The child came and gave him a hug. “I’ll tell my daddy he has to take you,” she said seriously.
Luke smiled and hugged her back, deeply touched. “Thank you, sweetheart.”
Chapter Three
Most of the village gathered after breakfast to walk together to the cave. Although everyone knew the story about the bear cub Adena’s father had captured, few had been to the cave as it wasn’t on a regular route for fuel collection or near where the forest fruits grew.
Zuri wondered if the bear cub had been one of the reasons the village had banned the keeping of pets. She remembered her mother telling her the cub had been killed and eaten, but many had wanted to keep it as a pet. Back then the village had a few dogs and chickens as well. The chickens had been killed when they got too old to lay eggs. The dogs had died of old age, but no puppies were permitted. Zuri guessed old dogs didn’t have puppies anyway.
It was about an hour’s walk to the cave, and Arthur, who was leading, had to backtrack at one stage to find the entry, which had been partially grown over with brush. A couple of men hacked the brush clear, and the women bundled it up to take back to the village for fuel. A bonus addition to their outing. Every bit of extra fuel was good.
Zuri walked through the opening, which was higher than the top of her head, and quite wide. Even with her arms outstretched, she couldn’t touch the sides. Inside they all stood and waited until their eyes adjusted to the semidarkness, then moved forward. The first cave had a hard dirt floor and led into an inner cave. Here there were signs animals had used it as a home, but not very recently. Zuri hoped the men were taking note of it as a possible place to check for food come spring.
The wide tunnel narrowed a little and curved until it was hard to see. Zuri let her hand run along the rock wall as she walked slowly forward. Then the passage opened up wider, and they were in a big area with the…bus. It was a bus. It had rows of seats for people to ride in, and it was yellow. Even in the dimness, it was clear to see it had once been a bright-yellow and was still a strong color.
A truck would have been better for bringing things back to the village, but it was a big bus, and Zuri imagined filling it with wood and clothing and food. Bags of grain and crates of fruit. And chickens. How wonderful it would be to eat an egg once again.
People were swarming all over it, climbing through the open doors, and the men were already talking about the engine. Zuri stood silently back against the rock wall of the cave and thought. If the bus was here, why wasn’t the truck here, too? Surely the ancestors wouldn’t have wanted to find two separate storage places for the vehicles. This was a big cave. There was plenty of room for more things to be left in it. Quietly she followed the wall around. When she came to another wide tunnel—it would need to be a big tunnel for the truck to fit through, she reasoned—Zuri scratched an arrow in the dirt with the heel of her shoe to show which way she’d come. She walked into the passage, running her hand along the wall as she had in the first tunnel. It was short and opened into another cave. And there was the truck. It was huge and a dirty-white color.
It was a big step up off the ground to get to the seat where the driver would sit, but she scrambled up. Once there, she looked at the knobs and dials and understood driving such a thing might not be simple. She saw the glove compartment and, after several attempts, opened it. There were a lot of papers there, including a book with pictures of parts of the truck. So Luke was right. All people needed to do was read the book carefully and follow the instructions. If it could be made to work, of course.
Zuri replaced the book in the compartment and shut the tiny door, then slid down out of the truck. Time to tell the leaders what she’d found. Or should she look farther? Maybe there were more things here, too? Zuri couldn’t resist. She walked over to the wall and began looking to see if there were any more passageways.
* * * *
Tau was excited about finding the bus. Andy was holding the little book with pictures in it of the various parts of the bus and its engine. That would make it much easier to see what worked and what might need fixing. Hopefully, once the parts were lubricated and cleaned, most of them would work just fine.
He watched Udo kick the tires. They were flat, but he couldn’t tell if they were perished or just needed air. The light wasn’t very good there. Anyway, the bus would work without tires. They’d used wheelbarrows without tires for years and years before the rims were too damaged for the wheels to turn easily.
Tau looked at the seats. They seemed to be bolted in such that taking them out would not be too hard. If they took out half the seats, they’d be able to fit in much more fuel and bigger items than they could stow with the seats there. Just leave enough seats for the people to sit in, and all the rest should be removed to make extra storage space. And there was a luggage compartment underneath the bus as well, which would hold quite a bit of stuff, too. All in all, this bus was much better than a wagon, even if they couldn’t make it work and the cows had to haul it.
“We ought to push the bus through the passageway into the first cave, by the entrance. That way it’ll still be protected from the weather, but we’ll have plenty of light to see to work on it. If we leave it here, we’ll have to burn torches all the time, which will use a lot of wood,” said Arthur.
“Someone will need to steer it though so it doesn’t bang into the walls,” added Andy.
“Me, me!”
“I will.”
Most of the young men wanted to steer the bus, but Andy shook his head. “You’re all strong, and we need you to push.” Andy cast his eyes over the crowd, finally pointing to Adena, who was both short and slender. “Adena, you can steer. You understand the basic premise? You know what to do?”
Adena looked overawed, but she nodded seriously.
