The Nethers

by M. E. Parker

  Since the first time Sindra had seen Megan’s drudgers, they’d gone along with orders, hopped to her command, killed who she wanted them to kill and applauded the loudest at her show. After watching their comrade in arms complete the circuit from the electrified fence with a jolt that fried him where he stood, seeing her have no remorse or regret about losing one of her own, witnessing her next-in-line-to-sacrifice-for-me attitude, some stepped back, some shook their heads, others froze, but they all gave her a reluctant refusal to approach the steam walker.

  “Well, get going.” Megan approached one drudger after another. “It’s fine now.” She marched back to the machine and checked both sides again, discovering that the fence needed another tire thrown on it to keep it off the machine. “Okay, now it’s fine.” She pointed at the cab. “Hop to it.”

  Wrists and ankles bound, Sindra squirmed to have a better look at the insubordination.

  “Oh, don’t make me do this myself. If I break a nail in that thing, I’ll wear your throat as a bracelet.” She pointed at the nearest drudger, who squinted with pain at the prospect of having his throat worn as jewelry. Megan raised her arm to grab the handle on the cab. She kept her hand a foot away from the metal, glancing to her drudgers, pushing it closer, an inch away, her hand trembling.

  Megan grabbed the handle and climbed into the armored cab of the contraption Jonesbridge had built to break Mesa Gap’s wall. The metal muffled her voice, but her message came through. “That’s why you are the drudgers, and I am your queen. None of you taint sniffers has enough bile in your gut to do what has to be done.”

  The giant steam walker grumbled as Megan engaged the steam. Now, halfway through the hole, she retracted the stabilizing legs. The machine settled on its track wheels. She withdrew the claws and drill and lowered the bull nose, barreling headlong into what remained of the junk in front of her. Metal screeched as she reversed to pick up speed and rammed the gate and the obstacles around it.

  Megan strode out of the opening with her hair flowing behind her. “We have our hole!” Her crew cheered. She examined the other vehicles Jonesbridge had abandoned by the wall. “Thor is heavy. We can’t carry it. Get that overloader fired up.”

  “I don’t know who we’ll find to put up a fight in there. All their warriors are occupied.” She held her head high with pride in her attack plan. “Load up anyway.”

  The drudgers reloaded their popcaps with glass and metal fragments. Some found discarded shotguns from dead soldiers.

  “Rounder. You’re coming with me. Can’t have you tempted to set my pets free again while I’m gone.”

  “As long as Mesa Gap’s been there, I’ve wanted to have a look inside.” Rounder turned toward the wall and looked up. “Now that I’m here…it feels wrong. Doing it like this. With you.”

  “I liked you so much better before you grew a conscience. But it’s just like a big pimple growing on the end of your nose.” She pinched the end of his nose. “I can pop it any time I want. Just like I did before.”

  “Nope. Ain’t going.”

  “Suit yourself.” She flipped her hair and her hip in his direction as she turned toward the wall.

  It took four drudgers to chase down and lasso Rounder. They sat Ren, Sindra, and Rounder with their backs to each other and tied them together, the rope going round and round them, cinching the three of them into a three-point human star.

  “Megan.” Rounder’s voice was strained. “Take that Old Age tech, if that’s what you’re after, but don’t kill none of them Gapi folks.”

  Megan laughed. “Oh, I only want one.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Myron lay in his cot, staring at the ceiling in Te Yah’s lodge. Worrying about Sindra, thinking, planning, his thoughts racing from one problem to the next, all his mental gears turning at once. He watched the twins sleep, embraced in the same cot, their eyes closed but threatening to pop open at any time. Nico, now reunited with Myron, shivered with fever in his cot, wrapped up in a blanket.

  Moonlight shone through the windows reflecting off of the low ceiling. The room had windows on either side of a corner, one that overlooked Mesa Gap from the edge of the crater and the other with a view of the city gate. At night, lights along the paths and tracks transformed the city into a twinkling ring.

