We stare up, praying for an exit. The black ceiling looms ever closer. And only when it seems like we are going to bump up against it does it suddenly slide open to expose an even darker blackness. The elevator ascends into it. And once again, we are swallowed by darkness.
4
NOTHING HAPPENS FOR five minutes. Long enough for the air inside the sealed elevator to grow stale. And for claustrophobia to set in.
“What happens next?” Cassie whimpers. “What should we do?”
Nobody answers.
Then we start moving, sideways, a slow trundle that quickly picks up speed. We must be on some kind of track, but it’s hard to tell in the darkness. We come to a stop again, then start moving, in a different direction this time. The elevator dips and turns, the constant changes in directions and speeds disorienting. After a couple of minutes, we suddenly stop.
We wait with bated breath.
Searing light floods our vision. We clamp our eyes shut, then almost immediately pry them back open, desperate to see. The elevator sits in the center of an enclosed space, large as an auditorium. Tracks coil around us in a tangle of crisscrossing and encircling loops.
David starts kicking at the door in panic.
“Don’t,” Sissy says softly, her hand on his shoulder. “It’s not helping.”
We wait for five minutes. Breathing shallowly, trying to conserve the diminishing air.
“Sissy,” David murmurs. “I can’t breathe.”
“Try to stay calm,” she says. “There’s air enough for all of us.” She brushes his hair back, slick with sweat.
“We’re going to die in here,” he says.
“No, we’re not. Sissy’s right,” I say. “We just need to stay calm. The light is meant to annihilate duskers, not humans. Any dusker somehow able to steal into this elevator would be dead by now.”
David turns quiet, his expression pensive.
“We can be hopeful,” I say. “There wouldn’t be all this light to kill duskers here unless there are humans at the end of this ride.”
David puts his hand on the elevator door. “How much longer until we start moving again?”
“Any time now—”
The lights blink out. Just like that, we’re submerged in darkness. The elevator starts moving again, picking up speed, descending.
And then we’re slowing down. A thin vertical line of light suddenly pierces through the darkness, widening into a column as we draw closer to it. And finally we’re right up against this light, then merging into it, blinded by its brilliance, the brightness flooding the interior of the elevator. A series of loud electronic beeps jolts us. The elevator doors suddenly open. And just as quickly, they begin to close.
“Hurry!” Sissy says, pushing us all through the brightly lit opening. We tumble out of the elevator, falling to the ground.
It’s the smell that hits us first. A stench of unwashed hair, ripe armpits, the effulgence of raw sewage. A fluorescent ceiling light glares down on us.
The elevator door clicks shut behind us.
Silhouettes emerge out of the brightness in front of us, bony and angular. Their voices are male and young.
“There are five of them!”
“No way. Not five. There’s no way—”
“Count them yourself!”
“We’ve never had more than three at a time!”
“—doesn’t make sense—”
I stumble toward the voices, the silhouettes.
“Look at this one,” a young, boyish voice sounds from the dark. “Kind of old, don’t you think? Must be almost twenty. Positively ancient.”
I blink, coaxing vision into my eyes. Faces merge into view, young and uncouth, sneering. “Where are we?” I demand.
“Where are we?” A rough, caustic voice, mimicking. The group of boys starts walking away.
“Wait,” Epap says.
They ignore him, keep shuffling down the corridor.
Epap grabs the nearest one by the shoulder. “Where are we?”
The boy regards Epap coldly, then whirls his arms around dramatically. A smile touches his lips, but his eyes remain icy. “This is the Civilization! Where all your precious dreams come true!” The smile twists into a sneer as he turns to a group of boys standing nearby. “That’s what they always ask. Is this the Civilization? Without fail. Please.”
The boys break out in cruel, mocking laughter.
“Brother?” says Cassie.
And just like that, the laughter stops. One of the taller boys steps forward. He’s all bones and sharp angles. His cheekbones jut out.
“Is that you?” she asks. “Matthew, is that really you?”
His lips tremble. “Cassie?” The name comes out hoarse, as if long unspoken.
