Fire in the Wall

by S G Dunster

  I willed myself to be still. I was trembling internally, keeping my jaw clamped shut over my chattering teeth.

  A moment or two of breathing, snuffling at me like a dog scenting its prey, and then silence.

  A few long minutes later, Eap spoke quietly. “He’s gone.” A soft black paw batted at my cheek.

  I opened my eyes, staring directly into Monty’s sulky gaze. I couldn’t help but flinch. I shifted slightly and turned my head. They had all moved to the other side of the cage, leaving me to lie inert and hide our escape attempt.

  “You’ll have to stay there,” Selah said. “You make good cover. You’re still asleep, Logan. We shall have to make a pretense of lying next to you as we try to break the tether. They watch us. They are awake.”

  “When will they try to eat us?” Lil asked, voice as reasonable as if she were asking when lunch is.

  “Who knows,” Eap replied.

  “I’ll take next shift.” I turned slightly so I faced Lil’s shallow bite marks in the tough, swollen hide strips. I took a deep breath, and sank my teeth into it.

  It was foul. Like taking a mouthful of the smell of dog refuse. I swallowed my spit, forced down my bile and gnawed, filling my mouth with the rank taste, taking a moment now and then to gag.

  Finally, unable to keep it down anymore, my stomach convulsed and I vomited through the grid of poles, emptying my stomach in the dirt our cage rested on.

  “Right,” Eap said. “My turn, now.”

  I shifted slightly, curling myself as if holding my stomach, closed my eyes. Eap moved in close to me, angling his head behind mine so he faced the tether.The backs of our heads touched, and I could feel all his movements, sense the grinding vibrations in his skull as his teeth made contact with the hide. I squeezed my eyes tight and forced my thoughts elsewhere, away from the taste in my mouth, away from the reality of what Eap was doing.

  Reality.

  I’d thought it. The exact word. Real. This was real for me.

  It’s working then. At least it’s working.

  I must have dozed because suddenly I was awake, shifted to a slightly different position, and it was Arapahoe bent down close to me, working away at the tether. “Almost through,” I heard him gasp, sitting back on his haunches. “Selah, are you ready with those steam shells?”

  I moved, turning my head so I could look at them—Eap, Lil, Selah, sitting on the floor of our cage, watching the men and women of the camp. They were by the fire; a group of the men stood off a ways, gesturing and chatting ferociously.

  “Latin,” Eap murmured. “Bad Latin at that. That’ll be my contribution to this.” He grinned, his awful square teeth gleaming in the dim light.

  “Done,” Arapahoe breathed, unwinding the tether.

  It took some strenght, some fingers. The tether had been bent around the poles for a long time, and was thick as a finger. Selah stepped in to help, throwing glances over her shoulder from time to time.

  “They’re going to notice,” Lil said. “Go fast.”

  “Thank you,” Selah said from between gritted teeth, “for the encouragement.” She pulled away the tether.

  And they’d seen us. The group of men who’d been talking—they pointed and ran toward us.

  “Steam shells!” I said. “Now, the steam shells! Arapahoe, can you break—“

  A great crack, even before I finished, and Araphoe had bent the freed pole back, splintering it in two. He hustled through the hole, barely big enough for him to wiggle through, and pulled Selah after him.

  She came out, straightened, and threw her shells, one after the other.

  One hit a tree trunk and exploded, sending a great cloud of orange flame and a thirty-foot halo of singeing steam all around it.

  The other landed in the grass of the meadow beyond the fire ring. Immediately the grass took fire.

  The people clustered by the fire ran into the grass, beating it with their feet, screaming and leaping back when the dissipating steam burned their skin.

  The men running toward us wheeled and made for the tree, which was already sending sparks of flame into the canopy around it. A glow of fire spread down the trunk, and licked into the grass, leaping tall as it found the crumbled earth-and-flesh compost underneath.

  “The weapons,” Eap said, and we all ran for where they’d been piled, close to the fire ring.

  The few men and women still near the fire screamed as we approached—not fear. Rage. One of the women was missing her four top teeth—black gums, and incisors gleaming like fangs. She made some guttural noise and flung herself at me. I scrabbled with her, keeping her dirty nails from my face, her teeth from my throat.

