The Sun Dwellers (The Dwellers Saga)

by David Estes

  “To blend in,” Trevor says. “Rather than sneaking around, we might actually be able to pass for a group of sun dwellers enjoying the Festival. There will be lots of people, right?”

  “More than you can imagine,” Roc says.

  I glance at Adele. Her cheeks are pale again, her hands open. “He’s right,” she says. “I think this is a good thing. The more chaos there is up here, the better chance we have of blending in. My mom would have known that.”

  “I agree,” I say. Perhaps it is a good thing. The sun dwellers will be too busy getting drunk and celebrating to notice the traitors in their midst. At least I hope.

  While the others chew on Adele’s words, I take in our surroundings, and I understand why this guard tower is so undermanned. It rises above the subchapter, in the center of the city, like a single finger held in the air. In a time of war, like now, most personnel will have been dispatched to the subchapter borders, leaving the least experienced guard—the boy—to hold down this well-protected tower. Whether the Resistance purposely chose their secret entrance into subchapter 18 to be in a guard tower, or whether the tower was built later on, I do not know.

  I notice that, like me, Adele’s scanning the city. Under the moonlit night her face is a luminescent pale, her mouth slightly open as she gawks at a world that is like another planet to her. Wide, rich, brown cobblestone streets intersect the city, marching in every direction like dominoes. Red-bricked buildings and apartments rise all around us, grand and regal and wealthy, with large spotless glass windows and marble balconies hanging off the sides.

  The windows remind me that we’re far too exposed.

  Ram’s thinking the same thing. “We gotta move,” he rumbles.

  I look at Roc. “We can’t use the main intra-Realm tunnel,” I say.

  “I think there’s an old shipping tunnel that’s not used much anymore,” Roc says.

  “Lead the way.”

  We move out, jammed against the buildings, single file. Everyone’s on the balls of their feet, reducing the footfalls to no more than whispers in the dark. Even Ram manages to jog noiselessly, which impresses me considering his size. We stick to the shadows, in case some insomniac sun dweller decides to peek out their window just as we pass by. The Enforcers aren’t a concern because the Sun Realm has the lowest number of Enforcers of all the Realms—our crime rate is close to nil.

  We pass a circular courtyard, hugging the curved edges, gazing at the massive statue of the first Nailin president, Wilfred Nailin, in the center. The one who started it all.

  It’s an eerie feeling, zigzagging through the sun dweller city at night, the breeze ruffling my hair and clothes. It almost feels…nice. It takes my mind off what I did in the tower, what I might have to do in the next couple days. I draw the line at saying it’s peaceful, but that’s how it feels. Far too peaceful.

  Dark gray rock walls loom over us as we exit the bounds of the city, crossing a wide plain of rock, far from the edge of the city. At ground level is the black mouth of a tunnel. We don’t break stride as we race toward it, seeking the safety of darkness. As its jaws close around us, I let out a sigh of relief.

  We play our flashlights around the space, which is empty aside for a cluster of large rocks at one side.

  “Where does this lead?” I ask Roc in the dark.

  “It leads to—” Roc doesn’t have a chance to finish before the spotlight bursts in his face, darting around the side of the rock cluster.

  As he throws his hands over his eyes, a voice says, “It leads to hell.”

  Chapter FiveAdele

  Not again, I think. Blinded by the light, I’m blinking, blinking, trying to see the sun dweller guardsman, waiting for the sickening sounds of death as Tristan kills another one.

  He had no choice.

  Heavy boots thud all around us.

  My vision clears much faster this time, and when the world reappears it’s much worse than before. We’re surrounded by a dozen red-uniformed men in various stages of alertness and dressing. Based on their half-clothed attire—some are bare-chested, wearing only thick red pants, others have their red tunics through one arm but not the other—we’ve stumbled upon a sleeping sun dweller platoon. They were behind the big rocks on the edge of the cave, well-hidden from our prying eyes. Some quick-witted and wide awake night watchman must have alerted them just before we snuck into their camp.

  Just our luck.

