Under the Mountain

by Lynda Engler

  Quade stepped forward, shook Luke‘s hand and said, “It’s nice to meet you, but I’m sure you didn’t come here to chat with us. You kids run along and carry on with whatever your plans were. Don’t mind us old folks.” His laugh came from deep inside. If Luke wondered at all about Teagan’s father being all right with him following her to her room, Quade’s smiling eyes comforted him.

  After Teagan closed her bedroom door behind them, Luke cleared his throat and then asked, “Isn’t he worried about a boy being in here with you?”

  She reassured him easily, and this time he had no questions about her motivation. “I’m not a kid. Eighteen is old enough. Besides, you heard my parents. They weren’t much older than me when they were ‘accidentally’ conceiving Hayden. And I won’t make that mistake. I can’t get pregnant, Luke. I’ve gotten my implant, and until I decide I’m ready for kids and have it removed, you have nothing to worry about. So, relax.” Her head tilted back and her lips parted slightly.

  He whispered, “I feel like I’ve known you forever, not just eleven days.” Luke took her chin in his hand and lifted her lips to his. This time he had no uncertainties, no matter what happened. Her neck arched to meet him and as her breathing quickened, he became lost in her.

  August 25, 2101

  Chapter Nineteen

  Isabella

  Isabella had just stepped from a long, hot shower when she heard Dr. Rosario in the kitchen, slamming cabinets. He had left to meet with President Harrison not more than half an hour ago. He should not be back yet. She towel-dried her hair, threw on clothes, and went to the kitchen to investigate the banging.

  “Hey Doctor,” she said as she crossed the threshold to the kitchen. She leaned on the doorframe with her arms crossed and was about to ask what was the matter but he cut her off before a sound passed her lips.

  His right hand shot up, index finger pointing sharply up toward the ceiling. “Do you know what that insane man said?”

  She shushed him with a finger over her mouth and whispered, “I assume you mean the president?” Pointing up or down at Mt. Weather indicated direction and the president’s office was on level one. From their residence on level nine, everything was up, except of course the man Isabella cared for more than anyone on this stricken planet.

  He nodded furiously. “Yes. President Harrison won’t accept my testing proposal. Won’t even consider it. Narrow minded fool!” His face was flushed, patchy red blotches accentuating his cheeks, and he was talking way too loudly in a bugged room. He did not seem to care. “We will begin testing V2 on mutants tomorrow, as planned, including more bombardment testing on them. That idiot head of government cares nothing about my protests of the inhuman treatment of the mutants. Nor does he care a whit for science. All his concern centers on his self-importance!” The scientist opened the refrigerator, looked inside, and then slammed it shut.

  “It’s not your fault, Dr. Rosario. You have done everything you can.” Isabella was equally angry, but she did not want to show that to him right now. She wanted him to have all the thanks and recognition he deserved for what he had done, and would continue to do, helping everyone on the planet. The political arena was not his forte or his concern.

  She knew whose it was – Social Dissonance, and Isabella had a plan.

  It was ten o’clock and Luke was not in the apartment, so she called Teagan and found both of them there. She asked if she could come over so they could all go “play tourist” together, and of course, Teagan said to come right over. That was their code for discussing what Isabella was increasing thinking of as their radical activities. As she took the lift up to level five, she thought how much she had always wanted to come to their nation’s underground capital and see the city.

  She never expected to start a revolution.

  Within moments of arriving at Teagan’s domi, almost all the young revolutionaries had arrived, with the exception of Noeni who had a morning job at the greenhouses. Both of the twins would begin college classes in a week, along with Teagan, but during the summer months, they all worked at least 20 hours a week, accumulating credits which would help pay for their classes. Economics in the post-Final War world were nothing like before, but people still had to work for their benefits. Basic food, housing, education through high school, and medical care were provided to all citizens, but anything else must be paid for with credits they earned. The manufacturing facilities and greenhouses, along with the businesses that Isabella had seen throughout the city, were the biggest employers. Others worked as teachers, medical professionals, and at dozens of other jobs that keep a city functioning.

  Teagan started the scrambler and Mathias asked Isabella to tell them everything about Dr. Rosario’s visit with the president. She gave them a detailed run down of everything he had told her, including how he felt about it. His disappointment, his pain, and his outright anger.

  “You can’t just sit around, moving slowly and releasing a few prisoners here and there anymore!” implored Isabella. “We have to make a stand. Social Dissonance needs to defy the law and rescue them, even if we risk being captured ourselves. And I don’t mean just because it’s my family that needs saving. All of the prisoners need to be freed.”

  Mathias replied, “I think we can stage a jail break. It will be difficult and complicated. We will need a lot of planning and help from the inside, especially from Daphne’s military friends. But that won’t be enough, Isabella. We must not be the villains. We have to be the heroes. If we aren’t, eventually they’ll just catch and imprison a new batch of mutants.”

  “Don’t call them that!” shouted Isabella, and she felt her ruddy face turning even brighter red, her eyes boring into his. Anger leaked from her pores, fueling even more fury. She took a step forward into his personal space and clenched her fists at her side. She wanted to punch him.

