The Girl Who Found the Sun

by Matthew S. Cox

Alas, she had neither of those here. Still, she noted the location of the strange plastic sheets for later, intending to grab one before returning to the Arc. Those little spikes would be perfect for walking on dirt. Inside the Arc, they’d probably be slippery.

  The shelves right next to the weird plastic rugs contained wheeled office chairs. They appeared usable—albeit filthy—but the Arc didn’t need chairs. She kept going. Four aisles past that, she about screamed from unexpected excitement.

  An entire aisle contained air filter inserts in various sizes. A handful of loose ones in each size sat atop plastic-wrapped bundles containing twenty or thirty. They ranged from eight-inch squares up to rectangles twice the size of the inserts the primary filter duct used.

  “Wow…” Raven gingerly picked up a square labeled as 38x38. The ancient filters looked unbelievably clean for their age, but would no doubt be brittle. Then again, if the fabric inside had been made from synthetic materials, perhaps not. “These are almost perfect. And there’s so many. The big ones we can cut in half.”

  Tinsley looked up at her, confused. “You’re too happy over tiles.”

  “This isn’t tile, Tins… these are air filters.”

  The child blinked. “Are they gonna fix the air?”

  A scenario of the windmills collapsing, the power going out for good, and the CO2 scrubbers/fans shutting down played on fast forward in her imagination. “A little. These will get most of the dust out of the air. But, they’re not a permanent fix. Mostly, they’ll only keep it from getting worse. They’ll give us time.”

  Tinsley grabbed one and lifted it, staggering backward when it flew up unexpectedly fast. “Eep! They’re light!”

  “Yeah. It’s mostly open space and synthetic fabric. Keep that one to bring back.” She picked up a twenty-pack, then hurried to the stack of weird plastic mats, grabbing one and rolling it up into a tube to make it easier to lug.

  “What’s that for?” Tinsley held up her filter panel. “And I think we’re going to need more than one.”

  “This”—Raven patted the plastic—“is going to become sandals. And you’re right. We do need more than one. A lot more. Way too many for the two of us to carry. We’re going to take that one back as proof.”

  Tinsley glanced down at the filter in her hands. “If he doesn’t believe you, can I bonk him over the head with this?”

  “Hah!” Raven grinned. “Tempting, but I don’t think that will help. Besides, his skull is so thick it would destroy the filter… and we need it. C’mon. Time to go.”

  “Aww. Okay.”

  With the rolled up plastic under one arm, a twenty-pack of filters under the other, Raven gave one last look around the facility, awestruck at its sheer size. So much stuff just sitting here waiting for people to need it. She wondered how a society that stockpiled resources like this could have been foolish enough to ignore the warning signs leading up to the Great Death. Could the Plutions have been so advanced humanity didn’t have any chance?

  Hmm. Maybe they weren’t as obvious to them as it is to me reading it.

  Shrugging, she made her way out of the building, laughing to herself at the notion of smashing that filter over Noah’s head. Tinsley clung to her back until they made it past the patches of shattered glass, dropping to her feet once they reached safe ground.

  The sun hid behind the ruins further west, its heat and daylight noticeably weaker, a sign that night approached. If she could avoid doing so, she’d prefer not to be outside after dark. At least, not until she had a better understanding of what sorts of animals might be out here.

  18

  By The Book

  We’d be a lot better off without so many damn rules. Someone ought’a make a rule prohibiting there being too many rules. – Ellis Wilder.

  Raven didn’t know what to expect under the hatch, or even if it would open.

  During the roughly two-hour walk back to the Arc, several ‘Chewie’ sightings—rather hearings—kept her jumpy. Neither she nor Tinsley ever saw anything, but grunts, thumps, and the crackle of small branches breaking came from behind and to their left, as though something followed them.

  Tinsley, who’d been utterly fearless in regard to the danger of toxic air, became clingy at having a ‘monster’ close by. Though Raven thought at least some of the grunting noises sounded awfully human to be a bear, she dismissed it as her overactive imagination. Even if everything she knew about the world was wrong and humans might have survived in places other than the Arc, another person would have tried to talk to her—or attacked.

