When I finished the drink I was already feeling the sugar/caffeine high coursing through my veins. I went back the way I came and found the three-way tunnel. I picked the middle one and explored that way. It didn’t seem like it wanted to lead anywhere except to various offices and buildings that would bunk the people who worked here. Some of the bunks were clearly being used on a regular basis, but I didn’t see anyone.
I walked along stone walls and explored what seemed like miles of corridors. Some were meant for vehicles. Others were narrow enough for only humans to walk through. Signs had been torn away from walls. The colors on the floor seemed to jump and disappear depending on the whims of their creators.
If I lived in such a place, would I want plain directions for visitors? I think I would not. The colors were likely a recent addition, giving meaning to who lived here.
And who lived here? Besides Tate of the one arm and the bipolar, psychotic nature?
I passed through a steel-door entrance and found one of the reservoirs that Tate talked about. It was a huge cavernous opening with water gently lapping at the end, letting me know that even beneath the earth, the moon affected the forces of gravity. It went back far enough that I couldn’t see the other side. It was deep enough that someone could put a boat in it and float around. In fact, as I raised the lantern, I could see a plastic kayak propped on a side wall.
The water had a wet but fresh smell. I resisted a slight shiver as the colder temperature registered on my skin. I didn’t have a thermometer, but I guessed it was in the sixties after a cool breeze washed over me.
It occurred to me that a place like Cheyenne Jr. was like a mine. Fresh air didn’t occur naturally in a place like this. It required something to circulate it or else it became stagnant, even dangerous. (Canaries in a coal mine?) Something that circulated air required energy to run. It needed a generator. A generator necessitated fuel stores. Perhaps the U.S. government in its infinite wisdom had also built a reservoir or a big tank just for diesel fuel. Perhaps the people who lived here prioritized in ways that I hadn’t taken into account. They could use rechargeable lanterns instead of using the electricity. They could cut down on refrigeration because the underworld tended to be cooler as a whole. They could use the fuel stores to run whatever kind of recycling device they had managed to get running because they wouldn’t be able to live down here if they didn’t recycle the air.
Interesting. There were many fuel stores available still on the outside because no one was able to utilize them. It would be something people who lived in Cheyenne Jr. would want to trade for if I could broker some kind of deal.
I forced a knot down my throat because it meant I would have to deal with a certifiable fruitcake like Tate. Had he told the people he lived with that his day job was being a mass murderer and arsonist? I thought about it. It didn’t seem like he was afraid that I would blab about his sordid past.
I stared at the water and saw something moving at the very edge of the light. The lantern was bright, brighter than a gas one, and I held it up to see as far as I could. Was there someone in the water? Something?
A pale shape slithered around the blackened waters. A distant splash sounded as it moved in the reservoir. It touched the glimmer of light and slid back out of sight. That iridescent glimmer of light meant something else. It was the edge of the bubble. The bubble ended in the middle of the mountain and in the middle of the reservoir. It meant that on the opposite side of the bubble, here, there be dragons.
Or in this case, here, there be…mermaids.
A few more shapes splashed and writhed in the waters. Their heads came out of the water, and they peered at me with obvious interest. I didn’t have a longing to grab the kayak and paddle out to see them to ask what was crack-a-lacking. Their hair was paler than mine. Their skin was corpselike. Their eyes glowed reddish-pink as they reflected the lantern’s light back in my direction. I felt a tremor run down my spine, and it wasn’t the kind of tremor that bespoke of a chilled breeze in the middle of the mountain.
These weren’t the friendly buddies that some of the new animals could be. These were the kind that had a penchant for animal flesh, and look, humans were animal, and we supposedly tasted like chicken. Maybe I should ask Tate about that. I could just imagine how that conversation would go.
I stood on the edge of the reservoir’s concrete wall and stared out into the blackness. A half-dozen red eyes stared back. Theirs didn’t blink.
“Well, I can honestly say that I need a bathroom right now,” I muttered.
