “It’s been a really long time since the Great Death. Maybe humans did die out except for us. Those pigeons came back. Why not people?”
“Because we can’t fly to the Arctic to escape fatal heat.” Raven tossed her water bottle back in the satchel and grabbed another filter bundle.
“Umm, hey…” Lark paused in the middle of tying filters down on a cart. “I just had a really weird thought.”
Shaw chuckled. “Things are pretty weird already, but what’cha got?”
“You know how the Arc is way, way bigger than we actually need and we think there used to be thousands of people living there?”
“Yeah. Some real bad disease killed off lots of people a couple generations ago,” said Trenton.
Oh, shit… Raven gawked. “You think they went outside?”
“Well…” Lark smiled weakly. “An event that killed eighty percent of 2,000 people ought to be remembered, right? No one knows what even happened. There’s no giant pile of dead bodies anywhere. No records about large numbers of people dropping dead. Don’t you think it’s strange for the Arc population to drop so drastically yet none of us know what happened?”
Shaw whistled. “Damn. Thanks for that. Now I’m not going to sleep ever again.”
“Whoa.” Trenton blinked.
“Level one,” whispered Raven. “They put all the bodies up there. That’s why it’s off limits.”
“That is one potential explanation, but I have to disagree.” Shaw set a pack of filters on his cart. “That many bodies couldn’t be stored anywhere in the Arc without the entire place smelling so bad no one can breathe.”
Raven folded her arms. “Unless they burned them. Level one could be full of bones and ash.” She caught herself and let her arms drop. “No… that much cremating would have permanently filled the halls with smoke.”
“Yeah.” Shaw patted the filters. “Almost done.”
“Is that what all the gunk in the vent ducts is from? Maybe they did burn them all. It happened decades ago. Crap would’ve settled by now.” Trenton shuddered. “Have we been crawling around in dead person?”
“Eww,” whispered Tinsley.
Raven hurriedly loaded filters onto her cart. “We are assuming the population dropped suddenly. I mean, it looks like it did, but history is only as accurate as the people writing it down. It could’ve been longer than we thought. Four, five, six centuries since the Great Death. The population might have dwindled gradually… or not. If that happened, we wouldn’t have forgotten so much advanced technical stuff. It’s like all the chemists, doctors, and electrical engineers died at once, so they couldn’t teach the next generation.”
“Or…” Lark held a finger up. “Picture this. You went outside and realized it’s not a deadly hellscape.”
“Yeah… so? What does that have to do with like 1,700 people dying?”
“Imagine like eighty years ago, someone else did that. Wanted to go outside. Some people—like Noah—remained convinced the outside world would kill them. The Arc population divided into two groups: one wanted to go outside, another too scared to try. What if the ‘leave’ group happened to be seventy-five percent of the people and also contained all the smart scientists and technical staff?”
Raven stared at Lark in stunned silence—as did everyone else except Tinsley, who busied herself playing with a plastic tube she swung around like a sword.
“It is kinda odd to think about some decades-ago plague that somehow managed to kill all the smart people.” Trenton laughed. “Brain eating rot?”
“That’s… it fits. There’s no records of an epidemic and no evidence a large number of corpses had to be dealt with at once.” Raven slouched. “So we’re the descendants of the idiots who stayed behind.”
Shaw looked up from tying down the filters on his cart. “I don’t remember seeing a thriving town out here. If what Lark is suggesting really happened, the people who left decades ago might have gone extinct. Staying inside could’ve been the smarter option.”
“Or they went crazy, mutated, or something like that.” Trenton pointed down the aisle. “Maybe we just met one of ’em.”
“People aren’t that furry.” Tinsley shook her head.
Trenton faced Raven. “You get a look at it?”
“Not a good one, no. It had an arm. Yeah, furry. Dark. Shaw’s height. I guess it could’ve been like a bigfoot or something.”
“A what?” asked Lark.
“Read a book about a supposed monster some people thought was real before the Great Death. Basically, a big furry humanoid with limited intelligence.” Raven pulled out cord to secure her filters.
“You just described Shaw,” said Trenton.
Shaw frowned and stalked after him. “Come here, boy.”
Trenton ran away, circling the carts, though the older man didn’t appear to be seriously trying to catch him.
“That’s a wild theory.” Raven thought it over while tying down her filters. The escape corridor isn’t on any of the schematics and building it doesn’t make any sense. Why make an elevator to a deadly toxic surface? But that sign… unless someone put that there to confuse people into thinking the corridor had always been there. What if the ‘stay’ group included the Arc administrator who wouldn’t let them open the big door? The plan might have been to use the Arc as the heart of an above-ground city, which would have required easy access back and forth, so elevator.
She growled at having way more questions than answers. And that still didn’t explain what might’ve happened on level one. The idea that it might be a huge morgue creeped her out, but Shaw was right. All those dead bodies would have saturated the Arc with the smell of death. In a closed system, someone farts in the water plant on level six, we smell it upstairs.
Clinging to the idea that the Arc contained the only humans left on the whole planet also didn’t make sense. Why did she want to believe that so much when easily dismissing the stories of an intensely toxic outside world?
Chase…
The only reason she’d agreed to get pregnant at sixteen had been the belief that the very existence of humanity required it. If it turned out that other people lived elsewhere, she might regret having sex with a guy she didn’t even like. Maybe she feared it would change her feelings about Tinsley.
No. No way. I do not regret having my daughter.
She walked over and hugged Tinsley, who happily returned it.
Except for the filters less than half the size of the ones they needed, the rest had all been loaded, perhaps enough to replace everything in the system two or three times. A start, but only a way to buy some time.
Hopefully, it would buy them enough to convince Noah he was an idiot.
“Ready?” asked Raven. “About time we went back.”
“Yeah.” Shaw set his hands on his hips and looked over the carts. “Tren
t, head over a couple aisles and grab four shovels. Couple spots on the way back, the dirt’s a bit deep for these wheeled carts. Used to be a road. We’re probably going to need to clear a path.”
“Sure.” Trenton jogged off.
“And keep your eyes open for Chewie,” whispered Tinsley. “He’s gonna follow us again.”
22
Fallen Saints
People do stuff for all kinds of reasons, not all of ’em make sense. Don’t waste time being upset over why you did something. Figure out how you’re gonna deal with the consequences. – Ellis Wilder.
Dragging four large flatbed carts back to the Arc turned out to be a lot of work.
Inside the ruined city, they had to plow aside centuries of accumulated trash, debris, dirt, and whatever old furniture fell out of the high rises. Some stretches of road offered clear going, but more often than not, the carts sat still while the team cleared obstructions or shoveled sediment out of the way. The wheels bogged down in anything deeper than four inches.
Areas where the dirt hardened didn’t require shoveling, fortunately true for most of the distance outside the ruins. They still hit a few wetter spots that required digging out of. Also, having to keep alert for the possible return of ‘Chewie’ added another complication that slowed them down even more. Tinsley mostly helped out watching for any creatures trying to approach, but she also tried to clear away dirt with her hands.
The expedition arrived at the hatch much later than she planned on, likely only an hour or so of daylight remaining. What she’d expected to be a two-hour there, two-hour back trip had consumed the entire day. No one brought food since they’d expected to be back for a late lunch but missed it as well as dinner. Fortunately, the cafeteria always kept some food available given that people’s scheduled wake hours had no relation to the motion of the sun.
“Elevator would’ve come in real handy for crap like this,” said a winded Shaw once they’d come to a stop by the hatch.
The Girl Who Found the Sun Page 22