  A pair of drainage ruts ran between structures and under tracks and paths, so that, during the rare occurrence of rain, the water would flow to an underground reservoir and through their filtration system without disrupting the foundations of the city. Proper drainage, Te Yah had explained, meant the difference between construction in the fertile soils around the crater and mudsliding down into a bath of junk and houses. Myron stood at the window, taking in the view, getting lost the possibility of finding more bastions of civilization like Mesa Gap out there somewhere beyond the Nethers, a place that would accept him despite being touched by darkness as Te Yah claimed. If—when he finally found Bora Bora, he would establish his own city there.

  A screech from the wall shattered his peace. The sound of metal scraping metal and crunching debris, the same sound the wall eater had made before the twins stopped its progress. Myron tiptoed to the door and jiggled the handle, knowing it would be locked before he tried it. On his way back to the windows, he spied Drillbit curled up at the twins’ feet. Nico mumbled in his sleep. Myron checked the windows next—barred shut.

  With the noise at that wall, he expected that Jonesbridge had regrouped. The warriors of Mesa Gap, those that had survived the long-range attacks, had gone out to defeat the artillery damaging the city, but they never returned. With his eye on the wall, he watched the steam walker break through behind a fiery shower of sparks, anticipating a flurry of orange shirts and Alliance defense corps, shocked to see Megan and her drudgers fly through the opening in an overloader and chariot caravan. With all of the defenses either defeated or still fighting Jonesbridge, Megan rode through Mesa Gap unchallenged.

  “Come on. Wake up.” Myron jostled Mah-ré’s shoulder. Her eyes opened, and she swung her feet to the ground at the same time as Gah-té, as though they hadn’t been asleep. He showed them the locked door. “We have to go.” He pointed out the window.

  The twins joined hands and walked to the window. They pressed their faces to the glass, exchanged worried glances, and whispered to each other in Gapi. “We go,” they said at the same time.

  Mah-ré put her ear to the door while Gah-té searched the room, returning with the bag of tools that Myron had taken from the refuser shed. When Mah-ré lowered her hand, Gah-té picked the lock.

  Myron lifted Nico and carried him to the rickshaw. He draped him over the roll of plastic. The twins climbed into the two seats. Mah-ré cradled the sleeping Drillbit in her arms.

  Myron pedaled for the gate. The combined weight of the load made picking up enough speed to climb the hill a chore. He pumped the pedals, hoping to get out of Mesa Gap before Megan torched the place. He kept his eye on the drudger crew as they raced around the other side of the crater, hollering their war cries.

  The Gapi ambled out of their homes to see what was going on, unprepared for a breach in their wall. When they saw the marauders speeding down their streets, the Gapi shut their doors and windows and withdrew into their hidden places that Megan would overlook.

  The rickshaw picked up speed as they reached a downhill section of the street. Myron put everything he had into the pedals, so that his momentum would carry them all the way to the hole in the gate. Speeding around the steam walker, through the hole in the wall, the plastic roll shifted, tipping the rickshaw. It spilled everyone out and rolled over Nico.

  With the light of the empty guard shack, Myron searched for the plastic roll.

  “Myron!” Sindra called. “Look, Rounder. It’s Myron.”

  “Sindra?”

  Myron scanned the shadows along the Food Court wall, spotting three people tied up, backs together, facing away from each other. Drillbit scampered over to Rounder, growling and barking. My
ron scooped Nico up and carried him over to Sindra. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  “Get us out of this. We can’t be here when she gets back.” Rounder squirmed.

  Myron studied the rope, but lost sight of everything when the guard shack lights went out, along with the lights of the city. “What happened?”

  “Megan happened.” Rounder grunted and tugged, trying to loosen the tight grip of the ropes.

  “I hear them,” Ren said, her voice cracking.

  Myron pulled at the rope, his fingers following it around until he located the knots.

  “Hurry!”

  “I can’t get it that fast.”

  “She’s coming.”

  Myron heard the calls of her drudgers and the whoosh from the overloader. He tipped the bundle of Sindra, Rounder, and Ren and did his best to roll them as a group.

  “Ouch. What are you doing?” Ren said.