The sound made the mermaids jerk. Albino mermaids, I thought. They were like the fish that lived in caves for centuries and more. Living in the darkness made them albinos and sometimes blind, too. Some of the critters I’d heard about had lived in the caves so long that evolution had taken away their eyeballs.
“So how did you get in here, anyway?” I asked the mermaids. “I doubt you came with the water, so I bet you popped in with some of the other new animals.”
“Can you talk to them?” someone asked, and I almost didn’t need the bathroom after all. The voice came from behind me, and the lantern juddered in my hand.
I turned my head to see a young woman standing about ten feet away. She was dressed in an oversized brown t-shirt like one of the military ones I’d seen in my father’s dresser. (The Naval dress uniform was his typical attire. He almost never wore the blue and gray pixilated patterned ones that a brown t-shirt went underneath.) It wasn’t a stretch to understand that the people who lived in Cheyenne Jr. were using everything down here, to include whatever clothing had been left by the Air Force personnel. She also wore a pair of cut-off jean shorts with tattered ends.
The young woman was taller than I was and about ten pounds lighter, which meant she was nearly anorexic in appearance. Her skin was dull and lacked a natural luster. Her eyes were ringed with dark flesh. She almost looked like the ghost of someone who had once died in this spot.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I know someone who could if we could get her here. She can talk to most of the new ones if they care to listen.”
The young woman brushed a long hank of black hair over her shoulder. The hair was as dull as her skin. She was clean, but she needed a good dose of sunshine to produce some Vitamin D. Or maybe these people could use a few tanning beds. Her shoulders slumped a little as she obviously thought about what I said. “I don’t think that will happen,” she said. She looked past me into the water. “Sometimes they make sounds like whales. I guess they’re smart, too.”
I looked back into the water. I could no longer see the reflection of the red eyes, but white shapes moved distantly. The water rippled in response to their actions. “I wouldn’t underestimate them.”
The woman was smiling grimly as I glanced back at her. She wasn’t going to underestimate the mermaids. “They took Tucker a few months ago,” she said, and her tone was prosaic. “They used some kind of rope and went fishing for him. Caught him in a loop. It was like they watched a rodeo and decided they could do it, too. I saw part of the rope. I think it was made out of a type of seaweed that grows out there now. It’s pale like them.”
I stepped back from the edge of the reservoir. Being lassoed by something in the black waters wasn’t my idea of a good time.
“But Tucker was teasing them,” the woman said as she clearly gauged what I was thinking. “He put stuff in the water just to see what would happen. He hooked one of them once and dragged her almost all the way in. They can come past the edge of the zone, you know, if they really want to. They don’t like it, though, so mostly they stay right at the brink. Or further out. I think this reservoir is a lot wider and deeper than it was originally.”
“Nice to know,” I said. I thought about Light and the girls. I hoped they weren’t waiting for me, waiting to become a snack for something that ate really big bugs. I hoped they were headed back to Sunshine as fast as their pearly little wings could take them. They would be safer there than here. (D
ream Landers had said the firefly pixies had spoken to him, but Dream Landers didn’t seem very real to me.)
She moved to the side of the reservoir and knelt to let her fingers trail in the water. I happened to notice that she didn’t have a flashlight or a lantern. I thought about warning her about what happened to people who push the envelope, but I reconsidered. She knew about the mermaids. She already knew. She didn’t need my input.
“My name is Lulu,” I said. I sighed and sat on the edge of the reservoir, carefully setting the lantern on a flat surface where it wouldn’t fall into the water and placing the crutch next to me.
“Salome,” she said.
I blinked. “A biblical name,” I said. That pesky knot had abruptly developed in the back of my throat. Hasadiah was a biblical name. It was a biblical name I never wanted to hear again.
Salome cleared her throat, and out of the corner of my eye I saw her shrug. “How would this person talk to them?” She pointed out into the darkness of the reservoir.
“It’s a gift,” I said. “She has an ability to talk to any of the new animals. They gave it to her so that she could help humans and the new alike.”
