His open eye fixed on Brett’s, and now he could tell he could see him. He hadn’t been prepared to beg for his life to the Rebels who’d been intent on killing everyone here, but he was begging Brett now. Begging him to end his suffering.
“I don’t want to die alone,” he whispered. His hand found Brett’s.
Brett looked off to his left and saw a large chunk of rock, smeared with blood. Probably the rock they’d used to smash Seventy-Six’s skull.
He freed his hand from Seventy-Six’s.
“Okay,” he said, tears standing in the corners of his eyes. “Okay.”
ONCE IT WAS DONE, HE left quickly. Killing a man was a hard thing to do. He told himself Seventy-Six had been dying anyway. He’d asked Brett to end his suffering.
What the Rebels had done to those men was barbaric, but at least two of theirs had been killed. He wouldn’t think of them as Gang. They had the cross on their foreheads, but they’d turned their backs on Leader, and on Brett. He felt no empathy for the two that had been killed. They were his enemies now, they were Rebels.
He had the information Leader had sent him to find. He’d been given three days to find it, he’d done it in one. He just had to make it back and deliver the news to Leader, then he’d be okay. Leader would spare his life, because he’d done what was asked of him. He’d followed Leader’s orders without complaint, unlike the Rebels, and he had the information Leader needed to protect himself. The great man had been right all along.
Six Rebels. Four Gang, two Regulars. Leader’s guards would have no trouble against six men, no matter how desperate they were. He wouldn’t let them off easy though. No, he’d have them captured and made an example of. Brett didn’t want to imagine the finer details of that punishment.
It would be brutal, but they deserved brutality for what they’d done. It was savage, animalistic, like so much of life down here, but turning your back on your vow to serve Leader was bad enough. Killing your brothers was infinitely worse. They’d broken the rules, and they deserved every moment of the punishment they had coming.
He’d been fortunate not to run into them on his way deeper into the SUIC. He would have to be careful on his way back, but he must hurry. Leader needed to know they were coming, and he needed to know before they arrived.
The Regulars he’d heard, what were their names? He couldn’t remember, after the trauma of the Gypsum Chamber, the Monster Chamber, finding the bloody fight scene and Seventy-Six begging him to end his life. One of them had sounded like an overgrown kid, asking if there would be fighting in the Cotton Cave.
The fact those two were headed there didn’t bother him, despite its proximity to Leader’s compound. He knew those guys weren’t Rebels: they’d spoken of the fighting like they wanted to avoid witnessing more of it.
It sounded like they’d seen the fighting, the ambush and massacre of Gang by the Rebels.
How had they not become victims? He guessed they’d hidden, like he had from the two of them when they’d been approaching the Water Chamber.
The thought of the place made him shiver against the muggy heat of the SUIC. He didn’t want to go through there again, but he knew he had to. There was no way around it. Same as there was no way around the Monster Chamber. He had to make it through those hellish places and deliver the news, then maybe Leader would give him clean water to drink, some rice to eat, time to rest. Maybe he’d even give him a room inside his white walls for saving his life. Or even do the thing Forty had been so convinced he would: make him his right-hand man.
A distant rumble made him increase his pace. Those rumbles meant only one thing: more Gang dead. How many were left?
He wondered how far ahead of him the Rebels were. Probably already through the Water Chamber. He knew they’d made it past the heat of the Gypsum Monster Chamber; he’d have stumbled across their bodies when he’d come in the other direction if they hadn’t. Once he made it through the Water Chamber, his chances of running into them would decrease. He’d be back in the main part of the SUIC, where there were many tunnels a man could use to get around.
He made it past the monster quicker than he had before, emerging from the stifling heat with a blinding headache that he knew must be due to dehydration. He stumbled on, determined to get through the Water Chamber and back to Leader.
It was close now. He could hear rats, hundreds, maybe even thousands, of tiny little feet, converging on the place in the tunnels that adjoined it.
