Half Way Home

by Hugh Howey

  “Agreed. My ass is cramping.”

  We all laughed at that, and the shared levity seemed to wake us up and signal the start of a new day—or at least the continuation of a very long one. As a group, I think we were still wary of the tunnels. Maybe that’s why we were huddled up near the miserable rain, and why we shrieked whenever one of the smaller, harmless vinnies passed.

  “Screw it,” I heard one of the girls say. “I’m gonna go check on the water in the tarps.”

  “And I’m gonna head down,” Karl said from directly below me. “Might as well explore this tunnel some.” He said it like a question, with some lilt of doubt at the end like he needed to buttress himself. We were all silent for a moment, waiting to see if he would really do it.

  Kelvin reached over and patted my arm. “Let’s go with him.”

  I nodded, even though it was too dark for Kelvin to see me. Maybe I was just steeling myself, or perhaps I felt too anxious to fake the decision verbally. We followed Karl down to the soaked dip below us, all three of us likely feigning a confidence we didn’t truly feel. One of the vinnies made its way past us, keeping high up the curved wall of the tunnel to stay out of the water.

  “Vinnie coming,” Karl shouted back to the rest.

  I fumbled in my pack for the flashlight, even as each minute seemed to bring a tad more filtered light down through the canopy above. I flicked it on and its bright cone revealed a tunnel similar to the hole we’d ascended through two nights ago. The steep slant worked its way down through a dip before rising back up and falling down again.

  I cursed myself for not using the flashlight the previous night when others wanted to explore further. We wouldn’t have gotten any sleep with the vinnies passing through, but it might’ve been more comfortable on flat ground. If we could’ve gotten over our fears of what had happened the last time.

  “It’s like a plumber’s trap,” Kelvin said. He splashed forward into the puddle of water at the bottom, the level coming up past his ankles.

  “A what?”

  “The curved pipe below a sink,” he explained.

  “Like I know what those are for.” I splashed past him, twisting up my nose at the smell of rot and mildew. Karl had already picked his way up the rise to where the tunnel leveled out again.

  “It’s to keep the rain out of the tunnels in the tree,” Kelvin explained. “Whatever drips down from above collects in this low spot and leaks through the tangled limbs. The vinnies must’ve evolved the habit of chewing their tunnels this way.”

  “Or they’re just smarter than they look,” I said. A short train of vinnies crested the rise by Karl. I moved to get out of their way, but they swung to the side, up the slope of the tube and away from the water.

  “They don’t like to get their feet wet,” Karl pointed out.

  Kelvin and I followed as he continued forward, and I kept his way lit from behind with the flashlight. Several dozen paces further and the tunnel began a gradual descent. We stumbled down until we came to one of the familiar openings in the gear-like side of the tree’s trunk.

  “Hell, yeah,” Karl said. He smiled back at us, his teeth flashing in my cone of light.

  “Good call on picking this tunnel,” Kelvin said, slapping my back.

  I could feel myself beaming, even as I again lamented the less miserable night we could’ve had in the lower portion of the tunnel if only I’d agreed to go look. Then I thought about something bad happening, something like Britny, and realized it would’ve been my choice that made it happen. I had a sudden desire to hand the flashlight to Kelvin and run back, up to the treetop. I wanted to leave my decision-making behind, along with my responsibility for all future ones.

  Kelvin and Karl knelt by the hole and looked out, oblivious to my fears. I crowded in behind them, resting my hand lightly on their shoulders so they wouldn’t turn and bump into me, or get startled and fall.

  Above us, the heavy patter of rain could be heard against the leaves, the thwaps of each impact ringing out like pops on a tight drum. Below, we could see the ground with far better clarity than we could each other, as if the light of the world were rising instead of falling.

  “We must be facing the mountains,” I said. “The canopy’s not blocking out the light in that direction.”