Salome digested that with aplomb. Certainly she had to know about what was and wasn’t about these days. Two years of the world being new and improved would educate anyone.
“You’ve been out of this place, haven’t you?” I asked.
“Of course. I was in Wewoka, Oklahoma,” Salome said. “It’s a very small town about fifty miles southeast of Oklahoma City.”
“And now you’re under a mountain,” I said.
“It’s safe here,” she said promptly.
“It wasn’t for Tucker,” I said, playing devil’s advocate because I felt like it.
“Tucker got what was coming to him.”
“Is that where you get your drinking and cooking water?” I asked, my face wrinkling with distaste. Mermaid poop and decaying corpses of men who got what they had coming to them. That’s what I had a raging desire to drink from. Not.
“There are four reservoirs. The one we drink from is all the way down,” Salome said with a tilt of her head indicating the direction. “No mermaids in that one. It’s all inside the zone.”
“So how many of you are there in here?”
Salome smiled secretively. I didn’t like that much. I kind of wished the mermaids would come back.
“Tate isn’t your leader, is he?” I persisted. “I know him from way back, and he’s not exactly leader material.”
Salome climbed to her feet. “They sent me to look for you.”
Great. Another close-mouthed individual. Maybe Salome was related to the firefly pixies.
“So how did you find your way around in the dark?” I asked, letting my voice be conversational. Just asking like I was asking about her favorite color or the name of the last book she read. Just talking. No big secret to tell Lulu with the limp.
“The lines are glow-in-the-dark paint,” Salome said as she stared out into the blackness. “We don’t have many of the rechargeable lanterns, and the LEDs aren’t going to last forever.”
I glanced at the lantern with a little bit of guilt. Nothing in our world was going to last forever. Before the change I would have simply ordered another one of whatever, or I would have told the housekeeper to do it. That had been Louise. I hoped that Louise had kicked the bucket, and I prayed she rested in peace. Then I shrugged. It wasn’t like I was here voluntarily. They could have simply left me outside and brushed me off their hands.
Salome held out her hand. I took it and stood up awkwardly. She held onto it as she pulled me in a little closer. The scent of popcorn on her breath was strong. It smelled like the movie theater kind with extra seasoning. I started to jerk my hand away, but she was stronger than she looked.
“Are you sure you don’t want to get to know the mermaids?” Salome whispered.
I had my other hand on Mr. Stabby. Salome’s eyes flickered down and saw it. She smiled and stepped back, abruptly letting go of my hand. I nearly overbalanced, but she reached out and tugged on my t-shirt, gently correcting my balance. “I’m not a mermaid kind of girl,” I said steadily. “I’m more like a zombie unicorn kind of girl.”
Salome’s expression was a little confused. “Come on,” she said. “The meeting hall is this way.”
After an excruciating walk down a very long hallway and three turns, I discovered that the meeting hall was a movie theater, which explained why Salome had popcorn breath. I saw that the lights were on and heard the murmur of voices. The sign on the outside said that there had been a James Whale marathon featuring Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, and The Invisible Man. (I was almost sorry I’d missed that.)
Salome opened the door for me, and all the voices stopped.
I saw a half-dozen people sitting and standing in the small theater that probably didn’t seat more than fifty people. Most had buckets of popcorn and were munching the stuff by the handfuls. At the front of the theater was the screen. A lectern had been moved there, and a man stood at the podium looking at me expectantly.
My eyes skittered over the people and bounced over Tate, who sat in the front row with a very large tub of popcorn. He smiled crookedly at me. Then my eyes came back to the man in the front.
If there was ever a nightmare to be had, this would have been mine.
Chapter 9
Lulu Learns a Lesson
The Past – San Francisco, California
When I woke up two mornings after I thought I had killed a man via the chain/strangulation method, it was overcast. It was the first cloudy day in weeks that I could remember. (There had been a lot of sunlight pouring through the leaded glass windows of the church, and possibly I just hadn’t noticed that on some days the light was lessened by clouds. I had been obviously otherwise occupied.) It seemed apropos considering my mood.
