Cautiously, Steven exhaled. He stood as long as he could without taking another breath. If a dinosaur didn't unearth him and eat him, then the poisonous gases outside would kill him. He wanted to see what was digging before he died, so he stood, his lungs aching for oxygen. When he began to feel light headed, he gave in and gulped up the air.
Nothing happened.
He took another breath.
Still nothing.
Just air. He set down his pail and stared up at the ceiling, at the bottom of the egg that protruded only a foot away.
It took several moments until the digging began again. This time, it was right over Steven's head.
***
It didn't occur to Maeve, until Diem and Eon had taken their spades to the hard Earth, what the catch was. Her mind gathered the pieces as she watched them and she quickly realized, as they dug near the spindling where she'd emerged, exactly what they were after.
"Do you mean, eggs?" Maeve asked. They had begun filling buckets with dirt and dumping the soil a few feet away. Diem didn't pause as he dumped another shovel full into the bucket.
"Yes, dragon eggs. Dragons don't lay one egg at a time, they lay catches," Diem said. Maeve spun in a small circle. The broken spindling, the one that Forge had snorted over with Maeve inside it, still lay on the ground near the digging spot. Maeve's legs went gluey.
"Are you sure this is where they're buried?" she asked.
"Yes," Diem laughed. "This was the place. Beside that spindling. Why?"
Her mouth was as stuck as her legs. Her tongue hardly worked. "No reason."
They were digging directly over the top of the Archive room where she'd found the eggs. The room had caved in, but what if they reached the Archive? But she'd climbed up on the tree roots. The Archive couldn't be that close to the surface.
But the eggs were. They had poked right through the ceiling.
Maeve dragged a bucket of dirt and rock away, watching over the men’s shoulders as they dug. She couldn't stop them. Maybe she shouldn't. When it caved in, it could've sealed the Archive halls anyway. But the Archive was slowly running out of food and once the eggs were gone, there'd be nothing left to eat. Maybe it was time to tell Diem about how she'd surfaced in his tree after all.
As she dragged away another bucket, she heard Eon whoop.
"I got something!" he shouted. Eon twanged the tip of his shovel against the shell. Maeve recognized the thing immediately. Glinting like crystal in the sun, the men hauled up the egg and Maeve's nerves jingled like loose change beneath her skin. The hole caved in behind them, to Maeve's relief.
"Whoa, what's wrong here? Why's it so light?" Eon said. Diem said nothing, but the two climbed out of the hole to inspect the treasure. Diem slid his hands over the shell.
"It's empty," Diem said. "There's a hole..."
"A hole?" Eon swooped down to get a closer look. "What did that? Punaise bugs?"
"Too large an opening. And look, it's perfectly round."
"What bug can do that?" Eon asked, but Diem just shrugged.
"I don't know. Let's get the rest out. Maybe we'll find what made it."
Eon threw the spade of his shovel into the dirt and stopped. "What's that?"
Maeve heard the rock and dirt filtering down, as if it were running through a sand timer. It made her blood run cold.
And then she heard the gun shot.
***
The air around Diem ripped in half. One half the explosion, the other half Eon's scream. Eon gripped Diem's arm as he fell back. Diem jumped, pulling Eon away from the hole with him.
"It only got the edge of me," Eon panted after further inspection. He moved to the edge of the digging site and peered down. "What was that?"
"No idea," Diem said.
Maeve tried to move toward the hole, but Diem caught her and held her back.
"Get out of my way!" she snapped, but he hung on. He wasn't about to let her be hurt by whatever had just shaved a layer off of Eon's bicep.
"Stay back!" he said. "We don't know what exploded!"
"I do!" Maeve said, giving him a massive shove. It struck Diem at once—Maeve had come up from the ground. From near this spot. But she'd said she was alone.
"Is someone down there?" Diem demanded. "Are there more like you?"
"Yes!" Maeve said. He let her go and she fell to her knees beside the hole. Maeve shouted down into the dirt, "Don't shoot! It's Maeve! Don't shoot!"