CHAPTER SEVEN
GABE TORE THE LAST of the rope into strips, which each of them tied about their faces, covering their noses and mouths. Then Gabe and Carmichael took the bodies, one at a time – Gabe holding the arms, Carmichael holding the legs – and hurried into the darkness and the heat and the steam. They tripped over and stood on rats as they went, but the masks helped them deal with the stench, and it was easier to cope with being inside the Water Chamber when you knew for sure where the exit was. They rolled them down the hill, one by one, into the putrid water, rats eagerly swarming over them in search of their next meal.
It was a good day for the rats. It was a bad day for Gabe, and for Bodge, and for all the other men in the SUIC. The odds of escape were getting longer all the time. Not only did they have Leader and Gang to deal with, they had the possibility of the whole place disintegrating, crushing them, and now they had the sickness to worry about too.
Carmichael lamented the bodies having to be dumped so carelessly and without dignity. He knew all four of these men, he told Gabe, and all four were good men. Men who wanted to serve their sentences without trouble or fear. Men who just wanted to live and had been happily doing so in the Cotton Cave, carving out an existence without the threat of murderous Gang killing them for sport.
The sickness had arrived from nowhere, Steele told Gabe, first making its victims drowsy, then sending them into a coma and eventually taking their lives. It was a silent killer, not wracking their bodies with pain or blisters. There was no coughing or vomiting. No seizures or hallucinations. It was a mystery, and it was a real concern. Some called it the Sleeping Sickness, as its victims just seemed to drift away from reality, into a sleep from which they never awoke.
Steele’s brother was the last they transported, Steele saying a tearful farewell before they carried him away into the darkness. Bodge placed an arm around Steele’s shoulder to comfort him, an action that would have amazed Gabe if he hadn’t been carrying a heavy corpse that he wanted to get rid of quickly.
When it was done, their sadness turned to relief. Steele told them the trip back was always the easiest part. “Just so you know, I don’t think you’ll catch it from handling the bodies,” Steele said. “The face masks might stop us breathing it in though, if it’s an airborne thing, but it doesn’t seem to be. If it was, we’d probably be dead already.”
“How many times have you done this?” Gabe asked.
“Several,” Steele said, pinching the cotton around his nose with fingers that were black with SUIC dirt. “One time we had to bring twelve.”
“Yep,” Carmichael agreed, as he tied a double-knot in his own makeshift mask at the nape of his neck, before leading them away from the Water Chamber. “We were scared at first. We thought we were sure to catch it, but we’ve brought at least fifty men out of the Cotton Cave. Rosselli told us we had to think positive, that we had more chance of catching it if we were inside the Cotton Cave than if we were outside it. See, Gang don’t seem to be affected by it.”
“That’s weird,” Gabe said, wondering how it could possibly be right, how a virus could differentiate between Gang and Regulars.
“Not so weird that it stops us trying to do the best for the living and the dead,” Steele said. He didn’t look at Gabe when he spoke, and Gabe thought he was likely picturing his brother, thinking of better times above ground. He didn’t ask them why they’d been condemned to the SUIC but, much like he’d thought when he met Bodge, he was sure they didn’t deserve this fate. He didn’t think anybody de
served a fate as bad as this.
They walked on, the tunnels beyond the Water Chamber easier to negotiate due to the higher ceilings. These were tunnels dug using heavy machinery by the World Alliance that had imprisoned them, unlike the tunnels past the Gypsum Chamber, which had been carved out over thirty years by the desperate hands of desperate men. Steele and Bodge dropped back slightly, and Gabe took the opportunity to question Carmichael about what lay ahead.
“Are Gang digging above the Cotton Cave, into the shaft?”
Carmichael snorted. “Who told you they were doing that?”
“Just an idea I had.”
“No one is digging above the Cotton Cave, and no one is escaping via the shaft. Unless they’re planning to hijack a drone.”
“Yeah, good one, Carm.” Steele smiled for the first time since Gabe had met him.