The other boys move away. Quickly, as if they know what’s going to happen next and want no part of it.
Cassie takes a tentative step toward Matthew. Her eyes are shaking in their sockets, glistening over. “You’re so tall now.” She reaches up, is about to touch his face, then withdraws her hand. “And skinny. How long has it been? Since you were … sent here?”
“One year.” Softer and with sadness, he continues. “Three months, twenty-three days.”
“Where’s Timmy?”
His eyes cast downward.
Cassie’s lips wobble as tears pool in her eyes.
Matthew rubs his arm. “Come with me. I’ll get you some clothes to change into.” He looks at the rest of us. Maybe it’s the change in light, but a softness touches his face. “Bring your friends, too.”
5
IT IS A world of metal and garish light. With only narrow, low-ceilinged corridors to maneuver within. Every corridor we walk down is identical to the previous: metal and light, metal and light. On each side of us, recessed into the walls, are enclaves, rows of them stacked three high in perfect alignment and spaced apart with mathematical precision. Each is the size of a large coffin, steel plated and embedded deep into the wall.
But it’s the other humans we gape at the most.
They mill around aimlessly, or gather in small groups of three or four. All young, mostly boys. Pale, gaunt, emaciated, often staring off vacantly at the walls. They blink as we pass, gazing back at us with neither hostility nor warm hospitality. Just mild curiosity bordering on indifference, as if the arrival of newcomers is commonplace. Occasionally, Cassie would gasp with surprise, her face paling at the sight of yet another familiar face from the past. But none call out to her or acknowledge her. They only avert their stares quickly.
Matthew leads us to the end of one corridor. Inside an enclave are stacks of clothing. All the same drab garb worn by everyone else, brown and bland, mildewy. I slip into the clothes quickly and approach Matthew as the girls get dressed.
“My name’s Gene.”
He regards me with narrow eyes.
I point to the boys. “And that’s Epap—”
“No names,” Matthew says curtly.
“What?”
“We don’t have names down here.”
“But you’re named Matthew.”
He shakes his head. “That’s … from before.” He purses his lips. “Listen, we just don’t do names here.”
“Why not? You all—”
“We all disappear. Inevitably and suddenly. So there’s no sense in giving names. No sense in forming bonds.” He turns his back to me, starts walking away.
I take his elbow. Gently, but with insistence, I stop him. He flinches but does not snatch his arm away. “They take you for food, don’t they?” I say, remembering what Krugman had told me about this place. “Randomly, you never know when you might get taken.”
Matthew doesn’t say anything, but he gives the slightest nod.
“Tell me how,” I whisper. “How do they take you?”
He resists at first. Only after the girls join us, Cassie standing closest to him, does he speak, mechanically, with only the slightest tremble in his voice.
About once a we
ek (at least they think it is a week; there is no way to measure the passage of days and nights in these underground catacombs), an alarm goes off. You have one minute, he tells us, to climb into one of the enclaves in the wall. Only one person per unit. Then a glass window will snap down, sealing you inside. That is a good thing. Because it protects you. The lights go out—the only time they ever do—and the darkness is morbid and terrifying. And then they come down into the catacombs to gawk at the hepers. The Ruler and his retinue. Up and down the corridors, looking and staring, drooling and shaking. The Ruler will inevitably point to a particular heper. If it’s you, you’re as good as dead. Because within the next hour your enclave will be retracted into the walls, then whisked away on some transportation system. From bed to coffin, just like that.
“To where?” David asks.
Matthew’s lips stretch into a sad, horrific smile. “The kitchen.”
“You know this for sure?”
The smile droops. “No. Some think you end up in the Ruler’s private chambers. But nobody’s ever come back to say, so it’s all conjecture.” He spits on the ground. “Empty, useless conjecture. ’Cause you’re dead, either way.”
Cassie speaks, her voice strained and tense. “Girls are taken first, right, Matthew?” She gazes down the corridor. “Because girls are the choicest of morsels. That’s why there are so few here. We’re the first to get chosen.”
