Cold Falling White

by G. S. Prendergast

  At last in a clearing we come upon a kind of excavation, and sure enough, dug into the earth is a large pipe, about four feet in diameter. I’m relieved to see its size. The pipe disappears off into the trees in either direction like a tenacious snake. August approaches it cautiously, as though it might come to life and devour us both before slithering away. The sharp metallic clang of his knuckles rapping on the pipe resonates through the trees.

  Under? he signs.

  “Yes. It might go underground, under rivers or whatever. Right under the drone web, I think.”

  He taps his temple with one finger. Smart.

  We follow the pipeline west, and soon, cresting a rise, we get a good view of the ground level where the web comes down. It’s hard to see some parts of it where it disappears into the thick forest, but there’s a Nahx transport vessel parked on a nearby road.

  “Do you think they know about the pipe?” I whisper.

  August shrugs.

  Repeat. Think. No.

  “Not very smart?” I tug off my hat and scratch my greasy hair. “So maybe they won’t notice anything? This could work.”

  August nods.

  I estimate the web is about a half mile away. Pulling the crumpled map from my pocket, I spread it out on the curved metal of the pipe. I’ve been trying to mark our progress, noting landmarks like roads, lakes, and creeks where I can. I’m pretty sure Bear Lake, where the refinery is, is about five miles west of here.

  Can I do that? Can I crawl through five miles of pipe? That’s insane.

  August bends to inspect a round, bolt-ringed plate on the side of the pipe, tapping it lightly.

  “That’s an access port, I think.” We passed one of them along the way. I assume they appear at regular intervals—about a mile apart. August pinches one of the bolts and tries to turn it. I’m about to tell him we need some kind of tool when there’s a rusty creak and the bolt comes away in his hand.

  Jesus. I knew he was strong, but that’s extraordinary.

  I watch for any movement down by the web while August removes the rest of the bolts. When the last one is gone he wrenches at the plate. I stand back as he pulls it away, pretty sure that since the invasion shut down the power grid there’s no pressure in the pipes anymore.

  Pretty sure, but not certain.

  Black sludge dribbles out onto the forest floor as the plate comes away and August lets it clank down. So no. No pressure, just some residual crude oil coating the bottom of the pipe. That will make it easy to slide along it, I guess, though fumes might be a problem; they waft out of the pipe, making the air thick and acrid.

  August steps aside as I poke my head into the pipe, shining my flashlight down it either way. The danger is we’ll meet some kind of blockage and have to shimmy backward and uphill to get back out. And there’s the danger that we won’t find another access hatch and I’ll be crawling through sludge for days. And the danger the Nahx will hear us and bust us out of there before I make it to the other side.

  It’s a very slim chance we’ll survive, but what options do I have?

  The pipe is pretty wide inside—wide enough to crawl as opposed to sliding along like an eel, so that’s something. By the sky, it’s only about midday. The pipe goes downhill most of the way from here, so we might be able to slide like in a water park. That will save time. If it continues downhill all the way to the next hatch, the whole prospect becomes a lot more plausible.

  “Do you think you could open one of these plates from the inside?” I ask.

  August bends again to inspect the bolt holes, the thickness of the plate, and the bolts.

  Maybe, he signs.

  “The next plate should be on the other side of the web. If you can open it, I can get out there. It’ll be about a mile. It might take us an hour to get there.” An hour in the dark, crawling through slime.

  Once I hoist myself into the pipe I find I’m able to easily maneuver around on my hands and knees. Shining my flashlight, I can see where the pipe bends downward, like a waterslide. My confidence is wavering now that I’m inside it. What if August can’t get those belts undone? What if I’m wrong about those lawsuits and the pipeline bypasses the refinery and goes all the way to the coast? There’s no human alive who could crawl in the dark for however long that would take. Weeks? Months?

  I turn back, poking my head out. August stands there with one hand on his helmet. It would be nice if I had a choice to leave him here, because he’s definitely done enough to call his promise to Raven fulfilled.

