Two Miles Down

by David McGowan

  Gabe considered the situation. “If I help you, will you take me to Rosselli?”

  “Yeah,” Carmichael said, sounding defeated. “We’ll take you. But it wouldn’t matter if you had a message from God himself. The end is coming, and there’s not a whole lot we can do to stop it.”

  THE TWO REGULARS HAD spoken of Crossmen and fighting. Crossmen had to be Gang, Brett was certain of it. It was too much of a coincidence to be otherwise. Who were they fighting with? That was the question Brett couldn’t answer, and now, as he raced along the narrow tunnels, relieved to have the Water Chamber behind him, he felt his loyalty to Gang flare.

  These were men like him. Men who just wanted to belong to something bigger than themselves, who sought safety in numbers. He hated that Leader had sent these men into danger, digging toward death, toward the destruction of the SUIC, their home. But he didn’t hate these men. He didn’t agree with some of the things they’d done in the Cotton Cave – they’d shown their subhumanness back then – but that had been a long time ago.

  Now, he feared for them, for their safety. Was there a group of Rebels ambushing Gang and, if so, who the hell were they? Disaffected Regulars who’d left the Cotton Cave for the far reaches of the SUIC and formed an alliance through their shared hatred toward Gang and Leader?

  He rushed past an air hole, then stopped abruptly. His eyes widened. His mind raced. His jaw went slack and hung open like a dog’s in the midday summer sun.

  Could it be other Gang, like Leader had suggested? Men who were so afraid of digging, so afraid of Leader’s bullshit plan, that they’d decided they had no option left but to kill Leader, take control of the SUIC to stop the bombs? Surely not. That would be sheer madness.

  It would be easier to throw themselves into the dark pool in the Water Chamber, get it over with quickly, because it would be over for them, once Leader found out who they were. Disobeying his orders, tattling on your partner: those were digressions punishable by death. Trying to kill him? That was a sure-fire way to get your skin peeled off while you were still alive to feel it, to have your eyes popped while they were still in your skull, to have your bones dislocated from their sockets one by one, and probably ten other punishments that would lead to death, but slowly. Oh, so slowly.

  The heat rose almost imperceptibly as he rushed on through the SUIC. He hadn’t noticed his body temperature increasing but now, as he skirted a minor cave-in and turned a corner, a wall of heat slammed into him, and again his jaw dropped, as he realized he’d completely forgotten about the Gypsum Chamber.

  They hadn’t made a big deal of it to Leader, but coming through last time had been a close-run thing for both Forty and him. True, it would have been an easier death for Forty if he’d just sat down in the Gypsum Chamber and let the heat overwhelm him, but he hadn’t known that. He’d thought Leader was going to reward him with all the riches in the SUIC, not have two guards pummel him to mush and throw his corpse into the hell-pool in the Water Chamber.

  He stopped, hesitant to go toward the small opening ahead of him. Last time he’d been in there, he’d been okay for maybe five minutes, and then everything had gotten hazy. Dots had danced in front of his eyes, his body felt like it was ablaze, and he’d felt his organs wavering, deciding whether to quit on him or not.

  He’d made it through, and hadn’t Leader told him he’d been brave for doing it? For serving the greater good. He clung on to that praise, and high praise it was, coming from Leader. But Leader didn’t know, couldn’t know, how bad the Gypsum Chamber really was, and now, as he crossed the threshold and saw the first of the towering crystals ahead, felt that wall of heat squeezing him, constricting his life and trying to snuff it out, he had a thought.

  It shouldn’t be called the Gypsum Chamber. It should be called the Chamber of the Monster. The heat was like some malevolent-yet-invisible beast, sucking the life from anyone who dared approach it, and yet here he was, risking his life in an attempt to save his life.

  Madness really, he thought as he fought to breathe, taking twice the number of breaths he’d needed on his approach to the chamber, fighting to keep his way lit, the lighter going out every few seconds. But that was a good thing. It gave him focus as he fought on, determined to make it out. He wanted to know what was going on, who was fighting, what it meant for Leader, what it meant for him, and he thought the answers lay on the other side of the monstrous space.

