by ST Branton
“Look, our people have been mining here for generations.” Cale addressed the huddled group who were working feverishly to lay the bags down fast enough. “If there is one thing we know how to do, it’s work a damn mine. Even when the lights go out. Come on, everybody, grab a lantern and get to work!”
Cale made his way back down toward us and immediately jumped in to help lay the bags down, at least twenty feet away from the tunnel’s entrance. Ally and a few of the mothers were still on their way back with a couple of the men. They’d left to gather all the children and were still making their way from the town. As soon as I saw them crossing the last section of the access road leading to the tunnel, I ran out, leaving Cale in charge of the group. Akker worked side by side with him as I ran to help get the children inside. Most of the children were across the small stream, which had grown and was now flowing when I heard a loud sound come from the direction of the dam.
“Oh no, the dam. It’s breaking right now. Everybody inside,” I shouted.
There was a hurried panic to get us all in, but soon all of the children were beyond the sandbags, and Ally brought up the rear with Qulma. We ran into the tunnel together, going past the sandbags and closer to the area where it climbed into the mountain. Once I got inside, I noticed that not only had Cale and Akker created the entire layer of sandbags, but they’d already placed dynamite on the edges of the tunnel.
“We have everyone,” Ally confirmed. “We checked everywhere, and we got headcounts. The whole town is in this tunnel.”
“We only have a few minutes,” Cale said. “Once I light these sticks, though, there’s no going back this way. We’re essentially causing a minor earthquake. The sticks will go off and weaken this structure here. Then it’s up to the Vrya to do the rest. If they can shake the ground enough, we can cause the fault-line to collapse the entrance.”
“Where did you find dynamite?” Ally asked.
“This town has been blowing holes in the mountains for decades. There’s almost always a box locked somewhere out of the way in every mine in case of a cave-in,” he informed her.
“Okay, is everybody ready?” I asked the group behind me. There was a general sound of agreement, and I took it, knowing we had seconds to make this work before the water flooded in and made everything we did for nothing. If we couldn’t get this to work, on time, we would have trapped ourselves in our own grave.
Cale nodded, and Akker joined him as they climbed over the sandbags and scrambled toward the dynamite. I heard the sizzling wicks as they lit them, and a few seconds later, they both dove over the sandbags while holding their arms over their heads. Ally, myself, and several of the dryads created a wall of people to block any other impact from getting farther up the tunnel, and we turned our backs to protect ourselves as much as possible.
The Vrya began to hum together, and I felt the earth vibrating beneath my feet. They were concentrating as one, on this specific place, focusing their fear, their pain, their love, all on one spot. It was an intimate experience, and I felt lost in the sound of their hum. I closed my eyes and waited.
A series of deafening explosions rocked the tunnel. The walls seemed to fluctuate, and children cried farther up the shaft. The humming grew louder as the explosions went off, then tapered down and slowly faded away. When the sound stopped and all that was left was dust settling, I chanced a look behind me. Akker and Cale were peering over the sandbags at the entrance. It had completely caved in. Rubble filled everything to within a foot or so from the bags, and Cale and Akker were dirt-covered. Akker turned to look at me, his jaw wide and a smile stretching across his lips.
A cheer rang out among us as the sound of water rushed by the entrance and we saw no leaks, heard no water coming in. I put my hand against the wall and hung my head. I suddenly felt exhausted but elated at the same time. We had saved the entire town of Hunt, but now what? Cale and Akker walked up to meet the rest of us, and Shailene put her arm around my shoulders, giving me the smallest but most gratifying of hugs.
“I know you’re tired, honey, but now we have a bit of a hike.”
“I’m fine. Hikes are good. I can run a marathon.” I grinned. Ally outright laughed, but kept it cool. She probably already knew what was ahead.
“It’s about eight miles up, everybody,” Shailene said to the group at large.
“Good,” Qulma’s voice said from right behind her. Qulma’s eyes met mine, then moved over to Cale. “That will give us plenty of time to figure out how to live together.”
Cale smiled and held out his arm. The Vrya woman took it regally, and they walked to the front of the group. Cale grabbed a lantern on the way.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The hike was arduous, not only because of the distance but because of the exhaustion which now weighed heavily on me. So much happened in such a short time, and I was exhausted from it. Splinter, who had stayed with Ally when I ran off after Akker, was sleeping soundly in my pocket and I wished more than anything to be able to lay down with him and sleep, too. Well, almost more than anything. A long, hot shower would be number one on the list, followed by sleep. But I would take the nap if offered that first.
At some point, Ally silently helped motivate me to get to the head of the pack, and we now kept pace with several of the town leaders, Vrya elders, and Cale and Qulma, who were in a deep conversation for most of the hike. I tried to listen in on some of the discussions but eventually tuned out as I focused on keeping one foot in front of the other. All around us, humans and Vrya were helping each other over rough terrain. Children, tired of walking, were riding on the backs of the younger boy dryads, two at a time, who smiled and kept their spirits up.
“Should be only a few hundred feet away.” Cale broke the hushed tones everyone else was speaking in. A tired but spirited cheer came from the group, now walking no more than four across in the tunnel.
