Skillful Death

by Ike Hamill

  I don’t think the attack has anything to do with wanting to drive anyone from the forest. I think the logicals have timed this attack just to drive the creatives underground so they can leave their stronghold without fear of attack.

  “What about your soldiers?” I ask.

  “Who?”

  “The fighters who work for you? Like the ones who put that bag on my head.”

  “They’re fine,” he says.

  “Yes, but where are they?”

  “In their shelters, I’m sure.”

  “How long will the attack last?”

  “It varies. A week is the longest. We can easily survive that long in our tunnels. We have provisions stockpiled for ten times that long. They have no idea of our level of preparation.”

  “But while you’re down here, they are free to do whatever they like up there?”

  “It’s a maelstrom,” he says. “They can’t travel through the forest during one of their own attacks. Trees are being uprooted and thrown into the sky. Branches are smashing down. That would be suicide. Our tents are ripped from their footings and tossed by the wind. That’s why we have no permanent structures up there. Everything is disposable. It’s all a replaceable illusion. The forest will be regenerated by the morning following the attack, and we’ll have our tents up that same afternoon. We’re completely impervious.”

  Some of the other Providentials nod in appreciation of their own ingenuity.

  “What if they’ve simply driven you underground so you can’t go to meet Constantine?”

  Peter’s smile fades as he considers the question.

  “But how would they know?”

  “As I told you before, you have a mole in your organization.” I say it loud enough for the other Providentials to hear me. Eyes dart around. These people are not shrewd. When they look at each other, I see who each person distrusts. Peter glances at the squat man before his eyes return to me.

  He pulls me a little distance from the group, which is hard to do in such close quarters.

  “If this meeting with Constantine is so important, I cannot let a spy derail it. You must tell me. When is the meeting?”

  “I’m sorry, but I haven’t received the psychic signal yet. What’s worse is I can’t receive it underground. I have to get to the surface,” I say. Of course, I’m making this up. The entire story about the signal is made up, but I’m happy to have an excuse to force the Providentials out of this warren.

  “We can attempt to escape the radius of the attack, but it will take some time,” he says.

  “We need to hurry.”

  “I don’t know who to trust. You and I will leave alone. Perhaps we’ll take just one other; I know I can trust her.”

  “We have to take them all, even if one is the mole,” I say. “It’s the only way you’ll be able to determine who the mole is.”

  I hope he doesn’t question the logic behind my statement. I don’t have any logic behind my statement. But, as I thought, this man is not shrewd. He also seems afraid that someone will guess that he’s not shrewd, so he doesn’t question my statement at all.

  “Of course,” he says. Peter turns back to the group of Providentials. “We have to get back to the surface so Malcolm can receive his signal. We’ll take the transverse tunnels to the old mines and then escape through the quarry.”

  The squat man shakes his head before he speaks. “Those tunnels haven’t been tested in years. They’re likely to have collapsed.”

  Peter narrows his eyes. “We’ll assess the tunnels when we get there.”

  One of the women takes the lead. She opens a hatch in the ceiling and pulls herself up to a ladder. Nobody speaks. They just follow. Peter takes the rear and shepherds me in front of him.

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  The tunnels begin as terrible and they get worse as we go. It’s best when we’re climbing. At least then you can spread out to your full height, but you’re always dealing with someone’s feet right in your face. Below, Peter is impatient and he pushes at my feet.

  The first few horizontal tunnels are lined with planks all around. As the storm rages above us, the ground shakes and dirt sifts down between the boards. My instinct is to look up when I hear the sounds. That’s a terrible instinct. I get dirt in my eyes several times before I learn.

  After a couple twists and turns we’re in another small room with a vertical shaft in the center of the ceiling. We don’t have to send someone up to check the weather. We can hear the thrashing wind from the bottom of the ladder. The guide woman pulls boards from the wall, revealing a derelict tunnel. This one has bricks for walls and the ceiling is the underside of jagged rocks. It’s like it was dug under a massive slab, and the path of the tunnel follows the contours of the rock. From floor to ceiling, the tunnel is only a couple of feet tall. We’re going to pass through this one on our knees.

