“No!” Brock yelled.
The conductor looked back and waved for us to hurry as the train began slowly moving forward on the repaired track. Steam billowed in a cloud from the small car at the front where the conductor stood, and drifted across the two open-topped passenger cars it pulled farther and farther up the hill. Aaren and Brock picked up Brenna, and I raced alongside the train, pumping my legs as the wheels on the side of the end car inched closer and closer. Finally, I got near enough to leap onto the passenger car. I reached back for Brenna, pulling her next to me right before Brock and Aaren both jumped up beside us. We collapsed onto a bench.
“I can’t believe we made it,” Aaren said.
Brock panted. “I can’t believe Hope didn’t kill us.”
Brenna looked up at me with her big blue eyes. “Can we do it again?”
My heart rate and breathing had barely returned to normal when the train reached the river at the top of the third ring, its final stop.
We hopped off and headed straight for the mill on the edge of the river. The double doors were open, letting in the cool spring air, and we could hear the sounds coming from the mill over the chugging of the train.
As soon as we walked in the doors, heat from the wood-drying kiln hit us, along with the chonk and bang from the nail-making machine and the whirring of the saws. When my dad noticed us, he shut down the saw, pulled out his earplugs, and took off his safety glasses.
“Hey, pumpkin. What’s wrong?”
My dad told us not to talk to a soul about what we had found until Mr. Hudson figured out what was going on, because he didn’t want to panic anyone before he had answers. After a very long three and a half days, Mr. Hudson asked my dad, Brock, Aaren, and me to join him in the clearing by the woods on the second ring, right next to the cracks in the earth.
The sun had just sunk behind the crater, and Mr. Hudson already had lanterns lit, shining light on the two tables he had hauled up from his workshop. They were covered from one end to the other in piles of papers, glass beakers, a gas burner, a lantern, mortars and pestles, and a microscope. Off to the side, a bedroll and pillow lay, but it didn’t look as if Mr. Hudson had used them for a while. His hair was a mess, his clothes were wrinkled, and he had dark circles under his eyes. A chair sat next to one of the tables, but he stood, leaning over some charts. We climbed off our horses and he looked up at us with tired eyes.
“So they were right?” my dad said. “It’s lowering?”
Mr. Hudson gave a single nod.
My dad walked to the same side of the table as Mr. Hudson and in a quiet voice asked, “How much?”
Mr. Hudson ran his hand through his dark hair, making it stick up even worse than it was already, then pulled his black case toward him. The one I’d seen him carry a million times. Lots of things changed when the green bombs hit, including minerals, ores, and plants. Right after the bombs, when Mr. Hudson was my age, he traveled with his parents and my grandparents from Holyoke, Colorado, across the Forbidden Flats, picking up other survivors along the way. They were the original members of White Rock, back before they’d even found White Rock. He began collecting samples of the minerals and metals he found on that trip, as well as every excursion they’d gone on since then to scavenge for supplies. He brought them all back, performed tests, categorized them, and found each a spot in his black case.
He pulled a sheet of paper out of his stack that had been torn from a book. Aaren, Brock, and I crowded around the table to see it—the periodic table of elements, with notes added in his own handwriting.
He used two fingers to tap on the chart. “Chemical reactions don’t only happen with liquids. They can happen with solids.” Mr. Hudson looked at Aaren, Brock, and me. “Remember in Tens and Elevens, when I showed you a double replacement?”
I nodded. “You put two white powders in the same vial, and when you mixed them together, they turned yellow, right?”
Mr. Hudson smiled at me as though he was impressed that I had been paying attention enough in inventions class to remember that. “Right. Because it underwent a chemical change.” He motioned behind him toward the giant cracks that looked like claw marks in the ground. “The same type of thing happened in these fissures, only with different elements.”
