by Mark Lukens
On the opposite wall, where the girl sat now, was a line of wooden crates and boxes, along with some plastic tubs and cardboard boxes stacked on top of them. The girl had made herself a little shelter in between the stacks of boxes, with a crate lid that she could pull in front of her little alcove if she needed to. She had a blanket shoved into her cubbyhole and a small collection of supplies on top of one of the crates. The little area reminded Kate of Ted’s wooden shed he’d built on top of the roof.
“Hi,” Kate said.
The girl didn’t answer; she just stared at Kate.
“I guess it’s safe now?” Kate asked, pointing up at the ceiling. There was no noise coming from up there and the girl had the lights on, so it was just a question to get her talking.
The girl still stared at her.
“My name’s Kate. What’s yours?”
The girl wouldn’t answer.
“How long have you been down here?”
Again, the answer seemed kind of obvious—since the Collapse began, most likely. But the girl wasn’t taking the bait and answering any questions.
Kate looked at the girl again, at her grimy skin and wild hair, her big blue eyes. She was obviously in some state of shock, and there was no sense in asking where her parents were. They were gone and this girl had been alone for almost a week now with rippers running amok in the town above her.
Kate recalled the conversation she’d had with Ted before she left the city. He had urged her not to leave, not to search for her family. She felt that Ted partly wanted some company up on his roof, but she also thought he was trying to save her from the misery of finding out that everyone in her family was gone. But she couldn’t stay. Even though she hadn’t been close to her family in years, she felt an overwhelming urge to find them. She’d always been a realist, a rational, scientific-minded person who looked at cold, hard facts. She wasn’t a gambler, someone who believed she could beat the odds very often. But in this case, she had taken the chance. And the closer she got to her hometown up in the mountains, the more she realized that the cosmic dice were not going to roll her way this time—she wasn’t going to find her family alive.
But then again, if she had stayed, she never would have found this girl. Maybe in some strange karmic way, this was meant to be. She thought of the blind woman she’d seen in her dreams summoning her, pleading with her to go west and find her and the others.
“Can I come closer?” Kate asked. “I won’t hurt you.”
The girl didn’t say anything. She didn’t move, but she didn’t shake her head no.
Kate looked to her left. The room they were in ended forty feet beyond the ladder that led up to the trapdoor. To the right, the room just kept on going, like a tunnel disappearing into darkness. She was pretty sure the desk was on top of the trapdoor now. Maybe she could lift up the trapdoor if the desk was only partly covering it, but probably not. But this room led to that tunnel, perhaps another way outside.
She looked back at the girl, gesturing at the blackness to their right. “Is that a tunnel? Does it lead outside?”
The girl nodded.
Kate smiled, relieved. At least the girl had responded. She hadn’t spoken, but she had responded. That was a big first step. At least she wasn’t so traumatized that she couldn’t communicate.
The girl looked down at her stash of stuff next to her, then rummaged through it. She picked up a little square wrapped in brightly-colored foil paper. She held it out for Kate.
“I can have that?”
The girl nodded.
Kate took that as a good sign. She got to her feet, her muscles stiff from sitting against the cold brick wall for who knew how long. Even her bones ached. Her feet and legs were sore from her sprint away from the rippers. Her clothes still felt a little damp and stiff from the rain, and they already smelled musty.
She walked across the floor and knelt down in front of the girl and took the piece of candy she had offered. She unwrapped the chocolate bar, snapped off a piece and popped it into her mouth. The chocolate was a little piece of heaven, but it also immediately awakened a deep hunger in her, and her stomach growled. “Sorry about that,” Kate said.
The girl smiled.
Kate broke off another square of the chocolate bar and offered it to the girl. She took the piece and ate it, chewing it up quickly, not savoring it as Kate had done.
Now that Kate was closer she had a chance to check out the girl’s living quarters. There were a few clothes stuffed down among the blankets, not clothes that would fit her, probably clothes for warmth while she slept. Stacked up near the front of her cubbyhole, on top of one of the wooden crates, was a line of canned and boxed food, mostly snacks: a few cans of soda, a box of cereal, two cans of fruit cocktail, a few more pieces of hard candy, a few snack cakes, two cans of soup. But what caught Kate’s eye the most was tucked into the cubbyhole, leaning up against the side of it—a drawing tablet.
“Where did you get all of this stuff?” Kate asked.
She didn’t answer.
Maybe it was better to ask her yes and no questions right now. “Did you get all of this stuff yourself?”
The girl nodded.
“It doesn’t look like you have a lot of food left. Or much left to drink.”
The girl didn’t respond.
“We’re going to need to get some more. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“I could get some for you. I could help you because you helped me.”
The girl waited for Kate to continue.
“Do you think you could show me another way out of here?”
No answer.
“Is that the only way out of here?” Kate asked, pointing up at the trapdoor.
The girl shook her head no.
“That way?” Kate asked, pointing at the tunnel that disappeared into the darkness.
The girl nodded.
“Why don’t you tell me your name?”
“Brooke,” the girl whispered.
“Brooke? That’s a pretty name. I’m Kate. Can you say my name?”
“Kate.”
