“They screwed it up,” he said, whispering in Hood’s ear as they stood together in the middle of The Swamp.
“So we’ve got to do it again. They can’t get it wrong. Our lives may depend on it.”
“We can’t do it again. The Tardies will figure out what we’re doing.” Gunther rocked back on his heels, then grabbed Hood’s shoulders again and reverted to tiptoes. Although he hadn’t yet fully worked out his plan, he presented it to Hood as best he could. They had to move fast. Events were spiraling faster and faster downward into a morass from which they would not be able to escape.
Hood hung his head. “I don’t know, man. I don’t remember. Ask Kara. If she says yes, then ask Rad if it’ll work.”
Kara’s memory of the day they climbed to the escape route was as hazy as his and Hood’s. “I think so,” she said. “But I was pinned down out there by the bugs, I didn’t notice very well.”
Rad did not like his plan, but confirmed its logic. If he could indeed cut off the flow of the stream, and hence the Tardies’ water supply, the Tardies could not survive. They needed water to live. Without it, they would either go into cryptobiosis, or they would have to move to another location.
Gunther sighed. The decision rested upon him. If his plan succeeded, he and his friends might escape. If it failed, they would join Serge and Billy as recycled organic material to feed the cave’s denizens.
INTERLUDE 7
The phone call jerked Dicey out of a distracted sleep. The voice on the other end, gruff and wild, at first sounded unfamiliar.
“Hallelujah, sister! Looks like the Lord’s giving us cloudy skies again, but nothing worse than drizzle. We on?”
Of course she was on. She was never off. “Zeke?”
“None other.”
“Zeke.” She glanced toward her window to see only darkness between the curtains that never drew completely shut. She pulled herself to a half-sitting position. “Yeah, we’re on.”
“Outstanding! I’m on my way! Need anything?”
“What?”
“Can I bring anything? Other than my ropes and cave stuff?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Right on. See you at sun-up.”
Holding her head in her hands, Dicey threw her legs over the side of the bed and sat erect. Her brain felt heavy, like a can of old paint.
She shook her head hard. Yes, a can of old spray paint. Better shake it again, and again, until the little marble inside started rattling from top to bottom to indicate it was mixed. Jigga-jigga-jigga-jig.
With a glance at Spike, still curled up in bed and smiling in some dream-world far away, she pulled herself to her feet. A bolt of excitement shot through every nerve in her body. Zeke was on his way. Regardless of the weather, the hunt for her children was on.
She drew back the curtains to see her field shimmering in the pre-gray dawn. Here and there a bauble of light shone on a blade of grass, and a dandelion waved with sparks of ecstasy. Earth and sky were bloated with moisture. A poet’s dream—but not a good day for a hunt. Had she looked out the window before Zeke’s call, she might have called the search off.
The phone rang again—Kelila.
“The collision didn’t happen,” Kelila gasped. “Oh, my God, it’s a miracle. A miracle!”
For an instant Dicey tried to see the world through Kelila’s eyes, but gave it up. “That’s wonderful, Kelila,” she said, trying to put as much enthusiasm into her voice as possible.
“I’ll be over as soon as my parents come down from the barn,” Kelila continued. “I’ve been trying to concentrate on Gunther, and I think I know how to get into the cave. I think he’s trying to tell me something more, too.”
Dicey’s heart palpitated like a frog’s leg stimulated by an electrode. “What’s he trying to say?”
“They’re trying to get out, but they’re meeting opposition. He needs help from outside.”
Dicey shook her head. The marble was still bouncing up and down. Kelila’s words sounded like something she’d read on a fortune cookie. Trying to get out, but meeting opposition.
“What kind of help does he need?”
“I can’t tell. Once we get inside the cave, I’ll be able to hear better.”
Dicey shook her head again. The marble resounded, loud and clear. Ah, at last—brain matter ready for spraying.
The words she spoke next could have come straight from The Greek Mother’s Guide to Survival. Dicey didn’t know if there was such a book, but if there wasn’t, there should have been. “Kelila, would you like some breakfast?”
