The Changlings (The New Earth Chronicles Book 2)

by J. J. Thompson

  “Good luck explaining these things,” Bobby said as he waggled his sword. “And Esmiralla.”

  “Telling them about our 'gifts' can wait,” Sarah told him. “So can Esmiralla, at least for now. Let's go.”

  Bobby sheathed the sword again and slipped the backpack over his shoulder. He slipped the belt through a loop on the sheathe and fastened it around his waist, with the sword hanging on his left hip so that he could draw it with his right hand.

  “It's heavy,” he said as he walked back and forth a few paces, trying to get used to the weight. “Do I look silly?”

  “Do you really want me to answer that?” Sarah asked him with a giggle.

  Bobby rolled his eyes at her. He gathered up the leather wrappings and tossed them out of the way. Then he picked up his candle and followed her down the long hallway, limping a bit as the sword kept banging against his leg.

  At the end of the hall, next to two elevators, was a door leading to a staircase. Sarah opened it and walked through. She led the way downward, absently twirling the wand in her hand as she went. Finally she slipped it into one of the belt loops on her jeans and focused on the steps.

  The stairwell was circular and very wide. It descended gently, winding around and around. Each exit leading out of it was about twenty feet below the one above it. Both Sarah and Bobby stopped several times to peer down into the gloom below, but they couldn't see anything. It was very quiet.

  The bunker was four levels deep, but walking down the steps in the silent darkness made it seem a lot deeper than that.

  Dust rose up at every step and Sarah coughed again and again, trying to clear her throat.

  “I sure hope that the well water is still good when we reach the bottom,” she said in a raspy voice. “We'll need it pretty soon.”

  “It was fine when we left,” Bobby said, his throat as dry as hers. “No reason to think that it still isn't.”

  “I guess so. If we're going to set up our camp here for a while, we'll need a steady supply of fresh water.”

  Bobby remained silent for a minute.

  “Are you actually thinking of staying here?” he asked suddenly. “Really?”

  Sarah stopped and turned around to look up at him.

  “Why not? Can you think of a more secure location this close to the city?”

  “That's the point, Sarah,” he replied seriously. “Maybe we're too close. We've already been attacked by a drake, and we've only just left town. And where there's one drake, there will be more. Not to mention the dragons and the goblins.”

  He smiled a little.

  “Goblins. They seem less threatening now, don't they? Anyway, shouldn't we get as far away from Ottawa as we can?”

  Sarah stared at him in the combined light of her stone and his flickering candle and nodded reluctantly. Bobby's face was shiny with sweat and he looked as exhausted as she felt, but he was obviously still thinking clearly; maybe more clearly than she was.

  “Yeah, you might be right. But let's wait and see what everyone else wants to do before we make any major decisions.”

  “Okay, that makes sense.”

  “Good. Come on. We're almost at the bottom.”

  The lowest level of the bunker was even eerier than they remembered. Maybe it was the imagined weight of the rest of the complex over their heads, but both Sarah and Bobby found the air heavy and the atmosphere oppressive as they walked down the hallway toward the pump room.

  The floor here was as dusty as the rest of the bunker and there were no tracks to be seen, not even the footprints of rodents or the markings left behind by insects. In short, the place felt as lifeless as a tomb.

  “It's nice that no rats or mice got in while we were gone,” Bobby said uneasily. “Kind of strange though, isn't it?”

  “Maybe. I'm glad they didn't though. I don't like rats,” Sarah said with a shudder. “Especially the Changed ones. Ugh. They're as big as dogs used to be. Gross.”

  Inside the pump room, the pair were relieved to find a stack of torches stored near the door. They were covered in thick plastic sheeting and still smelled strongly of kerosene when Bobby unwrapped them.

  There were a few brackets that the Changlings had installed around the room to hold the torches and Bobby lit one and placed it in the bracket closest to the door.

  “Ah, so much better,” he said with relief as the torch burned brightly. “It feels more like home already.”