“Good, Brooke. That’s real good.” Kate was quiet again for a moment. She didn’t know what else to say. She’d never been the best around kids. Even though she had always wanted to teach, she’d never had the desire to teach children. She’d never planned on having kids anytime soon, but now she was stuck with one.
“I was on my way to the mountains. Do you think you would want to go with me?”
For a second Kate thought the girl was going to shake her head no, but she kept her blue eyes right on Kate and shrugged.
“Yeah,” Kate said, brightening up. “You should go with me. It will be safer there than here. I promise. Do you want to go with me?”
Brooke didn’t answer. She retreated a little farther back into her cubbyhole, holding on to her blanket.
CHAPTER 20
Nearly a day later Kate still hadn’t convinced Brooke to leave with her, but at least she had convinced the girl that they needed to look for more food. Brooke had given Kate one of her blankets and an old sweater she could use as a pillow. Kate had stretched out on the floor in front of the wooden boxes to sleep. It was damp down here in the tunnel, but at least it wasn’t freezing.
Kate used to love watching the History and Discovery channels, anything where she could learn more. She remembered watching a show about the Prohibition during the 1920s and how booze was smuggled through tunnels underneath towns and cities to speak-easies. That’s what this tunnel reminded her of, a smuggler’s tunnel.
She had slept a lot over the last eighteen hours or so. She felt rested now, but she hadn’t eaten much, and the only thing she’d eaten so far was full of sugar. They needed to find some real food soon. And Brooke needed some real food, too.
It was time to go looking, whether Brooke wanted to join her or not, Kate still needed to go.
The rippers hadn’t been back in the office above them, but Kate h
ad heard them in the distance, and at least once or twice she’d heard them somewhere else in the building above them. She wasn’t sure if the rippers would be able to find their way into this tunnel, but if they did they would be trapped because the desk was definitely on top of the trapdoor and Kate couldn’t move it. She had tried. It felt like the desk weighed three hundred pounds or like it was wedged against the door somehow. It wasn’t worth hurting herself over since Brooke said there was another way out of the tunnel.
When Kate looked at the other end of the tunnel, the part that disappeared into the darkness, she could imagine the rippers creeping down the tunnel toward them, materializing out of the darkness into their weak sphere of light.
They couldn’t stay here too much longer—eventually the rippers would find their way in.
Another problem was the rats. They scurried around in the dark, squeaking, their claws clicking along the stone floor. She’d seen one hanging from one of the wires on the ceiling just at the edge of the light, its beady little eyes shining red in the dark. Those eyes reminded her of the Evil One.
She’d had the few hours of no dreams when she’d first come down into the tunnel (and she even wondered if she had literally passed out for a few hours), but the dreams had come back. She’d dreamt of the Evil One coming into the tunnel, only now the little touch lights had burnt out and Brooke was gone—Kate had been alone in the dark with him; just her, the Evil One, and a thousand rats swarming all around him.
Claustrophobia was setting in, and a panic that time was somehow running out, that they were pushing their luck with every hour they stayed down here.
“We need to get something to eat and drink,” Kate told Brooke.
Brooke just looked at her.
“We need to go out there and find some food and water. I want you to come with me.”
Brooke didn’t say anything. She just looked down at the drawing tablet in her lap. She’d been doodling in it.
Kate felt a wave of anger inside of her, but she forced it back down. “Look, we need to go. We can’t stay down here in this . . . this tunnel, or whatever it is, forever. I know it’s scary, but we have to go out there sometime. If we don’t, we’ll die in here.”
Brooke looked up at her, staring at her with her big blue eyes.
“Come on, Brooke. We need to go.” She reached a hand down to her, proffering it.
Brooke just sat cross-legged in her little cubbyhole, her drawing tablet on her lap. For a second Kate was sure Brooke was still going to resist.
“You can take your drawing tablet with you,” Kate told her. Brooke hadn’t let her see what she’d been drawing, and Kate had respected the child’s wishes so far, doing anything she could to get on Brooke’s good side so the little girl would leave with her. “You can take anything you want with you.”
Kate thought of her suitcase and the supplies she had rounded up over the last few days in her SUV. Maybe if they couldn’t find a vehicle, she could get some gas and go back to the truck. But the truck was at least two miles away, and there were probably still plenty of rippers roaming around.
First things first: get out of this tunnel, see where it leads to, and see what they could find. Making any long-term plans wasn’t possible in this new world they’d found themselves in.
Brooke got up, her drawing tablet and pencils clenched in her hand.
“Okay,” Kate said. “Good. Do you have any other clothes? Anything else you want to take?”
Brooke shook her head no.
Kate had cleaned Brooke’s face a little yesterday with the last of the water from a bottle, but Brooke had managed to get more dirt on her face between then and now. She stood there, dirty-faced and wild-haired, her only worldly possessions—her drawing tablet and pencils—in her hands.
“Okay. Show me the way out of here.”
Brooke led the way with the flashlight. Kate had stuffed the two touch lights into her jacket pockets and taken the other flashlight. She had a few pieces of hard candy in her pants pockets—the last of their food. They had split the last can of soda a few hours earlier.