  But I need him. Which is both annoying and something else. Nahx and humans are supposed to be enemies. Back at the base, Liam and Topher talked as though we could somehow drive the Nahx from the earth, wage some great battle and eradicate them like smallpox. Only an idiot would think that was an option now.

  August saved Raven’s life. She saved his life. He’s saving my life. Maybe there’s meaning to it. If we do this enough, we might be able to live with one another.

  This one little bridge of trust might be bigger than any dream of great battles and victories.

  “I don’t think I’ll be able to open the pipe from inside.”

  August nods and clambers into the pipe behind me. I move forward to give him room as he arranges his long limbs around him. He’s too tall to crawl, but the bottom of the pipe is slippery with oil, so he should be able to pull himself along easily enough. He clicks something and a light on his shoulder turns on, its beam dancing on the slick metallic walls of the pipe.

  “How long does that battery last?”

  Forever, he signs. Promise Not scared.

  We inch along slowly. When I reach the slope in the pipe I kind of tumble down it, landing with an oily splash in the lower curve. August is much more graceful behind me, controlling his descent with his hands on the pipe walls, keeping his light steady as he reaches me.

  Broken?

  “No, I’m fine.” I untangle myself and crawl farther into the dark. The air smells like a badly managed gas station in here, and even with my scarf pulled up over my nose I’m getting light-headed. I can’t imagine a worse death than this would be. Poisoned by toxic fumes in a greasy pipe? I wonder if August will just leave my body in here. Something tells me that he wouldn’t, but when I turn back to look at him easing himself along the pipe, I notice he’s wheezing. Great. Maybe we’ll both die in here. Archaeologists will have fun with that.

  I feel along the pipe walls as we make slow progress, searching for the access hatch. It feels like we should have come across it by now. Have we already gone under the web? I thought maybe we might see some sign of it, but so far it’s just been fumes and sludge and darkness. Kind of like my worst days at high school.

  August’s fingers close on my ankle.

  “What?” I say, turning back. He holds a finger over his mouth and twists his body to face behind us. Several long seconds pass while I hold my breath. A moment later we hear the unmistakable sound of someone in metallic armor clattering down a sloping pipe. It resonates toward us like a death knell.

  “Fuck!”

  Fast. Fast!

  He shoves me, pushing himself along with his free hand. We reach another slope and slither down that, landing in a pile at the bottom. August hisses as we extricate ourselves, before launching me forward with another shove. The slimy mix of oil and fetid water sprays up in my face, making me press my eyes and mouth firmly closed. I’m scrambling my hands along the pipe now, desperately searching for anything that feels like the access panel.

  “Did we pass it? We must have passed it!”

  Over the sound of my frantic hands pounding on the metal, I can hear the progress of the other Nahx behind us. They’re gaining on us.

  August shoves me to the side and slithers past me, shining two lights ahead of us. He waves his hand in front of my face, closing his fingers tightly.

  Grab me!

  I latch onto his foot and he tugs us along, with me trying to improve our momentum any way I can. An etern
ity of desperate scrabbling later, August slides to a stop, his light flashing around.

  “There!” It’s a panel, the stubby bolts casting long shadows on the metal. August curls his fist around one and twists. Only a Nahx would have the strength to remove these bolts; it’s only because of August that I have a chance of surviving. I roll over and face backward, pointing my pathetic gun into the dark.

  Behind me August loosens another bolt. I hear it clang onto the concrete outside the pipe.

  If I’m getting out of this pipe ever, I’m doing it here, and if here is not beyond the drone web, then this has all been for nothing. Bile rises in my throat as the combination of oil fumes and mortal fear becomes unbearable. Clang! Another bolt comes free. I haven’t been keeping count. Was that three or four?

  Sound carries uncannily through this pipe, and I hear a distinctive Nahx hiss as if it is right in front of me. August hears it too and grabs me by the foot, dragging me past him and pushing me down into the sludge. He twists two more bolts away, slamming the heel of his hand on them to force them out.

