by S J Taylor
He smiled at me with that lopsided way of his. “Yes. We have power. We aren’t savages, Era Rae.”
Laria scowled at me, and then turned down the tunnel, following Jadran under the string of overhead lights. Her bare feet padded along the floor, which was also concrete. She seemed to know her way.
Tunnels led everywhere. When he and his people called this place the caves, I was expecting walls carved by dripping water full of stalactites and moss and maybe torches set into the stone. This was all manmade. Walls and floors and ceilings were level and perfectly straight. Some spots had cracks wider than my arm and deeper than my hand. Every so often we came to intersections with passages leading off at straight angles. Some of the tunnels were collapsed. Some of them went off into darkness.
How far did these go, I wondered. Everywhere under the city, is what Jadran had said. I remember what I saw outside, the pure massive scale of this place that used to be called Jacksonville. If these tunnels went all through that…
My mind threatened to shut down just thinking about the scale of it.
It was some minutes later when I stopped with the two of them before an open doorway. It was the first one we’d seen. The room inside was dark until Jadran reached inside to the left of the door and did something that turned lights on inside.
“Our main storeroom, is what this is,” Jadran told me. “Food, and sealed canisters of water and…”
He stopped, and we all saw it at the same time.
The inside of the room was wrecked. Metal shelves that must have once stood anchored along all four walls were now torn down and twisted in the middle of the room. Cans and plastic bottles were broken and torn apart. Pieces of clothing, torn and shredded, were cast around among the debris. The walls had long gouges in them. Two of the light tubes in the ceiling were broken, their jagged ends still held in place.
Everything that had been stockpiled here was ruined.
“The Enforcers…” Laria whispered, kneeling down in the broken bits of things just inside the door, picking up pieces of things and letting them fall again.
But Jadran was over at the wall on one side, running his hands along the broken concrete. “No. This was not the Enforcers. Not their style. Besides, they are at our backs. For now we walk ahead of them. They could not have gotten here first.”
“Then who did?” I had to ask. “Not your own people?”
He shook his head again. “Not people at all.”
When he moved his hand along the wall again, I followed his fingers, watching as they traced one of the long gouge marks, and then another just above it, and another above that…
Parallel lines. Three of them. Everywhere the gouges appeared on the walls there was always three of them, in a row. The patterns crisscrossed in places, but they were always the same.
I recognized that pattern. It was obvious, once you knew what you were looking for.
“Claw marks,” Jadran pointed out. “From an animal.”
“What… sort of animal?” I asked him, unshouldering my rifle and setting it tight to my shoulder.
Stepping back from the wall Jadran slapped dust from the palms of his hands. “We should go. The caves are no longer safe.”
Chapter 2 - Children of the Event
Era’s Journal, Entry #3033
Of course we had animals on Colony 41. We were an island Colony so we had the usual island growth. Trees, grass, that sort of thing. It wasn’t uncommon to see snakes or small rodents out in the training areas, in the wild parts of the island that were left untamed on purpose so we could practice our skills as future Enforcers. There were birds, too, although I didn’t see them very often.
Pets were never allowed. I knew the concept. The people who raised me, who I thought of as my parents, had kept a horse and a dog. The dog stayed in the house with us. It got fed scraps from the table. It had a name, although I can’t remember what it was now. We kept it on a leash and taught it to be mean so it would keep away any visitors to the farm.
Then the Event happened, and I was taken to the Colony, and I never saw the dog again.
It never even occurred to me to wonder what happened to it.
I was bitten by a snake once. On Colony 41, during a training exercise. It was a venomous species left on the island on purpose so that we could get a real feel for the dangers we might find in the Outlands. Academy students who weren’t careful, who didn’t watch where they put their feet or who reached into bushes without probing them with a weapon or stick first, those were the students who learned the lesson.
Everything wild is dangerous.
So there I was, snake bit and bleeding and in danger of dying if I didn’t get to the medical facility. The snakes on the island had a venom that produced paralysis after twenty minutes and death after thirty. The professor overseeing the training made me kill the snake first before he allowed me to get to the doctors. I survived, obviously, but I learned my lesson. After that I was careful. I always watched out for the snakes. I made sure to stay away from them, and I never got bitten again.
These are the life lessons the Restored Society hammered into us. Don’t trust nature. If you get hurt, take care of it yourself. Don’t depend on anyone else to save you.
Stay away from animals, unless you want to be hurt.
The Restored Society lies, and I know that, and I know not to trust what they taught us. But it turns out, some of the lessons were closer to the truth than I knew.
In the Outlands, stay away from the animals.
We took everything we could from the supply room.
It amounted to four sealed metal canisters of water and a few cans of what Jadran promised to be jellied apples and two unbroken jars of something else. Those got crammed into my bag. I managed to pull out a loose-fitting top and a clean pair of brown cotton pants that were only ripped across the front of one knee. Better than the dirty and torn clothes I’d been wearing for two days. Laria found a pair of leather boots and a pair of pants that fit under her dress. I tried not to think how it wasn’t fair that she could make such a random outfit look so good. Jadran found a new shirt to replace the one he’d torn up to make the sling for me. After that, there was nothing worth saving.
