by S. C. Green
We’d followed the tunnel in a straight line for what felt like miles, every moment expecting to come up against the hard, grey shell of the dome. But we never did. My hand scraped something else, though. Something rough and cold. Rocks. I tried to clamber over them, but I couldn’t find a way through.
“Jack, look.” I flattened myself against the wall as best I could and shone the beam of my torch ahead.
In front of me, the tunnel had been completely blocked by a stack of large stones and debris. Was it a cave-in? I shone my torch along the roof, but the brick lining was still intact. These stones had been placed here deliberately as a way to block the tunnel. But why? And by whom?
“We’ll never move these stones,” I whispered, running my hand over a large one on the bottom of the pile.
Jack aimed his own beam up. “Look.”
At the top of the tunnel, a small gap had formed where the rocks didn’t quite run flush with the roof of the tunnel. Only a small creature could hope to fit through … like a raven.
“Hold this.” I shoved my torch into Jack’s hand and transformed into my bird form. Instantly, the darkness lifted as my bird eyes penetrated beyond the gloom.
“Raine, be careful!” he called after me as I zipped through the hole.
The debris went on for several metres. Someone really had gone to a tremendous amount of effort to block up this tunnel. My stomach twisted in fear as I manoeuvred my way between the cracks and gaps between the rocks. Why had someone gone to all this trouble, and when? Was the tunnel blocked years ago, or did someone block it after the dome came down? Were they trying to keep something out of the city, or trap something inside?
Finally, the rock dropped out from under me, and I was free. I fluttered up, enjoying the movement in my wings, before settling on a dusty iron light fitting. I fanned out my wings, stretching the cramped muscles, and surveyed the space around me.
I’d been in a long room with a high wood ceiling, a concrete floor coated with grime, and concrete walls covered in peeling plaster. A low wooden table stretched the length of the room, a few uncomfortable-looking benches stacked around it. Candles burned down to the stubs sat in multi-coloured wax pools at the bottom of glasses. In the corner I’d just come from, part of the wall and roof had crumbled away, leaving a pillar of debris that obscured the entrance to the tunnel. Overhead, something heavy thumped with a regular rhythm.
Every inch of the concrete walls was filled with graffiti, words, and pictures scrawled over top of each other. My bird eyes picked out some of the words from amongst the chaos: ‘Danger’, ‘won’t be an experiment’, and ‘Death is not the end.’
What was this place? Where had I ended up? We hadn’t climbed uphill, so I knew I must be in some room far underground below the city streets. But where? And what was the purpose of this odd place?
At the other end of the room was a narrow wooden door. I’d been just about to change into my human form when a shape floated through it.
A wraith.
It hadn’t seemed to see me. It moved along the length of the room, its blue lidless eyes glued to the walls, as though it were looking for something among the crude scrawls. My stomach tightened. If it saw me, it might know I had entered the dome from outside. And the last thing we needed was the wraith loose in the world again.
I wouldn’t be able to go out through the door without it noticing me. But while its back was turned … I launched myself off the fixture, my wings open in a silent glide. I zoomed straight toward the hole and dived through.
The wraith hissed behind me. A few moments later, I burst into the darkness of the cave, zooming right past Jack’s face.
“Shit!” He leaped back as I crashed on the ground, quickly transforming into my human form.
“Do you think it followed me?” I whispered, hoping it wouldn’t be able to hear us talking through the rocks.
“Did what follow you?” Jack demanded, shining his torch at the hole.
“Turn that off!” I hissed, forcing down his hand.
He clicked off both lamps, plunging us into darkness. His hand sought mine, but I pulled away, moving closer to the hole, my Reaper senses on high alert.
I couldn’t see a wraith, nor hear it hiss. I waited for several moments, drawing in my breath as silently as I could.
“Whatever it was, it doesn’t seem to have followed you.” Jack backed up the tunnel.
“It was a wraith,” I said. “We need to get some equipment down here, to monitor if the wraith come through this tunnel.”
“But, how will we get inside to—”
“We can’t use it,” I whispered, my throat catching as I realised what that meant. “It’s not safe. We can’t use this tunnel until the wraith are gone from the dome. Otherwise, we risk alerting them to its existence and setting them all free.”
And so, dejected and dusty, we’d returned to the station, dragged back some of our equipment, and set it up beside the mouth of the tunnel. If any wraith came through, we’d know about it. We stayed up for most of the night, swapping a bottle of scotch back and forth and trying to figure out a way to get in the city without being husked. Nothing came to us, and so we stayed away from the tunnel, waiting for the right time to return to it.
That time was now.
Squaring my shoulders, I led Red down the narrow staircase, deep into the basement of the apartment complex, past the darkened halls and wide concrete floors. He floated just behind me, his body moving through the balustrade on the stairs and occasionally sinking into the metal gratings.
I found the mouth of the tunnel again just as we’d left it – a row of machines, a laptop, and a large bank of batteries sitting directly in front of it. I gestured with my wing and flew over the equipment into the dark tunnel. Red followed close behind, his legs disappearing into the ground as he floated along. Unlike Jack, at least he didn’t have to worry about getting a sore back from stooping in the low tunnel.
