by Jen Crane
“Okay.” It was all Nori could come up with despite the fact her head swam with a million things she wanted to say.
Her father grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her into him for a fierce, desperate hug. “What do you need? Everything we have is yours. Food, supplies, gas.”
“I’ve got that covered,” Cooper said. “But we’ll have to find you once we get there. There’s a town called Esperanza south of Monterrey, right at the base of the mountains. People hang padlocks from an old bridge. Attach a note with meeting instructions to one—a blue one—and we’ll find it. If we get there first, we’ll do the same.”
“How will we ever find a blue padlock?” Nori scoffed. “We can hardly find food.”
The muscles of Cooper’s wide jaws flexed as he stared down at her, still under the protective wing of her father. “We’ll paint it if we have to. You got a better idea?”
A cold finger of shame touched Nori’s spine, and she looked down, shaking her head.
Cooper extended a hand toward her father and said stiffly, “Thank you for trusting us with her.”
“Thank you for seeing her safely there,” he replied and kissed the top of Nori’s head before returning Cooper’s handshake. “She’s special.”
“I know,” Cooper said, a twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“Don’t let me down, son.” Her father looked away and blinked several times. “Don’t let her down.”
“I’ll do my very best.” Cooper stared straight into her father’s eyes and nodded. Amazing, Nori thought. In just those few moments, he’d somehow gained her father’s trust.
Nori swallowed past the lump in her throat and reached for her mother. “I love you.” She held on tight, eyes full of unshed tears. “See you down South.”
Her mother’s returning smile, suffused with confidence and love, was burned into Nori’s memory for the rest of her days.
33
Into The Great Unknown
The trip back was a blur, and not just metaphorically. Nori wept most of the way with her head buried in Cooper’s back. They made it to the entrance before the sun rose, shutting themselves underground, and the heavy iron door behind them.
Kade had been uncharacteristically quiet, but breathed a gusty sigh when Cooper sealed the door. “I don’t know about you two,” Kade said, “but I’m glad to be back.”
Nori turned in her seat toward him. “Back Subterranean? Why?”
An uneasy tremor ran the length of his body, and he shivered. “I don’t know. Being up there, I felt…exposed. Too much open space. I couldn’t see all of my surroundings.” He shook his head. “Huh-uh. Give me Subterranean life any day over that.” He said the last as if talking about rotten meat.
“You up for this?” she asked him.
“What, a road trip?” He scoffed and straightened. “I’m a free man. Besides, I promised your mom, so…”
Nori smiled and held out her hand, which Kade squeezed. “What now, Captain Cooper?”
“Oh, don’t call him that,” Kade groaned. “His head already has trouble fitting through the tunnels.”
Cooper laughed. “Now we ride to the 25th Parallel. Viva la Mexico!”
Nori rolled her eyes. “Do you have a plan to execute this idea of yours? Where will we sleep? How will we eat? We sure can’t make it two or three days on what we brought, despite what you told my parents.”
“Two or three days?” His face was severe. “More like two or three weeks.”
“What?” Nori’s screech bounced off the tunnel walls. “You can’t be serious.”
“It’s not a straight shot,” he said, suddenly indignant. “And we’re traveling underground, if you’ll recall. Nothing’s going to be easy about this. Or very fast. But my guess is it will take your parents longer since the roads—hell, the whole world— is jacked up.”
Nori massaged her forehead again. She was so tired. “All right. So, can we at least find somewhere to sleep tonight and get a fresh start tomorrow?”
“The lady asks me to take her to bed.” Cooper waggled his eyebrows. “I cannot refuse. I know just the place.”
Nori’s jaw dropped. “That’s not… You know I didn’t mean… Ugh” she finished weakly and Kade giggled. “Oh,” she said, turning to her traitorous friend. “You’re no help at all.”
“What is this place?” Nori’s top lip inched toward her nose as Cooper locked the door behind them.
