The Collector

by Luna, David

  “He’s right. Time to get to work.” Quado puts back on her tough girl exterior. “Remember, they’re always moving.”

  Neil and Inna slip past the crumbling statue of Octovio Helms at the center of Sector A’s dilapidated town square. His arm continues to extend outwards, not pointing in any specific direction, but pointing towards the future. The posture is reminiscent of old Roman statues where his chiseled features and confident demeanor suggest things will undoubtedly be better for those that choose to follow him.

  The trek through the sector is slow and tedious as Neil and Inna take cover in the shadows while remaining on foot, pausing at every corner to peer around the bend before continuing.

  Neil loses focus when they pass Paiton’s former bungalow. Her screams replay in his mind, the images of Slayter’s violent assault flashing in quick bursts. “How could he be so selfish?” he yells at himself. He denied Wade the chance to be with Paiton and now here he is setting out down the same path with Inna. He always felt that our choices define our futures and that we have full control over what happens to us, but now he realizes his choices can only get them so far. For their plan to succeed, he’ll need Sage to intervene and help, something Neil failed to do for Wade while he restrained him off to the side and allowed Slayter to be Slayter. He’s going to need a little bit of compassion, something he also failed to give for the majority of his career. Doubts start to creep in, doubts if he is even worthy of being allowed to make it. He’s caused a lot of pain and torn many loved ones apart, so it is foolish for him to expect his future to turn out any differently. But whether he deserves to make it out or not, he won’t let his past choices prevent Inna from escaping to freedom if that is what it comes down to. It’s the least he can do to redeem himself in this life.

  Neil’s internal debate preoccupies him for much longer than intended. He stumbles to a stop as he nearly leads them past the final turn, then backtracks a block where they then exit to the outskirts of the sector. Exposed under the moonlight without shadowy protection, they jog down a dirt path towards the base of the mountain – the giant Wall looming higher up in the distance – until stopping near a RESTRICTED sign.

  “Is this really where Quado said?” Inna asks, bending over to catch her breath.

  Neil nods to confirm, his brow furrowed. It’s not the location that causes him to scratch his head, it’s another detail from Inna’s past. “I know your grandma came before the Wall, but what about your grandfather?” he asks. “Was he from here?”

  Inna shakes her head no.

  “So how did he get in?”

  She shrugs, unsure.

  “You think it’s a coincidence they got married at the same place Quado says are the hidden tunnels?”

  Neil refers to the base of the mountain where the brick church sits in ruins, the same brick church Inna’s grandparents were married and the same brick church Neil took Inna to the night of their first kiss.

  “That’s why it was so important to them,” Inna realizes. “He came through the tunnels!”

  “Let’s hope so,” he says. He takes her hand as they sprint past the Agency warning sign.

  Rays of moonlight pierce through the missing sections of roof, illuminating the collapsed architecture below.

  The light aids Neil and Inna as they comb through the roots and vines that have overtaken the church, scouring all four corners of the structure, including the front altar and rear balcony, for any sign of the tunnel entrance. The search comes up short.

  “Maybe it’s just a rumor?” Inna says, throwing her hands up in defeat.

  “Quado’s intel is good,” Neil defends.

  Inna plops in the bed of purple orchids adjacent to the trickling natural stream. Exhausted, her eyes gravitate to the familiar angel statue near the altar, its delicate features washed away by time.

  “You told me so many secrets about the landfill,” she says quietly to the statue as if she’s speaking to her grandma. “Why never anything about this?” She dips her fingers in the trickling stream.

  Neil takes notice of the moment. He watches Inna’s fingers dance on the surface of the water, creating ripples that are soon whisked away. His eyes remain focused on the propagating ripples, snatched and taken away much like they will be if he doesn’t figure something out before the Agency catches up to them.

  Suddenly, Neil cocks his head as something dawns on him – the trickling stream only crosses halfway through the church before it disappears underneath the foliage with no clear end destination. He crouches down and spreads the dense patch of orchids, which allows him to trace the zigzagging stream through the center of the church and all the way to the angel statue at the altar.

  “You don’t give up,” Inna says shaking her head incredulously.

  “Where does it go?” he asks. He kneels to dust away a pile of stones, noticing a hair-thin crack where the base of the statue meets the floor. He leans shoulder-first to try to slide it out of the way.

