by M. E. Parker
The clerk pointed a pencil at Sindra. “There’s a reason for our rules.” She leaned across the desk and slapped her hand down. Her eyes looked like giant horsefly eyes behind her lenses. “Fifty people to feed. But only one piece of bread. Fifty fireboxes to fuel with only one piece of coal.” She paused, staring straight into Sindra’s eyes. “Fifty enemy soldiers to shoot. Only one bullet.” She perused her papers. “It all works together. Do your duty to win the war.”
Sindra nodded, unsure whether she had permission to speak.
After a lengthy silence the clerk pronounced the sentence. “Trial by stockade, three—no, four days in the shirker coop.” She removed her thick lenses and looked up at Sindra with a stern but sympathetic glare. “And, if you survive your tribulation, you will undergo reorientation.” The clerk tinged a bell on her desk.
Hearing her punishment made Sindra’s knees weak. The world began to spin. She knelt down on all fours and threw up on the stone floor of the Industry Administration. The bile burned her dry throat.
A nearby ghost threw a burlap rag that landed on Sindra’s neck. “Get that cleaned up.”
She reached for the rag and dabbed the spot on the floor, and then wiped the drool from her mouth.
Two ghosts prodded her to her feet. “Come on.”
The team of ghosts led Sindra down the main thoroughfare of the Industrial complex where overloaders laden with coal loaded barges, and slogs of all stripes convened en route to mines and factories. In the center of the common area between the machine shop and skilled munitions assembly, a ghost marched to a chain and lowered a cage that hung from an extended pulley. He yanked the door open and escorted Sindra into the cage, the shirker stockade. He affixed the shirker sign on the edge of the cage, and two of them pulled the chain until the middle of the enclosure lifted to eye level of passing slogs.
The trial by stockade was reserved for a slog suspected of shirking or any other capital crime thought to impede production. The coop was a cage too short to fully stand in and too narrow to lie down. The rules of the shirker coop dictated that a displayed slog may only have to drink and eat what other slogs offered from their own ration. If anyone felt enough sympathy to share from their own already paltry ration, the shirker might get enough water and food to survive the stint. The regular slog water ration barely kept a normal slog alive.
The only person Sindra had seen in the coop hadn’t survived the ordeal, which implied a guilty verdict in the trial by peers. Since Sindra hadn’t lived in Jonesbridge long, other than Myron, she doubted whether anyone would take enough pity on her to share. Without Myron, she lost hope.
Countless eyes of fellow slogs cut her angry glances as they passed. Some looked away, others paid no attention to her at all. The shift change completed and the streets emptied. Darkness fell and with it, the temperature. She hugged her ribs and squatted for warmth, working her tongue from cheek to cheek, trying to produce moisture to quench her thirst. The guards who raped her had given her extra rations in the past. No one wanted a carpie with axe blades for hips, they’d told her, but where were they now with their rations? Sindra grabbed the bars on the cage and rocked it, screaming. The factory noise smothered her clamor as though it had wrapped her pleas in a blanket and thrown them into the canal.
Every time she nodded to sleep, her shivering woke her, so she stared into the darkness where the yellow sparkles of factory lights dotted the landscape, dreaming that Myron would appear with a loaf and a sip of water. Tonight, Sindra faced a bitter, violent wind, a wind that acted to clear the air much more than usual. She took a breath, clean and cold, so cold she almost preferred the stink of smoke. She began to see shapes in the darkness, outlines of railroad tracks and Old Nickel’s face standing next to Bug and Nap.
Shadows hopping from one place to the next, Sindra reached out to catch one. She heard a voice, unsure whether it was real, until she felt the warmth of a threadbare blanket slip through the bars on the cage.
“Here.” The voice said. “Half my water.” He passed a canteen through.
Sindra wrapped up in the blanket and squinted into the night to see who had shown so much kindness. Beside the cage, the new guy, the one-legged-man who had created quite a stir in 14-C recently with tall tales of the outside world. He leaned on his cane and spoke softly.
