Freefall

by Roderick Gordon

  “This way,” Elliott whispered, allowing Bartleby to pull her forward.

  “Hey, hold on a minute,” Will objected. “You mean you actually want to follow the trail? Why don’t we just forget it and continue toward the river?”

  Elliott shook her head, adamant. “No, we should check for ourselves what it is. We have to find out all we can about this place if we don’t want any surprises.”

  “OK, anything you say,” Will replied, pursing his lips unhappily. The feel of the loaded weapon in his hands already seemed to belong to a different time, a time that he was grateful was behind him. And nothing on earth — or inside earth, he thought wryly — would induce him to go back to those fear-filled days.

  As Bartleby snuffled away at the leaves, the trail appeared to avoid the vertical beams of light, where flies and other insects buzzed languidly. Soon they could hear a symphony of birdcalls, and the chirping of cicadas also seemed to be growing louder.

  “Do you know this area?” Will asked Elliott.

  She started because he hadn’t bothered to lower his voice, and in response she gave another disgruntled shake of her head. Whether this meant she hadn’t been there before, or that she was annoyed he wasn’t being quiet enough, he had no idea. But he suspected it was the latter.

  Fine, if you want to play soldiers…, Will thought to himself. Stealth mode it is. Crouching low, he began to emulate the way Elliott was treading lightly on the dry leaves underfoot.

  Before long, they started to spot tracts of sunlight on the ground up ahead, which meant they must have been coming to the end of the thicker, tropical tree cover. Indeed, as they reached this brighter area, the giant trees of the jungle were replaced by thorn-covered acacias — far shorter, and with swollen pods dangling from the branches of their less developed canopies. It wasn’t all that different in feel from Topsoil woodland.

  Will glanced up at the blindingly white sky. As he lowered his gaze, it fell on a sheer cliff face.

  “We’re not going to climb that, are we?” he grumbled to Elliott.

  They both stopped to take in the white stone escarpment, which was well over a hundred feet high. On the top of the cliff, the jungle appeared to resume its prolific growth.

  Elliott made a quick assessment of the escarpment through the trees. “It seems to go on,” she observed, looking to their left and then their right.

  Will immediately knew they must be at some sort of fault line, where there’d been a fracture in the crust. He still wasn’t used to the idea that the earth had two crusts — an outer one he’d spent most of his life on, and an inner one, like the white flesh lining a coconut shell. He and his father talked for hours about what else they might find in this new world: Huge mountain ranges? Vast shipless seas and oceans? So, Will decided, the cliff could have been formed as a result of a fault line, and either the land on which he and Elliott were standing had subsided, or the land on the other side of the escarpment had risen up, or possibly both.

  Elliott called him over with a whisper, bringing an abrupt end to his reflections.

  She was squatting down and studying a patch of mud and rotted leaves. She looked anxious. For the life of him Will couldn’t work out what she was getting so wound up about.

  She traced out a shape with her index finger, then moved crablike across the ground, putting her cheek almost to the mud to examine an adjacent area. As Bartleby strained on his leash, she ignored him, crawling forward a few feet, still examining the ground. She suddenly looked up at Will. She held up three fingers, then pointed ahead.

  It was another of the signs she and Drake had used in the Deeps.

  Will knew only too well what it meant.

  He felt a rush of adrenaline, his heart beating hard in his chest. Since he failed to react and instead just stood there, Elliott leaped to her feet and came over to him.

  “People. Three sets of prints — one adult, two smaller,” she confirmed.

  He shook his head, not wanting to hear any of this, not wanting to register what she was saying. Wide-eyed, he stared at her, his hands gripping the Sten.

  “People?” he asked numbly. “Or Styx? Are you telling me it’s the twins and the Limiter?”

  Elliott turned to where the tracks led off. “One set is certainly the right size for a man, and his tracks are light — like someone with military training.”

  “On the ball of the foot,” Will murmured, recalling the way Elliott had tried to teach him to move around on the Great Plain.