  Another hiss resonates down the tube, followed by a growl.

  August presses his back against the pipe wall and simply kicks the panel, making the metal clang loud enough for my ears to ache. All attempts at stealth are done now. The whole pipe vibrates with every kick. I’m trying not to gasp with desperation because each breath fills me with the vile fumes.

  August turns and shines one of his lights down the tunnel at the approaching noise as he continues to kick.

  CLANG! CLANG! I put my hands over my ears. This is truly the ringing of the bells of death. I’m done for.

  Suddenly the panel gives way with a loud pop. August dives for me, grabbing me by the sweater and shoving me out the hole. I crash to the concrete pylon, my head cracking on something hard. Dazed, I stumble upward, my fingers curled over the edges of the access hole.

  “Get out of there! August!”

  All I see is a blur of metal as he scrambles around in the pipe and disappears in the direction of the other Nahx.

  “No! Get out! August!”

  I know the plan was to leave him behind, but I never thought it would be like this. They’ll kill him.

  Head still spinning, I hoist myself up to the hole, leaning inside. August is a few feet away, lying prone in the circle of illumination cast by his lights, the Mountie’s rifle aimed back down the pipe.

  “August!”

  He turns and looks at me just as three other Nahx appear around a bend in the pipe. The horrifying metallic scraping of the other Nahx slithering toward him makes my teeth chatter. I reach for him, half back in the hole, my hand flailing vainly to grab him. But he’s just out of reach.

  “Come with me. Come with me…”

  He tilts his head to the side, raising one of his hands, his finger and thumb touching like he’s going to snap his fingers.

  “NO! No, August, don’t! DON’T!”

  Snap.

  There’s a low whomp as the fumes and fuel around him ignite. The bluish flame tumbles back toward me and away from him, toward the other Nahx. I recoil from the heat, feeling the hairs on my fingers singe away.

  “Get out of there! August! August!”

  Without looking back, he launches himself toward the other Nahx. They slide away into the flames.

  The pipe starts to vibrate weirdly, but before I can even think what that means, there’s a deafening crack, and suddenly I’m flying through the air with the glowing hot hole in the pipe sailing away from me. I land hard and keep my eyes open only long enough to see the inferno of ignited gas fumes shooting out the hole and back toward me like a rocket launch.

  It’s near dark when my eyes open again, and the forest is on fire around me. I struggle to my feet, turning on the spot, disoriented. Over the glow of the flames, I can see the drone web outlined against the billows of smoke in the sky, less than a hundred feet away. The pipe is lying in still-burning pieces scattered around the charred concrete pylons. I can barely make out that the destruction extends well past the web into the Nahx zone. That escape route, such as it was, is gone now.

  In the other direction, there’s a thin strip of pink along the horizon—the setting sun. The west.

  I stagger that way, dodging burning trees, blinking tears from my eyes. Home, I think as I escape the fire. Home.

  My home is gone. Names and faces flare in my delirium. Mom. Chloe. Toph… everyone is gone. “Home” is simply “humans” now. And the words don’t inspire me to keep moving as I thought they might. Gravity pushes me as much as anything else. The downhill slope I’m on suggests a creek or river. I need water.

  “Promise,” I say out loud. My lips sting, and when I reach up to touch them I find my fingers red and blistered. My throat burns, each breath like swallowing broken glass. But I keep repeating the word like a prayer for salvation. “Promise. Promise. Promise…”

  PART TWO EARTH

  “There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.”

  —MARY SHELLEY, FRANKENSTEIN

  RAVEN

  Suddenly I’m no longer in the void. I’m still weightless, insubstantial as a gust of wind, but there’s some resistance, something tugging at me, something beneath me, anchoring me.

  It’s the earth. Gravity.

  I’m not alone. And I can hear.

  Chuff chuff chuff.

