by Lynne Jonell
She scrunched down behind a bush and listened bleakly to Danny’s piteous sobs.
No. She wasn’t the one who would get killed. It was Danny who would be killed, unless she went in and got him out.
Christina drew in her arms to her chest, suddenly cold. Was she brave enough to go into that dark, horrible place?
She wasn’t sure. And even if she did go into the truck after him, what if Danny’s noise and clumsiness ruined the whole plan for everyone? Then ninety-nine children—not to mention her mother, Taft, Leo, and Christina herself—would lose their best chance to escape. And if they didn’t escape, some of them would die.
Christina sat without moving. They might not die right away, of course. It would take weeks before the food in the cavern ran out. And not all the children would be sent away in the garbage truck.
But if she tried to save Danny and things went badly—if she was caught, and the cut collars were discovered, and the guard on the orphans was doubled and tripled so that there was no chance of escape at all—then, eventually, people would die. How would she feel then, watching children loaded into the hopper, knowing that all too soon they would be mashed? How would she stand it, knowing that beneath her feet, near and yet impossibly far, her mother and Leo and Taft would slowly starve to death?
Christina stared up at the orphan fire, and her mouth went dry as she faced the alternative.
She could leave Danny where he was.
She could go now and lead the other ninety-nine orphans off the ridge. People would call her a hero, and sometime tomorrow when they got off the mountain, the townspeople would come and lift out her mother and Leo and Taft, too. It would be too late, then, for Danny, but she would have saved everyone else.
A soft night breeze lifted the cut ends of her hair and blew them back against her mouth, and stirred the leaves of the bush that sheltered her. It swirled up dried weeds, a sprinkling of dust, and bits of torn paper from the garbage truck’s hopper, and then it wafted back down and cooled the hot tears on Christina’s cheeks.
It was too hard to make the right decisions, out in the real world. No wonder her father had kept her behind walls, safe and protected. She couldn’t do it.
What if she did save ninety-nine orphans while leaving Danny in the garbage? Could she really pretend to be a hero? Could she even look Taft in the eye, knowing she had done that?
Christina bowed her head. Ninety-nine wasn’t going to be good enough. It had to be one hundred. And it had to be now.
She stood in the hopper, twisted away from the yawning open slot, and took a last deep breath of sweet air. Then, before she could change her mind, she stuck her shoulders through the gap, heaved up a leg, and scrambled in.
She was on her hands and knees in something that oozed. Retching, Christina tried to stand upright but stopped while she was still bent over, her stomach heaving in dry convulsions. Something squelched underfoot.
“Taff?” said a frightened voice from a back corner.
Christina shook her head, then realized Danny couldn’t see her. “Not Taft,” she managed before she choked, strangling on the fetid air.
The smell was beyond belief. It was ripe, it was rotten; it was old bananas and sour milk and rancid cheese and spoiled meat. It had the sharp, acrid scent of mold, and the rich, fruity odor of decaying plums and fresh vomit, and everything was slimy and wet and unspeakably foul.
“Steena?” said Danny, and then she had found him; her hands were patting his face, and he was gripping her arm, weeping in terror and relief.
“Hush, Danny. It’s all right. I’m here now.”
“But it’s dark, Steena,” Danny said, trembling. “I can’t get out.”
“I’ll help you. Come on, hold my hand. But, Danny, listen. Be very, very, very quiet, all right?”
Danny’s body joggled, and Christina realized that he was nodding vigorously.
“All right. I’ve got you. Now get down on your knees and crawl . . . wait. What’s that?”
The children froze at the sound of heavy boots crunching across gravel. There was the creak of a steel door and then the garbage truck bounced. A dim light flicked on in a thin line, where the back and side walls met.
“Okay, Barney,” came Barney’s voice, faint but clear through the crack. “You are not as stupid as they think. You are going to figure these buttons out if it takes all night.”
THE engine roared into life, rumbling and loud, the whole truck throbbing like a hollow steel drum.
Christina thought: This isn’t happening.