  Here and there, the walls have caved in and we have to crawl over dirt and loose bricks. My knees are banged up within minutes and my hand throbs from the splinter. I should have picked it out when we were stopped, but it didn’t seem important at the time. It’s just a minor annoyance, but I can’t stop looking at my palm.

  It’s not like I can see much. A few of the Providentials are pushing flashlights along the ground, but there are no lights built into these tunnels.

  It feels like we’re crawling forever. My shoulders ache, my knees are bruised, and I keep hitting my back on the ceiling.

  “It’s blocked,” the woman calls out from up ahead. Her voice sounds muffled, like someone’s pressing a pillow against her face as she talks. When we all stop, it’s so quiet I realize I can hear my own breathing. That’s an unsettling feeling, as if we’re all buried and soon we’ll breathe only dirt.

  “Can you dig?” Peter asks.

  The tunnel is so tight, I’m not sure I can turn around. Are we going to have to back all the way out of this tomb? An image pops into my head—what if the tunnel has collapsed behind us as well? It’s a logical assumption. The earth has been shaking and we’ve seen a lot of the walls caved in. Who knows if those bricks fell ten years ago or earlier today? This could be a tiny tube of air we’re rapidly consuming.

  “I think so,” she says. Her voice sounds so muffled. I can’t stop picturing her drowning in loose dirt. What if her digging causes more of the tunnel to cave in? Time seems to stretch out forever as we wait for word from up front. I can only see the backside of the Providential in front of me, and I don’t even know his name.

  “Maybe we need to turn back,” I say to Peter.

  “I don’t think we can,” he says.

  “What? What does that mean?”

  I’m starting to panic. Knowing you’re about to panic doesn’t help to alleviate the feeling. It’s rising in my chest like a hot red wave. I keep feeling like I should be able to out-think it, but it’s coming faster on the swells of my panting.

  “Malcolm,” Peter says from behind me.

  He puts his hand on the back of my calf and I spring away from his touch, ramming my back into the rock above.

  “It’s no use,” the woman says. “The walls are falling in as fast as I’m digging.”

  My brain overloads and I fall forward onto my face. I’m breathing like a freight train. In my imagination, I can see all the oxygen being sucked from the tunnel to power my useless fright. My arms go numb.

  “Relax, Malcolm,” Peter says. “You can’t die here.”

  “What?” I manage to ask during a quick exhale.

  “You can’t die in here. I know it to be true.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “He’s right,” another voice says from in front of us. It’s one of the men, but I don’t know which. I haven’t heard either of them speak enough to connect their voices to their faces.

  These people are crazy. I don’t know if they’ll ever die; they certainly don’t have a good grasp on mortality. According to Bud, the old blind man was an old blind man two-hundred years ago, so who knows
how old these people are. Knocking around for all those years must put a weird spin on your perspective. It might even make you casual about being trapped in a tiny tunnel a hundred feet below the ground while a maelstrom tears apart the world above.

  With their longevity, I would think this scenario might frighten them even more. Worse than dying in this tunnel, they could be trapped in here, unable to die and slowly going insane.

  “It’s a tight fit, but I think we can make it,” the woman calls back.

  The waiting is even more terrible now that I’m picturing her trying to wriggle through a hole. I’m anxious for my turn to try and I’m hoping that the squat man doesn’t get stuck in there. Finally, I see the feet ahead of me shuffling forward. Of course, we only move a couple of feet before we have to stop for the next wriggler, but at least it’s progress.

  As I wait, I’m certain that the air is growing thin. I can barely take in enough oxygen to stay conscious. It feels like I’m breathing through a straw. I want to claw past the man in front of me and then whomever else is blocking the path. I hear Peter’s steady breathing behind me and I resent him sharing the precious resource.

