Freefall

by Roderick Gordon

  He closed his eyes and pressed his hand to his forehead, as if he was experiencing a stabbing pain. But it wasn’t that sort of pain.

  “No. Shut up,” he gasped. “Don’t!”

  Something in his head was telling him that he should follow his brother, telling him that he should jump. At first he thought it was his intense guilt over Cal’s untimely death — his guilt that he might have saved Cal if he had acted differently. It also occurred to him that he’d suddenly developed a fear of heights, just like Cal. But he quickly realized it was neither guilt nor fear compelling him. It was something else altogether. The voice in his head had become an impulse, which was so overpowering Will was barely able to resist it.

  As if he was outside his own body and calmly looking on, Will had a vivid picture of himself carrying out the act. From this third-person perspective, stripped of all feeling, of all emotion, chucking himself over the brink made such perfect sense. It would be the answer to everything, a clean end to so much unhappiness and uncertainty. Still frozen on the net, Will battled the impulse, frantically trying to oppose it.

  “Stop it, you idiot!” he pleaded through tightly drawn lips. He had no idea what was happening to him. As the contest raged inside his head, his whole body was shaking. The urge was assuming control of his limbs, making them move, and he was slowly but surely turning back toward the abyss. But Will still seemed to have some say in the matter, and kept his hands clenched — they were grasping the net so hard they hurt, but at least they were anchoring him in place. At least he still seemed to be able to do something to stop this madness.

  “For God’s sake!” he screamed at himself, shaking more than ever. All of a sudden, he thought of Chester, waiting for him below. Whether it was this or because he’d won the raging contest in his head, he found his limbs were under his control and responding to him again. He released his grip on the net and crawled back to the ledge in a frantic hurry, terrified that his victory was only temporary.

  He kept crawling for some distance before he allowed himself to get gingerly to his feet. He was drenched in a cold sweat, and very frightened indeed. He couldn’t understand what had come over him — never before had he been subject to such an irrational impulse as that, an impulse to take his own life.

  Below, Chester had been mopping Elliott’s face with one of his spare shirts. Then, as he moistened her lips with a little water, she mumbled something. He nearly dropped the canteen. Her eyes were half open and she was trying to speak.

  “Elliott,” Chester said, taking hold of her hand.

  She was still attempting to say something, but her voice was so weak it was barely audible.

  “Don’t try to talk. Everything’s OK — you just need to rest,” he said as reassuringly as he could, but she pursed her mouth as if she was angry. “What is it?” he asked.

  Her eyes slid shut as she lost consciousness again.

  Just then Will ambled through the curtain of falling water and into the cave.

  “Elliott woke up for a second…. She said a few words,” Chester told him.

  “That’s good,” Will replied listlessly.

  “Then she just blacked out again,” Chester said. He noticed the change that had come over his friend. “Will, you don’t look so good yourself. Was it awful … with Cal?”

  Will was moving as if he was absolutely drained and about to drop.

  “Elliott will be all right, Chester. She’s tough,” Will replied, sidestepping his friend’s question. “We’ll fix up her arm,” he said, as he delved into Cal’s rucksack. He lobbed the water bladder to Chester, followed by the packet of peanuts. “Better add these to our food stores,” he said, then staggered over to the wall and slid down against it.

  Bartleby wandered in through the waterfall and glanced at each of the boys in turn with his morose eyes, as if to make sure neither of them was Cal. He shook the droplets of water from his sagging skin, then made straight for Will, curling up beside him with his huge head resting on his thigh. Will absently rubbed the cat’s massive forehead — it was the first time Chester had seen him show any real affection toward the animal.

  “You didn’t answer me,” Chester said. “About Cal?”

  “I saw to him,” his friend replied inexpressively, before he closed his eyes with a long sigh, leaving Chester the only one awake.

  3

  AS HE TURNED a corner into a cavern, Drake came to a stop at the sight of a single soldier. “Blast!” he mouthed, quietly pulling back into the tunnel again.

