The Sun Dwellers (The Dwellers Saga)

by David Estes

  Arms and legs are tangled in a mess of limbs. There’s a head in my armpit, and my face is near someone’s feet—Trevor’s, I think, by the look of them. We’re all frozen in place, none of us crying out or complaining or so much as breathing while we silently pray the man didn’t see or hear us.

  There’s a thud, presumably when the guy mounts the truck bed, and then a click and a clatter, as he rolls the door down, casting us into darkness.

  “Good to go!” he yells, and then the truck lurches back, the bags of garbage shifting slightly from the rear acceleration. I finally risk a breath, but still don’t speak, expecting the truck to slam to a halt, the door to fly open, the men to come at us with big guns. We do stop, but only because the truck has reversed out, and is now ready to move forward. With a harsh roar, the truck shoots forward, and we’re thrown back into the trash pile.

  “Get your armpit outta my head!” Roc hisses.

  “Your head’s in my armpit,” I retort.

  “Someone’s foot is in my face,” Adele whispers.

  “Sorry!” Tawni says.

  “This is foul,” Roc says.

  With the truck door closed, we’re locked in a steel box, the air thickening with each passing second. The stench is so strong it’s almost like I’m eating it with each breath. Every few breaths I gag, wishing I could throw up, but knowing the others would never let me live it down.

  “Are we there yet?” Trevor asks after a few minutes.

  “I truly hope you’re not going to ask that every five minutes,” Roc says.

  “Maybe every ten,” Trevor says, his smile obvious, even in the dark.

  We’re probably talking too much, but it’s comforting to hear my friends’ voices in the dark, and the drone of the engine is more than sufficient to drown out any sound we make before it reaches the driver’s ears.

  “I feel unclean,” Roc says after a few minutes of silence.

  “Join the club,” I agree.

  “Are we there—” Trevor starts.

  “No!” the four of us say collectively.

  “Okay, no need to get so testy. I was just checking.”

  “What’s the plan when we get there?” Adele says, thinking ahead, as usual.

  “Not get killed?” Roc suggests.

  “That’s a good start,” I say dryly. “Look, when the truck stops I’d say it’s highly unlikely we’ll be able to get out without being seen…”

  “So we’ll have to fight our way out,” Adele says.

  “Exactly.”

  “You children can stay in the back while I take care of it,” Trevor says.

  “Just like you took care of things with your crowd-surfing dismount?” Roc says.

  “That wasn’t my fault!” Trevor says.

  Although the banter between Roc and Trevor should put a smile on my face, it doesn’t. Instead, a lump forms in my throat. I swallow a few times, but it refuses to be dislodged. A dark cloud settles over me—not one of stinky garbage, although that’s there too, but of untold truths and sadness. The silent truth: one that Roc and I have held onto since I was fifteen, since right before my mother disappeared. The sadness: that I haven’t told Adele, or Trevor and Tawni for that matter. They deserve to know, not only because they volunteered for the dangerous mission we’re on, but because they’re good people. Eventually, the world needs to know, but first they should.

  “I’ve got something I have to tell you,” I say, my voice shaky. My skin is tingly and hot, and my heart races as I prepare to unleash the burden that’s been weighing on me for over two years now.

  “This isn’t the right time,” Adele says, to my surprise.

  “But you don’t even know—”

  “It doesn’t matter what it is, I know now is not the right time.”

  “Then when?” I say, still shocked that Adele wants me to wait even longer to give her information she knows I’ve been keeping from her since we met.

  “After this is over.”

  “What you are guys talking about?” Trevor asks.

  Ignoring him, I say, “That’s too long. I have to do it before we get to the President. It will help you all to know what you’re fighting against and what you’re fighting for.”

  “We already know that,” Adele says. “We’re fighting against evil, against injustice, against all that’s wrong in the world we live in. We’re fighting for each other, for our friends, for our families.”

  “But there’s more to it,” I say.

  “Now that we’ve got a ride, we’re ahead of schedule,” Roc points out. “There are places we can stop between the subchapters to rest, plan, and talk.” Roc to the rescue. He’s the only other one in our party who knows the truth—the importance of getting it out.