  None of them move, just stare at us with angry eyes and half-snarls. Each bears a weapon, some swords, some bows with arrows cocked, most black guns. My favorite. Instinctively I try to sense the weight of the gun strapped beneath my tunic in the small of my back. But then I remember: it’s not there; Tawni’s got it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I do have a small knife strapped to my leg, which I mostly use for small jobs, like cutting ropes. Not for killing. Never for killing.

  Now what?

  “Get on your knees!” one of the sun dwellers shouts. He’s naked from the waist up, with dark curly hair all over his chest, like he might have an ape for a father and a human mother—he spits on the ground—no, make that an ape for a mom, too.

  None of us move.

  “NOW!” the ape yells, his voice booming through the naturally acoustic cave. NOW, Now, now… His voice fades in the distance, down the “safe” and “unused” tunnel we’re supposed to be heading down.

  Still no one moves.

  The guy cocks his double-handled gun, probably an automatic or semi-automatic.

  “We have no choice. Do what he says,” Tristan commands. Although on the face his words sound compliant, there’s a hint of resistance in his tone, as if he has other plans.

  Roc and Tawni are on their knees even before Tristan can obey his own order; I suspect they were halfway there before he spoke. Trevor and I slide down next. Sharp needles of rock pierce and prick my clothes. Ram’s the last to join us, his big nostrils flaring like a bull, his eyes wide and wild, and for a second I think he might attack them all on his own. But eventually he drops to one knee, his other boulder-sized kneecap angled forward as if in a stretch.

  “Both knees!” the ape yells, taking three big steps forward. I expect him to beat his chest any second. Instead, he snaps a sharp kick at Ram, who tries to duck, but doesn’t have time. Evidently these soldiers sleep in their boots, because they’re all wearing heavy footwear, their apish leader included. Ram is the unfortunate recipient of the likely steel-toed footgear, his head snapping back at an unnatural angle.

  I cringe, and Tawni cries out, but to everyone’s—none more so than the sun dwellers’—surprise, Ram doesn’t fall to his side. His head rebounds forward, revealing a wicked inch-long gash on his temple.

  First blood has been drawn.

  If the rest of us comply from this point on, perhaps it will also be last blood.

  The only problem: most of our group, me included, aren’t too good at compliance.

  And Ram’s laughing—of all things, laughing!—a deep grumble of delight, like a foot to the head is just what he needed to make today the perfect day. Still chuckling, he shifts his right-angle knee so it’s also flush with the rough ground. Six ducks, all in a row. At least four of us are thinking of the best way to hurt these guys.

  “Secure their weapons,” the ape says to his men. “Bind them.” The men move forward from all sides, as if they’re a single organism, an extension of the ape himself. I do the math. Twelve enemies. Six of us. Assume Tawni stays put. Assume Roc can take one of them. That leaves two for most of the rest of us. I’ve seen worse odds.

  There’s a surge of warmth as blood pumps to my extremities in anticipation.

  My fingers tingle with nervous energy.

  We’ll go down fighting, one way or the other.

  Ram’s the first one up, exploding from his haunches like a missile, his shoulder a battering ram, shattering the sternum of the unlucky soldier who was about to use a small snatch of rope to secure him. Tristan, Trevor, and I snap to our feet si
multaneously, each attacking the closest soldier. Mine is tall and broad and holding a sword in front of him like he knows how to use it. But even he’s surprised by the swiftness and ferocity of my attack, probably because I’m a girl, and not particularly big. My father’s face appears in my mind a split-second before I hit the guy. His words: Even the big ones will fall if you hit them in the right places.

  He swings high with his sword, a head-lopping attempt, but I duck under and thrust my leg straight up toward his crotch. The right place. He’s in agony the moment I connect, dropping the sword and clutching himself. I fling my knee as hard and as high in the air as I can, audibly hearing the crunch of his jawbone as I catch him under the chin, his teeth chattering from top to bottom. The worst hit: the back of his head off the unforgiving stone when he collapses to the cave floor.

  One down. I’m due another. Gunshots explode through the night.

  I whirl around, searching for my next victim, anticipating the need to dodge a bullet or an arrow—or maybe another blade. Or—

  None of the above.