They’d ridden another twenty miles through the grungy tunnel, one mile indistinguishable from the next. After turning down a nearly-invisible ramp just off the main path, the three eventually pulled up to a single door painted to blend into the tunnel. There was no knob, no hinges, no evidence of a door at all. But Cooper had toggled a hidden latch and sprung the lock on a metal-clad door.
Nori followed the two men as they walked the motorcycles into a bunker the size of a school auditorium.
“What is that God-awful smell?” She swung her head to Kade, whose face held the same disgust.
“That, my friends, is food,” Cooper said and at their obvious repugnance, he grinned. “Come and see.”
“It’s an indoor garden.” Nori’s mouth fell open. “Hydroponics, artificial light. Vegetables!” She ran to a rectangular plant bed framed by thick railroad ties. “Fruit! Oh my God! Where on Earth did they get these seeds?”
“This place was built long before the scorches.” Cooper pulled a shiny strawberry from a plant trailing down a thick plastic tube. “People have been farming down here for decades. They brought plants and seeds with them, and have subterranean farming fine-tuned to an art.”
“Why?” Nori wheeled around.
“Why what? Why did they grow food? Is that a trick question?”
“No, why did they move underground? Why did people build this massive system of roads and cities? The money and manpower it must’ve taken… The years spent planning, and hiding, and sneaking around. And how? How did that many people keep the biggest secret since, I dunno, Area 51—which, by the way, wasn’t kept very well at all.”
Cooper opened his mouth to speak, but she went on.
“It’s almost like they knew,” she said and shook her head. “Like they knew what level of devastation was about to hit, and they built a way to survive it.”
“No one would do that.” Kade’s mouth turned down. “People wouldn’t keep a secret like that and save only themselves.”
“So, it’s just a coincidence that the entire Subterranean was created before the one above it combusted in cataclysmic solar blights? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
She turned to Cooper, who’d slipped toward the raised beds. “How was an underground world built beneath the one me and my family live on—and we never knew about it?”
“Who’s hungry?” Cooper asked with an armful of summer squash.
“Whose place is this?” Nori wiped her eye on a sleeve. The fresh onion she was chopping was particularly strong. She turned away from it both to avoid the smell and to pressure Cooper into finally talking.
He shrugged. “Belongs to the CCC.”
“What’s the CCC?” Nori asked as Kade joined them in the small kitchen.
“You find it?” Cooper asked him.
“Yeah,” Kade answered. “Did you know there are about six dozen cases of water down there? That storage area is stacked to the ceiling with supplies.”
“You snag some?” Cooper grabbed a handful of chopped onions from the pile Nori had made and threw them into a skillet of hot oil.
“Loaded up the bikes,” Kade said. “Vitabars, and batteries, and extra flashlights. Few other things.”
“Good. We’ll need to fuel up, too. There are cans along the back wall.”
“Cooper.” Nori’s raised voice was resolute.
“Hmm?” He didn’t face her.
“What is the CCC?”
He turned toward her from Kade, but his eyes followed later, as i
f he had to drag them to meet her gaze. “It stands for Council of Concerned Citizens.” At her raised eyebrows, Cooper took a deep breath and words tumbled out. “The CCC started out as a philosophical group. A bunch of racists with radical views on overpopulation banded together to rid the world of the people they thought were depleting Earth’s resources.” He cleared his throat and looked down. “Over time, it morphed into much more.”
“They like to think they run things,” Kade said. “Even though everyone knows life down here is anarchy.”
Cooper’s tone was grave. “The CCC does run things. They encourage chaos and lawlessness to further their own goals, while enforcing strict regulations on their own people.”
“So, these guys are what?” Nori shrugged. “The Subterranean Mafia or something?”
Cooper twisted his mouth as he considered. “Something like that. Except with advanced technology and resources. And more hired thugs.”
Nori’s head whipped toward Cooper as pieces of the puzzle fit together. “Are Sarge and Wallace and Jenks a part of that?”