  “Okay. Can you wait until then, Tristan?” Adele asks, her voice comforting in the dark.

  “I can do that,” I say.

  “Damn. I was hoping for story time in the hot, stinky pile of garbage,” Trevor says. “Whatever you’re keeping from us, it had better be good after all this talk about it.”

  “Trust me,” I say, “it’s good.”

  Chapter FifteenAdele

  When the door opens we’re ready, Tristan on one side, me on the other, and Trevor, who volunteered for the job, right in the middle. Drums beat and cymbals clang in the distance. Curious, I think.

  “What the—” we hear a deep voice say when light floods the inside of the garbage truck.

  Trevor’s voice is innocent, the usual confidence and smartness stripped from it. “I must’ve gotten on the wrong bus,” he says. “Is this the Laguna Club?”

  What “the Laguna Club” is, or whether it even exists, I don’t know. What I do know: Tristan’s giving me the signal, one finger up, meaning it’s time for action.

  I swing out from my hiding spot behind the edge of the truck, whipping my boot around like a club, changing my direction slightly when I see the exact position of the big-eyed, wide-mouthed guy. Tristan’s moving, too, lunging like a battering ram headfirst, his body a blur. My foot hits the guy’s jaw about the same time Tristan’s plows into his chest. Close enough anyway.

  I follow through, landing on two feet and one balancing palm, swiveling my head to scan the area around us, which is full of trucks but empty of humans. There’s a punching sound, because, well, Tristan’s punching the guy in the head, either knocking him senseless, or knocking some sense into him, I’m not sure which. When he gets to his feet the guy’s not moving.

  A door slams, echoing through the aluminum garage, vibrating off the steel support girders and piping that run along the ceiling. “The driver,” I whisper, as the clop of feet on concrete approach.

  Trevor hops off the truck bed, his lips curled into a grin. “I’m not letting you have all the fun,” he says, accelerating around the corner. As I start to chase him, a man says, “Who the he—” and then the hollow ring of flesh meeting the thin metal side of the truck.

  By the time I catch up, the guy’s flat on his back, his head lolled to the side, his tongue bleeding and hanging partway from his mouth. “I think he bit his tongue when he accidentally ran face first into the truck,” Trevor says.

  “Nice work,” I say.

  “Why thank you.”

  “Is there anyone else here?” Tristan asks, striding up.

  “They’d be all over us if there was,” I say. “Trevor’s method of subduing this guy wasn’t exactly discreet.”

  “Everyone’s a critic,” Trevor says.

  “We should do some quick reconnaissance anyway,” Tristan says. “Roc, Tawni—c’mon out.”

  Roc hops down and offers Tawni a hand, which she takes, stepping gracefully from the truck. “I think my feet squished in goo,” she says.

  “Roc—there’s something on your tunic,” Tristan says, pointing.

  “Blech,” Roc says, prying a strip of something black from his shirt. “I don’t know what that is, but its presence in that truck alone means I desperately need a shower
.”

  “Can you wait like two, three hours until we get to subchapter one and kill our father?” Tristan says. “Then we can all use the nice palace showers.”

  “Ooh, hot water,” Roc says, his face lighting up.

  “You’ve got hot water?” I say, unable to hide the look of disgust from ambushing my expression.

  “Uh, yeah,” Tristan says, chewing on the side of his lip.

  I shake my head. The wonders of the Sun Realm never cease to amaze and anger me.

  Changing the subject, Tristan says, “Let’s split up and check the rest of the garage. Trevor and I will dispose of the bodies.”

  “We will?” Trevor says.

  “Yes.”

  “Are they…dead?” Tawni asks.

  “No, but I want to tie them up and hide them away so they won’t be found for at least a day. Hopefully by then this will all be over.”

  Translation: the President dead. Us maybe dead, too. Hopefully all resulting in a ceasefire, which might just give the Resistance enough time to get their legs under them.

