by Sean Platt
And Raj — in her mental theater now but in reality as well — just kept taking the abuse. Only now was it dawning on Lila how strange that was. Raj wasn’t supposed to come on this cross-country errand, but he’d been in the right place at the right time, and Lila had insisted they not leave him behind. Since then, a normal family would have accepted him. It had been over a month since she’d told her mothers about the baby, and the shock had passed fairly quickly. It was hard to stay mad at a girl for getting knocked up when only a concrete wall separated you from crazies and an armada of alien ships. But as easily as her family had accepted the baby, it still hadn’t accepted Raj.
That made Lila feel bad. She suddenly wanted to do something nice for Raj. She’d apologized for the incident in the kitchen, taking care to not apologize for her line-in-the-sand insistence that he stop bitching and accept their collective decisions. After that, they’d returned to quasi-normal, and in the few moments they could manage — in the middle of the night, quietly and quickly in the bathroom — they’d remained occasionally intimate. But something had changed. Not just between her and Raj, but in the bunker as a whole.
The arrival of the new group and the departure of Cameron and Piper had, she supposed, made everyone realize there was still an accessible outside world. For the past months, they’d grown used to the idea that the rest of their planet was a poisoned, unreachable place. But now, staying felt like a decision. And after all this time underground, Lila wanted to decide something different.
She felt pent up, claustrophobic, restless. She’d watched enough old shows on the juke. She’d even watched her father’s shows — even the stored episodes of the web series he liked so much, about the super-Internet of the future. She’d played cards, read books (both paper and on Vellum), done puzzles, run on the treadmill, lain in the UV bed for a few minutes even though she suspected that might be a terrible idea for a pregnant girl, stacked cans in the pantry, arranged cups from smallest to largest, and counted the kitchen floor tiles. In a way, the addition of new bunker mates made things palatable (Christopher felt like any of her and Trevor’s friends despite the murder), but in another way it made things harder to know they could go outside … but shouldn’t.
Maybe Cameron really would be able to work out her father’s riddle. Maybe, together with Piper, they could bring Daddy home. She was a bit nervous about how he might be changed after his experience but desperately longed for him back either way. She didn’t want to hope. But it was something to consider — a possible light at the end of the tunnel, even if distant and probably unlikely.
And that was good because if Lila didn’t focus on something, she might go crazy.
Really, she was headed there already.
It wasn’t fair. She had these issues with the baby to contend with
(you could tell your mother)
but on top of all of that,
(you should, because something’s wrong, not with me but with the air, this place, what’s coming)
confinement was giving her crazy dreams. Snippets of something (dialogue from a movie? Lyrics of a song? Something someone had once told her?) kept getting lodged in Lila’s head, and she couldn’t place it. If they’d still had the web, she’d have Googled plug the hole and a few other choice phrases,
(network nodes brains)
but she didn’t. So she had to be content not knowing where she’d heard those things before, why she kept hearing them now, or if she’d maybe never heard them at all and was just losing her fucking mind.
A cavern, deep in the ground, with a platform broken away along the walls every ten feet down, deeper than anyone had ever been. Rising water. A hidden place, a secret left behind.
It all mingled with something Lila knew she’d seen somewhere before — an image from a paper book in a used bookstore, showing cave explorers kneeling around a rather ordinary patch of wet rock, looking at the camera with expressions that were more weary than jubilant. The photo, apparently, showed the “bottom of the world” — the deepest navigable cave in existence. The idea had intrigued her, and she’d thumbed through the pages, skimming the story. Apparently, the journey to reach the world’s bottom had been incredibly dangerous and terrifying. So why had the explorers risked their lives to reach it? For the same reason mountain climbers climbed in the opposite direction: because it’s there.
