“Where’s the woman?” I yelled through the roaring gale.
“She’s coming,” the boy said with what little energy he had left. I doubted the woman would be able to make it through if she was in such bad condition and wondered why she hadn’t been pushed down first. Then I noticed a rope tied around the boy’s waist and traced its path to the outside. He must have been tied to the woman. I started to pull the rope towards the opening and felt the weight of something much heavier than a small boy. There was no help from the other end of the rope and I knew the woman must be unconscious.
“Come on, Marshal, pull.” We both pulled the rope until we saw a foot come through the opening. I grabbed it and, with the help of Marshal and Billy, managed to get the woman safely inside. I let the trapdoor fall shut and locked it up once again. We untied the rope and carefully carried the woman down the stairs and laid her on the couch.
“What happened to her?” I asked as I loosened her clothing. She was wearing a black and silver ski jacket, a pair of brand new blue jeans, a red sweater and a pair of high heeled boots. Someone had hit the malls in town, I thought. She looked to be in her mid twenties and I couldn’t see any marks on her.
“She hit her head when we were making a run for it,” Billy said. He was wearing new clothes as well and I noticed some toy cars tucked into his pockets. “I knew Marshal had a place here and figured it was our best hope.”
“What did she hit her head on?” I felt around the back of her head and felt a lump the size of a golf ball. I quickly pulled my hand away. “Oooh, nasty.”
“The wind was blowing everything around,” he said. “I-I think it was a piece of fence or something. She didn’t pass out right away, though. She made it to the top of the hill outside. We decided to tie ourselves together so we wouldn’t lose each other, it was her idea, and I pulled her here. Thanks Marshal. I was sure you wouldn’t open the door.”
“I didn’t want to.” He looked up at me and glared. I didn’t care if he was mad at me. This was the right thing to do.
“Get Billy some water, Marshal,” I said, trying to avoid his eyes. “Is this woman your mother, Billy?”
“What?” The boy looked at me as if I had just spoken a foreign language. “My mother? Who are you anyway?”
“She’s a newcomer, Billy,” Marshal said and handed the boy a bottle of water. “And I’d be nice to her if I was you or I’ll throw you back out in the wind.”
“No, she’s not my mother,” he said trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “My mother didn’t fall with me; nobody’s mother did. Whoever sent me here kept my mother safe and sound back in the real world up there.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think...” I tried to apologize. I felt stupid. Of course, his mother didn’t come here with him. “Who is she then?”
“I met her in town,” he explained. “Said she came from down south, Kentucky I think. Said she heard things were better up here. Said down there people have been killing each other off, scary like. She used to be part of a group that was tryin’ to make a new community. They was tryin’ to make it like up there.” He pointed up and I knew he was talking about the real world.
“What, civilize us?” Marshal laughed. “Like that would be a good thing.”
“Yeah, well, she said they were close to makin’ it happen and then these gangs came in,” he said. “They came in and murdered everyone. About a month or so before the 360, they moved into their towns and slaughtered everyone. Emma Lee, there, just made it out with her husband.”
“Her husband?” I was confused. How could a mother not fall but a husband could?
“Yes, yes, Nicky some people down here fall in love and get married,” Marshal explained to me. I had never thought of that but, I guess it made sense. “Where’s her husband now, Billy?”
“He died,” the boy informed them. “I guess he got pretty messed up by the gang and didn’t last very long. Emma Lee won’t talk much about it. Is she gonna be okay?”
“I don’t know.” I managed to get her coat off and cover her up with a blanket. I took a little bit of first aid in grade ten gym class but I couldn’t remember much about what I was supposed to do with a head injury. I think I was supposed to look at her pupils and see if they were dilated and ask her questions to see if she had a concussion but what could I ask her? What day is it? Who’s the president? Like she would know any of that anyway. “I don’t know anything about medicine. She’s got a nasty bump on the back of her head but it’s not bleeding or anything. Maybe she just knocked herself out or the wind finally got to her. We’ll just have to wait and see. We’ll just let her lie here and not move her ‘til she wakes up. How long since you guys had anything to eat?”
