Freed (#3 Flamestone Trilogy)

by Holly Hook

  “What is?” Travis asks.

  “We'll tell you later,” I say. I pat Weslie on the arm. “You were great.” I turn and face the people staring at us. No one's come forward to talk to us, to ask us where we came from. Maybe they're afraid that they'll upset the crazy woman. Or maybe they're staying back because of the weapons Weslie and I still hold. I have the axe. She still holds Garrett's pistol. “We should take inventory. See how much we have down here before we do anything else.”

  “We have maybe three days' worth of food,” a man says nearby. “The Dwellers come down and bring more every few days or so. It's hard to tell. Time flows funny down here.”

  “Good to know,” Shawn says. “We need some kind of plan in case they don't bring any more.”

  “The Dwellers just stocked the storage room a few hours ago,” the man tells us. He points to the steel door. Someone has propped another one of the glowing mushrooms next to it. The metal shines with the weak blue light. The dust is starting to clear and I can see farther up the room now. It's a long room that ends about two hundred feet away. There must be a couple dozen people here by now. I can't make out which one's the crazy woman. Everyone's gathering closer to us. Another woman comes near, sees my axe, and backs away.

  “It's okay,” I say. “We're not Flamestone Society. We're from a settlement that's on the surface of this world. We came down here on a rescue mission. To get everyone out of here.”

  “Looks like there was a problem with the plan,” another man says from the back.

  “Uh, yes,” Travis admits. He faces me, then addresses the crowd. “These burrows go in every direction from here. The worm must have dug those and it didn't start from solid stone. It came from somewhere and we need to find out where. I think we should all split up, go down these tunnels, and see which one comes to an opening. Then we meet back here as soon as we can and let everyone else know what we found. If we don't find anything, we can see about digging a tunnel to the other side of the mine. It shouldn't take that long.”

  “Oh, it takes longer than you think,” another man says, stepping forward. He leans on his pickaxe and he's got a beard going down the front of his shirt. “It takes weeks to dig a tunnel as long as the one that connected the two sections. The worm made most of the tunnels in here, not us. That's why the Dwellers put us down here. They must think there's some huge Flamestone vein somewhere that the worm came from. We just haven't found it yet.”

  “But there's tons of Flamestone down here already,” I say. “You're saying there's a bigger vein?”

  “There must be. Remember the lessons I gave you?”

  I turn.

  It's Antoine.

  He stands there, smiling ear to ear. Weslie's jaw drops as she takes him in. He's not as dirty as everyone else. He must have been the last person to come down here before us.

  “Antoine!” Weslie embraces him. He returns it.

  “I'm here. I'm here. How did you get down here?” He eyes the lantern. “The Society doesn't let you bring those things.” He releases her and checks out her pack. “Oh...you found some fireworks. That's awesome.”

  “Well, I had to get revenge,” she says.

  “Revenge?” he asks.

  “The worm,” I fill in.

  Antoine studies the carcass. “Oh.” He hugs Weslie again. “Awesome!”

  “Who's this?” Shawn asks. “Why haven't I seen these people before?”

  “I'll tell you about it a bit later,” I say. We can't waste time down here.

  My mind spins. One person hasn't shown up yet, and it's the one who I came to this world for in the first place. “Have either of you seen Talia?” I ask Shawn and Travis. We're almost all together again. Trapped, but together again.

  “I saw her yesterday,” Travis says. “I didn't get to talk to her. The Dwellers were carrying her down a tunnel. I think it was the one just past the storage room. I haven't seen her since. She never came back to that place they make us sleep. They've been taking people down that tunnel since I got here. Usually it's one every couple of days. I don't know what's down there.” There's no smile on his face now. No sign of any jokes. It's all serious now.

  I look in the direction of the storage room. There's no Talia running for us. No one, period. And right across from it is another one of the burrows.

  “We have our tunnel picked, then,” I say. “That's what we need to search.”

  A man brushes past me. He waves to a woman in the back. “I think these people are right,” he says to her. “We need to split up and go searching for an exit. We haven't even reached the ends of a lot of these burrows yet.”

