Forsada: Volume II in the New Eden series

by Peter J Dudley

  “Out there tonight, he wasn’t in charge. He was trying to stop the burning. Trying to get them to leave.”

  “So?”

  “At one point we had to hide in some bushes, and he was only a few feet from me. I heard him talking. He said that if this worked, if they destroyed us—if they destroyed you—then Darius would attack Upper in three days.”

  Three days.

  “Lupay…”

  He looks unsure, but it’s so hard to understand his stony expressions. “What is it, Tom?”

  “I think he knew we were hiding there, behind him.”

  Before I can even think about that, Susannah steps from the shadows into the torchlight. “Three days! We have to warn Upper.”

  Tom nods, seemingly happy to change the subject. But I’ll make sure to ask him about it later. “That north corridor will take us within a few hundred yards of the town.”

  That’s good enough for Garrett. “Okay, then. Rest time is over. Let’s go.” He starts, then pauses. “How far?”

  “Not far,” Tom says. “Eight, ten miles maybe? But that tunnel was never production quality.”

  Garrett throws up his hands. “What does that mean?”

  “It means they dug it but never brought it up to code.” He sees that means nothing to us. “Subterran safety standards. The supports are weak. The walls are rough. It’s narrow. I used it a few times, but that was ten years ago.” His glance flicks to Shem, who’s rocking back and forth heel-to-toe, his body so rigid he might snap right in half.

  Tom stands, shakes his head, and looks down. “Can’t even say for sure if it still goes all the way through.”

  “Well,” I declare, “only one way to find out.”

  As I start to go, Garrett lurches forward and shakes my hand off his arm. Shem has stopped rocking and leapt at Tom, who reels backwards. Garrett thrusts one hand out and stops Shem cold with a hard palm on his ribs. Shem whoofs as he stumbles back.

  “Not now,” Garrett says with a deep threat in his sharp voice.

  Shem steadies himself, his jaw quivering and his eyes darting around the dim hall, maybe seeing us or maybe not. His hands flex over and over, and I can see him working himself down from his hysteria. Slowly. With great effort. It takes half a minute. Finally, he takes one big breath and waves his hands at us. “All right,” he growls.

  “Not ever,” Garrett suggests, but Shem doesn’t seem to hear as he turns and faces the darkness.

  Garrett and I have done our best to keep Shem away from Tom all day. Maybe he recognizes Tom, and maybe he doesn’t. But it’s clear he’s connected Tom to that night. And he doesn’t like it.

  As we retreat to the cavern and collect ourselves, I watch him. He keeps to himself, mumbling and squeezing himself in strange hugs as he paces in tight circles. Every few steps, his whole body shudders. I don’t know how long it’s been since he’s had a drink. Maybe the memories of that night haunt him so deeply that drinking is the only way he can handle it. And now those memories are alive right in front of him.

  We all have our own hells, I guess. I wonder if it’s worse when you created it for yourself like he did.

  I look at Freda, who watches us all with red, puffy eyes. There’s curiosity there. Pain. Sympathy.

  Susannah sits beside her, with Honey and Daisy between them. Honey clings to her mother with a terrified grimace on her grimy, scratched-up, six year old face. Susannah looks tired to the depths of her soul.

  Ginger strokes Freda’s hair, watching me with a startling intensity.

  After a while, Ginger rises slowly and dusts herself off. She wipes at each eye once with a sooty, dirty hand. Then she steps to the middle of the group and faces me.

  “If it’s time to go, then we should go,” she says.

  Why she’s looking at me and not Tom, I’m not sure. But her young voice seems to bring everyone back to us, even calming Shem.

  Within two minutes we’re walking in a line, Tom in the lead and me right behind, then Steven and Ginger. Garrett takes the rear so he can keep Shem right in front of him. Back in the cavern, Susannah and Freda tend to the families we “rescued.” No sense walking them straight into another war if that’s what’s going to happen.

  We have no food and only a little water with us, and after a half hour the narrow cave constricts my mind and squeezes my thoughts. I struggle to keep up with Tom even though he doesn’t seem to be rushing. I’m used to walking in the hills, seeing mountain peaks to judge my distance. I’m used to the sun or stars to point me north.

