Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles)

by S. M. Stelmack

  She surveyed the site, then spied the girl with braids skipping rope or, upon closer inspection, knotted rags. Lindsay turned on her brightest smile and called softly out to her.

  “Hey there, I’ve got something for you—”

  The little girl’s eyes widened as Lindsay reached toward her with the little treat.. And then she started screaming. Ear-piercing, terrified shrieks that rebounded around the cavern until it seemed that there were hundreds of them.

  Alarmed, Lindsay did the most natural thing possible—and the stupidest. She rushed to the child to calm her. “No, listen, it’s okay. I’m not—”

  The girl was swept out from her reach, and Lindsay was tackled from all sides.

  Her face and hands were clawed, her hair yanked back to a neck-snapping angle, and then she was kicked and punched in her stomach, her kidneys, her legs. She kicked and clawed back, finally pinned down as others joined in. Her attackers were all women, and they fought dirty.

  All at once, there was a shout and the gang widened their circle. She was roughly hauled to her feet, her back pulled against the solid front of a man. Jack. Panting, she leaned in gratitude against him, her head on his shoulder.

  Reggie was beside her, looming large, looking her over with a mix of disapproval and sympathy. Off to the side, Shamba regarded her impassively. The women were gathered in a loose semi-circle, aggression and hatred uniform in their expressions. The little girl, her screams having turned to sobs, was in the arms of one woman with matching features, clearly her mother.

  Gali stepped up to Lindsay. “You going to live?”

  What the hell do you think? Lindsay felt Jack’s arm tighten in warning around her.

  “Yes, thank you.” She kept her voice low as she wiped blood from her nose.

  “What were you doing to the girl?”

  “Nothing! I…” She glanced around. The whole village was there, ready to finish her off. “I…I wanted to know where the washrooms were.” The truth sounded so lame.

  “Why did you ask the girl, then?”

  “Because…I…” Lindsay floundered, and Jack cut in.

  “It’s my fault, Gali. I didn’t tell her where she was supposed to go. Let me deal with her.”

  Gali turned to Shamba. He gave a faint shrug, a clear signal that it was up to Gali how she called it.

  She switched back to Lindsay. “I’ll turn you over to Jack, for his sake. Don’t be mistaken into thinking that you were mistreated today. You’re in our world now, topsider. You play by our rules.”

  Lindsay felt like spitting in her face, but she nodded.

  “The latrine’s there.” Gali waved to a trail that ran alongside the gorge, then strode away.

  Jack lowered his mouth to Lindsay’s ear. “Go, and then back to the guesthouse.” He gave her a push in the right direction.

  Humiliation bowed Lindsay’s head. She could feel every eye in the village following her. It was bad enough that the people openly despised her; to have Jack play along made it even worse. Then again, considering the way they’d parted, maybe it hadn’t been an act.

  When she got to end of the trail, she groaned in disbelief. She had reached a point where the gorge narrowed to some twenty feet across. Planks laid on ropes formed a kind of swinging bridge over it, and out in the middle was a small suspended hut that hung over the waters.

  The toilet.

  She had no idea how far down that gorge went, and she didn’t need to know.

  “Bastard. Bastard. Bastard.”

  * * *

  Jack was sitting on the rat rug, his back against the far wall of the hut when Lindsay returned. At the sight of him she dropped into the opposite corner, drew up her knees and buried her face in her arms.

  Shit. He dragged a hand down his face. “Hey, Linds,” he said softly. “I’m sorry about what happened out there. I should’ve explained things a little more clearly to you.” He paused. “Are you okay? I can take you to Shamba, if you need help.”

  No answer.

  “That rule about complaining and whining. You can have a break from it for the rest of the day.”

  In response she turned her head to the side and twisted herself more deeply into the corner. Her exposed cheek was red and swollen, and Jack wondered how many more bruises were slowly mottling her pale skin. He cursed himself for not having gotten to her sooner. Like all of them around the fire, he’d been thrown by how the screams rebounded off the walls. It was the rush of the women toward the guesthouse that had alerted him, and even then he’d approached slowly, thinking it a village matter.

