by Scott Sigler
“Bello, has anyone seen any pigs?”
“A few,” she says. She points into the woods beyond Bishop, Farrar and Visca. “In there. But they haven’t come out. There must be too many of us.”
Too many, and we’re not so wounded we can’t defend ourselves.
We won’t stay in the Garden for long, I know that, but maybe long enough to organize hunting parties. We could go into the woods, chase the pigs down. I don’t know how many there are. There could be hundreds. But if we butcher every last pig, then I’ll know for sure we got the ones that ate Latu.
Kill them all…wipe them out.
The thought fills me with a strange kind of joy.
“Em? Are you okay?”
Bello sounds concerned. I didn’t realize that I’d stopped walking. I was staring into the woods. Staring, and thinking of a line of dead pigs, gutted and strung out across the grass. That thought made me happy.
“I’m fine,” I say, but I know thoughts like those—and the fact that I reveled in Aramovsky’s fear—mean I am not fine at all.
“Well, come on then,” Bello says.
We start walking again.
I notice a few dark spots up on the ceiling. Irregular circles of varying sizes, some of them mushed together to form interesting, random shapes. Is it some kind of mold, maybe? I squint against the brightness, look closer—it’s not mold. There’s nothing on the ceiling: those dark areas have simply stopped shining.
More mysteries for Spingate to figure out, I guess.
Most of the ceiling glows bright as day. If only that light actually came from the sun, all we would have to do is punch through and we would be outside. We would be free. I would run so far, so fast, and I would never look back at this horrible place where Grownups kill each other and murder little children.
I turn my attention to the grass. The knee-high green blades sprout up through a thick mat of dead brown. These plants have grown, then died and fallen, over and over again. Maybe the grass was once nice and neat. Maybe Spingate is right and the pond once had open water instead of reeds. If so, that time is long past.
A stinging bit of pressure flares up below my belly.
“Bello, I really have to go.”
She grimaces. “I know, me too.” She points off to our left, into the trees.
“We’ve been going in there,” she says. “It’s inside the perimeter, but away from where people eat. The circle-stars patrol it pretty regular, make sure there’s no pigs. And also the underbrush is thick enough that the boys can’t see us when we make our business.”
The boys…they’re watching the girls? I know that’s supposed to make me angry or concerned, but I wonder if O’Malley wants to look at me. I wonder if he watched me while I slept.
No, he wouldn’t watch me. Maybe he would watch Spingate or D’souza—I think they are the prettiest of us all—but not me. I’m too short. I don’t know what I look like, but there is no way I am as beautiful as they are.
Bello leads me toward the trees. The grass ends abruptly where the tree shadows begin, giving way to vines and some other small plants that grow closer to the ground.
A few steps past the grass line and in the shade beneath the leaves, I see a fallen log. It is brown, rigid, no leaves left on its dry branches. It’s a skeleton, a wooden version of the stripped bones we saw back in the hall. How long has it been here? I see more logs. Some are crumbling, a darker brown that is disintegrating into little pieces. There are scraggly bushes and smaller plants growing from and near the rotting logs. Vines climb over everything, even up the trunks of living trees.
This whole place looks…wild. It doesn’t make any sense. We’re still underground, I’m sure of it. How can such a wild place be in the middle of a dungeon?
As my feet leave the grass and step onto the vines and creepers, I get the feeling that someone is watching. I turn quickly; out in the grass, Bishop is staring at me. I expect his face to flush red because I caught him looking, but instead he smiles. I feel tingly. He should be embarrassed, but I’m the one that gets a hot face and has to turn away.
A pain in my lower parts reminds me I still have to pee, have to pee bad. I need to find a place where no one can watch.
I follow Bello into the woods. It isn’t dark in here, because a bit of light filters through the leaves, yet the shadows are plentiful and deep.
