“How do you know all of this?” Mason asked, stupefied. All the times she’d been given special treatment, and the fact that she’d been matched with a potential elder, all started to make sense.
“Only some things were lost with the passage of time,” Mattli said, a hint of sadness in his voice, although Mason wasn’t sure if it was for Ashley or for their lost knowledge.
Alkoff turned and stared out of the window. “So, we can’t return after all,” he said quietly, and even though Mason didn’t know him very well, he could hear the disappointment in his voice.
“That’s why you sent me, isn’t it? To find out what was there? Not to make sure Ashley wouldn’t return?”
Mattli’s voice was thick with sadness. “We both knew Ashley wouldn’t return, even if the mainland was safe. She didn’t belong here. We hoped she could head the colonization efforts.”
“You could’ve told us that. It would have saved us a lot of stress,” Mason said, tiring of their secrets.
Neither of the elders responded.
“Well, I suppose the thing about secrets is holding onto them until the timing is right, huh?” His voice was thick with disgust.
Alkoff didn’t avert his gaze from the window. “Tell us what happened. What did you see?”
“Nothing, at first. Just a wasteland of gray sand. There are no trees, no buildings, and no wildlife. Nothing. I’m not sure how far inland we walked before we bedded down for the night. Not far, less than five miles, I’d say. The sky was clear and the moon was full, allowing for a fair amount of light. I fell asleep after Ashley did, but a sound woke me up. We hadn’t been sleeping long, so I scanned our surroundings for some sign of life, something that could have been responsible for the sound. Off in the distance, I spotted a strange cloud. No, cloud implies too much substance. It was more of a translucent fog. I thought I was seeing things at first. But it advanced on us rapidly. I blinked once, and it was one hundred yards closer. Again, and it was almost upon us. And then I heard her screaming.” He stopped his tale, hoping he didn’t need to go on.
“And that’s it,” he said after a moment. “I hightailed it out of there, made it back to the canoe, and somehow managed to find my way back here.” He shrugged, not wanting to talk about it anymore. The box weighed heavily in his pack. But something held his tongue.
Mattli cut off his thoughts. “From what I can tell, you’ve only given us a day and a half, maybe two days’ worth of your story. You’ve been gone for almost six. Where were you for the other four?”
Mason hesitated, not wanting to tell them about his new home. He felt like revealing it would mean sentencing himself never to return. But maybe he was past the point of no return already. “I found a small island. I was…” He hesitated, not wanting to give them a reason to ask more questions. “I was recuperating on it. The last few days have been a lot to handle.”
“Yes. I suspect they were,” Mattli said, seemingly satisfied with Mason’s answer.
Alkoff dragged his gaze away from the window. “It’s as we’ve feared.”
“Or worse,” Mattli said.
“What do you mean? You knew about this?” Mason asked, wondering just how deep the elders’ secrets went.
Alkoff turned to Mason. “I think it’s time you learned about the island’s dead, Elder Hawkins.”
19.
The elders took Mason to the pyre. It was broad daylight, so people stared, but Mason was flanked by the two head elders. No one dared to stop them or say anything.
The elders had already disassembled the pyre, and there was no trace of the morning’s ceremony. Alkoff and Mattli stopped when they reached the piled parts of it.
“As you know, this is where the bodies are set out. Since you built this particular pyre, you know how it comes apart, allowing two elders to carry the body away,” Alkoff explained. “Away to where, you may wonder.” He turned and walked into the woods behind the pyre.
Actually, Mason had never wondered about what became of the dead after the ceremony. Ashley was the one with that particular curiosity. She’d wanted to stay with her dad after his funeral. The elders had forcibly carried her away as tears coursed down her face. Mason had tried to tell her they weren’t punishing her—this was just how things had always been done. She’d shouted back that she’d like to see if he still felt that way after someone he loved died.
He felt a pang of… he didn’t really know what. Ashley had been the only person he really cared about. He’d watched her die and still didn’t know what had become of her. It had brought him no peace to see her body disposed of in such a horrific manner.
He shook his head, bringing himself back to the narrow path he walked with the elders—one in front and one behind.
They stopped walking suddenly, and Alkoff turned to look at Mason. “Elder Hawkins, it’s important for you to understand something. Up until today, only the two head elders have ever gone past this point. After a funeral service, there are elders who are assigned to carry the body to here.” He gestured to a large, flat rock. “Elder Mattli and I then take the body to its final resting place.”
“What makes you think I’m special enough to be told such sensitive information?” Mason asked, skeptical about their intentions.
“Because of what you’ve seen.” Mattli said it like it was as plain as the nose on his face.
“But I don’t even know what I saw.”
“You will,” Alkoff said, making Mason even more uneasy.
“Look, I’m uncomfortable with all of this. Maybe an ignorance-is-bliss approach would be better?” Alkoff seemed to be ignoring him as he and Mattli moved some brush aside, revealing a large, wooden door in the ground.
“I mean, won’t sharing these secrets with me create more hostility among the other elders?” He eyed the door. Although he’d lived on the island all his life without knowing the door was there, that was not what he was thinking about. He was focused on what was beyond it… and what they planned to do with him once he was on the other side.