Cooper nodded.
“The same jerks you were in cahoots with?”
“Who says cahoots?” Cooper smirked and looked to Kade for backup, but the fighter didn’t bite.
“Don’t change the subject,” Nori said through gritted teeth. “Are you or are you not involved with this CCC?”
“I am not.”
“Then why were you with those losers? How do you have access to these supplies and facilities—to their vehicles?”
“Because they think I’m in cahoots with them.” Cooper groaned and threw the spoon dramatically into the pan. “Aw, now look,” he said. “You’ve got me saying it.”
“And why would they think that?” She would not let him distract her this time.
“Because I’m a very good actor.”
“Cooper!” Nori seethed. “Give me a straight answer!”
“What do you want me to say?” He turned from cooking to face her. “Listen, I’m not really a member of Sarge’s little biker gang or the CCC, and I don’t support its maniacal mission. I just let them think I do.”
“Why would you do that? Are you some sort of spy?” Cooper scoffed, but she wasn’t about to let him off easy. “I think that’s exactly what you are,” she said slowly. “What are you really up to? And what were you doing in Chicago?”
“I’m just trying to get by, all right?” Cooper said. “These guys, they’ve got a network of people and supplies that runs in and out of these tunnels like veins to a main artery. If you want to survive, you’ve either got to be in with them or have friends big and bad enough to scare them off.”
“What were you doing in Chicago?” Nori’s voice was hard as steel.
“That’s what I’d like to know.” Sarge’s sinister rasp ran like rivulets of ice water down Nori’s spine. He stood just outside the door with one leg propped behind the other and one elbow resting on the doorframe in feigned nonchalance.
Two heartbeats. Ka-thunk. Ka-thunk.
“Nori, move!” Cooper flung the hot grease—squash and all—at Sarge’s head.
She fled to the other side of the bunker, Kade close on her heels. There was nowhere to go but the garden.
“Get on!” Kade bellowed and pointed to the motorcycles parked along the wall.
“I can’t drive this thing!” Nori considered it for a split second, but it was hopeless.
“Get on!” It was Cooper, and she blew out a relieved breath before doing just that.
Cooper mounted behind her and kicked the bike to a start. As they neared the single doorway out of the garden, he muttered, “Tuck in tight.”
Sarge skidded into the door and time suspended in anticipation of the ultimate game of chicken. Sarge’s chest heaved as he breathed, his face red and raw from grease burns. He set his feet wide, as if he could actually stop a motorcycle.
Nori followed Cooper’s lead and huddled low on the bike.
In the end, it was a simple choice: live or die. Sarge could move and survive, or stand his ground and get plowed by an engine-powered hunk of hot metal. He chose life.
Nori turned and saw Kade ride through behind them. Sarge grabbed for Kade’s shoulder to swing him off the bike. He was wiry, and mean, but Kade had bulk on his side. He tossed off Sarge’s grip, shoved him into the wall, and kept his seat on the motorcycle.
Cooper kicked aside dining chairs as they slowly maneuvered the bikes back through the kitchen and toward the front entrance. Nori swiped their backpacks from the table as they passed and tucked them between her and Cooper.
They made it through the open doorway, but barely had time to breathe before Jenks and Wallace came running toward them. Their faces looked like a pair of bad actors miming first confusion, then shock, and then murderous intent. Nori clenched her eyes shut as Cooper laid on the throttle, but when she turned back to look, Wallace had pulled a rifle that was slung behind his back forward.
“He’s got a gun!” she screamed. “Kade!”
Gunfire exploded. One after another, the shots popped and echoed like firecrackers.
When the shots stopped, the only sound was the high-pitched scream of her ringing ears. Nori screamed for the friend trapped between her and gunfire. “Kade!” she screamed. “Kade!”
“Go back!” Nori beat Cooper’s shoulders with her fists. “Go back, go back, go back!”