One of the studies I’d done on Red had been about the forces of physics that acted on a wraith. They could float through matter, and they didn’t need to breathe, so what stopped the wraith inside the dome from simply dropping down into the earth, floating through the layers of dirt and magma, and popping out on the other side? In fact, what stopped the wraith from floating out into space? It seemed there were physical forces acting on the wraith – physics didn’t just apply in the corporeal world. I knew that Red’s legs could bob about underground for a long time, but he couldn’t actually move through huge expanses of solid matter. He could pass through a wall, but not a concrete dam.
After some time, we came to that same blockage in the tunnel. Red sniffed the air and wrinkled his misshapen nose, but he didn’t say anything. I flew out the hole into that same strange room and forced my shift. In moments, my feet hit the ground, my black cloak falling around my body as my legs absorbed the shock. I straightened up again. My gaze flew instinctively to the door at the end of the room even though I knew no wraith would come through.
I’d done it. I was inside the dome. I had a chance of finding my daughter and Alain.
Red came to stand beside me, turning his blue gaze all around us, his blackened mouth gaping open. “I recognise this place.”
“Where are we?” I asked.
Red’s memories of his life before he became a wraith were often mixed up. He seemed to lack context, he couldn’t put the pieces together to discern relationships, timelines, or relevance of memories. It was like he had bad deja vu all the time, but he could never connect the feeling to anything concrete. But it was odd that he should recognise this place. The government had brought Red in from the next state over.
“I don’t know. It’sss not clear to me. But I aim to find out.” Before I could stop him, Red floated through the roof into the floor above. I imagined him soaring through the storeys, his body flying through furniture and computer screens until he popped out on the street somewhere.
While he was gone, I walked around
the room, running my fingers over the rough wooden table, peering at the graffiti smeared across the cold concrete walls. Much of it was in strange languages, probably the creoles and dialects of the many migrant workers who had come to the city for work over the decades since its founding. I caught snatches of a few other words: union strike and workers unite.
How apt, I thought ruefully. My palms grew sweaty despite the cool air. I was here, on the same side of the dome as my daughter. Now all I had to do was find her.
Red popped back through the ceiling and floated down in front of me. “We appear to be in the sssub-basement of an office building. The sign out front reads Sssunn.”
The Sunn Corporation? That was the company who operated the chemical plant next to the cemetery … the plant whose spill caused the creation of the wraith from the cemetery’s inhabitants. We couldn’t have travelled far enough into the city to be underneath the plant. I remembered a corporate headquarters in the Heavensgate suburb of the city. That would be close to the edge of the dome. We must’ve been directly under that building.
But that only made the strange room all the more mysterious. Why was it here? Who had painted all the graffiti on the walls? Some of it looked old, the paint faded beyond legibility. Yet other words were crisp and new, the ink obviously from felt-tipped pens, the kind used to brainstorm ideas on whiteboards or large pads of paper. People had been coming to this room for a long time.
“There’sss a staircase yonder.” Red gestured toward the door.
“Yonder? Seriously?” I barely held back a snort. “Did Annabelle love that you always sound like a cowboy film?”
“I don’t remember. I hope ssso.” Red lowered his head. “I can’t ssseem to ssstop.”
I grinned at him. It was weird. I was supposed to be afraid of the wraith,yet having Red here with me made me feel braver than ever.
I grabbed the handle, my breath catching in my throat. I wanted to see what was out there, but… terror at what I might find seized in my joints. For years, I’d lived with the hope of seeing May again. Soon, I would discover if she’d lived or if the wraith or the city had taken her life. If that were true, how could I survive without that promise of hope?
I bit back the terror. I had to be strong. May needed me. At least, I hoped like hell she needed me.
I shoved open the door.
The hall was low-ceilinged and pitch black. I tried the light switch, but nothing came on. Of course, they wouldn’t have electricity inside the dome since the city had been left to rot.
I dug into my pocket for my phone and clicked it on, angling the screen to provide a dim circle of light. No reception here. Whatever the dome was made of, it definitely blocked all signals from the outside.
At the end of the hall, my hand closed around the balustrade of the staircase. I glanced up, aiming my phone above my head to illuminate the well twisting up into infinity. Fuck that. I shifted into my bird form and flew up. Red raced along beside me, his body tucked like a bullet as he streamed toward the surface.
My bird vision illuminated more than the phone screen. As I swooped past each landing, I could make out the shapes of more rooms and dark hallways. In some halls, large storage containers sat waiting beside doors, as though a worker were coming by at any moment to move them. On the upper floors, some of the doors had been forced open, and papers, broken test tubes, and other laboratory ephemera scattered down the stairs.
The staircase opened up into what had once been an airy, open-plan office, but now looked like every other floor – a mess of overturned desks and filth-streaked walls. In one corner, a thin wool blanket and some empty cans of refried beans suggested someone had been squatting here, although the thick dust layered over everything suggested they hadn’t been here in awhile. At the edge of the lobby, glass doors that led to the street had been kicked in, and damp air had rotted the carpets. Two tall palms flanking the entrance had long since died, their crisp leaves curled like witches’ fingernails.