“I’ll share what rations I can with you. May not be enough water to survive four days out here, though.” He dug a dried sprig out of his smock. “Here. Chew on this barber weed. Something I give the mules from time to time to settle them down after an injury. It’ll help you through the night. Might make you see strange things though.”
“Thanks,” Sindra whispered, pulling the blanket tighter. “Why are you helping me?”
“You and Myron are the only ones that know the way out of this place. Someday I’ll expect you to show me the secret. You gotta survive this first.”
“Myron’s gone,” she whispered, torn between her hope that he disappeared because he’d fallen in a hole or passed out from illness, and dreaming that he ran to his flying machine and sailed it over the Gorge.
He seemed not hear her, or not to care. “Besides,” he went on, “I used to work as a mule man in a traveling preacherman show, thirty years back. Preacherman claimed that kind deeds sometimes come back around.”
She watched as Errol hop-skipped on his crutch until his darkened body blended with the night. Sindra closed her eyes and imagined Myron’s postcard with a picture of sunshine and warm sandy beaches.
Chapter 9
“Sindra!” Myron stumbled to his feet. Blood rushed from his head, and he fell backwards. His eyes came clear finally on the now familiar form of Coyote Man, leaning with his arms over his knees against the opposite wall.
“There you are. Not sure if you’d croaked on me or not,” Coyote Man stated.
Myron backed away. Still woozy from his illness, his thoughts a kaleidoscope of dark tunnels and caves and plans gone wrong, Myron lunged at Coyote Man, leading with his fist. He threw a weak punch while flashes of the last thing he remembered, Coyote Man raising a board over his head as Myron waited for Sindra, drove him to strike again. He connected a blow just under Coyote Man’s chin and followed with his left hand. He pounded on Coyote Man’s chest, visions of Sindra, now out there alone, driving every blow.
Coyote Man did not budge, as though Myron had struck a brick wall covered in fur. “Save your energy, boy. You’ve been pretty sick. Burning with the fever and shaking, talking the talk of a dying man.”
Myron stopped to catch his breath as Coyote Man turned around and ducked underneath a ledge. Myron followed, limping out of a stone recess into a tiny cavern with a fire at its center, smoke billowing through a fissure topped with a narrow strip of sky. Hanging from an iron rod over the center of the fire was a rusted pot full of churning soup with chunks of brown and gray bobbing through the bubbles.
Coyote Man dipped a wooden scoop into the pot and handed it to Myron. “Bone stew,” he said. “I call it coyote casserole.” He filled a bowl for himself.
Steam rose from the scoop. Myron put the stew to his mouth. The hot liquid seeped into the cracks in his lips, giving them a sting.
Myron rubbed his head, still aching from Coyote Man thumping it with a log. “Why did you bring me here?”
“’Cause you and me are sailing out of here on that contraption of yours.” Coyote Man pointed at Myron. “The sooner the better.”
Myron spied his bundle containing his nuts and bolts and books and postcard of Bora Bora laying on a rock beside the fire, relieved that Coyote Man hadn’t left it behind. “I’m not going anywhere without Sindra.” Myron wobbled to his feet. Crawlways on both sides of the cavern wound into darkness, making his chance of picking the right one precarious.
“Your girly got sent back to Jonesbridge. Best forget about her.” All beard and fur, Coyote Man scooped another bowl of stew with no concept of the betrayal he had set in motion, forcing Myron to abandon Sindra witho
ut a word. “Rest. You’ll need your strength.”
Myron grabbed his bundle and darted into the closest passageway.
“Nothing you can do for her now!” Coyote Man called. “Best you get back in here and finish eating. We’ve got a gorge to cross.” He chuckled. “Only one way out of here, and that ain’t it.”
Myron worked his way back into the open cavern, glaring at Coyote Man who sipped his stew without a care. Still weak, Myron walked past the fire and crawled into the other passage.
“That ain’t it either.”
Myron returned to the fire and found his bowl. Scooping another helping of bone stew, he situated himself on the other side of the pot. His surroundings came into focus gradually, his thoughts still blurry.
