He walked slowly, at a pace the injured Bodge could match. Around an hour later, when they emerged into another echoing space and lit their surroundings, he found that they’d reached the Cemetery.
“I DON’T LIKE IT HERE. Can we find somewhere else?”
He had to admit: the Cemetery was an eerie place. When he’d retreated deeper into the SUIC, looking for a way to escape, and eventually for somewhere to give up and die, he’d been only vaguely aware of passing through this place. Then, he’d had no light to show him the rows of unmarked graves. Now, holding the lighter above his head, he made out the nearest patches of sunken earth, no more than two feet between each. Hundreds of men were buried here. Men who’d been killed by Gang, or who’d starved, or taken their own lives. Even Gang themselves, and he was reminded starkly of the peril they were in.
“You’ve been saying you want to stop for an hour. Now you want to keep moving?” He flipped the lighter shut, plunging them into darkness once more. It was double relief: he no longer had to see Bodge’s pained expression, or the shallow graves.
“I’m afraid of the ghosts. Please, Gabe, turn on the light.”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“I seen one,” Bodge whispered. Even whispering, his tone was shrill. The poor kid was terrified, but Gabe didn’t take the bait. The last thing they needed was to scare themselves with ghost stories. What they needed was rest. Bodge’s sprained ankle might improve if he took the weight off it for a couple of hours.
“Just forget we’re here. We’ll try to get a little sleep, then we’ll get going again. How does that sound?”
“You’ll protect me from the ghosts?”
“You bet,” Gabe said wearily. He flicked the lighter on long enough to lead Bodge to the edge of the Cemetery, where they sat down under a slight overhang and tried not to lean against the scorching wall.
If there were ghosts in this underground hell, this was surely where they’d be. Tortured souls of men condemned to such a terrible fate as theirs were not likely to find passage to whatever came next easily. It could be Heaven; Gabe was sure innocent men had perished without a chance to clear their names down here. For the guilty? Well, they were already in Hell. Was it so hard to believe a man’s essence, his soul, could get trapped in the SUIC Cemetery?
He tried to picture his son, tried to block out his surroundings, but it was hard to be this close to hundreds of dead men. He would be happy once they left this place behind, and even happier if he never came back here again, alive or dead.
“Gabe?”
“Yeah.”
“My head hurts.”
“That’s because we have no water. We’ll find some when we get moving again.”
“Can we make a fire? I’m scared to sleep in the dark.”
“Why are you so afraid?”
Bodge didn’t answer, and after almost a minute of silence, he heard a low sob.
“Hey buddy, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”
“I do have to tell you, because you looked after me all this time.” He sniffed loudly. “Bad things happen in the dark.”
His tone sent chills through Gabe. “Bad things?”
“Yeah, dark gets inside people and makes them do bad things. I already know I’m bad, because Annie told me so. But I’m scared that being in the dark will make me badder.”
“You said Annie was your mother?”
“Yeah. She liked to drink all day long until she was falling over, and I had to be quiet and keep out of her way, but I couldn’t always do it, because I kept growing bigger.”
When Gabe finally ignited the lighter, its orange glow lit on Bodge, and he saw tears dripping onto the dusty ground. He sat, shoulders hunched, hugging his knees, resting his forehead on them.
“Sometimes, when I was sleeping, she came in my room and beat me with her cane. She told me I was bad because my brain don’t work right.”
Gabe shuffled closer and threw his arm halfway around Bodge’s broad shoulders. “Your brain works just fine.”
“No, it don’t. Not since my daddy shook me so hard and got sent away. After he was gone we didn’t have nothing. He used to do a job, and bring money, but he got sent away because of me, and Annie had to get money other ways. She had lots of boyfriends. Sometimes she would get them to come into my room and show me how bad I was, but they didn’t beat me, they hurt me other ways, and I didn’t like it. The dark got into them and made them bad.”
“Jesus,” Gabe muttered under his breath. This gentle, scared soul had been subjected to horrors he didn’t even want to begin to imagine. “Did Annie ever get in trouble for hurting you, or for letting her boyfriends hurt you?”