The tunnel grew narrower the more they walked, the brick ceiling curving up above them, getting lower and lower, bit by bit. The claustrophobia was creeping up on Kate again, but she pushed it away; Brooke had to know a way out of here. She hoped so, anyway.
They walked for fifteen minutes, the darkness closing in so tightly around them, their flashlight beams only pushing it back so far. There were small puddles of water on the stone floor in some areas, and water dripped from the brick ceiling in some places. Kate hoped this tunnel was safe and that it wasn’t on the verge of collapsing.
She was about to ask Brooke if she was sure the tunnel led to the outside when the girl stopped and shined her flashlight beam ahead at a metal ladder embedded into a brick wall. The tunnel opened up to a room almost as big as the one they had been staying in.
Brooke stuffed her smaller flashlight down into her pants pocket and held her tablet and pencils in one hand while she climbed up the ladder toward a faint light.
“Be careful,” Kate told her. She thought about suggesting she leave the drawing tablet behind, or maybe Kate would carry it for her, but she knew Brooke wouldn’t want to give them up.
Kate was right behind her, stuffing her flashlight down into her pants pocket, the end of it sticking up. Now that the flashlights were out, Kate could see the faint rays of daylight shining down onto the ladder.
The ladder led up to another block platform with an even smaller concrete tunnel that had a metal grate at the far end.
“That’s the way out?” Kate asked Brooke. “That grate opens up?”
Brooke nodded and crawled into the tunnel, crawling quickly to the grate. She pushed at it and the grate opened up. She was out through the end of the tunnel in a flash.
Kate crawled through the tunnel after Brooke, and she was out through the opening a few seconds later.
The day was cloudy and cool, a stiff wind blowing the grass and weeds of the empty lot next to the brick buildings. There were other buildings in the distance to the right and left, a road ahead of them beyond the large unkempt lot, and a dollar store across the street. The store was dark, like everything else around them. Kate had no idea what time of day it was, but she guessed it was sometime in the afternoon. At least it wasn’t raining, but it looked like it might rain at any moment.
“Is that where you got your stuff from?” Kate whispered to Brooke as they crouched down among the tall weeds and grass.
She nodded.
Good. Maybe that meant the store was safe. But even though Kate didn’t see any rippers roaming around, that didn’t mean there weren’t some nearby, maybe some even inside the dollar store.
Kate spotted a car parked at the end of the empty lot, half on the sidewalk and half on the grass, the driver’s door wide open. “Let’s get to that car over there,” she whispered. “We’ll wait there for a moment, make sure there aren’t any rippers around. Then we’ll get across the street. Sound like a plan?”
Brooke nodded.
Kate was trying to sound upbeat, like this was all some kind of game, trying not to frighten Brooke. But inside, Kate was scared to death. One wrong move and they would be cornered by the rippers. And there would be no one to help them now. Ted had saved her once, and then Brooke had saved her. She couldn’t count on that happening again. The cosmic dice weren’t going to keep rolling her way forever.
“Let’s go,” Kate whispered.
They ran through the grass, careful to avoid any trash along the way that they might step on or trip over. They kept low as they ran, trying to stay under the height of the weeds and grass. But winter was coming soon, and the weeds were beginning to die back a little, so the coverage wasn’t so great.
They got to the car, ducking down by the rear of it. Kate had glanced inside, hoping to see a set of keys dangling from the ignition. She’d found a few cars and trucks with the keys still inside, left b
y people who had turned into rippers. But many had left the cars running, the lights on, and either the vehicles had run out of gas or the battery had died.
There were no keys in this car, and she didn’t feel like searching the car for them. She wanted to get inside the store.
She stared across the street at the dollar store, watching it for a moment. There were a few vehicles parked along the road; two of them were wrecked into each other, blocking the road to the left. Trash lined the street and sidewalks, papers and wrappers blowing across the deserted streets; it reminded her a little of the town where the Evil One lived, where the dead and dying were displayed everywhere.
“Monsters?” Brooke asked.
Kate had been concentrating on the street in front of them and the store on the other side. She looked down at Brooke who stared up at her from the side of the car.
“Monsters?”
It took a second for Kate to realize that Brooke was asking about the rippers. “I don’t see any of them right now,” she whispered to her. “But we need to be careful.”
Kate peeked up above the trunk of the car, looking up and down the street again, listening, and then watching the dollar store and the vehicles parked in front of it. She looked back at Brooke. “You ready?”
Brooke nodded.
“We have to hurry across the street. We’re going to go to that truck over there. See it?”
Brooke moved closer to the end of the car and looked across the street, spotting the pickup truck with a topper on the back. She nodded.
“Let’s go,” Kate whispered.
They darted into the street. Kate ran fast, a few steps ahead of Brooke. The wind hit her as soon as she was in the middle of the street, papers blowing by like they were in a whirlwind. She looked down the street at the lone traffic light swinging back and forth on a sagging wire two blocks away. Something clanged somewhere, metal on metal, but there were no screeches and screams from the rippers.
They were up and over the sidewalk a moment later, and then down by the side of the truck. Kate had a chance to glance inside the truck, making sure no one was in there.