Mr. Hudson pulled two stones out of his black case. He held up the first one, a rounded stone so dark gray it was almost black, then the second stone, one with jagged edges that was at least as dark but had a purplish shine to it. “Neither of these existed before the bombs. There are seams of both of these in this mountain, running almost parallel.”
Using a chisel, he broke a piece off each stone and put each in its own mortar. He handed one mortar to Aaren, and they both ground their stone into a powder with the pestles.
He held them out for us to see, as if he were teaching us a class back in Tens & Elevens. “See? Separate elements. But when I combine them …” He poured them both into a vial, then put the stopper on the vial and shook it a few times.
A light gray powder filled the bottom of the vial, but slow-moving, almost see-through smoke filled the rest of the container.
“A double replacement. The chemical change did two things—one made the color you see in the bottom, the other created a gas.” He pulled off the stopper, and the gas lazily drifted out of the vial. “You can see the gas better when it’s in the vial, because it’s concentrated. Even though you can’t see it once it leaves the vial, it’s still rising.
“The shaking of the quakes crashed the seams of both these minerals together, turning much of the minerals into powder and mixing them.” He gazed at the sky. “This gas is traveling upward, combining with the gases in the Bomb’s Breath, and making it … heavier, in a sense.”
I looked up at the few stars that were beginning to shine in the darkening sky. I couldn’t see the Bomb’s Breath, of course, and from where I stood on the second ring, I was probably eighty or ninety feet below it. Or at least that’s how high up it was before it started lowering. The thought was suffocating.
“Is it only happening here?” my dad asked.
“Yes,” Mr. Hudson said. “That’s the first thing I worried about, too. I marked the level of the Bomb’s Breath on the outside of the crater and checked it the next day. It is staying at the same height it always has. It’s only coming down within White Rock, and it’s not pulling the rest down with it. It’ll stay fifteen feet thick, too—the entire thing will just drop lower and lower. The more of this gas that travels up to the Bomb’s Breath, the more the Bomb’s Breath will descend on us. This is a sustained chemical change, so it will continue to create the gas for weeks.”
“Weeks?” my dad said, his voice urgent.
“Yes. About eight weeks, in fact.” Mr. Hudson fumbled with the mess of papers on his table and pulled out one with mathematical equations on it. “But we’ll never make it eight weeks, because the problem is compounding. The Bomb’s Breath lowered roughly two and a half inches in the past day, but in a week, it’ll be dropping seven inches in a day. In three weeks, seventy-two inches a day. It will drop to the highest houses on the third ring in twenty-three days.”
Aaren’s and my houses, along with a handful of others and the tunnel leading out of White Rock, were the highest on the third ring. I wasn’t sure my legs could hold me up. Twenty-three days. Twenty-three days. Twenty-three days. My heart pounded to the rhythm of the only words surging through my brain.
“Can’t we fill in the cracks with dirt?” I asked. “Cover them up so the gases won’t come out?”
“That won’t stop the gases—they’ll still seep right through the dirt.” Mr. Hudson waved his arm toward the sky. “That hazy air we’ve been seeing—it’s caused by those gases. When it combines with the particles in the Bomb’s Breath, the particles turn gray. The haze will continue to get worse until we can fix it.”
“So there’s a way to fix it?” My dad’s voice came out hoarse.
The black case lay open on the table,
and Mr. Hudson gestured to the rows and rows of items contained in it. Hundreds of rocks of different shapes, sizes, colors, and textures filled the bottom half of the case, some of them shining as if they were made of metal, and others as dull as dirt. The top half of the case held dozens of vials filled with different-colored powders and liquids.
“I think there is. I’ve tested all of these, and there is one that stops the gases from being created, and should allow the Bomb’s Breath to go back up to its natural height.” Mr. Hudson pulled a rock out of his case. “Seforium.”
I had never seen a stone like it before. It was a rich orange color and was nearly as chalky as limestone.
Optimism flashed across my dad’s face. “It’ll stop it?”
“It will.”
“Where can we find it? We can put a hold on rebuilding and get as many people as you need to mine it.”