  Sarah nodded absently as she looked around the room. The old electric water pump sat next to a round hole in the cement floor that was covered with a large piece of plywood. The pump hadn't worked since the magic had returned, so the staff back then had improvised, attaching a stainless steel bucket to a long rope to draw up the water the old-fashioned way.

  The bucket and rope were still sitting beside the covered well, a little dusty but still serviceable. The rest of the square room was mostly empty, with just a few cardboard boxes filled with cleaning supplies stored there. Sarah opened them one by one until she found a clean cloth and used it to wipe the dust out of the bucket.

  Bobby adjusted the sheathed sword as it threatened to trip him, grabbed the sheet of plywood and pulled it off of the opening, raising even more dust as he did so.

  “Why is it so damned dusty in here?” he wheezed as he waved his hand in front of his face. “The place was sealed for ten years.”

  “Concrete,” Sarah said and pointed at the ceiling. “Cement dust falls constantly, you know that. Heck, we got it all the time back home.”

  “Yeah but I figured since this place was locked up, and all of the surfaces were painted, that we wouldn't have the same dust problems here.”

  Sarah began lowering the bucket into the well and looked across the hole at Bobby.

  “Dust is a small price to pay for safety,” she told him. “Once we sweep the place out, it'll be fine.”

  He gave her a sour look and dropped his backpack next to the door. He stretched and groaned.

  “Hope the beds are still comfortable,” he said wistfully. “It'll be so nice to sleep on an actual mattress again.”

  Waiting until she felt the bucket hit the water at the bottom of the well, Sarah smiled at the thought.

  “I hadn't considered that. Wow, a real bed. That's actually exciting.”

  She jiggled the rope a few times until the bucket became heavy and began to draw it up again.

  “Well, there's still water in the well, so that's good news. Bobby, why don't you light another torch and check out the rest of the level? We don't need to stick together for safety down here. I'll meet you in the old recreation room in a couple of minutes. Go ahead and drink the rest of the water in the canteen if you want to. I'll have the well water.”

  “Okay. I'll do that.”

  Bobby pulled another torch out of the bundle and lit it off of the one already burning. He winked at Sarah as she hauled up the bucket, scooped up his backpack and walked out into the hallway.

  There were at least a dozen doors leading off of the hallway to the left and right and Bobby stopped for a moment, trying to remember which one was which. He pulled out the canteen and drained it, rinsing the dust from his throat with relief.

  Toward the end of the Changlings' stay in the Diefenbunker, all of them had moved down to the bottom level. It was closer to the well and to the latrine, plus they only had a limited number of torches and the leaders decided to ration what was left.

  The largest space on the bottom level was the recreation room and that was where they had moved all of their beds. It had almost been like summer camp in a way, with everyone sleeping together and a lot of teasing and joking going on. Unfortunately it didn't last. Once the food ran out, they had left the bunker and set off for the city. And that was the last time that any of the Changlings had been in the Diefenbunker. Until now.

  Bobby found that walking through the dark hallway was a lot spookier when he was alone. The concrete floor sent the sounds of his footsteps reverberating down t
he length of the corridor and back, multiplying them and making it sound like he was being followed by a crowd of people. He kept glancing over his shoulder to reassure himself that he was alone. It was unnerving.

  He counted doors and stopped when he reached the third door on his left. All of the metal doors were painted a dark brown, now peeling and spotted with rust, and written on the door in white, block letters were the words: 'Recreation Room'.

  Bobby pushed down on the handle and the door opened inward with a squeal of disused hinges. He stepped inside, lifted the torch over his head and looked around nervously.

  The room was very large, about thirty feet wide and fifty feet deep. The ceiling soared a dozen feet overhead. There was another stack of torches next to the door covered in plastic and Bobby was relieved to know that they wouldn't run out of light any time soon.

  “What a mess,” he muttered as he walked forward.