Gabe was silent for a while, absorbing yet another blow to his hopes of getting them out. He listened to Bodge and Steele talking quietly behind him. Bodge was doing most of the talking, telling Steele how the far reaches of the SUIC were much worse than this, even than the Water Chamber. Steele grunted the occasional response.
Gabe knew those places they’d struggled to get through were likely gone now, buried under rock and earth. The Gypsum Chamber, with its mass of heavy crystal deposits, was probably the only thing providing some resistance, but he thought it was only a matter of time before even that hellish place succumbed. When it did, he expected the heat would radiate out from it and through the SUIC like a pulse. Maybe that would be enough to finish the remaining life down here, once and for all. He knew that could happen at any moment, and he pushed grimly on.
Every so often, they came to the site of an explosion. They saw no bodies, only blood. Carmichael told them Leader had men whose task wasn’t to dig, but to find the bodies of those who’d died and give them a decent burial in the distant Cemetery.
“It’s not like it was before, when he had Guards, Patrollers, and Hunters. Now he only has guards – four of them watching the entrances to his compound – and two Buriers, for the whole of Gang. The rest of them are Diggers, but I don’t think there’s many left. The sickness isn’t getting them, but they found another way to wipe themselves out.”
“But what about the explosions? They’re caused by the digging, right? There must be some left, at least, because the explosions haven’t stopped. Someone must be triggering them.”
“Those dummies have made the place so unstable that the bombs are still going off, even without crossheads to trigger them.” Steele shook his head as he spoke, an air of superiority in his tone.
“You mean Crossmen,” Bodge said.
Gabe thought about Thirty-Nine and Forty, the Buriers Carmichael was talking about. They had their work cut out for them, there had to be plenty of Gang to bury. The explosions had been consistent throughout their journey through the SUIC, save for a couple of hours here and there that he had no way of explaining. It was a dangerous job, for sure, going into places where bombs had detonated to recover the bodies, having to worry about further explosions. He wondered whether they’d fallen victim to one of the two. It was surely only a matter of time, and for all of them, not just for Thirty-Nine and Forty. Still, where the Diggers were concerned, he thought it was probably better to go out with a bang than to bring down the wrath of Leader for disobeying his orders.
They felt two more rumbles as they headed away from the Water Chamber, and Gabe was sure he could hear the whole place groaning, as though pleading for mercy from the earth-rattling booms that radiated through the SUIC. Carmichael was probably right when he said the numbers of Diggers were dwindling, but what should have brought relief brought only a creeping sense of despair. Less Gang meant less danger of falling victim to their bloodlust, but if no one was digging, then there was no way of getting up to the surface, no way of escaping, and that creeping sense of despair brought with it depression and desperation.
Each time they came to what Carmichael called a collapse zone, they re-traced their steps and found a different route. Thankfully, the main tunnels of the SUIC, the arteries of the place, were holding up against the detonations, for now at least.
CONVERSATION WAS KEPT to a minimum as Carmichael and Steele led them through the narrow tunnels. After doing the trip so many times, they knew the tunnels well. The air holes were closer together here. Gabe figured that was because the World Alliance thought most of those lowered would stay near the entrance shaft, and in turn had calculated the front section of the SUIC required more air. It meant there was a continual hum vibrating through the tunnels, but the heated air sapped his energy as he tried to keep up with Carmichael and Steele.
Bodge stuck close to him as they progressed. Gabe knew it was because he had the lighter, not that it was much use now. The flame sputtered and cut out more often, and his thumb ached from holding it in position on the lighter.
Periodically, he looked at Bodge, trying to figure out his expression. He didn’t look as scared as he had before. A change had come over him, and Gabe blamed himself for giving Bodge false hope about their future. He felt guiltier with each minute that passed. He’d promised Bodge a better life in the Cotton Cave, and he’d thought that once they made it past the Water Chamber, it would be smooth sailing. Get to the Cotton Cave before the Rebels, find the gun, and turn their attention to getting out of this place.
