Freed (#3 Flamestone Trilogy)

by Holly Hook

“Weslie,” I say.

  She's still sitting on the floor, breathing heavily into her hands. She's calming down some. Weslie needed to scream and push that explosive cart at the worm. It was necessary. A way to get some revenge for her brother, even if this isn't the same monster.

  But what if the explosion has caused some kind of cave in?

  Terror slices up through me. Weslie's standing now. Her eyes are red. I don't want to bring up that possibility with her yet. But we have to go check out the damage.

  “Travis,” I say. “We need to go look at what happened. I'm sure the worm is dead. What have you heard about the creatures living down here?”

  “I've only been here a few days,” he says. “The miners talk sometimes. I've heard stories about the giant worm, but until now I just thought they were stories. And everyone talks about those squid things. I guess they're here to make sure we don't start any fires to get away from the gnome things. The squids don't attack us, though. Only light.”

  “Makes sense,” I say. I think of the one that jumped on our elevator. Weslie did have that lantern at the time. It must have been going after that. “Let's go see what happened. Weslie, you can stay in here if you want. Pit can stay with you.”

  Pit's standing up now. He's still shaking. I don't want to take him out there, either.

  Weslie's leaning on a shelf of canned meat. At least there's more food down here. And water canteens. I also spot a trough full of fresh water in the corner. The Dwellers do have to keep their workers alive somehow. “I will.”

  “Weslie—that was amazing. How you faced the worm like that.”

  “It was,” Travis agrees.

  “I don't know what came over me,” she says in a tone of voice that means, I do know.

  Travis claps her on the shoulder. “We'll be right back. We only need to go out and see what happened.”

  I have a feeling I know. I don't want to let the terrifying thought get to me yet. We have to think. We're down here. We still have three more people to find.

  I open the steel door.

  The air reeks of smoke, but not enough to make me gag. And rotting trash. That's a different story. I wonder if there's giant worm guts everywhere. Even Pit won't want to touch those.

  Travis steps out behind me and we shut the door, leaving Weslie inside with Pit. At least there's a dim light burning in there. I have the lantern. I didn't even realize I'd picked it up. We need it in case any Dwellers come back. I wonder if they come out to inspect damage to their mines. They must have some level of intelligence if they make people work for them.

  The huge main corridor stretches up ahead. The air's dusty and smoky, obstructing our view of the tunnel we came from. The blue mushrooms are all still here lighting the place, but knocked over from the blast. Two other people stand in the entryways of two of the branches. The explosion's drawing stares. I shine the lantern up on the first person as we pass. It's a tired, ragged woman holding a pickaxe. She's covered in Flamestone dust.

  “What happened?” she asks. There's a glowing mushroom not far behind her.

  “You know that giant worm that was stalking through here?” I ask. I have to deliver some good news because I have the feeling things are about to get worse again. “We don't have that problem anymore.”

  “What?” she asks. “How did you get that lantern? They're not allowed down here. And what was that explosion?”

  I keep going. I have no time to explain things. Maybe I should have brought another stick of dynamite, but I left them with Weslie. If she hadn't brought them down with us, we'd be running through the tunnels right now, delaying our deaths until we got cornered somewhere.

  The smell gets overbearing. Travis pulls his dirty shirt up over his nose. “Look on the floor.”

  There's green slime.

  Everywhere. On the floor, and dripping off the ceiling, too.

  I slip and have to grab Travis's hand to avoid a trip into the slimy stuff. It's splattered. It's even on the walls of the room and all over a couple of toppled glowing mushrooms.

  “This is disgusting,” I say, waving some of the smoke and dust away.

  The worm lies there, front half blown away.

  I don't even want to describe it. It's like a giant tube full of decaying garbage has blown open. Worm parts—at least I think they're parts—have flopped out of the carcass. They're green and brown and red and every shade in between, coming in tubes and pads and sacs. Is that a pair of overalls in there among them? God. This worm must have eaten a some of the workers. This is all that's left of them and all that would have been left of us.