  Yes, it was no longer about finding out what Leader wanted to know. He wanted to know too, needed to know what he was risking his life for.

  Were there any loyal Gang left? Or were they turning against Leader now, in what felt like the SUICs end days? Were the Rebels made up of Regulars, taking advantage of the fact that most of the Crossmen (as he’d heard Gable call them) had been blown up?

  The lighter went out at that moment, probably saving his life. He focused on it, re-lighting it, moving on, watching it. It was staying lit longer now, and that meant there was more oxygen in the air. He was nearing an end to this torture. He was going to make it past the monster that guarded the answers he sought.

  He glanced up and noticed something white ahead of him. The bones of the men the monster had taken. But it was getting easier to breathe, and he sped up, rushing past his fallen brothers, and finally out of the Gypsum Chamber, leaving the monster behind.

  AFTER ESCAPING THE peril of the Gypsum Chamber, he found a second wind. He redoubled his efforts, running through tunnels that got lower and lower as he went deeper and deeper, following the twists and turns, wondering whether he was getting close to the Cemetery, to the end of the SUIC.

  As much as the thought of hundreds of graves chilled him, it would be a relief to stand upright, for the low ceilings meant he was bent almost double, and that was a bitch on his lower back.

  These were tunnels dug by SUIC men. Generations of them. Not by their jailers, so far above. These tunnels had been dug by men searching for somewhere to hide, somewhere to live, away from the brutality of Gang and what they did to Regulars in the Cotton Cave. Shame flared in him at the realization he was part of that, part of the reason men came all the way back here, where there was hardly any air to breathe, just to escape the terror they’d inflicted on the Regulars. He’d only been trying to live, to survive. It had been him or them; he’d had to prove himself by killing at least one, and he’d done that when a new arrival had refused to give up the things he’d been sent down with, right there in the small circle of light below the shaft. There had been a group of them, and he’d delivered just one kick. The others had been way more brutal. He’d seen another new arrival, another Regular, hiding in the shadows, but he’d let him be. Didn’t that make up for what he’d done?

  He rounded a corner and saw two men lying side by side, flat on their backs. He approached them cautiously, seeing the hole in the rock to their left. It angled sharply upward, a heap of shattered rock beside them that they’d chipped and hammered away with tools the ancients would have used. Handaxes, hammerstones, knives shaped from rocks.

  He stood over them. No blood or bruises, except for their hands, which were bloodied from digging up. These were not Rebels, or Gang who’d been in a fight. These were men loyal to Leader and, looking closer, he saw they were Leader’s final two recruits, Eighty-Three and Eighty-Four. An image of their branding ceremony flashed into his mind, of Leader calling him and Forty forward and telling them they were to be Buriers. It seemed so long ago.

  “Hey, wake up.”

  Both men woke with a start and sat up.

  “All power to Leader,” they recited in unison, registering the cross on his forehead. It was an old greeting, a sign of loyalty to Leader and to Gang. It told him they were friends, that they believed the same thing: Leader knew best. That his plans and instructions were always the right ones, to be followed unquestioningly.

  Brett glanced at the hole and the debris, calculating their dig site couldn’t go more than ten feet up. Ten thousand still to go, before they’d fe
el the sun on their blackened faces. He thought they would die of exhaustion long before they made it, if the bombs didn’t get them, or the whole place didn’t fall in and bury them first.

  Were Leader’s plans the right ones? Did he really think they could find a way to the surface through the bombs? Or did he know his plan was doomed to failure, sure to eventually cause a chain reaction that would bury them all?

  Brett didn’t return the greeting. “You seen or heard anything strange just lately?”

  “Like what?”

  “Leader sent me.”

  Hearing this, both men stood.

  “He thinks a group of Rebels are looking to overthrow him, maybe even kill him. He sent me to find out what’s going on.”

  “No shit?” Eighty-Three asked.