Running into Carmichael and Steele, having to dispose of corpses, hearing about the rampant disease in the Cotton Cave: it was like being repeatedly kicked while down, and he did feel down. He’d promised to find Bodge a peaceful life. He’d told him things would be okay for them, when he should have known the future couldn’t be predicted, not down here.
Soames’s dying wish had been for the men of the Cotton Cave, the Regulars, to fight Gang, to overthrow Leader. The news of the sickness made it starkly apparent to Gabe that that was never going to happen. Sure, the Rebels had the same idea, but it didn’t matter if they overthrew Leader, because they would still be Gang. They didn’t have a deal to let the Cotton Cave live in peace. As long as they had the crosses on their foreheads, Gabe thought they would invariably return to their old way of doing things, of taking what they needed from the weak, and the weak were the Regulars.
If Carmichael was right, and most of the Diggers had already perished, the first part of the Rebels’ plan would be easy. They would only need to get past the guards on the doors of Leader’s compound. After that, killing him would be a formality. Then they could impose their own will on what was left of the SUIC, on those who’d survived. If the entire place didn’t fall in before then, the Rebels were sure to succeed, and what would that mean for everyone else? For Gabe and Bodge?
The holes dug into the SUIC ceiling by Gang? He knew they were inconsequential, reaching nowhere near the surface. They brought only danger, not the possibility of escape.
What was more, he thought he knew why the sickness only affected Regulars. At the far end of the Cotton Cave, the end nearest the shaft, was the water pipe.
It had been an unwritten rule in the Cotton Cave when Gabe made his home there: if you wanted water from the pipe, you had to stand in line and wait your turn. All the men in the Cotton Cave were short of food and water, and the pipe was a lifeline for many. Especially the older men. There were some who would wait seven or eight hours for a drink from the pipe and, once they’d stood for thirty seconds or so, gratefully drinking what little came from it, would go right back to the end of the line, never with their thirst quite sated, when grumbles arose from the men waiting behind them.
The line never seemed to shorten.
For those who were unable to hunt rats, the water was something in their stomachs, a way to forget the hunger that gnawed at them. He’d seen the same men, day after day, in the low light that found its way into the Cotton Cave, wasting away. Eventually, they’d be replaced by others, when hunger took them.
Gang didn’t drink that water. Their water came fr
om inside Leader’s compound. It was rumored that there was a waterfall in there, with clear water filtered through two miles of rock and earth. Most thought that was why Gang took the water bottles from the new arrivals. Not for the water that was in them, but because they wanted as many bottles as they could get to fill up from Leader’s waterfall.
It meant they didn’t have to rely on the water coming from the Cotton Cave’s pipe, the water Gabe thought was poisoning the Regulars. When he’d heard and felt the first rumbles coming through the earth around him, he’d wondered if there was a new war above ground. Now, he wondered if society above had come so far in its recovery that the World Alliance had decided it was time to destroy the SUICs. Perhaps they’d chosen poison as their method of eradicating the subhumans so far below, to ensure there was no chance of them finding a way back to the surface to bring their evil into a recovering world.
If they had, they hadn’t figured a third of the men down here got their water from another source.
Even if the SUIC survived the bombs, the Regulars that were left would likely still have to drink that water. Unless they wanted to join the Rebels’ new gang, and if that meant preying on people weaker than them, which Gabe was certain it would, then he wanted no part of it.
Put simply, they were screwed.
That creeping sense of despair he knew so well, that had been dormant as he’d focused on getting them through, had awoken, and it was hungry. It fed on stress, anxiety, hopelessness, and it was having a feast, gorging itself on those feelings as they flowed through Gabe.
That old familiar feeling of being powerless to effect positive change gradually took over him. Why had he agreed to go with Bodge? Because he’d made him think of his own son, lost and alone in the slums so far above him. He’d vowed to get them out, or die trying, but he’d never really gotten a chance to try. He’d thought he could find dig holes that reached all the way up to the surface, but they’d only been inside one, and that had reached nowhere near the distance they needed it to.
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