“What is it saying?” the girl asks.
“No, hahaha,” Anna laughs.
“You have to look into their faces,” Cider says holding a watch up to their curious gazes.
“Ahh...whatever. I'll try to sell them as something, come back in three days,” Monswabba says.
“Come back? but we have nowhere to go,” he says.
“That's your luck I guess,” snaps the clerk, “what do you expect when you come in with scrap like this.”
“Give them one of the safer rooms, the girl looks meek to the rabble that frequent this place. But know that it's coming out of whatever I get for these...things,” the auctioneer says.
“I can handle myself thanks,” Anna snaps confidently.
“You’re welcome,” the girl says handing Cider a rusty key with its room number scratched into it.
“How did you get these anyway?” The drooling man asks looking to Cider.
“I came across them by chance,” he replies to the fat man, who then casts a last puzzled look before he waddles back to the musical scrapings of his fork.
“Where is our room?” Anna asks.
“Third floor, first door on the right,” the clerk replies, “enjoy your stay,” she adds to Cider with carnal eyes.
“Enjoy your stay,” Anna mimic's the girl as they walk off to the elevator.
“If he's looking he must not have what he wants,” the clerk says.
“I'm not his,” Anna snaps, the sound of those words from her sting at his ego.
Ting! announces the elevators arrival, and worn wooden doors slide open with a mechanical clunk to a wood paneled box.
“Ladies first,” he says.
“You think she’s a lady?”
“Are you jealous?”
“No, just...tired” she huffs.
“Right, adorably tired.”
“I have a headache.”
Ting! the doors slide closed on the two standing next to each other though looking miles apart elevating to their floor.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Rabbits are red
Another mundane room of a hole in the wall hotel, though this one feels more like the stifling subterranean atmosphere of a cave. A film of sweat coats the inside of the room and their skin. They spend most of their time wandering through the wide halls and narrow streets in search of anything resembling an InterAlto station. Finding nothing but stagnating air entombed by cement pillars. She begins thinking this is a prison for its inhabitants. Halls and homes alike have vaulted ceilings spread through the structures like veins and organs. The minds and souls of this society persist primarily indoors, in the halls and the few open spaces outdoors, otherwise only on the catwalks and walking the street when between places Pockets, they call the vast caverns, at the whim of the pooling winds pressurizing them until they pop. She sits idly stuffed in their stuffy room not wanting to move to draw anymore sweat from her pores. Watching the still windows never move or even shake, the only things in view unless you go to the ground levels, to be in the shadows. The two prefer the it down there, miles down, where there are more places to be and people to meet, though they’re all very paranoid and reluctant to speak about getting out of anywhere when asked.
“Did you see how many people were out today?” he asks as he lathers his face for a shave.
“Yeah and everyone was talking about the wind, something about it opening paths up to higher places,” she says, speaking over the running faucet.
“Could be our way out,” he says.
“Or closer to it. How are we gonna get...somewhere else?” she asks.
“I dunno,” he spits into the sink, “yet.” He usually shaves and showers up from a waking stupor as she takes to her usual perch of peering from the window’s sill to the Alto outside. To soak in the scene and new stimuli of each Alto she’s new to. Seeing nothing but bricks and windows and staggering heights below and the bottom’s of other structure’s suspended high above them. One of the many, many, window curtains rustles suspiciously drawing her to them like small prey peering to a noise in the bushes It rustles again, opening more, and she sees a blue room and half of a kitchen table for a second. Then the curtain’s torn away from the glass, showing the tan hands of a man preparing a meal on his table, skinning and chopping carrots. She looks to see if Cider’s out of the bathroom yet, though he’s still humming happily and shaving with eyes on the mirror. She drifts back to her view through two windows, seeing a muscular man dressed in light brown fatigues frantically running in and out of her line of sight.
What's that guy doing? she thinks, then vainly leaning closer for a better look. The man returns to view though she can’t see his face, only seeing a strong hand raised and holding a butchers knife like a guillotine over a squirming.
“RABBIT!” she yells, as the blade comes down, reddening the table and cleaving the white hare’s head with an echoing chop that screams through her unnerved ears.
“What? how'd you know Vivian calls me that ?” Cider asks nearly nicking his nose.
“What? who's Vivian, that trashy clerk,” Anna sneers.
“Haha no, a friend. What’re you yelping about?” he asks, with lather dripping to from his half shaven face to his shirt.
“Dammit,” he says wiping it in more. Anna looks back to the sight of the shadowy figure opening his own window and walking onto the catwalk toward her. She closes the window to a chop sounding to her like safety.
“Oh my god, Cider, Cider!” she says excitedly.
“What?”
“Holy shit, he's coming,” she says leaping toward the half open bathroom door.
“Who? What? What is it now? a monster under your bed?” he says laughing.
“No at the window, uh the door,” she says.
Knock! knock! knock! the man’s hand wraps on the window pane. Cider slides away from the mirror still lathered and sloppy from washing up.
“Well, who is it?” he asks.
“I dunno,” she nods her head no when saying “but he killed a bunny.”
“What does he want?” he asks.