  “Don’t knock it over,” she says.

  “I’m not Superman,” Neil jokes, knowing there is no way he could tip the solid object over. “Come help me. That water has to go somewhere.”

  Neil clinches his jaw as he manages to shift the block of stone about a centimeter, then a couple more before he examines the outer rim of a newly revealed hole underneath the base – a hidden shaft leading below. He laughs and jumps in celebration.

  “You’re joking,” Inna says in disbelief. “You know I don’t like it when you play tricks on me.”

  “Didn’t I say come help me?”

  Inna joins him at the altar where he instructs her how to push with her shoulder. Their feet nearly slide out from under them on the fallen debris while they push, veins bulging from their temples. Neil turns his back to the statue and drives his heels into the stone floor. They use all their might until the angel statue breaks loose from its barrier and miraculously slides fully out of the way, revealing a wide black hole leading below, the entrance to the hidden transfer tunnel. Neil and Inna stare at their ticket to travel undetected, one step closer to freedom. They soak in the moment until Inna hurls her arms around him, her hope restored. Neil holds her tight, then lowers his body into the darkness below.

  The faint trickle of the natural stream echoes throughout the cavernous tunnel, with the water from the church pooling on the tunnel floor and continuing its journey throughout the web of underground cracks and crevices. Years of mining, blasting, and erosion has created an archway large enough for a mining cart to pass through, or even worse, a cattle car transport vehicle.

  Neil drops in from above and lands on a pair of old mining tracks, once used to haul out the various types of stone and ore, though based on the rubble burying the tracks, they haven’t been used since the Wall was built. As Neil helps guide Inna down inside, she immediately notices the tunnel slithering away in only one direction, the church ruins marking the beginning of this secret path.

  Neil leads them forward. Quiet. Stealthy. On alert. With the air still and heavy, the only noise that is heard comes from the occasional loose stone slipping out from underneath their feet.

  After nearly two hours of travel general fatigue sets in. It causes their movements to turn clunky and much less covert, their breath and heavy footsteps beginning to echo from around every bend.

  Suddenly, Neil raises his fist to halt as he senses an oncoming noise – a deep rumble. Inna nearly collides into him, unable to see in the darkness. Neil places his hand on the tunnel’s side wall to feel the vibrations growing stronger from behind the rock.

  Inna spots a small beam of light shining through a pinhole in the wall. She peers in to see a parallel transfer tunnel, the cavern laced with ceiling lights to provide illumination. The tunnel’s path is wider than theirs, and the mining tracks are cleared from stone debris littering the floor, which allows for the oncoming rumble – one of the Agency’s cattle cars – to sputter along the parallel route.r />
  Inna’s eyes grow wide at the sight of the truck bed loaded with people being hauled away. Most of the faces are drooped downwards, each person engrossed in their final thoughts. Inna knows she was slated to be on one of these trucks, one of the melancholy people set to die. It brings about a sense of guilt.

  “You don’t need to see that,” Neil whispers to interrupt. He prods her to continue forward, though even he sneaks in a quick glance at the passing death vehicle.

  After another hour of twists, turns, ducking, slipping, and climbing, the hidden tunnel both widens and brightens as it converges with six other tunnels at once, a large intersection where each tunnel breaks off in a separate direction. It’s like a metropolitan underground city as the mounted lights are much larger and brighter, while crude directional signs dangle above the entrances to each route.

  As Neil scans the five potential routes, he realizes that their tunnel isn’t hidden, it’s merely out-of-service as only three of the six tunnels have ceiling lights and directional signs installed above them – SLUMS, DOWNTOWN, and SECTOR A – while the others, including their current tunnel, are bathed in darkness.

  Numerous cattle cars loaded with volunteers roll by at unpredictable intervals, coming from both the Slums and Downtown while lurching towards Sector A. Neil knows the processing facility is near this sector, which explains the empty cattle cars returning and backtracking the opposite direction, presumably to pick up more volunteers.

  “How do you think the market gets by this?” Inna asks as she marvels at the complex web beneath the city. “We need a schedule just to cross here.”