“Oh, yes! Planetary near-misses are exhausting, but that’s not a huff compared with intergalactic collisions.”
“I can imagine. No, I can’t. Come on over, I’ll have something cooked up within twenty minutes. If it’s not done by the time you get here, you can help me.”
Breakfast was nearly ready when the group began to arrive—the same group as the other day, minus Cathy and Durrell, with the addition of three other men, who identified themselves as the fathers of three of the other kids who had disappeared—Van, Sass, and Giles. Marge and Arthur Brandow arrived with a tureen full of sausage and eggs that—added to the breakfast Dicey had already prepared—ensured that none of the volunteers would begin the search hungry.
Despite the other things on her mind, Dicey focused her ears on Luisa as Luisa poked Jimmy in the ribs. “I was expecting you yesterday. It poured rain all day, so I know you weren’t out fixing fences or watching a Mets home game. My guest room is indoors, out of the wet.”
“So were all the toilets I had to fix,” Jimmy replied. “Well, all but one.”
“So now I’m competing against toilets?”
Once again, Zeke led the way to the back spring, his motion machine spraying wet grass and mud over the searchers behind him. The sun eased its way in and out of clouds before finally deciding to stay.
Zeke took his place on the hillock above the spring and called on the Lord to bless the undertaking. With nods toward Kelila and Dicey, he beckoned them to join him.
“I believe we should do things a little different today,” Zeke said. “If it’s okay with you ladies.”
Dicey nodded vigorously. “Of course, of course.”
“Kelly?”
Kelila moved her mouth, but no sounds emerged. Shyly, as if ready to flutter away at the slightest cross word thrown her way, she came around so she stood directly in front of Zeke. She stared into his face, her eyes moving from the deep-sunk eyes to the beard and the mane of fierce hair.
“Think of me as a hairy animal,” Zeke reassured her. “A nice hairy animal. Or as Jesus.”
He stopped. “No, forget Jesus. Maybe Moses. I know you don’t …”
With a finger that made even this tough caver wince, Kelila touched his face. “It’s okay. I believe in anything or anyone who’s good.” She hesitated before proceeding. “I think I know how to get into the cave.”
“Do you now? Well, let’s see if it’s the same way I think.”
“I think it’s around that big rock,” she continued.
“Paint me purple!” he exclaimed. “That’s exactly where I think it is, too.”
Zeke called out to the group waiting for him by the spring. “Folks, before we do anything else, we need to check out that rock down there. I need a few of the strongest men to grab a hold of my arms and carry me down.”
The men looked around at each other, sizing up one another’s biceps. On the same impulse, they all laughed.
At their hesitation, Zeke called out again: “Jimmy B—you. Get two bulky guys and come on up here.”
Looking nervous, Jimmy nodded toward Lionel Brace, Giles’s father, and tapped Cal Givens on the arm. Without hesitation, the men followed him.
Following Zeke’s instructions, Cal and Lionel grabbed Zeke under the armpits and, with Jimmy B supporting his legs, carried him down the hillock. They set him down on
a smaller rock beside the large one. There Kelila was waiting for them.
Zeke’s words emerged as soft as goose down. “Okay, honey. I need you to check out this rock. Do whatever you need to do to examine it. Touch it, feel its vibrations, listen to it … Whatever. No one will laugh at you.”
With a smile, Kelila closed her eyes and extended her arms toward the rock. She began moving her arms back and forth, as if summoning the spirit of the rock and beckoning it to enter her body. As the tips of her fingers finally made contact with the rock, Dicey imagined she saw blue-green sparks dart from one to the other and back again. Kelila’s face contorted ever so slightly as her eyelids slid open—dreamlike, Dicey thought.
All at once the girl jumped. Her eyes shot to the foot of the rock, and she pounced several feet to her right. “There,” she said.