“Come, Elder Hawkins,” Mattli said. “It’s something you must see, if you want to understand what happened to Ashley.”
Did he want to understand? He wasn’t sure how understanding could help. Perhaps it would only make the whole situation more horrifying.
Alkoff poked his head out of the hole in the ground. “Are you coming? This isn’t the type of place I’d like to spend my whole day in.”
“You’re not exactly encouraging me to follow you down there.”
Alkoff nodded, the side of his mouth tipping into an almost smile. “Duly noted. I’ll tell you what. The sooner we go inside and show you around, the sooner we can go topside and put this whole thing behind us.”
That seemed encouraging. But a lot of things seemed encouraging. Like the sight of the mainland rising out of a seemingly endless ocean.
Mattli held out his arm toward the door. “After you.”
Mason frowned and followed Alkoff down into the darkness.
A ladder at the mouth of the opening led deep down into the heart of the island. Alkoff was already at the bottom, lighting sconces lining the walls with a flint. It was a round room, with a door to one side.
“As you know, Bennett Ashby was our savior. He found this island and led our ancestors here so they would be spared from the apocalypse. He also created The Dead Room.” He gestured around him.
“Technically, isn’t that the dead room?” Mattli pointed to the door on the far end.
Alkoff eyed him, but he kept talking. “Everything down here is part of the dead room. Elder Hawkins, this is where the dead go. They are not thrown out to sea to feed the creatures who live there. They are not burned, and we certainly don’t have enough land to have buried so many people over the last few centuries.”
Mason was confused. Save for the sconces on the wall and the door at the far end, the room was empty. “Help me out here. I don’t see any skeletons or bodies. If this is where the dead go, where ar
e they?”
“Elder Mattli, if you would please?” He gestured toward the door.
Mason examined it more closely. It was large and heavy looking, and it seemed to be made of the same metal as the mysterious box. It had a sophisticated lock on it, which Mason would have loved to examine more closely, given the chance. Elder Mattli removed a key from around his neck and inserted it into the small dial in the center of the door. Then he turned the dial left, right, and left again, moving too quickly for Mason to see the combination. He reached for the giant sprocket handles radiating out from the center of the door and turned them with some effort.
Mason moved to help him, but Alkoff held out a hand. With a loud clunk, Mattli drove the locking mechanism home, and the door swung open much more easily than Mason had expected it would. Seizing his opportunity, he moved forward and examined the door more closely.
“What kind of metal is this? It seems so strong, yet it’s light. How is it made?”
Alkoff smiled in earnest, for the first time in days. “We’re down here in the dead room, and this is what you’re interested in? The door?”
“Well! Look at it.” He ran his hand along the smooth surface, expecting it to be cool to the touch, like the surrounding air in the dank space. It wasn’t, but it wasn’t hot either—it was simply normal room temperature, which puzzled him further. The box acted the same way, never absorbing the elements around it.
“Bennett Ashby built the dead room before bringing refugees to the island. We don’t know if he worked in cooperation with the island’s residents to build it or if he did it in secret. We do know he developed the metal to contain what we keep in here. Unfortunately, he couldn’t develop enough of it in time to save more of humanity… or, for that matter, himself,” Alkoff explained.
“But what is it?”
“I don’t know, exactly. Perhaps you, being the metalsmith, would be better equipped to tell us.” Alkoff urged Mason into the room. “Please, let us continue the tour. If you’d like, you can take some time to analyze the door later.”
Behind the door, a similarly sized and shaped room greeted them. Mattli skirted the walls, lighting the sconces therein with a torch from the other room.
Mason counted all the torches in the small space. Nine total. He wondered if there was one for each elder, or if that was a coincidence. “Why aren’t we suffocating from smoke down here? There are an awful lot of lit torches.”
“For someone who never asked a lot of questions before, you certainly are making up for lost time,” Mattli said.
“We use a grass that doesn’t smoke for these torches. It only grows near the opening of the door, and we harvest it sparingly.”
“Grass that doesn’t smoke? Never heard of it. Another of Ashby’s saving graces?”
“Perhaps. I never gave it much thought. We simply don’t want to overharvest it. It’s paramount for the dead room to remain in full working order.”
“Why? You could always use kinetic flashlights down here instead. And heck, if things really went south with the dead room, you could toss the bodies into the sea or burn them. That seems like an obvious solution. Why work so hard to keep this place in tip-top shape?” Mason persisted. None of this was adding up, at least not yet. “Also, I’m still not seeing any bodies.”
“The dead room was one of Ashby’s wishes for those on the island.” Alkoff didn’t elaborate. Mason wondered if he’d reached the limit of the secrets he was allowed to know, or if Alkoff himself didn’t know the true importance of the dead room.
Mattli addressed another aspect of his suggestion. “We don’t burn the bodies because the island is relatively small, and its trees are finite. Burning them seems wasteful, don’t you think?”