  From the gray-green uniform, Drake recognized that the soldier was Styx Division. It wasn’t routine for these men to be deployed in the Deeps, their principal role being to patrol the borders of the Colony and keep an eye on the Eternal City. But in the past month, he told himself, nothing had been routine. Not only had trainloads of the fearsome Limiters pitched up at the Miners’ Station, but a couple of Division regiments had also been drafted in to support them. He’d never seen so much activity.

  Lowering himself to the ground, Drake nosed around the corner so he could take another look at the soldier. The man’s back was to Drake, and he was resting his rifle stock on the ground. The soldier was hardly being vigilant, but it would still be too risky to tackle him. Drake grimaced. This was a real nuisance. It would cost him at least another hour if he was forced to turn back and take another lava tunnel to get to the Great Plain.

  Then an engine suddenly revved, filling the cavern with thunderous noise. Drake slid farther around so he could see what was going on. One of the Coprolites’ huge excavation machines sat beyond the soldier, smoke streaming from the multiple exhausts at the rear and forming a black pall in which Drake could just about make out some bulbous forms. Coprolites. So the soldier was overseeing a mining operation.

  Drake knew it was crucial that he destroy the test cells in the Bunker before the Styx reached them. Time was critical. He had no alternative but to deal with the soldier.

  He rose slowly to his feet and, staying close to the cavern wall, crept toward the man. Helped by both the roaring engine and the fact that the soldier’s attention was on a Coprolite emerging from the excavation machine, Drake managed to reach the man without detection. He dropped him with a single blow to the nape of the neck. Drake immediately swooped on the soldier’s rifle. Pulling back the bolt to make sure it was loaded, he allowed himself a smile. He felt better now that he had a proper weapon in his hands again and didn’t have to rely on his rather rudimentary stove guns.

  As he slung the rifle over his shoulder, he turned to the four Coprolites standing in a group not far from where the Styx soldier had fallen. Just as he expected, they hadn’t shown the smallest reaction to what he’d just done. They were completely motionless, with the exception of one who was bobbing his head in a slow rhythm, much like the bough of a tree caught in a breeze. It never failed to amaze Drake how passive and detached these gentle beings were. Master miners, they toiled to supply the Colony with coal, iron ore, and other raw materials vital to it, and in return the Styx treated them like slaves, chucking the odd consignment of fruits and vegetables their way and providing them with just enough luminescent orbs to stay alive. These orbs were slotted into place around the eye openings in their thick mushroom-colored dust suits, with the result that one could tell precisely where they were looking. And at that moment, it was anywhere but the unconscious Limiter, or Drake, or the huge machine they had apparently been about to board.

  “Make yourselves scarce, guys!” Drake yelled above the noise of the engine. “Go back to your settlement. The Styx will know that a renegade did this,” he explained, waving a hand toward the unconscious soldier, “so there won’t be any reprisals against you. Just go home!”

  Drake swung around to the steam-driven vehicle. It was a huge beast with a cylindrical hull constructed from thick sections of armored steel. Propelled by means of the three solid rollers underneath it, at the front end was a massive diamond-edged cutting wheel some thirty feet in d
iameter, which enabled it to slice a tunnel through the hardest of rocks.

  The rear hatch was open. As Drake considered it, an idea began to form in his head. He urgently needed to reach the center of the Bunker, where he knew the test cells were situated. And that would take him quite some time on foot.

  “I wonder …,” he said out loud. Although he’d never piloted one of these vehicles before, he had seen inside them several times, and the controls didn’t look too demanding. Plus, this one was fired up and ready to go — the four-Coprolite team had clearly been about to leave when he’d clobbered their Styx overseer.

  He walked toward the hatch and, stepping inside, glanced around the interior. It was all made from bare, beaten metal, dark with grime except for the areas that were regularly used, which shone like burnished steel. His eyes settled on the steering levers and the various dials beyond them.

  “Worth a shot,” he said, and was about to close the hatch when a set of bulbous fingers gripped the edge. The hatch swung back. A Coprolite stood there, his eye-beams shining directly at Drake.

