by David Estes
I am shocked. Disgusted. The rest of us are barely scraping by and Tawni’s family has servants. Seriously! I want to say something but I hold my tongue, because I know she is uncomfortable with the set-up, too. It isn’t her fault. Like I said before, you have no control over what situation you are born into.
Cole changes the subject. “What happened to you guys in the Pen?”
I’d almost forgotten that he only saw the butt end of our escape from our cells. It feels like all three of us have lived through the entire thing together.
I give him a taste of his usual sarcasm. “See, Tawni and I were playing poker, Texas Hold’em, with a few of the guards, when it came time to meet you. We thought they’d let us go because, by that point, they owed us a bundle of money. Instead, one of them whipped out an Uzi and started firing away. We ran out of there like bats out of hell, leaping bullets and fighting guards the whole way. It was crazy.” Maybe not all true, but it was crazy.
“Mostly lies,” Cole says in the dark. “But a hint of the truth, the crazy part, right? Oh, and I expect you did get shot at, too.” He is good, all right, but I’m not about to tell him that.
“Okay, the true story is…”
I tell him the full story, downplaying the incident with me and the guard who stepped in front of me, but totally milking the “barrage of bullets whipping past our heads, tearing our clothes—I think I felt one trim off a lock of hair.”
“Let me see where the guard hit you with the stick,” Cole says when I finish.
I don’t want to. Don’t want the sympathy. Don’t want them to worry about me. I know it is bad, but probably not as bad as it looks.
He won’t leave me alone until I show him.
Even using only Tawni’s watch light to see, my side looks awful when I raise my tunic. Already it is marbled with purple and blue at the top, and is green and splotchy at the bottom. The shape doesn’t look quite right, like I am missing a rib or two.
To my surprise, Cole laughs. If I am expecting sympathy, I don’t get it. “You’ll live,” he says. And then: “I’ve seen worse from a single punch on the schoolyard.”
I thought I didn’t want sympathy, but then when I don’t get it, it makes me mad. It is probably just lack of sleep, the pain I am in, the gamut of emotions I’ve felt this night—or I’m just a head case. Probably that, too.
Tawni is nicer, immediately tearing off strips from one of the bed sheets and wrapping them around my stomach and side to support my battered ribs. I grumble about her pampering, but afterwards I’m glad she does it, because my ribs stop hurting temporarily.
The servant’s bed I sleep on is more comfortable than the one I’d slept on growing up. I practically melt into it. Although I am too tired to be excited about having escaped the Pen, I do smile in celebration just before I fall asleep.
Tristan’s face fills my mind and I drift away to a better place.
Chapter Ten
Tristan
They are surrounded with no hope of escape. I don’t know why of all nights they’ve chosen this one to attempt to gain their freedom, but I know if we don’t help them they won’t make it. She won’t make it. For all I know, the guards might shoot them, rather than try to apprehend them. For all I know it might be another policy, like no visitors allowed outside of certain hours. The gunshots we heard earlier certainly point to that conclusion. I can see the new guards on the first day of training. Lesson 1: Always shoot guests attempting to escape.
Not a nice way to treat your so-called guests.
I can see her halfway up, frozen in place, eyeing the guards on the outside of the fence. Even between the tightly woven chain links, her beauty resonates from her like radiation from uranium. If she was a type of energy, she would definitely be nuclear. Although I suspect that even from this closer distance Roc isn’t able to make out her eye color, I can see her emerald beads shining forth with an immense amount of passion and strength.
I am coiled tighter than a snake ready to strike, my muscles tensed and flexed, my fists balled, my feet naturally assuming a runner’s stance. I start to sprint toward them just as the bomb explodes. It sounds like a cannon in the quiet night, and I can feel the shockwaves from the force so strongly that they stop me dead in my tracks.
I am frozen in place, unsure of what just happened, or what to do. The acrid smell of smoke and dust fills the air. I can’t see the guards on the inside, but presumably they are taking cover or were injured by the bomb blast. The guards on the outside are still pointing their guns at the prisoners, but they are pacing, nervous, much less sure of themselves than they were a few seconds ago.