  When he’d seen Lindsay twisting helplessly under their blows it was as if he was the one getting it in the gut. And when he’d pulled her against him, it was all he could do not to lift her up and take her away from it all. He knew that he had to abide by Agharta's customs, though, or it would go even harder for her.

  “This is the thing,” he explained quietly. “These women are down here because if they were upstairs they wouldn’t be allowed to keep their children. The law states that if a parent cannot provide a home for their kids, then they’re taken away. And for most of these women, that's exactly what the state tried to do. Instead of giving them a place to live, they decided to take the children and abandon the mothers to the street. They’re not down here because they think a cave is the best place to raise kids, but because they don’t have anywhere else to go. Given their history, they have reason to be protective.”

  Lindsay stirred and said in a hoarse whisper, “Jack, could you leave me alone for a little while?”

  “You…sure?”

  She nodded. Hesitantly, he rose. “All right, then. Do you want me to bring you anything?”

  She shook her head.

  Jack made his way back to the fire, now free of people, and stared into the flames. He’d screwed up. He thought of the previous night when she’d shared her body with him, and now she wouldn’t even show him her face.

  He heard footsteps and looked up as Reggie took a seat beside him.

  “How she doing?” he asked in a low voice.

  Jack shrugged. “Fine, I guess. She wanted time to herself.”

  Reggie pulled back to get a good look at his friend. “That what she told you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She been jumped by a gang, made to feel lower than dirt, and then had to walk that tightrope out to the can—”

  Jack groaned. “I forgot about that.”

  “—and you believe her when she tells you that she wants to be alone. Man, you been out of the loop too long.”

  “Why would she say it if she doesn’t mean it?”

  Reggie threw up his hands. “How the hell should I know? I learned the hard way that’s how women work. If I were you I’d head right on back or you’re going to get no peace tonight.”

  “Why don’t you visit her? You two get along well enough.”

  Reggie stared in disbelief. “Shit, Jack, I already got my own woman to deal with. No man deserves more trouble than that.”

  * * *

  She appeared asleep when he pulled back the curtain. From the looks of it, she’d gone through a kind of nighttime routine. Her outer clothes were folded in a pile by her side, a half-empty bottle of water within reach. She was lying on her belly in her sleeping bag, her head turned to the wall. Her face was pale, a red scratch scored across her cheek. Her hair—the root of her troubles and his small, pure joy—was bound back in a tight braid.

  She didn’t move at all when he entered, a sign that she was faking sleep.

  “Feeling better, Linds?” He shed his jacket and sat next to her.

  Lindsay turned her head, this cheek sporting a bruise. Her eyes flickered open, then closed again. “No.”

  “You need to see Shamba or Gali, then. You can’t go on injured or it’ll get worse.” Worry sharpened his voice.

  Her eyelids fluttered open. “I told you, I’m fine.” She closed her eyes again. “Isn’t it time we got some sleep? I’m ti
red.”

  She was using his line.

  “Right. Sleep.” He blew out the candles except for one a little beyond their heads, which he intended for a night light. Taking off his boots, he stretched out on the rat rug beside her.

  “Goodnight,” he said, but she didn’t reply. He laid on his back, closed his eyes, and wondered when—or if—he would fall asleep tonight. It didn’t help that Lindsay, as bruised and battered as she was, was lying so close beside him, and that he could detect the scent of her shampoo and hear her light breathing. He concentrated on emptying his mind, tossing out all sorts of mental garbage. In the end, he was left with one thing too heavy to discard. An apology.

  He turned on his side and whispered, “Linds. I am sorry for treating you the way I have. I’m sorry you were hurt. I said out there it was my fault and it’s the truth. You have to know I'm trying to be like the old Jack. I really am.”