  “What!” Drake exclaimed.

  This was most unusual. Although the suited figure before him looked rather sinister, with its enlarged limbs and glowing eyes, Drake didn’t feel threatened. It didn’t even enter his head that a Coprolite might be about to turn on him. He knew them better than that — they were incapable of hurting anybody. In any case, he’d done his very best to help them out over the years, passing them over any surplus luminescent orbs that came his way in exchange for food. Both he and the Coprolites knew this was a token transaction, because he really didn’t need their food, while they most definitely needed the extra orbs.

  As the Coprolite stood there, his hand still gripping the hatch, another of the strange beings joined him, then the remaining two, so that the whole team was present. Like a group of automatons that had been issued a silent command, they all began to advance at the same time.

  “What are you doing? It’s not safe for you here!” Drake yelled, but drew to the side, since they seemed intent on entering the vehicle.

  After the last Coprolite had closed and locked the rear hatch, Drake watched as they took up their positions. Two of them slid into the seats on either side of the hatch and strapped themselves in. The other two padded to the front of the vehicle, and one of them turned to Drake. He recognized it was the Coprolite who had been bobbing his head — he was a few inches taller than the others. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s too risky,” Drake repeated, but the Coprolite placed his bulbous hand on the driver’s seat and spun it around, as if offering it to Drake.

  Drake shook his head. This was unprecedented. Apart from the fact that Coprolites always kept to themselves, maintaining an almost religious neutrality, they knew too well that the consequences of aiding and abetting a renegade would mean certain death for themselves, and possibly retribution against their entire settlement. These four were endangering their womenfolk and their children. Yet they seemed to have wordlessly decided to help him!

  Shrugging, Drake went to the driver’s seat and eased himself into it while the larger Coprolite took the copilot’s seat beside him. The second Coprolite seated himself behind what appeared to be, from the strange map spread open on a shelf before him and the row of compasses arranged at head height, a navigator’s console.

  Drake hesitated as he regarded the array of controls, then pushed down on the largest of the pedals by his feet. The engine revved, but nothing happened. The Coprolite by his side leaned over to push in and twist a rod on the dashboard, and the vehicle began to creep forward.

  “OK!” Drake shouted over the noise of the engine, and depressed the accelerator a degree as he pulled down on the left steering lever. The vehicle began to turn ponderously. As its floodlights lit a stretch of cavern before him, he aimed at the lava tube that would take them out onto the Great Plain. He could barely see where he was going as he squinted through the several inches of pure crystal windshield. This was made doubly difficult, not only because it was badly scratched and covered in dust, but also because his view was limited by the massive diamond-edged cutting wheel mounted on the front. Several times he scraped the vehicle against the side of the lava tube, throwing himself and the Coprolites around in their seats.

  Then as he cleared the lava tube and entered the Great Plain, he floored the accelerator. The vehicle lurched forward — he was surprised how fast it could traverse the moonscapelike terrain of the plain. Even over the din of the engine, Drake could hear boulders splintering as the three rollers crushed them to powder. And from the waves of intense heat on the back of his neck, he knew that the two Coprolites at the rear were continually opening the doors of the firebox to feed it with fuel and to stoke it.

  After traveling a few miles, there came a sharp crack. Something had struck the crystal windshield. He heard the sound again, but this time the outer hull was hit, making it ring like a dampened bell. Drake realized they were being shot at.

  In the headlights, Drake caught sight of a Limiter, his high-powered rifle raised. Drake laughed — it was like a mosquito trying to get the better of an elephant. He yanked down on one of the levers to alter course toward the Limiter, who loosed off another shot. But he didn’t look quite so confident once he realized that the huge machine was bearing directly down on him. He turned to run, and run he did, frequently changing direction like a chased hare as he tried to escape.

  Drake wasn’t about to let him off that lightly. He’d already mastered the steering levers, and it was no effort to keep after the Limiter, who, growing ever more frantic, tripped and fell. Drake drove straight for him, but just at the last moment the Limiter rolled out of the vehicle’s path. His rifle wasn’t so fortunate, though, and was squashed flat against the bedrock.