  As it turns out, I was deemed a lesser threat. Tristan and Trevor are each finishing off their own victims—Trevor bashing a bulky dark-skinned guy in the head with the butt of his own gun and Tristan straddling a sturdy white soldier, clobbering him repeatedly in the face—but it’s Ram who’s in the thick of things. And that’s where the bullets are flying, both toward him and from him. He’s managed to steal a gun from one of the soldiers and is firing at six or seven sun dwellers, each of whom are firing back at him. His tunic is blotted in at least three places with growing circles of darkness. His face is scarred with the trickling river from his initial head wound. And yet, he’s still fighting, trying to take out as many of the soldiers as he can before they take him out, for our sakes, not for his.

  “No!” Tristan shouts as he charges toward the line of enemies. Trevor and I follow in his wake, both yelling at the top of our lungs, as if the loudness of our yells will determine the strength of our attacks. I pass Tawni, who’s splayed on the ground, clutching a bloody knee, Roc hovering near her, a downed sun dweller soldier nearby. Roc got his man and I’m glad.

  More gunfire: a soldier drops, then another. To my right: Ram’s fallen to two knees again, his chest covered in swarming darkness, a death plague eating away at him. Still shooting. Another enemy down.

  Tristan smashes into one of the last four from the side, knocking him into another. The third and fourth men turn toward Tristan, trying to find their aim. I’m too far away. Trevor is closer, but not close enough.

  Boom, boom!

  The last two upright soldiers, one of whom is the ape man himself, slump to the ground, their eyes rolling around like marbles. The thump of Ram’s body follows a second later, his final act completed.

  My head is on a swivel, trying to take in the carnage before me: Ram’s crumpled mass; Tristan kicking away the guns of the two soldiers he tackled, a strange guttural groan rising from his throat and out his mouth, moving toward Ram; Trevor rushing forward and kicking the final two men in the head, knocking them unconscious; Tawni sobbing somewhere behind me, Roc muttering soothing and utterly unbelievable words; red sun dweller soldiers strewn across the cave like boulders, some dead, some out cold. And me in the midst of it all, dazed and energized and sad.

  I walk numbly to where Tristan is huddled over Ram, his head bowed, his hands folded reverently in front of him, as if in prayer. Tristan’s words about Ram echo in my head: Let’s just say our friendship has had its ups and downs. Right now we’re on an up.

  The up has crashed to a lower down. The lowest.

  I place a hesitant hand on Tristan’s shoulder. He jerks slightly as he tilts his head back to look at me. His eyes are rimmed with red and filled with moisture, but his cheeks are dry. I don’t expect he’ll shed tears today, not while in the Sun Realm with all of us one mistake, one wrong tunnel away from death.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and although I don’t know Ram that well, I avoid looking at the dead man’s face.

  “Me, too,” Tristan says, standing up. “We have to make this look like a one-man job.” There’s coldness in his voice—his attempt at pushing aside the loss of a friend.

  “Okay,” I say. “What do we do?”

  Trevor’s picked up on the vibe and pitches in right away. “All the bodies have to be in the same general area, so it’s believable that Ram could have inflicted all the damage on his own.” He practically did anyway, I think.

  “But they’re not all dead,” Roc chimes in. “One of them will just tell them the truth.”

  “None of these guys will wake up anytime soon,” Tristan says, giving one of them a harsh kick to the head as if to illustrate his point, or possibly as a final act of revenge for what they did to Ram. “By the time they do, we’ll be long gone.”

  “But they’ll know we’re coming,” Roc persists.

  “That’s unavoidable,” Tristan says.

  “Not if we take the rest of them out,” Trevor says. I bite my lip.

  Tristan stares at Trevor. I know they’re both thinking it’s not only the smart thing but the just thing. My lip starts to bleed.

  “We can’t kill them—they’re unarmed and unconscious,” Tawni says, the only voice for humanity in our group.

  “It’s no different than what they did to Ram,” Tristan says flatly. “It’s what they deserve.”