“I don't know, I just seen him through the window.”
“Come in,” Cider yells.
“Are you crazy,” she says smacking him on the arm, which he answers with a shrug. The man slides the window open and enters with one yellow boot looking for the ground. He's a tall man in military pants and a red vest over a black shirt standing silently, staring with bulging intense looking lunatic’s brown eyes. A bullet wound healed over is dead in the center of his forehead, and the blood of the rabbit drips from his hands. The room fills with the hard jawed man’s overpowering aroma, of testosterone oozing musk. The silence of an instinctive standoff continues for almost a minute of intense inner thought.
“Hey, where'dya get that watch?” Cider asks.
“I got them from the desk clerk,” the man says with a thick accent, replacing y's with j's and clicking the k's while over pronouncing the vowels.
“What do you want?” Anna asks.
“I seen a little birdie in my window there,” he laughs a shallow laugh that bellows from his mouth.
“Why are you here, friend?” Cider asks remembering the straight razor in his hand, and eyeing the bloody blade in the other guy's reddened fingers.
“Who sent you? why are you watching me?” the man asks insistently.
“No one sent us, we’re not even from this place,” she answers.
“Are you with the IBI?” The man in fatigues asks.
“No, and they’re no friends of mine, they been my heels for...ever,” Cider says.
“Oh yeah and why are they after you?”
“I'm a bank robber, a vault knocker known the Altonevers over,” Cider says boastfully.
“Haha, good. I’m in good company then,” the man laughs.
“And you? what're they after your for?” Anna asks.
“Participating in the revolution they say, but it is them who are guilty. It is the
establishment that has committed a revolution, treason against the people by establishing a new order of totality. I am Rojo of the counter revolutionary guard.”
“Oh that doesn’t sound so bad,” he says.
“And what about the rabbit,” she asks.
“For stew, for dinner.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” she sighs in relief, and the nervous tension of uncertain intentions flees from of the room. The posture of the three eases into the comfort of the company of a fellow traveler.
“And who are you?” Rojo asks.
“I'm Cider and this is Anna,” Cider says.
“Oh Anna what a beautiful name,” Rojo says.
“Thank you,” she blushes and nods.
“Come in have a seat. Are you from here?” Cider asks nodding to Anna “Yes, come in. Do you know anything of this place? like how to leave?” she asks “Yes sit. Sit, have some tea or coffee,” she says gesturing to the couch.
“Thank you. This is this is my home, why I fight, but finish yourself friend,” Rojo says looking to Cider’s one lathered cheek.
“Coffee is all we got,” she says.
“That will be fine, would you like some salo leaves?” Rojo asks.
“What’s that?” she asks, and Rojo answers by moving a glob from his cheek with his tongue and opening his mouth to show Anna a clump of chewed green leaves between his teeth. A nose hair singeing smell of mint makes her blink from across the room. It's the smell of a highly potent psychoactive plant.
“Maybe in some tea, later. The water is boiling either way,” she says.
“What brings you to this place?” Rojo asks.
“We made a wrong turn,” she says.
“Nothing you do can be wrong. You are much too pretty for that,” Rojo says. The two banter through the polite conversation of a host settling a guest. Cider hears Rojo's frequent compliments of Anna, each of her flattered murmurs over the running water needles away at his sense of envy. His patience is thinning while flossing his teeth faster and faster until he finally draws blood. Rojo laughs that she calls the IBI, Ribbit's and frogs, when explaining the circumstances that have lead the two to here, and now.
“So what is this place?” Cider asks, plopping himself next to Rojo on the couch, between him and Anna who's sitting at her window perch.
“This place was originally built as a sort of prison. A labyrinth to contain us,” Rojo says.
“Us?” he asks.
“Yes we of the counter revolution. You see, they could suppress our actions, but could not stamp us out. Our furnace hot hearts are forever burning for freedom, and warming the minds of our brothers and sisters by the light of liberty. Many of the people are today ignorant even of their own plight. Anyway, I was hit during a raid, giving me this...mark,” Rojo points to the wound of his forehead, and they threw me down here, trapped in this inside out of a place. But I learned. I learned the battle is not a physical one, it is of the mind. And a spiritual one of man against the morality of man, to incite the others, the masses, for their own benefit. Is the only way, so I took to resurrect the ways that've come before me, of free speech and the printing press to keep the people’s hearts and minds filled with debate and question.”
“So you're from up there?” Cider asks offering a smoke, which he does to people he's recently met in case they find his smoking impolite, they'll be more reluctant to say anything if he was polite enough to offer.
“Yes from above the halo is my home,” Rojo says.
“Do you know a way out?” Cider asks.
“Oh yes that's well, very simple, very very simple,” Rojo says. The two are now at the edge of their seats, leaning in closer as he draws them in with an intentional pause.
“You have to take an establishment vehicle. It’s the only way to go up fast enough, otherwise it takes so long just to get to the tops of this, fragmented floating metropolis. A prison that it will shift and move you away.”
“Are all these people trapped down here like you?” she asks.