  Travis blinks next to me. “This might be just a wild guess, but I think it's dead.”

  “This is worse than the Megapede,” I say.

  “The what?” Travis asks.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I have a lot to explain to you.”

  “It really is dead,” the woman says from behind us.

  I ignore her. We're not done yet.

  “We have to check the tunnel,” I tell Travis. “See if there's still a way out of here.”

  I walk around the carcass. The smoke smell gets stronger and a stray black rock falls to the floor from the wall. Stone has tumbled everywhere around the worm. I spot the mangled mine cart against the wall, black with the force of the explosion. Weslie and I did that. We managed this feat. But where's the tunnel we came through? It can't be completely blocked—can it?

  “I think the tunnel's completely blocked,” Travis says.

  I swear. “Then how do we get out of here?” I think of Baxter standing up in the processing office, waiting by the elevator for us to board. We gave him twelve hours to wait before giving up. He might be gone already, but if he's not, he's going to have a long wait ahead of him.

  And Travis is right. I can't even make out the tunnel anymore. This is just as caved in as the mess we left in the processing office. Only worse, because this has a giant worm blocking the way and filling the tunnel we came through with gross. Even if we all manage to move this beast, more rock will come down to fill the space that we leave—or worse, the workers. Can these workers dig out of here in twelve hours or less?

  “The tunnel is blocked,” the woman says behind us. She doesn't sound happy. “You closed us in here. How are the Dwellers supposed to bring us our supplies now? We only have food and water down here to last a few days!”

  And she slugs me in the back. Pain explodes between my shoulder blades and I whirl around, raising the axe to keep her back.

  I jump and Travis moves in front of me. He spreads his arms, blocking the woman from view. “Hey. This worm was going to kill us. Did you really want it squirming down here, eating us all? We'd be dead if those girls hadn't done what they'd done.”

  “I don't care!” the woman screams. Her voice is a knife in the dark. She's in panic. “The worm doesn't notice you if you don't move. All your screaming and running brought it this way in the first place! All you had to do was duck into a tunnel and stay still, and it might have missed you!”

  I feel like I'm going to throw up.

  Did I just make things worse for everyone down here?

  Now instead of leaving these people to death by overwork and giant worms, I've doomed them to thirst. Starvation, if that doesn't kill them first. I think of the supplies in the closet. The cans. The water. Those are for these workers. And the woman is right—depending on how many are down here, they might not last very long.

  The woman doesn't dare try to charge Travis. He's much bigger than she is. I'm glad he's here. Weslie and I might have had to hurt her to keep her from hurting us.

  But the woman leans around him and faces me. “You killed us all,” she says. “You killed us all before we had a chance to earn our way out of here.”

  “Is that what they tell you?” I ask. “That you can earn your way out of here?”

  Travis shrugs. “I think it's a lie myself.”

  “Yes!” she shouts. “We can earn our way out! If they r
eally wanted us dead, they would have killed us a long time ago. It has to be true!”

  This woman is crazed. She has nothing else to hold onto. The Flamestone Society needs a way to keep these people from giving up or killing themselves down here. From giving up. They're fantastic liars. It's like that concentration camp I read about in school. You work, and you go free, said the sign. It was just like this.

  “It's not!” the woman shouts. Her eyes bulge. All her teeth show. “We're supposed to get let back up into a better mine if we work hard enough down here!”

  We have to get away from her. There are lots of tunnels down here to hide. Travis takes my arm and sweeps me away. “Come on,” he says. “There's nothing we can do here.” Then he raises his voice. “If that worm got in here, there must be a way in and out of this mine. We just haven't found it yet.”

  He's right. I have to hold onto that thought. I can't stand the idea of dying of thirst.

  “Get back here!” the woman shouts. More workers gather now, but none of them are Shawn or Talia or Antoine. “Get back here and answer for this!”

  And then she growls.