  “Yes,” she said. “But the other two sets are much smaller, and identical in size,” she went on.

  Will swallowed hard. “What do we do now?” he asked.

  “What Drake asked us to: Make sure the Rebecca twins and the Limiter are inoperative, and that the Dominion risk is neutralized,” she replied succinctly.

  “Inoperative … neutralized,” Will mumbled to himself. Concentrate on the words alone and that all sounded fine — two tidy, detached words like you’d read in a book or newspaper. But this was different, this was real, and in order to achieve Drake’s objectives, he and Elliott would have to do things that were far from tidy. Will himself would have to do things that he wasn’t sure he was capable of, not anymore. Things that would probably change him, forever. Of course, Elliott was right. It was their responsibility to make sure — however they could — that the virus didn’t find its way Topsoil. But as he looked at Elliott, at how she was immediately equal to the task, she seemed so clear-cut about it, as if she had no reservations whatsoever, whereas Will’s head swam with doubt.

  Glancing in the direction they were about to take, he guiltily admitted to himself that he wished the three Styx were long gone and that Elliott wouldn’t be able to find them. But as he thought about it, he knew that couldn’t be the case — the tracks had to be relatively fresh because otherwise the frequent monsoons would have washed them away.

  Elliott tethered Bartleby to a tree, then pulled the rolled-up fishing net from her Bergen and stowed it under some branches. Will knew she was getting herself battle-ready as she checked the equipment in the bottom of her Bergen, then slung it back on. “Single file, four paces behind,” she said to Will, as she began to read the tracks and slowly creep forward.

  Will regarded their surroundings with mounting dread. The trees and the foliage were no longer benign — each bush harbored a Limiter, and each tree trunk hid one of the malicious girls who attempted to kill him any chance they got. Will’s mind hammered with various thoughts, as loud as shouts. I can’t do this anymore. I’m not ready for this. Not now. He felt as if his head was going to rupture.

  They came to the foot of the escarpment and looked up. Very little grew on its face — the odd sapling or shrub had managed to anchor itself in the cracks, and across the upper reaches long trailing tree roots and dried-out vegetation hung down, like a pale green fringe.

  She led him under an overhang in the escarpment. “They stopped here for a while, maybe to get out of the sun,” Elliott whispered into Will’s ear after she’d scrutinized the ground. Then Will and Elliott crept along the foot of the escarpment, every so often clambering over rockfalls where the face had crumbled away. Occasionally they came across passages that penetrated into the escarpment, but these were nothing more than narrow corridors, overrun with tangles of thick undergrowth. Elliott didn’t bother to go down them to investigate; she could see that the tracks continued straight past.

  Eventually they came to another opening in the escarpment, wider than the others, with vertical sides of white rock. Even Will could tell that someone had gone down it, pushing their way through the dense vegetation and leaving footprints behind as they went.

  “Stay close,” Elliott had said to Will before they started in. He had no intention of doing anything but that.

  As they advanced into the passage, Elliott continued to read the ground, finding broken blades of grass and the odd shrub that had been trodden down.

  They followed around a gentle cur
ve in the passage, and then Elliott waved Will down. They both lowered onto their chests. She touched her earlobe — an instruction for Will to listen. He wasn’t sure to start with, but he thought he might have heard a voice. A girl’s voice.

  Elliott began to snake forward very slowly, making sure there was nothing in her path. A snapping twig might give their presence away.

  Coming to a halt, she held still for several seconds, then turned her head to Will. She pointed to her eye, then patted the ground beside her. Once Will was level with her, he sought out what she’d spotted.

  The passage widened out into a larger, roughly circular space, a hundred feet or so in diameter. Its sides were as steep and the same height as the rest of the escarpment. From what Will could see, it resembled a cove in a coastal cliff, and the passage he and Elliott had come down appeared to be the only way in or out. A sprawling mass of parched vegetation hung down the sidewalls, and all other flora in the circular area also appeared to be desiccated and brown. Will guessed this might be because the space, with its white walls, acted like a sun trap. It certainly felt far warmer there than back in the acacia wood.