Mr. Hudson set the orange rock on the table and faced my dad, his eyes looking older in the flickering light from the lanterns. “I’ve seen it only once, and never again since. Forty years ago, not long after the bombs hit, I dug this out of the Rocky Mountains.”
“The Rocky Mountains,” my dad echoed.
Mr. Hudson gave a single nod.
“Five hundred miles to the west, across the Forbidden Flats?”
“If we don’t get it,” Mr. Hudson said, “we’ll have to evacuate White Rock, or we’ll be trapped in the lower rings, with the Bomb’s Breath coming down on us.”
It was late by the time my dad got everyone in the council gathered for a meeting in my kitchen to discuss an expedition to the Rocky Mountains. I pretended to go to bed and listened from the hallway.
They debated whether they should send a large group so they could better fight off any bandits they came across, or take a small group so they could travel quickly. They decided that with as little time as we had, they didn’t have a choice—they’d better send a small group and do it fast. Then they discussed who to send on the trip, what to take, how to travel quickly, how hard it might be to find a seam of seforium, and how long it could take to mine it. They talked for a long time about the dangers they’d face until my head spun and my stomach churned. I finally gave up listening and went to bed.
I fell asleep and dreamed I sat on the flat part of the roof on the community center, and instead of being see-through, the Bomb’s Breath was an intense orange, like sunset on an angry sky. On all sides of me, people scurried around doing things, but I sat on the roof, watching the Bomb’s Breath lower. I wanted to help, too, but I couldn’t move. Instead, I watched as it sank into the third ring, swallowing my house with its darkness. People dropped to the ground whenever it touched them. Lower and lower still, and I just sat on the roof in the lowest part of White Rock, not doing anything. It descended to the second ring, and then the first, and still I sat, watching people fall to the ground all around me. When it came down enough to almost swallow me, I woke with a scream, shaking.
And then I realized it wasn’t only my scream that awoke me—it was also the scream of the steam whistle at City Circle, blowing three short whistles, three long whistles, then three short whistles: the signal that we’d have an emergency town meeting in one hour. I jumped out of bed and hurried to the kitchen to ask my parents about it, but they were both gone.
I picked up a note on my kitchen table in my mom’s handwriting.
We had to leave early for the community center. Take the 8:00 a.m. train down to meet us.
The train wouldn’t be here for almost an hour—I couldn’t sit around waiting for that long when I was so rattled. I got ready as quickly as possible, then went next door and knocked for Aaren, and we both jogged down to the community center. It was already pretty crowded. Everyone who had arrived early went from classroom to classroom to gather chairs and benches and set them up in the gym. The high windows on the angled part of the roof wouldn’t be replaced for a while, but at least the broken glass on the floor had been swept up. Aaren saw Brock come in and they both started helping with the chairs, but I went into the kitchens. I needed my mom.
She was pressing a ball of biscuit dough flat on the counter and directing a group of people putting together breakfast sandwiches. When she saw me, she wiped her hands on a towel and wrapped arms around me that weren’t as bony as they once were. In fact, she felt stronger every day. I would never have guessed that my mom would’ve changed so much from bandits invading months before.
She whispered, “Are you okay?”
Those words coming from her made me realize how much I wasn’t okay, especially after the nightmare that awoke me. I nodded anyway. It was a minute before I trusted my voice to come out normal. “I’m fine. Need any help?”
She looked at the flurry of activity in the kitchen. “Of course! Your dad decided it would be better to feed everyone, so they can get straight back to work after the meeting instead of sticking around and worrying. With your help, we can get these finished in time to find a seat.”
I assembled sandwiches until people from the trains started filing into the gym. My mom took off her apron and walked with me through the crowd, to the spot on the front row of benches where she always sat.
Usually Aaren, Brock, Brenna, and I stood toward the back, so we could see everyone’s reactions. Today, though, I wanted to be by my mom. We sat there, knowing why an emergency meeting was called, while all the people around us were trying to guess.