  Selah shouted a warning just before something clocked me in the head so hard I bit my tongue bloody. I yelled, a roar straight from my gut through my throat. I fought blindly, the pain in my mouth inspiring a merciless flow of anger and rage and aggression—all adrenaline, not even knowing what I was grabbing for. I kicked, hit, threw myself at the woman, and finally broke free of her grasping hands. I grabbed for my guns as the horde of men and women came screaming back out of the woods. The woods were on fire. Flames leapt, and the smoke was choking.

  “Run!” Arapahoe gave me a shove.

  I ran.

  Lil, with her shorter legs, was falling behind, so Arapahoe swung back, grabbed her, and slung her up on his shoulder, ignoring her furious squawks. I risked glancing back and saw Satie grab at his neck with her toothless gums. She hung there like some strange neck-beard, swaying as we ran.

  We charged into the darkness of the forest, ducking under branches through tunnels of brush, squashing brittle skulls under our boots.

  Hours, it felt like, running. I didn’t know where . . . the general direction of away seemed to be all we cared about.

  “Stop,” I called, slowing my pace for a moment. “The weapons.”

  We stopped, circling back to Selah and Arapahoe, who was still carrying Lil. Eap and Selah quickly distributed the weapons they’d recovered. I slid my guns—one steam, one poison-dart, and my super-heated lava gun—into their holsters. My glass knife I slid into the spot I’d made for it, where the straps crossed in the middle of my chest.

  “No time to rest. We must continue,” Eap said.

  He was right. I could hear them behind us—a swift, almost silent, patter of footfalls like fat raindrops at the beginning of a storm. I gulped down the sudden rise of fear in my throat. I ran again, so hard I tasted the blood in my throat and felt like my heart might batter itself to death against my ribcage.

  The smell of smoke was following us, too. We were starting to feel the heat, the fire warming up this super-insulated glass globe. When we stopped again to catch a breath, sweat was trickling down Selah’s temple. Lil and Eap and Arapahoe’s faces glistened. “We’ve got to go faster,” I yelled. “I’ll make a glider. We’re going to bake in this thing.”

  “No cheating,” Eap shouted back. “This will all be for nothing if we make it changeable! We must find the stairs. Get to the higher levels, fast.”

  “It’ll be hotter up higher!” I argued as we took off running again. “Won’t it?”

  I panted, coughed down phlegm, and gasped for breath. You wouldn’t think that a man who lived by the bottle the last half of his life would have so much wind in him. I was barely able to keep up. He was pacing me well.

  “Stairs!” Lil grunted, pointing. She was still slung over Arapahoe’s shoulder, clutching it tight. She pounded his shoulder and pointed more emphatically. “That way!”

  I saw, with dizzying relief, that she was right.

  We’d found the central staircase leading to all the floors throughout the globe. They curved up in the distance, covered and hung all over with vines and tree rubbish. A massive, dark-green snake spiraled toward the dim light streaming down from above.

  I was very glad, in that moment, that Eap had created stairs in my domes. Airlifts, in a place this neglected, probably wouldn’t work anymore; power disconnec
ted, machinery twined around by vines and overrun by plants.

  Eap veered, doubled back, and charged up the stairs, getting the first flight behind him before we got there. Arapahoe and Lil followed. I waited, intending to go up last. Selah wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

  After a few minutes, there was a rustling in the brush. Not one person—many. Our pursuers.

  “Where’s Selah?” I called.

  “Keep running!” Eap’s dim voice called down from above. “We can’t afford to stop—they’re coming! And the fire!”

  I went up a few more steps, hesitating again. From there, I could see the glow of fire through the trees. It was massive, throwing up grey boils of smoke, and it moved toward us at a terrifying pace.

  The men and women following us were scattering in front of it now, not so much running after us as trying to find an escape route. One of them spotted the stairs and gestured, shouting to the others.

  “Selah!” I called, standing stubbornly on the first landing. I looked up at Eap, at Arapahoe leaping up the flights with Lil on his back. He hadn’t even noticed. Hadn’t noticed . . .

