by Hugh Howey
Page 20
It was Rickson who got her moving again, even though he wasn’t there. Elise could hear his loud voice booming through the Wilds telling her there was nothing to be afraid of. He and the twins used to send her on errands through the pitch black when she was just old enough to walk. They would send her for blackberries and plums and delicacies near the stairs when there were people still around to fear. “The littlest ones are the safest,” Rickson used to tell her. That was years ago. She wasn’t so little anymore.
She put her book away and decided that the dark Wilds with their leafy fingers brushing her neck and the clicking of pumps and chattering teeth were worse than painted people leaking smoke from their noses. With her face chapped from crying, she crawled out from beneath the counter and jostled among the knees. Always turning right – which was the trick to getting through the Wilds in the dark – she found herself in a smoky hallway with loud hisses and a smell in the air like boiling rat.
“Hey, kid, you lost?”
A boy with short-cropped hair and bright green eyes studied her from the edge of a booth. He was older than her, but not by much. As big as the twins. Elise shook her head. She reconsidered and nodded.
The boy laughed. “What’s your name?”
“Elise,” she said.
“That’s a different name. ”
She shrugged, not sure what to say. The boy caught her eyeing a man beyond him as he lifted strips of sizzling meat with a large fork.
“You hungry?” the boy asked.
Elise nodded. She was always hungry. Especially when she was scared. But maybe that was because she got scared when she went out looking for food, and she went out looking for food when she was hungry. Hard to remember which came first. The boy disappeared behind the counter. He came back with a thick piece of meat.
“Is it rat?” Elise asked.
The boy laughed. “It’s pig. ”
Elise scrunched up her face, remembering the animal that grunted at her earlier. “Does it taste like rat?” she asked, full of hope.
“You say that louder and my dad’ll have your hide. You want some or not?” He handed the strip of meat over. “I’m guessing you don’t have two chits on you. ”
Elise accepted the meat and didn’t say. She took a small bite, and little bursts of happiness exploded in her mouth. It was better than rat. The boy studied her.
“You’re from the Mids, aren’t you?”
Elise shook her head and took another bite. “I’m from Silo 17,” she said, chewing. Her mouth was full of saliva. She eyed the man cooking the strips of meat. Marcus and Miles should be there to try some.
“You mean level seventeen?” The boy frowned. “You don’t look like a topper. No, too dirty to be a topper. ”
“I’m from the other silo,” Elise said. “West of here. ”
“What’s a westophere?” the boy asked.
“West. Where the sun sets. ”
The boy looked at her funny.
“The sun. It comes up in the east and sets in the west. That’s why maps point up. They point up at north. ” She thought about pulling her book out and showing him the maps of the world, explaining how the sun went around and around, but her hands were covered in grease, and anyway the boy didn’t seem interested. “They dug over and rescued us,” she explained.
At this, the boy’s eyes went wide. “The dig. You’re from the other silo. It’s real?”
Elise finished the strip of pig and licked her fingers. She nodded.
The boy shoved a hand at her. Elise wiped her palm on her hip and grabbed it with her own.
“My name’s Shaw,” he said. “You want another piece of pig? Come under the counter. I’ll introduce you to my father. Hey, Pa, I want you to meet someone. ”
“I can’t. I’m looking for Puppy. ”
Shaw scrunched up his face. “Puppy? You’d want the next hall over. ” He nodded the direction. “But c’mon, pig is much better. Dog is chewy like rat, and puppy is just more expensive than dog but tastes the same. ”
Elise froze. The pig that went by earlier with a rope around its neck, maybe that one was a pet. Maybe they ate pets, just like Marcus and Miles always wanted to keep a rat for fun, even when everyone else was hungry. “They eat puppy?” she asked this boy.
“If you’ve got the chits, sure. ” Shaw grabbed her hand. “Come back to the grill with me. I want you to meet my dad. He says you all aren’t real. ”
Elise pulled away. “I’ve got to find my puppy. ” She turned and scurried through the crowd in the direction the boy had nodded.