“We ate in town before the winds came and shared a can of stew while we ran,” he said. “Hey, Marshal, did ya know someone killed Butcher?”
“Really, Billy? Butcher? Someone out there must be crazy, crazy, crazy.” He avoided my eyes and tried to sound surprised by the news.
“Yeah, Marshal. Butcher’s dead and the out-of-towns are real mad about it. That’s why we had to run so fast without getting any supplies,” he said. “Well, that and the winds. They’re early this time, don’t ya think?”
“Why would the out-of-towns be mad?” I asked without sounding too interested.
“You know about the out-of-towns?” He eyed me suspiciously.
“Marshal mentioned them.”
“Well, they think someone’s tryin’ to move into their territory and they ain’t too pleased. They don’t like an unknown takin’ stakes around here. This is their land and they decide who can live here and who can’t.”
“Wow, dictatorship, much,” I mumbled as I wiped Emma Lee’s face with a wet cloth.
“What?” asked Billy.
“Nothing,” I said. “So, Billy, tell me about yourself.”
“Like what.”
“Like how old are you? How long have you been here? Where do you live?”
“Pretty nosy ain’t ya?” He obviously didn’t like me asking questions.
“No, I think its called being friendly,” I snapped back. I wasn’t going to be pushed around from some twerp that looked the same age as my little brother.
“Billy, Billy, Billy, I told you to be nice to Nicky,” Marshal warned him.
“Well, what business is it of hers? Who is she anyway?” He looked angry. “Like I wanna tell some stupid girl all those things about myself.”
“Look, I don’t like being here any better than you do.” I was starting to lose my patience with this kid. Maybe Marshal was right; we should have left him outside. “I was just trying to be nice, make small talk. If you want to keep everything to yourself, fine. Just sit in the corner and when the wind dies down go on your merry way.” I turned my back on him and went and sat at the table. Barker followed me and put his head on my lap. I patted him and started with the puzzle again.
“Nicky, can I talk to you?” Marshal stood over the table.
“Sure, go ahead,” I said, suddenly able to fit pieces together.
“Nicky, Billy doesn’t mean to be mean,” he whispered. “He’s just young and sometimes he tries to act tough to make up for it.”
“So what?” I was angry. “I’m young, you’re young. None of us asked for this. I’m still not clear on exactly what the hell’s going on here but if we’re going to be all pissy to each other than we’re just going to make things harder.”
“Please, Nicky,” he was trying to get me to calm down, “give Billy time. He’ll get used...”
“I’m sorry miss,” it was Billy. He had come over to the table. “You’re right, I shouldn’t be so mean. I should be thankful for what you did for me and Emma Lee and I’m sorry. It’s just hard to trust anyone. You’re new and I’m glad you feel like we should stick together and be all friendly but you’ll see. The people out there are mean and don’t care about nothin’. They just wanna push everyone around and have everyone do what they say. Li
ke they got nothin’ up there and are tryin’ to make up for it down here. Marshal knows. He knows when to keep quiet, when to keep hidden. You ask him.” He looked over to the young redhead who had his head down pretending to look at the puzzle. “Well, I just wanted to say sorry and if ya wanted to know about me, I’d be willin’ to tell ya.”
“Thank you, Billy,” I stood up and put out my hand for him to shake. This seemed to impress him and he smiled and shook my hand. “That wasn’t so hard was it? I am new but I’m not stupid. Marshal told me about the out-of-town people and I plan to keep out of their way.”
“Yeah, well...” he started.
“Let’s start over,” I said. “My name is Nicole Barrett; you can call me Nicky for short. I’m seventeen and I fell down here with, what I am told, the last 360. Up there the year is 2012.”