And that’s sort of where they were, or what it felt like, sitting on the bottom of the world. Maybe they were safe from the ships (although they’d managed to get Dad anyway), but this place was its own kind of death. Its own sort of torture. First, she’d clearly seen Morgan Matthews in her mind and anticipated his arrival. Then, in a flash before it had happened for real, she’d imagined Christopher putting a bullet in Morgan’s head. Now she kept thinking about Piper and Cameron, picturing them not alone, but with three new companions. Why was she so sure that those things had happened, whatever they were? None of it was real. They’d managed a brief chat with Cameron on the radio just an hour ago, and he’d said nothing of others or strange barriers. The signal came and went, leaving them with no idea when they might chat again.
Morgan, outside, trying to enter.
Endless rows of stones.
Piper and Cameron, plus three.
The bottom of the world — both recollection in pictures and something else, something she’d never seen. The book’s descriptions of spelunking had made Lila feel boxed in just reading them, but the dream/thought/vision of the wet hole with its broken platforms every ten feet was worse. It didn’t feel like a deep pit, whatever it was. It felt like a descent into Hell, with something unthinkable hidden at the bottom, stored since
(the last time)
forever.
Lila looked up into the mirror. She was okay. For now anyway. If the pains came back, she’d tell her mother. If they didn’t, then no big deal. And while she was at it, maybe she could ask Mom about —
Lila’s hands flew to her abdomen. She couldn’t breathe. Everything was tight, constricting, muscle tugging bone hard enough to snap it. She fell to one knee then the other. She saw her own shocked expression in the mirror for a second before she fell to the ground, rolling backward, racking her head against the tile floor. Her eyes squeezed shut. This pain was so much worse. So much harder. So much —
It stopped as quickly as it had started.
It’s all beginning.
Hearing the voice — more feeling than actual words — Lila looked down. Her clenching hands had opened, no longer holding her midsection. Her palms were on her sides, fingers now standing straight out like a jazz hands parody of surrender.
But she’d noticed something. Something that chilled her, as obvious as it suddenly was.
In the pain’s aftermath, it now seemed clear where those hints and whispers and visions and mental voices were coming from.
Not from her head.
From her stomach.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The screamer was a woman.
Piper chased the sound without thinking. Years of running in Central Park made it easy to cross the distance and leave Cameron in the dust.
Years of running in Central Park had also (and this occurred to Piper once she heard a new volley of screams and knew she was close) bred a specific reaction to screaming. The sound elicited alarm, yes, but sympathy was Piper’s stronger response. She’d never witnessed a mugging or a rape in progress, but she’d heard enough warnings (and was human enough) to recognize one when she heard it.
There were two basic ways to answer something like that. You could call the police on your cell, sure, but how long would it take for the cops to arrive? People screamed to draw attention. To get help. And help, if it was worth anything, didn’t stand idly by waiting for the men and women in blue.
Piper stopped when she saw them. There were six people in the clearing: three men, two women, and a small boy, maybe four years old. If there was any chance of inaction, it vanished the second she saw the kid. Free to
run, he went nowhere. The kid sat at the struggling group’s edge, canted down on one knee. He was crying, watching in horror as three assailants — two men and a woman — pummeled what had to be his parents with a series of strikes and punches.
“Let’s go,” Cameron said, arriving beside her.
She could hear his shallow breath and see him in the corner of her eye without turning from the melee. The attackers had guns, hanging uselessly from straps or, in the case of the rough-looking woman, tucked into waistbands. They were using their fists and what looked like a board to do their work, and the work itself was sadistic. If they wanted to rob people, why not point their guns and demand they hand over what they had? Although they must already have done it; there were two extra packs near the crying child. Why didn’t they go?
“We have to help,” Piper said.
“There are three of them.”
She turned to look at Cameron, anger flaring. “I can count.”
“The idea is to avoid conflict.”
Piper gave him a hard look then reached for her gun. Staring him straight in the eye, she raised it overhead. And fired.
Activity in the clearing froze as if someone pressed pause. Piper lowered her gun and leveled it at the others.