  Then Will did see something, but it was completely out of place. Near the center of the circular space, there was some type of structure — a small hut with a flat roof, its sides a dark reddish brown and with a number of holes in them, as if they had rusted through.

  Corrugated metal?! Will thought. What’s that doing here?!

  Then, above the sound of the cicadas, he heard, quite plainly, one of the Rebecca twins. The voice was nasal — she was speaking in the Styx tongue.

  If Will’s heart had been beating fast before, it was pounding so rapidly now that his pulse in his ears sounded as loud as a ten-gun salute on repeat.

  Then, as he turned his head and tried to get a better view through the vegetation, he located where the voice was coming from. He saw the Rebecca twin’s profile as she sat on something slightly raised, maybe a boulder, not far from the hut.

  As he was watching, she jiggled her leg, and he heard a gentle splash. Then there was a bigger splash, and the second twin rose up into view, just in front of the first Rebecca. She was dripping wet, her long black hair loose and hanging around her face. She swept it back with one hand, scattering drops of water, which sparkled in the intense sunlight. Were they swimming or bathing in some kind of pool? Will couldn’t believe how relaxed they both appeared — but then, they hadn’t the smallest inkling that he’d also made it through to this inner world. They’d lowered their guard because they believed there was no threat here.

  But where was the Limiter?

  Will continued to watch them as the second Rebecca sank back out of view and, he assumed, into the water. Although she was out of sight, they were still talking. He heard a few vague words. They were in English. As the rays from the overhead sun drenched the scene before him and the odd bird twittered, he was transported back to past summers at his home in Highfield. His bedroom had overlooked the part of the garden where Rebecca would often spread a towel on the lawn and sunbathe, while he had to hide himself away from the rays because of his lack of pigmentation. On these days, days when he wasn’t off digging somewhere and he lay on his bed and read, her voice drifted up to his window as she sang along to the radio.

  With a nudge from her elbow, Elliott brought Will back to the present. She was pointing at something. It was difficult to see them because their dun camouflage merged so effectively with the rusty metal, but there they were … two Limiter combat jackets … hanging on something at the rear corner of the hut.

  The Rebecca twins’ jackets.

  Will couldn’t believe it.

  His eyes met with Elliott’s. He knew she was thinking the same thing — he was willing to bet that if the twins were taking a plunge in the pool or whatever it was, they would have left the phials somewhere for safekeeping. And where better than their jackets?

  He caught himself. Maybe they’d left the phials with the Limiter. Where the heck is that Limiter? he asked himself again.

  Elliott gave the sign to withdraw, and Will was grateful beyond words that he didn’t have to remain so close to the Styx girls or the so far unaccounted-for Limiter. As he edged back, it felt a little as if he’d just put his head in the mouth of a particularly bad-tempered and hungry lion, and got away with it.

  Once he and Elliott were around the curve in the passage and far enough from the cove, she quickly took off her Bergen and began to delve in it. She took out two large explosive charges with timers attached to them — they were from the batch that Drake had asked Will to deliver to her.

  Then she moved close to Will and again whispered in his ear. “I’m going to set these along here. Go to the entrance of the passage and keep watch. If a charge goes off or you hear shots, clear out — fast. You can come back for Bartleby after.”

  Will nodded, then crawled off down the passage. Once he was back at the escarpment, he found a sheltered spot behind a tree and watched the passage, waiting for Elliott.

  The longer he waited, the more uncomfortable he felt. Elliott’s words resonated in his head. It was obvious she was shouldering all the weight of a possible conflict so that Will didn’t have to put himself in any danger whatsoever. Indeed, it sounded as if she was ready to sacrifice herself in order to deal with the Styx. As he mulled it over, he realized he couldn’t let her do that. It was his battle, too, and it was only right he played his part in it.