  Brett noticed how his hands curled into fists at a perceived threat to Leader’s safety. It struck him as ironic, when Leader seemed so determined to kill them.

  “I heard a couple of Regulars talking. They came from this direction. Said there was fighting back here. You heard anything?”

  “No, man. We’ve been up in that damn hole. Only made thirty feet, but we’re trying.”

  Farther than Brett had thought. Still a long way to go. He nodded. Looked left and saw their tools. Those tools would make great weapons. A teardrop-shaped handaxe, a large hammerstone. He couldn’t take them and leave these men with nothing. Not if they were digging.

  A thought occurred to him. “You wanna come with, help me look for the Rebels?”

  The men looked at one another before Eighty-Four spoke. “Better not. He told us to dig, so we’re gonna dig. We got another ten feet to make before we can go back to give him an update.”

  “He didn’t say you should tell us to stop, did he?”

  Brett thought Eighty-Three sounded hopeful, but he couldn’t pretend he had the authority to make them stop digging. If he told them yes, Leader had sanctioned him to give new orders, and they returned to the White Wall Chamber and told Leader that, he might be dealt the same fate as Forty.

  “No, he didn’t.”

  The shoulders of both men dropped. “Okay, well, maybe you ought to get moving. Go find these sons of bitches and deliver some justice, Leader-style.”

  “Yeah.” Brett glanced at the handaxe again. “Maybe I should.”

  He left them then, the sound of grunting and cursing as they climbed back up into the hole echoing down the tunnel after him.

  He wished he could have made them stop digging, turn their tools into weapons, and save themselves from the inevitable. He heard ticking inside his mind, time running down, running out, and even though he knew he was imagining it, it seemed to get louder as he continued on his way.

  AT THE SECOND DIG SITE he came to, he found two more men who introduced themselves as Fifty-Four and Fifty-Five, and told him proudly that they’d dug seventy feet up into the rock. Next to the heaped rock was a pile of dead rats. They were upbeat, hopeful about their chances, and covered from head to toe in dirt. Their faces were so filthy, he couldn’t make out their features. Most other Diggers hadn’t made it past twenty or thirty feet before triggering a bomb and going to meet their makers, so Brett was greatly impressed.

  When he told them he’d come directly from Leader, and innocently asked why they weren’t digging, they took his question badly, like it was an accusation.

  “We got our reasons,” Fifty-Five said, sneering and making a point of turning his back.

  “Yeah, and you don’t look like you got a whole lot of digging behind you,” Fifty-Four added.

  “Hey, I’m not accusing you guys. Leader sent me out to search for Rebels. He thinks there’s a group of them, trying to kill him.”

  The men looked at one another with questioning eyes.

  “You know something?” Brett asked.

  “We heard a group pass by. Maybe two, three hours ago.”

  “How many?”

  “Four, five.”

  “You hear them talking?”

  “No, we were up in the hole. We don’t spend less than twenty hours out of every twenty-four up in that hole. Heard some whooping and hollering, that’s all.”

  “We thought maybe someone found a way to the surface, so we came down to see what all the shouting was. Figured no one could have dug all that way.”

  “Unless it was us.” Fifty-Five clapped his partner on the shoulder and grinned. Even his teeth were dirty. Fifty-Four clapped his shoulder right back. They were good partners, unlike he and Forty. Brett wondered if they were twins.

  “Yeah, unless it was us. By the time we got down, there was nobody here.”

  “Which way did they go?”

  The two pointed in opposite directions, then Fifty-Four, the slightly burlier of the two, punched his fist into his palm a couple of times. “What’s Leader going to do about it?”

  “I bet it won’t be pretty,” Fifty-Five said. “In fact, I bet they won’t be pretty by the time he gets done with them.”

  Brett nodded. “Gotta figure out who they are first. Heard two Regulars talking about a fight on my way here.”

  “You think that’s what the whooping and hollering was about?”

  “Could be. Listen, I better keep moving, figure out who these guys are before they get to Leader.”

