Half Way Home

by Hugh Howey

  A cool breeze drifted across the treetops from the west, the air seemingly chilled by the mighty blocks of ice-topped granite. They could have been a thousand miles away or ten, my sense of distance was so completely obliterated. Between the last glimmer of morning stars above, and the size of the leaves beneath me, the mountains provided one last blow to my ego—my sense of belonging to this universe—and made all else seem insignificant by comparison.

  “It’s gorgeous,” Tarsi whispered. Her arms encircled me from behind and I rested my hands on top of hers, feeling a joy from our contact that somehow grounded me from the enormity of my surroundings.

  “I can’t believe she’s gone,” I said, thinking of Britny. I wanted to say I wish she could have seen this, but it felt too trite and sad to utter. Tarsi replied by squeezing me. I felt her chin find a sore muscle in my back, her head sagging and heavy against me.

  “We were supposed to conquer this?” I heard her whisper with sadness.

  The thought stirred something within me. Something angry. Then it floated off on the freshening breeze, lost among the gentle flapping of blanket-sized leaves.

  ••••

  It didn’t take long for the growing light to wake the others. While everyone took in the amazing sights to all sides—the boys reveling in our delight as we saw it for the first time—a gradual giddiness seemed to conquer our loss. All except for Vincent, who remained silent and detached despite our efforts to include him.

  Part of me felt guilty for taking excitement in anything, and we all seemed to pay homage to his greater sadness by tempering our enthusiasm. When one of us accidentally laughed or grew excited, a sheepish, apologetic look tended to follow.

  We sorted through the gear that had survived the previous night’s ordeal, several of us bemoaning the loss of a precious item: a thermos, a strip of tarp, even an entire pack. We inventoried what was left, none of us speaking a word on what Britny had been carrying even though I’m certain we were all silently, guiltily, tallying her things.

  The girls broke out what remained of the cooked vinnie meat while Karl and Samson crawled back down the hole to search for dangling bombfruit. We rationed our water carefully, the brilliant blue sky overhead a refreshing novelty and also a cloudless curse.

  “We should have known that was a possibility,” Kelvin said, plopping down beside me and shaking his head. “Why would the tunnel be that size unless they came that big?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded and picked splinters out of my calloused feet.

  “You think those were the adults? Is that as big as they get?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Or it’s a male-female thing.” I glanced up to see several others following our conversation in silence while they toyed with their food.

  “How do we get down?” Mindy asked me. Once again, faces turned my way, even though I’d shown no particular aptitude, nor willingness to lead. I dwelled on this tendency of the group to ask my opinion when what I should’ve been doing was thinking of an answer for Mindy. I wondered if it were nothing more than Stevens taking me aside that first day, or maybe the fact that only my flashlight had survived our escape. I bit my lip and mulled whether it would be best to put an end to whatever shred of authority I seemed to hold among the group, or if even my hesitating threatened to fill them with despair.

  “Where’s the sign from Mica and Peter?” I asked Jorge, hoping to deflect the burden to someone more eager to shoulder it.

  “Below,” Samson said, intercepting the question. “Right past that dip in the brambles. It pointed that way.” He gestured toward the nearest peaks.

  “How long do you think we can last up here?” Leila asked.

  “Without rain? Not long,” Kelvin said. “I say we head toward the mountains and scout below the canopy now and then. There have to be rivers flowing down from that snow and from the rain.”

  “Yeah, but how do we find a way down?” Mindy asked. “How do we get past those things?”

  “We can mark the tunnels when they come out at night,” Karl said. “We’ll gather some more up in a circle using the thick leaf chips they like. Maybe we’ll lead them ahead of us, just in case the canopy is thin in places.”

  “But then what?” someone asked. “We head back down? Just take our chances?”

  “Maybe it was the tremors,” I said. “It could’ve been a fluke.”

  “Don’t call it a fluke,” Vincent said, not looking up.

  An uncomfortable silence ensued.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him.

  He waved his hand. I wasn’t sure how to interpret the gesture.

  “We’ll go down as before,” Kelvin said, rescuing me. “We’ll lead a long train of vinnies down ahead of us. They seemed to know something was coming. The more of them we have, the more warning we’ll get.”

  “Good idea,” Tarsi said.

  “We could cut some long sticks from the brambles,” Mindy said. “We’ll sharpen them in case we need to drive them back.”

  “Even if that doesn’t work, if they were long enough to span the gaps in the tunnel, they’ll make it easier to hang on if we have to go over the edges again.”

  “Especially if we rigged up bits of rope on them for our wrists.”

  Kelvin and I looked to one another as the group started spouting out suggestions. I raised my eyebrows, signaling my appreciation for his help as a growing sense of purpose took hold of our group. The urge to survive seemed to be returning, bringing with it the motivation to move forward.

  Wherever that took us.

  • 25 • The Storm

  I took the lead as we set out across the canopy, my gender giving me the right to risk my life and my comparatively diminutive size making me the least likely to go crashing through a soft spot or a hole. Tarsi had insisted on walking along beside me, but neither I nor Kelvin would hear of it. The two of them followed a dozen paces behind, trying to include me in their sporadic conversations.