  He waited for her to say something. She didn’t move, her face remained averted. He fell back and shut his eyes. There, at least he’d said it. Now maybe he’d get to lose himself in sleep.

  Lindsay shifted beside him, her mouth came against his ear. “I deserved that beating. In fact, I’m grateful for it.”

  He flinched and without thinking, his arm came hard around her middle. “Lindsay, don’t be stupid. How can you say that?”

  She didn’t resist his hold but she didn’t stop either, her soft words brushing against his ear. “I always want to make things right, Jack. I’ve always liked beautiful, perfect things. I had a beautiful family. A beautiful niece. I made a business of taking old places and making them new again, even married a man because he matched me, like I was pairing up two paint colors or something.

  “That storage bin with your things. That’s an unfinished project I wanted to complete. And when Seline went missing I wanted her back, all clean and polished exactly like she’d been when she left. Only the world doesn’t work that way. There’s no making things right.”

  His arm tightened around her. “She’ll be okay, Linds.”

  She sighed, a long, exasperated sound. “You’re not understanding me, Jack. Of course she will, but she’ll be a different person after this. Everybody down here is well beyond being ‘fixed’. I had this insane idea that I could make the people in this village believe I wasn’t evil by giving one of their children a pack of crackers. Crackers. Like some stupid little present would make everything good. It took a beating to knock sense into me. ”

  “You didn’t know, Linds.”

  “I knew their life was hard. I knew they kept their kids clean and healthy as they could. I should’ve known better then to push myself on them, and now, I do. Seline will never be the same again. Same with you. I know you say you’re trying, and I’m saying, there’s no point.”

  No, no, she couldn’t have said that.

  “You can’t be the old Jack,” she carried on. “It’s impossible. So, I’ve got a choice. When we get Seline out of here, I can spend the rest of my life trying to make her as she was, or I can accept that she’s altered and get on with things. The fact is you don’t need fixing, Jack. None of us do.”

  Jack couldn’t believe what he’d heard. She might as well as stabbed him in the heart, for the pain, anger and desolation that seared through him. In one fluid motion he was crouched over her.

  “You’re wrong, Lindsay.” He could hear how cold and sharp he sounded, could see it in the widening of her eyes.

  She rose onto her elbows and moved to speak but he wrapped his hand around her neck and her mouth closed. He could feel her Adam’s apple as she swallowed, knew the mild asphyxiated sensation she must be having. “This epiphany of yours is a betrayal. Of Seline. Of me. Even of yourself. And before we take one more step on this little adventure, we’re going to get something real straight. Got it?”

  She nodded.

  “When your family was wiped out, and your brother was lying in that hospital bed with the life trickling out of him, did you say ‘Oh well, nothing I can do?’ Did you look into his eyes and say ‘Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s okay?’ Did you?”

  Lindsay shook her head. Under his fingers, her pulse pounded.

  “Of course you didn’t. You stepped up and became the guardian of your niece, and with Janice’s help, you rebuilt your life brick by brick. You didn’t make some weak compromise, but created something bright and prosperous and beautiful. Didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “Then get this through your head, Linds, and don’t you dare ever forget it. I crawled through a world of shit, blood and razors to get back to the surface. I sacrificed parts of me I never thought I could lose and still live. Did terrible things to others to save myself. And right now I am as deeply, majorly broken as your brother was after having his body smashed by that truck.”

  Her face was pale, her pulse pumping, her eyes dark liquid pools in the candlelight.

  “It’s never been said, but we’ve made a pact, you and me. I’m risking everything, more than I pray you’re ever able to comprehend, to get back Seline. And when we do, she’s going to be a shell of the girl that went down here. She will need someone—I will need someone—who pulls us back into the light. Someone who works to make us whole again, because I can tell you from personal experience, we’re not going to be able to get there on our own.