Eventually, the five council members walked in and took their seats on the raised platform at the front. The noise from the crowd cut in half, but everyone shifted in their seats, looking toward the doors for my dad.
A few moments later, he came into the gym holding his clipboard, looking in charge and confident even while limping to the front to step up onto the platform. He leaned against the table and looked out into the crowd.
The room was packed, with all the chairs and benches taken, yet there were still more people standing than there were sitting.
My dad cleared his throat. “Let’s get right to this. I trust everyone to remain calm and quiet while I explain.” He looked at us like he was trying to judge how we’d take the news. “You’ve all noticed the massive fissures in the mountainside on the west. We’ve found out there are gases being released from within them. The gases aren’t poisonous. They are, however, rising to mix with the air in the Bomb’s Breath.” My dad took a long pause. “And that’s making the Bomb’s Breath lower.”
The noise level in the room rose so much, I thought maybe my dad had been too quick to trust us to remain calm and quiet. But he stood there, patiently waiting for the noise to die down. He’d told me once that people would be quiet on their own quickly enough, when their need to hear information became stronger than their need to talk. This time, it happened really fast.
“The good news is, there’s a mineral that will stop the gases,” he said, and the entire room held their breath as they waited for the but. “But as far as we know, it is only found in the Rocky Mountains.”
Everyone gasped.
“We’ll need to send a team tomorrow morning to travel across the Forbidden Flats to get the mineral. Ken Williams,” my dad said, and he motioned behind him, “will lead the team, and those joining him will be notified soon.
“Yes, it’s a long trip. And yes, it will be dangerous. We don’t know much about the weather or where bandits and any towns are, so we are hoping to go with a guide. We have reports that there’s someone in Arris who has been to the Rockies. Two of our men left at first light to see if the man will guide us, and they should be back by tonight. If he can’t, we still leave in the morning. We have no time to waste.”
My dad looked out across the crowd for a moment before continuing. “I’m going to trust you with the whole truth, because I think you deserve it, but I’m also trusting you not to panic.” He paused for a minute. “We now have twenty-two days to get the mineral and be back, or the Bomb’s Breath will be low enough to affect homes. That’s not long to
travel so far. But we’ve gotten through some pretty tough times before, and we’ll do it again.”
It was hard to go back and rebuild houses after the meeting. I understood the need to keep busy, but I wondered if it was all pointless. If they couldn’t find the mineral or make it back in time and the Bomb’s Breath kept coming down, would each family go find another town to live in? Would we all go somewhere together? I couldn’t imagine another twenty-one days of wondering if they’d make it back before the Bomb’s Breath engulfed my house.
We used chisels to remove mortar from the bricks that had fallen off the broken part of the Johnsons’ house. I picked up a hammer and chisel and added my clang, clang, crack! to the clamor of everyone else’s, wishing the noise would drown out my dad’s words. The only thing able to do that, though, seemed to be my dream, which kept replaying in my head. The one where I sat and did nothing to help.
I stared up at the sky. Was the haze getting worse? It was hard to tell.
Aaren, Brenna, and I trudged home from the five p.m. train. As we neared my house, my exhaustion vanished when I heard horses. Four of them were picketed by the shed.
“They’re here!” We ran to the house, and the three of us burst through the front door.
My mom came into the room and took my jacket off me like I was two years old, hanging it on the coatrack. “The man who’s been to the Rockies hasn’t agreed to be our guide yet, but he’s staying for dinner so we can discuss it.”
“Me too?” I asked hopefully.
My mom smiled and said yes.
“And Aaren?” I asked, brushing mortar powder from my shirt.
“If it’s okay with his mom,” she said. “Aaren, you take Brenna home and get cleaned up, then if you can, come back and join us. Hope, you better get cleaned up, too.”
Sky Jumpers Book 2: The Forbidden Flats Page 3
