by Tara Basi
He breathed a huge sigh of relief when after only ten paces they found the edge of another pit.
“How many of these things are there?” Jugger asked.
“Maybe a million, arranged in a grid. The map shows the way through, we’ll keep going till we find the last one on this edge, then we’ll rest,” Battery Boy said, gaining in confidence as they passed one pit edge after another, all regularly spaced.
“A million, a million holes?” Stuff exclaimed.
Less than half an hour later they found the north corner of the pit grid. A final pit with no others beyond it, the first of a row of pits stretching for kilometres under the Block and just the first of many rows. Battery Boy guessed from the map numbers that each row had a thousand pits and there were a thousand rows, a million pits. All regularly spaced in symmetrical Block style.
“This is it, the maze. We count the pits and follow the path in the map and the door is at the end. Two, maybe three day’s walk,” Battery Boy explained to the others as they stood in the circle of torch light.
“Let’s go then,” Jugger said.
“I’m tired, you said we could rest when we found the maze,” Stuff whined.
“You see anything to eat around here? We gotta keep moving,” Jugger insisted.
“We should rest, just a couple of hours. We have to follow the path exactly, we can’t make a mistake. If we’re tired we could easily miss the door,” Battery Boy explained calmly, hoping to persuade Jugger rather than start another argument.
“Two hours it is, Mr Boss,” Jugger replied after a long silence.
The boys moved a safe distance away from the corner pit edge and settled down to get some rest. Within minutes Stuff was snoring loudly. Battery Boy and Jugger sat quietly in the pitch black, interrupted only by the bursts of strobe lighting that seemed to be getting a little closer each time they flared up. Battery Boy was too excited about finding the maze and working through the path in his head to sleep and Jugger just seemed restless.
“A grid ain’t no maze, what’s the puzzle?” Jugger asked pointedly.
“A direct route isn’t safe. Map’s taking us around the dangerous parts,” Battery Boy answered, more guessing than knowing.
“What danger?” Jugger pressed, obviously uncomfortable with having to rely on someone else for his safety.
“Doesn’t say, don’t know, reckon we don’t want to find out. Best we stick to the route in the book,” Battery Boy replied.
For a while there was just the quiet dark.
“Why’d you two run away?” Jugger asked, unexpectedly.
“Someone told me the truth about the Bands, the Block. What life was like before, when we were all free. They helped me get away,” Battery Boy answered.
“And the midget? He don’t look like no runaway type,” Jugger asked.
“Some old-girl snatched him, made a run for the wastes. Day before his tenth birthday. Must have got quite a way before her head dropped off. Stuff panicked, kept running, got lost, couldn’t find his way back. I found him near dead, about a year ago.”
“Bet he’d love to go back, but he’s spoiled now. So, how you liking this, being free, eating shit, cold, wet, running scared every day, probably dead before you hit fourteen.”
“No Band telling me what to do, I’m free.”
“Right. Me, I got this Band, live good, different girl every day, and a bit of hunting on the side. Not so much these days, not many stupid enough to choose to be a runaway. Reckon you two are the last ones.”
“Block can take you any time, even with a Band. Takes you at eighteen anyway.”
“I’m good with the old-girls so I was gonna make eighteen, if you hadn’t turned up with that bag. Before that, life was good. Band never bothered me. Stick to the rules, hardly know it’s there.”
“Like I said I don’t want no Band and no Band rules.”
“Bet you have rules, out here. Bet you make little Stuff follow them rules? Or what, you give him a good kicking? Right? What’s the difference?”
“They’re my rules and they might get you past eighteen.”
“Crazy runaway. Better get that sleep, don’t want you making any mistakes with that path,” Jugger replied. Battery Boy heard him move away and stretch out.
After a few moments Battery Boy lay down and tried to sleep. What Jugger said irritated him and kept him awake for a while longer. Tress never said it would be easy, being free.
Battery Boy was falling into a pit filled with blood and spiders. He was sinking below the surface, screaming for breath, choking, blood poured down his throat and the spiders followed, filling his open mouth.