  The garage is small, but is still able to fit almost ten trucks, each of which is sealed up and standing idle against one edge. Like the prongs of a fork, me, Tawni, and Roc branch out, each of us walking between a different set of trucks. Seeing nothing, we meet on the other side and then walk back by different routes, thus ensuring we hit every nook and cranny where a sun dweller trucker might be hiding. We even look underneath the trucks. Nothing.

  We finish by hauling each of the truck tailgates up to look inside. Every truck, except for ours, is empty, the garbage having already been hauled off to wherever the incinerator is. Like the garbage, the truck drivers are gone, too.

  “Where do you think they went?” Tawni asks.

  “They’re probably done for the day and have joined in the festivities,” Roc says. “Subchapter four has one of the biggest Sun Festival parades.”

  That explains the drums and cymbals. A parade. Which means: lots of people. Here we go again.

  When we return to our truck, Tristan and Trevor are finished with the two unconscious guys. They’ve used small swatches of rope to tie their hands and feet together, and used strips of cloth cut from the guys’ tunics to blindfold and gag them.

  “We should put them in one of the empty trucks,” I say.

  “They’ll find them too easily,” Tristan says.

  “No, they won’t find them until the truck returns to one of the other subchapters to get more garbage. They have no reason to open the ones that are already unloaded. They’ll probably just think the other workers didn’t finish with the last truck so they could join the parade early.”

  “Brilliant,” Roc says. “By the time they realize what’s happened, it will likely be tomorrow.”

  “Good call,” Tristan says, his blue eyes bright.

  While Tawni closes the gates on all of the trucks except two, Roc and Trevor haul the driver’s body into the back of one of the remaining vehicles, and Tristan and I lug the other one. When we slam the final gate it clicks and latches into place with a final ring that sounds eerie in the mostly empty garage.

  “You should put your heels on,” Tristan says to Tawni when we’re finished.

  “Ugh. I’ll ruin them,” she says.

  “People don’t walk barefoot here very often.”

  Her nose curls up, as she slips her filthy feet into her shoes, clasping them. “Satisfied?” she says, one hand on her hip.

  “Now you look like a sun dweller,” Roc says. “But we all really need to get cleaned up before we move on. We’ll turn heads for all the wrong reasons looking like this.”

  Luckily, there’s a wash basin for the truckers, full of soapy water, which we use to get most of the grime off our skin and clothes.

  Finished, I say, “Let’s go,” feeling the light thrill of anticipation in my stomach. We’re almost to our destination, a place that seemed impossibly distant when we first began our trek through the Sun Realm. Despite the shortness of our journey in terms of hours, it feels like we’ve been seeking our quarry for weeks, if not months. I suddenly feel the strain of the miles and the violence in my bones, my muscles, my very being, as if it’s all become a part of me, just caked on and patted down like a lump of clay, weighing me down.

  I shake my arms and legs as we walk toward the lone door that exits the garage.

  “What?” Tristan says, looking at me strangely.

  “I’m just cramping up from the truck ride,” I say.

  Nodding, Tristan raises a hand to a push bar halfway up the door. “Remember?” he says, raising his eyebrows.

  “Blend in,” I chime. “We got it.”

  His eyes meet mine for a too-short moment before he pushes outward, striding through the door as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.

  The parade is in full swing, but, thankfully, not on our block. As Tristan and Roc lead us toward it, I look up at the subchapter roof, my eyes widening as I take it in. Another artificial sun, this one hot white, fills the city with light. Even wearing my sunglasses, I can’t look directly at it. Covering the dark ceiling roof are speckles of light, shimmering like diamonds, reflecting the rays of the sun in a thousand different directions.

  “Tawni, look,” I breathe, my eyes lost above.

  “Wow,” she says when she looks up. “What are those?”

  “Diamonds,” Roc says.

  So not shimmering like diamonds, shimmering because they’re diamonds.

  “Where did they all come from?” I ask, finally looking away from the spectacle to meet Roc’s eyes.

  “Where do you think?” he says, his voice lowering into an angry tone.