  All of the Changlings' beds had been set up against the walls to the left and right of the door, more than a dozen on each side. When the group had left the bunker for the final time, they obviously hadn't been too concerned with leaving it tidy. There were boxes scattered everywhere, toys had been dropped around the room and left forgotten, and not one bed had been made.

  Bobby smiled as he corrected himself. One bed had been neatly made before the Changlings had left, with the sheets and the blanket on it as flat and perfect as a military cot. Sarah's.

  “Naturally,” he whispered affectionately.

  He walked through the room, kicking several rubber balls and a pile of old clothes out of his way. Dust covered everything, of course, and he started sneezing before he was halfway across the room.

  “Oh, it's going to take forever to clean this place,” Bobby said, feeling even more exhausted at the thought.

  “It won't be that bad.”

  He turned around and saw the blue glow of Sarah's stone at the doorway. Her face was lit from below and looked ethereal in the darkness.

  “You're done?” he asked as she walked over and joined him.

  “Yes. The well water is still sweet and cold, so we're okay there. This place is a bit of a mess, isn't it?”

  They both looked around the rec room, memories flooding back.

  “Remember the day that we all moved our beds down here?” Sarah asked with a giggle. “People were so stupid, fighting over which spot they were going to sleep in. As if it made a difference.”

  “It did, back then,” Bobby assured her. “But we were all so much younger then. Heck, we were children, Sarah. And we acted like it.”

  She walked over to the neatly-made bed and patted it affectionately. Then she immediately backed away from it, waving her hand at the cloud of dust that flew upward.

  “Damn it, I forgot about that,” she said, coughing. “It's going to take forever to get rid of it.”

  “I just said that,” Bobby told her with a grin.

  “Well, I stand corrected, because you were right. Come on, drop the backpack and let's explore the rest of the level. Then I want to call the others and see what's going on in the city.”

  “Right.”

  The other rooms on the bottom level were just as dusty and untidy as the rec room had been. Mainly used as storage rooms when the bunker had been operational, they were filled with boxes, crates and bags of almost every conceivable item needed to live underground except, of course, food.

  Sheets, blankets and towels. Bath soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes. Cleaning solvents, mops and brooms. Clothing of every size, consisting mainly of serviceable shirts, pants, underwear and socks for men, women and children. The list went on and on.

  “You know,” Sarah said at one point as she opened yet another crate to peek inside of it. “If this place wasn't such a hike from town, we could have had an almost endless supply of useful stuff. Did you see the boxes of dishes and cutlery? Wow.”

  “Yeah, you could have broken plates every day and never run out,” Bobby said with a teasing grin.

  “Always the wise guy,” she replied with a reluctant laugh. “But seriously, why didn't we ever think to come back here? If not to stay, then at least to salvage what we could?”

  “Bad memories maybe? I dunno. I think that once we all found our own camps and made our homes, we kind of settled down into a routine. I mean, why go anywhere when everything you need is close at hand? And before we emptied out most of the stores in the city, at least the ones close to us, we didn't have to travel, did we?”

  “That's true, I suppose. I just wish that there was a source of food somewhere nearby.”

  Bobby started to speak and she shook her head to cut him off.

  “Yes, I know that we can forage for wild vegetables and berries. But unless you get really good at snaring rabbits, and we both learn to skin them without throwing up each time, that won't be enough. And certainly it won't be enough if the others have to leave the city and join us.”

  Sarah walked back out into the hall with Bobby trailing along behind her. She looked from one end of the corridor to the other and sighed loudly.

  “It would have been the perfect place to stay, wouldn't it? But without food, at best it's just a temporary refuge. I guess that I was just kidding myself.”

  “I understand why, though,” Bobby replied gently. “It was our home, once upon a time. It would have been nice if it could have been again. But we really are too close to the city, you know. Anyway, let's go back to the rec room so that you can call Sandra and the others. I'm getting really worried about them.”

  When they returned to the recreation area, Bobby lit a couple of torches and placed them in holders on either side of the door. They brightened up the room quite a bit and both he and Sarah felt more relaxed as the darkness was pushed back.