The crowd ranged themselves along the sides of the bus, with a group of the strongest behind it. The children were ordered to stand out of the way, and then Andy called, “On the count of three. One. Two. Three, push.”
The people heaved, and the bus rocked on its wheels, but it didn’t go forward.
“Again. One, two, three,” roared Andy.
Several more times, they all pushed together, and the bus moved an inch or two, but that was all. The people rested, many of them rolling their shoulders and puffing from the effort they’d used.
In the stillness, the piping treble of little Ayan rang out. “The brake. Old Luke said there was a brake, and that stopped the machines moving when the driver didn’t want them to move. You have to undo the brake.”
“Dammit, she’s right. We should have thought of that,” said an older man.
Andy and Arthur pushed their heads into the driver’s compartment to locate the brake. After some muttering, they found it, and Adena released it.
That time, when the people pushed, the bus moved faster than they’d expected, and Adena had to grab the steering wheel to keep the front of the bus pointed at the middle of the tunnel. Their progress was a little erratic, with Adena overcorrecting a few times and the people on one side of the bus having to flatten themselves against the wall of the cave at one stage, but they made it safely through the passage, across the cave where animals had been, and into the first cave where the light seemed much brighter after the dimness deeper inside.
Arriving there, the people crowded around again, eager for a closer look now visibility was so much better.
Udo and Tau stood back from the crowd, Tau looking all around them. “Where’s Zuri?” he asked.
Tau watched Udo’s gaze repeat the scan he’d just made. “Not here.”
Without a word, they turned together and headed back deeper into the cave. She wasn’t in the animal cave, nor in the passage, nor in the chamber where the bus had been.
Tau followed the walls one way and Udo the other. They met up at a wide passage leading deeper into the cave system. Silently Udo pointed to the dirt floor. An arrow had been scratched into it. “You reckon she left a message for us?”<
br />
“I don’t know, but she’s not outside, so this is the only logical place to look.”
“Well, there was one very narrow passage on my wall. But I decided to leave that to check later.”
“I agree. Let’s follow the arrow first,” said Tau.
Tau rested his hand on the wall very lightly, just as a guide, but Udo walked beside him not touching the other wall. It didn’t matter. This tunnel was very short and opened into another spacious cave, with the truck in the middle of it.
“Of course! How stupid we are. Old Luke said there was a bus and a truck. Of course they would be together,” said Tau.
He rushed over to the truck and climbed up into the cabin. The back where the luggage went was shut, so he didn’t think Zuri would have gone inside it. So where was she? Suddenly he was worried. She’d led them to the truck, something they should have thought of themselves, but where was she now? Old Luke hadn’t mentioned any other machines.
“Where is she?” Tau’s voice was scratchy with worry.
Udo laid a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “We’ve gotten ourselves an explorer. I reckon she’s kept going.”
“What for? Luke didn’t say there was anything more.”
“But he was just a little boy back then. He wouldn’t have known everything. Let’s check out the walls for another passage,” suggested Udo.
Tau took a deep breath and nodded, then they circled the room. This time there were two possibilities. They walked a little way into the first tunnel, but there was no arrow scratched in the dirt, so they returned to the cave with the truck and tried the second passageway. This time, to Tau’s great relief, there was an arrow. He may not have found her, but at least he now knew he was following her.
This passage was short, too, and opened into a rectangular space with phosphorescent rocks in the roof, giving a gray glimmer of light. Along one side wall was a row of double bunks. In the center of the room was a long table with benches to sit on each side of it. And stacked against the other walls were crate after crate of supplies, piled head-high. When Tau turned back to the entryway, he saw there was a big metal sheet there, obviously meant to be a door to close off the area.
“Gods! We’ve found their secret hideaway. The place they would come to if they were attacked,” said Tau.
“Actually I found it. You just followed my signals. Or I’m guessing you did,” came Zuri’s muffled voice.
“Zuri? Where are you?” asked Udo.
“Here.” A hand waved from behind a pile of crates. “These ones are water in bottles. To my right are tins of food. I haven’t had a chance to look at the ones on the other side of the room yet.”
Tau rushed across to Zuri. “We were worried about you,” he said, tugging her into his arms.
Udo was right behind them, bear-hugging both of them from behind.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Let me out. I want to look at more crates.”
For the next five minutes, they spread out, looking at the piles of crates around the room. Udo even climbed up to check some of the top ones. But although the arrangement might have looked haphazard, they were all stored very logically, all the water together, the food in one place, a group of boxes of clothing, and other crates of farm equipment, household utensils, and machinery.
“I wonder if there are tires for the bus?” said Tau.
“Underwear,” sighed Zuri happily.
“But is this old food edible? Maybe it’s gone bad after so long,” said Udo.
“Some of the old people said they ate canned food they brought with them for many years, so I think it lasts for a long time. But likely not this long. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. When we open the cans, we’ll soon know if it’s rotted or not,” said Zuri dismissively.
“We must get back and tell Andy what we’ve found,” said Tau.
“What I found,” corrected Zuri.