  Her words echo the same sentiment Neil has been concerned with ever since his investigation at the Archives led him to the existence of the hidden tunnels – that Sage and her band of gypsies couldn’t have possibly avoided detection for so long on their own.

  “Which way?” Inna asks.

  Neil glances down to the half-buried mining tracks beneath their feet and follows them with his eyes as they extend through the intersection towards an opposite tunnel. That tunnel is also unlabeled without a sign, which means it is out-of-service and not in Agency use – the perfect route for the Black Market to sneak through. He quickly examines the two other unmarked routes, but he finds his focus returning to the tunnel directly across the way. He knows he’s going to have to take a gamble and guess which of the three unmarked routes to take.

  “That one,” he says as he nods directly across from them.

  Now they just have to get across. Neil scans for anything of use, surrounded by nothing except rocks and stones. Just then, he spots the steel spikes used to secure the mining tracks to the tunnel floor buried beneath the rubble, most of them old and rusted, but finds a damaged one bent and protruding out halfway. He struggles to wrench the spike loose, nearly slicing open his palms in the process as he pulls out not one, not two, but three spikes nearly seven inches in length. Inna cocks her head as she watches him unfasten his belt and pierce the leather strap with the metal tips.

  “Remember my tires when I first came to your shop?” Neil asks, revealing a makeshift strip of metal spikes similar to the one the group of misfits used on his utility truck. “It’ll cause a diversion.”

  “And also put them on alert,” Inna reminds him.

  “Then we better be quick.”

  Neil studies the cattle cars as they continue to travel back and forth, attempting to find a pattern in their intervals. For a brief moment when the intersection is empty, he tosses the trap out into the intersection near the Sector A wooden directional sign. Within moments, a loaded cattle speeds through the intersection and travels towards Sector A as expected. Neil and Inna’s eyes follow the truck’s tires as it races unknowingly closer to the trap, but the vehicle misses it by mere inches. Within moments, another cattle car enters the cavern and zooms towards Sector A, but it’s the same result as the tires just miss the strip of spikes.

  Inna’s hearts sink. The plan failed. Her eyes stare up at Neil, seemingly asking the same question running through his mind: what now? For every step closer they keep running into another roadblock. Perhaps they should give up.

  Suddenly, as Neil attempts to find the words to lift Inna’s spirits – CLANK! CLANK! CLACK! – an empty cattle car whips violently up and down as it returns from the Sector A tunnel, the spikes piercing its front tires. Two Tunnel SEOs on the rear bumper immediately leap off on alert as the vehicle careens to a stop. An additional two SEOs from an oncoming cattle car jump out to assist, shouting for their volunteers to stay put in the rear. It doesn’t take long for the four SEOs to discover the strip of metal spikes still stuck in the stalled vehicle’s tires, which sends the officers into an even bigger frenzy. They shout amongst themselves and turn their attention to the volunteers huddled together in the truck bed, chaos breaking out exactly as hoped.

  Neil and Inna seize the opportunity to slip into the intersection. They dash towards the targeted out-of-service tunnel until one of the volunteers from the stopped cattle car notices, pointing at Neil and Inna and unknowingly tipping off the four Tunnel SEOs. Neil and Inna duck for cover behind a large boulder adjacent to the slums’ tunnel entrance, only halfway across and now stuck in the middle of the cavern.

  Neil places his hand over Inna’s trembling lips as two of the four Tunnel SEOs begin marching closer to investigate. Neil considers fleeing to the slums. With a brief head start, they might actually have a chance in the ensuing foot chase, and once there Inna would know dozens of places to hide. However, that potential escape option is quickly eliminated once the sound of an oncoming engine rumbles from deep within the slums’ tunnel. Within moments, headlights appear on the rock wall to confirm an approaching cattle car just around a bend in the tunnel behind them. They’re trapped from both sides.

  Knowing their fate, Neil tightens his grip around his gun and extends Inna the shock baton. “Swing fast and swing hard,” he whispers.

  Inna shakes her head no. His eyes command her to take it, having no other option, but she continues to deny him.

  The headlights from the oncoming vehicle dance along the rock wall as the cattle car rounds the bend and comes into view, only a couple hundred meters behind them, while the two Tunnel SEOs are even closer in the other direction, the two groups closing in on them.