  No, can’t be. All the blood and sweat I saw on his face and clothes when he came home from the mines. The worrying when there was a cave-in—that maybe this time I’d be the one to lose their father, not the girl down the street, or the boy two blocks over. The two Nailins a day wages, barely enough to buy half a bag of rice to eat with our week-old bread and well water. All for what? To supply the Sun Realm with a million diamonds to plaster their subchapter roof with so they have something pretty to look at every day when they wake up?

  My lip turns up into a snarl. “My father mined them,” I growl.

  “Some of them for sure. Subchapter fourteen was the biggest diamond mine in all the Tri-Realms. Eighty percent of the diamonds above us are from the mine your father worked in.”

  He survived the harsh working conditions: the stifling and disease-causing air, the claustrophobic tunnels, the filth and the grime, the crumbling support beams, the unstable mining dynamite and razor-sharp pickaxes. All to get him to a single moment—one that haunts me still—where one man crushed everything in my world.

  I slam a fist into my palm, generating a loud slap that makes Tristan turn toward me, his eyebrows raised, his mouth opening to ask a question.

  “I’m fine,” I say, cutting off his unspoken inquiry.

  Another reason I like Tristan: he usually knows when to let things go. He nods and continues on, leaving me to work things out on my own. Just his simple act alone helps to calm me. Come to think of it, the only time he’s ever really pushed me when I wanted to be left alone was after our fight. At the time I thought I wanted to be alone, but really, I needed him more than ever. If he hadn’t chased after me, who knows where we’d be in our relationship right now? Even when my father died and I fell into a deep, dark depression, he knew not to force my feelings out; instead, he was just there for me, by my side, every chance he had, despite the fact that he had lost a friend too.

  My father trusted Tristan. Even when many others didn’t.

  And so shall I.

  As we approach the first cross street, I cast my thoughts aside as the parade passes. Although there are hordes of sun dwellers, just like in the last subchapter we were in, I can see the action pretty clearly, as those in the parade are raised on high platforms, which are being pushed by muscular, shirtless men of all d
ifferent colors, black, brown, white, their heads down, their muscles toned and flexing.

  “Are those…?” I say, trailing off.

  “Slaves?” Roc says. “Is that what you were going to say?”

  Honestly, I’m not sure what I was about to say, which is probably why I didn’t finish the question. As far as I know, there’s no such thing as slavery. At least not anymore. We didn’t learn much about the old ways in history class at school, but we did learn that people used to use slaves to do things they didn’t want to do, but that it was abolished long before Year Zero.

  “I’m not sure,” I say. “Do they volunteer for that?”

  “They’re not slaves,” Roc says. “Well, not technically. They’re servants, like I am…I mean, like I was. But they might as well be slaves. They don’t get paid, just fed and sheltered and clothed.”

  “Why don’t they just leave?” Tawni asks, lowering her voice as we get closer to the back row of the crowd.

  “It’s called a breach of contract under the law, punishable by being sent to the Lower Realms or by imprisonment—usually both. Wealthy sun dwellers travel to the Lower Realms to find servants. They promise them an extravagant lifestyle, easy jobs with lots of time off, gourmet food, things we could only ever dream about.”

  “You mean, you were a moon dweller?” I ask.

  Roc laughs. “My father’s father was a star dweller.” His laugh fades and he screws up his face, wincing slightly, as if he’s just been slapped. “I guess he’s not my father anymore,” he murmurs, staring off into space.

  “So the man who raised you—his father was a star dweller?” I ask, trying to distract him from his dark thoughts.

  “Exactly,” he says. “He was recruited by President Dervin Nailin to come and work as a servant for him.”

  “Mine and Roc’s grandfather,” Tristan adds without turning around. Apparently he’s been listening to every word.

  Tristan plows into the cheering crowd, jostling his way through. I dive after him, heavier things on my mind than bumping into a bunch of sun dwellers. As I swim through the sea of parade watchers, I notice something. These people seem different than the ones in subchapter eight. They’re less…horrible. At least that’s my initial impression. There are kids, for one, riding on their parents’ shoulders and laughing and craning their necks to see the next float coming down the street. And the adults seem more civilized and fully sober, cheering and making noise, yes, but in a much more respectful manner than the young partiers we came across in the last sun dweller city.