  Actually growls.

  We keep walking. Travis stays behind me a bit, getting between me and the crazy woman. “The red and blue Fruit Loops just called,” Travis whispers. “Their yellow one is missing.”

  “Really,” I say. The woman sighs as loud as she can and starts dragging her feet, stomping around on the stone. I want to be away from her about as fast as possible. I'm glad it's still hazy in here and she can't see us very well once we're by the storage room door.

  “Where are those gnome things?” Travis asks. “They never leave us alone. They were swarming me when you came in.”

  “I don't know,” I say. “They must have been scared away by that worm. Or the explosion. Or both.” I pause by the storage room door. Weslie says something to Pit inside. At least she's talking now. “I wonder if the Dwellers have another way to get supplies in and out of here. They might. They're small and they must have an opening other than the elevator.”

  “We should keep a look out for that.” Travis opens the door. “What's your name? I didn't catch it in the explosion.”

  “Weslie.”

  “It's okay to come out. The worm is deader than dead. We just have to watch out for crazy people now. And find another way out of here.” He keeps his voice low. There's muttering around us now. More people are coming out. Someone curses out in the dust.

  Weslie walks out. Pit's right beside her. His tail's down and his magenta spots shine in the light of the lantern. He's got his long ears flattened to his head. Weslie takes slow breaths now and her eyes are dry. I'm glad. I need her to help us think a way out of here. We have to work together or we're all going to spiral into panic.

  Trapped.

  I try to shove to word away, to make it stop, but it keeps getting bigger and bigger and threatens to eat everything.

  We've just made things worse for everyone.

  Maybe the woman was right and all we had to do was hide and stay still so the worm didn't detect us. No wonder the area was quiet when it came through. But Shawn and Talia and Antoine were new down here. They might not have known the rules yet.

  They could be dead already for all I know. Especially Talia. I'm sure Garrett moved her down to this level after I stabbed him if she wasn't here already. He hinted that she wasn't in one of the higher mines to begin with.

  “We have to find the others,” I say. “Then we need to see if there's an opening out of here somehow. Even if it's just a cave, if we can lead everyone here to water, that would help. There might even be fish down here for people to catch or something, or something that they can eat while we figure out a way to get out of this mine. I'm sure it's possible to dig another tunnel out of here. We know where the other tunnel is and what direction to go in.” I'm spouting out ideas. Some of them might even be dumb ideas.

  Weslie shakes her head. “That's going to take a while.”

  “We have to try it. We can't leave all these people down here to die. The Flamestone Society sure isn't going to launch a rescue. I'm sure the Dwellers are rushing up to tell them all about what happened. Provided they can understand those squeaks they make.”

  I hear more voices coming from farther down the corridor. The woman screams something unintelligible at someone. The man mutters something in response. She's mad at everyone. I can't really blame her, but I dread going back to check the growing group. What if Shawn and Talia aren't among them?

  I gulp. “Weslie, take the lamp. Travis might need all hands free,” I say.

  She does. “What's going on?”

  “You'll see.” She takes the lamp from Travis and Pit stays close to her. “We still need to know if the air's getting bad.” We might have lost ventilation or something and now the air will get more and more stale. But at least the Flamestone in the veins around us didn't start burning in the explosion. If it did, the oxygen stifled it before it could go any farther. That's a good sign.

  The voices get more excited as we go back through the haze, lamp in tow. Travis walks in the front. He seizes a pickaxe that someone's just dropped on the floor. Someone else moves a giant mushroom up ahead closer to where the explosion happened. They're checking out the damage. The half worm lights in blue and the smell hits again, still mixed with smoke. It's just as disgusting as before, even though the green slime has stopped dripping from the ceiling.

  I spot a man holding the giant mushroom. He sets it down next to the worm and backs away, holding his nose. The site's lighted in pale blue now. The Dwellers still haven't returned. Maybe they're not coming back because there's no way for them to. Or maybe they're just leaving us down here to die.