  Finally, it’s me. I’m the next one to the blockage. I can see the lights of the Providentials on the other side. The hole I’m meant to climb through is a tiny crescent moon of light. How did the squat one make it through here? I have to turn my head to the side to begin the attempt. There’s no room to look forward. That’s a terrible feeling—trying to climb forward when you can’t look to see where you’re going. I claw at the soft walls and loose bricks.

  My mind flies back to a memory of digging. I was naked and pulling myself up through moist dirt and a tenacious network of tree roots. When was that? I can smell the rich dirt and taste it forcing its way into my mouth as try to escape the loamy grave. It must have been a dream. I would certainly remember being buried alive, wouldn’t I?

  When I pull my head past the collapsed part of the tunnel, I suck in a relieved breath. My feet flail behind me. I’ve got nothing to push on. My arms are pinched to my sides. For a second, I believe I’m stuck. Then, one inch at a time, I move forward until my arms are released. I tug at the walls and flop through to the other side of the hole. The Providentials in front of me shuffle on. I only have to wait a second for Peter. He makes quick work of sliding past the blockage.

  We crawl fast to catch up with the group.

  The light is brighter up ahead. The tunnel is a little wider and I feel like I can breathe deeply once more. What really removes the sense of claustrophobia is the sound. With more room for the sound to bounce around, it no longer feels like I have cotton stuffed in my ears. The ceiling pulls away. Here, it’s an archway of brick instead of the underside of some vein of rock. I could almost crouch and walk upright.

  We emerge into the back of a cave carved into powdery gray stone. I stand up and grip my face in my hands. With a shudder, the last of my panic washes away. It’s flushed from my bloodstream by the relief of fresh air. I walk to the edge of the cave and look out on a glorious scene.

  Our cave is cut into the wall of a deep quarry. Above, trees reach out with hungry branches to absorb all the sunlight above the quarry. Below, emerald green water sits still in a deep pool. I can’t tell if the water is so green because of some mineral or because it’s reflecting the filtered light from the trees. Either way, it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I feel reborn.

  I untuck my shirt and shake about a pound of loose dirt from inside my clothes. I must look as filthy as the Providentials who stand in a circle, holding conference near the back of the cave.

  Peter breaks from the others and approaches. I’m still looking out over the quarry.

  We need to know when the meeting will take place.

  I look him in the eye. I don’t even consider trotting out my old lie about waiting for a transmission.

  “Tomorrow,” I say.

  “The Skomin farm is large. Where will the meeting take place?”

  “The cedar grove.”

  Peter returns to his group and I hear them plotting.

  “Tell your men to set up the devices in the cedar trees. As soon as it’s dark—no later. Set them for maximum sensitivity. If anything bigger than a dog walks through those woods, I want the whole thing to be splinters in an instant,” Peter says to the squat man.

  One of the women speaks next. “What about the snipers? If we position them along the road, we should be able to take them out before they’ve even approached.”

  “Set them up, but only as a precaution,” Peter says. “They could already be positioned on the other side of the road.”

  “We could still send patrols to the south of the grove,” the woman says.

  “Good,” Peter says.

  What they lack in strategy, they seem to compensate with manpower. As I listen, they commit enough forces to take out an army. I wonder how their fighting has remained bloodless for so long.

  The squat man pulls out a device. It’s some sort of radio, I imagine. He starts to convey orders.

  “And tell them to drop a ladder for us as soon as they can get a squad over here,” Peter says to the squat man.

  I have to think of a way to warn Bud. I was supposed to get these people to the cedar grove, but they’re engineering a sophisticated surprise attack. This is beyond what I thought they were capable of. If Bud is as ignorant as I was, he will be in deep trouble.

  “Wait,” I say to Peter. “This is supposed to be a peaceful meeting with Constantine.”

  “We know the nature of this meeting,” Peter says. “He hopes to inspire us to fight with the other Providentials. We will grant him his wish.”

