by Scott Sigler
I was the leader of four other people. Now I am the leader of twenty-three. Everyone seems to want to follow me, and I don’t know why. Whatever the reason, I will not let them down.
Not sure of what I’m supposed to do, I mimic what Bishop did; I raise the spear.
“We go straight,” I say.
I walk.
They follow.
FIFTEEN
We walk uphill.
And we walk, and we walk, and we walk.
It doesn’t make sense—even if our coffin room was far below ground, shouldn’t we have made it to the surface by now? And we still haven’t seen any windows, any hint of the outside.
My feet hurt. They were numb from the constant walking, but when we met Bishop’s group we stopped for a bit: it was like blood flowed into them again. My feet thought they were getting a rest. Now that I’ve put them back into action, they are not happy. It feels like my bones will soon wear right through muscle and skin.
I hear the others talking behind me, my group and Bishop’s marchers alike, saying out loud the same things that run through my head. They know they have families, but can’t remember any faces. They know they went to school, but can’t recall what classes they took, their teachers, their classmates…no specifics of any kind.
They want to know what their symbols mean.
They want to know their first names.
As we walk, I try to meet some of the new people. There is K. Smith, the only circle-cross, a girl so thin she looks like she’s on the edge of starvation. She has stunning gray eyes, olive skin and short brown hair. She’s the tallest girl among us, almost as tall as O’Malley.
G. Beckett has tan skin and strawberry-blond hair. His symbol is a jagged circle, like Spingate’s and Gaston’s. Beckett doesn’t say much. He seems younger than me—not in size, but rather in the way he carries himself.
There are six empty circles besides Bello and me: E. Okereke, a boy with the blackest skin of any of us; Y. Johnson, a girl with dirty-blond hair who won’t look anyone in the eye and mumbles to herself; R. Cabral, a girl who looks anyone and everyone in the eye but says nothing; and O. Ingolfsson, a squat blond boy who looks as strong as Bishop, although he isn’t as tall and clearly isn’t as coordinated. The last two circles are J. Harris and M. D’souza, a boy/girl pair who go out of their way to avoid talking with me.
The circle-stars hate that I won the vote. Most ignore me. The bald, brown-skinned girl, Y. Bawden, will answer my questions, but she doesn’t trust me. At least she isn’t openly hostile: U. Coyotl—whose tan skin has a reddish hue that looks like his mother gave him a bath and scrubbed him way too hard—and W. Visca—a big boy with light pink skin and blazing white hair—all but snarl at me every time I look at them.
The person who surprises me the most, though, is Bishop. I expected him to carry a grudge, maybe plot a way to take back the spear or fight me for leadership the way Yong did. Bishop does none of that. He’s happy. He’s talkative. In fact, he won’t stop talking. His constant chatter is the only thing that raises everyone’s spirits.
Time drags, as do our feet. I honestly don’t know how much longer we can go on.
It is maybe five or six hours after I got the spear that the first of us falls: a half-circle girl named Q. Opkick.
Before I can reach her, Bishop already has her over his shoulder. He’s smiling, nodding, like someone passing out from lack of food or water—or both—is the most normal thing that could happen.
More will fall, and soon. All we can do for Opkick is press on, so we press on.
My feet…they hurt so bad.
Perhaps an hour later, I almost fall myself. I stumble, but O’Malley catches me, rights me. He does that strange thing again, where he can kind of speak to me with his eyes. Those eyes say: Don’t fall—if you do, we’re lost.
I nod. I can keep going.
And then, finally, far up ahead, our hallway…it ends.
I move faster. So do the others, headaches and thirst and dry mouths forgotten. When Bishop had his group marching in step, it made a sound like the steady beat of a big drum. I don’t make anyone march: as we quicken our pace and break into a run, it sounds like rolling thunder.
The hallway ends in a dusty, rusted archway blocked by two stone slabs, a thin line down the middle separating them.
A door.