“They were like me. Their forebears were, but with generations of cultural stagnation, muzzled in this subtle puzzle they've been placed in to struggle against one another, they’ve been washed of any thought of camaraderie. They've forgotten why they'd been cast here, or that they even have been cast out in the first place. A population of minds that have gone dull with complacency, knowing only their own full stomachs and not of others, their sisters and brothers,” Rojo says, shifting in his seat and spitting to the ground with a disgusted face. His head is filled with distasteful thoughts, thinking of his people’s defeat by their own apathy, destroying one another for their own feeble advance.
“Like we are the animals of a coliseum for their amusement or something,” he spits again as he speaks.
“What will you do?” Anna asks “If you can't escape, and you can't fight them alone.”
“I'm not alone. The only way is, like I said, to keep the coals burning of our ancestors struggles and spread the warmth in words to reignite their passions. To spur them to remember what freedom felt like,” Rojo recites loudly. Speaking in an unrelenting soul expressing tone. His whole demeanor straightens and he jumps from his seat, putting his right hand to his heart and spilling the hot cup of tea down his chest. Unfazed, enraptured in the thought of reawakening the masses, his people. He stops speaking but she can tell by the intense look on his face that the speech continues in his mind.
“Excuse me,” Cider says.
“We must be valiant in the face of their totalitarian grip and destroy their false ideology of dominance, make them feel the repercussions of our suffering. The suffering of a once thriving society entombed.”
“Excuse me,” Anna says interrupting him from his overzealous entrancement.
“Oh yes, excuse me,” Rojo says.
“It's fine but…,” she says.
“How do we get a car? one of those establishment vehicles?” Cider asks insistently.
“Ah I know, no worries friend. Tomorrow, tomorrow you will get a vehicle, but that depends,” Rojo says as sits shaking his head.
“Depends on what?” he asks.
“I'm sorry to have to bargain, but you will have to help me with something.”
“We should help him, he's fighting for something good,” she says with enthusiasm, “what do you need help with? spreading the word, writing pamphlets, handing out fliers?” she asks. Cider rolls his eyes as Rojo says “No lovely voiced girl, though I like your purposeful thought”
“What do you need help with? Help us, help you, help us,” Cider says.
“I've been following a man making runs from a cluster house on the north end. By tomorrow I will be ready to take him, there will only be a few people there with him,”
“And what’s the score for?” he asks.
“Two hundred pounds of pure sola powder,” Rojo says.
“How you gonna carry that?” she asks.
“With your help. We need to get it to the base level, the Shallows. That's where the place is open pavement and the streets are wider. Then we need to jack a bus.”
“Why do we need to jack a bus?” Cider asks.
“To draw the authorities to it, as a diversion. While we are on the highway I’ll jump out of the back doors onto a car going in the opposite direction. Crashing into the windshield to be carried away with the score as you two drive the bus to where there's a bridge over a large lake. Stay low when the bus is in motion, they will be shooting at you, and you should probably shoot back,” Rojo says.
“And then what?” she asks, doubtful of his plan.
“Drive the bus off the bridge into the lake. The two of you jump out of the front and rear doors just before the bus hits the water. Then swim away to escape into the storm drain system.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Cider says wiping his hands.
“Yeah I think we can do that,” Anna agrees.
“Good it's settled then,” Rojo says happily.
“Oh but when do we get the vehicle,” he asks.
“Afterwards we’ll regroup at my apartment, then we’ll trounce one of the patrols they've sent to sniff us out, and your home free,” Rojo says.
“What time do you want to start?” she asks.
“When you wake up come to this address. It’s a Laundromat, there are rooms in the back. I'll be where we keep the munitions and paper,” Rojo says handing them a scribbled on matchbook.
“How far is it?” Cider asks, not really wanting to walk too far.
“Just a ways walk down to the Shallows, what we call street level, and follow the avenue directly below. Left for six intersections and make a right for four more, I hope to see you there. As for now I was just making a dinner of rabbit stew,” Rojo says, reaching out to Cider for a handshake to solidify their pact. Realizing his palms are still bloodied and pulling back.
“We'll see you there,” Cider says sipping mint tea.
“Take care,” Anna says, waving as Rojo slips through the window and back to his own place. They wait a minute before closing the door behind him.
“Do you think that's gonna work?” she asks.
“I don't know, either way what else can we do, sooner or later they'll be asking for the room bill,” he says.
“I meant about his other plan.”
“Who knows? that's his fight, were just passing through alright,” he says.
“Yea but…,” she stammers.
“Why? are you struck by him,” Cider says in a teasing tone.
“He seemed to be very nice.”
“Yeah, nice to you. I bet not so nice to the establishment.”
“You’re just jealous someone’s flattering me for a change.”
“You wish,” he says dismissively.
“I hope the next place is better.”
“We have to get there first.”
“It is beautiful though,” she says waiting for him to ask.
“What is?”
“That he's living for what he believes is right.”
“Is that how that goes? Watch out when it comes to local politics. You don’t know their motivations, it’s often a quick way to draw heat. Were just passing through, remember, unless you wanna get stuck here.”
The Altonevers Page 16