  Ginger holds a torch right behind me, throwing wicked shadows ahead that stretch and merge into the darkness. Their frantic dancing makes my head hurt. I let my hand drag along the rock at my side as we go, just to keep my mind from thinking.

  Every now and then my fingers catch in a softer patch that isn’t rock, sending dirt and pebbles skittering to the floor. Tom wasn’t kidding; this tunnel isn’t like the Subterra corridors.

  After a long while, I finally call out to Tom for a rest. He slows and stops, but immediately I know we won’t rest long. The air is so still and dead that the torch smoke settles on us, sucking up the good air. Still, I need to stop moving for just a moment.

  Outside on a trail, we’d be able to gather in a group, face each other. But in this narrow tunnel, the best we can do is turn sideways. Maybe Ginger and I could squeeze past each other, but the tips of our noses would scrape on the way by. It’s tight.

  Our heavy breathing echoes off the close walls. Garrett passes his flask forward, each of us taking a sip to moisten the dust that thickens the inside of our mouths.

  Tom turns sideways and leans on the wall, and I do the same, opposite, so we can at least sort of look at each other. Ginger and the others do the same, until we look like we’re lined up for some kind of folk dance.

  Tom gives half a grin, but I can see his chest rising and falling with difficult breath. “The air is better than I expected,” he says, and he finishes with several seconds of coughing.

  “How far have we come?” I ask him.

  Ginger pops in before he can answer. “A mile, I think,” she says.

  Tom looks impressed. “Good. You noticed the markers?”

  With a shy grin, Ginger nods.

  “Markers?” I didn’t see any markers.

  “They’re kind of hard to notice,” Ginger says, with a little too much sympathy in her voice.

  Tom points to a spot next to me on the wall. I wrench myself around and struggle to see that part of the wall. My own shadow darkens it, and I have to wriggle out of the way of Ginger’s torch light. She holds the torch to the side so it won’t catch me on fire.

  There’s some sort of squarish rock poking out from the wall, at waist height. It protrudes only an inch or so, two inches on each side. I can tell right away that it’s been put there deliberately. There’s one groove across the end of it.

  Tom doesn’t wait for my question. “In unfinished corridors, we put one every quarter mile. At the first quarter mile, we carve a mark in the top. Second quarter mile on the next face clockwise. Third quarter mile on the bottom, and so on. At each mile we carve a groove across the front. You see this one has a single groove. One mile.”

  I slip my fingers across it and wonder if I’m the first to touch it in a decade. Probably.

  “Hey, Tom” I say, thinking back to a moment right before we left the cavern. “What was it you whispered to Freda, back there?”

  Tom’s expression stays tired but goes dark. “I didn’t think you saw that. I told her how to find the way into Subterra. If we don’t return within a couple of days.”

  Of course. Me, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. So many things could happen once we reach Upper. But it’s only ten miles, so we should be back with food and clothing within a day, and then we can bring them out. But what if we can’t come back?

  “Time to move,” Tom says.

  As I push myself off wall and fall into step behind him, I knock away loos
e dirt from my backside.

  After another mile—I notice the markers now, and they’re reassuring but still feel much too far apart—I realize we’re going uphill. The air is a little less heavy but still thick. And now, about every hundred feet, a brace of thick timbers holds up the ceiling.

  The farther we go, the walls become less granite and more dirt. At four miles we stop for a long drink and a real rest, dousing one of the torches to reduce the smoke. At seven miles, my clothing sticks to my dust-crusted skin. My mind is so empty, the only thing I know is the rhythm of Tom’s feet in front of me and the hypnotic dancing of shadows on the walls.

  “Ah!” Tom suddenly calls out, and I awake from my blankness.

  “Ha, ha,” he laughs. “I didn’t want to mention this in case I remembered wrong, but here it is.”

  The exit? Already? Thank God! Seven miles instead of ten. I close my eyes and try to guess which part of Upper we’ll see first and how late into the morning it is outside. To breathe the fresh air finally, to bathe in sunlight, to—

  “Oof.”

