by Ike Hamill
“So, what is?” Ashley asked.
“What is what?”
“You said that the scratching noises were not our mystery to figure out, implying that there is a mystery that is ours?”
“Oh. Well…” Lisa said. She didn’t think she had an answer until it came out of her mouth. “I guess the only important question is whether or not this continues. If we find anyone else, maybe they’re going to be hiding, you know? The people of the observatory were hidden away, waiting for the madness to pass. I think that the message we have to bring to them is that they need to come out. The madness has passed, or else it never will. There’s no sense in hiding.”
“You think?” Ashley asked.
Lisa nodded.
Tim appeared in the doorway. “What are you guys waiting for? Breakfast is ready.”
At times, it felt like the bicycles were even slower than walking. Tim was leading them up into the mountains. They followed the faintest trace of paint on rusted signs. Once, they had to work together to lift the bicycles over a tree that had crashed right across the road. Tim was working the hardest—his bike towed a trailer with Penny in back.
Lisa didn’t mind any of it. This was their life. To her, there was no concern about how far they were from their goal. This was their goal.
“It’s right up here, I think,” Tim said.
They turned onto a dirt trail and rode until the trees and shrubs were closing in on both sides. Ashley ditched her bike first, leaning it against a branch. Lisa got off and walked in place until her rubbery legs warmed to the idea of supporting her weight again.
“Yeah, I think it’s up there,” Tim said.
They finished the rest of the path on foot. Lisa looked up to see Ashley pacing around an old truck that had grass growing up around its tires.
“This hasn’t been here that long,” Ashley said, pointing.
Lisa only shrugged.
“It’s up here,” Tim said. He was pushing through some bushes and Lisa followed. He stopped when he got to a hillside of loose rock. He stood there, staring at a small black hole. Penny inched forward and sniffed at it.
“That’s it?” Ashley asked, arriving last.
“I’m not sure,” Tim said. He put his hands on his hips and made a slow turn. “I think so.”
“Let’s find out,” Ashley said, getting down on her hands and knees in front of the hole. For a terrible second, Lisa pictured her trying to crawl into that space. She might actually get her head in there and then something would come out of the darkness to drag her inside.
Ashley wasn’t that impulsive, of course. She was only looking to see which of the rocks they could move to enlarge the hole. She stood back up and moved a rock out of the way. Tim joined her. Lisa held back, waiting to see how long they would work at it before they gave up. She was convinced that this wasn’t the answer to any question they should be asking. Her skepticism only began to wane when the hole legitimately began to expand. Soon, a hunched person might be able to fit.
Tim dug out a flashlight and clicked it until it came on.
“We should have more light sources,” Ashley said. “I’ll grab some from the packs.”
They had dropped their backpacks at the base of the trail. She ran back down the path.
Tim was examining the entrance without committing himself to actually entering.
“I thought we would see some sign of them,” he said. “I really thought they would be here.”
“Maybe they were,” Lisa said. “From all appearances, it has been a long time.”
“Yeah,” he said. His tone conveyed that he didn’t actually believe it.
“Okay,” Ashley said. She was out of breath from running back to them. Ashley handed around the flashlights while Tim explained to Penny that she had to wait outside the cave. The dog didn’t appear to need any convincing.
“I’m just concerned that she’ll try to follow us and get lost in the dark.”
“So, tie her up?” Lisa suggested.
Tim was already shaking his head before he managed to ask, “What if we don’t come back?”
“Here,” Ashley said. She had a small flashlight with a ring on the end. Looping the ring through a bandana, she put it around Penny’s neck, like a collar.
“Stay here,” Tim said, putting his palm up in front of Penny’s face. “Don’t move.”
They went inside.
They moved at a snail’s pace while the circle of sunlight was still visible behind them. It was tough to disconnect from that safety. Once it disappeared, their progress quickened. Tim spotted a footprint in the dirt and practically shouted. His voice echoed back to them from a thousand facets of rock.
For a couple of minutes, they all moved quietly. The sound of his voice had made it obvious that there were deep, dark reaches of the cave that their flashlights would never penetrate. Lisa looked up and wondered at how many tons of dirt and rock were above them. The cave hadn’t been designed and constructed—it was a fluke of gravity that the space existed at all. Any moment, the balance of rock might shift and erase the pocket.
“Metal,” Ashley said. “It’s a railing.”
Lisa didn’t believe it until she saw it with her own eyes.
“Wait,” Tim said. He was looking back the way they had come. “Turn out your lights.”
Ashley just put hers against her hand, reducing it to a feeble orange glow. Lisa did the same. Tim’s light was already off, and Lisa understood why when she saw the bouncing beam in the distance. They stood still until the light caught up with them. Penny was wagging as she approached.
“I told you to stay,” Tim said, turning his light on again. Her eyes sparkled in the beam.
Lisa laughed.
“It’s steep down here,” Ashley said from the lead position. “Looks like there were stairs at one point. I can climb down.”
“Go ahead,” Lisa said to Tim. “I’ll stay with Penny.”
