“Take your name off,” Henry yelled near his ear. “Take it off before he sees it. I won’t allow it.”
“You don’t have any say over it,” he said back. “Not anymore.”
That stung Henry a bit, but there wasn't time to get mad at him.
“Aaron, look," Henry said. "I know you feel bad it took Eric and not you, but don’t do this. You can’t beat him. Just be glad it didn’t take you. Why can’t you just be satisfied with that?”
“I’ve got a right to fight like everyone else.”
“Please,” he said, squeezing Aaron's arm. The boy had grown so much bigger and leaner. “Please, I can’t—”
“You can’t?” he barked. "You can't what?"
Henry stared, his mouth open but unable to find any words that might satisfy his son. In desperation, he said it again.
"I can't…"
Aaron made a face that both shamed and angered Henry, but when he tried to stoke the emotions into something he could use, neither would take.
"I know you can’t," Aaron said. "That’s why I’m here.”
"Please," Henry said again. “You’re…all I have left.”
“Whose fault is that?”
"He'll take your arm, boy," Henry told him, pointing up at the row of over-muscled, malformed limbs mounted above the bar. "You want your puny arm hanging up there with the rest? I know you feel bad about what happened to Eric, but there's no sense in this. You can't beat him like he is, you know that."
"I might," he said. "I've been training."
"Training," Henry spat. "What are you playing at? Even if you win, which you won't, you've got no use for the winnings. If you're looking to commit suicide, don't make Eric be the one to —"
Eric hollered then, and everyone turned toward him. He'd seen the chalkboard. His nostrils flared as he slammed the squirming basket back onto the table, but Aaron seemed more amused than anything else.
"No turning back now," Aaron said.
"You're crazy," Henry told him.
"Maybe," he said. "How about a drink on the house?"
Henry poured him a double. Aaron nodded and reached into his shirt, pulling out two pieces of paper, folded tightly together. He slipped it to Henry over the bar.
"Hide this," he said. "Don't take it out until after the fight."
"What is it?"
"The note's for you. The other one's for Eric. It's important. After this is over, give it to Eric."
Henry shook his head. "Eric ain't gonna want this."
"Promise me."
Eric wouldn't take it, whatever it was. Aaron knew that as well as Henry. A lot of them were easy to distract, but not Eric. Pushing some random trinket on him wouldn't work like it did with Turgeon; it would more likely buy you a broken bone or worse. Henry looked down at the papers, then back at Aaron, unsure.
"What is it?"
"Just trust me," Aaron said.
Against his better judgment, Henry took the papers and stowed them in his apron, leaving Aaron there to drink his last supper while Eric crashed back into his chair and slammed his elbow back into the metal restraint. Aaron knocked back the drink, watching Eric. It marked the first time Aaron had seen him since he'd been taken. Outside of Arms, people mostly stayed out of the choggs’ way, and that went double for Aaron and his brother.
Aaron walked through the crowd of those shiny black helmets, toward the table still stained red and black from the night's events. Most people had kind of come to accept the way things were, but Aaron had always been different that way. He'd been restless, Henry thought, even before the chogg had taken Eric, and to make matters worse, Aaron had been there when it happened. He actually saw Eric get taken. Afterwards, he had never been the same. Henry thought that maybe he felt guilty that the chogg took Eric and not him, like somehow he let it happen, but the truth was that it had never been his choice to make. The chogg got what they wanted, and whatever that happened to be, no man could change it.
Aaron took off his shirt, and Henry could see that he hadn't been kidding about the training. He didn't know how long he’d been at it but his right arm was almost twice the size of his left, with a lot of bulk in the shoulder, bicep, and forearm. He had built up some impressive size, but it was nothing compared to what Eric had been turned into. Nevertheless, Aaron sat down, facing his brother, and put his elbow in the restraint.
That had to be a first. Henry had never seen anyone stupid enough to enter a match willingly before, not in all his years. The two men stared at each other as they clasped hands, and it seemed at that moment as though something passed between them. The greedy grin on Eric's face faded, and in fact he seemed to calm a little. His chogg didn't like that, and so it dug its legs into his skin, making his face screw up.