“2012? Wow-ee! That’s science fiction stuff! Can you believe that, Marshal?” He seemed amused by what I had told him. Marshal just shook his head. “Okay, okay, I’m Billy Walker. I’m ten years old and I fell down here in 1955.”
“1955?” I was surprised. This kid had been down here for fifty-seven years? No wonder he acted so cold-hearted. I bet he had seen a lot in all those years. “You’ve been down here a long time Billy. You should feel proud of yourself. You’re like some kind of superhero like Superman or Batman.”
“Yeah, I guess I am.” He pumped up his chest and smiled. I had said the right thing. It helped that I had a brother the same age and knew how to talk to him.
“mmm...oooo...” Emma Lee started to stir on the couch and we all went over to find her lying there with her eyes open. “What happened? Where am I?”
“Don’t try to get up, Miss Emma.” Billy knelt in front of the couch and pushed her back down. “You hit your head real bad and you need to lie down.”
“Oh, yeah. The wind blew some kind of post or somethin’.” She felt the back of her head and winced as she found the lump. She had a deep southern accent that I thought sounded cool. “Where are we hun?”
“We’re at my friend’s,” Billy explained. “’Member, I told ya ‘bout him?”
“Really? We made it?” She seemed surprised by that. “And you must be the friend?”
“Yes, ma’am. Name’s Marshal, glad to have you here.” He nodded his head.
“And who are you?” She looked at me through hazy eyes.
“Nicky,” I smiled. “You took a bad hit on your head and I think you should stay still. Billy said you guys haven’t eaten much. I’ll make you some soup to help you get your strength back.” I made my way to the supplies to find some cans of soup. I hung the pot on the hook Marshal had rigged up over the small stone fire pit he had built on the floor in the corner. It was how we cooked and kept warm at the same time. It was kind of cool, I thought, that out of nowhere our group of two had just become four.
Chapter 5
We stayed down in our underground fortress for another ten days. With four of us now, the time didn’t seem to go as slowly. Not that I didn’t like Marshal’s company, it’s just that two people can get bored of each other real quick. Emma Lee proved to be a wealth of information about things that were happening down south and I loved listening to her deep southern accent.
She was twenty-four and came to this world in 1811 and she looked exactly the way I imagined a woman from the south in the eighteen hundreds would look like. She had long curly black hair that she kept swept up in a loose bun most of the time, porcelain white skin and dark brown eyes. She was a smart woman, too, and so good at keeping a conversation going even when it looked like everyone had run out of things to say. She must have been quite the belle of the ball, I thought, attending all those southern parties and fighting off all the hunky southern men.
She told us about the community she and a group of others were trying to make. I thought it sounded good. They used a mountain to dig out caves for their houses, actually using some of the old coal mines that remained after each 360. She told us that the Kentucky mountains provided good protection from the winds and, despite the fact that they were surround by cold rock walls, the homes they built were quite comfortable and spacious. She was surprised that no one up here had thought about using the sturdy Rocky Mountains in the same way and I, too, wondered about that. Maybe we could carve out homes like they did in Kentucky. I reminded myself to talk about it with Marshal when we got out of here.
She continued with her story, telling us that everything was going good. People from neighbouring states had heard about what they were doing and came to join them. They’d been working on it for over five years and their little group of hard workers and visionaries was growing into a thriving community. News of their cave town had travelled far and their numbers had swelled to well over a hundred. Emma Lee had been there from the beginning and was proud of their efforts.
It was here that she met her husband, Derek. He had come down from Ohio three years ago to help with the building of the caves. Emma Lee said it was love at first sight. Derek had fallen in 1976 and had been happy and full of life. His free spirit is what attracted her to him the most. He was nothing like the men from her Kentucky upbringing. He was kind and actually listened to everything she said. He valued her ideas and never mocked her pursuit of knowledge. He collected books for her and even taught her how to read. The two of them were inseparable and usually worked on the digging detail together. I could tell that it was hard for her to talk about him but she seemed to want to tell us everything.
