The Tremblers

by Raquel Byrnes

  A thump over by Berkley caught my attention. He pushed something with his oar and turned to face Ashton. In the dark, the faceplate of the gas mask obscured his expression.

  Ashton looked over, nodded, but said nothing.

  The silent acknowledgement between the two men made me uneasy.

  “What was that?” I asked, turning.

  “Do we seem closer, Charlie?” He asked gesturing toward shore, his effort to distract me plain as day.

  The crackling glow of the dome did appear nearer than a few minutes before.

  I leaned further, trying to gage the distance despite no landmarks. A security shed listed in the darkness, it’s burned out windows gaping in the night against the Tesla grid’s illumination. A hundred yards further down, another shed, this one with a small flicker, a candle or lantern, stood just before a bend in the shore. “I think so…”

  “What of the Shore Patrol?” Berkley whispered.

  “They were hit months ago by Defiance and still there is no repair work done.” Ashton pointed to the ruined shed just ahead. “This is obviously a low priority area. No one treads these waters.”

  “And the other shed?” I asked pointing down shore. “Will he see us?”

  “If there is anyone there, most likely not.”

  “Most likely?”

  “He’d probably hear us first,” Ashton answered. “Don’t worry, Charlie. Just keep quiet.”

  He reached for me, but a splash near my hand caught my eye and I froze.

  The half-rotten torso of a woman bumped against the raft. Her hair, tangled in the rope of the balloon tied to the corner, made her head ram against the wood over and over again with a sickening thud. Her black eyes stared, unblinking, over a lipless grimace.

  I reached with shaking hands to disengage her from the raft when she gnashed, lunging for me with stubbed arms. I reared back, screaming and nearly toppling off the raft.

  Ashton was there in a second. He pushed at her body with the oar as she flailed, snapping at us while she drifted off in the current.

  A low moan tore out of my lips, deep and painful, I could not stop it. So cold. I was so cold in the wet and dark of the sea, surrounded by death.

  “Be quiet, Charlie.” His tinny voice warbled out of his mask tubes. “We do not know how many are out here.”

  “You knew?” I stared at him, hurt. “You knew and did not say a single word?”

  “I had hoped they were all dead,” Ashton explained, his arms flexing as he paddled. “They heard you.” He nodded to the security shed down the way. The flame, just a flicker before, ignited to a full search beam that panned the waters.

  “I—I’m sorry I screamed,” I whispered, flattening myself on the raft alongside a prone Berkley.

  Ashton gave a final push with his paddle and settled next to me on his stomach.

  “We’re almost there, anyway,” Ashton breathed, the hitch and hiss of his hose unnerving in the darkness.

  Berkley said nothing.

  The beam passed back and forth before resting on the flailing woman that had been caught on our boat. A resounding crack echoed across the landscape as the shore patrolman fired a single shot. The woman stilled, her limbs splashing limply into the water.

  I stared, shocked still, as the search beam went out, flooding us with the shrouding dark once more. Drawing in a shaking breath, I waited, terrified the beam would suddenly flare alight exposing us.

  Ashton’s body shifted, his arm slipping around my waist as if he meant to keep me from diving off the craft. A few moments later a small flame flickered in the dark shed once more. Ashton sat up, lifted the oar and began to paddle.

  I tried to get the image of the Trembler woman from my mind. Her death so casual, like the putting down of a wounded animal, left me speechless. I balanced myself in the middle of the raft, hugging my legs as we continued toward the banks. The distant sizzle of the Tesla Dome in the damp air made me long for home, but those kinds of thoughts threatened to send me into tears so I pushed them aside. I concentrated on the now. The danger and goal of this moment, knowing it was the only thing keeping me from completely crumbling under the fear and loss.

  I stared out at the sea. All around us, the ocean bubbled and bobbed with strange forms and I knew not if they were the treacherous heated plumes of gases escaping from the fissures that scarred the sea floor or the bodies of Tremblers waiting to drag me to the depths. Poison vapor hovered over the lapping waves, hiding whatever horrors lurked beneath.