The table creaked as the muscles in both boys’ arms began to bulge. Henry didn't want to watch. He didn't want to see Aaron get what was coming to him, and yet he couldn't turn away. Aaron had gotten himself strong. He wouldn't win, not by a long shot, but so far he'd managed to keep his arm in one piece. He stared at Eric from under his brow, his jaw clenched and his eyes determined. His arm was shaking, being forced back, but just barely. The room grew as quiet as it ever got.
Eric's eyes bulged out, and tears began to leak from the corners of his eyes even as he began to grind Aaron's arm down toward the tabletop. There was no way those bones were going to hold up much longer, but Aaron still wouldn't give it to him.
Henry wished he could stop it, but he knew that he couldn't. He’d become resigned to hearing that snap, and was waiting for it when Aaron lashed out all of a sudden with his free hand, and Eric screamed.
Blood had come from somewhere, and both boys had it on them. Eric let go of Aaron's hand and stood up, knocking his chair back. It looked like Aaron had used a razor to cut the big tendon on Eric's wrestling arm. The giant limb hung by his side, bicep bunched up by the shoulder while blood ran down to drizzle from his fingertips.
Anger surged through the crowd. They began to mob the table, ready to tear Aaron apart, and Henry thought they'd have done it too if Eric hadn't lunged with his good arm and grabbed him by the throat first. Aaron didn't struggle as Eric dragged him across the table, pulling him in close until their foreheads touched, and as they did, Henry's mouth parted. He realized at that moment that when Aaron stepped into Arms and chalked his name on that board, he'd never intended to win. This is what Aaron had come to do.
Eric convulsed as the chogg pulled out its stinger, then with the barb still wet, the thing scuttled off from Eric's head and onto Aaron's. No doubt it was angry about what had just happened, but it had found a new fighter, and an even better one. It would take it some time to build up that already impressive arm, but in the end he would be stronger than even Eric.
The others backed off, and that seemed to be that. They milled about, some watching Aaron jerk about as the chogg began its reflex test, others turning back to their drinks and cigars. Henry grabbed a bar towel and hurried over to tend to Eric’s wound. The boy, a man now, really, looked as if he wasn't quite sure how he'd gotten there.
"Give me your arm," Henry said. The wound was deep. He would never wrestle again, which he guessed had been Aaron's goal. He pressed the towel to the gash as Aaron grabbed the wriggling basket off the table and stalked off toward the exit. The little blanket covering it shifted and Henry caught a glimpse of the tiny child underneath, black eyes wide and patterns of veins standing out beneath its grub-white skin. Aaron would eat it. Every twelfth or so got eaten. He would make his way down into the deepest part of the tunnels and…
"Wait!" Henry called.
Aaron stopped, and the bar noise dipped low. Henry immediately regretted it as his son, or what used to be his son, turned to look him in the eye.
Aaron didn't say anything. No one ever did, once they had a chogg. Instead he just stared. He stared right into Henry, and through him. Any trace of recognition had gone. Henry knew it for certain when he saw Aaron’s eyes. Any t
race of recognition he ever thought he’d seen in any of their eyes had been wishful thinking, an illusion, because he could see then that even when looking into his father’s eyes, Aaron may as well have been looking at a shoe, or a rock. Henry felt his lip quiver, but knew better than to speak up. He didn't know if the chogg had meant for him to see that, and to understand, or if it had just looked back because it heard a loud noise. Either way, it turned away again a moment later, and then stalked out of the bar without another glance back at them.
“Damn fool,” Henry muttered, hearing his own voice break a little. Why had he gone and done that? What for?
“Where is he?” Eric babbled. “Where’s Aaron?”
Henry looked down to his other son, the disfigured brute who lay in his arms like a child.
"Hush, now," he said.
"Dad, where's Aaron?"