I made myself some brekky and peered out of the window of the borrowed kitchen I sat in. Brekky was two soft PowerBars and instant coffee. (No gourmet cook, I.) There had also been a can of V8 that I sipped at for about ten seconds. The V8 juice had seriously stung the inside of my mouth, and I realized that my teeth had cut the flesh when Theo had been pounding on me. I finished eating and drinking and went to use some mouthwash in an upstairs bathroom, making sure to carry the KA-BAR with me all the way. I had to step over a pair of pajamas lying on a hallway runner. Matching slippers lay at the bottom of the legs.
I stopped to look at the pajamas. I knew the brand. I had bought a set for my father for the last Father’s Day. Ralph Lauren made hella nice sleepwear. There was a shiny piece of jewelry next to the end of one sleeve. I touched it with my toe and saw that it was a medical alert bracelet. The person who had worn it was allergic to penicillin, tetracycline, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medicines. I took that to mean that the person couldn’t take a whole lot of different medications.
The thought that popped into my head was, Why would someone leave their jammies and their medic alert bracelet on the floor in the hallway? Why, they would not. Hmm. What a conundrum. What has happened?
People had vanished. They had simply blinked out. Someone had been on his way to the bathroom or to the kitchen, and then he was gone. He left his nightwear and his medic alert bracelet and his slippers. He’d also left me V8s in the kitchen and lots of PowerBars, which were much better for me than Twinkies. He also probably left me some antiseptic mouthwash with which I was going to make certain my cut mouth was thoroughly cleaned. I grimaced as I went into the bathroom. I found a large bottle of mouthwash, made sure it had lots of alcohol in it, and swished generously. It stung almost as much as the V8, so I figured it was working. While I swilled the mouthwash in my mouth, I tried to avoid looking in the mirror at my bruised and swollen face. Instead, I thought about what I should have been thinking about all along.
Weird animals. Disappeared people. Nutjobs. The world was so different I almost couldn’t wrap my head around it. I wasn’t complete
ly alone. There was the guy on the sailboat. There had been Theo. There had been Bathsheba. It stood to reason that there were others out there. There had to be. It was only a matter of finding them and making sure they weren’t like Theophilus the Demented.
I touched the handle of the KA-BAR. I might not be an expert in weapons, but I could learn how to use one. There were books on it in the public library. I could read about a lot of things. I could figure out how to find other people. If I was really smart, I could connect myself to people who wouldn’t be like Theo. I could be safe.
If I had been smart, I would have realized that it was Louise whispering sweet nothings in my ear. Louise wanted to be safe. Louise wanted to have other people protecting her. Louise wanted a big man to take over and tell her how to live her life in the nasty ol’ apocalypse. After all, there were dragons and blue, three-eyed sheep things out there. Who knew what else there was and wasn’t?
After I was done with my mouth, I went to work on the bandages I’d wrapped around me. I had to shower with cold water to loosen them up. Then after I pulled them loose along with some of the scabs that had formed, I had to jury rig a way to apply an antiseptic ointment I’d found in the medicine cabinet next to all the former occupants various pills and tinctures. I used a clean pad to put the ointment on and applied it to where I could reach. Then I affixed another clean pad onto a scrub brush with gauze and got the rest of my back. When I finished with that I applied about three rolls of sterile, purple stretch wrap that I’d gotten from the pharmacy. I wrapped it around my body so that it would stay in place until I could change it again. I imagined keeping the wounds clean and taking the antibiotic pills would help me in the best way possible.
It took me a while, and during the process I threw up most of the PowerBars, the coffee, and the V8. I had to lie on the floor on my stomach until the pain and nausea receded. It was likely an hour later that I carefully walked downstairs and found another breakfast bar to eat. This time it was a soft chocolate chip-flavored one from a box that promised it was 7% of my daily fiber needs. I sipped some more instant coffee and made myself drink about a cup of water out of the tap.
Forest of Dreams Page 8