  Neil forces the shock baton onto Inna’s lap whether she wants it or not, then readies his gun and prepares for a desperate last stand. With the Tunnel SEOs nearly on top of them, Inna finally grabs the weapon, but rather than leaping out to attack, she instead directs the electrified tip straight into a cable pinned to the tunnel wall. The cable slithers upwards to the ceiling and connects to the string of mounted bulbs, providing power to the lights, including those dangling over the intersection. The jolt sends a surge throughout the grid and leaves the tunnels in pitch-black.

  If it was chaos before, it’s pandemonium now. The rumble of the oncoming cattle car shifts to idle as the vehicle slams to a stop, its headlights narrowly falling short of reaching Neil and Inna by mere inches. Multiple armed shadows hop off the bumper and dash the rest of the way towards the intersection while the original two Tunnel SEOs take aim, the two groups unknowingly targeting one another.

  Faint footsteps can be heard mixed in with the turmoil, but are luckily masked by the shouting officers as Neil and Inna sprint the remaining half of the intersection towards the out-of-service tunnel.

  Suddenly the power surge ends and the lights stabilize just as both groups of SEOs meet head on, nearly at a clash until they realize who the other team is. They whirl around to scour the intersection, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary. The original cattle car with shredded tires remains stalled across the way, and the volunteers continue to huddle together in the rear of the second vehicle.

  Neil peers out from the darkened out-of-service tunnel to glimpse the confusion. Confirming they went unnoticed, he then ducks back into the shadows as together he and Inna
continue deeper on their journey to find Sage.

  They made it.

  ******

  Falling Memories

  Another building collapsed in Sector A today. This was an old mailroom back when people had letters delivered to one another, then was used as a distribution center for the tank trucks before they needed to find a bigger space.

  When is any money going to be put back into preserving our buildings? Time doesn’t wait on the budget crisis! And better yet, when is anyone going to write me a letter? Maybe someone already has but there’s no one to deliver it…

  -Quado

  22

  A dried waterline stains the rotted foundations of the Victorian structures of Sector B. Tiny weeds and roots force their way up through the cobblestone pathways, having had a decade to reclaim the abandoned sector.

  “What if we missed them?” Inna says, as she and Neil move along the empty ruins. “What are we supposed to do, check every tunnel? We won’t make it through again.”

  Just then, their ears perk up at the rising sound of indistinguishable chatter coming from afar. Neil follows the voices. They pass through an archway and stumble upon a hidden bazaar – the bustling Black Market. Dozens of mobile gypsies squat side by side offering prostitutes, thieves for hire, unauthorized music, revealing clothing, water rations, and gambling, amongst other services. Candles and strings of lights bathe the illicit shops and stands in an orange glow.

  “Sage?” Neil asks a vendor, but the vendor grunts and ignores him as he boxes up his supplies. Inna notices the others doing the same.

  “They’re packing up,” she realizes.

  Neil and Inna quicken their pace, on a limited amount of time. Neil tugs a clothing vendor by the arm. “We’re looking for Sage,” he says. The clothing vendor points deeper into the bazaar, deeper into the sea of merchants.

  Neil always knew Sage, the gypsies, and the black market existed, but he never knew it was this large in scale. As they move deeper into the broken sector, he revisits the question as to how this extensive of an operation could remain hidden and undetected. Everyone knows the market is mobile, never staying in any one place too long, but the city is only so big. The Agency and its Collectors are trained specifically to track people down, so why could they never find this? Better yet, why were they never assigned to find this? It is probably because the Collectors were preoccupied with the Brigade, Neil supposes. That’s the only reason he can think of to justify the Agency’s questionable decision of inaction, though it still doesn’t explain how the Black Market continuously evades detection within the tunnels. While the tunnels provide shadowy protection, even he and Inna had trouble sneaking through and it was just the two of them on foot. Here there are dozens, maybe even hundreds of merchants, loaded down with packs on their backs and wagons housing crates, supplies, and even their families, close behind them. Even with all that has happened, Neil continues to give the Agency the benefit of the doubt. Just because he chose Inna over the system doesn’t mean he no longer believes in it or that it shouldn’t exist. What else are they to do with too many people and too little water and resources? Like Wade, he just doesn’t want to be part of it any longer ever since Inna woke something up inside of him.