  I slam right into Tom’s back, my eyes still closed.

  “Hey,” he says. “You asleep or something?”

  I’m glad Ginger was paying attention, or we’d pile up like rocks at the bottom of a pit. Plus, she’s holding a torch.

  “Something like that,” I mumble. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. But look. Finally, somewhere to spread out!” He walks a few feet farther ahead, and I follow him into a small room.

  It’s really just a circular hole someone dug, as rough as a child’s pit dug into beach sand and not much bigger. The ceiling is low, but at least we can sit and stretch out our legs and look each other in the face. Finally, something to look at besides the back of Tom’s head.

  The line follows us into the room and spreads out. Exhaustion keeps everyone quiet. Tom takes the torch from Ginger and slips it into a bracket mounted on a wooden support. The light is steady and dim. We’ve spent and abandoned three torches so far, and this was lit only a quarter mile back. We still have a few more, plenty to get us all the way to Upper. Assuming we’re more than halfway there.

  Tom flops to the floor at the point closest to the tunnel’s continuation. He doesn’t look tired, but he sits unusually still. The others ring the room, leaning their backs against the wall and breathing hard. We’ve kept a quick pace.

  Garrett lowers himself beside me, too close so our hips touch briefly. I pull my knees together and wrap my arms around them. Squeezing and stretching feel so good.

  Garrett skootches a few inches away. “God, what a long, boring walk, huh?” If he’s mad at me, it doesn’t show up in his voice.

  I nod in response and keep stretching. I reach straight out, twist my back, touch my toes. Parts of me crack and pop, but it’s wonderful to move different after hours of sameness, but within a minute I’m anxious to get moving again.

  “I wonder how much farther,” Garrett mumbles, mimicking my movements and groaning a little with the pleasure of stretching.

  “Less than three miles,” Tom says loud from across the way.

  “Yeah, ghost man?” Shem’s rubbly voice fills the room. “How’d you know that?”

  Tom is slow to reply, staring directly at Shem. His stony, white face is so difficult to read, but it’s clear there’s no affection in his gaze. Hatred? Disgust? Even in bright daylight I can’t tell what Tom’s thinking. Here in this dim hole, the shadows make him look sinister.

  “I’ve been here before,” he says with a flatness that suggests he’s hiding some information in the statement. But he’s not hiding it very well. Next to me, Garrett stops stretching and stares at Tom.

  “Hmm,” says Shem as he slowly rises from the floor and shuffles his feet, kicking around bits of dirt. “When might that have been, I wonder?” He stops his fidgeting and glares at Tom for a moment before leaning back against one of the thick timbers supporting the dirt ceiling.

  Tom returns Shem’s glare and slowly, warily stands up. “Ten years ago,” he says. This is not so flat, and it hides nothing.

  Garrett tenses. Besides the two men who stand opposite each other, I’m the only one in the room who knows Shack’s version of what happened that night.

  “What were you doing in Tawtrukk ten years ago, I wonder,” says Shem airily, as if he hadn’t already pieced the puzzle together hours ago.

  “This isn’t Tawtrukk,” Tom says.

  Garrett stands up. The rest of us look from one man to another, unsure what’s about to happen.

  Tom doesn’t take his eyes off Shem, but he says to everyone else, “Time to go. Still three miles left, and Darius won’t wait for us.” He leans against a thick timber supporting the doorway out, the way we’re going.

  I stand, and the others rise as well. The cave’s cool air feels good on my wet, dirty back.

  “No,” Shem says. “This ain’t Tawtrukk, is it?” He squares himself at Tom but stays on the other side of the room. “Is this where you brought her?”

  “No,” Tom replies. I’m surprised at how calm and cold he seems. But of course, he’s also had hours to think this through.

  “Brought who?” Garrett steps between them, looking from Tom to Shem and back.

  Tom continues, ignoring Garrett, “I took her down the other corridor. To Subterra.”

  “Subterra. What the frick is Subterra,” Shem says, but it’s not a question. Rage is bubbling up inside him, and even from here I can see him trembling.

  “It’s somewhere safe,” Tom growls.