  My teeth chattered violently and I buried my head in my arms to keep them still. Moans sounded in the waters far away, distant splashes and the noises of struggle floated to me from the dark. How did they end up in the ocean? They drifted out there in the murky water, quaking and groaning, and my chest heaved as I remembered Ashton’s assertion that it was pain. I hoped the people they had been did not still exist in those wretched bodies. I hoped oblivion took them before they became monsters. Another thunk against the raft from beneath sent me to my feet and I nearly toppled over the side.

  “It’s just upcroppings,” Ashton whispered, easing me back down. “We’re nearer to shore.”

  Up ahead, the Tesla Dome glowed only a few hundred yards away. The steady thrum and huff of the vast machine grew louder and I searched the shore. A skeletal outline of the dome generator’s pipe works stood silhouetted against the sky. The vast steam-powered engine driving the Tesla Dome’s grid churned just atop a rise. More than a block long, the enormity of it took me by surprise. Automated conveyor belts squeaked and rattled as they ferried fuel to its innards, the hoppers dumping and filling with coal let out a deafening, clattering sound.

  I wondered why there weren’t any noise buffers and then realized there would be no need. No one lived outside the grid to hear it.

  “Hold on.” Ashton used his oar to stop as we hit the shore. “Up there, through the steam works.”

  The moonlight did little to help us navigate the rocks and wells of sand; I fell twice, nearly bashing my head on a boulder. Wafting eddies of vapor seethed across the dunes and made it even more difficult to walk among the shadowy shapes on the shore.

  Ashton led the way.

  Berkley shuffled behind me, grunting and straining as we climbed the steep bank.

  As we approached the dome’s edge, the hair on my head and arms rose, static rippling the air like lavender wisps of smoke. The hum of current throbbed, my heart beating in time with the surges. All encompassing, the air around us grew heavy with charge.

  Ashton pointed to a section of the grid at ground level.

  The hole in the latticework of energy sparked at the edges.

  “Here,” he motioned for me to wait as he dropped to the sand, and elbow crawled through the rip in the dome. I went next, laying on my stomach and extending my arms. He pulled me through in one motion, helping me to my feet as we waited for Berkley to make it through.

  A thread of light snapped across the sky and I flinched, thinking it was a tracer gun, but thunder followed a second later. I looked up in time to get a face full of rain. It fell in driving sheets, pounding the grass and hissing as it hit the hot pipe works. I fought the slippery ground, sliding back a few feet for every small advance I managed.

  A two-story metal fence ran the length of the building, extending out to either side of where we stood. Topped with swirls of jagged wire, the sight of it nearly caused me to unravel with despair. “How will we get over this without flaying the skin from our legs and hands?” I moaned, not sure I had the strength.

  “Things are not always as they seem, Charlie,” Ashton said as he walked along the perimeter, his fingertips sliding along the corrugated panels. He hesitated, stepped back with his head tilted, and then stopped. He knelt, placing both palms on the lowest panel, and pushed, swinging it inward. “See?”

  I smiled despite my fatigue. “Finally something goes our way.”

  Berkley and I crawled through the fence after him.

  I
struggled to my feet.

  A growing cloud of steam formed with the deluge of cold drops hitting the Tesla Dome’s engine. The hot mist billowed all around us, obscuring everything but not nearly warm enough to sooth the chilly ache in my limbs. We climbed together, finally coming to rest against the first set of pylons bracketing the enormous tangle of pipes like flying buttresses.

  Out of breath, I paused to clear the drops from my face mask.

  Ashton leaned next to me, his arm snaking around my waist.

  I wanted so dearly to just lean on him and sleep. Perhaps when I woke this would all have been a nightmare.

  “You are shivering again,” he said, rubbing my arm with his palm. “Your clothes are drenched.”

  “I will be fine once I get warm,” I assured him. “It’s Berkley who worries me. He is not a young man.”

