Forty switched the lighter from his left hand to his right. “What are you talking about? We’re lucky just to get the chance to serve him. Without him, we wouldn’t survive.”
“I know.” Thirty-Nine scratched at his crudely-shorn hair. Damn rats and their fleas.
“And it ain’t luck that got us this job.” Forty tipped a wink, that black space where his front teeth had once been as dark as the tunnel ahead. He’d knocked them out when, chasing a rat, he’d gone head first into a wall that didn’t want to move out of his way.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning he’s got us marked out as special. He sent everyone ‘cept the guards on the doors of his compound, and you and me, to dig. He thinks we’re a cut above the others. Don’t get me wrong, I ain’t saying the others aren’t worthy. They’re our brothers, but when this is over, he’s gonna need people close to him, and that’ll be us. Just think, man, what it’ll be like when we get out. We’ll change the world. And Leader’s old. He’s gonna need someone to take over from him when he can’t rule no more, and that person could be me.”
Thirty-Nine didn’t answer. He fixed his gaze on the darkness ahead, feeling claustrophobic in the narrow tunnel. When this is over, Forty had said. It would be over only when one of two things happened. Either the sickness that had already claimed the lives of dozens of Regulars in the Cotton Cave would spread through Gang too, or the whole place would fall in and bury them.
Having eighty men digging toward explosives, or methane, or whatever it was, was a disaster in the making. They would never find a way to the surface. No one was getting out. If Leader couldn’t see that, then he was mad.
He turned his head quickly, just to be certain he’d only talked about Leader internally. Sometimes, being down here played tricks on you. You said things you ought to keep to yourself, and you didn’t say things you thought you had. It was all part of the pressure of the environment. Part of losing your mind, he supposed. He was relieved to see that Forty wasn’t looking at him. He hadn’t spoken aloud, but even thinking something like that was asking for trouble. It was breaking the rules. He would have to be careful, even about what he thought, because thinking bad things about Leader was wrong. Leader was everyone, everything.
“The hell’s that?” Forty indicated with a nod at a pile of rock blocking their way.
“Looks like there’s been a cave-in. There’s not enough there for it to be a dig site. Nothing major.”
“Major enough that we’ll have to go back to find a way around it. Shit.” Forty kicked a small rock, ignoring the fact he had bare feet, then hopped on one leg, trying to grab his stubbed toe and complaining.
They turned and trudged back down the tunnel, splashing through an inch of warm, dirty water. As they went, Thirty-Nine scolded himself silently. He was lucky, despite what he’d had to be part of to earn the cross on his forehead. Gang was a family, a band of brothers, serving the greater good, and that greater good was decided by a great man. He’d do well to bear that in mind. As bad as the SUIC was, being another few feet down would be even worse, and once you were dead, you were dead a long time.
“This way’s no good, either,” Forty said. “It’s too narrow for a fat fuck like you.”
He looked down at his ribcage. Yeah, obese. A year had passed since they’d been told they had to let the Regulars have half the rice that was lowered into the SUIC. Had to let them live in peace. They didn’t send enough rice down to feed Gang, never mind the Regulars too. Yet Leader had told them to leave the Regulars, and the Cotton Cave, alone. Thirty-Nine didn’t know why Leader didn’t just have all the Regulars killed. That way, they’d have a lot more food to go around, but Leader knew better. Leader always knew better. Trouble was, now that no one was allowed into the Cotton Cave, they couldn’t collect the rice, meaning the Regulars were getting the whole lot. The ones that weren’t dead, anyway.
Perhaps he thought sending Gang into the Cotton Cave to kill them was the quickest way of getting everyone down here infected. Or maybe he’d decided to stand back and let the plague kill them. It was the only logical reason Thirty-Nine could think of why Leader had suddenly decided they were off-limits.
Whatever, it meant they were rationed half the rice they were given before Leader’s tenth rule had been introduced, and he hated rats. There wasn’t a chance in hell of him eating them, not if he could still get a little rice. So, yeah, fat fuck.
Did Leader think they had to escape the SUIC to get away from the plague? Was that why he’d sent almost all his men to dig? He wondered why they couldn’t just wait it out, wait for the Regulars to die. If they kept away from the Cotton Cave, they’d be okay. Once the plague got rid of the Regulars, there would be enough rice to really make him a fat fuck. He’d like that, having some meat on his bones.
They doubled back a third time, finally finding a clear tunnel. Their lucky position? They were the men sent to check on Diggers who didn’t report in with a progress update. The reason they didn’t report was usually because a bomb had disassembled them. A couple had gone rogue in the early days, but they’d quickly been found, and dealt with. Since then, Gang had been blowing themselves up at increasingly-regular intervals, blindly following Leader’s orders without questioning them. Everyone knew what had happened to the men who’d gone rogue and been tracked down to the Cotton Cave.
Their job was to collect what was left after the bombs exploded, trek all the way to the Cemetery at the far end of the SUIC, bury it, then trek all the way back to Leader’s compound to let him know more of his men were dead (and, if they were lucky, get a few mouthfuls of rice for their arduous work). It wasn’t glamorous, but it kept them far enough away from the Cotton Cave that they didn’t need to worry about the plague. It also meant they weren’t digging, and that meant they weren’t going to get blown up.