  “We have to get to the crater.” With the twins’ help, he pushed, rolled, and spun Sindra, Rounder, and Ren to the crater, where they tumbled down the steep embankment onto the garbage at the bottom. Myron ran back for Nico, groping the ground until he felt the warm flesh. Myron hopped into the Food Court crater just before the headlamp on the overloader pierced through the hole in the wall.

  He peeked over the edge to see a flashlight beam traveling the ground.

  “Where are my pets?” Megan fumed, searching for Sindra and Ren. Then Myron saw Te Yah, bound and gagged next to the green thorium power pack, in the bed of the overloader, guarded by six drudgers, all with shotguns. “Find them!”

  “No time.” One of her drudgers, a scout, jogged in from the darkness. “Jonesbridge is on their way.”

  “I’m going to get you, Rounder,” Megan screamed into the night. She climbed in the overloader and engaged the steam.

  “Myron. Help,” Sindra whispered.

  He slid down the soil to the bottom, landing on Rounder’s shoulder, and climbed around a mattress frame. Fingers searching the ropes for knots, he went to work untying them. As wiggle room allowed, the main ropes holding them together fell away for Myron to work on the individual hands and feet, attending to Rounder’s last. By the time he had them free, they had to hunker down again.

  Steam, wheels, boots, mules braying, and an army on the march heralded the arrival of Jonesbridge. Myron and Sindra held their embrace in the bottom of the crater, sandwiched between Rounder, Ren, and the twins. Nico sprawled out along the steep incline. All of them took shallow breaths. No one moved as footsteps crunched in Food Court. A beam from a flashlight hit the wall of the crater. It danced around the edge, lowering until it stopped at the stack of mattress skeletons. Sindra tightened her grip on Myron’s arm as he relived the moment that she sailed away into the clouds without him, ripped away from his hand to dangle beneath the airship.

  “They beat us to it,” the Alliance captain hollered. “Mobilize. To Megan’s Point!”

  Relieved that Jonesbridge cared much more for finding Thor than they did for recovering escaped slogs, Myron relaxed. Sindra fell asleep with her head on Myron’s shoulder, and when Myron’s eyes shut, his mind filled with dreams of the ocean until he arrived on a distant shore with a pink horizon and an airplane fuselage lodged in the air between two trees, the perfect place for him and Sindra to raise the baby.

  Myron awoke to find the twins standing at the edge of the crater and Nico nestled beside Sindra.

  “Let’s get going.” Rounder’s voice echoed off the Food Court wall.

  Myron climbed out of the crater, worried about the condition of his rickshaw and plastic roll. “Rounder. Help me get this loaded.” Myron situated his rickshaw and headed for the plastic.

  “What is that?”

  “Plastic sheet.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “Te Yah let us have anything we wanted from his stores for helping him disable that nasty rig.”

  “He let you have anything you wanted and you chose this garbage?”

  “That’s right. Can you give me a hand?”

  “No.”

  Myron struggled to get the roll back into the rickshaw himself.

  Rounder returned to Ren, who stood by the pedal bus. Myron set to studying it, taking inventory of its function.

  “Ren, great luck that you’re here. This just might work.” Myron rushed to meet her. “I have an idea. And you may be the only person in the Nethers that can make it happen.” He lowered the bag of tools he’d swiped from the refuser at Ren’s feet.

  “You still owe me for the last favor I did you.”

  Myron snagged a wire sticking out from under a damaged sign that read PANCAKE HAUS and knelt on the ground to sketch out his idea. “Let’s say, for your payment, I’ll book you passage on the airship Bora Bora.”

  “What?”

  “This guy’s cracked in the head, Ren.” Rounder pointed at Myron and inspected the long roll of plastic jutting from the rickshaw. “Anything you wanted? Not meat? Not rye water. Not shoes or hat or maybe a promise to help get that baby. The whole reason you came to Mesa Gap to begin with? You ask for plastic.”

  Myron ignored Rounder and scrawled his best rendition of the pedal bus in the dirt. “You’ll need to find some supports. Ribs, like this. To bear the weight of the bus and keep the plastic off of the direct heat while it expands.” He drew semicircular lines over the top of the bus, making it look like a dirigible. “Plastic will melt if it’s too close to the flame.” He recalled the time he tossed the fishing bob into his stove back in Fourteen C and it melted into red goop during Rolf’s inspection. “In the garbage wall around Mesa Gap I’ve seen long white bendy pipes with this on them.” He wrote the letters PVC in the dirt. “They’re light and hollow and really stout.”