  “Is it my name I’m hearing over this ruckus?” Berkley staggered the final steps to us. He pointed to the filter canister at his waist. “We have to keep moving. Not much time left.”

  I nodded, turning to Ashton. “You know a way to enter the city through here?”

  “Yes, the grid is weaker where the generator connects with the beam emitter. We can climb around the equipment and make it into the city via the ducts underneath the exhaust shafts.”

  “There are no security soldiers here?” I asked, trying to look through the condensation on my mask and the rain.

  “No, it is automated and the core of the dome’s power is highly protected with a specialized locking system only the government can access. The entrance on the other side is sealed to all but Ignition Officials by a secure metal door. If we pass through by night, we should be able to make it into the city undetected.”

  “And then what?” Berkley asked. “What of the journal?”

  “The journal?” Ashton’s brows furrowed. “It is safe.”

  “Well, we’ve barely made it with the skin of our teeth,” Berkley said, shifting from foot to foot. “Are you sure you still have it?”

  “It’s safe,” Ashton repeated evenly, but the sudden tension in his shoulders set me on edge.

  “We should keep moving,” I said, hating the quickly rising discomfort churning my stomach.

  “Yes.” Ashton looked at me and then Berkley, his brows furrowed. “We should.”

  “And then what?” Berkley asked, edging closer. “You’ll contact The Order and hand the journal over?”

  “What is it to you?” Ashton asked, turning.

  “You’re a knight of The Order, yes? That is what you’ve been told to do.” Berkley squared his stance, his face going rigid with stress.

  “No,” I stepped between them. “Ashton believes, as I do, that the best chance of stopping this is to do as my father originally asked and deliver the journal to Collodin.”

  “You agree with this?” Berkley asked Ashton, his lip twitching. “You will take the journal to Collodin, not The Order?”

  “Yes,” Ashton said. “Lizzie should be happy that the Governors and The Order will not get their hands on it.”

  “She would be, yes,” Berkley said as he pulled a tracer gun from his jacket, aiming it at me with unsteady hands. “But it is not Defiance that I represent this evening. Hand me the journal, Miss Blackburn.”

  “What?” I blinked in the steam, barely able to see him. “How is that even working?”

  “We are near enough to the dome to draw power,” Berkley motioned with the weapon. He licked his lips, eyes darting from me to Ashton. “Do not doubt its lethality, Miss Blackburn.”

  Ashton’s form stepped in front of me, his shoulders blocking my view. “Easy, Berkley.”

  “Stop moving,” Berkley warned. “I know what you’re capable of.”

  “Just…explain what you are doing.” Hands out in a supplicating gesture, Ashton moved slowly toward the old man.

  “What is happening?” Fear streaked down my spine as I watched the nose of the weapon waver. Moving from behind Ashton, I did not believe my own eyes. Why would he save us only to threaten us? “Mr. Berkley, we must get through this together.”

  “Give it to me,” he cried, hand extended. “I do not want to hurt you, but…but I will use this if I must.”

  “No! I will not give it up.” I glanced at the tracer gun, heart racing. Perhaps I could hit it away. I coiled, ready to leap.

  “Charlie, no—” Ashton jumped in front of me.

  A whip of light snapped out from Berkley’s gun, lashing Ashton and smashing him to the ground.

  I screamed, rushing to him. He writhed beneath my palms, his face twisted with pain.

  “Why are you doing this?” I screamed at Berkley.

  “I am attempting to do what he will not,” Berkley said, his face a grimace behind his mask. “Ashton’s message to The Order when you arrived in Port Rodale left them questioning his loyalty. It appears they are correct in doubting him.”

  Ashton groaned, trying to sit up and I gasped at the ragged tear in his side. In the distance, between the pipes, furtive movement caught my eye and was gone.

  “You work for The Order?” Ashton asked, struggling to his feet. “You’re a traitor to your own cause, Berkley.”