  She kept her hand on Dad’s old military knife for most of the walk, Tinsley’s arm threaded through hers. Trying to beat sundown, she didn’t dawdle to gawk at ruins, trees, or the occasional scrap of civilization peeking out of the foliage.

  Whatever creature followed them didn’t reveal itself at the edge of the forest when they reached the large area of open dirt spanning from the Arc’s back entrance to the windmill farm. She stopped about halfway between the tree line and the metal square on the ground, peering back into the greenery. Alas, the sun’s position below the treetop level made the woods behind her an impenetrable mass of shadows. ‘Chewie’ could’ve been hiding behind the nearest tree and she wouldn’t have seen him.

  I really have read too many scary books.

  Somewhat confident that no giant furry beast would appear out of nowhere barreling toward them, she walked the last forty yards or so to the hatch. Tinsley twisted to watch the windmills spin against a backdrop of a sky fading rapidly from blue to orange, the horizon beyond the turbines black.

  Moment of truth. Are we in trouble?

  She grasped the hatch and pulled.

  It opened without protest, and no one appeared to be waiting at the bottom. At least, no flashlights turned on.

  “Whew… Not sure what I’m freaking about. I’m going to basically admit to it anyway.” She exhaled out her nose.

  Tinsley rummaged her tread socks out of the tool satchel and put them on after brushing dirt off her soles. Raven took cord from the satchel and tied the filter panel onto the girl’s back, then rigged a harness for the twenty-pack of filters and the much heavier plastic mat, hanging them over her shoulder to free both hands for the long ladder climb.

  She let Tinsley go first, closing the hatch behind them and turning the wheel.

  “It’s really dark. I can’t see anything,” whispered Tinsley.

  “Yeah. It’s going to be this dark outside soon, too.”

  “Not really. There’s stars up there. It smells bad inside.”

  Five-ish hours of being outside truly did make the Arc smell like an old sneaker that had stepped in poop.

  A few minutes of repetitive climbing later, Tinsley whispered, “I’m on the bottom.”

  Raven took the last three rungs slow, reaching out a tentative foot until she found concrete, then fumbled around in the dark to find her daughter’s hand, then hurried along using one hand on the wall for navigation. At this hour, a strip of glow shone in from under the locked door, giving her enough light to see the steel plate beside the maintenance passage.

  No one had moved it back into position, a good sign no one noticed her leave. That would have been a miracle if she didn’t plan on going straight to Noah’s office and throwing the single filter at him.

  That’s going to piss him off. Maybe I should talk it over with Ben first.

  She slipped into the ‘secret’ maintenance passage, pulled the plate in place, and hurried through the crawlways to an exit fairly close to the engineering room. Two women she recognized as being on the water team went by as she emerged into the corridor. Neither paid any special attention to her crawling out of the hole. No one would think it unusual for a tech to be in those passages.

  “Hope Ben’s still ‘in the office.’”

  She hurried down the hall and swung a left into her work area—finding it empty of people.

  Being back in the Arc with no one the wiser about her missi
on caused an adrenaline crash. She’d been worried the security people would grab her at the bottom of the ladder and throw her right in jail, preventing her from doing anything about the situation. Fair bet if she had been discovered, that would have happened. In the absence of that fear, the exertion of the long overland hike and rummaging caught up to her.

  “Yeah… figured they all went home for the wake. Hell with it. Tomorrow.” She unrolled the plastic mat on her work table, weighing it down under several fan motors to keep it flat. “These”—she snagged the filter from Tinsley and set it on top of the pack—“are coming with us. Don’t want them to disappear on me.”

  The girl smiled.

  They walked home, had a shower to rid themselves of dirt and dust, then changed into their night clothes before eating two more muffins for dinner. Though her dial clock showed the time at 1-0-1-7, almost three hours earlier than she usually went to bed, she didn’t bother trying to stay awake.

  Raven awoke sixteen minutes before the alarm went off, aware of an odd feeling.