  Bodies move. At least people are mobilizing. I'm glad to see it. It will maximize our chances of surviving this.

  Travis nods. “We take that tunnel no one returns from. We've got to find her now that those things are gone.”

  I don't stay to make sure others are splitting up. Weslie and Antoine exchange a few deep words and Antoine gasps. She's just told him about Jaden's betrayal. I can tell.

  “Guys,” I say. “We need to go. We grab some more supplies, and we look for her.” My heart hurts. She's probably been down here much longer than anyone else I know. A few days, at least. Garrett might have had her put down here in the first place for all I know. “This w--”

  Hands seize my shoulders from behind. A growl rings in my ears.

  It's her.

  Crazy.

  I go staggering back. The side of my axe hits me in the shin and pain explodes, promising a bruise. A fist slams into the side of my jaw. My teeth clash together and something pops. Spots explode in front of my vision. People shout. Another fist comes towards my face and I raise a hand to block it. My wrist catches the blow. I drop the axe. It lands on my foot with a thud and I go down on my back, reeling from the pain. The woman scrambles around me. She screams gibberish and I'm not sure if I'm in a dream. She lifts my weapon. She's crazed. Drooling. She's going to kill me with my own axe and I can't even get up. I can't even roll away. I'm going to pass out.

  “Elaine!”

  A shot explodes through the air.

  The woman lurches. Drops the axe and grabs at her side, eyes bulging open with shock. People scream.

  Crazy falls, landing over my feet. I smell smoke. Blood. They mix with the stench of the dead worm.

  Weslie stands on the other side of her. The pistol's smoking. It trembles in her hands. The lantern's on the ground, dropped and forgotten.

  The spots clear from my vision. I'm frozen as my brain tries to process the scene. Antoine stands by Weslie, mouth falling open. Crazy curls up on the ground, grasping her side. She coughs. It sounds wet. Her breath comes in rasps.

  I get up. The pain's fading.

  Weslie just shot her.

  And saved my life.

  I rub my jaw, trying not to think about what happened. Shawn helps me up and guides me away from the scene. He pulls my head to his chest so that it's all I can see. My legs tremble. The woman coughs again and moans. I don't want to look. I don't want the Weslie I know to be...to be...

  I don't want to look at the act I'm going to have to perform if I ever see my stepfather again.

  “Wes,” Antoine manages.

  “What?” Her voice is high. Terrified. “What have I done?”

  “She was going to kill Elaine. You did the right thing.”

  The woman on the ground sucks in a breath. It's rattling. No one in the room speaks. Someone else clears their throat, but no words come. These people have seen monsters, but this seems to be the first human on human combat they've witnessed.

  “Don't look,” Shawn tells me. He holds me tighter.

  “We have to finish her,” Antoine says. “She's suffering.” Something scrapes against stone and he grunts.

  “No!” Weslie says. She steps away. She's breathing heavy. “What did I just do?”

  I don't want to hear those words. Shawn won't let me look. Monsters are one thing. This is another. This is a person
. A crazy person who tried to kill me, but not crazy due to her own fault.

  I hear another thud.

  A wet thud and a crunch.

  Someone in the crowd lets out a breath.

  And then, silence. She must be gone.

  “Elaine. Don't look. They're going to take this away,” Shawn whispers in my ear. I hear Weslie hyperventilating again. Antoine says something to her. There's a dragging sound. Someone's taking the crazy woman's body somewhere else.

  This happened because of me.

  If only I'd watched out a little better, Weslie wouldn't have had to shoot.

  Antoine wouldn't have done whatever he had to do.

  “Wes,” Antoine says. “Calm down. Please. If you hadn't done that Elaine would be dead. You had no choice.”

  “Leave me alone!”

  “You did her mercy,” a man says. “She's been crazy down here for a long time. Tortured. She's been doing nothing but scream in her sleep. I don't know what happened to her, but you freed her from it, girl.”

  “You didn't have to do that!” Weslie shouts at him. Her shout echoes off the jagged walls of the corridor. “I did!”