Seeing the hand that came up out of the pebbles and soil was ghastly, but it came up gripping the loose dirt around it. As Maeve reached for the hand, Diem dropped down beside her and grasped it himself. With a mighty pull, he drew up an arm, then shoulders, and finally, the sputtering head of a man.
"Steven?" Maeve gaped. Another mighty pull and a man emerged from the dirt. Diem deposited the man on the ground, his eyes creased shut with dirt, he spit soil from his mouth. Pebbles filled in the hole behind him. A long weapon had come with him, undoubtedly the one that he'd used to blow the skin from Eon. Eon abruptly wrested the weapon away from the unearthed man. The man clawed for it blindly, until Maeve spoke again.
"Steven," she said. The man hurriedly wiped his eyes and jumped to his feet, blinking to clear the remaining dirt from his vision.
"Maeve? You're okay! Oh, good God! Did I clip you? Tell me I didn't get you! Are you alright?"
"I'm fine," Maeve said.
"We thought you were dead! What are you doing here?" As the man named Steven reached for Maeve, she retreated a step, and Diem intervened. He moved right between them and the man's gaze swung from Diem's massive chest to his face. He noticed Eon before craning his neck around Diem to locate Maeve again. "Who are these guys? What happened to you? We thought you were dead! Why didn't you come back and tell us it was safe up here?"
"Us?" Eon said. "How many of you are there?"
Steven ignored Eon, focusing completely on Maeve, which brought all the tension to the surface of Diem's skin. His shoulders tightened, his biceps flexed. Diem moved closer to Maeve, but as he did, Steven moved closer too. Adrenaline tingled through Diem as both his hands curled into fists.
"I couldn't come back," Maeve explained. "The hole caved in."
"Are you alright?" The man leaned in as if he was going to run his hands over her. The only reason Diem didn't rip off the guy's arms was that it looked as if Maeve might beat him to it.
"I'm fine, Steven," she said tightly.
"Are you sure? Who are these two?" Steven mumbled to her with a jerk of his chin. "Are they keeping you against your will?"
"No," Maeve chuffed a laugh. "This is Diem, and that is Eon. Their people..."
"We don't need to discuss our people here," Diem said, squaring his shoulders. Maeve glanced at him, her gaze questioning, but Diem was no longer sure who she was and if he could trust her. There was a man she'd never mentioned, standing right before him. There could be whole Houses full of people down below the surface, all with weapons like the one Eon held.
Rha or not, the gravity of the situation still gripped him. He scoured the man for signs of aggression, signs of power, signs of a war coming up from the Earth that would collide with the one coming down from Pluto soon.
"How many of you are down below?" Diem asked.
"How many are up here?" Steven countered, crossing his arms. Diem stepped in and grabbed the man by the throat.
"I asked how many?" Diem said. The man's eyes popped like a squeezed ratfish before he decided to answer.
"Fifty three," Steven said. Maeve yelped.
"There were only 39 when I left!" she said. "How are you eating?"
"The eggs," the man choked and Diem let go. The man stepped back and rubbed his neck.
"You are what's been drilling holes into our eggs?" Eon demanded.
"Your eggs? How were we supposed to know whose eggs they were?" the man said. "Maeve found them and thank God she did. It's all that's kept us alive!"
Diem stepped forward and the man shrunk back.
<
br /> "How many have you drained?" Diem asked. Steven, still cowering, glanced at Maeve.
"The Earth isn't the way we knew it anymore, Steven," she said. "Look around. Unbelievable things have happened. Aliens, from Pluto, scorched everything. Our entire civilization is gone. These people," she motioned to Diem and Eon, "these are the survivors. The Plutians transformed the environment, so humans could live here and run their dragon business."
The man had been leaning in, listening hard, until she got to the last sentence. He dropped away from her with a resounding snort.
"Dragon business? What kind of stuff are you smoking? This is hardly the time to pull my leg, considering..."
Diem gave a short whistle and the ground shook as Forge lumbered from the opening of her lair. Steven squinted as his mouth fell open. As the dragon neared, Steven stumbled backward in shock.
"What the hell is that thing? That's not...that's not real..."