  Mathias looked her in the eye and, very calmly, said, “I will call them that.” Before she could protest, he went on. “I will call them that, because that is what the people think of them. As long as the population considers them sub-human, unintelligent freaks of nature, they will be rounded up again and again and again. They’ll be kept prisoner, eating gruel and living in tiny, crowded concrete rooms. They will be forced into dangerous work and die from it. They will be kept as animals. Worse. At least people care about pets.”

  “We have to stop it!” Isabella almost shouted, but kept her voice low so the scrambler could mask her words.

  “We will,” replied Mathias in a measured tone. He took a step back from Isabella, his feet planted in a wide stance, and addressed the room. “But to free them and make it permanent, we must change the attitudes of the majority of people. We’ve been doing that little by little, but we have been afraid of being caught. We would lose our jobs, get kicked out of school or not get into college, and be ostracized by everyone who did not agree with us. We’ve worked slowly and in secret until now. But I believe we need to step up our game. We need to get more people on our side, at least a small majority of the population.”

  “Yes! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying. We need to speed things up. That’s what my idea was... get more people to see things the way we do. I’m not sure exactly how to do it, but I know it’s been done before. We talked about it before… History is full of people who have changed the world. Like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Jefferson wrote about liberties. Lincoln freed the slaves. They helped change the world… and that’s what we have to do. We have to change the world,” said Isabella, aware she sounded melodramatic, but not caring.

  “Exactly!” said Roan, pumping his fist into the air. Others echoed his sentiment. They began voicing ideas of how to go about with the social revolution. Ideas bounced around the room like a ping pong ball, sometimes shooting straight to another who added to it and improved and expanded the plan, others careening off to the side, shot wide of the table. Not everything they wanted to do would be implementable right away. Some plans had pre-requisites they had t
o address first. Although they were less concerned about being caught anymore, they still needed to work in stealth mode. The longer it took the authorities to figure out who was behind their social revolution, the more they would achieve.

  They knew that changing opinions was crucial, so Isabella proposed an informational campaign of facts as the best place to start. That included getting realities out about what the government was doing to the new humans: the prison on level ten; the inhumane treatment of prisoners; and the cleaning campaigns of the five cities that used prisoners who were not provided with protection from the radioactivity while they worked. They would also inform the public about the use of new humans as test subjects for the vaccine in development and the bombardment testing that was not only cruel, but also useless because it did not recreate the environment Outside. They would spread the term new human as an alternative way to describe the mutants.

  The group would tell people the truth about how the government, especially President Tyler Harrison, was spreading lies about the new humans to make people think they were unintelligent and sub-human just so he could use them as slaves to accomplish his personal goal. They would point out nasty facts about how the government was treating its own citizens, how their constant monitoring of sounds in the city was not for safety but for intrusive spying so they could punish people who were subversive.

  Social Dissonance would also spread positive stories about how new humans lived Outside, the families they cared for, and the communities they had set up, such as the villages of Telemark and Alpine. Telemark had rebuilt small homes with running water and electricity they got from solar panels. Their ancestors had passed down the technical knowledge needed to maintain them. They had agriculture and commerce. Further north in New Jersey, Alpine had a rudimentary school system, grazing herds, running water powered by a small hydroelectric system and pumps, and elected town officers including a mayor. Both small towns were proof that the new humans were as human as the rest of them. They just needed to get that knowledge out to the populace.

  Hayden pointed out that public terminals in places like the library, White Shore station, and a couple of cafes would be the obvious place to write their propaganda stories and send them. Mathias created anonymous digital accounts that they would use to disseminate the messages through the city’s internet. They would send messages to every form of media and every personal message address they had utilizing the Social Dissonance digital address that Lester Schmidt had set up years ago. The authorities had tried to shut it down a few times but Lester’s hacking skills were quite advanced… each time the account was deleted, it reappeared exactly 3.14 hours later. Lester liked the symbolism of pi, but it was not the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter that fascinated him, but rather that no matter where along the circle you began, you ended up back at the beginning, and even a shortcut across the diameter would land you back where you started.

  Isabella hoped her first internet message to the people would inspire others to join them. She sat in an easy chair at the library and wrote from her heart. “Government is supposed to be filled with public servants who create positive change. But here, the rule of law has drowned under the weight of the earth above us and the selfish, the greedy, the power hungry, have floated to the top, like in all tyrannies since the dawn of time. Rather than do good, they put on a friendly face to keep the population pacified. Behind that face lurk inner monsters that are hungry for more and more, until they cave in. Thomas Jefferson said, ‘When the people fear the government there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty.’ We must make the government fear the people!”

  Typing was still a slow process for Isabella so she wrote on notebook paper and Teagan quickly typed it up. They sent the essay out to every media outlet in every population center, and soon the group began hearing people quoting it, on the beach, in the shops, and in cafes. Roan even heard one man talking about it at the fitness center. Hayden heard patrons in his restaurant talking about the Social Dissonance stories and since his customers were generally older and better educated, they knew they were beginning to make an impact. They were gathering more support, including some from older citizens.