  “Since we aren't staying long-term, we might as well not skimp on the light, don't you think?” he asked her as he adjusted the torches so that they burned as brightly as possible.

  “Yep, I agree. This place may have been home once, but it feels more like a tomb now. Use as many as you want to.”

  Sarah put her wand down on the floor and carefully rolled up the rumpled sheets on the bed that was closest to the door to try to avoid a cloud of dust. She slipped them underneath the bed and then walked over to the backpack and took out the two cans of beans that they had found in the old cottage.

  “You want me to heat them up or not?” she asked as she returned to the bed, sat down on the bare mattress and smiled happily at how comfortable it was.

  Bobby looked over at her and she held up the cans.

  “Oh right. No, cold is fine. Just make sure that the beans smell okay when you open them. Food poisoning is not something that I enjoy very much.”

  Sarah grinned at him and went to work with the can opener. Bobby joined her and tried to sit down on the bed, then cursed as the sheathe on his hip slipped between his legs.

  “Damned stupid thing,” he muttered as he undid the belt.

  He put the sword on the floor and dropped on to the mattress, ignoring Sarah's snickering.

  She handed him an open can and a spoon and both of them began eating.

  “Tastes good,” he said around a mouthful of beans.

  Sarah nodded as she ate hungrily.

  When they were finished, Bobby left the room to fill his canteen from the well. Sarah waited until he was gone and then reached down and picked up the wand off of the floor.

  “So how do I use you?” she asked as she examined it closely.

  The shaft appeared to be some kind of dark metal, but was grainy like wood. It was heavier than it looked. The pointy yellow gem was odd as well. When Sarah peered into it, she saw small flecks of green suspended inside. They seemed to form a strange pattern, like a constellation. She could almost see a picture in her mind when she stared at it.

  She looked over at the doorway to make sure that Bobby wasn't coming back and then raised the wand and concentrated on it.

  Maybe I should use it
like I use my stone, she thought.

  After only a few seconds, she gasped as the gem blazed with a bright, pure light. It tinged everything around it with a warm, yellow glow and Sarah felt a weird rush of happiness, as if the light itself was greeting her like an old friend. At the same time, it made her vaguely uneasy.

  “Whoa.”

  She looked back at the doorway and saw Bobby staring slack-jawed at the bright gem.

  “How'd you do that?” he asked.

  “I'm not sure. I just tried to use it the same way that I use my stone; you know, focus on it and will it to glow. And it worked.”

  “Cool. It sure is a lot brighter than the stone. And the light, I don't know, feels warm, like sunlight or something. I like it.”

  “Yeah, me too. But it feels kind of...”

  She groped for the right word.

  “Intimate, in a way. It's a bit creepy, you know? I'm not sure I like that.”

  She stared at the wand and then set it down on the bed. As soon as she released the shaft, the gem went dark again.

  “It needs your touch,” Bobby told her as he handed her the canteen. “Or likes it.”

  “Hmm. Seems to.”

  Sarah drank her fill and handed it back.

  “Thanks. Okay, enough of that for now. Let's see how everyone's doing.”

  Chapter 15

  Sarah cupped her stone in her hands and rested them on her lap. She closed her eyes and the stone flared brightly as she pictured her friends' faces in her mind. She called out to them, one at a time.

  “Eric. Caroline. Clara. Alexa. Sandra. Rachel. Miesha. Guys, it's me, Sarah. Can you hear me?”

  Bobby sat at the end of the bed, watching anxiously. He noticed for the first time that Sarah's stone had fine veins on its surface that only appeared when it was glowing as brightly as it was at the moment. He stared at them in fascination and they seemed to move and shift around. It was creepy and he shuddered as he watched them.

  Why didn't I ever see that before, he wondered.

  “Guys, come on,” Sarah said with a frown, her eyes still closed. “There must be one of you that can hear me.”