  “You had no right!” Shem takes one step forward, and Garrett straightens, putting himself between the two men.

  “You had no right!” Tom erupts. “If I hadn’t taken her away, you’d have killed her. You know it.”

  “Killed who? Taken who away?” Garrett is frantic and confused. I try to grab him and pull him away, but he swats my hand hard.

  “We were fine,” Shem spits. “You ruined my life, you son of a bitch. You demon.”

  “I saved her life,” Tom replies.

  “Whose life!” Garrett screams, but I think he knows.

  “There, that one,” Shem says, pointing past Garrett at Tom. “That’s the demon that stole away your mama in the night, took her away from us.”

  This is not good. Bad time for this. I can’t let this happen. We have things to do.

  “I took her to a safe place,” Tom answers, speaking to Shem, and Garrett spins to stare in confusion. “She never really recovered. You beat her so badly that night, her mind was never the same. Slamming someone’s head with a skillet does that to a person.”

  “I’ll slam your head, you devil!”

  Shem launches himself at Tom, shoving Garrett out of his way. Garrett stumbles back into me, pinning me against the dirt wall. The dirt compresses behind me, soft and moist, and I sink in several inches before I can pull away.

  Tom is ready and braced for Shem’s charge. He takes the big man’s full weight with a grunt. They wrap in a brutal embrace and struggle for a moment. Tom throws Shem off, and Shem tumbles into the dirt.

  “Stop it!” I scream at them, but they don’t.

  Tom stands in the corridor, just in the shadows beyond the torchlight, and Shem jumps up and charges again without any pause. His eyes are wild, his hair flung about like a madman’s. Tom ducks to the side and trips Shem as he flies by, into the corridor. We hear him stumbling in the dark, hear him fall to the ground.

  Garrett half steps in that direction, and I grab him. He wants a piece of this, even though he doesn’t understand it. He might take the wrong side. But whose would be the right side?

  Either way, I need every one of us if we’re going to save Upper.

  “Stop!” I scream again, feeling the burn of the dust in my nose and throat. The screaming hurts my pounding head.

  An instant later, Shem hurtles from the darkness, his shoulder aimed at Tom.

  Tom deflects him and retreats, and Shem misses and slam
s into the thick wood that supports the doorway with a slushy thud and a snap that sounds like collarbone. Shem yells in pain and bounces backwards, stumbling into the corridor again. When he rights himself, one arm hangs limp, but the madness in his eyes is the same.

  The timber creaks and groans where he hit it.

  A crack like river-ice thawing echoes through the room as the timber bows and snaps under tons of dirt and rubble.

  “Cave-in!” yells Tom, and he shoves me and Garrett back down the hall where we came from. “Run!”

  An avalanche falls in the doorway, faster than I can think. I move where Tom shoved me, run a little way back down the corridor. The sound is terrifying, a crash like thunder inside my head. Will this whole thing fall in? How far do we run before we’re safe? What light there was dims in the fog of dirt and then snuffs out, and I’m running in pitch dark. I fling my hands out before me but keep running.

  In a few seconds, it’s over. Rumbling echoes along the corridor as I slow and stop. I lift my shirt over my mouth and nose and gasp through a haze of dirt and dust. My whole body tingles with fear, with little pricks of swirling dirt, with sweat and exhaustion.

  The silence that follows the cave-in is like death. It’s possible I’ve died already, but it doesn’t feel like it. At least I’m not squished under a ton of dirt and rock. I’m breathing. And I think I can at least make it back to the cavern where Freda and Susannah wait with the others.

  I would give anything for some water to wash the dirt from my tongue, rinse it from my throat. But Ginger has the flask.

  Ginger. Oh, god.

  Ginger and Steven were still in the little room when the ceiling collapsed. I turn back toward them and start feeling my way along the wall back the way I came. Or am I? Did I turn myself around in my confusion? Am I heading toward the cave-in or away from it?

  A blackness fills my inside as deep as the blackness around me.

  I yell out, “Ginger!” I stop and stand still, listening for a reply.

  “Stop yelling, sheesh,” says Tom, only a couple of feet away from me. “And you almost stepped on my foot. Topsider.”