We weave around tree trunks, edge past bushes, trying to make sure no one can see us. Branches catch on my shirt; I move gently, and they slide free. The dead leaves are thick, a soft mat that can’t completely protect me from the broken sticks poking my feet. This underbrush is dense. I’m glad the circle-stars come through here, as Bello said, because this looks like a good spot for pigs to hide. If we stay in the Garden much longer, I’ll make sure we find a better place to do our business.
Bello moves a little to the right; I go a little to the left.
The woods end at a wall. It’s green and lush, the same thick branches that make up the thicket Bishop and I crawled through to get here. At the top of the wall, far higher than I can reach, the arched ceiling begins the sprawling curve that will take it up, away and across.
I slowly reach my hand through the thicket. My shoulder is starting to press against the stems when my fingertips hit cool, damp stone.
Stone, just like all the archway doors, just like the dome room and our coffin room. Maybe the walls aren’t made of stone, maybe the halls and rooms were carved from it. And the way we’re going up and up and up…maybe this whole strange place is inside a mountain.
Something hits me: that walk alongside the pond…that didn’t feel like we were walking uphill. The incline has always been so slight it is barely noticeable, but when Bello and I were walking through the grass, that felt flat.
All this time, I believed that a step up was closer to a step out, but if we really are in a mountain, maybe the way out is actually sideways?
It hurts my head to think about it. I’ll talk to Spingate after I pee. I swear, it feels like I’ve never gone in my whole life.
I’m surrounded by trees and bushes, bathed in shadow. I look around, but don’t see Bello. For the first time since Spingate came out of her coffin, I am alone.
I rest my spear against a tree, slide up my plaid skirt and pull down my underwear. I realize that Bello probably washed those, too. I can’t believe the girls saw me naked! What would my mother say if she—
Movement on my right.
I rush to cover up, thinking one of the boys followed us in here; I relax when I realize it’s only Bello. She’s a little ways away, doing the same thing I’m doing. Through the branches and underbrush, I see her smile a big smile that crinkles her eyes and makes her too-white cheeks rise up high, then she looks away. I can tell that she’s embarrassed, just like I am.
Here in the Garden, Bello is a completely different girl than she was in the endless hallway. Maybe some people are meant to walk up front and face danger, while others are made to walk in back, where it is safe.
Still, I don’t want her to be able to see me doing my business. I scoot a little to my left, putting a tree trunk between us.
Finally, a moment to myself. In that quiet instant, I can hear laughter from our group echoing out across the grass and into the woods. They are happy, they are safe.
I love that sound.
Movement on the right again draws my eye, but this time I don’t look. I’m sure Bello wants her private time as much as I want mine. I hear a branch move, leaves rattle.
Then I hear something else: a muffled scream.
I look around the tree trunk. Through the leaves, I see Bello, see her wide, panicked blue eyes…
…and see something black clamped over her mouth.
She’s yanked backward—Bello vanishes into the underbrush.
TWENTY-SEVEN
I pull up my underwear and grab my spear. I run toward her, screaming as I go.
“Bishop! Help!”
Broken sticks
and sharp twigs drive into my feet, but I ignore the pain. I reach the spot: Bello was here seconds ago. I stare at the thick underbrush, unable to see through it. Part of me says, Stop, wait for help, but Bello is in there—something took her.
I have to save my friend.
I charge straight into the tangled plants. Branches snag my clothes, scratch my skin. The pain is distant, a faraway thing. I crash through a thick bush. I see glimpses of Bello’s white shirt as she’s pulled deeper and deeper into the wooded darkness alongside the thicket wall. I rush after her. My foot catches on a vine-covered log and I tumble forward. As I go down, I see her face clearly, see what is covering her mouth:
A hand, long and bone-thin and gnarled, wrinkled pitch-black skin. A black arm is wrapped around her waist.
I land face-first, kicking up a cloud of dead leaves. I scramble to my feet. I see another flash of her shirt as she again vanishes behind dense branches. I snatch up my spear and I’m moving. Something has my friend…not someone, something.
