The Toby the Trilby Trilogy Boxed Set

by Angela Castillo

  Tears slipped through closed eyes as Gramble Shana and Gramble Lenora nodded in agreement. They each took a turn adding requests for safety and wisdom.

  The other three grambles stood by in respectful silence. While they appreciated Toby’s faith and could not deny the results of his obedience to the “Voice” as they called it, their minds, driven by science, still found the idea hard to accept.

  Mia prayed last. After “Amen” she looked down at him. “Be careful, Little Brother.”

  “You too, Little Sister.” He grinned at the long-running joke. Although Mia was a foot taller, he was older by three months.

  Toby stepped into the cool evening, where crickets had already begun singing praises to the stars. Night travel was no problem for him, his feline eyes caught any light available to illuminate his way.

  His heart stirred in excitement, and his shoes made dusty tracks on the new path.

  2

  DANGER IN THE TREES

  Only a short time passed before Toby began to miss the calm, green clearings near his home. Thick weeds and brush made the trail hard to follow. He stood still for a moment, ears twitching. Fierce, trilby-eating beasts could be hiding anywhere in the forest, ready to pounce. If not for his enhanced feline senses, he might be forced to turn back.

  The highway, an obvious choice for most travelers, must be avoided. Any people he encountered would probably be hungry and desperate.

  An hour of pressing through the tangle finally brought him to a little valley of pines. The brush was replaced by a thick carpet of needles. Toby paused to pull some of the snarls out of his tail and study the surrounding tree trunks. Thick and sturdy. He removed his gloves and flexed his claws. They extended like ten razors, an inch past each finger and thumb.

  He dug them into a tree trunk and pulled himself up, hand over hand, fifty feet, until the branches thinned too much to hold his weight. Toby shimmied to the edge of a limb and leapt to the next tree. Faster and faster he flew, while the wind whistled in his ears. His tail streamed behind for balance.

  After several miles of tree travel, he paused in the crook of a large oak to catch his breath and check his compass. A giant grin spread across his face. Sometimes being a trilby was fantastic!

  Wonder how far I’ve come. He climbed to the top of the tree and poked his head out through the branches. The dull, gray thread of highway was just visible from his perch.

  A hum drifted through the trees. A motor? Couldn't be. Valerie and Mia had both lived in large cities, and told him machines hadn’t run since the great disaster. Surely they would know. But he had lived with the constant drone of generator motors his entire life underground. Nothing in nature made that sound. Only something fashioned by the hands of men.

  Shouts rang out from below.

  Toby climbed partway down the trunk until he could see the ground.

  Children, some younger than himself, but mostly older teens, poured into the thicket. All wore rags and clutched weapons of twisted metal. Most kept running, some ducked behind large piles of brush or rock, and braced themselves in what looked like defensive positions.

  A moment of peace. Everyone was hunched, breathless. Then a group of men and women surged in, all older than the first band. These adults were much better equipped with tight-fitting body suits and what appeared to be machine-made metal weapons. The air filled with shrieks and sounds of battle as the attackers located their prey.

  Toby's stomach lurched. He gripped the branches and flattened himself against the trunk. This tree still had leaves to hide him, but they were dried and rustled with the slightest movement.

  Two people struggled below his tree.

  The tallest man’s long, dark hair flowed down past his shoulders and blended with his black trench coat. He shoved a bright blade against the boy’s throat.

  "Hey, look, can't we work something out here?” The boy’s blond hair stuck out of a battered cap like withered straw. “We just wanna find out what the star thingy is too!"

  "That's what all you scum urchins say.” The tall man spoke through gritted teeth. ”’We just wanna help!' 'We just wanna be Moddies!’ I don't have a second more to deal with your theivin' hides, understand?”

  “Come on, Leader, we have skills, you can use us! We made it out here so far!" The boy flattened against the tree trunk.

  All other fights ceased and both groups jostled and prodded each other to get closer to the tree.

  "Do you even know what 'gasoline' is?" Leader pressed the blade closer. "Or a fan belt?"

