“You didn't think we were going to walk the whole way, did you? Alright, you two, take inventory on weapons. See what we have, make sure it's working and make sure it's loaded. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Doc, do you think you could cook up some explosives with what we have?”
“How big do you need them?”
“Enough to scare. I think the greatest challenge we have is getting them away from the base. We all know that's a long, safe tunnel to the front door, so we have to make it as unappealing as we can. So get them out of it and past that moat.”
“You.” He points to me. “You have twenty minutes to kill. I suggest you spend them killing.”
**
It only takes me ten minutes to find a Slither Beast and give it the Death. It's easy when they rub their dry, loose skin against the rocks. It can be heard from very far away, and when they're half out of their old skin they can't move as quickly as normal.
I strip the meat from the bones with my nails and hand a small piece at a time to Child. As I watch Terence, he walks over to Boyd.
“I need you to come with me and our new friends to the second entrance,” he says quietly.
“Why me?”
“We might need your particular skill-set when we reach it.”
“I gave that up a long time ago.”
“You know I wouldn't ask if it wasn't necessary. I don't enjoy making a man go back on his promises but this would be for the right reasons.”
Boyd looks at the ground. He looks at the sky. Then he says, “Kate comes with us.”
“I'd rather she stay with the group.”
“And I'd rather her stay with me, where she can help me remember why I'm doing this shit in the first place,” Boyd says. At this, Terence nods. “How do we know they won't retreat back inside once we run out of Fireworks?”
“I have no idea. This whole plan is too last-minute for my tastes, but under the circumstances it's all we have.” They stand in silence trying to figure this out. Suddenly a small voice at the side of them stops the quiet, and they turn to see it. It's Child.
“What did you say,” they ask her.
“Moat,” Child says, her hands and mouth full of meat. “Put Fire moat.”
“Set Fire to it?”
She nods. “Real People no want Fire.”
Terence looks at Boyd. “We'll need gasoline. A lot of it.”
**
The others come back in cars, five of them. It's been years since I've seen a car moving around, heard the sounds of its machines working and smelled the stinking breath it pushes out. They were such a big part of the world back in the Real Times, but now I know them as holders of nests and not much else. It's strange to see them alive again.
Werner pulls close and leans his big arm out the open window. “Wouldn't you know it? Right where we left 'em.”
“Is everything in working order,” Terence asks.
“Purring like newborn kittens. You can thank me later by giving me the biggest room. That used to be yours, didn't it?”
Terence nods.
“Just messing with you, buddy.”
Terence walks away to the people putting guns and other Supplies into the cars. Werner shakes his big head. “Seeing his brother really did a number on him.”
“Why?”
“Graham betrayed him, for starters, and they already blamed each other for the death of their mom. You can't even imagine what losing her did to him. We're talking total meltdown. The man you see now is a hollow copy of the one he used to be.”
Like the skin shed by the Slither Beasts.
“He loved that woman, I tell you. All of us did.”
“How did she find the Death?”
“No one knows exactly except them two, and they've never told. The only thing I know is three of them were riding in the same car, got separated from the group, and by the time we saw them again there were only two of them left, trying their damnedest to pull the life out of each other. Been like that ever since.”
“Will Terence give him the Death?”
He chews his lip, thinking about it. “He's a good man, Terence, but I couldn't say what he might be pushed to under the circumstances. I'll tell you this, though- I wouldn't want to be in the same car with him at a time like this.”
Terence takes the attention of the group.“Alright everyone, time to head out. You know what you have to do and you know what's at stake. There's a chance we're going home this morning, but it won't be easy. So let's do this, and do this right.” He points to me and says, “You're riding with me.”
Werner shrugs.
**
As the cars roll through the town we stay quiet, pulled into our seats to not wake the Munies sleeping behind the walls of houses. Once we have to go around a skeleton laying in the center of the street, because the bones would be too loud to drive over.
Terence drives with pictures in his eyes, the wheel squeezed tight between his fingers. In the front with him Boyd talks about where the secret door should be. He guesses this by the shape of the base and what I told them about where the secret room was and what I could hear above it. On his legs is a bag full of machines Terence handed him, which he doesn't look happy to see.
Behind Boyd is Kate, Boyd's wife, who agrees with what Boyd is saying but doesn't do it with words. Instead she nods and watches the town go past and scratches lines into her pale arm with her dull nails.
Between us Child's body is pulled into a ball, her eyes closed. She's trying to save all the strength she took from the Slither Beast meat.
Boyd jumps when I touch his shoulder. “What are you,” I ask him.
“I'm...I'm just a man.”
“She means what do you do,” Terence says.
“Oh. Do you know what a hacker is?” I shake my head no. “Okay, I'll start earlier- do you know what a computer is?”
“The vision screens.”