“Slick, smell.” Ally had her nose in the air.
I closed my eyes and tried to smell. At some point, one side of my nose had been smashed pretty hard and was incapable of much smelling, but the other was able to pick out notes of clean air and water. We were close now. I only needed to make it a little further.
The remainder of the hike wasn’t as bad since the ground mostly leveled out. After one sharp turn where we could only go two at a time, the mouth of the cave opened in front of us. I walked to the edge of it, thankful for the gentle slope rolling down from it in case my weary knees pulled a ‘nope’ card.
The town lay before us, but it was hardly recognizable. Everything was destroyed, and only the steeple of the small church on Main Street still stood above the water. Some of the people cried softly at the destruction, and Cale sat heavily on the ground. I looked behind to see the rest of the group coming out in the now-rising sun, the soft, blue light of early morning still sharp enough to hurt the eyes for a few seconds after eight miles in the pitch black of the tunnels. Qulma sat beside Cale, between him and me, and I decided to sit beside her, too. She looked out over the town and sighed heavily.
“Our compound will not have fared much if any better. We were closer to the dam, and the first point where the land is low. I am sure it is destroyed.”
“Makes two of us,” Cale replied, but there was no bitterness in his voice. Merely recognition, both of his town’s troubles and the troubles of Qulma and her people. “What do we do now?”
“Well, in light of the current circumstances,” Qulma answered gently, “there is only one option. We rebuild. Together.”
“You mean, live in the same place?” Cale asked. I couldn’t tell outright if his face told a story of apprehension or disbelief. “Your people are happiest out in nature. Ours like the community of the town. How would that work?” It surprised me. The tone of his voice wasn’t accusatory or dismissive, but curious. He was trying to figure it out. For so long I had seen him as a goon, an empty-headed manipulator with hate in his heart, but now he sat here, broken and sad, and all the pretense was gone. Al
l the ego was history. What sat here with Qulma was a man who was changed, forever, and was willing to adapt. I was proud of him.
“More or less,” Qulma said. “Perhaps we will be a little closer to the epicenter of town, and perhaps the town could be less…” she searched for the right word.
“Condensed,” I finished the sentence for her. Qulma turned to me and smiled while patting my leg.
“Yes, condensed. A little more like our compound, and we will be a little more like the city. Together, we can rebuild and be better than either one of us was before.”
“I would like that,” Cale told us while staring out over the water to the town now floating by. “I would like that very much.”
A man had tried to start a war here between these people, and very nearly succeeded. Were it not for a brave Farsider overcoming his instincts and the courage of a Nearsider willing to put aside differences for the sake of the greater common good, all the people now sitting here would probably be dead. A war would have begun, and Hunt would have been the first battleground.
Instead, with hard work and the sacrifice of several people, we were now plotting a new town, a new world, where Farsiders and Nearsiders would live side-by-side in peace. It was remarkable. I marveled at the change in the town, and also the difference in myself.
Archie had been right. No matter how much my reputation inspired hate among the Farsiders, they weren’t to blame. Not all of them, at least. Hobbes was the villain here, and I’d save all my hate for him.
Ally sat beside me and leaned her head on my shoulder, and I sighed heavily. Soon, the day would begin in earnest, and the Vrya and the people of Hunt would go about the job of rebuilding. Until then, I would sit there with my best friend and watch the sunrise.
And eventually, tacos.
Chapter Forty
Splinter was asleep on the center console again, his body wrapped around a ham biscuit. The horror of everything we experienced was lost on his sweet, spiky little head. At least one of us was at ease and enjoying the drive. I didn't have that luxury. As Ally drove, I sat cross-legged in the passenger seat with Jonas's laptop sitting in my lap.
"Did you find anything yet?" she asked.
I clicked a final button, and his email popped up. I let out a mirthless snort. "I just got into his email. He might have been a deceitful, diabolical son of a bitch, but when it comes to common sense, he was about six neon shades short of a crayon box."
"Was his password 'password?’" she asked.
"Nope. It was 'notpassword.’"
"Holy shit, we almost got obliterated by a second-grader."
My eyes scanned the long list of emails in his inbox. Something stood out to me that made my skin prickle and my blood run cold. "A second grader with a disturbing social life."
"What do you mean?"
"It looks like our friend Jonas had a hot and heavy email relationship going with somebody who calls themself UnhappilyNeverAfter."
"What kind of mall goth, write poetry in blood, listen to Britney Spears when no one's looking shit is that supposed to be?"
I looked at her. "Aww. I miss Amanda."
"No, you don't. She was the bane of your high school career. Well, one of them."
"True." I shrugged and nodded, then looked back at the screen. "I don't know who it is, but they've been carrying on for a while now." I opened a message, and the feeling in my chest worsened. I closed it and opened another. "Oh, wow."
"What?" Ally snapped her head over to look at me. "What is it?"
"Jonas's anonymous pen pal sure had a lot to say. These messages are full of intel on the Vrya. He didn't happen on the community because he was working around Hunt. He didn't discover them and genuinely believe there was a cult lurking in the woods. That's not why he got in touch with you. Whoever this person with the terrible email address is, fed him all the details about them, including where to find them and how to hurt them."