Battery Boy woke up, coughing and retching. There was something hard crawling into his mouth. He spat the fat, slippery cockroach out before he even realised what it was and half retched-yelled as he flipped the torch on.
Jugger and Stuff were on their feet in seconds, jolted awake by the noise. The light revealed a sea of cockroaches flowing over the spot they had vacated. All three were covered in the lingering travellers. Battery Boy beat at his clothes, throwing the hard bodied writhing arthropods to the dirt. Everywhere the light beam landed was carpeted in cockroaches, sometimes two or three deep. The insects seemed disinterested in the boys as they purposely marched towards the south side of the corner pit. The air was filled with the constant clicking of their multitude of tiny mandibles.
Battery Boy grabbed his bag and led the other two out of the oncoming tide to the north side of the pit, which was free of creepy crawlies. There were millions of roaches, a fast flowing river pooling along the southern edge of the pit. Shining his light across the pit Battery Boy could see a legion of silvery antenna twitching expectantly as they congregated at the pit’s edge. In places the roaches were piled ten high and struggling for position, many were pushed over the edge and disappeared.
The feeble glow of the torch was suddenly dwarfed by the towering columns of light that erupted very close to their corner of the grid. So close it was obvious the light came from the Block and something moved in the light, just before it was extinguished. The closest light pillar flashed only a hundred metres away.
Without warning, the under-surface of the Block over the pit they were standing next to dilated revealing a rectangular opening. Instantly it was filled with a blinding light. Out of the light dropped a pit-shaped, ten metre high block of grey jelly, streaked with ribbons of pink. The constant north-south wind caught edges of the giant blancmange, throwing a torrent of small raindrop sized globules towards the waiting mandibles on the south side of the pit. Even before the bulk of the slop vanished beneath the rim of the pit the light was extinguished, only to flash somewhere else in the near distance, before stopping altogether.
Battery Boy turned the torch on the south side and illuminated a feeding frenzy of insects crawling over each other to attack the grey pink jelly spread over their backs and across the earth all around the southern edge of the pit. The after-stench from whatever had been dropped into the pit was sickening. Stuff was throwing up what little he had in his stomach while Battery Boy and Jugger coughed and gagged.
“What was that? A Block shit?” Stuff spluttered wiping his mouth on the back of his sleeve.
“Doesn’t matter what it is, makes no difference,” Battery Boy said not really wanting to consider the possibilities.
“At least we can eat,” Jugger said as he crunched a still wriggling cockroach. Not bad,” he mumbled while chewing, seemingly unflustered by what had happened.
“Listen, about the maze, this is important,” Battery Boy said as they stood in a circle around the pool of light shining onto the ground from the torch. “You have to count with me; we’ll stop every twenty pits and check we have the same count. First we’ll go east, along the grid edge, for exactly two hundred and forty pits. Then we’ll turn. Got it?”
“What if we make a mistake,” Stuff asked nervously.
“They we’ll have to come back here and start all over
again,” Battery Boy explained with a sigh.
“I reckon if someone can’t count we chuck him in a pit,” Jugger suggested, staring pointedly at Stuff.
Battery Boy shouted out, ‘One’, and set off.
The boys trotted along the line of pits, like the open graves of giants, silently counting off each one they passed. They called out totals after every twenty to check they all had the same count. Every fifteen minutes or so the fast moving Block light show would reignite in a random part of the grid, make its deposit and then everything would be dark again. Having mastered the shape of the pits and layout of the grid Battery Boy felt increasingly relaxed about moving faster. Occasionally, they would be forced to crunch across a river of roaches headed for some new feast, but more usually the ground under their feet was smooth and featureless.
Without incident, after several hours, they arrived at pit two hundred and forty.
“We’ll take a break, ten minutes,” Battery Boy called out as he sensed from Stuff’s ragged breathing that the boy needed to catch his breath.
“Next?” Jugger asked, breathing quite normally.