Except ourselves.
“Does this happen to you often?” I asked Jadran as we picked up everything and got ready to go. My pack was heavy now.
“The caves have always been a safe place for us,” was his answer. “The dangers in the city above have never come down here. Not in my memory.”
Until now, I thought. I checked the machete at my hip. The stun pistol went into the bag with our food and gear and my little journal book, and then I handed it to Laria to carry. I figured she could at least do that much.
She sniffed at me, but she took it.
That left the pulse rifle for me to carry. Jadran had one of the MARs slung crossways on his back, and the other in his arms, the strap wrapped around his right arm. I recognized that technique. It kept anyone from just yanking the weapon out of your arms. It was nice to have someone around with the same sort of tactical training that I had. It was like we were always thinking the same thing.
Laria’s eyes burned into me. She saw me watching Jadran, and she must have thought it was for reasons other than appreciation of his tactical readiness.
Of course, she didn’t know about the kiss we’d shared last night. I wondered what she would think of that. Hellfire. I didn’t even know what to think about it myself.
And right now it didn’t matter. This safe zone that Jadran thought he was bringing us to was compromised. We had to get out.
“So what did this?” I asked, as Jadran led us out into the brightly lit tunnels again. “Those claw marks on the wall… what sort of animal could do that?”
He took his time answering, stepping softly ahead, eyes focused on each intersection as we came to them. He swept his MAR down every side tunnel, waiting, listening, before moving on.
“The Children of the Event,
” he finally said.
I was sure I must have heard that wrong. “The who?”
Laria said something I couldn’t quite hear, followed by a snicker.
“Era Rae has no reason to know these things,” Jadran said stiffly to Laria, keeping his attention ahead of us. “The custom of our people is to teach and offer knowledge, not insult.”
“The customs of our people?” Laria blurted out, her voice tightening in pitch. “Our people? Jadran, our people are dead! Did you forget so soon? They are dead!”
“That doesn’t mean our customs died with them,” he insisted. “We keep our people alive, Laria. You, and me.”
The look that came over her face was one of pure ownership. Possession might actually be the better word. She and Jadran were the last of their people. He’d just said as much. That meant if they were going to carry on the lineage of their village… he belonged to her. I could see her sinking imaginary claws into Jadran’s soul as she stood there, light blazing in her eyes.
I swallowed past a sudden lump in my throat. That’s what she was thinking, I reminded myself. I could read it all over her face. It did not mean that Jadran felt that way.
Besides, why did I care who Jadran chose to mate with. Or spend his time with.
Kiss.
Right. What I needed was to just stop thinking about it altogether. My life was far too complicated right now to think about men. My feelings could stay locked up in their little box.
Laria turned those greedy eyes on me, her head up high and a challenge in her eyes. Whatever, I thought. If he wants you, he can have you.
But it was me he kissed.
She turned away before my face could betray that last thought to her. For now that was going to be just one more secret of mine. One of many, making me who I was.
Era Rae.
Whoever she was.
Jadran checked down the length of another side tunnel. This one had a faded red line painted along the middle of the floor. He thought about it for a moment, bouncing the heavy round barrel of his MAR against his palm. “This way, I think.”
“You think?” Laria and I both asked at the same time. She turned to me with a snarl on her lips. I just shrugged.
“Yes,” Jadran said, obviously ignoring the little interaction between Laria and me. “I haven’t gone down most of these tunnels in a very long time. The way I’m looking for will bring us safely through the caves and up into the city. This is the way. I think.”
“Up into the city?” I couldn’t believe that was his plan. Into the city? The Outlands were dangerous enough but even the Enforcers were taught to steer clear of the old cities. Living threats like enemy soldiers were something you could be trained to protect yourself against. The city sitting over our heads was an unthinking death trap. Buildings collapsing. The streets breaking apart under your feet. Sinkholes. Radiation. I could only imagine the threats we might face up there. The Enforcers who had been to the old cities and returned to the Colony had only whispered about what they found.
And Jadran wanted to go up there?
“We can’t go into the city,” I argued. “It’s not safe.”
“It’s not safe down here, either” Jadran pointed out.
In the distance, from somewhere behind us in the tunnels, a gurgling roar echoed. It was the sound of something large, and angry.
Laria jerked like she’d been stung by a blast from a stun pistol and buried herself up against Jadran’s back. I was too busy trying to sight my rifle down the tunnel to notice how Jadran reacted to her childish need for him.
The thing roared again. It sounded closer.
“Right,” I said. “Up and into the city. Let’s go.”
Jadran led us at a fast pace down the tunnel with its red line. There were intersections, and other tunnels, but the red line kept showing us the way. I ran in a sidestep, facing backward the whole way, my rifle up and my finger on the trigger. My shoulder ached and burned with the weight of the thing.
And the whole way, the unseen nightmare followed behind.
