Then the buzzing sound had gotten louder, and they’d all looked up to see another of the oval drones descending, and Gabe had scurried out of the light and into the shadows, from where he’d watched what happened next.
The newcomer had been defiant. When Gang surrounded him and demanded his possessions, he’d been ready to fight for what he had. In the ten minutes that followed, he’d been beaten to death by the bloodthirsty Gang, while Gabe watched on, helpless to do anything about it, sickened by their whoops of delight as they crushed the man’s bones and spilled his blood.
He’d eventually turned and fled down a long, wide slope, where he’d found the Cotton Cave.
The Cotton Cave was half a mile away from the shaft. Still close enough that your eyes could find motes of light to enable you to make out your surroundings.
There were around two hundred men living in the Cotton Cave when he’d been there. If you could call it living. The wall had been excavated, leaving an overhang on one side of the chamber that provided a sense of shelter to the men living there. The rock itself was boiling hot, so living under it was torturous. Many of the men used the clothing they’d been lowered in to mark their own bit of land, hanging it between their small amount of space and that of the men living either side of them.
That was how the Cotton Cave had gotten its name.
Some of the men living at the far end walked around naked in an effort to regulate their body temperature. Some defecated where they lived and didn’t care enough to bury it. Others starved, too frozen by fear of the place to hunt. For those who could hunt, there was food. Rats. Lots of rats. And insects. Worms and spiders and cockroaches.
Food was sent down every month – a way of ensuring they lived long enough to suffer – but Gang took that. It was just rice, but those in the Cotton Cave never saw any of it.
Gabe had been there three years. Three long years, during which time he’d made few friends. He’d eked out each day, surviving, waiting for those above to realize he was innocent and free him. He’d grown used to spending half his day standing in line to get a drink of water from the trickling pipe that stood at the end of the cave nearest the shaft, a line that never shortened. Acclimatizing to the hostile conditions, figuring out how to catch rats, growing used to the taste of them.
He’d gotten good at hunting. He’d been on the end of the Cotton Cave farthest from the shaft, at the mouth of a tunnel that had terrified him in the early days. He’d been scared that, if he went down that tunnel, he would never come out alive, but the narrow mouth of the tunnel had been a good place to hunt. He’d grown adept at setting traps with his cotton shirt, even catching them with his bare hands sometimes.
Still, it wasn’t living, eating insects and rats, breathing the heavy odor of others’ waste. He’d expected to contract some fatal disease, but he never had. He’d thought of the rats as vermin at first, but as the months passed his opinion changed. They weren’t vermin, the same as the men in the Cotton Cave were not base. The base vermin were Gang, the strong victimizing the weak, ruling over the Cotton Cave through violence and fear. Taking what they wanted, raping and murdering, forcing the living to bury the dead.
He’d headed in deeper to search for escape, his connection to the outside world fading with every step further into the darkness of the SUIC. He’d survived but, somewhere along the way, he’d begun to lose his identity as a human, to feel like the subhuman they’d labeled him.
But now he had hope. Hope of getting out, of ending his nightmare.
HE’D JUST STARTED TO fall into sleep when an almighty racket broke out.
He jumped to his feet, stumbling and cracking the top of his head against the rock behind him even as it registered that the noise wasn’t Gang or some great disaster befalling their little corner of the underground.
It was Bodge, whimpering and grunting and groaning and screaming as he was consumed by the nightmare he was having.
Instinctively, Gabe swung a foot and caught Bodge on the shin. Bodge jolted awake and sat up quickly.
“Gabe, is that you?”
“Of course it’s me,” Gabe hissed through clenched teeth. “Shut up, will you? You’ll get us killed.”
He listened. Sound carried throughout the SUICs chambers and tunnels. Thirty-Nine and Forty were looking for Fifty-Eight. If they heard Bodge’s din, they’d come running back, thinking Fifty-Eight was making the racket.