  Maybe the weak cry I heard was my imagination. But without even thinking, I dashed back down.

  “Selah,” I called again when I got down to the ground. It was very loud—the crackle of fire, the shouts of people running. Several of them leapt up the flight, pushing past me as I came down.

  “Here,” I heard a weak, muffled sound.

  “Where?” I shouted.

  “Stairs. In a . . . a plant of some . . .”

  I followed the sound of her voice to a vine—a vine with a huge grey bud like a withered pea pod, the seam lined with rows of strange, curved spikes. Teeth.

  A slim brown leg stuck awkwardly from it, wiggling desperately. I ran and tried to pry it open. It shifted immediately and grazed my hand with one of the teeth. It burned, stung, and went numb.

  “Hang on!” I shouted. I backed up and pointed my lava gun at it, hand shaking. But then I paused, holstered it. I couldn’t burn the thing without burning Selah alive.

  “Lil!” I yelled up the stairs. “This twisted plant thing! It’s yours, right?”

  My voice echoed, and the roar of approaching voices underlined it.

  “Lil!! How do I open the butt-ugly lip plants??” I screamed, and pulled on Selah’s leg, grabbing her by her slender, smooth ankle. I tugged as hard as I could.

  I heard an ominous crack, and the leg hung at a still more awkward angle. Like I had dislocated it.

  Selah wasn’t struggling anymore.

  Frantically, I grabbed at the lower lip, careful to avoid teeth, and tried to shove it down. It stayed stuck like my stubborn windows at home when they froze.

  I changed back to trying to tug at her. From my angle, I could see her body in there, cradled by the virulent green. Her skin was growing ashy-pale. I grasped the upper lip this time and slid my hand through the corner of the mouth, a space barely big enough for my arm to fit. I found her belt, wrapped my fingers around it, and tugged.

  She slid partway out, but she was snagged on something.

  One of the fangs. They were inside the pod, too, and one had jabbed clear through her shoulder. She was slippery with blood, which fountained from the wound. Too much blood.

  Too much.

  The plant shifted again, nearly spearing me through with one of the teeth. I pulled my arm out and jumped clear. “Lil!” I screamed. “Get your stupid— “

  Something smashed into the back of my head, hard. I turned, snarling. There was a group approaching me—those filthy, wild men, surrounding me in a tight half- circle. I pulled my gun from my holster and aimed it at the ground, sending a stream of flame through the underbrush at my feet.

  They shrieked and fled.

  I aimed another stream of fire, this time spraying it past them, blocking them.

  They ran wildly all over, looking for places to go.

  “This!” I yelled. I tapped the plant. “Tell me how to open this!”

  Nobody was listening to me. They were all crazy. Wild. Trying to escape the fire.

  Disgusted, I threw my gun back into its pocket and turned back to the plant. Then I remembered. Knife.

  Of course. Duh.

  Internally beating myself to a mess, I reached into my chest holster and cut the bud from the stem, which was thick as my arm. As I sliced into it, the plant shuddered and writhed. The spiky leaves whipped at me. One caught me on the temple, sending a spatter of blood and sweat down my face.

  Finally I got it, hacked it clean off, and the heavy bud toppled onto the ground. It and rolled, over and over and over.

  “Selah!” I shouted.

  There was no answer.

  Even as I ran to it, even as I took my knife and cut through the top of the plant, pulling at the dark gooey mess of her hair, I knew.

  I ripped flesh-like vegetation until there was a hole big enough to try to drag her all the way out. She lay there, coated in plant-slime.

  It was exactly like the time Rusty, our old beagle, delivered her puppies. One had been stillborn. It never opened its eyes, never moved.

  Selah lay curled on the forest floor, eyes shut, mouth fallen open. Her hands were limp and tumbled against her chest.

  I backed away, breathing hard, and tasted sour bile at the back of my throat.

  It was too late.

  She was gone.

  Dead.

  I walked a step toward her, then two more back, then ran to her side and knelt, taking her face between my hands, wiping off the slime, touching her eyes, her mouth, cupping her slender neck. I leaned down and kissed her. Her lips were still warm.