At one intersection, we made a left turn, following the line still, and we were a few hundred feet down that tunnel before I saw a shadow pass along the wall back at the corner. It was there, and then it retreated back, and I could just make out the sounds of huffing breaths and something like knives scraping repeatedly against a hard surface.
Claws, I realized. Huge, heavy claws on the concrete.
“Jadran,” I called back in warning. “It’s right there. I saw… something. I don’t know what it was.”
“One of the Children.” It was Laria who answered me, her voice distant and empty sounding. When I looked back, her eyes were wide and her face was pale beneath her tan. The harsh glow of the overhead lights showed me the fear on her face.
“What’s she talking about?” I asked Jadran.
“Run,” he said, like I hadn’t spoken at all. “Run faster.”
So we did. I didn’t know how far it would be to the exit Jadran was looking for. I was beginning to think he didn’t either.
We kept going. I saw the shadow behind us a few more times, right there at every turn, but it never got any closer. The thing behind the shadow growled and huffed and made enough noise that we knew it was there, whether it showed itself or not, and that was all the encouragement we needed to keep running.
The tactical part of my mind had to wonder why this thing stayed hidden. It wasn’t scared of us. That was obvious. Was it waiting for the right place to attack? All of these hallways were the same. Short, straight pathways of cracked concrete and flickering light. One turn after another. What could it be waiting for…?
Unless it was herding us, I suddenly thought. Pushing us in the very direction we thought we wanted to go. Enforcers used that tactic sometimes, driving an enemy in a set direction until they were caught in a trap… surrounded…
Hellfire.
“Jadran we need to stop and regroup.” We were in one long section of hallway when I finally realized the danger. Most of the lights above us were dark or broken. Only a few of them still cast their dim glow. There were no doors here. No intersections. Just a ninety degree turn at both ends. “Is there another way around…?”
From ahead of us, a hissing sort of growl slithered its way down the tunnel.
Laria squeaked and pressed herself against the wall. “It got ahead of us. Jadran, it’s ahead of us!”
“No, Jadran it’s worse than that.” I caught his eyes with my own. We didn’t speak. We didn’t need to. We just understood what the other was thinking. Just like that.
This creature following us, whatever it was, had been pushing us into a trap.
There wasn’t just one of them. There was two, and they had boxed us in between them.
While I covered us from behind with the pulse rifle Jadran went over to Laria. She reached out for him, arms wide, like a child about to be scooped up by her father and told everything would be all right. Jadran reached past her, though, to the bag of our supplies, and took out the stun pistol. Ratcheting the cylinder to its highest setting, he pressed the weapon into Laria’s hand.
She whimpered, her eyes wide.
I had to wonder if she was remembering how she had killed a woman back in Refuge. Peaceful Laria, who hated weapons and war and fighting, had taken a human life. That probably would have been hard enough on her, but to make things worse she had killed that Enforcer to save me.
I doubted she would ever forgive me. She already blamed me for the Enforcers coming here in the first place.
Down the hallway in my direction, behind us where it turned the corner, a leg slipped out with slow intent.
It was long, and heavy with muscle, and its skin was the color of dead flesh. The appendage ended in a three-toed foot with curving, serrated claws.
I didn’t wait to see the rest of it.
Dropping to one knee to steady myself I sighted down the pulse rifle’s scope and fired. Once, twice, half a dozen times in rapid su
ccession. Each shot hit the target, right at the edge of the wall where the creature was starting to push itself out. A spray of dark red blood layered across the wall as the leg was severed by the lances of green laser fire.
It screamed. The sound of it curdled my blood and rang off the walls. The leg flopped to the floor and twitched, its clawed toes scrabbling against the concrete.
From the other end of the hallway, an answering scream roared.
I heard the stun pistol fire off a series of shots and turned reflexively to aim down that way. There was nothing there. No monstrous animal. No threat. Laria stood with her arms held stiffly out in front of her, her face in a panic and her chest rising and falling rapidly. Jadran was pushing gently on her arms, talking to her softly, trying to get her to relax. Wait for a target, he told her. Don’t shoot until you see something to shoot at.
I shook my head and ground my teeth and turned back to cover the way behind us.
Just as the monster lurched into view.
I think my mind had trouble processing what I saw. The thing was… wrong. It was a nightmare of twisted, knobby limbs and puffy flesh and throbbing veins. Huge and hulking, it filled the end of the tunnel. One of its arms was coiled around like it had been made of taffy instead of muscle and bone. Its body tapered down to a segmented waist and the lower torso would have had four legs if I hadn’t already blown one apart. The stump of that wound oozed thick, black blood.
Two massive arms felt their way along the walls with hands that ended in stumpy fingers and long, slender claws.
The head was shaggy with greasy hair that matched the color of its blood. The eyes—all four of them—were beady black orbs. They blinked at me, out of sync with each other.
Then it smiled, opening a thin slit of a mouth and hissing down the hall from a deep maw filled with tiny, jagged teeth.
It was almost human, and at the same time it was so alien that I could barely call it an animal.