“Yes.”
“Did she get sent away too?”
Bodge shook his head, and one of his tears landed on Gabe’s cheek. It mixed with his own tears, and he let it be. If he wiped it away, more would only take its place.
It took Bodge a minute to answer his question. A minute of silence, apart from the occasional sniffle.
“One day she got mad and told me to stay in my room. Said if she saw my big stupid ugly face she’d stick a knife in my belly. I stayed in there so long I thought I was gonna pee my pants, and so I came out to go to the bathroom and she was sleeping on the floor. I saw her bottle, and I drank it. It wasn’t a nice taste, but it made my head dizzy and it made me so I wasn’t afraid for a little while. She got mad when she saw what I did, because not having it made her sick, and she chased me with a knife from the kitchen. I don’t ‘member what happened after that.”
“Did she hurt herself?”
“They said I stabbed her, forty-two times, but I don’t ‘member, and I don’t know how many forty-two is. I just know she was dead, and there was lots of blood.”
“Is that why they sent you here?”
He nodded. “I did a bad thing, and I ain’t safe to be up there no more. It’s okay though, because you’re gonna look after me now.”
Through red, teary eyes, he found a smile that Gabe thought was beautiful in its simplicity. After all the trauma, after all the bad things that had happened to him, he still wanted to trust.
He shouldn’t be down here, Gabe thought. If you back an animal into a corner and scare it enough, terrorize it enough, it will attack to save itself, to get away. When all was said and done, Gabe and Bodge, and all the people above and below ground, were just animals. Bodge had saved his own life, and they’d judged him subhuman for it. After failing to protect him for his whole life. So, who was really the sub? Bodge, or the people whose job it was to protect kids like him? He was sure of one thing: Bodge’s mother and father were subhuman. His mother’s boyfriends too. But it was Bodge who was underground, paying for their crimes.
“I’ll look after you, and you’ll look after me, too. We’ll be partners in crime. How does that sound?”
“I don’t wanna do no crimes, Gabe.”
He laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t get you in any trouble.”
They sat, shoulders touching, both sweating profusely.
“Tear me a small piece of rope, and I’ll make a little fire, so we don’t have to sleep in the dark.”
“Really?” The light in Bodge’s voice was worth sacrificing the rope. It was only twelve-foot-long anyway, not likely to be much use, apart from being something they could burn to preserve the life of the lighter.
“Yeah, but just a small piece, we have to save it for emergencies. Hopefully it’ll stay lit long enough for you to get to sleep.”
He listened to the sound of tearing cloth, then Bodge thrust a square of what had once been the sleeve of a shirt into his hand. He shuffled away, making a gap between them, and put a flame to the cloth. It went up with a whoosh, then quickly died down, and he watched Bodge’s eyes gradually begin to drift shut. By the time another ten minutes had passed, his own eyelids were drooping. He felt himself on sleep’s precipice, his eyelids heavy as he drifted into another place. Just as he began
to submit, he heard a voice in the distance.
“You really think he’s gonna stick to it?”
He scrabbled into an upright position and slapped the embers of the small fire.
“What’s going...”
“Shhhh, Bodge,” he whispered, clamping a hand over Bodge’s mouth. When Bodge nodded, he removed his hand, and they listened in silence.
“You hear something?”
“Probably a damn rat.”
The voice was gruff, hard. It echoed in the darkness on the far side of the Cemetery.
“What if it’s him? He could be alive.”
“There’s no way he survived that blast. Even if he did, he won’t have made it more than a mile.”
“How can you be so sure, Forty? We haven’t found his body.”
“He probably fell into a hole. Listen, we’re carrying pieces of Fifty-Seven here. Not Fifty-Seven, but the bits of him that weren’t liquidized in the explosion. Fifty-Eight had to have been right behind him when that tunnel went up, so he must have suffered serious damage too. Once we bury what’s left of Fifty-Seven, we’ll go look for him. Leader said we gotta bring back the lights, and they weren’t with what’s left of this poor sucker. So yeah, okay, Fifty-Eight must have made it out alive, but if he was injured bad enough that he didn’t make his way back to Leader, then I’d say he’s dead by now. There’s no way he passed us, we would’ve seen him, so chances are he’s down a hole somewhere. Man, I know these are our brothers, but I’m sick of having guts all over me.”