We stop. We stare. It could be nothing. It could be everything.
Is this it? Did we make it? Does the door lead us out of this horrible place? Does it lead to food and water and people, maybe our parents?
“Bishop,” I say, “give Opkick to someone else. I need you up front with me.”
O’Malley glances my way, a sour expression on his face. He doesn’t like that I want Bishop up front, but that’s stupid—Bishop is the biggest and strongest of us, of course he should be the first through.
Bishop joins me at the door. El-Saffani is at his sides. The twins came without being asked. Where Bishop goes, they go.
I look back to Spingate.
“Open it,” I say to her.
She nods rapidly, excited at this new puzzle she must solve. She brushes dust off the metal frame, exposing embedded jewels. She studies the archway for a moment. I see her lips moving. She starts pressing blue jewels. She shakes her head—she got it wrong.
Gaston joins her. He points at a pair of yellow jewels. Spingate nods, presses them. Then she presses a green one: a hidden panel pops open.
Inside the panel, two dark holes.
She looks at me, asking for permission, as always.
I glance at Bishop. I have a connection with him that isn’t there with O’Malley. I can’t explain it. It’s something I feel in my stomach, in my bones. O’Malley is smart, he helps me keep things organized and calm, but Bishop is like me in one key way: he wants to lead. He and I are willing to make decisions and take responsibility for them.
Bishop grins at me. Perhaps behind this door is the adventure he seeks.
He’s ready.
So am I.
I nod at Spingate. “Open it up.”
She slides the scepter’s prongs into the holes. They click home. She lifts.
The hall groans and shakes.
With a grinding sound so loud some people cover their ears, the stone doors begin to shudder.
SIXTEEN
The doors slide open a crack, then stop. Hot, humid air billows out. So does a stench, something rich and awful.
Spingate runs to me.
“Em, the air is damp. That means there might be water in there!”
I nod. I’m not sure if she thinks I’m stupid, or she says whatever crosses her mind no matter how obvious it might be.
The doors slowly slide wider.
It’s dark inside, pitch-black, the hallway’s light creating a widening rectangle of brightness on the floor beyond.
For a moment, I hope I am seeing an illusion, or that my eyes are playing tricks on me. I want to see grass and trees. I want to see the outside. What I want doesn’t matter though: reality is what it is, and the reality I see before me is just another room.
Little Gaston’s face wrinkles up. He waves a hand in front of his nose.
“Oh, that’s awful. Bishop, if you’re going to fart, couldn’t you at least walk to the other end of the hall?”
Bishop turns toward him. Gaston melts away again. Snarling, Bishop goes to give chase, but I grab his arm.
“Stay with me,” I say. “We don’t know what might come out of there.”
His pale face flushes. He knew better than to let Gaston get to him at a time like this. Bishop steps to the widening space between the doors, his knees bent, his hands out in front of him and ready to take on any danger.
I hear kids moaning from the smell pouring out of the room. I think I know that odor, something from school…I wish I could remember. If I ever find the people who made us forget everything, I swear to Tlaloc, I will stab them all.
Tlaloc? Who is Tlaloc? That’s
a name, like Tchaikovsky was a name, but I don’t think Tlaloc is a musician. I don’t know who it is, but at least the name gives me a bit of hope that maybe my memories will come back.
The heavy doors are halfway open when the right one grinds and slows. It starts to shudder up and down, the floor bouncing under our feet each time it descends. Then it lurches and comes to a stop with an ear-splitting crunch.
The left door keeps going. It slides all the way into the wall, making the hallway vibrate one final time.
The right door, obviously broken, tilts away from us at a slight angle. The area beyond the opening is completely dark except for the hallway’s light, which plays off a hard floor littered with bits of metal and streaked with some kind of dirty grime.
O’Malley leans close to me.
“Em, what do we do?”
We can either turn around and leave, or we can enter a dark, stinky room so humid that just standing outside of it is already making me sweat. But like Latu said, I’m not going back.