  Kelvin and I craned our necks to see more of the landscape, but a large limb rising up from below cut most of it off. I trained my light up the limb and toward the canopy, the falling rain sparkling as it streaked past. We could see dozens of bombfruit hanging from above, and it dawned on me that the rain we had felt back at base was nothing more than the delayed drippings from the real storms as the canopy leaked its puddles through its tight brambles.

  Karl left us and walked down to the next few openings to see around the limb. He didn’t get twelve feet away before he shouted back to us: “Fucking shit, guys. You’ve gotta see this.”

  Kelvin and I hurried down to join him, the three of us crowding along the edge of the opening. Karl pointed below, out past the far edge of the canopy’s overhang where the rain fell heavy and unobstructed. Through the gray veil it created, out where dawn’s storm-strained light seemed to surf down the face of the nearest mountain, we could see manmade things. Colony things.

  Two tractors were parked by a module, which sat in a distant circle of mud.

  ••••

  “It’s gotta be the mine,” Leila said as soon as we reported our findings to the rest of the group. All nine of us huddled below the entrance to the large tunnel, eating bombfruit cut from the underhang and drinking fresh rainwater.

  “I thought this planet had a major mineral and ore deficiency. Are you saying Colony lied to us?”

  “No,” Leila said, shaking her head. “It’s probably abandoned. How do you think Colony figured out there weren’t any metals to begin with?”

  “From the original mine,” I said.

  “Bingo.”

  “I think Colony even mentioned a mine site that first night,” Tarsi said, “but it said the thing was a few days drive away.”

  “Maybe it is. If you have to go around the trees, that is.”

  Kelvin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and spoke around some bombfruit: “You think that’s what Mica and Peter were heading toward?” he asked me.

  “Maybe.”

  “What do you mean?” Jorge asked.

  “Mica was interested in the mine,” Kelvin said. “She and Porter talked about minerals or something one day over lunch.” He looked to Leila. “And didn’t you say she was a geologist?”

  “Do you think she escaped to find something?” Leila asked me.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. Maybe—” I turned to Kelvin amd snapped my fingers. “That rumble we heard earlier, when I fell through the canopy. I know what that was, now.”

  “An engine,” Kelvin said, his eyes wide. “A mining tractor?”

  “I think Colony knows where Mica and Peter were heading. If that tractor is on its way, we need to get down there.”

  “Slow down,” Jorge said. “If Colony’s heading that direction, we need to stay up here, where we’re safe. Besides, we still haven’t talked about how we’re gonna get down safely. We can’t spend another day walking through these tunnels hoping another earthquake doesn’t occur.”

  “I’m going down,” I said to Tarsi and Kelvin, ignoring Jorge.

  “Same here,” Kelvin said. “I don’t feel much safer up here. I need dirt under my feet.”

  Most of the rest of the group agreed, which left the question of how we mitigate the dangers of the descent.

  “I liked the idea of forming a long train of vinnies,” Tarsi said. “That way we have a lot of warning. Besides, with the rainfall there’s hundreds of them up here we could gather.”

  A drop of water smacked me on the top of my head; I could feel it worming through my hair and across my scalp. I looked up at the source of the drip, the dim light of the stormy morning finally filtering thro
ugh the massive leaves. The drips had been tormenting me all night, filling my head with schemes, ways of keeping the moisture out completely. I couldn’t blame the vinnies for crawling up the sides of the tunnel, trying to stay out of the wetness—

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said.

  I scanned the group around me, their faces barely discernable and tinged with green. “Probably a stupid idea,” I admitted.

  Jorge snorted, obviously expecting no less.

  “Let’s hear it,” said Kelvin.

  ••••

  The plan grew and altered as I spoke it. It began as a way to keep the vinnies out of the tunnel, but then it transformed into something crazy: a plan I began to doubt even as it formed. Everyone else just got excited and egged me on, which I suppose is how bad things tend to happen.

  The allure of the idea was that we would be in the tunnel for as little time as possible, minimizing the chances of encountering another stampede-causing earthquake. A handful of us volunteered for the wet work, crawling out into the cold and working in the rain as it soaked us to the bone. Karl used one of the machetes to hack through the thick stems of the largest variety of leaves. The rest of us gathered them and passed them down into the tunnel. There, Kelvin and Leila carpeted the brambles with them, overlapping each leaf with the next as they created a nearly watertight flooring.