(Kill your enemy, and you are forever free.)
I yell for Bishop again, then I point the spear tip forward and I charge in. That thing that is hurting my friend: I will cut it to pieces.
I will kill it.
From the left, something slams into me, sends me stumbling—I bounce off a tree trunk and tumble down in a flurry of sticks and dried leaves. The world spins. I taste blood in my mouth.
“Don’t damage her!”
A new voice, a voice that promises murder, a voice I’ve never heard before and have also heard a hundred thousand times. The voice of a woman, of a Grownup. Something about that voice whips hard against the brain-mud suffocating my past—for a moment I can almost remember, then that moment is gone.
Where is my spear? I don’t see it. My hands whip across the leafy ground once, twice, but I don’t feel it.
Weaponless, I jump to my feet, turn to face this new threat.
I see a nightmare.
Two nightmares, a few short steps away. They are people but not people. Deeply wrinkled, coal-black skin covers spindly arms and legs. They have big red eyes, round and shiny, but no mouth—leathery flesh-folds dangle where a mouth should be. One is almost my height. The other is taller than me, with a jagged, dark-blue scar zigzagging down its chest.
There is something wrong about them, something that makes me want to turn and run, that makes me want to tear out my own eyes so I don’t have to look at them, jab sticks in my ears so I don’t have to hear them.
Bello isn’t here…more of these things must have dragged her away.
The smaller one points at me. “Take her,” she says in that voice I know but do not know. “Quickly, take her!”
The scarred one reaches for me. My hands ball into fists. I am afraid, yes, so afraid, but also enraged. It has to be them, the ones that put us down here, the ones that murdered those little children, the ones that let Yong and Latu die.
It grabs my left wrist and pulls me toward the thicket wall. I stumble, then plant my feet and yank back hard, jerking the monster around suddenly as if it didn’t expect me to resist at all. I kick at its shin: where my foot hits, I feel something break.
The monster lets go of my arm, hops on one leg to keep its balance. The other leg is bent in at a funny angle below the knee.
“You bitch,” it says. A man’s voice, growling and hateful. “You always were a bitch, Savage.”
If it has lips, those lips are hidden by the disgusting folds of skin hanging where a mouth should be.
It raises a trembling arm. There is something metallic ringing its forearm below the elbow, like a thick bracelet, and jutting from that bracelet is a metal rod that ends behind its bone-thin hand. Spindly fingers clench into a fist: the rod’s metal tip is pointed right at my face. On the bracelet, a white jewel begins to glow.
The smaller monster grabs the scarred one’s wrist, shoves the arm down.
“Don’t shoot her,” she says. “Just take her!”
Shoot her? That bracelet is a weapon?
Something heavy rips through the underbrush to my right, and suddenly Bishop is there, standing between me and the wrinkled monsters. Fresh scratches crisscross his bare arms and shoulders. A snarl twists his face into a mask that frightens me even more than these disgusting creatures.
He’s holding my spear.
Bishop roars and lunges forward: the blade drives deep into the scarred monster’s chest.
Everything stops.
Bishop’s rage-face melts away, replaced by that confused look I saw when we first met. He’s still holding the spear shaft in both hands.
Part of me sees the smaller monster scurrying off, vanishing into the trees, but I can’t look away from what Bishop has done.
The scarred monster stares at the metal buried dead-center in its chest.
“No,” it says. “No…I gave up everything.”
Bishop makes a noise that is more a whimper of fear than a battle cry. He realizes what he’s done, and it horrifies him. He yanks back, pulling the blade free. Thick, grayish-red liquid covers the metal. Bishop shakes his head slightly, automatically, as if he doesn’t want to believe this is happening.
The creature drops to its knees. It sags to its right side. It doesn’t move.
Bishop grabs my upper arm.
“Come on, Em! There could be more of those things!”
I try to wrench free, but Bishop is too powerful. All my strength barely moves him.