There was a sudden hiss of hydraulic hoses. Something shifted and clanked. The rear ram panel shut with a boom.
Christina clutched Danny, her mouth open in a silent scream.
A gleam of pale light appeared at the middle hinge of the rear panel, accompanied by a grating, sliding noise Christina had heard before. The ram panel was scooping, up and back, into the body of the truck.
Christina staggered away from the moving steel, dragging Danny to the far wall. She flattened against it, her heart hammering like a piston. She fixed her eyes on the yellow crack of light from the cab as if it were her last hope.
The crack thinned—dimmed—and winked out. The wall was moving, it was moving, she could feel it at her back, pushing them toward the rear panel, the panel that was scooping, ramming, coming at them—
Barney had pushed the red button. They were going to be mashed.
Christina became aware of a thin, high screaming and a rapid-fire metallic banging. At the same time the engine noise shut off abruptly, and over it all an angry male voice shouted, “. . . IT OFF, YOU DONKEY BRAIN! PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO SLEEP!”
Christina’s throat was sore and rasping. The scream, she realized, had been her own. She lowered the hand that had been frantically banging Leo’s wrench on the steel wall. Next to her, Danny was moaning quietly. She put a hand over his mouth and listened, weak at the knees.
“Sorry—sorry, Torkel. I just wanted to practice pushing the buttons so I didn’t mess up tomorrow—”
“You don’t have to start the engine to do that, you moron! Just turn the ignition halfway, enough for lights and such. The buttons will still work. Anyway, what’s the big deal? Look, it’s simple. Green to close, brown to scoop, red to mash. What’s the matter—can’t you tell them apart?”
“Of course I can, Torkel. I’m not stupid!”
Torkel snorted. “Right. Listen, I’m going in to get some sleep. Push all the buttons you want, but keep an eye on the food truck, will you? I’m leaving—it’s your shift anyway.”
Christina heard a crunch of gravel, a creak of wooden steps, and the sound of a door closing. She had to stop this, they had to get out.
“Barney!” she shouted, putting her mouth to the crack in the corner. “BAAAARRNEY!”
Her voice echoed hollowly. The truck jolted as if Barney had jumped a foot and fallen back on the seat.
“Who—who’s there?” Barney’s voice quavered.
Christina was struck by a sudden thought. Barney sounded afraid.
“Baaaaaarrney!” she cried again, making her voice lower, more ghostly. “Don’t doooooo this, Baaaarney!”
There was a long silence. “Who are you?” Barney said at last, his voice cracking.
This was better. As long as she could keep him talking, he wouldn’t be pushing buttons. “Whooooo do you thiiiiink I am, Barney?”
Barney gasped. “Momma?”
Christina felt an almost uncontrollable urge to laugh out loud, but she squashed it back down. This was no time to get hysterical. Let’s see—what would a real mother say? Danny moved restlessly under her hand, and she patted his shoulder.
“You were such a good boy, once, Barney.”
There was a sound of sniffling from the cab. “I was, I was! Momma, I always tried hard!”
Christina had a moment of sympathy. Barney did try hard. But trying hard wasn’t good enough, no matter what the dancing chickens on her computer liked
to say. You had to get it right. “So why are you mashing children, Barney? Couldn’t you find something better to do with your time?”
“Now, listen, Momma, you don’t understand. It’s nothing personal—it’s just business.”
The small bit of sympathy Christina had felt instantly drained away. “It’s personal to the kids getting mashed, Barney.”
The truck moved a little, as if Barney was shifting his weight. “Well, the mashing is really a very small part of it, Momma.”
Danny leaned against Christina’s side. She smoothed his rough hair and felt a growing anger, like a live coal in her stomach. “Sure, Barney, I know. There’s also the part where you starve them and scream at them and keep them working like slaves all day and all night—”
“Oh, Momma, I’m sorry!” Blubbering sounds came from the cab.