  “I was already on the surface, Linds. I already survived. So I’m not gambling everything I am to return to some empty fucking basement. I am coming back for a woman with blue eyes and bright hair, and by God, I expect you to do everything in your power to fix me. To fix her. Because if not, we might as well just leave her down here. It would be kinder than someone she loves looking her in the face and saying ‘You don’t need fixing’. You get me?”

  Last time his hand was around her neck she’d looked for understanding and he’d not given it to her. Now he was, and she gave it back to him straight. “I get you, Jack.”

  From Lindsay that was all he needed. A few soft words of knowing, of promise. His anger melted into something else. Sorrow for not being the man she’d remembered. The shame of having had to lay bear the frailty of his mind and spirit to the one person who’d always held a claim on his soul. But amidst it, he realized that something else had taken root. Something planted when he’d woken in her bed this morning.

  It was a tiny, shriveled thing, alive by the thinnest of margins. Yet it was there.

  Hope.

  He released his hold on her, and immediately she sat up and curved her hand by his ear, and made good on her promise. She kissed him.

  She took her time on his mouth, playing her lips lightly against his, her tongue skimming his own. And he lost no time in kissing her back. He could’ve spent the night that way, if he hadn’t become distracted by the bruise under her right eye. His lips brushed it and turning to her other cheek, he lined tiny kisses along the scratch there.

  “Kissing it better?” Her words were soft and low, carried to him on a wisp of breathlessness.

  “Is it working?”

  Her answer was throaty murmur. “Yes.”

  “Would you like me to do all the others the same way?”

  And exactly as she had the night before, she laid herself down, spread herself before him in silent invitation. In the glow of the trembling candlelight, he unbuttoned her shirt. Sadness and guilt washed over him at the sight of her cuts and bruises. He shimmied off her jeans, and kissed each mark on her shins and her thighs. He rolled her onto her stomach and kissed her lower back, her ribs, her shoulder blades. He eased her back and continued his tender ritual of healing. And all the while he felt the quiet marvel of once again touching without fear or hurt or loss. He was fixing her. Fixing himself.

  The last mark was on her left breast right above the cut of her bra. When he raised his head from it, his fingers took to stroking the black lace. The nipple hardened. He paused. He hadn’t intended that. He only wanted to make her feel better, not to turn it into sex
.

  He looked up to tell her that.

  Her expression had softened, taken on that same languidness as when he’d had her on the bed and not this god-awful rat rug. She covered his hand on her breast with her own, guided his thumb back to her nipple. “Aches there, too.”

  He sucked in his breath, and easily popped open her bra clasp to expose her perfect breasts. He lowered his mouth—

  A gunshot rang out. Then several more, followed by the shrieking of women and children.

  “Fuck!” Jack snarled, his voice alive with frustration as much as alarm. Lindsay looked up at him startled and confused, and he gave her a short, hard kiss. “Stay here.” He pulled his boots on, seized his gun, and backhanding the curtain open, he left, torn from her again.

  Lindsay grabbed her gun, backpedaling to the rear of the cinderblock hut, and trained it on the entrance. Crouched there, she clicked the light on and the safety off, ready for anything.

  She strained to hear what was happening, especially anything from Jack or Reggie. A couple of times she picked out Reggie’s booming bass, but nothing from Jack.

  Long minutes passed, no more shots were heard, and the sounds of Agharta’s startled inhabitants settled, too. Lindsay was patting through the gear for her pants when the curtain billowed inwards.

  Jack caught her in her underwear and a gun aimed at his heart. He drew a deep breath. “Get dressed, Linds. We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “What happened?” she said, securing the safety before turning to her clothes.

  “A Mole.”

  Lindsay’s hands stilled on the waistband of her jeans. “What? Here?”

  “Neil spotted it on the outskirts and scared it off with a warning shot. It was likely a scout, though they don’t usually come up this far. We can’t stay here any longer.” Jack pulled a face. “Our showing up and its appearance are no coincidence. Dammit, I knew that I’d heard them back in The Gallery. Should’ve trusted my instincts. Now the entire camp is at risk. They can’t defend themselves.”