"It is a real dragon, Steven, I swear it," Maeve said. She put a hand on Steven's arm and Diem had to swallow the growl in his throat. "It's a dragon and we were eating dragon eggs."
Eon dropped the gun in the dirt beside him. "How many eggs are left?"
"None, I don't think," Steven babbled. "They poked a hole in the last one they could reach and took it to Supply, so that when I caved the room in on myself..."
"NONE?" Eon said. Diem felt his own blood drain into his feet. Phuck's stock was gone and now that they'd tried to dig them up, the overseer would believe that Diem was trying to cheat him. Eon's mumble was nearly incoherent. "What are we going to do...none...they'll kill us all..."
"We will see if Hold House has any surplus," Diem said, but Eon shook his head.
"You know they don't..."
"I don't know anything until I ask directly."
Eon's laughter bordered hysterical. "They don't! Of course they don't! Ice House and Hot House would be the places to ask, and you know neither of them will help us! They aren't going to insure our numbers, when they are Hope Marketing themselves! We will be the ones with shortages! They're going to take Karma!"
But Eon's gaze swung to Maeve and the man beside her. His eyes narrowed, his features became pointed and shrewd.
"But we do have humans now, Diem. Fifty-three of them," Eon said.
"You are not selling any of us!" Maeve hissed at him.
"What's this all about?" Steven asked.
"The Plutians are trying to start a human trade. Selling humans for servants."
"To who?"
"The other planets," Diem said. Steven stood perfectly still for one moment and the next, he was lying on the ground at Maeve's feet, out cold. Maeve stepped over him to get to Diem, standing chest-to-chest, her defiant face tipped toward his chin.
"You are not giving up any of my people," she said. Eon stepped in close too.
"It's better than starving, isn't it?" he said.
Diem stood firm between the two, both of them seething as they stared at him. Diem moved Eon back with one hand, but left Maeve standing near him.
"No human will be given to the Plutian harvest," he said. "Not one."
***
When Steven came to, he wanted to gather Maeve in his arms. He had imagined himself doing it, but the scenario had been a million times different, with him pulling her lifeless body from the collapse of pebbles and weeping over her. That she was standing beside him and he could nearly see up her skirt as she did, was a thousand times better. But, then it all came back to him as he saw the two mountains of men hovering at either side of her, talking nonsense about aliens selling humans, as if this were some ridiculous sci-fi movie.
Steven tugged on Maeve's ankle. "Tell me this is a joke."
She glanced down at him, caught his gaze flicking away from the edge of her skirt and moved away.
"It's not," she said. She added a little bit of a glare.
"Casper should be up here," Steven said, getting to his feet. "He'd love to play along."
"It's not a joke," Maeve said. Her tone nearly separated him from his spine. Solid and strong, he realized in a blink that she wasn't fooling. Somehow, this was the real thing. He scanned around, noting the dragon that hadn't advanced across the field first. Then, he inspected the weird trees. The melted leaves. A rickety shack across the way. Maeve drew his attention back, motioning to the gun at the feet of the one Steven had shot. "How many of those do we have in the Archive?"
Steven shifted his weight from one hip to the other. There were things you didn't speak of—how much money you have in the bank, what the sex was like with your wife, and where you kept the guns that could blow the heads off the mountain men who were standing beside Maeve.
"There are more?" the one closest to Maeve asked.
"Tell him what we have, Steven," Maeve pressed. When Steven hesitated, she snapped, "They're on our side, for God's sake! I know there were at least a hundred guns in that room down there, but you know the exact count. I know you do. Tell Diem what we've got."
Diem was the one who had already grabbed Steven's throat and now Diem stepped forward like he was going to do it again. Steven shuffled backward.
"About two hundred and ten," he squeaked. Diem stopped.
"I've heard of guns, but never seen the weapon work. How do you fire it?"
"How?" Steven grinned at the absurdity. He was a gentleman and even he knew how a gun worked. Sure, he wasn't confident in all the mechanics, and he'd never tried his skills aside from the shot he'd fired at the other man who took the gun, but when the other man scooped it up from off the ground, Steven squawked. "Don't aim it at anyone for God's sake! You're going to kill someone! You point a gun and you shoot it, that's how it works!"