“We turn south, into the grid proper, and count off two hundred and seven pits,” Battery Boy answered struggling to get his breath under control.
“Sounds easy enough.” Then Jugger added, looking up at the Block underside, “I think I’ve figured this out.”
Battery Boy’s eyes followed the torch beam up to the under surface of the Block, wondering if Jugger meant the random lights.
“Vans, it’s like the Vans only bigger, a lot, lot bigger. I knew I’d seen this, this floating business, before,” Jugger continued.
Battery Boy shuddered; a Van had taken Tress. Eventually the Vans took everyone, even the runaways who got caught. Only the dead got to stay behind. Vans were Block coloured, unadorned, truck-sized containers, that dropped out of the clouds but never quite touched the ground. On arrival one end dilated, revealing their cargo, always neatly stacked and undisturbed by the flight. Their regular visits re-stocked the schools and collected those whose time was up.
Of course Jugger would be more familiar with the Vans than most. The hunters’ main job was to unload the Vans and then throw the unwanted in, to be carried away and never be seen again.
“You never feel bad about all the people you tossed in a Van?” Battery Boy asked, trying to contain his anger. Hunters had thrown Tress in a Van.
“Band rules, no choice, everyone has to go, even me, but maybe not now, if we find your door,” Jugger answered with a cold smile.
For a moment it passed his mind to casually take the gun out of the bag and shoot Jugger in the head, just after saying, “And these are my rules.”
“It is like a Van door, you know where the light and the pink shit come out, all solid and then an opening,” Stuff suddenly piped up, distracting Battery Boy from his murderous thoughts.
It wouldn’t be right, Battery Boy had seen Tress struggle with the Band often enough, making her do things she didn’t want to do. You can’t fight a Band. He’d give Jugger the benefit of the doubt, besides he might need the old-boy before it was all over and he’d saved his life once already.
The boys turned from the edge and headed due south directly into the monster graveyard proper. The flow of crawlies and their incessant clicking became more frequent, as did the occasional waft of the stomach churning smell. Neither slowed them down or threatened them. Two hundred and seven pits in and Battery Boy directed the group east to count off six hundred pits, a good thirty kilometres, before taking a couple of hours sleep. All three boys kept up the count knowing a single mistake would mean having to start over. Every twentieth pit they called out their counts as Battery Boy called their names. Monotonously, pit after pit passed by without any distinguishing feature to break the tedium. The roach swarm did a good job of keeping the place clean, they ate the overspill glop and any of their own damaged or dead.
Battery Boy was surprised how quickly they were covering the path and decided to relax the count check to every hundred pits on this leg. It helped his concentration that Stuff had stopped his annoying whispering chatter. It probably calmed Stuff’s fears but it distracted Battery Boy from thinking about the door and trying to work out exactly what the book was saying about opening it. Even so, Stuff had been unusually quiet for a long time. All he could hear was the near continuous clicking of the roaches. Battery Boy jogged to a halt as he approached the next hundredth pit checkpoint.
Turning around to confirm his count with the others Battery Boy was shocked to find he was alone. “Stuff, Jugger?” he hissed.
All the light showed was bare ground. Apart from the background clicking, just a cold silence met his question. They always jogged a few paces behind, to Battery Boy’s left and right, avoiding the mistake of banging into him again if he stopped suddenly. They would never drift out of the safety of his light, where were they? Stuff and Jugger could not both have got lost. In this place his torch was a beacon. Even if they had fallen behind they could always see his light and they were moving in a straight line with the pit edges on either side to guide them. As a growing dread crawled up his spine he felt for the gun in his bag.