  To his incredible relief, she reappeared at the mouth of the passage. He had begun to wonder if he’d ever see her again — alive.

  She joined him behind the tree and, keeping her voice low, murmured, “Two charges set on twenty-minute fuses, mounted high so I can snipe them if I need to. I’m going to see if I can climb the cliff and get the full view of what’s going on.”

  “Why don’t I do —” he began to ask.

  “No, better that I try. I know how to use this,” she interrupted him, patting her Limiter rifle with the telescopic sight. “I just need you to cover this area.”

  “What if they come out?” he asked quickly.

  “Open fire with the Sten. Whatever you do, keep them pinned down inside the passage. Contain them,” she said, glancing over at the opening in the escarpment, “I’m going to see if I can pick them off, starting with the Limiter. Once he’s down, the twins should be easier to deal with.”

  Will nodded grimly, and Elliott immediately moved toward the escarpment, looking for a place to climb.

  Finding himself a better vantage point behind the trunk of an acacia, Will lay down. His palms left smears of sweat on the blued steel of his Sten as he adjusted his grip on the weapon. “Keep them pinned down inside,” he repeated, staring so hard at the opening of the passage that it seemed to become something unreal, like an illustration from a graphic novel.

  He tried to make himself less tense by shifting his shoulders around, but that didn’t work. He couldn’t stop himself from jumping at even the smallest movement, to the point that he almost fired on a leaf as it dropped from a branch. He could feel the sun heating the shirt on his back as he lay in wait. He was suddenly hit with the realization that this was one of those pivotal moments in his life, one of those moments when he could step up to the plate and prove himself. If he didn’t and it all went terribly wrong, then he would have to live with that. And he felt as if he already had far too many regrets in his short life. No, he wasn’t just going to sit there and let everything happen around him, like some passenger in a car. He had to do something. He was going to do something.

  What, exactly, he did not know.

  Come on! he said to himself. He began to formulate a rough plan, leaving his position and entering the passage. Twenty minutes, he reminded himself as he spotted Elliott’s charges where she’d fixed them on the upper branches of the trees on opposing sides of the passage. It was a clever strategy—when they both went off, the passage would cave in and the Styx should be trapped in the circular cove —
unless, that was, they could somehow climb the sheer walls.

  Crawling slowly, he reached the spot where he and Elliott had been before. He could see that the twins were now sitting side by side. He felt incredibly exposed, and he had an awful sinking feeling in his stomach because he knew he wasn’t going to stop there.

  Now what? Will asked himself. He assumed Elliott hadn’t reached the top of the escarpment yet, and the charges still had a good fifteen minutes left before they detonated.

  Then he decided.

  Swallowing hard, he began to crawl to his right. Bit by bit, he inched himself forward on a route that would take him around to the rear of the hut. It was a calculated risk, but he figured he could get there without the Rebecca twins seeing him because they were on the other side of the hut. And it also helped that they were distracted as they talked to each other.

  Clearing his path of any dry leaves or twigs as he went, he continued to crawl, pausing every couple of feet to check in front. He kept glancing at the two jackets. He fixed in his mind the image of himself reaching them — that was his goal, his reward.

  Where’s the Limiter? The question nagged at him yet again.

  The sweat was running into his eyes, but he didn’t wipe them, trying instead to blink it away, because every movement he made was crucial. And every second could mean the difference between success and failure. He kept his whole body low to the ground, all the time checking that he was taking the best route between the shrubbery, one which would provide him with cover in case either of the Rebecca twins decided to take a stroll around to the rear of the hut. Or if the Limiter did.

  He kept crawling, closing in on the corrugated hut. He didn’t have far to go, but the vegetation was particularly dry the nearer he got to the center of the cove, the walls of white rock focusing the full force of the sun on it. He took even more care to check for twigs — one wrong noise and the jig was up.

  Then the jackets were mere feet away from him.