“They took Bello,” I say. “We can’t leave, we have to find her!”
He looks around quickly. I see what he sees—forest growth so thick that one of those black things could be five feet away and we wouldn’t know it. We could be surrounded.
Bishop is overwhelmed, doesn’t know what to do. His hand squeezes harder; it hurts. I don’t think he knows how strong he is.
“Bishop, let go of me!”
He does, then shakes his head. “We can’t go after Bello yet—we have to warn the others.”
The others…are there more monsters in this sprawling room, closing in on Spingate and Gaston, O’Malley and Aramovsky?
I hear heavy things plowing through underbrush: more monsters coming to take us away. My chest turns to liquid and I cannot move.
Bishop spins to face the oncoming noise, blood-slick spear pointed out in front of him.
Farrar and Visca erupt from the tangled branches. Farrar sees us, moves to us, his eyes wide and his fists clenched tight.
“Bishop, what happened?”
Visca sees the fallen monster, takes a step away from it as if it were a spider about to strike.
A choked breath finally forces itself into my chest. I did it again—fear consumed me, and I froze.
Visca rushes to my side, his eyes flashing in all directions, searching for threats. “Em, I saw Bello come in here with you—where is she? And what is that thing on the ground?”
That thing is a monster, and Bishop is right: there could be more of them. Hundreds more, hiding in the shadows around us, slinking through the trees.
Visca and Farrar look to Bishop, waiting to see what he does, but Bishop is a mess. His hands flutter on the spear shaft. He can’t stop glancing at the horrid corpse, at the red-gray fluid oozing onto the brown leaves and rotted fruit.
When Bishop doesn’t answer them, Visca and Farrar turn to me.
They are waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
We either run blindly through the shadows and underbrush, hoping to find Bello, or we return to the others, warn them, maybe get more circle-stars and come back here with better numbers.
I have to make a decision, and I have to make it now.
“Come with me,” I say, then I turn and run, away from the shadows and toward the clearing’s light. I hear the circle-stars following close behind.
The trees thin. Leaf-strewn ground gives way to vines and creepers, then knee-high grass.
At the end of the overgrown pond, close to our thicket
tunnel, I see people clustered together, terrified by the screams. O’Malley stands in front, knife in hand, flanked by Bawden and Coyotl on one side, El-Saffani on the other. O’Malley is clearly afraid, but ready to protect D’souza, Smith, Beckett, Borjigin and the others, people who cower behind this line of defenders.
I sprint along the pond’s grassy edge, reeds whipping by on my left. As I run, I look to the woods lining either side of the Garden—so many trees, so many places for the monsters to hide, to sneak in, to grab more of us.
I can fight, so can the circle-stars, but what about everyone else? What if they can be taken as easily as Bello was? I need fighters by my side, not more victims to rescue. I need to get the weak ones out of here, get them out of the way.
After I found Latu’s body, I swore I would never leave anyone alone again. When I reach O’Malley and the others, I know I am about to go back on that promise. I already hate myself for it, but I’ve made my decision.
“Everyone, to the thicket tunnel. Right now!”
They don’t know what’s happening, but they move just the same. As we run to the thicket, I call out more orders.
“Farrar, El-Saffani, go through and make sure nothing is waiting to surprise us in that room. We’ll all gather there before we go into the hallway.”
The three circle-stars instantly sprint ahead. Farrar throws himself to the ground first and starts in. By the time the rest of us reach the thicket mouth, the twins are already well on their way.
Do we have torches? I almost call out and ask Bello, but she’s gone.
“Okereke, how many torches are left?”
“Seven,” the boy shouts back.
That will have to do.
“Gaston, Spingate, you go in next,” I say. “You’ll be out front in the hallway, with me.”
Spingate shakes her head.
“Seven torches isn’t enough to get us back to the broken door,” she says. “We’ll be stuck in the dark.”
“We’re not going back. We’re going to the archway you and Gaston found.”