As he became more aware, he had a good look at the cavern, its formations and nooks and crannies, and for the first time, its beauty struck him. The moistened colors danced on the walls with the light of the flames, concealing countless recesses and corridors of minerals. Ponds of water filled low areas and echoed with drips from the ceiling where the ground above them sifted melted snow. Beside the fire, a group of stalagmites jutted up from the ground. Striated with limestone and calcium, they also bore the yellow tint of sulfur ribboned with silvery-white magnesium bands. Above them, the stalactites reached for their partners on the ground striving to one day form a single column. Myron recalled a legend that these two formations were the souls of lost lovers who pined away for each other until they finally joined into one.
The lip of Coyote Man’s bowl disappeared into his beard as he finished off his stew. Myron followed suit, downing the rest of his meal, chomping the hunks of wild onions and sinew, gulping every morsel. He wiped the drops from his mouth.
“A mite better than the ground chaff and pig’s tail ration they feed you in that compound. Coyotes won’t even give that a sniff and they’ll eat damned near anything. They’ll eat the rations they give to the guards though, that’s for sure. ”
“I’m going back for Sindra.”
“Hold your leathers, boy. You and me are flying that contraption out of here. Your girl is with them. No getting her back now.”
Myron had feared that very thing, but hearing Coyote Man say the words aloud cemented it, no getting her back. “I am getting her back. I won’t go without her.”
Coyote Man’s shadow climbed the glistening stone wall as he stood. “Three is too risky. Three can’t keep a secret. Three can’t be trusted. And three can’t ride that tiny contraption.”
“That’s right! You are the third. If Sindra doesn’t go, you don’t go.”
Coyote Man’s eyes narrowed. “I know where you squirreled away all those supplies. Run off to Jonesbridge for that girl on a suicide mission and I might spread it all to kingdom come. If that contraption ever takes flight, it will be with me on board.”
Coyote Man was right about one thing, three full-grown adults on an airship built for one—Myron didn’t like the outcome of that equation, especially now that he’d seen the distance across the Gorge first hand. He would just have to string this wild man along, at least long enough to get in position to make the flight. “We don’t go without Sindra. Either wait for me to help her out of there or turn my balloon to garbage, it won’t matter, you’ll still be stuck here in this cave—same as you were yesterday. Help me get Sindra, and we sail to freedom.”
“You’re a fool, boy, traipsing off on some trifling errand back into the mouth of hell. You escaped once. Now you want to return?”
“That’s right.”
“Look, this place is trickier than you might know. There are secrets woven into its walls, like dye into cloth.”
“I know plenty.”
“I can’t make it over the gorge without you. And you can’t make it out of here without me. You’ll run out of untainted water, first thing. Drink that acid snow runoff and choke on your own spit.”
Conceding that one argument to Coyote Man, Myron had thought of everything, except what he would do when his canteen ran dry. “Fine. But we need Sindra, too.”
“What do we need her for?”
“Here, you’ve got the run of the place, with water and stuff. Sindra, she was a rail-walker. She knows how to find things out there, where all the leftover towns are. May not be any coyotes where we’re going. May not be anything.” Myron stood up. “So, if we’re going to make it, I have to get Sindra. Now. Before it’s too late.”
Coyote Man paced around the fire, staring up at the rock ceiling just above his face. He reached for a stick wrapped in oil-soaked burlap and stuck it into the fire. “Not without a plan, you won’t.” He led Myron to a wall in the cavern and illuminated an intricate map drawn with chalk. “Here it is. This whole God-forgotten place from the bridge all the way back around. Didn’t map inside the compound. Don’t need it. Won’t set foot in that place.”
Myron thought Coyote Man had a peculiar way of speaking that made him wish he were sitting around the fire with his grandfather, learning new things, talking about airfoils and grand machines and ocean animals the size of houses. “Who are you, anyway? Where did you come from?”
After a moment, Coyote Man responded with a grunt. “Name’s Ramani,” he said with a nod. “Miner. Worked nights nearly thirty years. But that man died when I became a coyote. Call me whatever you want to.”