  I know that sound. Digging. Digging in rich, leafy ground, damp with snowmelt, bursting to life with spring. The smell burrows into my thoughts, a birch tree, a lake, and ashes, charcoal. The sounds and smells seem to line up in my mind until they form a picture and I know what is happening.

  They’re digging a grave. They’re going to bury me. They’re going to bury me alive! I have to stop them somehow. Move. Speak. Open my eyes.

  But I have no eyes. Though I can feel the suck of gravity tethering me to the earth, I feel nothing else. No limbs. No body. I think the words “look around,” and something so odd happens that it almost distracts me from my terror of being buried alive. The idea “look around” stretches out, becoming a filament that twists and twines and spirals until every part of me is encased in its web. Then some of my cells simply awaken, and processing my desire to see, they do. Not my eyes—my skin, my hair, my pores. They… look around.

  It’s only moving shadows that I see. Someone very tall throws an object away, then kneels and bends, tugging something bulky from a hole in the ground. There are trees all around us, and above us a sun bright enough to fill my consciousness so that everything else momentarily disappears.

  By the time I can see shadows again they are walking away.

  My attention drifts down to the bulky thing the shadow pulled from the hole, but before I can turn what I see into a thought, as though someone has flicked a switch, the void reclaims me.

  XANDER

  Five Months Later

  Fighting is against the rules in the refugee camps around Prince George. Outside the camps too, in the streets and alleys, wherever they let us go, in the places that aren’t completely off-limits to the thousands of desperate interlopers made homeless by the Nahx. We can beg, starve, cough up our lungs, or die behind dumpsters, but God forbid we fight.

  Still, fighting calms my mind. There is just enough stimulation in the movement, the color, the smells and tastes and noise to distract me from the other nonsense I think about, but not enough that I get confused and overwhelmed. A little pain helps. I know the object of martial arts is to not get hit, but sometimes I let my opponent get in a good one, just to keep things entertaining.

  “Get him, Lou!”

  The other kids from my refugee camp call me “Lou” because no one can be bothered to properly pronounce my surname, Liu, and I guess “Xander” is not tough enough for them. Like Alexander the Great was just some schmuck.

  I duck and barely avoid a half-hearted straight jab to my forehead as the North Camp kid blinks blood from his eyes. This is nearly over.

&n
bsp; “You’re going down, northy!” someone shouts.

  I step back and my boot slips on a patch of ice, sending me ass first into the powdery snow. The northy takes full advantage, jumping on me and pounding my head with his white-cold fists. Fighting outdoors at night in northern Canada is pretty stupid, but there are snack rations on the line. A week’s worth of nuts, salmon jerky, dried blueberries. We South Camp miscreants can party like kings if I can just get this goober off me.

  Technically this is supposed to be a fists-only fight, since our boots could do permanent damage, but we don’t exactly have a referee, and as we’re breaking about a thousand rules already I doubt anyone will call it. I sit up quickly and head butt the northy hard in his chin. He goes flying backward as I scramble out from under him, kip up to my feet, and fall back on him fist first.

  The impact of fist on face travels up my arm and into my brain, smashing things in there, memories, knocking them down like toy soldiers.

  Raven. Tucker. Felix. Sawyer. Mandy. Emily. Lochie. Liam.

  They’re all dead. Maybe the brightness of that should have faded over the last months, over a sad and soggy spring, a hot and humorless summer, and now this winter, cold and hungry. But nothing has faded. Not even August, on fire, sliding away in the pipe as I dove for him, to stop him, to stay with him. To have someone left.

  Topher drifts through my consciousness like a sullen ghost, and I hit the northy again, just because I can.

  “He’s down, Lou, hold off.”

  I lean back, poised, aching to keep going, but even I don’t think it’s cool to hit a barely conscious opponent.

  “Get up, David.”

  “He’s not getting up,” I say. The adrenaline of the fight wearing off now, I’m tired, relaxed almost, and starting to process how I won. Badly. I hit him too hard.