“They were hurting me. I was asking them to stop, but they didn’t wanna listen. My daddy was shaking me so hard my head was gonna fall off, and Annie’s friends were doing things to me.”
“You’re fine, Bodge, but we can’t stay here. Come on, stand up.”
“My ankle hurts.”
“I don’t care, Bodge. Stand up.”
Bodge got to his feet, a shadow in the darkness. He began to whimper again, and Gabe reached out and grabbed him by his wrist in an effort to quiet him. It had the opposite effect: he’d grabbed him by his broken wrist, and he screamed even louder than before.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Gabe flicked the lighter on. He heard voices in the distance, likely Thirty-Nine and Forty racing toward the sound expecting to find the traitorous Fifty-Eight.
“Listen.” Gabe reached up and placed both hands around Bodge’s jaw. “We gotta move, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Give me your good hand.”
Bodge did as Gabe asked, and he led him across the graves, the lighter sputtering and going out as they stepped over the sunken patches of earth. When they reached the wall on the far side they stopped, just in time to hear the arrival of Thirty-Nine and Forty.
“Hey, Fifty-Eight, you in here?”
“He ain’t here. Come on, let’s go.”
“I’m telling you, it was him. I’d know that lily-livered scream anywhere. He’s trying to hide from us.”
“Maybe one of the giant rats got him. Or the zombies.”
The voices decreased as they walked in the direction Gabe and Bodge had been moments earlier. Gabe waited a couple of minutes, until he was certain they were gone. Then he flicked the lighter on and found a tunnel for them to disappear into.
“HOW’S YOUR ANKLE FEEL?”
“Like somebody squeezing it.”
“That’s because it’s swollen. We gotta keep moving though, okay?”
“Yeah.”
Bodge sounded close to tears. They moved in darkness, Gabe keeping the conversation to a minimum. He still didn’t feel safe. They’d made their way through a maze of tunnels, putting as much distance between the Cemetery and themselves as possible, but he still feared running into Thirty-Nine and Forty. Or other Gang. In the past, Leader had forbidden his men from venturing too deep, but now he had them digging all over the SUIC.
His mind-mapping technique had long since failed him. There was too much whirling around inside his head, a myriad of thoughts that covered the whole spectrum, from being discovered by Gang, to getting out of this place and seeing his son.
Between those thoughts was only fear.
If they were caught by Gang and discovered to be in possession of the lighter, they would be killed. Their theft of the lighter would be seen as a challenge to Gang’s dominance. They could ditch it, but he didn’t see the point in doing that. They’d only be worse off.
There was an atmosphere permeating the SUIC. He’d felt it when in the presence of Fifty-Eight and heard it in the exchanges between Thirty-Nine and Forty. Fear was bubbling, either because of Leader’s decision to have everyone dig up, the numerous deaths this decision had led to, or the threat of the whole place falling in. Maybe some of the condemned men even feared escaping this place.
“You still got the rope, Bodge?”
“It’s tied around my belly.”
Bodge sounded proud to be useful, and Gabe told himself to spur him on more, instead of losing his temper, or demanding he do this or that.
“You’re doing a great job.”
“You think so?�
�
“When we find somewhere to rest, we’ll see about making a bandage for your wrist. How does that sound?”
“Will it make it better?”
“It won’t make it better, but it might help with the pain a little.”
“How about here? Could we stop here?”
Gabe had walked right past the hole in the wall. Bodge, who had his good hand trailing along it despite the heat permeating through the rock, had felt the hollow open up under his fingertips.
Gabe reached up and felt it for himself, noting its upward thirty-degree angle.
“Wow.”
“Whatsamatter, Gabe?”
“Shush, wait a minute.” He listened for a time and, when he was satisfied no one was up inside the hole, he held the lighter above his head, flicked it to life, and confirmed his suspicions. “This must be where Fifty-Eight was digging. Kneel down.”
“Huh?”
“Kneel down. I want to step on your back.”
“Why?”
“To climb inside.”