“Jesus, Piper,” Cameron muttered. He had a rifle and a handgun, but it was the rifle he reluctantly raised, taking aim. Then, seeing that they were already hip deep and might as well power through, shouted to the others below. “Get away from them!”
Both men raised their hands, stepping back. But the woman didn’t hesitate. She reached for her own weapon and fired almost blindly. The shot struck the dirt a dozen feet below their position on a small rise. Her aim was to shock, and Piper, as brave as she’d felt a half second earlier, felt herself collapse. She was a crumpled heap in plain sight. Cameron had ducked behind a tree.
“Run!” he yelled at her. “Back the way we came!”
That got her moving. Piper came up far enough to raise her gun, aware that she was presenting a rather large and obvious target. The weapon’s weight bothered her. She’d fired a gun twice in her life, once point blank. She had no idea how to hit her target.
But she fired anyway, knowing that Cameron’s alternative was both more survival oriented and, to her, reprehensible. Sure, they could escape. But then she’d have to avoid mirrors for the rest of her life; facing herself would be impossible, knowing she’d left a family to die.
The shot went predictably wide. Piper had no idea where it landed, but her slug didn’t hit any of the six people below. She’d have to be more careful and make sure she didn’t hit any innocents.
Cameron racked off another two shots. He also hit nothing, but Piper suspected he wasn’t trying. One of the men had circled around to where the kid was but hadn’t — as she’d feared — snatched the boy to use as a hostage or shield. Instead, he’d taken the two backpacks and was already moving toward the others, away from Piper and Cameron. They had what they needed and were apparently content to call it a draw. All three assailants ran, one of the men turning to fire one last time, for cover.
Then it was over.
“Let’s go.” Cameron looked at Piper, annoyed.
But the woman was already running up the hill toward them, her face a mess of tears. The man seemed shocked. He’d taken a worse beating and, from a distance, seemed bloody. They’d roughed him up. Maybe because they’d had intentions with the woman and hadn’t wanted to damage the merchandise. Even in her jeans and filthy T-shirt she looked pretty.
“Thank you!” She fell at Piper’s feet. Either they were hurt or exhausted. Or maybe she’d been overcome with fear and adrenaline. Looking down at the woman, watching her cry and paw her way back up, Piper felt something bruise inside. Her eyes traveled to the man below, gathering the wailing child into his arms, and that bruised spot broke open.
“Are you all right?” Piper asked.
She sniffed. “Thank you! Oh my God, if you hadn’t been there, they’d have … ” She looked back at the man then traded glances between Piper and Cameron and the rest of her family until all five of them were huddled together at the rise’s top. The clearing below was littered with scraps and refuse, as if they’d been attacked mid-picnic.
“Thank you,” said the man, more composed. His face was bloody indeed, but it wasn’t as bad as it had looked from above. They must have hit him near the forehead — maybe with the board or branch or whatever it was — and lacerated the capillary-dense area that made wounds seem worse than they were. A little cleanup, and that part of him would be fine. But he was also heavily bruised, and his nose was askew enough that Piper wondered if he’d been born that way, or if it had just been broken.
“What happened?” Piper asked.
“They surprised us,” said the man. “Like an ambush. Must’ve seen us coming, then hid around that little area and waited. They had guns, so we all just raised our hands and said they could take what they wanted.”
“Did you have guns?” said Cameron.
The man shook his head. “I’m not a fan of guns.” Then he laughed, despite his obvious pain. “At least, I wasn’t. I became a convert after we learned about the ships. But I didn’t own any, and the stores were all stripped straight away. We ran across … ” He lowered his voice, as if to keep his next words from the boy, who he handed off to his mother. “We ran across some bodies. Pretty early. They had guns, so we took them. But later we ran into some other people and … ” He shrugged, as if to say, Easy come, easy go.
“Have you just been out here walking?” Cameron asked. “Where are you trying to go?”