  Getting an adequate—perhaps even excessive—amount of sleep resulted in none of the usual post-alarm sluggishness that had become her norm each wake. That should have left her energized and ready to tackle any project, but her head hurt, a faint burn lingered in her sinuses, and her muscles didn’t really want to cooperate.

  For a few seconds, she freaked out in her mind over walking into an invisible toxin and exposing her child to the same. Had the ‘Chewie’ following them been a hallucination brought on by some unknown chemical, just like Noah said?

  Tinsley stirred, coughed a bit, and groaned.

  “Morning, kiddo.”

  “Mmmn. My head hurts.”

  “Mine, too.” Raven pulled the slight girl upright, into her lap. “Do you feel sick?”

  Tinsley yawned. “No. It’s the same all the time.”

  It’s not the outside… it’s the air in here. Crap! If I’m starting to feel it, the other kids are in big trouble. And elders.

  She jumped out of bed. Tinsley raced to the toilet room before Raven could get there, so she hovered by the door waiting. Once the girl emerged and began to get dressed, Raven used the toilet, then rushed changing into her wake clothes. To save time and not waste food, they ate muffins from their remaining stash for breakfast.

  Dropping Tinsley off at the classroom on the way to the engineering area presented two problems. One, if her plan worked as she hoped it would, a group would be following her to the ruins today to help collect filters and she didn’t want to leave Tinsley down here in the bad air if she could avoid it. Two, showing up at the classroom would almost certainly set off a conversation with Sienna about where they’d been yesterday, missing dinner. While she didn’t mind having that conversation, she didn’t want the hour long delay it would cause right now. Raven grabbed the new filters and hurried out the door.

  Tinsley followed her at a brisk walk straight to the engineering room, not even questioning why they’d gone right past the school.

  The room remained empty, but she figured the others simply hadn’t arrived yet. She’d gotten out of bed early and skipped the usual twenty minutes at the cafeteria. Having some time to burn, she had Tinsley stand on the clear plastic so she could trace the outline of her feet. Enlarging the cutouts a bit would add a year to their useful lifespan before the child outgrew them.

  A small electric saw made cutting the plastic easy. In the midst of doing that, inspiration hit her. She cut out three of each side. Rather than hot glue a cloth strip to the top to serve as an ankle tie and toe loop, she sandwiched three layers of plastic together with hot glue, putting the ‘sandal straps’ she made out of fabric between them, cemented in place. The result: half-inch thick tough-as-armor sandals with spiked bottoms.

  Within seconds of Tinsley putting them on to test, Ben walked in.

  His casual wave on the way to his office proved he had no idea she’d gone outside yesterday. The man did not have any ability to conceal the kind of emotion he’d feel if he knew she’d gotten in big trouble.

  “Hey, Ben?” asked Raven.

  He stopped, whirling around to look at her. “Oh, that’s right. You should be off this wake. I’m not gonna say anything if you want to help out, but keep your head down.”

  “Actually, I did the exact opposite from keeping my head down. Can we talk? I need your opinion.”

  Tinsley examined the sandals, took a few steps around in a circle, and gave a thumbs-up. “They’re a”—she coughed. “Ugh. They wanna slide on the smooth floor, but they feel good.”

  “Opposite?” Ben rubbed his forehead. “Don’t tell me something in Noah’s office is going to catch fire.”

  She laughed. “No. You know how I feel about topside, right?”

  “Yeah.” He folded his arms. “What did you do?”

  Raven pulled the single filter panel out from under her worktable and held it out to him. “Oh, nothing much. Look at this.”

  “That’s…” He took it from her as if handling the most valuable commodity in the world. “It looks like it’s never been used. Where the hell did you get this from? Wait…” He stared at her. “Did you go searching around on level one? Find a storage room we forgot about?”

  “No. I’m actually more afraid of level one than outside. I went to the ruins of a city.” She started explaining about her father’s notes, but paused as Lark, Shaw, and Trenton walked in together, likely from the cafeteria—as evidenced by Trenton carrying a few pieces of toast he munched on. “Hey, guys. Look at this.”

  They wandered over.