  Meanwhile, using the other machete, Samson worked on the rise of the plumber’s trap, cutting it out so the water could pass into the tunnel. As he chopped the brambles up, other workers passed the removed pieces along and tossed them through the gear holes further down. Not only did this help remove the hump in the tunnel, the tossed limbs and hacked brambles would make for easy firewood if we could circle around the base of the tree and find them on the ground.

  It took almost an hour to complete the work; by then, the rest of the group had rainwater funneling toward the large hole from the depression up top. The low valleys we had avoided while walking came into great use, collecting the rain and forcing it toward our tunnel. Using bits of sticks, we propped up the edges of some leaves to guide even more rain into the tunnel.

  Once we were done, we gathered up the large leaves we had set aside and joined the others down past the flattened plumber’s trap. The girls had already carpeted the area Karl had cut out and a steady stream of water flowed through.

  Those of us that had worked up top wrung out our clothes while the rest worked to secure our supplies. We distributed one big leaf per couple, with Kelvin agreeing to ride alone with a large tarp full of the majority of our gear.

  As we worked, a train of vinnies marched past, all of them as high up the tunnel wall as their bristles could carry them. They were avoiding the rushing stream, just as I’d hoped.

  Tarsi and I plopped down on the first leaf, the honor (and risk) of going first given to the person with the dumb idea. Below us, the floor of the tunnel gurgled with flowing water. I sat in front, straddling the stem of the leaf, both my hands on its forward edge and curling it back. Tarsi sat behind me, and we scooted forward, lurching the leaf inch by inch, while Kelvin and Samson shoved from behind.

  At first, it felt like the entire endeavor would be a bust. I feared all of us had soaked ourselves to the core and worn ourselves out for nothing. Behind us, someone groaned as we struggled to get the contraption moving, but despite the waxiness of the leaf and the well-worn wood below, there seemed to be too much friction to get going.

  Then—imperceptibly at first but growing—our scooting picked up speed. I could almost feel the bond between the leaf and wood slipping as the water eased us along. Behind me, Tarsi quit pushing and wrapped her arms around my waist. I leaned back and yelled for Kelvin and Samson to stop.

  We were off. Moving at a walking pace for a few moments, and then faster. And faster.

  “Whoa,” Tarsi said, her grip around my chest making it difficult to breathe. I leaned back against her and concentrated on keeping the forward edge of the leaf up. Beside us, the openings in the tunnel flicked past. The rising curve of the round tube kept me from worrying about sliding out, and the tree was so large in diameter, it felt like we were going down a nearly straight chute rather than a tight spiral. The speed, however, quickly became a real concern. Within moments we were moving along faster than a tractor could go. I tried to keep my bearings with quick glances out the holes, but they flickered past so quickly it was like seeing the world through rapid blinks.

  “How’re we gonna stop?” Tarsi yelled in my ear.

  There were, admittedly, a few steps in my plan I hadn’t fully mapped out.

  I considered sticking my foot out against the core side of the tree, then thought about picking splinters out of my sole for the next week. Lowering the front edge of the leaf, I experimented instead with adjusting the shape of the curve, but couldn’t tell that it had any effect. Continuing to unfurl it, I let part of the edge collapse completely, digging into the thin film of water. My reward was a furious spray of rainwater spitting right up in my face. Tarsi ducked behind me for cover, squealing, but our leaf definitely slowed. I played with it some more, then felt something bump into us from behind, nearly causing me to drop the edge of the leaf.

  Tarsi squealed and I heard someone grunt and cuss behind us.

  “Watch out!”

  I turned around and saw Karl and Leila right on our tail. Both had expressions of half fear, half exhilaration on their faces. Tarsi and Leila shouted back and forth, teasing one another.

  “Stop goofing off and tell Karl to lower the front into the water,” I hollered back to Tarsi. “Have him slow down and tell the next person.”