“Yes, the work is yours, so the credit is yours.” Tau looked at his beautiful Zuri. A little too thin these days—gods, they all needed a decent meal—but still smarter than the pack of them, and still stunningly beautiful. He loved her so much it hurt, and his dream was for the three of them to be able to be together all the time, accepted by the village.
Udo must have been thinking much the same thing because he spoke slowly and hesitantly. “Zuri, when you tell the village what you have found, you are giving the community a great gift. In return, you could ask for something you want.”
Zuri frowned and looked at both men. “You aren’t talking about socks are you? Gods, how I miss not having warm toes in winter. You don’t even mean the fact that I want to go to the city with the men. You mean something much bigger. Something important to all three of us. Yes, now would definitely be the best time to ask for that. While they are surprised and, hopefully, grateful to us.”
She nodded again and turned toward the exit. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter Four
Luke was tired, aching, and dispirited. As soon as the villagers had left, he’d propped the storeroom door wide open so there was plenty of light to see right to the back corner. Then he’d started at the back left corner and began working his way methodically around the room.
Many of the crates were familiar to him. There were the books he’d been looking through just yesterday and the boxes of farming implements the village had been using all along. Spades and rakes and hoes and brooms, very few of any of them left now, and a crate of broken ones still with good parts to be used to join together to make workable ones.
Then there were the boxes of clothes. Not much left there either, just some very big men’s pants, and sweaters, and coats. No one was large enough to fit them, although some of the women had talked of cutting them up and making children’s clothes from them.
But there were still many crates and boxes he had to open and look at. Some held things he could not identify. If he thought there was a chance they were parts of a bus or truck, he looked at the pictures in the encyclopedia. Only one crate looked hopeful, and he dragged that to the doorway.
The storeroom had been searched many times for food, so he knew he wouldn’t find anything edible or that could be cultivated for food. By midday his knee was aching up a storm, and his back and arms were sore, too, so he hobbled out to the cooking fire and sat in the sun for an hour. One of the young mothers, Faye, gave him her baby to hold while she got him some food and a drink of cool water.
“You haven’t found anything?” she asked.
“There’s a box of machinery that may be useful, but I don’t know. Nothing else yet though, but I’m barely halfway through the crates so far,” he said, wondering how he’d keep going with his knee aching so badly.
“The babies will take a nap soon. Jenna and I can help you for an hour or so while they sleep.”
Molly joined them. “I have no strength these days. I’m always tired. But I’ll watch the babies while they sleep,” she said.
“Oh, thank you. Ben might sleep as long as two hours. He nursed well just now, so his little tummy should be full,” said Faye.
“Cara is still fussing,” sighed Jenna. “I don’t have much milk anymore, and water doesn’t fill her up.”
Luke felt the women’s pain. Who was he to complain of hunger when these young women needed food far more than an old man like him did? If they could get to the city…If they could find some food or learn to grow new crops that would feed them much better than the old ones. He must place his hope in the village making the truck go again. Or bus, whichever it was Adena and her father had found.
Sighing, he leaned hard on his cane and stood. “I’ll be in the storeroom.”
“I’ll put Ben down to nap right now,” said Faye.
“Here, give Cara to me. I’ll rock her, and likely she’ll sleep soon, too,” said Molly.
Luke had dragged an empty crate up to the box he’d been looking through, so that marked his progress around the room as well as providing him with a seat when he looked through t
he lower boxes. He scanned the small room, mentally weighing up the piles of boxes he’d checked and those still to do. He confirmed his guess that he was about halfway. With the two women helping him for an hour or so, he should be able to finish before the evening meal. The real question was, would their work be a total waste of time, or would they find something useful?
He showed the women the pictures in the encyclopedia then said, “But any machinery that you don’t know what is does, ask me. Likely I won’t recognize it either, but we’ll put it in the crate by the door in case it’s something that may help.”
They worked in silence for maybe fifteen minutes, and then Faye squealed happily, “Oh look. Pipes. At last we’ll be able to extend the irrigation system to the vegetable garden instead of carrying buckets of water.”
“Awesome” said Jenna, rushing over to look. The two women pushed and dragged the crate of pipes near the doorway, before returning to their task.
I hadn’t even thought of that. I wonder if there’s anything else that we should be using that I ignored. Luke sat on his upturned crate and thought of the many boxes and crates of equipment he’d looked at already. No, he didn’t think he’d missed anything. Most of it was supplies people had looked at many times before and found no immediate use for. Maybe to do with things they no longer had.
Luke looked through the next crate while wondering what other things had disappeared from their lives along with ice cream and chocolate. Children’s toys, he supposed. He knew he’d had a whole box of toys in the city, but had only been allowed to bring his few favorites when they left. Balls. Big balls, small balls, round balls, oval balls. Everyone, boys and girls, had played ball games—football, baseball, many other ball games. He’d brought a ball with him, but it got a puncture not long after they arrived. But he hadn’t recalled seeing a ball in—decades. Luke shrugged and concentrated on his task.
Forbidden Future [Embrace the Future 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 3