  Raven plucked the filter from Ben’s grasp and showed it off to them before restarting the explanation of the notes as well as her trip out to get the filter. “There are hundreds of filters there. Some are a bit small, but I saw at least 200 giant rectangular ones. We could cut them in half and get two squares the right size for each one.”

  “That’s a little difficult to believe.” Shaw shifted his jaw side to side, making his white mustache twitch.

  “I saw it, too,” said Tinsley.

  Lark’s jaw hung open. “You brought your kid outside?”

  Raven tossed the filter to Ben and folded her arms. “Damn right I did. The air in here is dangerous. Look at her.”

  Tinsley coughed.

  “She took her mask off to eat when we got to the ruins, and forgot to put it back on. She didn’t cough at all out there.”

  “Mom…” Tinsley pulled on her arm. “I didn’t forget. I didn’t wanna wear it.”

  “Wow.” Ben pinched the bridge of his nose. “Took the kid outside…”

  “I was worried if I didn’t, I’d come back to find her on the floor.” Raven picked Tinsley up and squeezed her. “I don’t even like having her inside this place now. Maybe replacing all the filters can help a little, but you all damn well know how much trouble we’re in.”

  The others exchanged conflicted glances.

  “Hang on. There’s more.” Raven pulled the tin of screwdriver bits out of her satchel, opened it, and held up the pigeon feather. “Check this out.”

  “The heck is that?” asked Lark. “Plastic?”

  “No. It’s a feather. From a pigeon. We saw live birds.” She jabbed the feather at Ben’s face. “Live birds. There is no way you will convince me birds are surviving in air that will harm us. In this novel I read, coal miners carried a canary with them because if they found toxic gas, the little bird would die first and warn them.”

  “Tweet,” said Tinsley.

  Everyone looked at her.

  “I’m the littlest.” She shrugged. “If the air goes bad, I’m gonna warn everyone.”

  Raven swept her up into a hug, fighting back tears. “No, baby. I’m gonna take you outside before it gets that bad.”

  “You said this old storage place had hundreds of filters?” Shaw raised an eyebrow. “You found birds, and you spent half a day out there with a six-year-old, and she’s fine.”

  “Yeah,” r
asped Raven, too choked up for her voice to fit out her throat.

  “And you went topside.” Shaw glanced at Lark.

  “Seriously? She’s like the most worried about the toxic air.” Trenton chomped a bite out of his toast.

  Lark playfully shoved him. “I was. But, yeah. I went out there. Feel fine. Those wind turbines are in rough shape. Rusty. Full of holes. The towers’ rivets are loose. That little girl there could probably kick one over. It might not be too late to save them, but the only way we’d ever be able to do that is a lot of work outside.”

  Shaw took the pigeon feather. “That’s real all right. Getting those filters is the only thing that’s gonna keep us all breathing. Even if it’s as bad as they say it is up there, it ain’t gonna matter real soon. Not so great in here anymore. I’m in. Let’s go get them.”

  “Wait. Wait.” Ben raised a hand in a ‘stop’ gesture. “You can’t just go outside. We need to get approval first.”

  Trenton scoffed. “If there’s a fire, you don’t gotta ask Noah’s okay to put it out.”

  Ben started to face him, but Lark raised her voice. “Yeah. The longer we wait, the more damage is done. We shouldn’t sit around for days waiting for him to make up his mind.”

  “Hang on, everyone.” Ben waved his hands back and forth over his head. “You won’t even be able to leave the Arc without official approval.”

  “How’d she get out?” Shaw gestured at Raven.

  “Trade secret. Kidding. I can show you guys, but if Noah realizes it’s there, he might want to close it off. Oh, look over there.” Raven pointed out the plastic-wrapped twenty-pack she’d set on an unused worktable against the wall. “The place had stacks of those.”

  Everyone stared.

  “We need to do this the right way. Noah is not unreasonable… he’s just cautious.” Ben looked down at the filter in his hand, then back at Raven. “It’s our job to make sure he understands the situation enough to make a decision. And that decision is that we have no choice but to get these filters.”