All eyes followed hers to the base of the rock. There a small mound of sand rose up from the rock’s edge. The previous day’s rain had created a miniature channel across it, confirming that the mound was a recent addition to the scene.
“Thank you, honey,” Zeke said. Then louder, to the group that kept pressing closer. “We need to move this rock. See how it’s slid from higher up on the bank?”
Moving the rock would be quite a feat, Dicey could see. Not only because of its size and weight, but because it was misshapen, and had settled in a depression in the ground from which the only direction it could be moved was up.
“I think if we push it this way,” Jimmy B said, gesturing away from the spring up toward the woods on the near side.
“Get some rope,” Zeke said. “Tackle box up front of my Zen machine.”
Arthur jumped to the task, while the other men arranged themselves in position to push the rock.
“Careful,” Zeke said. “Ground’s pretty soft there. Don’t want that rock sliding back down on you once you get it moving.”
“I found something.” The voice belonged to Marge, who had left the rest of the group and was walking through the woods near the edge of the stream.
Faces turned toward her, but no one moved.
“Two nutrition bars, a rope, what I think they call a runner, and a woman’s compact mirror.”
Along with two or three other women, Dicey ran to where Marge pointed into the underbrush, ignoring the weeds and brambles that soaked her trouser legs. At the sight of the items on the ground, she burst into tears. Luisa picked the items up and cradled them against her breast, while with her other arm she drew Dicey close. Dicey stared at the objects, but could not touch them. They were holy. They might well have been the last relics of her children on this earth.
“Holy Christmas,” came a man’s voice from the streambed.
“Hang me flipside on a flagpole,” came another.
Zeke spoke up next. “Everybody stand away. We don’t know how stable this sand is.”
Dicey looked down to see Zeke lying on the wet ground on his belly, leaning over a hole in the ground.
Zeke shouted into the hole. “We’re here, little buddy! Wherever you are, we’ll get you!”
To the closest men in the vicinity, he called out, “Get a runner and the rope from my pack. Tie the runner around the trunk of that tree. Run the rope through it and tie it. Who can do a fisherman’s knot?”
Spike raised his hand—shyly, like a kid at school. His voice emerged in a barely-audible monotone. “I can,” he said.
“Then do it, Spike!” Zeke waved his arms about like a clown. “I claim first rights into the cave!”
Dicey suspected no one was about to argue with him.
CHAPTER 18
“We’ve got two options,” Gunther said. “Either you and I and one or two other people go up and try to do it, or we go for broke and bring the whole group. The advantage of the first way is …”
Hood was shaking his head. “No way, man. We do it that way and it’ll be like before—Teddy’ll take you and me aside and slap our hands. Or maybe worse. Maybe one of us’ll be on the slab where Billy was, along with whoever comes with us.”
“Not if it works. Not if the stream stops flowing, and the whole Tardy colony is in disarray.”
“Man, the world doesn’t work that way. Everybody’s got great plans. But how many of them actually work out?”
The two were standing tiptoes after dinner, in the middle of the garden, in full sight of the Tardy guards. Gunther had just presented the group’s two options, as he saw them. Keeping the status quo—remaining in the cave as prisoners—was not one of them. Either three or four of them climbed back up to the auditorium and toppled the giant rock at the top of the rock jumble, or the whole group had to go together. If they decided on the latter course, they would have no further choice. Either they all escaped, or they all died. The first option at least allowed extra time, and permitted a further choice.
“So you think it’s time we tried to escape,” Gunther said.
“Yeah, man. We got to go for broke. Either they kill us all, or we stay here and let them pick us off one by one.”
Gunther understood Hood’s point, but he was not sure it was right. There were too many uncertainties. If the kids could reach the auditorium where they’d been attacked by the Insect Guards, if a few of them could climb the jumble of rocks where the highest rock teetered on the one below it, if they could push the rock off so it would land smack in the middle of the stream, they could perhaps divert the stream enough that the water to the Tardies’ home would be cut off—enough to wreak havoc among the Tardy community so they’d be too preoccupied to notice the kids escaping. Too many ifs for comfort. Then again, if only three or four of them attempted the deed and failed, the Tardies could do with them as they wished—and perhaps wreak vengeance on the remaining group. If the whole group accompanied the effort, they’d be close enough to the escape hatch that at least some of them might escape alive.