  Sharp metal etched a thin red line on Blond Boy’s throat. "No,” he gasped. “But I can learn... I kept these kids alive. That's gotta count for something!"

  "Hear that?" Leader turned to the group in gray suits. "Dread here kept them alive. These worthless, good-for-nothing whelps." He gestured to the ragged group of children, who all stared at the ground.

  One girl stepped forward. "You should give us more credit."

  “Stay back, Marabella,” Dread’s freckles stood out on his pale face. “I can handle my own problems!”

  Marabella ran a dirty hand through the long, brown locks tangled down her back. "Sure, Dread, you've done so well up 'till now."

  "This has all been a misunderstanding." She turned to Leader. "We're just a bunch of kids. We saw a big, shiny light in the sky and got curious, that's all."

  Leader blinked.

  Marabella batted her eyelashes.

  A man whose body suit showed off rippling muscles stepped forward. “Leader, let’s just finish cleaning up this mess and go. Didn’t you say you wanted to reach the spaceship before dark?”

  Could it really be a spaceship? Of all the things Toby had imagined the light to be, this was the least possible.

  “Garlo, let me deal with this.” Leader pulled his knife back a fraction of an inch.

  "If I let you kids get away," he said to Marabella, "you'll just come back and bother me later. I've got more important things to deal with.”

  “I know," Marabella rubbed her finger on the sleeve of Leader’s jacket. "All those cars to fix up, cities to overthrow. You must be really tired.”

  Dread took advantage of the distraction to wrench free from Leader's grasp. He slammed his fist into the man's stomach and pushed him away.

  Leader staggered back and tripped on a root. His coat tangled around his body as he thrashed in the brush.

  Garlo howled and threw himself at Dread. All three wrestled on the ground.

  Marabella’s cruel smile reached all the way up into Toby’s hiding place like a slap in the face. She flew into the crush of bodies, her own wicked blade clutched in her hand.

  The memory flooded in like a torrent, and burst through a dam Toby had carefully constructed in his mind. That smile... seen on the same girl’s face, through strained sunlight in a cracked rock. She was younger then. Two years younger. Dread had tried to cut off Toby’s tail, and Marabella had been the one to grab his precious pack of supplies when he fought to escape.

  How did it take him so long to remember one of the most terrifying experiences of his life? Toby shuddered. And now they were back, right under his tree. “God, please help me!” Toby squeezed into the tightest ball he could manage and clung to his branch.

  Finally, the screams faded into whimpers and crashing noises in the brush. A silence fell over the forest, followed by the sound of the same, distant engines.

  Toby opened his eyes and peered down.

  Dark pools stained the dirt around the base of the tree. Blood.

  He began to shiver and couldn’t stop. He lowered himself one branch, then another, until he reached the ground.

  Yes, everyone was gone. Wait. A heap of clothing, there, behind the bush. A hand, streaked with red, covered a face like a child when sleeping. No movement.

  Toby sniffed the air. All the others were far away. Why would they leave their friend? “They are young, still,” he reminded himself. “With no thought for anyone else.”

&
nbsp; He knelt down and pushed the arm aside to reveal... Dread. The boy was much younger than Toby had supposed. Lines on his face were caused by hardship and hunger, not age.

  The boy’s chest rose, then fell.

  Emotions crashed through Toby’s head like rocks. Mostly relief, but a tiny part of himself, a dark and ugly corner he tried to ignore, had hoped Dread would never stir again.

  Any moment, Dread’s band of hooligans could come back for their fallen leader and try for a tail trophy again. Or, even worse, the group of adults, and Leader.

  A crimson stain spread on Dread’s shirt where blood flowed from a ragged gash. Toby needed to stop the bleeding or death would arrive very soon.

  “I don’t want to help him,” Toby said out loud. “Father, he’s a horrible person.”

  A story about Jesus, the son of God, slipped into Toby’s mind. When one of Jesus’ disciples had asked “How many times should we forgive someone? Seven?” Jesus had replied, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.”