She eased her way down to a rock and sat on the cold surface while waving the dog over. With an arm around Penny’s neck, they watched Tim climb around to go catch up with Ashley. The two of them gave a narrative at first as they climbed down and out of sight. Lisa watched their flashlights grow dim.
Ashley called, “We’ll be back in five minutes.”
“Okay,” Lisa yelled. She was glad to have Penny there. The echoes once more suggested that there were places in this cave that might have been awakened by the sound of her voice. Lisa tried to not imagine them.
“It’s something that we have to do,” she whispered to Penny. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but this is how we have to get closure. They were all gone from the Outpost and this is Tim convincing himself of what he already knows is true. He’s going to need you when this journey is done because he’s going to be sad for a bit. I think he will recover pretty quickly though. We all will. To some extent, we already made our peace with this loss before we even left, you know?”
It amazed Lisa how much better she felt when she actually said the words aloud. She hoped that Tim and Ashley would be satisfied by their search and come back willing to move on. Penny began to swish her tail back and forth across the rock and Lisa knew that they were returning. She saw the light and then Ashley’s face as she climbed the broken stairs.
The young woman was smiling.
“They’re there,” Ashley said, speaking quickly. “We don’t know how many, but they’re there. They don’t use this entrance anymore. We have to go around. They’re going to meet us at the farm down the road.”
Lisa was too stunned to respond. She tried to picture people of the Outpost living underground, but she couldn’t do it. There had to be a mistake… or a trick.
“You’re sure?”
“What? Of course,” Ashley said, laughing. She turned to help Tim up over the edge.
The ride was quick.
The bikes bounced down the hill over the rutted road. Penny was running alongside them. Lisa would have known the house
even if Ashley hadn’t turned into the driveway. It was the only place they had passed where the driveway wasn’t all overgrown with bushes and grass. It wasn’t in perfect condition, but the driveway was clearly still used.
The truck next to the house was sitting on inflated tires, too. That was a sight that Lisa had started to think she might not witness again.
Ashley’s brakes sang as she stopped her bike and leaned it against the truck. She jumped off and began to head down a path that crossed the back pasture. Lisa glanced up at the house. She had figured that the old farmhouse was their destination. It wasn’t. In the distance, a tree had grown up inside the fence but fairly close to where the woods began. An older woman was leaning against the tree. When she saw Ashley moving across the pasture, the woman started out to meet them.
Penny couldn’t be restrained. Even when Tim whistled, the dog sprinted right by Ashley and ran toward the woman. Tim picked up his pace as well. Lisa waited with the bikes for a second, figuring that they would come to her. Curiosity drove her forward. She had to know who the person was. Lisa realized that it was the first live person that she had seen in forever. It would be nice to talk to someone who wasn’t Tim or Ashley.
Crossing the field, it frustrated Lisa the way that Tim and Ashley were clustered around the woman, blocking her from view.
Drawing closer, she raised her voice and asked, “Well, who is it?”
Lisa smiled to herself, recognizing that her tone had sounded just like Romie for a moment. The smile disappeared quickly, but came back when Tim and Ashley parted.
“Gloria!” Lisa said. “Forgive me, I thought you would…” She stopped herself from completing the sentence.
Gloria finished it for her.
“Dead?” Gloria asked, laughing. “No harm, we all thought you were too.”
They laughed together as Lisa moved closer, trying to get a sense of how much Gloria had aged. She clearly was older, but was she any older than Lisa felt? It might be close.
Tim was asking how many people were underground. Ashley was trying to find out if they had any fuel for the truck that was out by the farmhouse. Lisa interrupted both of them.
“How long?” Lisa asked.
Gloria blinked at her and her smile faded.
“That’s not easy to answer,” Gloria said.
“How long have we been gone?” Lisa asked again.
“That depends entirely on who you ask,” Gloria said. “Come with me.”
“Why can’t you answer?” Lisa asked as Gloria turned to walk back toward the woods.
“Just come with me,” Gloria said over her shoulder.
There was a break in the fence near the tree, and that’s where Gloria headed. As they crossed into the woods, Lisa looked down and noticed that the path they were on was worn down into two narrow tracks. Ashley ran ahead as soon as she saw the cave entrance.
“This side was much more sensible to use,” Gloria said, pointing at the cave. “We discovered it after one of the cave-ins on the park side. We could have dug out the other side, but we figured that it was best to leave it be in case our digging just led to more erosion.”
Gloria turned and leaned against the rocks. It almost looked like a doorway had been carved into the face of the hill. It was dark for the first few paces, and then lights were strung along the rock ceiling. There was even a handrail. Ashley glanced back and Gloria gave her the nod to continue on.
“It’s safe,” Gloria said. “You’ll find the others past the line.”
“Won’t they come out?” Tim asked.
Gloria shook her head. “I’m on duty. We take turns with our exposure, although I’ve been lucky so far this shift. Power hasn’t even flickered since I’ve been out.”
“Exposure to what?”
“Time,” Gloria said. “The accelerated time out here. You all look pretty good. I guess wherever you were didn’t have the same effect?”
Tim shrugged.
“Come on. Let’s head to the line.”
