CHAPTER 33
Cresting the hill, Ernest brought the buggy to a sliding stop.
“There it is,” he said, pointing into the distance, “New Sydney, the Big Smoke.”
Squid used the handle in front of his seat to pull himself up to standing. On the horizon, in the direction Ernest was pointing, was a city. It was unmistakably a city, but it was unlike any city Squid had seen, though he supposed he’d only ever seen one. He could already tell that the place that lay so far away in the distance was nothing like Alice. It was surrounded by walls which looked to be surrounded by trees, more trees than Squid had ever seen in one place. But it was what lay beyond the walls that was the real surprise: there were buildings that were taller by far than the walls. Four or five structures rose straight up like enormous shining fingers, stretching their way out from everything that surrounded them. As the afternoon light struck them the buildings gave off a bright glow, as if each of them were home to a miniature sun of their own.
Squid let his gaze fall back to his immediate surroundings. Below them, a short walk away across ground strewn with large boulders that seemed so out of place in the flat landscape that they might have just dropped from the sky like rain, was a collection of low, gray, semicircular roofed buildings. Even from a distance they looked old, crumbling into dust like ancient unfed ghouls. A fence that had surrounded the buildings lay long abandoned, falling down in places and completely collapsed in others.
“That’s the outpost,” Ernest said. “There’s an entrance to the tunnels inside, and those tunnels will take you all the way into the city. The only problem is that the tunnels are crawling with suckers.”
“They’re Ancestor buildings,” Mr. Stix said.
“Aye, s’pose they are,” Ernest said, looking at Mr. Stix as though he didn’t know whether he was asking a question or stating a fact. “Don’t know whose ancestors you’re talking about, but the outposts are from before the Collapse, if that’s what you mean.”
“The Reckoning is what happened to bring the ghouls to the world, when God brought his punishment down on mankind for the sins of the Ancestors,” Squid said. “Why do you call it the Collapse?”
“Sounds like a bunch of your crazy religious mumbo-jumbo if you ask me,” Ernest said.
“The Nomads don’t believe in the Reckoning either,” Nim said. “We think the ghouls are the spirits of the land, rising up against those who don’t treat our country right, and when we’re ready, the Storm Man will come and wash the ghouls away.”
“Still mumbo-jumbo,” Ernest said, shaking his head. “It’s called the Collapse because that’s what bleeding well happened, isn’t it? Civilization up and collapsed. I don’t really think the why and the how of it is that important, but if you really think you can find something in New Sydney that’s going to fix this rotten mess, then that’s what matters.”
“So you don’t believe in the prophecy either?” Squid asked.
“Don’t much matter what I believe, does it?” Ernest said. “But a prophecy that says you’re some kind of chosen one declared by your religious icon to find a sacred artefact and save the world? No, I don’t rightly believe that.”
Squid felt dejected. “Everyone in the Territory is relying on me,” he said, “and I think the people of Reach are too.”
“Look,” Ernest said, “like I said before, there’s always been stories that say the key to ridding us of the suckers is somewhere in New Sydney, that part I believe, but people have been searching forever, and each of them has left thinking they would be the one to succeed. No one has yet, but people don’t head out on these sorts of quests thinking they’re going to fail, now, do they? But I suppose you’ve got just as much chance as anyone else of finding something. I wish you luck in any case.”
Maybe he was right. Maybe the prophecy wasn’t true and Squid had come all this way, seen people die, gone beyond the boundaries of their world and lost his best friend all for a story, a lie. He tried to push the thoughts away but the doubts had been growing within him for a long time.
“I don’t need luck,” he said, trying to hide his unease from his companions. If he really was their leader he needed to seem confident. Lieutenant Walter and General Connor were the best leaders he had ever known, and they had always seemed confident. Once they made a decision they never let anyone see them have second thoughts. “I’ve got the prophecy and I believe it.”
“Nobody’s saying you can’t believe whatever you want to believe,” Ernest said. “Just don’t expect a story to stop a sucker from latching onto your neck.”
“All right,” Squid said as calmly as he could while the image of a rotting ghoul sinking its brown teeth into his neck played through his mind. “Let’s go.”
*
It took them only a short time, less than an hour, to reach the outpost. Ernest stopped the buggy directly outside a section of fence that had fallen over so long ago that dirt and sand had long covered most of it, and clumps of spinifex grass grew up through the wire mesh as if it were part of the natural landscape. On the ground, mostly buried beneath red-orange dirt was a faded sign. The writing that was visible read: “Control Monitoring Outpost Seven.”
The buildings were all similar; it seemed they had been purposely built low into the earth, with steps of gray stone leading down to the doorways, but sand and red dirt had piled up against the sides from countless years of exposure to the wind, making them seem even lower. Three of the seven buildings had caved in, leaving nothing but rubble with grass, scrubs and even the occasional small tree fighting to grow up through the stones. Those buildings that still stood were cracked and crumbling where shoots of grass had broken through or twisted brown vines snaked up the walls looking like fingers trying to pull them down into the earth.