  “Yeah, you do that,” Fifty-Five said, offering his hand. Brett shook it, but when he tried to let go, Fifty-Five gripped more tightly. “Listen, the guards on his compound will make short work of them, but you tell him if he needs someone to bash some heads together, he should call on us. We’ll stomp them into the ground.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  “And here, take this rockknife, and get a rat and some water down your throat. Look like you could use them.”

  “I could use some water, thanks.” After gratefully taking a drink of water, refusing the rat offered to him, and shoving the rockknife as far down into his cotton pocket as it would go, he left them behind. He was deep into the SUIC now, and it felt good to have a weapon. There couldn’t be much farther to go before he made it to the Cemetery, and somewhere between there and here, some sort of fight had taken place. But what if the whooping, hollering men were headed in the opposite direction? He decided quickly: he would continue toward the Cemetery to see if he could find the scene of the fight. If he found nothing, he would turn around and head back.

  He walked on, acutely aware of each passing second, glad to have found Gang who were strong and determined. When he heard the explosion, ten minutes later, he wept for his brothers.

  IT WAS ANOTHER HALF hour before he stumbled across the scene of the fight.

  His bare feet ached, his head pounded, his shoulders hurt from holding the lighter aloft, but his pain was nothing to the suffering he found in a circular opening piled high with rock.

  He counted the bodies. Eight in total. He went from one to the next, stooping close, holding the lighter in front of each face, opening their eyes, checking for a pulse.

  They were all Gang, all marked with a cross that was identical to his. They’d felt the same pain he had when Leader had pressed that heated piece of gold between their eyes.

  They were his brothers, and they were dead. Bloodied, savagely beaten, massacred. His heart ached for them.

  Why were they all together, in one place? Had they gone against Leader’s orders and been digging together? It looked like that was the case: there was a high pile of rock on the far side of the clearing that blocked the tunnel that led deeper into the SUIC. That didn’t matter, he knew he need go no farther. He’d found what he was looking for.

  He reached the sixth of the eight men and stooped beside him. When he held his light close to the man’s face, he saw the appalling damage he’d sustained. His skull was caved in on the right side, exposing brain underneath.

  As Brett rose, the man groaned and opened one eye.

  “Holy shit, you’re alive.” Brett knelt beside him.

  “Seventy-Six,” the man whispe
red.

  He nodded. “Thirty-Nine.”

  Seventy-Six obviously didn’t know how bad his injuries were, because he tried to sit up. Unable to find the strength, his face dropped into the dirt, into the large pool of blood that had spilled from the wound in his head.

  Brett leaned close to him, lowering himself onto his stomach, the blood sticky beneath him.

  “Talk to me, Seventy-Six.” He knew it was useless. The man’s brain had to be scrambled. He was on the edge of death, clinging to life by sheer luck.

  But he did speak, and his slow, whispered words chilled Brett.

  “Eight men. We, we killed two. Others killed us.”

  “Who were they? Regulars?”

  “Two Regulars, six Gang. Gang did the killing.”

  Brett looked around at the other bodies, knowing two of them were traitors. His hands and arms and legs and stomach were covered in blood. He wiped sweat from his face, grimacing at the coppery, sharp taste of blood.

  He lowered himself once more, and Seventy-Six opened an eye. Brett wondered whether he could see him, or whether he was just reacting to his presence.

  “They wanted us to join them.” He gave a small cough, and Brett felt blood speckle his face. “Said they’re gonna kill Leader, said we should help them.” Another cough, and this time blood oozed from his mouth. “We told them to go fuck themselves.” He smiled now, and Brett smiled back, wondering if the man could even see his smile.

  He put a hand on Seventy-Six’s shoulder. “You did good. You did the right thing. Listen, I gotta go.”

  “Help me.”

  “I wish I could. You don’t know how much I wish I could, but I gotta go back, before they get to Leader. I have to warn him.”

  “You don’t understand,” Seventy-Six forced out. “A rock. Get a rock.”

  Brett recoiled. “No, I can’t. It’s not right.”

  “Don’t leave me here, like this, in the dark. I don’t want to be in the dark anymore.”