  “Elaine?”

  I jump.

  It's Shawn. He's standing there at the entrance of a burrow, mouth falling open. He's got sparkling Flamestone dust all over him and his hair's greasy.

  “It's her,” Travis says.

  “Elaine! How did you get down here?” he asks, rushing for me.

  We kiss. It's the best one we've ever had. I about melt into Shawn as he wraps me up in his hug. He has to lean down to kiss me and I don't care that he smells like dust and rock and sweat. I don't think the workers down here have showers, but it doesn't matter. The whole area reeks and I can't even tell how bad off Shawn is.

  “How did you get down here?” he asks. I can barely make out the hazel of his eyes in the pale blue light. Weslie stands there in silence.

  “I came down here to get you.”

  “How did you know we were all the way down in this hell?” he asks. Shawn grips my arms. I'm glad to have someone here to lean on at last. “Those little gnome guys just dragged us down here a few days ago from a different shaft that wasn't as crappy. I thought we were never going to see each other again. And where did you get that axe?”

  “I found it. Shawn, it's a long story. Garrett's behind all of this. Garrett--”

  “Garrett?” Shawn explodes. “Him?”

  “Are you kidding?” Travis adds. “Your stepdad's always been cool. He can't have anything to do with this.”

  “Yes. I don't want to believe it, either. I'll explain--”

  “It's them.”

  The crazy woman is back. We separate and I keep my grip on the axe.

  She emerges from the darkness, pointing at us. Spittle flies as she glares at us. “It's them. They're the ones who blew up the burrow and sealed us all in here!”

  Pit gets in front of Weslie and I. Growls. She doesn't back down. I wonder if she's going to growl back, but her finger shakes instead. There are others behind her, too. Other shadows. Other people doomed to die down here.

  “We had to,” I say. “The worm was going to kill us. Were we supposed to stand there and let it eat us?"

  “It would have been better if you had!” Her voice echoes off the walls. “Now we don't have a way out of here. We're all trapped and we're going to die a slow, horrible death. G
etting eaten would have been better than this!”

  I tense. People mutter. No one else comes forward. No one that I know. Shawn holds me close to him. “You blew up the worm?” he asks.

  “I saw it,” Travis says. “They did. It was awesome. And you knew about the giant worm?”

  “I've seen it down here. Once.” His voice is very dark. Very scared.

  I remember that Shawn and Travis have been separated since coming down here. All the workers have. Now they're all gathering together. At least one of them hates us. And we're still missing two people.

  “Those two should die!” the woman screams.

  Weslie backs away into Travis.

  “Calm down,” another woman in the crowd says. “We're not even sure if we're trapped.”

  The crazy woman growls. Turns. Silence meets her. No one wants to step forward.

  “They should,” Crazy says. “They killed all of us. We're just dead people walking!”

  “No, we're not,” Shawn says. “This worm—it must have had some way in here. Some way that isn't blocked. We all know it's over here on this side of the mine a lot more than it is over on the other one. The entrance to wherever it came from might be attached to a cave or something.”

  “A cave that might have water,” I say. “And food.” I try to sound calm, but we have to keep everyone from spiraling into panic. “And we have supplies down here to last a little while.”

  “Are you nuts?” Crazy asks. “There's no water or food down here. Just the heat and whatever's left in the storage room. There's no way out! We're going to rot down here!” She kicks at a rock on the ground, sending it towards Weslie. It hits her shoe and she backs away. She's become quiet again.

  “Shut up!” I shout. “You're not helping any of us.”

  The woman growls again. She lunges at me, stops, turns, and stomps away into the dust. People back away as she goes through. There are young men in dusty overalls. Women with scraggly hair.

  “Wow,” Shawn says. “I'm glad I never had to work with her.”

  “Same here,” Travis says. “You okay?” He faces Weslie.

  “Yes,” she says. She faces the worm carcass. “It's all just hitting me again.”