“Things were going good,” she said as we all sat around the living room listening to her story. It was a day when the winds seemed to be calmer than usual. “The city was beginnin’ to really come on. Derek had already started to dig us out a home. We’d been married for three months by then and living with our friends allowed us no privacy.”
“How did you get married?” Marshal and Billy both rolled their eyes at my question. This was unimportant to them but I wanted to know. It all sounded so romantic to me.
“We did it ourselves, a little ceremony between us and God and everyone else in the community of course.” She smiled at the memory.
“I bet it was beautiful.” I said, staring off into space, imagining a small ceremony held at the foot of a mountain and surrounded by people who were truly happy for them.
“It was.” She smiled and then her face turned dark. “Then the Blood Demons came and everything changed.”
“Blood Demons?” Billy asked, his ten-year-old ears perked at the ominous name and he sat up straighter, ready to hear all about them.
“Yes, at least that’s what they called themselves, and blood is exactly what they wanted,” she said. “They rode into our valley on horseback, all dressed in black. Two of our men who we considered our unofficial leaders went down to the dusty road and met them with food and friendship, welcoming them to our city. We thought they had come to help us in our endeavor like so many others had done but we should have known by the way they were dressed that they meant harm.”
“Where did they come from?” I asked.
“Some say they came from the west, some say they came from the north. I’ve no idea which part of the country they hailed from and, to me, it didn’t matter. They were there and they seemed to have a hatred towards us that I can’t explain,” she said. “They said what we were doin’ was wrong and they had come to stop us. We had no idea what they had planned. Had we known, maybe some of us would have tried to get away.”
“What did they do?” Marshal asked, absorbed in her story.
“They wanted exactly what their name implied; blood. They wanted to kill us, plain and simple. They didn’t even try to negotiate. They didn’t want our land. They just wanted to kill us any way they could and there were a lot of them, too.”
“How many?” asked Billy.
“Maybe a couple of hundred, maybe a little less and they were ready for the slaughter. My friends didn’t stand a chance. It was a bloodbath. They killed the two men who had gone out to
meet them, shot them both right through the head. Then most of them got off their horses and stormed the caves while others stayed back to wait for people tryin’ to escape. There was no mercy shown to anyone; women, children, it didn’t mater, they were all murdered. Where they couldn’t use guns, they used knives and when they didn’t have knives they used clubs and beat people to death. No one was spared. It was horrible. There was so much blood, so much screaming.” She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to force back the memories.
“How did you get away?” asked Billy.
“I was down by the river getting water to boil for supper when they came. I heard the screams but had no idea what they meant. Derek had dug a tunnel that no one knew about. It was a hiding spot for him and me to sneak off to when we wanted to be alone. It led to the river and I snuck through there to find out what was going on.
“I saw them through the cracks. They were stabbing a boy about your age, Billy. He screamed so loud I thought the whole cave would come down. I knew there was nothing I could do for him but, still, the mother that is inside every woman, cried to rush out at him. I hid in the cave with my hands over my ears and my eyes pressed into my knees for hours. I felt every slash of the blade as it ripped through flesh, I heard every death as if I had caused it and I knew, that with everything that is me, I would seek my vengeance somehow.” She paused and took a drink of water and wiped her forehead. Just thinking about it had made her break out into a cold sweat.
“When the screaming stopped and I felt sure they had gone, I crawled out of my tunnel and began to look for survivors. I thought it was useless, though; they had seemed so determined to kill everyone. I saw people lying everywhere, mutilated beyond belief. I couldn’t recognize one person from the next. Some of the bodies were so badly broken it was hard to look at them. Skulls had been smashed, bones were broken and the blood; the blood was everywhere. I didn’t even get five feet before I was covered with it and slipping with every step I took.” She took another drink of water and I could feel my stomach tense and flip with every word that she spoke.
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