  “Shawn, let me go,” I say. I have to be the one to comfort her. I know what it's like to do something that I hate. What it's like to have to hurt another person.

  He does. Weslie's over by the wall, leaning over a glowing mushroom. She keeps the gun in one hand and has her free arm between the stone and her forehead. I brush past another woman whose mouth has fallen open.

  “Weslie,” I say when I get up to her. “You didn't kill her. Antoine did.”

  “That's right.” He's there, dragging my axe on the ground.

  No. He's wiping it off best be can on the stone. He tries to turn and hide what he's doing, but it's too late.

  My stomach lurches. That's what he used.

  I look back towards her. “You saved my life. Thanks. I owe you one.”

  Her breathing calms. “I'm never going to forget that as long as I live.”

  I put my hand on her back. The blue stripes on her tunic shine in the dim light. “I know you won't. And I know how much it sucks.” I think of the Megapede jaw that's still in my back pocket, riding in my pack. The blood that once stained it. My stepfather's blood. “Come on. Try to think about something else right now. Like how we're going to get out of here.” I can't have anyone breaking down. I know this situation will hit me later and I'll probably throw up, but I can't let that stop us now. Right now my mind is numb. Calm, almost.

  She peels herself from the wall. Faces me. Her eyes are red. “I'm sorry.”

  “For what?” I ask. The scraping sounds continue as Antoine works at cleaning off my axe. I try to tune them out, but they just seem to get louder and louder.

  “For being like this. So freaked out all the time.”

  “Stop apologizing. We're all freaked out,” I say.

  She brushes herself off, keeping a grip on her weapon. “I can't be much use, getting all upset all the time.”

  Travis snickers. “You just, um, I don't know. Helped blow up that giant worm and saved Elaine's life. I think that's pretty useful myself.”

  “Weslie, stop beating yourself up,” I say. “This world sucks. Which is why we're working to get out of it.”

  Pit appears from the fog and rubs against my legs. I pet him and let Weslie pet him, too. She manages a smile. “Okay,” she says. “We plot a way out of here. I'll try not to break down on you guys.”

  I face the tunnel we're supposed to go down. We're not going to get out of this madness if we stay here. Antoine stands there, holding my axe. I don't want to look at the blade, but I can't help it. The light from Weslie's lantern is still there, but faint. And now that it's on the floor, I can see it.

  The axe is shiny.

  “Here,” he says. He looks away as he hands it to me.

  “We...have to clean that off better,” I say. It's not the first time I've seen blood on a weapon. But Garrett didn't die from me stabbing him. But this woman...she died from this. This is a dead person's blood. Her final living memory.

  “There's no water down here. Well, that I want to waste. We need to conserve our supplies.” Antoine faces the storage room door. “That's our drinking water in there.”

  The axe feels heavy in my hand. I feel so gross, so wrong, even though I did nothing to hurt the woman. There's another dragging sound and I catch two dark figures dragging off a third towards one of the tunnels. They're taking her away. I hope they're not planning to eat her or something. I don't want to be around for that if supplies run out.

  Travis comes out of the dark as well. It's not him dragging her away. “I think she was the only loony down here,” he says. “No one else is trying to kill us.”

  “This isn't funny,” I say. “Talia must be pretty far down a tunnel if she didn't hear the explosion. Or she's not sure where to go.” I have to hold onto hope that she's still alive. Still living and breathing. That the overalls we found in the worm guts weren't hers. She hasn't been down here long enough to wear those—has she? Shawn and Travis are still wearing the same clothes they had on when they got here. Talia's wouldn't have fallen off yet by any means.

  I have to hold on.

  “We should go,” Shawn agrees. “While we're looking for Talia, you have to catch me up on everything that's happened since you managed to escape.”

  “Deal,” I say.

  People gather and talk to each other in low voices. We have to keep some kind of order here. “Everyone,” I say, letting my axe hang from my grip.

  Everyone quiets. Dirty faces turn towards us. I can't tell how many are here. They're all dark shapes before the pale blue glow of the dying mushrooms.