“Wish we had a weapon.”
Yeah, well we don’t, man.”
“You’ve been here longer than I have—what time of day would the Tardies be least likely to notice us escaping?”
“When it’s dark.”
“When it’s …” It took Gunther a few seconds to understand Hood’s point.
“You heard me. When it’s dark. As in, there’s no safe time.”
“Okay, so what does that mean? That’s the most useless advice I’ve ever heard.”
“When they change guards,” Hood said. “I don’t know what time that is, or if it’s the same time every day. But we might have a few seconds when they won’t catch on to what we’re doing.”
Gunther shook his head. “So how do we go about it? Does one of us give a signal?”
Hood rocked back on his heels before grabbing Gunther’s shoulders again and reverting to tiptoes. He spoke in a barely-audible voice in Gunther’s ear. “Soo-ee!”
“Huh?”
Hood repeated the message: “Soo-ee!”
Gunther stared him in the face. “The pig call?”
Hood laughed. “You got it. But it’ll be a lot louder than that.”
“Okay. So what? So we do the telephone thing one more time and tell the group?”
“That’s the idea, bro.”
“Simon, too?”
“Simon, too.”
This time the kids made no mistake. Within ten minutes, Giles returned the message Gunther had started with: “Soo-ee. Escape. Tomorrow morning.”
CHAPTER 19
Gunther jerked awake. He’d had a dream—or had it really happened? His eyelids felt heavy, and when he blinked, his eyeballs felt as if they were coated with sand.
He jumped and looked around, to find that he was lying in his usual place between Tiff and Rad. Still not satisfied, he reached for his penlight and turned it on. Hoping not to wake any of his friends, he aimed the beam toward the cliff wall behind them. The cliff face shone bright and clear, as always. His eyesight had not changed.
Tiff stirred and p
oked around at him as she woke up. “What are you doing, Gunth?”
“My eyes feel funny, that’s all.”
“Give me your light.” She fumbled for the penlight, then aimed it into his face. “Yeah, you look like the rest of us now.”
“You mean I’ve been to the lab?”
“Yup. Look like you got punched in both eyes. Don’t matter—nobody’ll notice but me. And I’ll still love you. Go back to sleep.”
Rad, on his other side, had sat up and was looking over. “They finally got you,” she said. “Oh, well. Guess there’s nothing special about you, after all. Go back to sleep. Sun’s not up yet.”
Tiff chuckled as Gunther settled back down between the girls. He felt violated. The girls’ blasé attitude did not help. Without his awareness, the Tardies had drugged him during the night, taken him away to their lab, and performed some kind of procedure on his eyes. From what he could tell, they’d done nothing to hurt him. He knew the other kids had all been through it, but still he felt abused.
What kind of information were they looking for? What did they do with the information?
Or was the eye thing simply a form of harassment? Did they know about the upcoming escape attempt? Had Simon reported to them? Had they understood the meaning of the “Telephone” game? Or had the timing of his eye exam simply been a coincidence?
As hard as he might, he tried to recreate the images that had passed through his mind during the night—images he’d thought were a dream. Try as he might, he could remember nothing except waking up and noting the sandpapery feel of his eyelids.
Now more than ever, he knew they had to escape. Today was the day. Regardless of whether they lived or died, or some lived and some died, they had to make the attempt. Perhaps tomorrow at this time they’d all be dead. Or perhaps they’d be outside, breathing the fresh air, gazing at the sight of puffballs shimmering with dew. Or perhaps two or three of them would be gazing at puffballs, mourning their fallen comrades. Perhaps he himself would be one of the gazers, or perhaps he would be one of the fallen. One of those consigned to oblivion.
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