“Well, let's just say I used to do very bad things with those vision screens. I stole money from people, even ruined a few lives. If you'd asked me then I'd have said I didn't care who I hurt. See I could talk to those vision screens the way I've seen you talk to the wind, the way you know what's coming just by listening to it. I thought I was a king of men in those days. I was just a no-good thief.”
Kate says, “You're being rough on yourself.”
“Not rough enough, my love.” He turns in his seat to me. “I used computers to be a bad person, a very bad person, but then the virus came and all the computers were taken away. Just like that the satellites were space junk and the networks became ghosts. And you know what it felt like? Like I was being taught a lesson.”
“By the God?”
He thinks about it. “I don't know the answer to that. To be honest I don't have to know who's talking for me to listen. But I had a chance to start over, so I took it. I walked away. Not that I had much choice, but I did it happily. And wouldn't you know it? Not two months later, I met the lovely lady sitting behind me.”
She touches his neck.
“Will you be able to do what you need to when the time comes,” Terence asks him.
“Will you?”
“I do everything I can, with everything I have.”
“And look where that's gotten us.”
Kate says, “Boyd.”
“No, he's right, I'm responsible for this. That's why I'm trying to make things right by everyone. And when it's all over, I'm suggesting we hold a new vote for leader. I've held the weight of it long enough.”
All are quiet as we leave the town.
The road that goes through the Wood, I remember it from when I was small. The last time I was on it my mother was to my left with a serious face, the trees going by so fast and her hand shaking on the wheel. Now to my left is a window, and outside it the Trees, and behind us the other people in the cars trying to keep up with Terence.
Child begins shaking in her sleep, legs kicking, face squeezed in, but before I get a chance to calm h
er Kate puts her hand on Child's leg and tells her it's okay, shhh, it's okay.
She takes her hand away when she realizes the croaking sound she hears is coming from my throat.
“I was just trying to help,” she says.
I show her my teeth. She doesn't say anything else.
**
In a place where the road becomes two we go left, and the rest of the cars go right. Boyd tells them through the machine in his ear to stay in contact, to use the protected line and good luck, and when he says this everyone's heart goes faster and they smell of the Fear.
We take the road as far as it goes until it curves up and up and turns to dirt, then the mountain becomes too much for the car so we have to get out and climb. Terence and Boyd are good climbers, and they keep up without breathing heavy. Child does the best she can being a child and being sick. But Kate is weak, and she shows it by not keeping up, and by breathing heavy. She has to be helped up the steep by Boyd, and it slows us down.
Terence stops climbing. “Anything?”
Boyd checks the machine in his hand. “No signal yet. I have a feeling what we're looking for is somewhere up there.” He points through a hole in the leaves to a deep line higher up on the mountain, big enough to walk on. I can see it because the sun is being born and the sky is brighter above us, which is good, but also not good.
We keep climbing. It takes some minutes but we reach the deep line, and we walk along it looking out over the tops of the trees while Boyd uses his machine. Finally it starts to make noise and he holds it to the rock and we follow him, listening to it go louder and louder until it seems to be screaming, and then he turns it off and puts it away.
“Look for a keyhole,” he says, feeling the rock, “something that doesn't belong.”
All five of us push and pull on the mountain rock, even Child, though she doesn't understand why, trying to find anything that might have been made by Real People. It seems like there's nothing, until Kate calls for us to come look. She pokes at a piece of the mountain sticking from the wall the size of her head.
She says, “It's not real.”
Boyd feels around its edges for some seconds until something clicks. Right to left the rock moves out of the way, behind it a face of metal with a hole in the middle. He asks me for the key and I give it to him, and he slides it in and turns. The metal face opens to show a vision screen with an outline of a hand, like a shadow. Boyd presses his hand to it and the screen turns to blood.
Terence says, “Is it bad?”
“Nothing I can't handle.”
“How long you think?”
“Five minutes most.”
“Really? That's it?”
“There's a reason you brought me instead of Werner, and it's not because he talks too much on car-rides.”
Boyd takes out more machines from his bag. As he uses them, Terence comes to speak to me.
He nods to Child. “How's she holding up?”
“Better with the sun coming.”
His eyes move to the sky. “I wish I could say the same for the rest of us. Listen- I need you to understand that things might get ugly.”
“Things are ugly now.”
“What I'm trying to say is, if this turns into a fight I need you to stay focused. Remember who's side you're on.” He looks over at Kate, standing at the side of Boyd. “She didn't mean any harm, you know. People get emotional when they see children, even Munie children, more-so when they've been through the kinds of things she's been through.”
“I can take care of Child.”
“I see that, but an important lesson I learned a long time ago is that being a family isn't just offering help, it's accepting it.”
“We aren't family.”
He nods, his face serious. “I'd settle for knowing you won't attack any of my people. What do you say?”
I look at Boyd and Kate. I look at Terence. “I say keep them away from Child, and I'll keep away from them.”
