Talen

by Shay Savage

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “I thought so,” Aerin says. “That’s the same as me. All this time, all these women in the valley, and you never…?”

  Blood rises to my face, and I clench my teeth as I try to keep calm. I was positively exalted a few minutes ago, and now I just want to run out of the room and hide in the darkness of the endless Rock Mountain corridors. I shove the blanket aside, withdraw my arm from around her shoulders, and jump out of the bed.

  “What was I supposed to do?” I ask, facing her. “Just randomly fuck women I came across because they felt obligated to me? Use them for sex because I can find things that they need? What kind of asshole does that?”

  “Shit, Talen.” Aerin scoots over to the side of the bed and puts her feet on the floor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I’m just surprised.”

  “I couldn’t be with any of them,” I say, slightly calmer. “It didn’t matter if I found them attractive or whatever. I’d be taking advantage of them the same way my father took advantage of everyone he ever came across to further his political career. I was not going to act like him. I will not.”

  “Please come back.” She pats the bed beside her. “I’m sorry—really. I didn’t understand, but I do now.”

  I huff a breath and slowly sit down next to her. She wraps an arm around my waist and leans against me.

  “I’m sorry,” she says again.

  “It’s all right,” I reply with a sigh. “I didn’t mean to overreact.”

  “You didn’t overreact,” Aerin says as she places her hand on my cheek. She kisses me softly. “It didn’t occur to me what kind of position you’re in with the Naughts, and you’re right, they probably do look up to you, and that puts you in an awkward position.”

  “Awkward, yeah.” I chuckle.

  “That does explain why no one has ever told you before how good you are.”

  “I still feel bad,” I tell her, “even now. I feel like I should have told you my whole life story first.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, it’s not like I’m a saint.”

  “I don’t expect you to be.”

  “But maybe there’s something in my past—something I’ve done—and if you knew about it, you wouldn’t want to be with me. Maybe you’d run screaming for the nearest exit out of this mountain.”

  “I’m sure your life story can wait a while. I don’t need to know everything about you to know that I want this.” Aerin takes my face with both hands and kisses me hard.

  I give into it, relaxing against her body as we slowly fall back to the sheets. I don’t like the idea of keeping her in the dark about the things I have done, and at some point, I will have to tell her, but that will have to wait. As our lips and bodies meld together, I don’t want to think about my sins.

  For now, I’m going to stay in the moment, in this bed, with her.

  Chapter 14

  “How do you know Star Wars so well?”

  I follow Aerin through the dark hallways of Rock Mountain. We’ve been searching for a way to get to the compound’s lower levels for days without luck, and I wish I had tried harder to convince her to just stay in bed this morning. The room where we have been living is much cleaner than the rest of the complex. Though I’m enjoying the lack of ash in the air, I’m beginning to lose track of time without the dim orb crossing the ashen sky and marking the passage of the days.

  “I had it on a magnetic cassette tape,” Aerin says. “My brother recorded the audio when we watched the movie, and we had a crank-powered cassette player. I used to listen to it over and over again, trying to remember what the scene looked like.”

  “Where did you get the recorder?” I ask.

  “My father was in the military.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Communications.”

  I wait for her to elaborate, maybe even tell me what happened to him, but she doesn’t offer any additional information. I look over at her, and her mouth is drawn down in an involuntary frown as she stares at the floor in front of her.

  My chest tightens. I didn’t mean to upset her, and I clearly have. I wonder if I should reach out and…I don’t know…stroke her arm or something. Isn’t that the sort of thing I should do to console her?

  I have no clue. I’m way out of my comfort zone here.

  The fact is, I’ve always thought I was pretty suave around women. I could laugh and joke and flirt with them easily. I also knew nothing would ever come of it, so there was never any pressure. With Aerin, everything feels completely different.

  Despite the daily—and sometimes twice daily—sex, I’ve become more and more awkward and anxious around her. Every time she walks close to me, brushes against my arm, or laughs at my stupid attempts at humor, my dick throbs, my heart pounds, and I feel like a complete moron. Even walking around in the dustiest and dirtiest areas of the complex, I want to take a step closer to her in hopes of getting a little more “accidental” contact. I want to say something else to make her laugh. Instead, I freeze up in mind and body, sure that the next thing I do or say will ruin whatever it is we have going on here.