  “The four of us are going to go look for a way out here. Has anyone seen an opening at the end of one of these tunnels? Anyone at all?”

  Mutters. People are talking about it.

  A woman with scraggly brown hair steps forward. She's got overalls on. “We've been making these burrows longer. Some of them go for miles. I haven't seen any end in any cave systems so far. But if you're right, there must be one. This worm didn't get born in solid rock and then start carving these tunnels.”

  “Which ones can we rule out?” Antoine asks. Weslie stands next to him. She's calmer now. I'm glad to see that. She didn't even kill the woman. Antoine took that burden off of her and I can tell he's struggling to keep a straight face for her sake. His eyes are haunted. His face, hollow.

  “We can rule out all four of these ones,” a man says, waving to the tunnels closest to the worm. “I've been in all of these and they end. I've been too nervous to go down that tunnel that no one ever comes out of. When the Dwellers take you there, you don't return.”

  He points tot he one across from the storage room. The Talia tunnel.

  The death tunnel.

  “Then we're going that way,” I say. I hold down my nausea. It's all hitting me now. Someone just tried to kill me. I can understand a monster or an animal, but a human is different. This is different.

  “That tunnel, it is,” Shawn says. “I'm not leaving you again.” He wraps his arm around me and pulls me close.

  “I hope not,” I say, even though I know that I was the one who left him. I'm not sure if I can ever forgive myself for that.

  Chapter Five

  Burrow

  The crowd scatters. The bearded man breaks up a couple of small groups and pairs of people and points them down a few tunnels. Someone opens the supply closet and sifts through the cans. The woman with the scraggly hair stacks them outside the storage room and counts them. A woman gets out the bowls and sets the canteens on the row on the floor. The Dwellers still don't return. They've abandoned us. There will be fresh workers to bring down as soon as they figure out another way. Either that, or they got to the other side of the cave in and they're not sure how to get around. That's bad news either way. If Dwellers can't get through, neither can we. Even the Light Eaters haven't come b
ack.

  “I just hope wherever the worm came in wasn't in the other section,” Shawn mutters. “Or we're boned, big time.”

  “We have food here for five or six days, if we all stick with eating twice per day,” the scraggly woman says. “I agree that we should split up and set up a base camp here. Three people should stay here with light at all times. This might be our opportunity to find a way out of here, period.”

  “It could be,” Antoine agrees. “You never know.” Even he sounds doubtful.

  I look down the tunnel that Talia is supposed to be at the end of. I spot one distant glowing mushroom. The rest is all dark. I hope there's no Dwellers or giant worms down that way, that the one we killed was the only one.

  Shawn kisses me on the side of the cheek. “We'll find her,” he says. “I'll be more of a hero this time.”

  “A hero?” I ask.

  “Yeah. A hero. Now that I know what'll keep those Dwellers away, I can do something against them. I'm glad those guys didn't drag you down here with us. That you could get away.”

  “They didn't sell me because of Garrett,” I say. “They knew he was my stepfather. And he's the leader of the Flamestone Society. It's the only reason they were worried. They didn't want to tick him off.”

  Shawn faces me, eyes huge. “Garrett's the leader of this Society? Is that what they're called?”

  Weslie holds up the lantern. She hasn't spoken at all in minutes. Antoine rubs his hand down her back. He's shaking. They're both not doing well. Weslie and Antoine aren't the kind of people who should be killing. They're not the kind really capable of it.

  I don't think I am, either. Or am I? I stabbed Garrett and that could have killed him.

  “Elaine, what's wrong?” Shawn asks.

  My stomach's still upset. It's because of me that they had to kill that woman. They're never going to unsee that for the rest of their lives. Weslie doesn't need that.

  “I'll tell you as we walk,” I say.

  And we head down the tunnel.

  Travis walks in the lead this time, and I behind him along with Shawn. Weslie and Antoine come up the back and Pit walks beside me. It's great to have everyone else here. It's great not to be completely alone. I don't think I could do this alone. This is way different than the surface world. It's a different world, period.