Compared to the second bomb, the first was like getting hit by a feather. The incendiary tears through the hotel above us, maybe through the exact room we are staying in—whether by coincidence or design—sending shivering tremors through the street below our feet. I lose my footing as a crack widens in the stone beneath me. I roll hard, narrowly avoiding falling into the widening tentacle in the street. I instinctively cover my head, metaphorically returning to my mother’s womb, curling up in the fetal position. Heavy chunks of stone shower down, battering my defenseless body. Some of the rocks are sharp, having splintered off dangerously, piercing my skin. If one penetrates my eyes I will be instantly blinded.
When the rubble shower ends a few minutes later, I sit up quickly, scanning my surroundings. Roc hasn’t fared much better than I, although he is sitting up, too, rubbing a nasty red bump on his head. His clothes and face are covered in gray dust.
“You okay?” I say.
He coughs and gives me a thumbs-up sign. I turn my attention back to the Pen. The guards on the outside are gone, their guns scattered haphazardly on the ground. The escapees are gone, too.
She is gone.
“Tristan!” Roc shouts behind me.
I turn, and then, seeing him gazing at the hotel above us, follow his line of sight. Several columns of heavy stones are wobbling precariously, on the verge of toppling.
“Go, go, go!” I shout, running hard toward the Pen’s fence line. I hear Roc’s footsteps pounding behind me, and then a dull, machine-gunning clatter as the stones collapse.
I whirl around, saying the quickest prayer of my life for Roc. He is fine, having escaped the impact zone just in time. With Roc safe, my thoughts go to her. But then I remember someone else: the deskman at our motel.
Without explaining to Roc, I rush back to the building, leaping heavy stone slabs and piles of smaller rubble along the way. The doorframe is mangled, but still holding itself up amidst the pressure of the collapsing floors above it. I slip through, rapidly locating the old man. Despite his seemingly innate ability to sleep anywhere and through anything, he finally met his match when the bomb hit, or perhaps when the roof partially collapsed.
I’m not sure what happened to his desk—perhaps it is splintered beyond recognition—but it isn’t there anymore. In its place: the old man—and a huge slab of stone that has him pinned to the ground. Finally, his head is up, his wild eyes looking at me, scared and helpless, begging me to save him.
The stone slab is far too big for me. Even with the adrenaline cocktail coursing through my veins, my first effort at lifting it is fruitless. It doesn’t budge, not even a little. It is like trying to lift the very earth on my shoulders, a feat only accomplished by Atlas—and I am no god. While my mind races, I feel a hand on my shoulder. It is Roc, pushing me gently aside, sliding a thick metal pole beneath the stone. I have no idea where it came from, but I know exactly what he is doing—making a tool, a lever—and so I locate a good-sized roundish stone that I am able to roll over. Together we push it under the pole. Overall, I am the bigger of the two of us, so I push down hard on the end of lever, using my entire body weight to force it to the ground. The stone is massive, and even with the lever, it strains against me, trying to thwart my attempt. Eventually the lever moves down an inch, and then two, gaining speed as I gain leverage. I am straining so hard that I have to
close my eyes for fear they will pop out of my skull.
I feel the pole drop suddenly beneath me and hear a loud crack and a thundering crash. Even with my eyes closed, I know what happened. The pole snapped in the center like a twig, releasing the stone. The man was crushed, broken beyond repair. I slowly open my eyes.
Roc is holding the man, who is not crushed, not broken—at least not beyond repair. Evidently I raised the stone a sufficient height for Roc to slide him out safely before the lever snapped. For that I thank God.
Roc is smiling, helping the man to his feet. The guy is clearly injured, so we each flop one of his arms over our shoulders and half-help, half-carry the man out of the cracking building. As we pass through the doorframe, the rest of the roof collapses, kicking up a cloud of dust around us as we escape.
We are lucky. The old man is even luckier.