  * * *

  Luke

  Luke had made his momentous decision, possibly the most important one yet of his young life. No matter what happened with the vaccine, he was staying at Mt. Weather. He was in love with Teagan. She filled his heart with a joy he did not know he was missing. She never left his mind for a moment. He could not understand how he had gone from being so nervous that he tripped over his own tongue, to infatuation, to finally such all-encompassing love that he could not pull himself away from her. He wondered how he could have ever lived without her. He knew he was too young – they were too young – to feel this strongly for each other, but there was nothing he could do to stop his heart and mind from continually yearning for her, needing her, and wanting her.

  Last night, he had felt the same passion from her.

  He had been surprised when all his new friends, and his sib, arrived at Teagan’s domicile this morning, that no one noticed he was still in yesterday’s clothes. He had never left. He kept meaning to pull himself away from her, to go back to his own apartment, and his own bed, but every time he thought about it, their passion renewed itself and all thoughts of saying goodbye vaporized. Eventually, Teagan had fallen asleep, her head on his chest and his arms wrapped around her. Her quiet breathing soothed him and lulled him into dreams that were empty compared to the reality of Teagan.

  August 27, 2101

  Chapter Twenty

  Isabella

  Within two days, their first messages to the media spread to the news stations at Cheyenne Mountain and the 96 Federal Relocation Centers. Individuals had also forwarded the message to others. Almost 4,000 people lived in the underground city of Cheyenne Mountain, and the 96 FRCs together held about 9,000 citizens.

  People in the two underground cities were getting upset that their intrusive government was listening to them all the time. They felt betrayed and spied upon. The FRCs did not have intrusive monitoring, but the people who lived there began to sympathize with the residents of Mt. Weather and Cheyenne Mountain. Talk began about President Harrison being power hungry and cruel. They talked about him manufacturing fiction about the mutants simply so he could get the contaminated cities clean and be the hero. While most people fantasized about moving Outside, they were content underground, and thought more about Outside as a far-distant future for their children or grandchildren than a certainty. Most never thought it would occur at all, much less expected it to happen in their own lifetimes. They did not see the need to rush. They were safe underground.

  Isabella even overheard someone talking about inner monsters as she and Daphne walked to the lakefront beach. It was Saturday, and Daphne had the day off.

  Isabella enjoyed spending time with Daphne, her first true friend. Growing up, she had been closest to her grandmother and thought of her as her best friend. Her only female sib had been Abigail, and she loved Abby, but Abby was bossy and habitually annoyed her. She loved her mother, her two cousin-brothers and all three of her aunts, but it was Granmama who had filled the role of best friend. Now, she was beginning to think of Daphne in that role.

  Mt. Weather’s temperature was designed to mimic the seasons, although it was never quite as cold under the mountain during the winter months as the temperature above ground. The climate Outside during recent winters had gotten extremely cold, a change seemingly unrelated to the Final War, or so the climatologist said. The 30 nuclear bombs that fell during the war dropped the Earth’s temperature creating the Long Winter, which lasted for two and a half years. However, 50 years later, that nuclear winter was no longer impacting the general climate. It seemed the planet had entered a low point in its millennial cycle, perhaps even a mini ice age. Regardless of the temperature above ground, the mean earth temperature underground ranged from 52°F to 62°F in
this latitude. Exhaust venting from the manufacturing facilities created heat, so it was economical to vent the hot air through the heating ducts of the city to regulate temperature.

  During the summer months, exhaust heat raised the concourse level temperature to roughly 80° during the day and cooled overnight as the ducting was diverted to the lower levels. The lake water was warm enough for swimming in all but three months of the year. Moreover, since it never rained in the cavern, the lake was always popular.

  Daphne reached the water first and flung off her cover-up, revealing a lithe and athletic body in a vibrant bathing suit. She splashed into the water like an exuberant child, Isabella following. Her own bathing suit, a conservative, solid-colored one piece that she had purchased yesterday at Daphne’s urging, soaked up the warm water as her torso hit the lake. She had spent long hours sitting in a lawn chair under her grandfather’s glass-bottomed pool, daydreaming of someday being Outside and swimming in it since she was too young to remember. The only time she had ever entered that pool had been when she jumped in the night Shia sleepwalked into it when Malcolm and his tribe had first come to Isabella’s compound. They had unknowingly settled above her home, and Isabella’s fascination with the mutant tribe had propelled her Outside, night after night, to watch them, learn about them, and eventually befriend them. From their first meeting, Malcolm had settled into Isabella’s heart.

  Isabella squatted down in the water until it reached her neck. A cacophony of voices and splashes greeted her ears from children swimming nearby, happily playing, and giggling. She watched them, her heart aching for her own adopted daughters, and the man she loved. It still amazed her that she had come to so totally adore those little girls and to fall so thoroughly and quickly in love as she did.