  “For some time now Defiance has not held up its own ideals,” Berkley said over the clanging as he backed up. He moved into the first section of pipes, his voice echoing along the metal. “When Lizzie and her mercenaries started to bomb factories killing innocent workers, I had to do something to stop her. That was never what Defiance was supposed to be about.”

  “You cannot believe she would do that,” Ashton countered, attempting to steady himself on a nearby pylon.

  We followed Berkley deeper into the engine, the thrum so loud it vibrated through me.

  “There is something else going on.”

  “They said you felt that way. That your rescue of her from Riley proved your loyalty to her and Defiance was too great.” Berkley motioned with the gun for me to move.

  I stumbled, walking ahead of him with raised arms.

  Shadows shifted in the steam. Though the overhead grid of pipes shrouded us from the rain, the haze grew thicker here, a wall of drifting vapor that obscured our path.

  I was hopelessly lost mere yards into the engine works.

  “You know Lizzie,” Ashton continued, closing the gap between them. “Bombing factories and mines? Why would she harm the people she claims to champion?”

  “I am not high enough in Defiance to know their reasoning, but I agree with The Order on this one. Defiance is too radical. They have lost their way. She has lost her way and led us astray.”

  “So you sold them over to The Order?” Ashton said, his voice edged with anger. “I hope they paid you well for your betrayal.” He bumped into me, his tall form visible through the dark and fog as we walked ahead of Berkley. His rasping breaths echoed in the filter tubes.

  “You have no idea the good that can come of the money your Order paid me.” Berkley argued. “Countless families in Outer City need help and they aren’t getting it. You saw those children. They lost those limbs and eyes to the way they are forced to scratch a living. I can ease their suffering.”

  A clang of metal up ahead pulled my gaze and I stared between the columns of supports, eyes narrowed. “They trusted him to search for my father after his disappearance. What changed?”

  “I told them I thought Defiance might not be responsible for the bombings, and I thought finding Collodin, as your father insisted, was the wiser move.” Ashton urged me to move with his hand at my back. “I still believe things are not as they seem.”

  I did not expect that. Even then Ashton argued for what my father wanted despite not knowing why and what it cost him. To Berkley, I said, “What of Lizzie? She trusts you. She asked you to help us.”

  “She asked me to help you for the sole purpose of retrieving the journal for Defiance.” Berkley shook his head, his brows furrowed. “The Order gave me an opportunity to stop the violence against the miners, the w
orkers, everyone that Defiance is supposed to be fighting for in the first place. I had to make a choice.”

  “And you chose to sell the journal to The Order,” I finished. “She will realize you betrayed her.”

  We walked through a gap in the pipes, squeezing into a narrow walkway. A sign above read, maintenance access only, and I struggled against the feeling that the walls would crush us as we ventured deeper into the thrumming machine.

  “Lizzie is making things worse for everyone,” Berkley explained, his face pained. “I know she meant well at the beginning, but these bombings…they’re wrong.”

  “But we want to stop the blight first,” I reasoned. “Does The Order care so little for anything but power that they would keep a cure from coming to light?”

  “They promised to make the contents known,” Berkley said. “They said they have the means to help everyone—”

  “The Order wants peace.” Ashton winced, supporting himself on the railing as he walked. “And doesn’t much care how it comes. In their eyes, Defiance is causing unrest. If they rally the people, save them from this terror…”

  “There will be no stopping a rebellion,” Berkley snapped. “With Lizzie at the helm, screaming about how Defiance saved us all from monsters, she will use the fear and fervor of the citizens to challenge the Peaceful Union. Everyone will pay for her radical inclinations. Those in the outskirts of society will suffer at the hands of security soldiers raiding their homes in search of Defiance sympathizers. Children will be questioned about parents. Families ripped apart…”

  “And you aim to quell this rebellion you see coming?” Ashton shook his head.

  “Not stop,” Berkley said, his face a mask of worry. “I want to stop needless bloodshed after we’ve already lost so many to the quakes. A tempered approach. Compromise.”