“Now who’s the one doubting Leader?”
“Shut up and dig, numb nuts.”
Gabe listened to the sound of the two men digging a grave for the remains of Fifty-Seven. He’d been killed by a bomb. Fifty-Eight had said he’d killed the man. Maybe he had. Maybe he’d seen a charge poking out of the rock and backed out of the tunnel they were digging, told Fifty-Seven to head in and dig while he rested.
For the next ten minutes, the only sound was digging, and an occasional grunt. Bodge, normally so restless, sat perfectly still. These men had weapons: the sharp rocks they were using to dig. If they stumbled across them, they would likely kill them as soon as they saw they were Regulars.
Gabe spied the dim glow of a lighter when they put down their rocks and got to work pushing the remains of Fifty-Seven into the hole using their bare feet, before they extinguished it so they could use their hands to shift the dirt more quickly.
When they were done, he heard the earlier question repeated.
“So, you think he’s gonna stick to his plan?”
A heavy, impatient sigh.
“Why would he go back on his word, Thirty-Nine? You ever known him to change his mind once he made a decision?”
“No. It’s just that he’ll have no men left, the way things are going.”
“Are you doubting your loyalty? Is that it? Because if you are, you can always get out.”
“Get out?”
“Yeah, of Gang. Like Six did. He got out of Gang. In fact, he got out of his skin.”
“Leader had his skin peeled.”
“Well, now you’re splitting hairs, which, incidentally, is what Leader had the guards do to Six.” The gruff-voiced man laughed loud, congratulating himself on his joke. “If you’re doubting him, and you want to get out, then you can, that’s all I’m saying. I’d have to tell him, of course, but I’m sure you’d be fine, really.”
“I don’t want to get out of Gang, and I’m not doubting Leader.”
Gabe heard a note of exasperation in the man’s voice that was completely different from the confident sneer of the other man. He thought he was wise to deny the accusation put to him. Even if he was doubting his loyalty to Leader, to admit it would likely end up with another grave being dug next to the one they’d just filled in, this time by just one of them. Leader’s torture of men who doubted him was brutal and merciless, but Leader wasn’t here. Forty might take care of Thirty-Nine right now if he admitted to having doubts about Leader’s plan. He listened as Thirty-Nine continued hesitantly.
“It’s just that, if everyone’s digging up, and the bombs keep exploding, the whole place might fall in. Even Leader might be killed.”
“If you wanna tell him that, you go right ahead and tell him. Maybe you got a death wish, but I don’t. It’s like I told you: we just do what he tells us, and when this is over we get to be his right-hand men. If you wanna doubt him and get yourself killed, well, there’s nothing I can do about that. I’m happy to be his only right-hand man if you want to check out.”
“I’m not doubting him, and I’m not checking out. If he tells me to dig, I’ll dig as hard as anyone. Harder.”
“Oh yeah? You won’t dig harder than me. I’m not gonna let him down. Come on, let’s go find what’s left of Fifty-Eight. Place gives me the creeps. Almost feels like we got company, and I got no clue how to kill fucking zombies.”
Gabe felt Bodge flinch when Forty cussed. He held his breath as they argued about which way to go. Thirty-Nine thought they ought to cross the Cemetery and look for Fifty-Eight on the other side. If they did that, Gabe and Bodge would be discovered, so he was thankful Forty was the more dominant of the two, and as relieved as he’d been in a long time, when they left the Cemetery the way they’d entered.
“DID YOU HEAR WHAT HE said, Bodge? Leader does have all his men digging up.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Is that your opinion, uh-huh?”
“I don’t know what it mean. I thought they were ghosts.”