  “I haven’t even forgiven you once,” Toby said to Dread, though the boy had shown no sign of consciousness.

  Toby searched his first-aid kit for the right supplies. Though Gramble Edward had not spent as much time training him as Mia, he taught him several emergency procedures. Nothing in the pack could stop that flow of blood. He rose to his feet and scanned the tree branches.

  Spanish moss. He grabbed a hunk of the thick, gray stuff, bound it with the white cloth and pressed the packet against the wound.

  Blood welled around his hands for a moment, then ebbed to a trickle. He watched, fascinated, while color flowed back into the older boy’s cheeks.

  What to do? He cringed as Marabella’s evil smirk slithered into his thoughts. Of course, he couldn’t leave Dread here to die. Beyond his desire to obey Father’s commands to love his enemies, his own guilty conscience would be impossible to bear.

  His fingers were sticky and hot under their thick leather coverings. When he tried to move his hands to pull off his gloves blood welled up again. He sighed.

  When he looked up, the steely stare of his enemy met him.

  Dread was awake.

  3

  A THANKLESS RESCUE

  Mia pressed the cold steel button of the service elevator and set down the bucket of vegetable scraps to rest her hand.

  Gramble Lenora chuckled. “Even the youth grow tired and faint...”

  “...But He brings strength to those who wait,” Mia finished. She eyed the heavier pail Gramble Lenora carried. How does she do that? No matter how hard Mia worked, she still couldn't outdo the elderly woman.

  The elevator was designed to hold over a hundred people and had been a huge help when they built the little house, used to transported a wood stove, furniture, and building supplies. No electrical appliances though, since they still couldn’t generate electricity on the surface. As self-appointed handyman, Gramble Howard always promised to try to run power to the little house. But other projects kept creeping up and he’d have to put it off again.

  “I wish we could bring the animals up with us.” Mia stared into the bucket of lettuce leaves, old potatoes and carrot tops. She could never carry down as many treats as she wished.

  “I feel the same way, but you know we can’t have that passel of animals by our house. Too much noise. Who knows what they’d attract? Wolves, panthers, maybe even those swamp people Toby rescued you from.”

  Mia shuddered, like she always did when reminded of her former captors. "Oh well, at least we have our family of kitties to warm our laps and toes."

  The service elevator creaked and groaned into its base like a sleepy cow, sighing when it came to a halt. The doors slid open. Mia and Gramble Lenora stepped out into the cavern’s long corridor. Another ten-minute walk would lead them to the main quarters, where the grambles had lived for over forty years.

  Even though the cavern held enough supplies to help thousands of people, including food replicators and stores of canned and dried crops from Gramble Shana’s produce, the family had to live with the reality this bounty couldn't be shared with outsiders. Stockpiles meant power and in the wrong hands used to control the remaining population of the Earth. They hadn’t yet figured out how to help the needy without starting a war.

  Mia and Gramble Lenora passed the lab where Toby had been created.

  ###

  Once Mia had asked Gramble Gregory and Gramble Colleen, “Why didn’t you just use your own DNA, instead of the random samples stored in the cavern?”

  “I couldn’t incorporate all six of us.” Gramble Gregory rubbed his thin, angular chin. “No one wanted anyone else to be the sole parent. That person would have a connection, a bond, an unfair advantage. We didn’t want Toby to belong to one more than the rest.”

  “Wasn’t that a tad bit selfish?”

  “Bringing him into this underground world was selfish in the first place!” Gramble Colleen smacked her clipboard against the counter. “Remember, we didn’t know what happened to the Earth. We thought everyone was dead. We were lonely and wanted a child to teach, to watch grow and change. . . and love.”

  “I’m glad he’s here now!” Mia said.

  Gramble Colleen wiped a speck of moisture from the corner of her eye. “So am I.”

  ###

  Mia snapped back to attention as Lenora swung open the heavy metal door to the animals' chamber, a space so large she couldn’t see the back wall. Gigantic lamps hung from the ceiling to bring light and warmth to the creatures. A chorus of animal voices met them.