  A thought struck me. I laid her out and tipped up her chin, put my lips against hers. Breathed out. Frantically, I fingered her chest until I found the juncture of her ribs, and moved up the fingers’ breadths I’d learned about in scouts. Pumped. Breathed. Pumped. Breathed.

  Nothing.

  I didn’t stop until I realized the heat was starting to scorch me, to burn my skin. I slid away from her and looked out at a wall of flame.

  Sobbing, head swimming, I ran through the fire, ran right through it, feeling the wash of heat like diving into water, and streaked up the stairs. The flames licked through my suit, sending a momentary flash of burn through my skin, but the fabric did what it was supposed to and didn’t catch fire.

  I couldn’t see the others. They’d obviously gotten up several stories above me. I ran, stumbling over everything, tripping on stairs. Running stupefied. Tears were pouring down my face.

  She was just a story, Logan. Just a story.

  By the time I got to the landing for the tenth floor up I was numb. My hand, completely without feeling from the plant-fang. My legs kept giving under me. But I kept going, stumbling, sweating, coughing, leaking saltwater all down my face.

  It was hell. The burn of my muscles. The burn inside. The helplessness, the frustration.

  The grief.

  I was angry—at Lil, for having a stupid carnivorous plant in her head. Who was afraid of such stupid things? Who thought of that?

  I wanted to punch her in the face and shake her until she broke down crying, which, because she was Lil, would never happen.

  I was stumbling through red. Blood from my head, blood in my eyes. Flame from below, glowing all around now, was sending waves of heat up through the center of the dome, ruffling past my body, searing my exposed face.

  I forced myself to keep going. Keep running. Pick myself up every time I fell, and ignore the throb of pain a sharp edge of stair left in my shins.

  “Logan!”

  I finally heard the faint cry above me. I looked up and saw Lil, Arapahoe, and Eap peering over a balustrade high above, and two pairs of eyes that gleamed like LED lights in the dark. Cat and gecko.

  I slowed to a stumble. I knew they were watching me trudge pathetically along, but I didn’t care.

  Finally, I caught up to them. The landing was bare, but the room beyond
—wisps of webs like tattered curtains swung from the ceiling. And above there was a dark mass—a moving sea of something. It was sure to be something terrifying,

  “Come on.” There was excitement in Lil’s tone, and a gleam in her eye.

  “No,” I said.

  Her eyebrows shot up.

  “I’m not going,” I said. “This is stupid. I’m done.”

  Eap eyed me. “Where is Selah?”

  I knelt on the ground, covered my face, and sobbed.

  “She’s gone,” Arapahoe’s deep, gravelly voice resonated through my backbone. His hand, heavy, fell onto my shoulder.

  “Gone,” I managed to choke out. “A plant swallowed her. I tried to . . . I tried . . .”

  “A heroic end,” Eap said quietly. His tone was infuriatingly calm. “She gave her life for the cause. Her grave, this great ugly bauble of ours.”

  “Dammit, Eap,” I spat. “That’s not how . . . it’s not for that. She wasn’t for this! My stories . . . my people aren’t for this.”

  “Logan.”

  It was Lil this time. Her hand replaced Arapahoe’s, which had fallen away. Her pointy fingers dug into my shoulder. “Get ahold of yourself, Logan. Get up. Now. Real people will die if you can’t get over the loss of an imprint.”

  I choked. Raged for a moment. Took a long deep breath.

  “You can make her again.”

  I was beginning to feel stupid. I uncurled and flung her hand away. I wiped my face with my rubber sleeve. It didn’t do much good, just smeared the snot everywhere. I looked at Arapahoe.

  What was he thinking? His eyes, dark, flat, fathomless. Canny, skeptical as always, watching me. Listening to this conversation. How was it making any sense to him?

  “You cared for her,” he said, finally.

  I stood painfully. Leaned against the balustrade. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I couldn’t save her.”

  He nodded—just nodded. Face a block of granite, covering who knew what might be going on inside. “Let’s keep going,” he barked, turning to the next flight, gesturing for Lil to climb up.

  “I’m walking by myself,” Lil said.

  He didn’t protest, but started climbing.

  I watched the group of them pass me toward the stairs, following him. Lil gave me a hard look.