I opened another of the messages and went still. I opened another. And another. I drew in a breath and let it out, fighting to keep my anger down. It took a few seconds, but finally, the rage slipped away. Ally glanced at me.
"Something else?"
"Me. A lot of these emails are about me. They talk about who I am and what I supposedly did. It's the ultimate Heinous Sara Slick propaganda package. Whoever this is, called Jonas up to the front lines against me. And that tells me one thing. I don't know who this person is or how they found Jonas and got him working with them, but Hobbes is behind it."
"You really think so?"
"Don't you think it's convenient to have someone from one of your forums reach out to you to tell you about this strange thing happening? Then that strange thing explodes into a horrible thing, and we find out his email inbox is stuffed full of juicy little tidbits about me? I really can't imagine there's anyone else who would know this much about me, or about what everyone in The Far thinks I did, other than Hobbes."
"When you put it that way, it seems like a fairly astute evaluation."
I looked over at my best friend. She stared through the windshield with a blank expression on her face, seemingly lost in her thoughts.
"Really? That's what you're going with?"
"What do you mean?"
"All this is going on, and you found out the guy you thought we were helping lured us into a trap, and your reaction is 'that seems like a fairly astute evaluation?’"
"Um...that slimy, slithering, son of a cracker salt-licking scumball?"
"That's the spirit."
She sighed. "I'm sorry."
"Why would you say that?"
"I trusted him. This is my fault. I got so excited when he emailed me, and I thought maybe I could contribute. In some way, I could be like you and kick ass and save the world. I felt so smart thinking I was reading between the lines and sifting out these details to figure out he was talking about Farsiders without even realizing it. Only to find out he not only understood it but did it on purpose to lure you to him.
“If I weren't for me, those people wouldn't have died. Qulma would still have her husband. Akker would still have his father. The dam would be standing, and the communities wouldn't have been destroyed. If I had ignored him, none of this would have happened. We almost died."
"But we didn't die," I pointed out.
"But we could have, and it would have been my fault."
"But we didn't die," I repeated.
"Slick, we could have. He manipulated me, and I put both of us and two communities at risk."
"Listen to me, Ally. If this is Hobbes like I think it is, you have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of or to feel guilty about. This dude is a puppet master. Once he decides something needs to go his way, he stops at nothing to make it happen. Unfortunately, that includes coming after me and ending the world—two things you cannot be blamed for, no matter what.
“You are amazing at your job, and you are passionate about it. That's what made you want to believe Jonas. Not some nonsense about living in my shadow. You kick ass in your own right, and I'd like to remind you, you're the only one who didn't completely give up on me after all these years. If anything, the fact that Jonas was able to pull this off and convince you makes it seem even more that it's Hobbes behind all this. It's like him to use his enemies to hurt his damn cause. But you know what? He failed because we succeeded."
Ally smiled. "We did, didn't we?"
"You bet your ass we did. I saw Cale hug one of the Vrya when he didn't think anyone was looking. That in and of itself is a victory. I don't know if the peace will last, but there's a real chance."
Ally let out a sigh and turned a wider smile to me. "I'm proud of you."
"You are?"
She nodded. "You showed that Sara Slick doesn't need to solve every problem with her fists."
I grinned. "You know what? I'm pretty pleased with myself as well. I didn't know I had it in me."
"I did."
Something caught my attention, and I looked in the re
arview mirror. Behind us, a car was creeping closer to our back bumper. I knew the face sneering back at me through the windshield.
"Son of a bitch. You have to be kidding me. Pull over."
"What is it?" she asked as the car drifted over to the side of the road and stopped.
"The Fae are back." I unhooked my seatbelt. I got out of the car and started toward the Fae coming toward me. Maybe Ally was right. Perhaps it was my violent attitude that made them hate me so much. Maybe I could put my new diplomatic skills to good use.
"Look,” I held my hands up in a show of good faith. “We don't need to do this. We don't need to fight. There has to be some way for us to make peace with one another."
Naida cocked her head to the side and gave me a condescending smile. "Aww, sweet little Sara Slick, the pathetic human. We always knew you were soft. Don't worry. They'll fix that right up for you when you get back to The Deep. I hear the bone pit is looking for some new contributions."
I swung a look over to Ally, my eyebrows raised. She shrugged.
"Okay, these douchebags get the fist."
I grinned and ran toward them.
Epilogue
“I can’t believe the plan failed,” Aldrich whined. “How could that have happened? I thought that human, Jonas, was the perfect pawn. And those fairies you provided with intel proved completely useless. My men found their bodies along the side of the road.”
Hobbes looked at Aldrich, an exceedingly loyal Philosopher, but one with the imagination of a thumbtack. His disgust was understandable, if misguided. “He was the perfect pawn. We simply didn’t account for our enemy’s queen.”
“So, what do we do now?”
Hobbes smiled. “I think it’s time we took the queen off the board. Sara Slick has outlived her usefulness.”
The End
International intrigue. Deadly assassins. Tacos!
Just an average day for the Heinous Sara Slick.