  “Wait, wait.” Ren crossed her arms, studying Myron’s diagram. “You’re aiming to put this thing into the sky?”

  “That’s right.” Myron drew an extension from the back of the airship. “And we’re going to need a propeller with a high torque-gear ratio right here. Pedals’ll turn it.”

  “A propeller?”

  “You’re the contraptionist, but we’re the salvagers. Sindra can help you find something to twist up into a propeller. She’s the best.” Myron swung a proud arm around Sindra’s shoulder. “Rounder, help roll out that plastic sheeting.”

  Sindra ran to the rickshaw and began to pull down the roll. “You just going to stand there?” She stared at Rounder.

  “Now you’re taking orders from this slack-jawed lud?” Rounder ambled toward the rickshaw.

  “Rounder, we have to get out of here.”

  “He knows what he’s doing,” Sindra said.

  “Ren?” Rounder stepped up behind her for confirmation.

  “Well, it could work. I guess.” Ren went to the bus and strained to pick up one end, gauging its weight. “This bus by itself weighs about as much as…” she cocked her head, squeezing her eyes shut as if to search the inside of her head for the answer. “Maybe forty or fifty gallons of slick.” She counted the people. “Add six of us. Course, they can’t weigh much.” She nodded to the twins.

  The bus was not much more than a skeleton with seats and pedals, but the sprockets, gears and chains, the axles and wheels, all those things added up. Ren estimated the length of the roll, and scribbled some calculations in the dirt. “This roll is a double bolt in length. But you’ll need at least three quarters of a hect of it to lift this bus with us and the coal.”

  “How much is that exactly?” Myron studied the roll, hoping he had enough.

  “Two hundred wide steps.” Ren scratched her head. “But—”

  Myron had already begun rolling out the plastic sheet. It bounced over the uneven ground as it unrolled, and Myron noticed the sheet was folded in half, making it twice as wide as expected but not nearly as long.

  “It’s folded. Okay, well, then, that makes it a quad bolt. Makes it twenty short steps wide. Then, one hundred wide steps long is what you need,�
� Ren said.

  Rounder stood on the plastic and started walking off the length.

  “Beside it. You’ll poke a hole it.”

  Rounder stepped off the plastic, glaring at Myron.

  “How do we…sew this stuff?” Sindra lifted one corner of the plastic sheet.

  “You’ll have to fold the seams. And attach between the bottom rib and the top rib. You can melt the seams, but don’t get the flame to close or it’ll melt a hole. Just close enough for it to spread together.”

  Myron folded the edge of the sheet over about an inch to demonstrate the size of the folds to make a strong seam. “I know you can build this thing and get out of here as soon as possible.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Myron gazed toward the northern horizon. “I’m going to Megan’s Point—to get Te Yah back.” Myron mounted the rickshaw.

  Sindra dropped her corner of the plastic sheet and marched to the rickshaw, shoving Myron off the seat. He tumbled to the ground, then stumbled to his feet. She pushed him again, and a third time, backing him up to a washing machine full of sand with a shin pine twig growing from the drum.

  “How can you even think about going back to that place?” She grabbed his shirt. “After all we’ve been through to get this far. We made it. We escaped Jonesbridge. We’re free and on our way to Bora Bora, Myron.”

  Myron placed his hands on her shoulders. She shrugged them away. “Sindra.” He nudged her farther away from the group. “I understand how you feel—”

  “No. No you don’t. If you did, if you felt like me, you wouldn’t never even consider going back to Megan’s Point on some suicide mission. He’s an old man. He’s lived his life. And—he won’t help anyone else.” A tear left a trail of clean skin through the dirt on Sindra’s face. “Talk to me, Myron.”

  “Look. I can’t explain it. Te Yah is special, Sindra. He’s what this world needs right now. If it’s ever going to survive.”