Matthew doesn’t reply for a moment. “Not necessarily,” he says, but his voice lacks conviction. “The Ruler likes to spread out the girls. Save them for special occasions. You might not get selected for a while.” He says all this with his eyes staring down at his feet.
We’re quiet for a minute.
“Just make sure,” Matthew says, “when the siren sounds you get into one of these enclaves. Immediately. Drop whatever you’re doing. The glass separations will come down sixty seconds later whether you’re ready or not. If you’re not, you’ll be stuck out in the corridors. Completely unprotected and vulnerable. And when they come down…”
“What happens?” Cassie asks.
Matthew pauses. “That’s when the rest of us roll toward the wall, shut our eyes, clamp hands over our ears.”
We stare down the brightly lit corridor at the rows of recessed enclaves on each side. Arms and legs dangle out from a few.
“And this siren,” I say. “You said it goes off about once a week.”
He nods. “Thereabouts. You guys are lucky. The siren just went off yesterday, so you’re safe for a few days yet.”
David sits down halfway into one of the enclaves, his face drained of color. “It never ends, does it?” he says quietly. A flash of anger crosses his face. “We should have listened to Gene. We should have headed east when we had the chance. Going back to the Mission was naïve and stupid. And what did it accomplish? The whole village was wiped out anyway. We did nothing. Even the girls who escaped with us by train—they’re now dead. So we saved Cassie. So what? We lost Jacob, and probably Ben, to save one girl?”
“David!” Sissy says. “Stop.”
“No, it’s true,” he says, his eyes glistening with tears. “We wouldn’t be here if we’d only listened to Gene.” He looks up at Sissy. “We’d be free, all six of us, journeying east. Not stuck in this place. Not sitting here like food on a platter ready to be served up for their consumption.” His lips tremble, and as he closes his eyes two tears slide down his cheek.
Sissy sits next to him, puts her arm around his shoulders. She doesn’t say anything. Because David is right, and she knows this.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“We’ll find a way out of here,” Sissy says. She nudges his face. “Hey, chin up. We’re survivors, remember? We’ll find a way out of here.”
He doesn’t answer, only stares at the steel floor.
I look at Matthew. “You’ve been here over a year now. Tell me the weak spots. We can find a way out of here.”
Matthew opens his mouth to say something, stops. His face ripples with ambiguous emotion.
“Can we backtrack our way to the train?” I say. “Down the elevator, back to the platform? Not now, of course, but later when the station is empty?” An idea lights in my mind. “Then we could all board it, trigger the train controls, set the train in motion, escape out of here?”
“That might work,” Epap says, catching on, his excitement growing. “Back to the Mission. It’ll be safe. The duskers there would have been destroyed by the sun days ago. Then we could set off on foot eastward. Yeah, that really might work.” He looks excitedly at Matthew. “Is that possible?”
All Matthew does is stare back. And then he starts giggling with a shrill laugh, his body jiggling up and down like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. The sound of his laughter sends chills down my back. And still laughing, he walks away, leaving us to stare and wonder. And then to realize.
There is no escape.
6
FOR THE NEXT hour we’re left to explore on our own. But it’s all the same dreary, monotonous repetition: brightly lit narrow corridors, glaring light reflecting off the floor and walls. Only the recessed, shadowed enclaves offer a break from this garish sameness. The boys in the catacombs, their eyes vacant and dark, stare ghoulishly at us, but when we meet their gaze they flick their eyes away. They walk away from our questions, ignore our greetings.
We discover two large spaces—both about the size of a large lecture hall—at opposite points of the catacombs. One space is the dining room, although that’s too fancy a term. It is really little more than a feeding area for animals. Troughs run from one end of the room to the other, filled with slop-like porridge. The boys (and a sprinkling of girls) mill into the room, and eat quickly with their hands, cupping the food into their mouths. Another trough is filled with water, and it is there we head first. The water is brackish and lukewarm, with a metallic tinge to it. Other boys—giving us little more than a curious look—slip in and out of the dining hall, spending only about a minute at most. I realize this is how they dine: in small doses and quickly, only enough to quell hunger pangs.