Squid wandered among the buildings. Most of the doors were open in those that were still standing, either broken or easily pulled wide. The insides of the buildings were bare; whatever they had once housed had long ago been pillaged or had disintegrated to dust.
“This is the entrance to the tunnels,” Ernest said. He stood outside a building that looked much like the others, though Squid noticed it seemed in better condition than the rest.
“You’ve been looking after this building,” Squid said.
“Aye,” Ernest said. “Not me, but some Runner will come out once or twice a year and clean it up, make sure it’s still standing. We want to keep the entrance to the tunnels open for times like this, for when people like you want to try their luck in the big city. Not that many of them ever come back, though.”
Ernest descended the stairs and pulled a thick steel bar from where it had been inserted into the handle of the door. He unlatched it, heaving his weight against it to push the door inward. It moved slowly with the resistive squeal of seized hinges.
“We keep it locked to keep the suckers out,” he said. “But you’ll still need to be careful. No one knows how many other entrances there are into the tunnels. I think the effort to map them was given up long ago. Suckers have a habit of stumbling down into the tunnels from other places so don’t be surprised to find them staggering around down there. They have a habit of coming at you from the dark.”
Ernest entered the building, ducking through the low-set door. Squid followed first, with Nim, Mr. Stix and Mr. Stownes close behind. The interior of the building was dark. The curving roof felt as if it loomed down on top of Squid, so he could only imagine how claustrophobic it must have felt to someone taller, and especially to someone of Mr. Stownes’s height. Ernest lifted an old lamp from where it hung near the inside of the doorway. Squid noticed there was space for ten lamps, though there were only four there. He wondered what had happened to the people who had carried the other six lamps down into the tunnels, though he also thought maybe he didn’t want to know. Ernest flicked a crank handle out from where it was recessed in the base of the lamp. He begun winding the handle, and after a few moments three small globes inside the lamp came to
life, glowing with a soft yellow light that grew progressively brighter and more white the longer he turned the handle. Ernest handed the lamp to Squid.
“Keep winding,” he said. “Wind the handle for a minute, and that should give you half an hour to an hour of light.”
Squid wound the handle, watching the light grow within the glass as if he were bringing it to life, as if he were making light from nothing. He knew about electricity, of course, but growing up on a dirt farm meant they were never rich enough to have anything electrical. He didn’t think anyone in Dust had had electricity. He wanted to know how electricity worked, but it wasn’t the same as understanding how the water tower or mechanical things like the cargo cage on the pirate dirigible worked. He couldn’t look at it and see how its parts moved; he couldn’t figure it out. Electricity was invisible. It was the closest thing to magic there was.
“This way,” Ernest said, indicating ahead with his hand. “You’d best bring that lamp up here, Squid.”
Squid kept winding as he walked beside Ernest, holding the lamp in front of him. As he moved forward, letting the light spill out ahead of them, Squid saw that what he’d thought was a dark spot on the floor was actually a set of steps descending down into blackness.
“Down there is the entrance to the tunnels,” Ernest said. “See that blue line on the floor? That’s what will lead you to New Sydney. Follow that and you’ll make it there.”
A thick blue line, faded with time and coated with dust, had been painted on the floor. It ran down the center of the steps and away into the dark.
“We have to go down there?” Nim said. “Sure, that looks safe.”
Squid started heading down the stairs. He had descended three steps before he realized Ernest was no longer beside him.
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Squid asked, turning to look at Ernest.
“Didn’t you hear me in Reach? I wouldn’t go down there for all the water in the world. This is where we part ways, Squid. I wish you luck.”
“We’ll see you on our return,” said Mr. Stix, but he looked at Squid as he finished saying it, making Squid think he wasn’t saying it for Ernest but for Squid’s benefit, maybe trying to encourage him.
“Thanks for your help,” Squid said, trying to force that leader’s confidence back into his voice and pushing down all the fear he felt even as it tried to bubble up into his throat. He looked at the others and then started walking down those steps into the dark before his courage faltered.
The steps continued down for longer than Squid had anticipated. At the base of the stairs a tunnel ran away into the dark. The light from Squid’s lamp stretched a short distance in front of them, illuminating the cracked gray walls of the tunnel and the blue line on the floor before the darkness took hold again. There were long tubes spaced evenly along the roof of the tunnel. Squid guessed they were electric lights of some type that would once have filled the tunnels with light, but they had long ago ceased working. Squid kept walking, holding the lamp at the full reach of his arm as if to push as much light as he could ahead of them. He kept his eyes locked on what he could see, trying to ignore the oppressive thoughts he couldn’t shake off about everything that might lie ahead, hidden in the dark.
CHAPTER 34
Their focus had been on nothing but the blue line on the floor for hours and hours and hours. Squid had lost all concept of how long they’d been down in the dark, a whole day maybe? Their entire world had shrunk to the halo of yellow that surrounded them. Everything else was blackness, empty and cold. Other lines, red, yellow and green, ran along the ground in some places, joining the blue line from a branching tunnel and staying with it for a time before turning away and heading off to another long-forgotten place. Perhaps they led to other outposts, or to something else entirely. They stayed with the blue line, the path that would lead them, step by step, to Big Smoke. Also, Squid realized, it was the trail that promised to guide them home, like the breadcrumbs dropped in an old story the Sisters had once told. He just hoped things worked out better for them than they had for the breadcrumb children.