Mason shrugged and scanned the room. A single long table sat off to one size, and the walls and floor appeared to be lined with the same dark metal as the door… and his box. He returned his gaze to the table again, spotting a box on top of it. It was just like the one hiding in his pack.
Curiosity overwhelmed him and he went to the box automatically, as if his feet had a will of their own. “What is this?” he asked, holding up the box, turning it in the dim light. It was smaller than his box, with slightly different dimensions. He continued to turn it over in his hand, hoping it would reveal the secrets of his own box.
Alkoff eyed the box, a healthy amount of respect for whatever was inside reflected in his eyes. “That is the key to the dead room. And the key to the apocalypse.”
Mason dropped the box like it had suddenly turned white hot. It made a loud clang when it hit the metal floor. Mason shrank back, hoping he hadn’t unleashed the apocalypse on them by dropping it.
Mattli retrieved the box and carefully checked it for damage, then gingerly returned it to its resting place on the table at the far end of the room.
“Care to elaborate on the apocalypse box?” Mason addressed the question to the room, hoping at least one of them would answer.
Mattli leaned against the table, the box resting between his hands. “We know neither where they originated nor what their original purpose was. We only know the result. We live every day in the reality they have shaped.”
“They?” Mason asked.
“The nanobots.” He said it simply, as if that one word would explain everything.
“Nanobots?” Mason said it slowly, trying hard to comprehend its meaning.
“Robots too small for the naked eye to see individually,” Alkoff answered, coming further into the room to stand by Mason’s side.
“Robots,” Mason said, still unable to come to grips with what they were saying. “Robots were responsible for the apocalypse? Tiny robots turned the mainland to ash?”
Neither elder responded. While Mason tried to make the pieces fit, something occurred to him. “So, what do tiny robots have to do with the island’s dead? Or what’s in that box?”
Alkoff looked at the younger man thoughtfully, knowing how difficult it had to be for him to comprehend this new information. He’d been older than Mason when the head elder had explained everything to him. But a few extra years had done little to prepare him for the shocking news. He knew how Mason was feeling.
“The nanobots somehow grew out of control. They are what killed Ashley on the mainland. If there are enough of them—and by enough, I mean millions—they can be seen by the naked eye as a sort of haze. They can consume anything, and they are indiscriminant in their tastes. Flesh, bone, metal, cement, plant, animal, you name it. Nothing can withstand them. Nothing except for this metal developed by Ashby.”
Mattli gestured to the box and continued Alkoff’s explanation. “The box holds three nanobots, or so we were told by the ancestors. Obviously, we can’t see them. They are used to destroy our dead.”
And that was that. The end of the world, all wrapped up in a little black box.
20.
Burton walked back to his home filled with glee. The situation was playing out even better than he’d imagined. He wouldn’t need Branneth or Mueller to help him carry out his deeds.
All the better, he thought. He didn’t like owing debts to others, much preferring it when others owed debts to him. It would make for an ideal scenario once he was in charge. Branneth and Mueller would be the perfect lackeys, only asking how high when he said jump.
He almost laughed at his foolishness when he thought about his failed attempt to take care of Mattli. He should’ve known better than to try and force the issue. Timing was everything. And the timing would never be more perfect.
He was so close that he could almost taste it. Just two insignificant lives to remove from the picture, and the island would be his.
“So, you have the thing that brought down modern civilization in that tiny box? What are you thinking? Those things could kill everything you’re supposedly working so hard to protect.”
Alkoff waited for Mason’s voice to stop bouncing off the metal walls before he replied. “We were instructed by the ancestors to main
tain this room and use it for its intended purpose.”
“So you cling to the old ways, even though they might mean our downfall? Are you so eager to see history repeat itself?” Mason challenged.
“To be fair, there are only three of them. It would take them a great deal of time to destroy the island,” Alkoff offered.
“Great. Slow and painful. I know that’s how I want to go,” Mason said, trying to think of a way out of all of this, wishing he could travel back in time four days to when Ashley was still alive and he was just a welder. That was all he’d ever wanted to be, not some special elder privy to horrors that only two other people knew about.
Mattli joined the men in the middle of the room and placed a hand on Mason’s shoulder. “Mason,” he said, “these robots are the key to the world’s undoing, but they also are the key to its rebirth. If they are still so prevalent on the mainland, as you say, the only way to overcome them is to understand them.”
That gave Mason pause. “You think we can learn to overcome them?”
“It’s something the elders have been working on for centuries,” Alkoff said.
“So, in other words, no.”
“Maybe not us. But someone, someday, will figure it out, and they will take our people back to the mainland. If we can learn to overcome the three contained within the box, perhaps we can use that knowledge to take back our home. The dead room is the key to making that happen,” Mattli said
“We’d hoped the nanobots had destroyed themselves by now,” Alkoff added, “or that they would have ceased to exist once there was nothing left for them to consume. We knew Ashley would have no reason to return to the island if she found something better, which is why we sent you after her. Our hope was that you would return to tell us it was safe to return, rebuild, and start new lives.” His voice turned sad. “Unfortunately, it seems there’s no easy way out.”
The Dead Room Trilogy Page 14