“Whaddya mean, your puppy—?” he yelled after her.
Around a line of stalls, Elise found another smoky hall. More smells like rat on a stick over an open flame. An old woman wrestled with a bird, two angry wings flapping from her fists. Elise stepped in poop and nearly slipped. The strangeness all around melted with the thought of her puppy gone. She heard someone yell about a dog, and searched for the voice. An older boy, probably Rickson’s age, was holding up a piece of red meat, a giant piece with white stripes that looked like bones. There was a pen there and signs with numbers on them. People from the crowd stopped to peer inside. Some of them pointed inside the pen and asked questions.
Elise fought through them toward the sound of yipping. There were live dogs in the pen. She could see through the slats and almost over the top when she was on her tiptoes. A huge animal the size of a pig lunged at the fence and growled at her, and the fence shook. It was a dog, but with a rope around its jaw so it couldn’t open. Elise could feel its hot breath blowing out its nose. She scooted out of everyone’s way and around the side.
There was a smaller pen in the back. Elise went past the counter to where two young men tended a smoking grill. Their backs were turned. They took something from a woman and handed her a package. Elise grabbed the top of the smaller fence and peered over. There was a dog on its side with five – no, six little animals eating at its belly. She thought they were rats at first, but they were the tiniest of puppies. They made Puppy seem like a grown dog. And they weren’t eating the dog – they were sucking like Hannah’s baby did at her breast.
Elise was so fixated on the tiny critters that she didn’t see the animal at the base of the fence lunge at her until it was too late. A black nose and a pink tongue bounced up and caught her on the jaw. She peered directly down the other side of the fence and saw Puppy, who bounded up at her again.
Elise cried out. Reaching over the fence, she had both hands on the animal, when someone grabbed her from behind.
“Don’t think you can afford that one,” one of the men behind the counter said.
Elise squirmed in his grip and tried to keep a hold of Puppy.
“Easy now,” the man said. “Let it go. ”
“Let me go!” Elise cried.
Puppy slipped from her grasp. Elise wiggled loose, the shoulder strap of her bag yanked over her head. She fell at the man’s feet and got back up, reached for Puppy again.
“Well, now,” she heard the man say.
Elise reached over the fence and grabbed her pet again. Puppy’s feet scratched at the fence to help. His front paws draped over her shoulder, a wet tongue in her ear. Elise turned to find a man towering over her, a bloody white piece of fabric tied over his chest, her Memory Book in his hands.
“What’s this?” he asked, thumbing through the pages. A few of the loose papers shuffled free and he grabbed at them frantically.
“That’s my book,” Elise said. “Give it back. ”
The man peered down at her. Puppy licked her face.
“Trade you for that one,” he said, pointing at Puppy.
“They’re both mine,” she insisted.
“Naw, I paid for that runt. But this’ll do. ” He weighed her book in his hands, then reached down and steered Elise out of the booth and back toward the crowded hall.
> Elise reached for the book. Her bag was being left behind. Puppy nipped her on the hand and nearly squirmed free. She was crying, she realized, as she squealed for the man to give her back her things. He showed his teeth and grabbed her by the hair, was angry now. “Roy! Come grab this runt. ”
Elise screeched. The boy from outside yelling “dog” to everyone who passed by headed toward her. Puppy was nearly free. She was losing her grip again, and the man was going to rip out her hair.
She lost Puppy, and Elise squealed as the man lifted her off the ground. Then there was a flash, like a dog pouncing, but it was brown coveralls rather than brown fur that flew past, and the large man let out a grunt and fell to the ground. Elise went spilling after.
He no longer had a grip on her hair. Elise saw her bag. Her book. She grabbed both, clutched a handful of loose pages. Shaw was there, the boy who fed her pig. He scooped up Puppy and grinned at Elise.
“Run,” he said, flashing his teeth.
Elise ran. She danced away from the boy in the hall and bounced off people in the crowd. Looking over her shoulder, she saw Shaw running after her, Puppy clutched to his chest upside down, paws in the air. The crowd rattled and made room as the men from the stall came after them.