The light ahead of them caught something that shone white on the wall of the tunnel. It was so obviously different from the gray they were used to that Squid stopped. It was a metal sign bolted onto the tunnel wall, red writing on a white background. The paint was flaking away, revealing the metal beneath. The outline of the now pink letters was still visible, though. Squid held up the lamp and read the sign out loud.
“‘All persons entering New Sydney subject to mandatory six-hour quarantine.’”
“We must be getting close,” Nim said.
“They must have used quarantine to try to keep the ghouls out,” Mr. Stix said. “To stop people who’d been bitten from getting in.”
“Didn’t work, though, did it?” Nim said.
“No,” Mr. Stix said. “By all accounts it didn’t.”
Squid was still trying to get his head around the fact that so much had happened before the Reckoning. Most people in the Central Territory considered the Reckoning to be the beginning of everything. It was as if all time was measured from then. There were artefacts around, family heirlooms, prized possessions, antiques, but records of the time before were sketchy. Everyone knew there had been a time before the ghouls, a time when the Ancestors had lived spread out across the world, but it was almost an academic knowledge, something that had no real bearing on their life. The world was the way it was. They lived the way they lived. To some extent even Squid had thought that way, even once he was outside the fence. He knew something must have happened before, but it hadn’t truly struck him until he read the words on that sign. People had lived out here, people from the time of the Reckoning, and probably had done for hundreds or even thousands of years before that. People had built Big Smoke and called it New Sydney. They had built these tunnels, they had walked through these tunnels, they had known a world before the ghoul. It was a thought that filled him with hope, but it was hope that swam in an ocean of fear.
“Can you hear that?” Nim said.
Squid stopped and listened, holding his breath. He was about to say he couldn’t hear anything when he heard it. Carrying softly through the stale air of the tunnels was the sound he had dreaded hearing since they’d first made their way down here, the guttural groan edged with a harsh screech that could only be uttered by a ghoul.
“Where is it?” Squid asked.
“It’s hard to tell,” Mr. Stix said. “Somewhere ahead, but whether it’s this tunnel or some branch I don’t know.”
“We need to keep moving,” Nim said. “Probably better than staying still.”
“Agreed,” Mr. Stix said. “Squid, you want to turn back or keep moving ahead?”
And so again they turned to him to make the decision, and again he felt the burden it was to be a leader – to decide whether to send them forward into danger, or to give up and turn back. But there was really only one choice he could make.
“We keep going,” Squid said. “Ernest told us this is the safest way into the city, so this is the way we do it. We’re not giving up.”
They continued on, and to Squid’s dismay the sound of the ghouls grew louder. Each time they passed the shadowy entrance to another branch of the tunnels he tensed, waiting for the decaying, dry-skinned face of a ghoul to burst from the dark and lunge at him with its rotten teeth bared. But none did. Squid realized that the way the tunnels curved, turned and joined played tricks with sound. At times it sounded as if the ghouls were in front of them, at other times Squid would have sworn they were behind; sometimes they seemed close, at other times far off.
They had walked through the dark for almost an hour without encountering any ghouls when Squid noticed that the yellow glow of the lamp was beginning to dim. The darkness of the tunnels began creeping toward them as it won the battle against the light, until eventually the torchlight succumbed. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. Squid knew it meant the battery in the light was a
lmost empty. He would need to wind again to recharge it, a simple thing that would re-energize their shield of light. Still, Squid felt this time was different, as if the dark were a living thing, a creature of the underground who was slowly suffocating the life from their only source of light.
Squid stopped and turned to his companions. Mr. Stownes, the last of the party, was almost lost to the clutches of the dark.
“I need to charge the light again,” Squid said.
“Better do it then,” Nim said. “We don’t want to be down here in the dark.”
Squid unlatched the small handle and began to wind. With each whirring turn of his wrist the lamp grew brighter, but this was accompanied by renewed screeching from close by, and this time the bone-scraping call of the ghouls was accompanied by a scraping noise. Squid realized too late that it was the sound of feet dragging on the tunnel floor. He swung around and the edge of the lamplight fell on the tick-tock stagger of a ghoul.
The monster had been a man, elderly when he had been sucked dry. His flesh was falling away from his bones in a dusty shower. Who knew how long this thing had wandered down here, lost in the tunnels, with no living thing to suck the moisture from? Squid had never seen a ghoul so decayed; its flesh had nearly completely disintegrated into gray dust. There was no blood-like sludge working its way out through cracks in the skin, no shine to the rotting flesh, no moisture in the body at all. The ghoul resembled little more than a skeleton with a thin layer of muscle and skin stretched like fabric over the brittle bones. It looked as though the creature hadn’t moved for a hundred years. When it lunged for Squid the thin skin over its back popped and ripped, tearing open in a long split down its spine.
A City Called Smoke: The Territory 2 Page 23