Myron vaguely recalled a man that went missing a while back, a victim of the elements, who had dropped dead of the wet lung on his way to his shift. Ramani’s beard blanketed his entire neck, but when Myron eyed his hands, he saw no tattoos of Industry, or of any other administration. “What happened to your tattoos?”
“They took me for a dead man. Didn’t so much as look me over. Just tossed me in the bury-hole with three other folks that actually were croaked. Not much of a way to treat a fellow countryman, is it?” Ramani spat. “I woke up to a coyote licking my face. My tattoos? I scraped ’em off with piece of flint. Practically peeled my skin right off.”
Myron studied the map as Ramani passed the torch along the wall. He had drawn every detail of the area bound by the Gorge, except for the inside of the compound. With his finger not quite touching the wall, Myron traced dry creek bed from the Gorge all the way to Iron’s Knob and stopped at the old chapel, trying to get an idea of how far Ramani’s cave was from the places Myron knew.
“Don’t plan on getting back in the way you got out. They cordoned off that area. Talking about a fugitive.” He chuckled. “That must be you.”
Myron knew he couldn’t have gone that way, anyway. They had dropped at least fifteen feet from the ladder when they first went down into the drainage tunnel. There was no way up the other direction.
Coyote Man pointed his finger into Myron’s chest with a thump. “Hear me, boy. All these mines and factories—they’re desperately important, and they’ll do whatever they have to do to keep unwanted people out and wanted people in. This place is secret. Nobody gets out of here. Not without a plan and a whole shitpot of luck. I know. I’ve tried.”
“You’ve tried?”
“Many times. Got as far as a quarter of the way down that gorge with tackle and ropes and such. Thought I might choke. Too treacherous. Too deep. And I thought about just jumping off into the gorge a time or two—end it all right there.” He stared at a point on the map. “Then there’s trip wires, razor wire, armed guards, watchtowers. You name it. I’ve been patient here alone. Until I saw that contraption of yours start coming together. Patience has run out. I’m getting out of here, too.”
Myron followed Coyote Man to an alcove under a calcite deposit that resembled glistening peeled potatoes. Beside Coyote Man’s makeshift bed, Myron saw a set of shelves fashioned from crates that held a variety of supplies. “Here.” Coyote Man handed Myron a water skin.
“What’s that?” Myron pointed to a brown box similar to the speaker on the factory floor, except this one had a hand crank, like the one Myron used for light when he read his books.
Coyote
Man reached for the box and pulled out a thin metal rod that had been concealed inside it as if folded in on itself from the inside.
“An antenna?”
“A radio. Made it myself. Well, most of it.” Coyote Man turned the crank, slowly at first, then as the whine of gears smoothed, he cranked faster. “Just garbled static down here in the cave.” He pressed his ear next to the speaker. “Topside, sometimes it’s more than static.” Coyote Man collapsed the antenna. “I swear that I’ve heard voices from out there. Singing.”
Myron once heard that if the wind could carry the voices of the lost generations we would never know it because we didn’t listen. He couldn’t imagine the box capturing singing from somewhere out there, how wondrous a thought, but Myron figured Coyote Man had grown mad in his solitude.
“Clean water,” Ramani yelled from another alcove. “There’s the rub in this hell hole.”
Myron followed the sound of his voice to a waist-high stone cylinder with a pool of shallow water in the center.
“Goes through twenty-odd swatches of burlap to filter large contaminates.” Coyote Man pointed to just below the surface of the water. “Makes its way through a layer of sand, then a deep layer of coal dust to filter the hazardous garbage.” He reached down and scooped a bowl of water where it trickled out at the base of the stones. “Got to boil it after that. I might eventually turn green from it, but I’m still here.”
In Myron’s estimation, the crazy man on the rim who thought himself a coyote was far more intelligent than most people that Myron had encountered. He looked peculiar, spoke with a strange affectation, and lived without the company of others, yet he set Myron at ease. He could never forgive Coyote Man for stealing him away when Sindra needed him the most, but Myron did need water, and he needed a plan.
“This water’s been cleaned and boiled.” He grabbed the water skin from Myron and scooped from another shallow pool adjacent to the filters. “Come on.”