Gloria led them several paces inside. Once Lisa’s eyes adjusted to the electric light, the cave didn’t look so bad. It felt contained, compared to the other one. This cave felt safe. They had to duck under one section of low roof and then the place expanded a little. Dripping water marked time and then Gloria stopped.
“This is as far as I go, according to the rules. I have to stay on this side of the line for my shift. I’ll be in contact though,” she said, holding up a radio with a glowing red light on it. “I’ll listen in to the conversation.”
Tim nodded and walked on, following the string of lights. Lisa didn’t understand, but left Gloria there anyway. She followed Tim. Around a corner, the cave opened up even more. There were tables and chairs. The people of the Outpost—a dozen or so, at least—were gathered around Ashley. Beth was touching Ashley’s arm, like she didn’t believe that she could possibly exist. Warren had a smile so wide it looked like it must hurt.
Ashley was telling their story about traveling through the jungle. She stopped when she saw Tim and Lisa enter. Lisa waved and gestured for her to continue. Ashley picked up the story again but accelerated quickly, only brushing over the high-level details—the river, the civilization, the observatory, and the return.
The people in the Outpost clearly had a million questions, but Lisa interrupted before they could start asking.
“Tell us about the Outpost. Why are you here and how long has it been since we left?”
They glanced around until most eyes settled on an old man who was sitting down. Lisa got a good look at him when Warren moved away, but she didn’t recognize him. She couldn’t remember the last time she had seen someone that old.
“Adrian?” Tim asked.
The man nodded and looked down at his twisted hands.
“It has been the longest for me, I suppose,” Adrian said. He coughed and cleared his throat. “But I’m an anomaly. I was caught on the other side of the line for a long, lonely time. I lost track. My best guess is that it was about twenty years, but it could have been more.”
“You aged faster out there?” Ashley asked.
“No,” Adrian said. “Same rate. I lived every moment of those years, but the people down here simply didn’t move at the same pace.”
“You can think of it like relativity reference frames,” Beth said.
“No,” someone else said. Lisa didn’t see who it was. “That’s not true.”
Adrian held up his hand to quiet them. He hadn’t been their leader before. As far as Lisa understood, Dianne had generally been considered the person in control. Now, maybe because of his apparent age, they deferred to Adrian.
“It’s not important to argue over,” he said. “Suffice to say, that things in here didn’t move quite as fast. From our best calculations, if someone had stayed below the line the entire time, they would have only experienced fifty-eight days since you three disappeared into the jungle.”
Lisa thought about when she and Ashley had found Tim. He said that he had been wandering around for weeks even though they had set after him pretty quickly. Maybe he had been right.
“As far as we know,” Adrian said. “The phenomenon has passed.”
His statement caused an uproar of commentary and arguments from the others.
Raising his withered hand into the air, Adrian eventually commanded everyone to settle back down again.
“Prove me wrong,” he said.
Beth tilted her head and frowned before she replied. “It’s not up us to prove you wrong. It’s our duty to remain safe here until we find a way to prove the opposite.”
“Wait,” Tim said. “If you’re unsure that it’s safe out there, then why is Gloria on the other side of the line? Why do you have people posted there at all?”
One by one, the heads turned back to Adrian for the explanation.
“There are worse things than accelerated time.”
Adrian cleared his throat again and took a sip of something from a chipped mug.<
br />
“I was trapped outside after a supply run. The Burke entrance of the cave collapsed and I was stuck outside with Erica. She succumbed to the madness, and she and Red came after me.”
“That wasn’t Red,” Beth said.
“Sorry. You’re right. I didn’t have a choice. Instead of sticking around to clear the collapse, I had to run. The truck that I had just driven was sitting on a flat tire and the battery was dead. I had to take off on foot and I made it almost a mile down the road before I was attacked.”
“It was another trap,” Beth said.
“I still don’t know that I would call it that,” Adrian said. “To me, trap implies that it was something that they set up. I still don’t believe that the wolves were smart enough to set it up, but they certainly took advantage of the situation. Let’s call it an ambush. As soon as I passed out, they must have come after me. I woke up as one of them was dragging me by the ankle and another was trying to chew through my jacket into my guts. When they fought, I managed to kill one of them with my knife. They were wary after that and I managed to get away.”
Adrian let out a long exhale.
“I figured it was best to heal up in a house down by the highway. That’s when I found out how long the days were. It seemed like the sun never set. It wasn’t like up in Alaska, when it just doesn’t descend below the horizon. The sun never seemed to move in the sky. Storms came and went. Trees and plants grew and died. My injuries eventually healed, but the sun never moved in the sky. A thing like that can drive a person crazy. I made a shelter in the basement of a house just so I could find some darkness. I lived for years out there, scavenging and moving carefully. I couldn’t stay out for too long. The sun would get inside my head if I was outside for any period of time. Eventually, I found my way back to the Burke entrance.”
Adrian looked down at his hands again and Warren picked up the story from another perspective.
“When the entrance caved in, we set out exploring in all directions. We had discovered several branches and an underground stream that led in this direction. Some of us explored, and some of us worked to clear the rocks. It seemed like every time we cleared a caved-in section, more rocks would fall.”