  “Your lucky day, matey!” Drake yelled, speeding away from the Limiter as he heaved on a steering lever to get back on course for the Bunker.

  A mile farther on, Drake caught his first glimpse of the Bunker wall, and very soon it was all he could see through the windshield — a thick gray ribbon stretching across the plain. He eased off the throttle, drawing up just before the wall. Uncertain what to do next, he glanced at the Coprolite beside him. The man leaned over and pushed home another rod.

  The whole vehicle shook as the cutting wheel mounted on its front began to slowly rotate.

  The vibrations grew and grew, so much so that Drake’s vision became blurred. As the wheel reached its maximum revolutions, the Coprolite pointed at the accelerator. Drake gently depressed it, and the vehicle edged forward. The spinning wheel touched the concrete wall, its diamond-tipped teeth beginning to bite into it and spewing out huge torrents of dust. Drake watched in fascination as the wheel sliced through the wall like a hot knife through butter. Once the teeth encountered the iron reinforcement inside the concrete, the machine’s incredible power was fully revealed — massive chunks of the wall were simply ripped out.

  It took five minutes to penetrate the outer wall of the Bunker, and then the cutting wheel made short work of the internal partitions, slicing through them as if they were made from paper. When he thought he was far enough in, Drake steered the vehicle into a corridor and powered down, then unstrapped himself and went to the rear hatch. As he opened it, he was able to survey the full extent of the devastation the vehicle had left in its wake. The columns supporting the ceiling had been demolished, and great slabs of concrete had fallen in. At least there was no easy way for the Styx to follow after him. He turned to the Coprolites.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” he said.

  One of them by the firebox nodded at him. Drake couldn’t suppress a chuckle. For a Coprolite, that was talkative. He saluted them and then disembarked.

  It didn’t take him long to locate the corridor of test cells that Cal and Elliott had first stumbled across. The bright lights made him blink. In complete contrast to the rest of the Bunker, which had fallen into disrepair after decades of disuse, the room
was clean and startlingly white. As he walked through the central area, some thirty by sixty feet in size, he could see that along both sides were rows of doors. A quick glance through their glass inspection windows revealed that no one had been left alive in the test cells. Putrefying corpses lay in pools of their own fluid. Drake shook his head. The Styx had certainly found what they’d been looking for — if these poor guinea pigs were anything to go by, the Dominion virus was lethal and a very real threat to the Topsoil population.

  The thought occurred to Drake that he could try to extract a viable specimen of the virus from one of the corpses — armed with this, it would be possible to prepare a vaccine, and the Styx plot would be thwarted. But all of the cell doors were sealed around their edges by thick welds and, short of blowing one of them open, he couldn’t see how else he could gain entry. And if he was to attempt this, apart from the fact he himself would be infected, he would be responsible for releasing the virus into the atmosphere. Then, too, there was the risk that the air currents might carry it Topsoil. He shook his head, hastily abandoning the idea, and instead investigated the laboratory equipment on a bench against the far wall of the room. There wasn’t anything there that resembled viral samples.

  “No time,” Drake said to himself, mindful that the Styx might be along at any moment. He used all the explosives in his satchel, planting charges at the base of each of the cell doors. He wasn’t going to take any chances — the heat of the ensuing firestorm would kill any remaining virus and sterilize the area, quite apart from the fact that the cells would be buried under thousands of tons of concrete and rock.

  He set the fuses and ran for it. He was well away from the area when the charges went off, but it was still enough to suck the breath from his lungs and knock him off his feet. He didn’t care — he was just relieved that he’d achieved his objective. Assuming Sarah Jerome had taken care of the only other source of Dominion when, as her dying act, she’d swept the Rebecca twins over with her into the Pore, the threat was now neutralized. Neutralized, that was, until the Styx could locate further lethal viral strains in the Eternal City, or develop an alternative in their underground laboratories.