“We need light,” I say. I turn to Spingate. “Any ideas?”
She clutches the scepter in both hands, holding it to her chest. She shakes her head.
Bishop silently steps into the dark room, El-Saffani at his sides. It annoys me he went without my say-so, but only a little.
The metal bits are springs, bars both round and flat, screws and nails and random pieces that used to be part of who knows what. Hanging down from somewhere above the archway, I see white cloth—banners of some kind, perhaps?
Gaston steps in front of Spingate and faces her. He’s staring at…is he staring at her breasts? Spingate notices it, too—her cheeks redden and she looks at me, silently asking me to do something about it.
“Gaston,” I say, “you’re being rude.”
He looks at me, confused. Then his eyes widen with understanding.
“Oh, no, I’m looking at the scepter.” He grins up at Spingate. “But don’t get me wrong, you’ve got really nice boobs.”
I can’t believe he said that. Spingate is flustered and doesn’t know what to do.
Gaston holds out his hand toward her. “Can I see the scepter? I feel like it…we need light, and it should”—he struggles to find the right words—“you know what I’m saying?”
She shakes her head, still flustered at his comment, then her eyes narrow. She looks at the scepter anew. Her lips move for a few seconds, and she nods.
“Yes, I think I know what you mean,” she says. “It should…”
Her voice trails off. She keeps her grip on the scepter’s bottom end, but tilts the top toward Gaston, letting him hold the prongs. They lean in together, hovering over it, examining it.
From inside the dark room, Bishop calls to me.
“Em, it’s safe to come in.”
I’m excited and bothered all at once. Excited because it feels like Bishop is looking out for me, checking for danger to keep me safe. Bothered because I’m in charge and he went in without asking or being told to do so. That’s not how things are supposed to work. So did he do it because he wants to protect me, or because he doesn’t respect me as the leader?
No, I’m being ridiculous. If Bishop was trying to protect anyone, it’s probably Spingate. I see the way the boys look at her. And this isn’t about my leadership, either—if I’d had time to think about it, I would have asked Bishop to go first anyway: he’s bigger, faster and stronger than everyone else. I know it, he knows it. He did what I would have asked him to do…only I didn’t ask.
Bishop leans out of the dark room. “Em, come on. And watch your footing, it’s slick.”
I step through the opening. O’Malley comes in with me.
My eyes adjust quickly to what little light there is. This place is bigger than our coffin room. It’s quite a bit wider, and so long the end of it is lost in thick shadows. There’s nothing much here other than the bits of metal scattered across the floor.
I take another step and my foot slides, almost making me fall.
“Told you to be careful,” Bishop says.
I kneel and put my fingers to the floor. It’s all greasy.
“What is this stuff?”
O’Malley points to the jammed door. “Gotta be from that.”
The top of the stone door cracked through the archway, bending the metal and ruining the wall. The door must weigh a lot. It looks like it might tear through at any second, fall flat and smash whatever happens to be beneath it.
“Stay away from the door,” I say, loud enough for everyone to hear. “It’s dangerous.”
I feel the cold grease soaking through my socks.
“The stuff is all over the place,” Bishop says. “The entire floor is covered in it. I think it helps the door open. It must have leaked out, which is maybe why the door jammed.”
I wonder how long it has been since someone came down here to fix the things that need fixing. Maybe this room isn’t important to whoever runs this place. Why fix something if no one is using it?
Everywhere I step, greasy dirt crunches and slides under my tired feet. I examine the walls: stone, with a line of carvings running along them. It’s too dark to see details, but my fingertips recognize rough outlines: suns, jaguars, stepped pyramids, faces with big, flat noses.
It stinks so bad in here. I know this smell…if only my brain could make the connection.
A glance back out the door shows the others grouped together, staring into the room, hoping we find something to eat or drink. The white shirts of Bello and Aramovsky merge with the white shirts of Latu, Ingolfsson, Beckett and the others. There is no difference between my people and Bishop’s—we are all in this together.