“We’ve been staying at my mother’s. She has a ski lodge.” He reset. “Had a ski lodge. We live in Denver.” He swallowed, and the shambling, pained way his throat moved made Piper cringe. “Used to anyway. But Denver … ” He inhaled as if steeling himself.
“We came from New York.” Piper nodded. Of course Denver would have been a zoo, and anyone with a nearby ski lodge would want to get away.
The man nodded then looked at Cameron. “Did you drive?”
“Just me,” said Piper. “Me and my family.”
The man looked at Cameron, seeming to decide not to ask how they were traveling together if they hadn’t started off that way. Cameron didn’t answer or volunteer his place of origin. His body language was closed and stiff. Piper did most of the talking. Cameron, it seemed, wanted to keep moving.
“Anyway,” the man said, “we came up here. It wasn’t a bad trip. Problem was, everyone else in Denver had the same idea.”
Piper looked at Cameron. She and Meyer hadn’t noticed many people headed into the mountains from Denver unless she counted the roadblock that had freed them of the car they, in turn, had stolen from the man bunkered in the dealership. Again: easy come, easy go.
The man shrugged again. “I was able to hold down the homestead for a while, but we were finally ‘evicted’ three days ago. We heard there’s a community up this way.”
“A ‘community’?” said Piper.
“Almost like a commune. A wanderer — one of the few who didn’t want to attack us and take the supplies we managed to get away with — told us he heard about it on the radio. And I know how that sounds, but — ”
“There are still broadcasts on some frequencies.”
Piper noticed the way Cameron actively hid the radio on his belt when he said it, and that he didn’t volunteer the obvious: that the “commune” he and this wanderer had heard about was almost certainly her home.
The man seemed to realize something then wiped his hand on his pants. He stuck it out toward Cameron. “I’m Mike. Mike Nelson.”
Cameron shook it. “Cameron.”
The hand jabbed at Piper. She shook it. “Piper.”
“This is my wife, Rachel.” He smiled a kindergarten smile, as if they were meeting casually and he hadn’t been robbed and beaten nearly to death. “And this is Charlie. Say hi, Charlie.”
“Hi,” the boy s
queaked, hiding his face against his mother’s side.
“Well,” Cameron said, nodding. “Good luck, Mike.”
Piper shot him a look.
Cameron pointed. “The place you’re looking for is that way.”
Piper grabbed his arm and whispered, “We can’t just leave them.”
Cameron looked at the family. Their faces had fallen.
“They don’t have any supplies.”
“It’s only a few hours. They’ll make it.”
“They don’t have any guns.”
“Excuse me?” said Mike.
They turned.
“I don’t mean to impose, but I was kind of hoping we could stay with you. At least until we figure out where we’re going.”
Cameron pointed again. “Follow the setting sun.”
“But I’m not exactly an outdoorsman,” Mike protested. “I figured I could get us there, but we’re kind of … ” He looked helplessly at his wife.
Rachel came forward, Charlie hiding behind her legs. “They took everything we had. Food, water … ”
“It’s not far,” Cameron said.
“ … and if they come back … ”
“I don’t think they’ll come back.”
Piper’s eyes stayed on the boy. She kept seeing the way they’d found him, on one knee as if knocked down or fallen, crying, branded with the image of his family’s beating, probably minutes from enduring the sight of his father’s murder and his mother’s rape.
“We have to help them,” Piper said.
“We can’t spare the supplies.”
“We’ll find a way to get our own. There’s a stream back there.” Mike pointed. “And if we don’t have far to go, we won’t need food just yet.”
“Then how are we supposed to help y — ”
“Please. You have guns.” Rachel looked toward where the bandits had fled, giving a shiver. “At least let us walk with you for a bit.”
“We’re going in the opposite direction.”
“We’ll go that way, then,” Mike said. “Maybe those people left my mom’s place. Probably did, actually; I heard them say they were headed somewhere else, somewhere east. There will be stores left. Mom was a hoarder.”