  The tight weave of branches and thick layer of leaves made for a relatively comfortable walk. When a stiff wind rolled through the trees, the canopy beneath us seemed to sway ever so slightly. It filled my stomach with a sickening sensation I might liken to being on a sailing ship or bounding across a small moon. I’d never done either of those things, of course, but both somehow seemed less alien to me than hiking across a treetop.

  The terrain ahead was full of bumps and dips, including some very long ridges that possibly indicated major branches underneath. I stuck to those, not just for the promise of stability but to stay out of the small puddles of warm water that had collected in the valleys. A quick taste led to even quicker spitting, but someone suggested it could be boiled and made safe. The few vinnies we saw in the daylight seemed to prefer these lower areas, especially any that dipped down far enough to provide shade.

  When the ridges petered out and I had to cross over a lower spot, I did so carefully, testing my weight on one foot before shifting the other forward. After a few of these crossings without incident, I stopped being so conservative. And that’s when my leg crashed through the canopy.

  It happened so fast, I never felt any sense of danger. There was a loud crack of snapping wood, and then I was on my butt, my entire leg hanging through a hole in the canopy. Kelvin slid forward on his belly and pulled me back. Exploring around the thin section, we discovered another of the large tunnels beneath. We made our way around it and up to another ridge before stopping for a ration of water and some bombfruit.

  While everyone else ate, Kelvin gathered every scrap of rope we had and began splicing them together. I watched him with mild curiosity as he looped both ends of the line and tied a series of complex knots.

  He came over as I took my two sips of water and showed me his creation.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Your new leash.” He held the rope up and snapped it tight a few times to demonstrate the general idea. “We both get to wear one end.”

  “I’ll be
fine,” I told him. “That was a fluke back there. Besides, that thing will just pull you off after me.”

  He looked me up and down, and then laughed. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “He’ll wear it,” Tarsi said, taking the water pouch from me and taking a sip.

  “Fine,” I said, knowing better than to argue with both of them. I lifted my arms and let Kelvin lower the loop down around my waist. He cinched it tight, somewhere between nervous-tight and paranoid-tight, then played out the line and worked the other loop around himself.

  “You’re welcome,” he said to me, glancing up after he checked his knots.

  “Thanks,” I said, feeling ridiculous.

  After everyone refreshed themselves, we set off again. As the hours passed, the heat of the overhead sun bore down unlike anything we’d ever experienced. I took my shirt off and draped it over my head, having seen what exposure to those rays had done to the boys who had spent just a few hours at the top, and most of that with clouds overhead.

  Around noon, the vinnies started making more frequent appearances. They popped up from the foliage and gathered by the warm puddles or chewed contentedly at the thicker chips of leaves. All the vinnies we saw were of the smaller variety—none like the ones that had stampeded us and caused Britny’s death.

  Also making an appearance after noon was a dark band of clouds—great billowy gray things that smothered the distant peaks and rolled across the surface of the range. Verbally, we decided the clouds were a good sign. Karl had sampled a few of the shallow puddles and agreed with me that they didn’t taste right. However, despite the relief of fresh water and the cooling cover the clouds promised, I felt terrified at the sight of so much stuff coming right for us. Especially as bolts of light began flashing through the dark mass. A storm was brewing that managed to out-grumble my stomach.

  “We’ll need to find shelter before that gets here,” Tarsi called up to me. I watched the vinnies scurry about with greater urgency and wondered if we shouldn’t start looking right then.

  We hurried along, the danger ahead and above taking my mind off the one below. I stopped picking my way as closely and no longer tested my footing in the depressions. After half an hour of forgetful and impatient marching, I fell through the canopy. Completely.

  It happened without a sound, just the swish of a giant leaf as it flopped down into one of the vertical caves. By the time Tarsi shrieked out, I had already crashed into the bottom eight or so feet down, the rope coming tight against my armpits just as my knees landed on a slope of brambles. It was over before I could even feel a sense of danger. If anything, I just felt embarrassed for getting careless. I picked myself up, feeling for bruises, as Kelvin and Tarsi appeared above.

  “Are you okay?” Tarsi asked.

  I looked up. “I’m fine. Just feeling stupid.”

  More heads appeared around the hole as the rest of the group caught up.

  “Maybe we should explore this one,” Mindy said.

  I grabbed the ladder of brambles ahead of me and began crawling out.

  “I say we go until it gets dark or rains.”

  “Maybe this was a sign, though.”

  “Now you sound like Oliver.”

  I felt like saying something in his defense, then froze at the sound of a distant and faint rumbling.

  “Quiet up there,” I hissed.

  A few people kept whispering, arguing about what to do with the rain coming.

  “Keep it down,” I begged. I lowered myself a few feet and pressed my ear to the brambles.

  Kelvin bent his waist over the edge. He grasped the limbs above me and lowered his head down near mine. “What is it?” he whispered.

  I held up my hand. It wasn’t thunder, so my first thought was the beginnings of another earthquake, but it sounded too high-pitched and consistent to be that. The group above began laughing at something—drowning out the sound—and by the time Kelvin shut them up, the noise was gone or too faint to hear. We waited a second to see if it would come back, but the roll of distant thunder had me wondering if it had ever been there at all.