This was more like it. “It’s not too late to be a good person, Barney. Get away from Lenny Loompski and find a different job. But first, I want you to push the green button. No, wait—”
Christina concentrated. The green was to close the ram panel. What opened it? The brown button, perhaps? Yes. After it scooped, the panel went back to an open position. But Barney kept getting the buttons mixed up. And she couldn’t risk him pushing the red button. Barney didn’t seem to know his colors very well. The vision test she had taken on her computer only two days ago probably would have said he was color-blind.
Christina was suddenly alert. That was Barney’s problem! And red and green color blindness was the most common kind. The two colors just looked like shades of brown.
No wonder Barney kept pushing the wrong buttons. They all looked exactly the same to him.
“Momma?” said Barney anxiously. “You said you wanted me to find some different work. What should I do?”
“Don’t fix traffic lights,” Christina said instantly. “You’re color-blind.”
“I am?” Barney’s voice scaled up in surprise. “I thought I was just dumb!”
“Well, that too . . . no, no, I didn’t mean that. Listen, I want you to press—” Christina thought of the panel of buttons. She could see them in her mind’s eye—green on the left, then brown, then red. “Press the middle button, Barney.”
The truck jolted. Danny began to whimper.
“Shh, shh, shh,” Christina whispered in his ear, over and over, like a lullaby. “It’s okay, I’m right here with you . . .”
The ram panel scooped and grated and clanked back into position. A puff of air wafted in through the open slot.
“Momma? Did I do that right?”
Christina thought of the dancing chickens. “Good effort! Nice job! Now, though, you’ve got to try harder, son. Go do something that helps people instead of hurting them.”
“Okay. Like what?”
“Um . . .” Christina thought. Barney had seemed to enjoy polishing the mirrors and glass the day before. “Washing windows, maybe?”
“I like washing windows.” Barney’s tone brightened. “I’ll make you proud, Momma!”
“I hooope so, Baaaaarney . . .” Christina let her voice drift off.
All was still. Barney’s footsteps had faded away in the distance. “Time to get out of here,” Christina whispered. “Crawl over—okay, now get down, flat on your stomach.”
“It’s yucky,” said Danny, sniffling.
“I know. I won’t let you go. Put one leg through the opening—then the other—”
“I’m stuck!” Danny’s whisper was terrified.
“No, you’re not. Turn your head sideways. That’s right, now you’ve got it—”
Danny was out. His hand, still gripping Christina’s tightly, yanked her bruised shoulder down and out before she was ready. Her head banged against steel.
Christina swallowed a cry of pain. Her face felt greasy and slick. She shut her eyes, hung on to Danny’s hand, and slithered out into the hopper and the fresh, free air.
They crossed the grounds hand in hand, keeping to the shadows, moving slowly. The guards were mostly there to keep the orphans working, Christina realized—they were so sure that the shock collars would keep the children on the ridge, they hardly bothered to set any kind of guard at night. But that didn’t mean she could be careless. Especially when they were this close to freedom.
A thin thread of melody drifted to her ears, faint and rising in the dark. Christina paused. Was an orphan singing? Dorset should stop that at once. They couldn’t afford any noise at all—
No. It was coming from behind her. Christina turned and saw the cone-shaped mound and the moon shining down from a starlit sky. It was her mother’s voice.
Every night, her mother had said—every night for years, she had stood below the opening to the sky and sung this song for Christina, knowing that her daughter couldn’t hear it, but singing it for her just the same.
Only tonight, she knew Christina was above her. Taft would have told her what had happened, and Beth Adnoid was hoping that Christina would hear and take courage from it.
Christina tightened her grip on Danny’s hand and smiled. He was a mess—slimy bits hanging from his shirt, matted sticky hair, smudges on his cheeks that showed up even in moonlight. She probably looked even worse, and Christina was sure that they both smelled horrible, though after being in the garbage truck so long, she had almost lost the ability to tell.
But Danny was here, and alive, and that was what mattered. She could listen to her mother singing, and feel happy, instead of being crushed with guilt. Maybe the decision to rescue him would turn out to be a good one after all.
They crept quietly into the orphan camp and stopped next to Dorset. All around, the children lay flat, watching them with shining eyes.