Boyd finishes with his machines. A piece of the mountain taller than him pushes forward and moves to the right, opening to show a mouth, and behind it a low, deep tunnel with Real People lights in the ceiling and a metal path in the floor.
Without any more words we walk through the mouth and into the mountain.
Into the dark.
V
With the voice of the outside to our backs, we walk. Our foot sounds on the metal path are the loudest sounds in the tunnel until the rock starts to move behind us, returning to its place on the face of the mountain. It closes with a loud boom that blocks out the birthing sun, and the long line of lights in the ceiling replaces it, but they're not the same.
Terence tells me to calm down, his deep eyes seeing how serious my face is. He's right- always stay calm, that's what my mother told me. That's what she always said, even when her fingers shook on the car wheel. Even when-
“Hey.” I put the hand light up to see Boyd. “Cut it out with the noises, it's creepy enough in here without all the croaking and growling,” he says, while Kate watches me over his shoulder.
Child stays at my side. She looks better than before, but I know it won't last if we don't finish our mission quickly and get back outside to the sun and the air and the things that her body needs.
“Are you ready,” I ask her. She shrugs her boney shoulders. “The dangers are almost over. This will give you a safe place to live, away from the Munies and the Beasts. You'll be able to walk and sleep with the sun on your skin.”
“Where Mother go after,” she asks.
“Away.”
“Stay with Child.” She rubs my arm with her small hand. My eyes start to burn so I move her hand away.
“I told you to stop calling me that. Remember to stay close to the ground if there's a fight, hide where they can't see you and I'll find you.”
“You not care.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Not stay, not care.” She looks at the tunnel wall instead of me. I try to tell her it's not true but she won't answer me, just keeps looking at the wall as we walk through the tunnel. Terence tries to smile at me but his heart won't let him.
We continue through the dark. Soon we're at the last ceiling light which looks down at a hole in the ground with a railing around it. Boyd aims his hand light down to show the stairs that live in it. They're built in a long spiral, the way water goes down the sink drain. Standing over them gives me a dizzy feeling like I might fall in and never stop, just fall forever through the dark and the death, and I know this isn't true, that no one falls forever, but sometimes feelings and truth are as different as real people and Munies.
Terence takes the stairs first and the rest of us follow, the round walls leaning in as if to whisper words in our ears.
We go down the drain stairs until we stand at the bottom in a room with yellow lights in the walls. A door in the floor has a wheel on one side, and at the middle of that a small hole.
This is the other side of the exit. I know it by listening to the way the air moves through it. When I pick up the stink of Munies and rotten supplies coming through the cracks, I know it twice as much.
Boyd talks to his machine. When he's happy with what it says, he tells Terence to use the key. It works. The wheel spins and the door swings up to let the filthy air escape, full of so much rot even the real people back away.
“Sweet hell,” Boyd says into his arm, “what is that?”
“A bad place for a Munie.” I look at Child, thinking of how just yesterday I almost let Graham take her and keep her down there, after he convinced me it was the safest place in the world for her. Seeing it now, in the light from Kate's hand, I realize how close I came to destroying the little one.
**
Standing at the mouth of the vision screen room, the lights in their hands pushed low, the people talk through their plan. In quiet voices and fast hearts they speak about what should happen and what to do if it doesn't. They decide to leave Kate with a gun to protect the exit, so we
can get back without problems when we're done. At least she has some purpose here, I think, but I don't say it. Boyd puts his mouth to hers, giving her soft words before he goes.
The rest of us leave the vision screen room and go into the long hallway. The lights are bright, but the only sounds are sleep sounds coming from rooms far away, and the air voice breathing from the vents above our heads. Graham walked with me here yesterday, my hands tied behind my back as he tried to make himself sound important.
Terence points down one of the hallways. “The processing room is this way.”
“Are you sure? I thought it was this way.” Boyd points down another hallway.
“We don't have time to be funny.”
“I'm serious. I haven't been here in a while but I'm fairly sure it's this way.”
Terence looks at both in turn. They look at each other for some seconds, saying nothing. Then they turn to me.
Child and I both point the right way- Terence's hallway.
“Are you sure,” Boyd asks, then he says, “Wait. Don't tell me. I don't want to know how you know.”
The change bothers people. It lets them believe in monsters, and the worst kind, the kind with faces they know. If we had met only a few days ago, when I was real and hiding in the trailer, everything would be different. But we met yesterday, when the change had already taken me. That's what life is now- life is I'm a monster, even to the people on my side.
We find the room without running into any real people on the way. The air voice from the vents is loudest here, like a great, sleeping beast made of metal. We step inside and close the door. Boyd goes to the metal beast as Terence turns to me.
“Are you comfortable with this? I know you don't like being separated from her.”
“Comfortable, no. Understand, yes.”
“She'll be in good hands. I hope you can see that Boyd knows what he's doing. If I didn't trust him implicitly he wouldn't be here.”
The Mountain and The City: A Post-Apocalyptic Tale Page 16