  I don’t know what to call whatever it is that’s been happening between us. Aerin is obviously far more experienced with such things than I am, and I don’t know how she actually feels about me. Though she initiates sex whenever we lie down for the night, she doesn’t offer any affection or romantic words while we’re combing the corridors for access points. I don’t know if she considers me a boyfriend or just a casual fuck, and I’m afraid to ask.

  I let out a sigh as I wave the flashlight over the walls, down the floor, and up to the ceiling. Everything looks exactly the same—smooth metal and seamless corners.

  We pass a junction, and I quickly shine the light down the passage to the left. I’m expecting more of the same, blemish-free, dusty metal, but a shadow catches my eye.

  “What’s that?” I ask, pointing.

  “What?” Aerin turns and takes the flashlight from me.

  “There.” I point at the area where four distinct shadows mar the otherwise smooth floor near the wall. “Are those bolts?”

  Aerin illuminates the area and then moves closer.

  “Four bolts,” she says. “It looks like an access panel. Do you have those tools?”

  “Sure.” I crouch down beside her and hand her a wrench.

  Aerin removes the bolts while I hold the light for her. When she removes the front panel, we’re staring at a hole in the floor.

  “Too narrow for a person,” Aerin says, “but look—there’s wiring back there.”

  “Wiring means power. It looks like the wires are leading toward our room.” The whole idea of calling the place where we’ve been living “our room” warms me.

  “They are.” Aerin sits up and nods in the opposite direction. “They’re also going in that direction, which means there has to be another entry point.”

  “It might be another small one like this though.”

  “Maybe, but eventually one of them has to be big enough to allow a person to get below.”

  Aerin shines the light farther down the passageway, and another anomaly becomes visible. She jumps up and rushes over while I grab the wrench and shove it back into my pack.

  “Holy shit! This is it!”

  Aerin waves frantically, and I run to her. She’s already twisting a dirty handle-crank in the floor. It creaks loudly, but when Aerin pulls on it, it swings up on rusty hinges, revealing a dark opening in the floor.

  I look down into the hole and see a metal ladder leading into the darkness below. Warm air emanates from the opening, but I can’t see anything except the rungs of the ladder. Without hesitating, Aerin sits down and swings her legs over the side.

  “Are you sure about this?” I ask.

  “Well, yeah!” She looks up at me with narrowed eyes. “This is what we’ve been looking for! Bring the light!”

  Aerin grabs the edge of the hole and descends into
the darkness. I grin, admiring her fearlessness when it comes to the unknown. I feel my own excitement grow as I quickly follow her. Holding onto the flashlight and the rungs of the ladder isn’t easy, and my hand starts to go numb as I grip the handle precariously between my fingers.

  It’s a long climb, and the flashlight needs to be cranked up again, as it only offers dim light now. When I shine it down, I can’t see the bottom of the ladder. I can barely see past Aerin below me. I lose count of the rungs on the ladder as we continue on.

  Suddenly, I hear a thud, and Aerin cries out.

  “Are you okay?” I freeze, trying to decide if I should jump down to make sure Aerin is all right or continue down the ladder.

  “Something burned me!” she says. “I found the bottom. Bring the light down here, but watch that last step—it doesn’t exist.”

  I navigate a few more rungs until I reach out with my foot and find nothing. I slow down and lower my foot a little more until I feel solid ground. Once both feet are on the ground, I shine the light around us.

  We are inside a narrow corridor. Actually, it’s more like a tunnel with slightly curved walls of both metal and stone, much like the shaft where we first entered Rock Mountain. Conduits and cables are anchored to the walls near the ceiling of the area, heading off into the darkness. A wide metal pipe is attached half way up the wall. Everything I see is covered with an inch of dust.

  “Be careful,” Aerin says. “That pipe is what burned my arm.”

  Making sure I don’t touch it, I hold my free hand out near the pipe. I can feel the heat coming off of it and look over at Aerin for an explanation.

  “It must be a steam pipe,” she says. “Unless it’s the hot water. I can’t really tell.”

  The light goes out, and I spend the next few minutes cranking it up to provide more power. I feel Aerin move up close to me, her arm touching my side briefly and sending shivers down my spine. My mind immediately flips from the present to last night, and the feeling of her fingers gripping my backside as I plunged into her. My loss of concentration causes me to slip while cranking the flashlight, and it drops to the ground.