  Tawni looks at me, her eyes wide and white, all color sucked from them under the glare of the spotlight, which continues to cast a beam of light through the center of the cave. “Adele, tell them they can’t do this.”

  I’ve endured so much death in just the last few weeks that I feel as if there’s a hole in my heart, because although I know I should be on Tawni’s side, I’m not. I understand what Tristan is feeling; it’s the same thing I felt when I killed my father’s executioner, when I killed Rivet after Cole’s murder. Although they were still conscious and dangerous when I killed them, had they not been, I would have done the same thing. Stabbed Rivet. Pumped hot steel into my dad’s murderer. If I could have killed them twice I would have.

  I don’t say anything.

  “Adele!” Tawni exclaims, horror creasing her tear-stained face. “Don’t let them do this.”

  I don’t say anything, look away from my friend, a pathetic act of avoidance.

  I look at Tristan. “She’s right,” he says, to my surprise.

  “She is?” I say.

  “I am?” Tawni says.

  “No, Tristan, we don’t have a choi—” Trevor starts to say.

  “There’s always a choice,” Tristan interrupts. “We can fight them, but we can’t become them. And we can thank Tawni for reminding us of that. C’mon, we don’t have time to sit around and talk about it.”

  No one argues and everyone pitches in, dragging dead and unconscious bodies in a circle around Ram’s fallen form, like a final monument to his character, like he defended us from all of them. It’s not far from the truth.

  Finished, we stand and pay our final respects to a man who was a mystery to me, maybe a mystery to all of us. The only words spoken are by Tristan: “You’ve more than paid your debt, new friend,” he says, and I wonder what his words mean, but don’t ask. It’s not the right time, nor can we linger much longer. We flick on our flashlights and extinguish the spotlight, thrusting us back into a shaky-red form of existence.

  From there we run, shouldering our packs and weapons, heads down, flashlights aimed just far enough in front of us that we don’t ram ourselves into a boulder or sprain an ankle in a rut. The shipping tunnel is wide and tall, perfect for trucks hauling goods and supplies to be distributed within the Sun Realm. But not anymore, according to Roc. There are bigger and better shipping tunnels now, leaving this one available for us. Which is probably why the soldiers were camped there, biding their time until their orders came in, to be dispatched to the front lines of the attack on some vulnerable moon dweller subchapter. At least until w
e came along. Now they’re headed for the infirmary if they’re lucky—or the morgue if they’re not.

  An hour later we’re still running, sweating tears of salt from exertion and for Ram, who even in death might buy us some time, help us accomplish our mission. More than six miles already separate us from our foes, but it’s not enough. We need to be a few subchapters over before they learn the truth of what’s happened, and even then it won’t be far enough.

  Another hour passes with sweat blinding and stinging our eyes.

  Twelve, thirteen, fourteen miles, maybe more. An endless tunnel. We drink as we run, spilling the precious liquid down the tops of our tunics; I relish the coolness on my skin as rivulets of water meander down my chest, my torso, my legs. But my thirst never seems to be quenched; it’s as if the water spills from my pores the moment I swallow it, leaving me wanting. My feet are sore from the never-ending slap, slap, slap of my boots on the pebbly tunnel floor. Every muscle burns, even ones I didn’t think I really used while running—my abs, for example. It’s farther than I’ve ever run and yet I don’t think to stop. Might never stop.

  But then I have to pee.

  At first it’s just a minor urge, but within a few minutes it escalates into a major problem. “I’ve got to stop or I’m going to explode,” I say, slowing my strides.

  “We need to find a safe place to camp,” Tristan says, encouraging me forward with a hand on my back.

  “No, you don’t understand, I’m literally about to wet myself,” I say, stopping.

  “Me, too,” Tawni adds, pulling up beside me, her face sheened with sweat.

  “I’m shocked you made it this far. Usually girls have to go constantly,” Trevor says in such a way that makes it sound like something we should be ashamed of.

  “I’ve got to go, too,” Roc admits sheepishly, bent over.

  “Okay,” Tristan says, “we’ll all take a bathroom break except for Trevor, who will prove his manhood by holding it until we camp.”