In the first of his chambers, the only one they’d ever been inside, Leader had drawn an outline of the SUIC in the dust. He’d split it into six sections and divided his eighty or so men between those sections, to dig up in twos. Each time Thirty-Nine and Forty returned with news of two more burials, Leader drew a cross through their number in the dirt with the sharp-edged rockknife he used to hack off their hair when it got longer than two inches.
He’d crossed out about half the numbers so far, and Thirty-Nine was beginning to wonder if they might be told to start digging soon. The farthest section, the one they were headed to now, had only two men left. Nothing had been heard from them in nine days. It didn’t take a genius to realize they were dead.
An empty zone would need someone to dig it, and that someone might end up being him. He didn’t want to get blown to bits down here. He planned to live a long life, even if he had to do it away from his wife and under the ground, and he wasn’t even past his thirty-fifth birthday. He was too young to be down here, but there was nothing he could do about that.
He was also too young to die, but he guessed that wasn’t up to him, either.
Leader knew best.
“STAY CLOSE, BODGE.”
“I am.” Bodge’s voice came from a distance, and Gabe stopped, waiting for him to catch up, listening to a steady ploink ploink echoing from somewhere ahead.
Without warning, Bodge clattered into him from behind, almost knocking him off his feet.
“Jesus, what are you doing?”
“I thought you were gonna leave me. I couldn’t hear you no more. I got scared. I don’t like it in the dark.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times, I’m not going to leave you.”
They’d been walking for over two hours, ever since fleeing their refuge. The lighter had been lost in their haste to outrun the flood and the collapse. He’d shoved it into a pocket as the polluted water flooded the tunnel, but it had somehow washed out of his pocket and away.
It was slow going in the dark. That suited Gabe; he wanted to be alert for the sound of Gang. True, Gang would have a light source that would immediately give their presence away
, but they had to be careful. Being paranoid might just save their lives if there were Gang this far back.
“I won’t dawdle no more, I promise.”
“Good, but don’t go rushing off, either. Stick close, and keep your ears open for Crossmen.”
“Okay.”
As Gabe took a couple of steps forward, he felt one of Bodge’s big hands grip his shoulder. It was like a vise, his large fingers curled into a talon-like grip that was sure to leave deep indentations. They walked hesitantly on, Gabe with his hands outstretched, feeling along the hot, jagged wall to his right. The tunnels sometimes grew so narrow they were forced to retrace their steps and find another way to make progress. Many before them had tried to dig their own tunnels, and they found several that tapered off at various depths. They had no tools to dig with, so they were forced to rely on what was already there, already available to them.
After another fruitless hour feeling their way up and down passageways that led nowhere, they stopped.
“Did we get lost?” Bodge asked.
“We were never found.”
“Annie always said I was lost. She said my brain weren’t good for nothing, because my daddy shook me when I was a baby, and the World Alliance Police took him. They sent him to a SUIC too, but I don’t think it was this one. Where are we looking for?” The vise remained on his shoulder.
He sighed. “I don’t know, Bodge. Just a place you can call home. With water you can drink, somewhere you can catch rats, where you won’t be bothered by Gang.”
“Like grandma said?”
“Yes.”
“When we find my place, you’ll stay, right?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
These were the back roads of the SUIC, dug by men condemned to life under the ground. The World Alliance had stopped digging when they got to the Gypsum Chamber, thinking it a natural barrier that would stop prisoners trying to dig their way out the other side. To spend any amount of time inside the Gypsum Chamber would be madness: the heat would boil a man alive in less than thirty minutes. But the men of the SUIC had found a way to dig around it, and had come upon two large chambers that the people above ground didn’t know about. The chamber farthest from the SUICs entrance, almost ten miles from the entrance shaft, had a ceiling so high it was known as the Cathedral. It was too far in, too far from the air holes that blew warm air directly from the surface into the tunnels of the SUIC, for anyone to live there. There were crevasses and voids that, when you threw a rock into them, didn’t echo the sound of it hitting the bottom. There was also a lack of decent air. It wasn’t a place where a man, or a subhuman, could live comfortably.
The other was the Cemetery, a place where some four hundred subhumans had been buried in unmarked, shallow graves. The idea of the place made most men down here, no matter how tough they were outwardly, shiver inside.
He should have gone into the Gypsum Chamber, died among the giant crystals that crisscrossed the place like massive ice swords. He hadn’t, because he’d still had hope. Hope he could find a way out.
“Listen, Bodge. We’ll have to go out in the open, to get through the Cathedral.”
“What about the Crossmen?”
“I’m as scared of them as you are, believe me, but we won’t survive this deep. It’ll be easier to breathe once we make it to the Cemetery.”
He thought, after all the false progress, after taking two steps back for every three forward, that they were probably less than a mile from where they’d begun. He didn’t tell Bodge that; he could tell the boy was terrified by the ever-tightening grip on his shoulder. The mention of the Cemetery had evidently spooked him.