I flew out through the broken glass, scanning the streets for any sign of movement, of life. The entire place appeared deserted. No wraith, apart from Red who floated behind me, but no human life, either. I almost expected to see a tumbleweed blowing down the freeway.
We travelled deeper into the city. Memories loomed down upon me from the buildings above. I used to take May to get ice cream on that corner. We used to catch the bus there. The bus now lay on its side on the edge of the road.
Where was everyone? Why were the streets so silent? Uneasiness crept up the back of my neck.
We headed for the Compound. If May and Alain were anywhere, they would be there. I spiralled up into the sky and soared over the buildings, my keen eyes searching for the familiar brown-brick building and park-like grounds that marked the Compound off from the rest of the city. Red couldn’t follow me through the sky, but he floated along on the ground, following my path through the deserted streets.
Even from my vantage point, it took me some time to locate what I was looking for. I’d last set foot in the city ten years ago, and everything already looked so different. Whole buildings had collapsed, destroying the markers I had in my head that mapped the cityscape. What buildings hadn’t crumbled had been covered in thick, stone-like lumps of grit, giving them a daunting, eldritch appearance. Piles of refuse stood on the street corners, those edifices of trash taking the places of roadside food carts and street art. And, all about the city, the smell of death and decay invaded my nostrils and rolled my stomach into a constant spin.
There wasn’t a single other living soul. My chest tightened. Had that blast of light killed everything?
Finally, the Compound peeked through the skyscrapers. Her beautiful back garden had been dug up, the debris piled up against the buildings where it would leave dark, streaky stairs against the brick. I swooped down and landed outside the main gates, my heart leaping with swelling hope.
Of course she’d be here … She has to be here.
No one came out to greet me or bothered to ring the bells inside. Nothing moved except a lone rat skittering across the courtyard. The front gates stood wide open, the hinges bent and buckled. No Reapers stood sentinel, guarding the complex. Even with my powerful hearing, nothing sounded from within. Where were the Reapers?
I was just about to head inside, when across the silent city, someone screamed.
A person? It was the first sign we’d had since arriving that someone was alive.
I didn’t even wait for Red. I soared as high as I dared, my body parallel with the roof of the dome, my eyes locked on the streets below, searching for the source of the scream.
Another scream. It came from the east. I drew lower. I could just make out figures moving in the street, right on the edge of the dome. Four were most definitely human, but one stood on four legs, orange and black stripes painted down its back. What the ...
I swooped lower. The figures came into focus and stopped my heart. I hung in midair, my body unable to process what my eyes were seeing.
Guarding the doors of a concrete apartment complex butted right up against the dome was an enormous tiger. The creature stood in attack position, legs splayed, back arched, tail twitching. She’d curled her lips back, baring rows of sharp, jagged teeth. A low, fearsome growl emitted from her.
At least three figures hid behind the edges of the building across the street. One of them had a large rifle trained on the tiger.
A girl stood in the middle of the road, facing the tiger, her black hair sweeping around her face, her hand held out in supplication. In her fist was a small handful of raw meat. The tiger bared its teeth at her and circled closer, its body coiled, ready to pounce. The girl’s face remained placid, her whole body lithe, ready to spring away should the tiger attack.
Nervous energy buzzed to the tips of my wings. I’d recognise those eyes anywhere, darker but just as penetrating as her father’s.
The girl was May.
5
Sydney
“Here, Pookie,” May cooed, holding out a handful of rat entrails. “I’ve got a treat for you.”
I stood beside May, my familiar smell hopefully calming the tiger. Usually, Sharky held her back until people were actually inside the building. He could get a good look at them through the atrium and decide if he wanted to deal with them or not. But today, Pookie must’ve been running around off her lead or something. She leapt through the lobby doors as soon as we’d rounded the corner, her body rigid, her teeth bared, that horrible growl issuing from deep within her belly. May screamed when she saw the giant cat. I didn’t blame her, but her shriek had put Pookie even further on edge.
Now May crept forward another step, dropping some of the rat guts onto the ground. Pookie’s gaze followed the disgusting blobs as they splattered across the pavement before focusing again on May’s jugular. She growled, her claws extending.
“Poooookie,” I wheedled, my voice coming out more high-pitched than I’d intended. I pictured those claws slashed across my stomach, in one swipe destroying the precious life I was carrying. Why was I even here? Why didn’t Harriet just shoot the damn thing?
Because you told her not to, and for some strange reason, Harriet listened to you.
Pookie slunk forward, her eyes blazing with ferocious hunger. Behind me, something croaked loudly. A large, black raven swooped down and landed on Pookie’s nose, its wings flapping madly. Pookie reared up, May and I instantly forgotten as she batted at the crazy bird with long, sharpened claws.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at the bird. We’d never get past Pookie now.
I thought the bird must’ve been Alain, but then I heard his voice from behind me. “Who is that? Show yourself.”
So if it wasn’t Alain, then who was that Reaper? And what did they think they were doing?
“Should I shoot?” Harriet called out.