  “Shit!” I kneel down and start feeling around with my hands.

  “What was that?” Aerin asks.

  “I dropped the flashlight.” I hear Aerin crouch beside me.

  “Here it is,” she says.

  “Is it okay?”

  “Let me crank it some more.”

  The crank whirs, but no light comes out.

  “The lens is cracked,” Aerin says. “That’s all I can really tell without being able to see it, but the bulb must be broken, too, or it would still light up.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yeah.”

  I turn my head up, but I can’t even tell if I’m looking at the top of the ladder or not. It’s nearly pitch black now, and as I turn my head from side to side, I get disoriented. I reach out to grab a hold of Aerin, but my hand only finds air.

  “Aerin? Where are you?”

  “I’m right here.” She grabs on to my arm, and I relax a little.

  “What should we do?” I’m not used to having an accomplice in my escapades. I’m both embarrassed and pissed at myself over my blunder. Putting myself in danger is a common enough occurrence, but I can’t help but feel a little responsible for her as well since I’ve shattered our only light source.

  “Well, we can’t just stand here,” she says, “so I guess we go back up and find another light source.”

  Her tone of voice tells me how annoyed she is, and I can’t blame her.

  “I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I don’t know how I managed to drop it.”

  “It’s all right,” she says with a sigh. “Can’t do anything about it now. Let’s head back up. I just hope we can find our way back to the rooms.”

  She releases my arm, and I hear her moving around near the base of the ladder. I step up close behind her, not wanting to lose the physical proximity while in complete darkness. I have no idea how we’re going to find our way back to the living quarters and electricity.

  “Wait…what this?” Aerin pauses and I bump into her back.

  I hear a slight click, and a moment later, a light bulb on the wall blinds me.

  “Shit!” I shield my eyes, blinking rapidly.

  “Sorry.”

  As my eyes adjust, I get a better look at our surroundings. The single light bulb is enclosed in a metal cage with the bulb exposed. Just to the right of the ladder is a switch on the wall with a metal conduit running from the switch to the ceiling, merging with the rest of the cables, and heading off to the right and around the corner. To the left, the passageway narrows into more darkness.

  “Let’s head that way,” Aerin says as she points in the direction of the cables.

  “How are we going to be able to see?” I ask.

  “We found one switch,” Aerin says with a shrug. “There must be more.”

  “Assuming any of them still work.”

  “It’s either that or give up, go back up the ladder into the dark, fumble around to the living area, try to find another light source… Do you see where this is going?”

  “No.”

  “Exactly.”

  Aerin begins to march to the end of the corridor and then disappears off to the right.

  “Hold on!” I’m grinning again as my admiration for her grows with her bravery, and I have to run to catch up with her.

  “There’s a door!” Aerin calls out.

  “Wait for me!” I maneuver around the corner and see a metal door just a dozen feet away. Another light bulb is on the wall nearby. Aerin is already in front of the door, pulling at the latch. As it swings open, I can hear a loud whirring sound from the other side. Aerin steps forward as I run up behind her.

  “Bingo!” she yells and then laughs loudly.

  Through the doorway is a metal, grated catwalk circling a massive room. A railing runs all the way around it leading to a staircase on the other side. The room is lit by exposed-bulb lights, just like the one by the ladder, spaced about fifteen feet apart. In the center of the room is a structure with two distinct dome shapes connected to a rectangular portion at the back. The shape vaguely reminds me of the airplane hangar I once saw in the capital city, housing airplanes that no longer function.

  The whirring sound is much louder on this side of the door, and I think it’s originating from the large structure. The air blowing against my face is warmer than that of the tunnel behind us, and I detect a faint sulfur smell.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “That,” Aerin says as she waves her hand in a grand gesture, “is a geothermal generator!”

  Without another word, she begins to walk along the grated span bordering the wall, heading toward the staircase that leads into the main part of the room. Like the idiot dog I apparently am, I follow her blindly and try to take it all in.

  “Holy shit,” Aerin says breathlessly. “This is incredible. I’ve seen pictures but never anything this big in person. This has to be a hundred feet long.”

  “How old do you think it is?” I ask.