Without warning a reeking sack was plunged over his head, down over his shoulders, trapping his arms and then drawn tight around his waist just as his legs were kicked away and he crashed to the ground, face first. Clawing fingers pulled his feet together. Kicking back was repaid with a fierce blow to his side draining his fight long enough for his ankles to be securely tethered. Battery Boy held on to his torch which was still on and illuminating nothing more than the inside of the filthy sack, telling him nothing about what or who had caught him. He struggled without effect as his captors cut away the old-boy’s precious canvas bag. More ropes were wound around the sack and his legs making it impossible for him to move his arms and almost choking him as they passed around his neck. Just like one of the animals he had hunted and bagged in the wastes, Battery Boy was caught.
Roughly rolled onto his back, hands grabbed his ankles and he was dragged forward. Any rocky ground and he would have been knocked unconscious or worse. His captors were running far faster than the boys had been moving, even hauling him in their wake. Unconsciousness might have been a blessing as he struggled to breathe inside the sack under a constant cloud of clogging dust kicked up by the runners pulling him. Battery Boy had no idea in which direction they were travelling, but every minute took him further from the path in the book, which was now gone with the bag. He knew he was already hopelessly lost. Breaking free by itself was not going to be much good. Staying calm and waiting for his chance were Battery Boy’s only choices. He switched off his torch and waited; no point wasting the battery. The hunters hauled him on for hours. The roaches’ clicking seemed louder and closer than ever. The hard ground grated the skin from his back and buttocks leaving him raw and bruised. Every bone jarring bang and bump gave him the opportunity to work the ropes. Seeking any give he twisted his bleeding wrists and flexed every cramping muscle to try and loosen his bindings.
Abruptly his ankles were dropped. His momentum slid him painfully forward to a bone-jarring stop. Rolled over on to his face, a sharp kneecap was pressed into his back. The weight behind the knee cut into his bruises, rubbing his raw skin against the sackcloth. Arching backwards from the cutting pain he muffled a scream by biting the sacking cloth.
“Drop the light or we throw you in a pit,” rasped a cold voice.
Battery Boy could drop the torch but it would still be caught in the sack at his waist where it was still tightly secured.
“You need to free the sack a bit,” Battery Boy hissed through clenched teeth.
There was no answer. Hands dragged him by his ankles, pulled him up and suspended him in the air, head down. Somehow he knew he was being held over the mouth of a pit. The ropes around his upper body were untied and the sack cut away.
“Light, drop it, now,” a cold voice ordered.
&nb
sp; Reluctantly Battery Boy let it go and it fell. The only light, was gone. His captors pulled him back and threw him to the ground. Talon-like fingers pulled at the bindings around his legs, yanking them viciously free, leaving nasty rope burns. Cramping muscles and excruciating feeling returning to dead limbs kept him immobile with pain. In the pitch black he was grabbed under the arms and pulled across the dirt. The surface texture changed under his heels as he was hauled onto the smooth surface of a pit edge. As panic pumped adrenalin into his veins, Battery Boy scrambled to get to his feet, grabbing for anything as he was rolled over the edge and dropped.
His half-scream was turned to a grunt of agony when he landed heavily on something metallic, bars. Someone jumped down beside him. The bars vibrated with the impact, Battery Boy heard the squeal of rusty hinges followed by a loud heavy crash of metal on metal. A door had been swung open. A hand grabbed him and dragged him painfully across the metal bars, then he was falling again.
Before the new scream had left his mouth he landed on something bony.
“Ow, get off,” rang out a familiar voice.
“Stuff?” Battery Boy breathlessly whispered.
“Battery Boy?” shrieked Stuff in delight.
“Great! No rescue coming then. What happened to your weapon?” was Jugger’s less welcoming response.
Battery Boy’s heart was pounding inside his chest, his breathing ragged and his body was in pain but he felt unexpectedly happy to be reunited with Stuff, and, more surprisingly, Jugger. Blindness was lonely enough without being alone.
“What happened,” Battery Boy asked, knowing he already knew the answer.
“Boss man should already know, they did what I would do, take the hindmost first, silently, and work your way along the line,” Jugger answered coldly.
“They grabbed me, gagged me and dumped me here. They’re not the free people we’re looking for, are they?” Stuff asked plaintively, making it obvious what he wanted the answer to be.