Nauseating as that realization is, nothing prepares my stomach for what awaits in the other large room. We smell it long before we reach it. It’s the communal restroom, but again, that’s too grandiose a term. It’s really just an open cesspool of raw sewage. We stand at the cusp, none of us daring to go in.
A young boy walks out, shows only faint surprise on seeing us. “Don’t urinate or defecate anywhere but here. We don’t have many rules down here, but this is one of the few ironclad regulations. Do your business in here and nowhere else. Or else.” He walks away, hitching up his pants.
Eventually, we’ll have to walk in, bear with the smells and sights inside. But not now. We walk away, the stink of sewage following us down this empty corridor. Farther away, where the smell fades (it never entirely dissipates), we gather around one of the recessed enclaves.
“This is bad,” David says. “What are we going to do, Sissy?”
Sissy doesn’t answer. She examines the top edge of the enclave, pokes her finger into a thin groove. “I feel glass. This is where the glass door comes down.” After a second, she climbs into the enclave itself, starts banging on the back wall. A hollow echo sounds back. She bites her lower lip, deep in thought.
“What is it?” Epap asks.
“It’s empty space behind this wall. Remember what Matthew told us? There’s a whole transportation grid back there. Probably a network of tracks or rails to shuttle these enclaves back and forth.” She climbs back out with a look of disgust. “Feels like a coffin in there.”
We slump against the walls, preferring to sit on the floor rather than inside the enclaves. Although we’ve been in the catacombs for only about an hour, I already feel the fingers of claustrophobia entombing me. The bright light unrelenting, the smells unbearable, the air morose and bleak. We will, eventually, have to eat the slop from the trough, use the
bathroom. Fall into a routine like everyone else here. And eventually, the alarm will sound and we will join the mad rush to find an empty enclave. This same dreary existence, repeated in indistinguishable cycles until, inevitably, one day, enclosed within an enclave, we will be shuttled away. Into their kitchen, into the Ruler’s Suite, into his mouth, passing in half-digested chunks through his organs.
An unwanted thought flits through my head, one that catches me by surprise: life in the Mission, governed by Krugman and his predecessors, now seems in comparison not so unconscionable. I shudder at the thought.
A determination sets in my bones. I look at Sissy and David and Epap. “We’re going to get out of here.”
“How?” David asks.
“I don’t know. But one thing I do know: we’ll escape or die trying. Because I’m not going to … simply waste away in this horrid place.” I put my hand on David’s, pat it hard. “I promise you, David. We’re not going to become like these people here. Because their existence … it’s not living. It’s not even surviving. It’s…” I shake my head. “It’s not for me. It’s not for us. I think I speak for all of us: I’d rather be dead tomorrow than alive for a year in here.”
Sissy’s eyes, withdrawn for the past hour, spark. I place my other hand over hers, and she grips it back tightly.
“Matthew told us the siren went off yesterday. That gives us six days to find a way out of here. Six days. That’s plenty of time. And we’ll spend every minute of that time examining every nook and cranny of this place. We use all our wiles and cunning and smarts. We’ll find a way out.”
“But Matthew said—” David starts to say.
“Matthew isn’t us. Matthew hasn’t survived a mass Heper Hunt, hasn’t escaped a horde of thousands. We have. Matthew hasn’t survived a journey down the Nede River, a plummet down a waterfall. We have. Matthew hasn’t survived swarms of duskers in the mountains. Matthew didn’t just survive mass carnage in the station below.” I grip Sissy’s hand tighter, grab David’s arm tightly now. “But we have. We are awesome together. We are formidable. I really believe that. There’s something about the four of us together. The duskers—thousands of them, armies of them, armadas of them—have never defeated us. At the dome, on the riverbanks, in the mountains. Not once. We’ve stared them down each and every time.”
The Trap (The Hunt Trilogy) Page 2