I’ve never felt so unsure of what to do next. I guess because I’ve never been in such an unbelievably confusing situation. We hear booms echoing around the town as more bombs hit, presumably destroying other buildings. We start hearing shouts in the distance, both from the Pen and from other streets. Other people, probably just like us, trying to decide what to do, where to go, figure out what is going on.
“He needs medical attention,” Roc says, looking at the man.
“I’m fine,” he grunts.
“No…you’re not,” I say. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”
“It will have been bombed, too,” he says gruffly.
He has a point. Nowhere feels safe at the moment. But still, out in the open I feel like we are too exposed, like at any second another bomb might land at our feet. We have to keep moving.
Roc seems to be thinking the same thing. We both start moving, forcing the injured guy to come with us. We turn the corner, but stop immediately when we see the scene in front of us. Smoke, rubble, buildings collapsed and collapsing. People running. We skip that street and head another block down. The next street is more quiet, not yet hit by any explosions, perhaps not a target of the attack by…well, by whoever is attacking—I have no idea who.
We travel another half-block without event and then hear a noise as we are passing an old building on our right. “Psst,” a voice says.
A woman is waving at us from down a set of stairs, from inside a doorway. “Psst,” she says again.
“Yes?” I say, unsure of how to respond to such a strange greeting.
“Do you need help?” she says.
We do need help—desperately need help—so I say, “Please.”
She beckons to us with one hand. We make our way down the steps awkwardly, trying not to bang the man’s already battered legs on the stonework. The woman turns sideways and shepherds us through the door and onto a small landing. Below us steps descend into darkness.
Once we are all inside, the woman closes the door and says, “You’ll be safe down here.” She moves past us to the stairs, holding a long candle in a small ceramic bowl high above her head. We follow her down, carrying the old man between us. The stairway is wide enough for us to walk three abreast.
At the bottom is another door, which the woman opens. As she enters, she says, “I’ve got three more.”
We poke our heads through the doorway, into a small cellar. It is crowded. Not including us and the woman, there are eight others. Four candles identical to the one carried by the woman are positioned in each corner of the space, providing spheres of light that overlap in the center.
“Make yourself at home,” the woman says, before exiting back the way we came and closing the door behind her. We gingerly lower the old man to the floor, next to a couple of kids who are staring at us with wide eyes. They can’t be more than six years old.
“Thank you,” the man says, his voice cracking slightly. His demeanor has changed slightly, as if he’s been softened by our persistent willingness to go out of our way to help him. I wonder what made him so hard in the first place. Perhaps it was just the cruelties of life—the faltering economy, old age, living in a cave—but I sense it was something more specific. He wears a wedding band but hasn’t once mentioned his wife, out of concern or interest or anything. I guess that he’s lost her already.
Roc sits down next to the man and I follow suit. My back to the rock wall, I take in my surroundings. The place is only about fifteen by fifteen feet. It reminds me of a small wine cellar—perhaps that’s what it is, or used to be. No wine adorns its walls anymore. I’d be surprised if anyone can afford wine in this subchapter these days. Regardless of what it used to be, or could’ve been, it will serve well as a bomb shelter now, deep under the ground-level rock surface.
In addition to the two kids, there are three women and three men. Two of them hold hands and are younger, sitting next to the kids, probably their parents. The young wife looks fearful, maybe not for her own life but surely for her children’s; her eyes dart about nervously, always returning to her young ones. The other four are older, gray around the edges, with serious faces that would fit in perfectly at a funeral. Well, at least three of them look that way. The fourth—a short, frail man with an impressive mop of gray hair—is wearing the biggest grin you could imagine. I wonder if my mother’s threat from my childhood—that if you make a face for too long it will get stuck like that—has cursed this man. Perhaps in the throes of an extremely merry moment, his face was frozen in the biggest smile of his life.
It turns out he is just a really happy guy. An optimist for sure. Always looking on the bright side of things.
“Crazy weather we’re having out there,” he says, somehow managing to keep his smile unchanged while he speaks. He is looking right at me so I feel obliged to answer.