“This way!” Shaw yelled, laughing, as he overtook Elise and turned a corner. Tears streamed from her eyes, but Elise was laughing too. Laughing and terrified and happy to have her book and her pet and getting away and this boy who was nicer to her than the twins. They dashed beneath another of the counters – the smell of fresh fruit – and someone yelled at them. Shaw ran through a dark room with unmade beds, through a kitchen with a woman cooking, then back out into another stall. A tall man with dark skin shook a spatula at them, but they were already out among the crowds, running and laughing and dancing between—
And then someone in the crowd snatched him up. Large and powerful hands jerked the boy into the air. Elise stumbled. Shaw kicked and screamed at this man, and Elise looked up and saw that it was Solo holding him. He smiled down at Elise through his thick beard.
“Solo!” Elise squealed. She grabbed his leg and squeezed.
“This boy got something of yours?” he asked.
“No, he’s a friend. Put him down. ” She scanned the crowd for any sign of the men chasing them. “We should go,” she told Solo. She squeezed his leg once more. “I want to go home. ”
Solo rubbed her head. “And that’s just where we’re heading. ”
29
Elise let Solo carry her bag and her book while she clutched Puppy. They made their way through the crowds, out of the bizarre, and back to the stairwell. Shaw trailed after them, even after Solo told the boy to get back to his family. And as Elise and Solo made their way down the stairwell to find the others, she kept glancing back to catch sight of Shaw in his brown coveralls, peeking from around the central post or through the rails of a landing higher up. She thought about telling Solo that he was still there, but she didn’t.
A few levels below the bizarre, a porter caught up to them and delivered a message. Jewel was heading down and looking for them. She had half the porters hunting for Elise. And Elise never knew that she’d been missing.
Solo made her drink from his canteen while they waited at the next landing. She then poured a small puddle into his old and wrinkled hands, and Puppy took grateful sips. It took what felt like forever for Jewel to arrive, but when she did, it was in a thunder of hurrying boots. The landing shook. Jewel was all sweaty and out of breath, but Solo didn’t seem to care. The two of them hugged, and Elise wondered if they’d ever let go. People came and went from the landing and gave them funny looks as they passed. Jewel was smiling and crying both when they finally released each other. She said something to Solo, and it was his turn to cry. Both of them looked at Elise, and she could see that it was secrets or something bad. Jewel picked her up next and kissed her on the cheek and hugged her until it was hard to breathe.
“It’s gonna be okay,” she told Elise. But Elise didn’t know what was wrong.
“I got Puppy back,” she said. And then she remembered that Jewel didn’t know about her new pet. She looked down to see Puppy peeing on Jewel’s boot, which must be like saying hello.
“A dog,” Jewel said. She squeezed Elise’s shoulder. “You can’t keep her. Dogs are dangerous. ”
“She’s not dangerous!”
Puppy chewed on Elise’s hand. Elise pulled away and rubbed Puppy’s head.
“Did you get her from the bazaar? Is that where you went?” Jewel looked to Solo, who nodded. Jewel took a deep breath. “You can’t take things that don’t belong to you. If you got it from a vendor, it’ll have to go back. ”
“Puppy came from the Deep,” Elise said. She bent down and wrapped her arms around the dog. “He came from Mechanical. We can take him back there. But not to the bizarre. I’m sorry I took him. ” She squeezed Puppy and thought about the man holding up the red meat with the white ribs. Jewel turned to Solo again.
“It didn’t come from the bazaar,” he confirmed. “She plucked it from a box down in Mechanical. ”
“Fine. We’ll straighten this out later. We need to catch up with the others. ”
Elise could tell that all of them were tired, including her and Puppy, but they set out anyway. The adults seemed eager to get down, and after seeing the bizarre Elise felt the same way. She told Jewel she wanted to go home, and Jewel said that’s where they were heading. “We ought to make things how they used to be,” Elise told them both.
For some reason that made Jewel laugh. “You’re too young to be nostalgic,” she said.