Except for the circle-stars, I remind myself. They are different.
The room’s darkness seems to come alive. It swirls around me, envelops me. Circle-star…Yong…his face so close to mine, his eyes wide. He knew he was going to die, he knew it and there wasn’t anything he could do but wait for death to come, wait in agony, crying out for his mother.
The hand on my shoulder makes me scream.
Bishop steps back, surprised, holds up both hands, palms out.
“Sorry, Em,” he says. “I called your name but you didn’t hear me. Are you okay?”
I nod quickly. I see El-Saffani looking at me. Maybe scowling is a better word. Do they think I’m weak?
“I’m okay,” I say. “What did you want?”
He points up, to the banners.
“Did you see what’s on those?”
I look at them. At first, they are subtle variations of darkness and shadow, as gray as ash, but after a few seconds patterns form. The banners…no, flags…hang from poles mounted in the wall above the archway. Maybe a dozen flags, all white or perhaps light gray, and they all have the same symbol: an empty circle.
“Same as yours and Okereke’s,” Bishop says.
I would give anything to know what our symbols mean. Do they define who my people were? Maybe my “tribe,” as Bishop would say? Was this room for my tribe?
Alone, I walk deeper into the dark room, leaving the cracked archway behind. I still feel a slight pull against my legs—I’m walking uphill. As it has been from the beginning, that pull is very small, so tiny it’s barely noticeable, but step after step, minute after minute, hour after hour…it’s getting to me. It’s driving me nuts.
I led us here. I led us to nothing. I hoped so badly those doors would open to the surface and we would be out. This is all too much…my decisions haven’t produced anything good.
You tried, Em, but you failed.
“Shut up, Yong,” I whisper. “Please shut up.”
I want to cry, but just like before the tears don’t come. Crying doesn’t fix anything, isn’t that what the voice in my head told me?
Have to focus. Everyone is counting on me to keep them safe.
There’s something off to my left, by the wall. A few steps take me to it. It looks like a column of white stone, cracked in the middle, the top half
lying broken and crumbled on the greasy floor. I recognize it from Gaston’s story about the haunted room—it’s one of the chest-high pedestals he talked about.
I wonder what rested on the flat top before someone smashed it to bits.
A boy approaches. I sense him before I see him: O’Malley, there in the dark beside me.
“Em, the others are getting upset,” he says quietly. “They want to know if they’re supposed to come in or if we’re going back.”
I’m upset, too, but does that even matter to him?
“Go back to where?” I say, unable to hide the frustration that drips from my voice. “To our hallway of bones, or to Bishop’s haunted room?”
I can barely see O’Malley’s face.
“Well, we can’t go forward,” he says. “It’s too dark.”
No, we’re not going back. Not while I am the leader. All this effort can’t be for nothing. Sooner or later, going up will take us out.
“We go straight.”
O’Malley pauses, perhaps trying to choose the right words.
“The others aren’t going to like it,” he says.
I laugh, an evil, dark-sounding thing that would make me doubt any leader who made it.
“O’Malley, I don’t like it. But we don’t have a choice.”
We hear a commotion behind us, back by the broken archway.
“Em! Come here!” It’s Spingate, silhouetted by the hallway’s light. Gaston is with her. He’s holding the scepter, but that’s not what he’s looking at.
“Hey,” O’Malley says. “Is that little guy staring at Spingate’s—”
I grab O’Malley’s arm and pull him along, cutting him off. “Come on, let’s see what she wants.”
Careful steps along the greasy floor bring us back to her. Spingate’s face is alive with joy. If we could turn her excitement into light, there wouldn’t be a shadow in the place.
“Look what Gaston and I found,” she says. “Gaston, show her!”
He holds the scepter upside down and touches a series of gems. A tiny cone of flame suddenly hisses out the end, so bright I hold up a hand to shield against the powerful light.