“I think we’re under attack, sir,” I say, assuming his comment is made from senility, rather than lighthearted humor.
It was humor.
“Silly child, I know that, just trying to get a little laughter going in this damn dismal place.”
I don’t particularly like him referring to me as a child, but I’m also not going to start a fight with a crazy, big-smiled old man, not after our experience in the pizzeria. Instead I say, “Oh. Ha ha.” My laugh comes out even faker than it is. And it is pretty fake.
“Geez, it’s like trying to get a nun to laugh in a bar in here,” the guy says, still smiling. “How’d you end up lugging around ol’ Frankie here?”
The hotel deskman suddenly has a name.
“Don’t call me that, Chet. It’s Frank—I’ve told you a million times,” Frankie says.
“We were staying at his hotel,” Roc offers.
“Hotel? Ha! That dump’s more like a dormitory.”
Frankie glares at him, burning a hole through him with his eyes.
“I didn’t think it was that bad,” I say, trying to get on Frankie’s good side. Instead, he just shifts his glare to me. I guess the whole saving his life thing has worn off.
“So you’re travelers then? What part of the Moon Realm are ya from?” the funny guy asks.
Probably remembering how well I’d handled a similar question in the pizzeria, Roc answers this time. “Subchapter six,” he says. “We’re just here for the night. So many of your people have come to work in our subchapter that jobs are scarce, so we thought we’d have a look around at what you have to offer.”
I hold my breath, hoping he will buy the lie. He doesn’t.
“Ha!” the man exclaims, so loudly he makes me jump slightly. “You’re sun dwellers if I’m an eternal optimist.” I freeze, waiting for the trouble to start. As if he senses my discomfort, he adds, “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with us. We won’t give you any trouble. Name’s Chip, ol’ Frankie was just messin’ with me earlier when he called me Chet. He’s always purposely gettin’ my name wrong, callin’ me all kinds of things like Chaz, Chris, and a whole lot of other names I can’t repeat in public. What did your mothers call you, anyway?”
“I’m Tristan,” I blurt out. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Roc glances nervously
at me. He probably thinks I’ve lost my mind.
I’m Roc,” he adds quickly.
“Tristy and Rocky…” the man says, moving his tongue in a circle as if he is rolling the names around in his mouth to see how they taste. “They’re good names, boys.”
I should just let it go. But I don’t. Stupid, stupid, stupid. If anything, my mother should have named me Damn Fool. “It’s not Tristy, it’s Tristan,” I say sternly. “And we’re not boys.”
The man chuckles, high and mirthfully. “You’ve been hangin’ out with ol’ buzzkill over here for too long,” Chip says, motioning to Frankie. “But as you wish, Tristan the Man.”
“You can still call me Rocky,” Roc offers unhelpfully.
I think we are out of the woods—clumsily dodging a bullet. Wrong again.
“Heyyy, wait a minute,” Chip says. I know exactly what the perplexed tone in his voice means. He has another question, probably a lot more questions. Because he’s probably figured something out. “You say your name’s Tristan, eh?”
“Uh, yeah, but you can call me Tristy if you really want to,” I say, backtracking, hoping it will help, even though I know it won’t.
“You’ve got a very famous name, young man,” he says. “What’s your last name?”
I go blank. Not a single real sun dweller last name pops into my head. All I can think of is: “Goop…and…no…I…mean…Troop.”
“Tristan Goopandnoimeantroop? What kind of name is that?” Chip says, laughing again.
“Sorry, I’m just a little lightheaded from all the smoke out on the street,” I say, shaking my head and trying to appear confused—not that it is that hard for me. “My last name is spelled T-R-O-O-P-E, and is pronounced True-Pay. It’s French.” I am feeling clever all of a sudden.
“Tristan Troop-ay, huh? Are you lyin’ to me again, young man?”
I have the perfect comeback for that. “No,” I say, not even convincing myself.
I get the feeling he may have worked it out already, and is just enjoying himself, watching me flounder in my scummy old pond of lies. I cringe, waiting for him to seal the deal.