Gabe identified with the note of terror in Bodge’s voice, he’d felt the same when he heard the voices echo across the boneyard. Now, the thoughts whirling around his mind were consuming him, pushing aside the fear. Just how far had they managed to dig?
“You ready to move? Does your ankle feel better?”
“We should wait, in case they come back.”
“Okay, yes, you’re right. If we go after them right away we might catch up to them. We’ll stay here for a little while. Get some sleep. If they come back, I’ll wake you.”
“Don’t leave me, Gabe.”
“I won’t.”
As though looking for insurance, Bodge hooked one of his big arms around Gabe’s leg. Listening in the darkness, he heard Bodge’s breathing slow as he drifted into slumber. He’d been too scared to ask for another fire to be lit, but he was too exhausted to avoid sleep.
He thought about the parts of the conversation he’d heard. Forty had been certain of his commitment to Leader’s plan, but the other guy, Thirty-Nine, hadn’t sounded so sure, despite his insistence that he had no doubts about his loyalty to Leader. Were there others in the Gang ranks who had doubts about digging up and out of the SUIC, and if there were, what would that mean for life underground?
From a gang of maybe a hundred men, there had to be some who didn’t like the idea of following Leader’s instructions face-first into a bomb. Fifty-Eight had proved that, and if there were more men like Thirty-Nine and Fifty-Eight, then it wasn’t totally unthinkable that Leader might end up with a revolt on his hands.
That could lead to a full-scale underground war between Gang, if the doubters were brave enough to communicate their doubt. A leader of their ranks would soon come to the fore, and then the digging wouldn’t be Leader’s primary focus. Putting down a revolution would. He wondered if that was Leader’s goal in all of this: a test of loyalty, a means to the end of weeding out those who were not totally committed to his cause.
But what if it wasn’t? What if he really did think they could dig around the traps set to stop the subhuman prisoners of the SUIC escaping? The man wasn’t stupid, he couldn’t rule over so many for so long if he was.
He wanted to believe there was a way to escape. If he were giving the orders, he’d have men returning to where bombs had been detonated, looking for a way to dig past the places they knew there were no bombs left. The World Alliance might have put several layers in, concentric rings to ward off this
type of escape plan. Plus, there was the risk of the whole thing coming down on them. Would Leader want to risk all his men in one place?
If he did, and they didn’t make it past the bombs, the SUIC could suffer a partial collapse, burying Gabe and Bodge behind a wall of debris that would cut them off from the rest of the SUIC. Just a few days ago, he would have considered this a good thing, a blessing, but not now.
Then, he’d been ready to die. Now, he was ready to live.
If those who doubted and were afraid to dig started a war, the end result was almost guaranteed: there would likely be no Gang when all was said and done. And what was a leader without his followers?
The only place they were guaranteed enough air was the shaft down which they’d been lowered into this purgatory, Gabe five years ago, Bodge a matter of weeks or days earlier. That would be the last place they’d dig, because they all knew, even Leader, that that would be a suicide mission.
Above that shaft was an army of men carrying automatic laser weapons, patrolling the wide-open space around the entrance to the SUIC. At least, there had been five years before, and he expected that army had only been strengthened during the time he’d been down here.
They were probably ready to drop bombs into the shaft if they ever saw men coming out of it.
He didn’t think Leader would order his men to dig there.
He thought back to his first couple of days underground. Never mind what they said he did, the subhuman crime he’d been convicted of. Never mind what any of the men down here had done, no one should be forced to live this way. That had been his first thought, ten minutes into his new life, as Gang had surrounded him and taken his light, taken his water bottle.
In his mind, he could still hear the buzzing whirr of the rotor blades on the drone that had lowered him, like a swarm of angry bees defending their queen, the light of its flaming engines fading as it moved slowly away, back up the rusting steel shaft.
He’d given up what he had to Gang, he wasn’t a fighter. He’d been convinced they would take his life right there and then anyway, standing in that washed-out circle of light that came from above, surrounded by six or seven Gang. Hardly able to breathe, such was his fear.
Two Miles Down Page 5