Bodge knelt, and Gabe clambered up into the hole, scraping an inch of skin from his back as he did so.
“What’s up there?” Bodge whispered.
The tunnel curved away from him, heading steadily upward. “You think you can climb up? We should be safe up here.”
“Maybe, if you help me.”
“I’ll help you, buddy, you bet.” He took another look at what lay ahead, quickly assessing whether it was wide and strong enough to accommodate Bodge. He thought it was.
He reached down and took Bodge’s hand, trying to pull him up. “You’re too heavy. You think you could climb?”
“No, my arm hurts.”
He thought for a moment. “Okay, I’ll jump down, and you can stand on my back and crawl inside.”
Bodge giggled as Gabe lowered himself. “I’m too big to stand on you.”
“Oh yeah? Well, we’ll see, won’t we?”
Gabe tensed every muscle in his body as Bodge stepped on him and, despite feeling like his eyes were about to pop out of his head for a few seconds, like his spine was about to fall into scrambled jigsaw pieces, Bodge’s weight soon shifted off him as he wedged himself inside the manmade cavity.
“Now use your good hand to pull me up.”
This was much less of a challenge, and they were soon side by side in the narrow tunnel.
Moments later, they heard the voices of Thirty-Nine and Forty below.
“Should we go back up, make sure he’s not still up there?”
“Are you stupid? You saw with your own eyes that he wasn’t.”
“Maybe he dug a tunnel in the other direction.”
“He didn’t. There was only one tunnel, we both saw the end of it. He didn’t stick around. Probably scared more bombs might go off.”
“Where the hell is he?”
“Already told you, down a fuckin’ hole.”
Bodge clapped his hands over his ears at the curse word, and Gabe tensed, hoping they hadn’t heard Bodge’s large hands clapping the side of his head.
“We must be the only people alive this deep. If we stick around much longer, we won’t be.”
“We already stayed way too long. We need to get back and tell Leader about the lights. He won’t be happy. Especially if he has to stop men digging to have them come search for us.”
The voices receded. Gabe waited a few minutes to make sure they were gone, then lit the lighter, before gently prying one of Bodge’s hands away from his head. “I guess it’s our lucky day, huh? They almost found us.”
Bodge nodded, his face flushed from holding his breath.
He climbed over Bodge, telling him to rest while he explored farther on.
“Will you be okay?” Bodge’s voice was filled with uncertainty. “Will I be okay? They won’t come back?”
“I don’t think so. Forty said they had to make it back before Leader sends people out looking for them, so we should be safe here. I want to see how far this tunnel goes. Rest up, I’ll be back soon.”
“Okay.”
Gabe headed away into the tunnel, before turning and heading back. “We forgot to wrap up your wrist.”
“Oh yeah,” Bodge said. “Will it hurt?”
“Maybe a little. Here, hold this.” He passed the lighter to Bodge, who watched its dancing flame with reverence.
Gabe examined the rope. One end appeared to be either a sleeve or a leg. He untied it, ripped down the seam, and used one half to wrap Bodge’s swollen wrist.
Bodge tolerated it without complaint, despite his wrist being almost the size of Gabe’s neck. When it was wrapped tightly, Gabe tucked the end through the final loop and pulled it tight. This action elicited a groan.
“Don’t worry, it’ll feel better now it’s wrapped up.” Gabe didn’t wait for a response, turning and shuffling away up the tunnel, blinking away the sweat that ran into his eyes.
After banking to the left, the tunnel ended. He looked up and saw a hole above him, hoisted himself up into it, followed it steadily upward for twenty feet, and was amazed when it opened into a space almost large enough for him to stand.
As he crouched and shuffled along, it grew wider and taller: it was definitely the place Fifty-Eight had been digging. Dirt was piled against the tunnel’s sides, forming gentle slopes.