Cooper didn’t respond besides stiffening under her beating.
“You can’t just leave him back there,” she yelled over the engine.
“Fine,” she said when Cooper didn’t respond. She raised her left leg, putting her weight onto her right side.
Cooper whipped around. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going back for him whether you stop or not.”
“Like hell you are.” He reached behind him to jerk her down by the jacket. “Sit down.”
“I can’t just leave him.” The adrenaline rush was gone, and Nori crashed. Tears fell and she swiped them with the back of her hand. “We can’t leave him, Cooper.”
“You want me to turn around and go toward the guns?” he said. “Is that what you want? For all of us to get killed? Cause they’ll do it.”
“But we can’t just leave—” Nori spun in the seat when she detected the whine of a motor behind them. “Kade?” she whispered, her body sagging with relief when her friend’s face came into view. He was leaning to the right, but he was alive.
“He’s okay,” she said, beating on Cooper’s back again. “He’s okay.”
34
A Cavern Oasis
“Can we stop for a while?” Nori asked.
The motorcycle headlight cut a v-shaped beam into the darkness, but there was nothing to see. They’d driven through miles and miles of rock losing Sarge, who was probably nursing serious grease burns.
Cooper turned his head toward her to speak over the engine. “It’s not much farther.”
“I really need to stop now,” she said, squirming.
“Trust me,” Cooper said, and caught her gaze over his shoulder. “I’m sick of being on this bike, too. About five more miles, and we’ll be there.”
“Where’s there?”
Cooper stretched his long neck first to one side and then the other. “Newman County. I know where there’s a lodge built inside a cave. We could all use a rest.”
Though life Subterranean was perfect for her particular disability, speeding through blurs of blackness mile after grimy mile bored Nori to oblivion. Straddling a speeding motorcycle for days wasn’t all she’d thought it would be, either. The insides of her legs were sore and her butt just plain hurt.
She turned in the seat to catch a glimpse of Kade behind them. His mouth was set in a thin line, and he arched his back before rolling his shoulders. He was tired, too.
“God, I thought we’d never get he—ahhhhhh.” Nori nearly collapsed when she stepped off the motorcycle. With a hand braced on the rough wall of the cavern, she
flexed and shook her legs until they gathered their senses and remembered how to walk. “I’m fine,” she said sarcastically. “No need to help me.”
“Where are we going?” Kade shone his flashlight past her. “Is that a creek?”
“Yeah, this whole area of karst was naturally formed,” Cooper said. Nori looked to Kade, who obviously shared her confusion. Kade shined his light toward Cooper, who hissed and threw up a hand.
“Oh. Sorry, man,” Kade said and turned the light to the ground.
“Anyway,” Cooper said “karst is landscape formed by water carving into rock. You know, caves, fissures, sinkholes.” Nori and Kade finally nodded their understanding, which only encouraged the geology lesson. “This whole area was formed by a natural spring,” he said. “They’ve rerouted much of it now into a reservoir just behind there.” He nodded past Kade.
“Why?” Nori asked.
“To have a water source.”
“For drinking, you mean?”
“And bathing,” Cooper said with a wink.
A bath sounded like the best thing in the whole world, and Nori lost herself for a moment thinking about sinking into a steaming tub and melting the ice that had frozen to her bones.
Cooper was still talking about caves. “Native Americans once lived here then it housed munitions in the civil war. Even the James Gang is rumored to have hidden out here.”
“No.” Kade stopped dead in his tracks and pointed the flashlight at Cooper’s face again. “Don’t mess with me.”
Cooper raised an arm in front of his face. “For God’s sake, stop shining that in my eyes.”
“Sorry.” Kade clicked off his light. “Are you serious about the James Gang, though? I’ve read every book I could get my hands on, and I’ve seen all the Jesse James movies. Train robberies, mountains, gunfights, snow.” He closed his eyes and looked on the verge of a seizure. “It’s what I imagined life on the Surface was like.”