  How does that expression go? “If you can’t spot the patsy at the table…” I guess the same applies if you look around the table and believe that everyone is a patsy.

  “It will be a massacre.”

  “And it won’t be the first,” he says. So much for the idea that blood had never been spilled. “And if Constantine is successful at luring the others to the cedar grove, then it will be the last. We’ll finally end this war. While their leaders are trying to extract the spirit from Constantine’s chest, we’ll be free to circle around and capture the center of the village.”

  “But if they do extract his spirit, they’ll have the power to overwhelm you,” I say.

  “That’s all nonsense. It’s all lies they tell children to keep them from exploring beyond the bamboo.”

  My options are few. I could try to fight this bunch. They’re old, but one versus six will likely end poorly for me. I could go along with them, but they’ll probably find little use for me once they’ve eliminated Constantine. I’m not going in that damn tunnel again. I decide to exercise my last option.

  I run for the mouth of the cave. Peter doesn’t try to stop me. I don’t think he realizes my intention until it’s too late. I fling myself from the edge, launching as far as I can. Below me, the surface of the emerald pool is at least forty feet down. I splash down near the center of the pool and plunge deep into the cool water. My ears pop and I fight my way back to the surface. My clothes weigh me down and my shoes make my legs feel like lead.

  I pull myself to the opposite edge of the quarry pool and begin my climb. The wall isn’t as tall on this side, and I’m up the rocks in no time. I glance back. Peter is leaning out through the entrance of the cave, looking up towards the top of the cliff above him. I run off into the woods and begin to circle the quarry. I need to figure out how to find Bud.

  ♣ ♢ ♡ ♠

  The artistic Providentials have ordered a group to track me down. I hear them behind me just as I reach the area devastated by the artificial storm sent by the logical Providentials. I’ve got a hunch and it proves correct. The people following me don’t want to enter the clearing. A lifetime of living under the trees has conditioned them.

  For me, it’s a beautiful sight. The wind has ruined hundreds of trees. Some pulled their roots straig
ht from the ground as they were laid flat. Others have been stripped of their branches and leaves but the trunks still stand. The blue sky overhead looks foreign after spending so many days in the forest. It’s foreign but gorgeous to my eyes. So much for Bud’s idea that the trees will fill the sky immediately.

  I hear a metallic clank behind me. Next to me, the split trunk of a fallen tree explodes in wood chips. Someone is shooting at me. I hunch over and weave into a cluster of branches. Two more shots ring out, but neither comes close. I work my way deeper into the clearing.

  I follow the toppled trees, hoping that they’re taking me in the right direction. My pace is terrible. In a couple of spots the wind has torn everything away and all that’s left is soft dirt. In those spots, I can run, but most of my path is littered with downed branches and trunks that I have to crawl over.

  I reach an area where the clearing splits. I imagine that two different storms must have crossed paths. I can’t tell which path to choose. The sun is going down so I have some sense of which direction is west, but I don’t know how far we traveled in those tunnels. I climb a downed trunk to get a better view. I hear shots instantly and bark explodes around me. I leap back down to the dirt. If the aim of these guys is any indication, perhaps Bud’s not in trouble.

  From what little scouting I can manage, it seems that the clearing is wider to the right. That will take me east. I think that’s the right direction to go. I dash between two trunks and then across an open area, expecting a shot to knock me down with each step. The ground slopes down and I sprint across it. I’m crawling through a thick wall of leaves when I hear the next shot. Leaves flutter to the ground and I dive down too. That was too close. I swear I felt the bullet pass right by my head.

  Maybe if I move to the other side of the clearing, I’ll be out of range.

  A flash of light catches my eye and I bury my head in my hands, afraid that the next shot is coming.

  I’m still alive.

  I peek out and there’s the flash again. The light is red and it flashes in three quick bursts. I blink and see the source. There’s a woman standing in the forest—a few trees deep—and she’s holding a light. She flashes it three more times. She’s trying to get my attention.