Ahead, it curved up and to the right. He was unprepared for what came next. As he rounded the corner, he tripped on something. He looked down and saw it was a foot, ripped from the body it had once been attached to. He fought the urge to retch, inching forward until the tunnel ended in a mess of stony shrapnel near the site of the explosion. Most of its force had gone either upward, or into Fifty-Seven’s body, meaning the ground under him was stable. He held the lighter up, and saw wire disappearing into the rock. It could mean only one thing: more bombs.
If there were bombs like this ringing the place, and in multiple layers, then digging up and out was a bad plan. A really bad plan. What if one exploded and set off a chain reaction with the others? One bomb detonating might not be enough to bring the whole place crashing in, but if five or six or seven exploded simultaneously? It could cause a domino effect. The entire SUIC could be destroyed, along with everyone inside.
From the assorted shards of rock, he found a couple that tapered into sharp, pointed edges, like knives fashioned by ancient cavemen. Then he turned back and headed for Bodge. There was no way they could dig here, not with the threat of unexploded bombs above, but at least now they had weapons to defend themselves if they ran into Crossmen.
He was surprised to find that Bodge had fallen asleep, and he made a decision. He left one of the rockknives by his side and carefully climbed over him, managing not to wake him as he freed the bottle from his hand. Then he dropped out of the hole and began his next mission: find food and water for them both.
IT WASN’T GOING WELL. He’d explored the narrow tunnels surrounding the one Bodge was holed up in, keeping the light off, listening carefully as he splashed through half an inch of water, worrying with each minute that passed that he’d been away too long, that Bodge might panic if he woke to find himself alone. Thankfully, he’d heard no explosions, but that wasn’t what he was listening for.
Primarily, he was listening for Gang, despite the proclamation from either Thirty-Nine or Forty that there was nobody else alive this deep into the SUIC. They could be anywhere. He presumed Leader would have them spread out to all corners of the SUIC to dig, in hopes they might get lucky and find a place that hadn’t been rigged with bombs. He didn’t want to run into any of them, especially with a lighter in his left hand, and a water bottle tucked down his waistband.
He carried nothing in his right hand, as that was the one he planned to use to catch and kill rats. That was another sound he was listening out for: the pitter patter of tiny feet. He wasn’t hearing many, and the few he did hear seemed wise to his game. His reward for slapping his hand down in the dirt and the sludge was a stinging palm and nothing mo
re.
He grew more and more frustrated each time he heard one scurrying along in his vicinity and missed it, wishing he’d brought the other half of the sleeve he’d used to fashion a bandage for Bodge’s wrist. He could have used it to set a trap to chase the rats into. He’d left it behind, so it was down to his wits and his reflexes, and he was very out of practice. It wasn’t looking good for them getting something to eat. If Bodge woke to find himself alone, he might go looking for him, and succeed only in finding Gang.
The final thing on his auditory checklist was the sound of trickling water. So far, in the ninety minutes he’d been mind-mapping the tunnels as he explored them, he’d heard nothing to indicate running water nearby.
This had him worried. The fear of not being able to find water underground was stark and terrifying. Their situation was nowhere near critical, but it could easily become so. The longer they had no water, the more dehydrated they’d become. That would lead to confusion, mistakes, and one form of death or another. Either they’d blunder into Gang, or walk in circles until they eventually just sat down and never got up again.
A low patter of feet, accompanied by a tiny squeak, caught his attention. He flicked the lighter to life. Taking a risk, but he was desperate now. He wasn’t just responsible for himself anymore, he had Bodge to take care of. He risked scaring the rat into flight, but he needed to pinpoint its location to give himself a chance of catching it.
It hugged the wall of the tunnel, a little over twenty feet away. It froze in the sudden light, staring back in his direction. He was close enough to see the light reflecting in its beady little eyes, and he took a couple of slow, forward steps. Ten feet past where the rat stood rooted to the spot, a tunnel dissected the one they shared. If the rat reached that tunnel, it would quickly vanish into the darkness. But it seemed entranced by the light, not fleeing when he took another few forward steps, its tiny nose twitching, its front paws held together like it was praying to be spared.
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