They walked cautiously on, Gabe with both arms outstretched, sweat running into his eyes, every breath a struggle, hardly daring to lift a foot off the ground and instead sliding his feet forward, expecting the ground to drop away at any moment. A while later, he sensed open space. The Cathedral was just ahead. He’d crawled through it weeks earlier, lacking the strength to stand. Then, he’d made his way through without thinking of the crevasses. It was a miracle he’d come out the other side. Now, the thought of falling into one terrified him. Bodge was dumber than a rock, but he liked the kid, and he’d promised to look after him. If he fell into one, it would be lights out. Nobody knew how far they went. Nobody who was alive, anyway.
“Stop,” he whispered.
Bodge froze. “Do you hear Crossmen?”
“No. Listen to me. We’re coming to the Cathedral. We have to go real slow.”
“Even slower than before?”
“Yes, Bodge. Even slower than before. There could be Gang here, or Regulars who are trying to stay safe. They might mistake us for Gang.”
“What’s a cathedrud?”
“Shhh.”
Any open space in the SUIC was dangerous. Not just because of the risk of falling into deep holes or down steep ridges, but because people gravitated toward open spaces. To have a sense of space was as close as a man could get to having a sense of freedom down here. The air felt thinner, cooler. Your voice traveled more than a few feet without echoing back at you. It made you feel less claustrophobic, less panicked, less powerless.
Sure, it didn’t have light like the Cotton Cave did, and there was a distinct possibility of meeting someone who was trying to live back here. Someone desperate enough to attack them with a rock and beat their skulls in without stopping to ask questions. This was, after all, a place for subhumans.
“Stick to the edge, keep the wall at your side. Don’t step away from it unless I tell you to, okay?”
“Yeah,” Bodge whispered, and when Gabe turned and began to inch forward, Bodge placed a hand on each shoulder and gripped.
“Ow, Bodge. Relax a little.”
The grip didn’t change, but at least he wasn’t doing this alone. He didn’t think he could do this alone. The pain of Bodge’s grip distracted him from his fear, and he listened hard as he edged forward, focusing on the sound of a steady trickle of water in the distance. A water source was a good base. From there, they could explore their surroundings. Make sure it was safe, find a hollow to form a protective barrier around them, and survive. They wouldn’t need food right away, not as long as they had water. A thought popped into his head, and he stopped.
“Bodge, if you have both hands on my shoulders, where’s the bottle?”
“Netween ny neeth,” came the muffled response, and they began to inch forward once more, Gabe blocking out the pain of Bodge’s grip by concentrating on the sound of the trickling water. He listened hard and, as they closed the gap between themselves and the water, he grew more alert than ever, listening for Gang, listening for Crossmen.
THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE was the temperature. When they were in the tunnels, the air was hot and close. In more open surroundings it was marginally cooler. Gabe could almost imagine a breeze against his face. It was still hot, but not so close, not like it was eating away at him, trying to get into him to boil him from the inside. If it wasn’t so dangerous to be out in the open like this, he could call this home.
But it was dangerous. They would have to move through the cavernous space and get to the other side. The more quickly they did it, the better. A source of running water was to be prized. People fought over a lot less down here.
If they found their way to it and it was clean, they could seek shelter nearby, get hydrated, then see if it was possible to catch rats for food. In time, their bodies would acclimatize to the lower oxygen levels. Their other senses would make up for the deficit of sight. They would have a home away from the danger that was present in and around the Cotton Cave.
“Gabe?” Bodge’s voice echoed back from across the space.
“Shh, keep your voice down. You hear the water?”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s see if we can get to it, huh?”
“I’m thirsty.”
“I’m thirsty too, but we need to be careful. We have to watch where we step, okay?”
“Mm-hm.”
“If you hear anything that isn’t you or me, or the water, squeeze my shoulder and stand still. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Gabe placed a hand against the wall and tapped with his foot in a semi-circle off to his left. Halfway through his arc, his foot reached out over open air. The sound of the water came from ahead and to their left, on the other side of the drop. He hoped the ledge they were on would take them all the way around it – it could be ten feet or one hundred – and to the far side of this dangerous place.
“Put your hand on the wall, and don’t take it off.” He felt Bodge remove his hand from his left shoulder. “No, Bodge, your other hand.”
Bodge swapped hands, and they inched their way along the ledge, keeping their right hands against the hot, uneven rock. Every so often, Gabe paused and tested the space to their left with his foot. It didn’t taper off, and they were able to make their way around it until eventually, after twenty long, nervous minutes, they reached the trickle of water.
“Let’s fill the bottle and keep moving. We can see if it’s clean once we have cover. Something feels off about this place.”
The sour scent of Bodge’s sweat wafted over him as he raised the bottle toward the water that dripped from a ledge above their heads.
“Be careful, don’t scrape it against the wall.”
“I’m careful, Gabe, I am.”
“You men better turn around, go deeper.”
The voice came from beyond the sound of the water. At the same instant, light flared less than ten feet away.
Gabe registered the cross branded into the head of the man behind the light. Bodge stepped back, dropped the bottle, and tripped over his own feet. He fell into darkness before Gabe could reach out to steady him. After a series of muffled grunts, there was silence.
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