Henry's eyes had grown wet. He reached into his apron for a napkin and felt something else. The papers, he realized. The ones Aaron had given him when he'd first come to Arms.
Henry looked around to see if anyone else was watching, but the others had begun filtering out now that the fights were over. Keeping them low, he unfolded the papers.
One of the two papers was a hand-scrawled note, and the other was a map of the tunnels. A path had been drawn on the map in a continuous dotted line. Henry squinted, moving the map closer to his face to better make it out.
"After this is over, give it to Eric. Promise me."
"Dad?" Eric called.
"Hush."
Henry hadn’t mined in years, but he knew the tunnels. He could navigate them blind, and he saw that at a certain point the path his son had drawn no longer made sense. It wandered into an obscure area that had long since been tapped and abandoned. The map ended there, but the line continued to a blank section that had been marked with a red circle.
"Dad?" Eric moaned.
Henry tore his attention from the map and saw his son's face was ashen and slick with sweat. He folded the map back up along with the note, unread, and returned them to his apron.
"It's okay," he told Eric. "I'll patch you up."
“Where’s Aaron?” he asked again. A lump began to form in Henry’s throat, and he swallowed it.
“He’s gone,” he said.
* * *
Several nights passed, but Aaron didn’t return to Arms. Henry tended bar as he always had, then returned home to tend to Eric afterwards, although in truth he didn’t need much tending. Whatever juice the chogg had pumped him full of had caused the wound to heal almost overnight. The tendon remained severed, but the bleeding had stopped and the tissue had knitted up, leaving only a puckered scar. Eric was back on his feet the following night. By the next day he’d begun to ask about returning to the mines. He could have returned to his quarters, but didn’t protest when Henry insisted he stay, at least for a while.
Henry lay awake those nights, thinking about the note Aaron had written him, and the accompanying map. He couldn’t quite bring himself to destroy either of them, but he’d hidden them both under his mattress. He still didn’t know quite what to make of what Aaron had written, but he knew that the words were dangerous, somehow.
They didn’t come from below. They came from above.
He lay in the dark, wondering what Aaron could have meant by that. That they’d come from the upper strata of tunnels? New tunnels went down, not up. They went down or sideways. No one ever went back to tunnels that had been used up. Chogg liked to dig deep, and the deeper the better.
We weren’t meant to be here. This isn’t where we belong, and we don't have to live like this. Eric knows. He knows something important. He was going to show me, but they grabbed him before he could. I'm hoping that, if my plan works, he remembers.
Henry let out a grunt. Did Aaron think men liked living this way? Did he think that if a better life were possible, they wouldn’t take it?
He breathed deep, letting the musk mellow the thoughts swirling in his head.
The map was Eric's. The area he marked is important, but I wasn’t able to locate whatever it was he found. He’s the only one who knows where it is, and what it is. I know you probably had to see what happened to me, and I'm sorry, but this was the only way I could think to make the chogg let him go. I know you, Dad, and I know you might not want to do this but I believe this is that important, so you be sure to give the map to him after I'm gone. Make him remember. Don’t let this all be for nothing.
Henry sniffled and wiped his nose with one forearm. He used the back of one grimy hand to wipe his eyes, as well. He hadn't shown the map to Eric, of course. He couldn't bring himself to. He bit down on the tears, feeling ashamed, not wanting Eric to hear. Then he realized that he could not hear Eric’s low, regular breathing.
He sat up and listened. Eric didn’t snore, but he had the rattling breath of a miner. The only sound Henry heard was his own breath, and the faint scuttling of chogg in distant tunnels.
Reaching to the oil lamp that hung on the wall next to his bed, Henry drew a match from the bin and struck it. When he lit the wick and turned up the flame, he found Eric’s bunk empty.
Panic began to rise up in his chest. Eric could have gone back to his own quarters, or grown restless and left to walk off some energy in the tunnels, but having read and reread Aaron’s message so many times, Henry knew that he’d done neither of those things. Dreading what he’d find, he took the lamp from its hook and knelt next to his own bed. When he lifted the mattress he found the crumpled note Aaron had written along with the map, but they'd been moved. Eric had seen them.