  When Mia carried her bucket into her favorite pen, a baby goat frisked over and butted her with its tiny head. She rewarded him with a carrot top, and the goat nibbled the morsel, velvety lips exploring her hand to make sure the whole treat was gone. She poured the scraps into the feed trough, and added fresh hay from Gramble Shana’s farm room next door.

  Then into the chicken house. The fluffy hens clucked and chuckled when she reached beneath them for eggs. She checked the ground for hiding chicks then swept the old straw out and added new bedding.

  “We’re going to have to thin out some roosters.” Gramble Lenora stood behind her, hands on hips. “Too many in here. If only we could bring a few to the surface, but roosters are noisiest of all.”

  “I’m sure no one will complain about extra chicken dinners!” Mia poured out grain for pecking beaks below. “We could give some live birds to Valerie since raccoons got some of her flock last month.”

  “Would you go see if Eddie finished those growth charts he promised me?”

  “Of course.” Mia wended her way through the clamoring herds. A rabbit tried to escape through the last gate and she pushed him back inside. “Nope, get back in there.”

  On, down the hall to Gramble Edward’s office.

  She knocked softly and entered, only to be met by a pair of feet covered in striped socks, propped up on the desk before her. Gramble Edward leaned back in his chair, face covered by a large book. Gentle snores came from under the dust jacket.

  “Gramble Edward?” she whispered.

  The book hit the desk. Feet slid to the floor.

  “Indeed?” Gramble Edward blinked behind his spectacles.

  “Gramble Lenora told me to come fetch the growth charts,” Mia gulped back a giggle.

  "Ah, yes, here you go,” Gramble Edward handed her a stack of papers. “How are you?”

  Mia stared down at her soft leather shoes. “I miss Toby already. I’m glad I'll be leaving today so I don’t have to think about him being gone.”

  “Yes, yes, foraging and all.” Gramble Edward pointed a shaky finger at Mia. “You take good care.”

  “Of course, dear Edward,” Mia patted his shoulder. Gramble Edward was her favorite. They had spent countless hours together pouring over textbooks, plastic models and every sick person and creature.

  “You are the future of medicine. The world cannot afford to lose you.”

  "Gramble Edward, don’
t be silly,” Mia said. “You’ll be with us for many more years. Besides, Gramble Shana is coming with me. We’ll only be gone a day.”

  “Shana? Then you must take care of each other.” Edward’s eyes softened and he smoothed his moustache with thin fingers.

  The gesture tickled Mia’s mind, where an odd little pile of occurrences had gathered over time. Did Gramble Edward love Gramble Shana? None of her business, but she couldn’t help but wonder.

  Two hours later, back on the surface, Mia and Gramble Shana ventured out into the deep woods.

  ###

  "How did you get here?” Dread struggled to move away from Toby then yelped in pain. “What did you do to me, Cat Kid?”

  “Keep still!” The movement caused blood to flow under Toby’s hands again. “I didn’t do anything. One of those other guys stabbed you.”

  Dread settled back, and his light eyebrows drew together. "Dumb Moddies don’t know a good soldier when they see one.”

  "Look, I need you to put your hand here,” Toby placed the boy’s hand over the bulky cloth covering the wound. “Press hard.”

  “Why? You gonna be just like everyone else and leave me?” Dread wriggled under the bandage.

  “No, I just need to find something,” Toby tightened his grip on Dread’s hand. “Can you please do what I said? You have to hold this or you’ll bleed more.”

  “Course I can.” Dread pressed his hand to his side and coughed. Pain flooded his face. “I get it. You’re off to tell the Moddies I’m alive. You a scout for Leader or somethin'?”

  Wish he’d be quiet. Toby grabbed his mess kit from his pack. A hollow between some large rocks made a good place to start a fire. He gathered dry branches and twigs and flicked his lighter.

  Dread’s eyes widened. “You Moddies have cars, good weapons and starters? Where’d you get all that great stuff?”