  She adjusted her grip on my waist and turned to explain it to the others. I kept the edge high and let go of the leaf with one hand to wipe the spray off my face and out of my eyes. We quickly picked up speed again, and I could hear Leila’s yelps of delight recede as Karl slowed his leaf down.

  “This is fun!” Tarsi screamed, hugging my chest with affection.

  I laughed and tried to gauge our height off the ground to determine what our rate of descent was. Already, in my brief glimpses through the side of the tunnel, I could tell the canopy was receding overhead. I tried to get a read on the distance to the bottom. The best I could tell, we were already a good ways down. Maybe a tenth or so. A train of vinnies whizzed past on the coreward side of the tree and Tarsi and I leaned away as their bristles brushed against us.

  “I wanna do this again!” she screamed in my ear.

  I thought about the grueling climb up and shook my head. Then I recalled how nice the ride had been on the vinnie once I got over my objections and fears. I started to think that we could get up and down from the canopy without much difficulty—then I remembered the earthquake and the stampede. That returned me to my original doubts and I promised myself I would never leave the ground again if I could just get back there safely.

  What took almost a full day going up ended up taking less than two hours on the leaf. I watched the ground outside draw closer and lowered the forward edge, kicking up more spray and slowing us down. Tarsi groaned in my ear with disappointment.

  Just before the end of the chute, we reached the edge of a large pool of water where the diverted rain had built up in the tunnel’s dead-end.

  We jumped off our leaf and leapt out of the nearest hole, splashing down on the soaked moss. Karl and Mindy slid to a stop right as we got out of the way, laughing and wiping the spray off their faces. We helped them over the lip and stepped out into the dimly lit clearing. Two more riders arrived going much too fast; they slammed into the pool of water and sent spray out several gaps in the bark. Samson and Leila fell out the bottom of the tunnel, over a lip of cascading water, gasping for air and giggling uncontrollably.

  Moving out into the rain, I opened the flap on my little tarp sack and peeked inside to make sure its contents had remained dry. Tarsi wrung water out of the bottom of her shirt, her hair plastered across her forehead.

  I looked
off in the direction of the mountains, but I couldn’t see the mine from our lower elevation. What I could see was that we were in for a miserable camp, or a grueling, wet hike.

  “What’re we gonna do now?” I asked Tarsi.

  She shrugged, then looked back toward the tree. “What’s taking the others so long?” she asked.

  • 27 • Together

  “Sould we build a shelter?” Karl took a leaf from Leila, who went back to the tunnel to fish out another. “Or should we try and get a fire going?”

  “At least we’re good on water,” Mindy said, indicating the miniature waterfalls spilling out of the last few gaps in the bark. The moss all around the base of the tree had turned into a small pond as it gathered the overflow of water.

  “Uh, about the water,” Samson said. “I wouldn’t drink it.”

  “Why not?” Leila asked, laying another leaf on the pile.

  “It’s, uh, not clean,” he said quietly.

  “What did you do?” Tarsi asked.

  “I think I peed my pants a little . . .”

  “You what?”

  “When we passed that first vinnie,” he mumbled, trying to defend himself. “Anyway, it wasn’t much.”

  “That’s so gross.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was sitting right behind you,” Leila complained.

  “I said I was sorry.”

  Tarsi and I bent down to work with the leaves as we laughed at the exchange.

  “Good thing we filled our water up top,” she said to me. We each grabbed the sides of a leaf and tried to shape it into an upside down ‘v’, giving us a dry spot to stash our things. Unfortunately, the edges of the leaf were too flimsy and wet to stay put.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Tarsi said, running over and grabbing Karl’s machete. She came back and sawed through the thick stem that ran the length of the leaf, breaking it but leaving the waxy surface intact. She bent the leaf right at the cut, sticking the end of the stem into the moss on one side and burying the tip of the leaf on the other. The stiffness of the stem kept both sides up, forming a tent of sorts, almost big enough for someone to ball themselves up under.