“Did you remember to hang on to Bubby?” Christina whispered to Danny.
Danny reached in his pocket and squeezed. The cow gave a tiny squeak.
Christina grinned. “All right, then, we’ve got everybody. Come on, let’s go.”
SILENTLY, quickly, the children moved down the stair-stepped terraces. The moonlight cast strong, black shadows down one half of the mine, and the small figures kept to the dark side, slipping carefully from one level to the next.
The flat terraces did not go all the way around. Perhaps there was more zoom on the near side, or maybe the far side had been kept rough to discourage thoughts of escape. Whatever the reason, Christina saw they would have to go all the way down to the bottom of the mines and then pick their way up through the rugged terrain to get over the far rim and off the ridge.
Well, at least they were outside in the fresh air. She took deep breaths—she couldn’t seem to get enough—and realized, to her dismay, that her sense of smell was coming back. And she really, really stank.
She tripped over a small pile of stones in the dark: Joey’s cairn. She stopped to stack them up again—at least the ones she could find by feel—and was bumped into from behind.
“Pee-ew,” said a voice. “No offense, but would you mind staying downwind?”
Christina held on to Danny’s sleeve as the orphans filed past. In the dark she couldn’t see if they were holding their noses, but she thought they’d be crazy not to.
“I don’t want to smell bad, Steena.” Danny’s voice was troubled. “Can I wash?”
There was a trickle of water running through the rock at their feet. Christina shrugged. How could it hurt? He could splash some water on his face and hands, and it might make him feel better.
“Sure, Danny. But be quick, all right?”
“Okay!” Danny pulled off his shirt with enthusiasm and rubbed it diligently in the water.
Christina hadn’t thought he’d try to wash his clothes—and without soap, it wouldn’t do much good anyway—but it was too late to stop him now. She wrinkled her nose. Getting the shirt damp only intensified the odor, unfortunately.
She looked back the way they had come, to the lip of rock five terraces up. No guards, no lights, no cries of alarm. They were safe so far. She turned to f
ollow as the last orphan passed. “Okay, Danny, come on, and bring your shir—”
“Let them go! Let the orphans GO!”
The cry came from somewhere above. The children stopped dead as “GO! Go! Go!” echoed from the rocks all around.
“Shut up, Barney! You’re waking everybody!”
The orphans melted into the shadow of the rock wall, motionless. Above them, silhouetted on the mine’s high rim, was a man. He was waving his arms.
“I want to wake up everyone!” shouted Barney. “It’s not too late! We can still be good people!”
Christina smacked herself on the forehead. This was unbelievable.
There were two silhouettes on the rim. One was shaking the other. “What is wrong with you? Have you gone nuts?”
Three silhouettes, now. No, four. Christina stared with dread and fascination, the way she might watch a train wreck that she could do absolutely nothing about.
“I started to go away,” cried Barney, “but I had to come back. I don’t want to hurt orphans, I want to help them! I want to make Momma proud!”
Oh, no, no . . . Christina grabbed her hair with both hands. All she’d had to do was tell Barney to go away and never come back, but no, she had to try to inspire him. She glanced up at the rocky hill they had yet to climb. If a hundred orphans moved now, they would almost certainly be seen. But if they stayed still, they would be caught for sure—
“Hey, look! The orphans! They’re gone!”
Christina’s heart sank as more guards massed at the edge of the rim, looking down. One had a flashlight—no, two. The beams shone down into the mine, moving back and forth, crisscrossing on the first terrace.
It wouldn’t be long now. Should they run like rabbits? Or try to hide?
The guards could outrun children. But there was nowhere to hide in the open bowl of the mines, unless . . .
“Pass the word,” Christina whispered to the closest orphan. “Follow me. Don’t make a sound.”
She turned back the way she had come, feeling her way with careful feet. There! She bent down by the cairn of stones—Joey’s memorial—and patted around until she found the box with candles and matches, left for anyone the guards sent into the underground mine, the lava tube that had been blasted open by an explosion of zoom.