"Fool," he muttered, scrambling to dress. He suited up for tunnel travel, pulling on a gritty jumpsuit and grabbing his helmet from its rack. He had no idea how much of a head start the boy might have on him, but hoped he hadn't been gone long. His knee throbbed as he picked up his cane and turned to the exit, pushing the door open with the groan of metal.
"Fool," he said again, and headed out into the darkness.
* * *
It took nearly two hours to reach the edge of the mapped area that Eric had drawn, and his unease grew with each step. He wandered through the spent tunnels above, up steeper and steeper slopes until his ears began to pop. In spite of the aches and pains, he pressed on, following the guiding ropes with one hand on his cane and the other holding up the map in front of him so that the candle mounted on his helmet could light it.
When he reached the blank, unmapped area near the red circle, Henry stopped to listen. He didn't hear his son, or anyone else for that matter, but a low moan from somewhere ahead may have blanketed the sound. He peered into the darkness ahead, looking for any sign of light, but he didn't see anything. All he could see were the mouths of tunnels directly around him, their guiding ropes long since removed. He was alone, with only the candle to stand between himself and utter darkness. He looked back to the map.
He’s the only one who knows where it is, and what it is.
"Eric?" he hissed, his voice echoing away to nothing. His legs felt like jelly.
The circle covered a fairly small area. Whatever Eric had found, it had to be close. Henry approached the junction, trying to decide which one to take, when he noticed the light from the candle flicker across the crumpled paper, and stopped short.
That flicker, and the quiet hiss of the candle flame, told him that a breeze, faint though it had been, had come from somewhere down the rightmost tunnel.
He took it, using the flame as his guide until he could actually feel a faint breeze on his face. When the shadows around him grew especially hectic, he stopped.
Henry turned and saw that a narrow crevice had formed in the wall, a dark gap that ran floor to ceiling. At first glance it appeared to just be a crack, a pocket that had opened in the stone over time, but he didn't recognize it. It must have formed sometime after he'd been retired from mining duty.
He moved closer, and when he put his face near it he could feel a cold current of air. It felt different fr
om the winds of the tunnels, which were fan-driven. Not only did the air feel much cooler, it felt…different. It had none of the underground's heavy humidity, and it didn't smell of alcohol breath and chogg musk.
He reached toward the crevice and slipped his hand through. In the shadows, the gap had appeared deceptively narrow, but he found that if he turned sideways he could squeeze his entire body through. On the other side, he spotted a faint glow from down the narrow tunnel. The passage made an abrupt turn up ahead, and the light was coming from that direction.
"Eric?" he called again. His voice reverberated into the distance, but no reply came.
He stuffed the map into his pocket and hobbled toward the light, grit crunching underneath the soles of his shoes as he went. He turned the corner and found himself looking down a tunnel unlike any he'd ever seen before. He still stood in a circular passage formed from dirt and rock, but a few feet ahead the tunnel changed to become square, its walls, ceiling, and floor all smooth and precise.
He made his way down, each step careful until the dirt under his feet changed over to some kind of smooth surface made up of tiles. Up ahead he could see a doorway, and through it, light. Something to the left of the inside of the doorway glowed, casting a shadow across the tiled floor.
"Eric?"
Henry increased his gait, boots and cane clacking on the smooth floor. He stepped through the doorway and into the room on the other side, where he found Eric standing there with eyes fixed on something in front of him.
The room was different from anything Henry had ever seen before, yet somehow it felt familiar, as if maybe he’d imagined or dreamed it. All along the walls were consoles, each covered in arrays of buttons and switches and mounted with a square glass display. Most of the consoles were dark, but a few had little colored lights that flashed and twinkled.
The flame still danced over the candle on Eric’s helmet, but Henry could see that it wasn’t the source of the light he’d seen from down the tunnel. One of the console’s glass displays was lit, and it flickered with a flat glow that played on Eric’s mesmerized face.
The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 13