"Whoa, Eon!" Maeve ducked out of the way, pushing the barrel to the ground. She pointed to the chamber, describing how bullets were loaded and fired. Steven listened, in awe, as Maeve explained technique, how to work the scope, how different guns and bullets were used for different purposes. His jaw was loose until he caught a glimpse of how Diem was watching Maeve in the same way. The man was also enchanted. Steven clamped his jaw shut with a grumble.
"The Plutians have venom, but this gun could shoot further than they can," Eon said. His face broke into a grin. "We have a chance."
"We have to dig down to your people," Diem said, but Maeve stood in his way.
"Give me your word, that no one from the Archive will be hurt or handed over to the Plutians."
To his credit, the man didn't hesitate.
"I give you my word, that I will do everything I can to keep every human safe," he said and Steven cringed at the tenderness with which the man looked upon Maeve. "But I can't tell you what will or will not happen. This will be a battle. I don't know what the Plutians will do. We have some dragons, but I don't know what the Plutians will bring. We may have your guns, but they have weapons too. We may all be sold in the end. We may all be killed. I don't know what our fate will be, but I will promise you...I will die before I let it happen."
"Good enough," Maeve said. "Let Steven and I go back down into the Archive and tell the others what is happening."
"No," Diem said. He pointed to Steven. "He can go, but you stay."
"They might not believe Steven," Maeve argued. Steven balked.
"Why wouldn't they?"
Diem quirked an eyebrow at Maeve. "Yes, why wouldn't they?"
She rolled her eyes. "Sure. Fine. Go. Go and tell them about aliens taking over the Earth. They'll beat you bloody."
"I'll take back some leaves, to prove I've been up here," Steven said.
"Here," Maeve stepped forward, sliding her eyebrow ring free. She put it in Steven's hand. "That might help."
Steven saw how Diem watched every move Maeve made and how the man also kept tabs on Steven's muscles as he got near her. Steven noticed how Maeve's lips twitched, how her eyes widened, how she was just as aware of the other man as he was of her. He glimpsed her short skirt again. Steven shuddered. It was quite obvious now th
at Maeve probably hadn't returned because she had been up here doing that man.
Steven realized in that instant that any feeling Maeve may have had for him had completely died.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Final days of Hot Season Six, Year 2095
Maeve watched Steven disappear back into the hole. He stood in the lowest point of the excavation and his feet disappeared, then his legs. Steven slowly sank away, into the rocky quicksand. Maeve found it jarring to watch his face disappear, right after he screeched, "I'll be back!"
No matter how creepy Steven could be, the moment he was gone, Maeve felt unnaturally hollow. As if she were homesick at a sleep over. She thought of the others in the Archive, and even though she barely knew them, she suddenly thought of them as a warpy little family—Steven, Amber and Amy, Casper, Nearly Dead Dave, Phil the braggy Centurion. As Diem and Eon and Forge righted the spindling to conceal the hole where Steven had just disappeared, Maeve found herself wanting to slide back down into the Archive behind him.
It was crazy to miss anyone this much. She was sure they weren't thinking of her. But she couldn't stop thinking of them. She had to get a damn grip.
"You watch the hole, I'll take the dragons to Phuck," Eon said.
"When you finish up there, head back to Fly House, alright? I'll keep Phuck away from the eggs, but I want a close eye on Breathe and Karma. And Journey," Diem added. "He's Linked to Breathe, so he's my family too."
"You think the Plutians are going to try something, even with the full shipment?"
"I do," Diem said grimly.
Eon nodded. "Journey's going to hate me hanging around him. He's crustier than an ol' heathen."
"Yes, he is. Just be quiet about it."
"Like he won't notice. No matter how old he gets, that ol' Taleor is still sharp as a dragon's claws."
Diem laughed, but it sounded hollow. Maeve wondered if Diem might be a little homesick too, being out here in his shack with her when his House needed him. She preferred to think they were both just homesick for the Earth like it used to be. Or how it should be now.
The Fly House (The UtopYA Collection) Page 34