  “Did you hear any of that?” I asked Kelvin.

  He nodded, then pulled his head out of the hole.

  “What was it?” Tarsi asked.

  “Probably his stomach,” Kelvin said. He reached his hand down for me. “C’mon,” he said, helping me up.

  ••••

  After another few hours of hiking, the edge of the canopy finally came into view. The sun had begun moving behind the darkening clouds, which rumbled louder and more frequently as they approached. Only the base of the nearest mountain remained visible between the canopy and the storm, which forced me to concentrate on a single, jagged pattern of rocks to aim for lest we begin walking in circles.

  “End of the road up there,” I said, stopping to allow the others to catch up. I watched as Karl and Mindy began gathering some of the chips the vinnies preferred while several others noted the location of a hole or two.

  “Are you sure that’s the edge?” Jorge asked, squinting ahead.

  “Yeah, I can see it,” Tarsi said, pointing out past me.

  “Why are we stopping here, then?”

  “Because I don’t want to keep walking while it thins out,” I said. “Besides, think of the size of the clearings between the trees. We might be past the trunk of this one already.”

  There were grunts of accord, then Leila voiced a fear I think many of us shared: “What if there isn’t a way down this tree?” she asked.

  “Then we build a shelter up here,” Kelvin said. “There’s plenty of building material. There’s food—and water coming. We’ll keep exploring until we find something.”

  “Speaking of shelter, I just felt a spot of rain.”

  As if to punctuate the sentence, a large drop smacked a nearby leaf with an audible crack.

  “We need to set up the tarps,” Tarsi said. “I’m dying of thirst.”

  The clouds swallowed the last of the sun, and a premature darkness fell across the landscape. Fumbling with Kelvin’s knots, I managed to loosen the safety rope; I dropped it around my feet. I untied my shirt from around my waist and shrugged it back on, the chill setting in quickly.

  “Let’s camp here for the night,” Mindy suggested.

  “Agreed,” said Karl.

  The rain pattered down around us, and I cursed our stupidity for waiting so late to get settled. The rush of reaching the edge had interfered with good sense. Around us, dozens of the smaller vinnies began scampering to and fro, our constant companions seeming to react to the moisture. Only, instead of looking for shelter, their number appeared to be swelling.

  “Looks like we’re not the only ones getting thirsty,” Tarsi said.

  Leila pulled her tarp out of her pack. “Let’s set up to collect some water.”

  “Are they coming out of any one hole more than another?” I asked.

  “Karl and I saw a whole train coming out of one back there,” Mindy said, pointing back the direction we’d come.

  “What are you thinking?” Kelvin asked.

  “Just trying to find something that separates them. I feel like we’re sitting on top of a maze, and I don’t want to just start at random.”

  “And I don’t want to get trampled,” Jorge said.

  “I’ll go explore it,” said Samson. Vincent agreed, and the two of them set off, but not before dropping their scraps of tarp and water containers.

  “I say we set up close to their hole,” Tarsi said. “We can take shelter in it while the water puddles.”

  We thought that was the best plan and followed the two boys back toward the hole. Meanwhile, hundreds of vinnies could be seen writhing across the landscape all the way into the distance. Tarsi stood beside me, watching them. “Almost feels like a party up here,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Kelvin said, handing us one side of a tarp. “I just hope the grown-ups aren’t invited.”

  • 26 • Down

&nbs
p; Yet another sleepless night ensued as the rain thundered down on the leaves above us. Our entire group had retired into the large tunnel Karl and Mindy had found, but it was impossible to sleep with the sporadic vinnie traffic and the rough tangle of woven limbs beneath us.

  Kelvin and Samson went up onto the canopy once to cut some leaves away and bring them down for bedding, but the waxy surface was too slick to sleep on thanks to the slope. And just like the major tunnel we had come up, the only flat dip in the upper section was soggy with collected water.

  I rarely used the flashlight in order to conserve our only battery, which meant a night of damp and uncomfortable darkness. Whenever a vinnie would creep up from below, one of us would shriek in terror, causing the rest of the group to shift out of the way as it pushed itself up to the canopy. Nobody wanted to be the lowest person, the one the vinnies reached first, which resulted in a tight clump up where the slope was steepest. We clung to the brambles and each other, shivering and miserable.

  We waited all night for the precious sun to come up. Minutes ticked by like hours. We took turns asking our neighbors what time they thought it was, but the answers were nothing more than guesses. I could feel the group growing restless, the reaction to a passing vinnie turning into anger rather than annoyance. Several times, Jorge crawled up and lifted the flap of leaves above us, poking his head out to look for the sun. After the fourth or fifth time, someone told him to give it up as each peek just brought down a small shower of cold rain.

  “I don’t think it’s coming,” he said. “I think it’s morning already, but the clouds are so thick the sun can’t get through.”

  Looking up, I could see the faintest of silhouettes around me.

  There did seem to be light filtering in from somewhere.

  “I can’t stand this,” someone said.

  “We need to just take our chances and go down. I’d rather be walking or riding a vinnie than sitting here like this.”