Among You Secret Children

by Jeff Kamen

  ‘When do we go?’ asked a woman in bandages as she reloaded her weapon.

  ‘Now,’ he said.

  ‘Then let’s go,’ she said, and as soon as a group was organised, they headed for the exit doors.

  ~O~

  Moth ran past the stinking jail cells and followed the passages as they wound up towards the base. Many times he was forced to deviate, turn back on himself, but eventually he saw iron claws in the walls, and as he ran on he heard a buzzing in his pocket. He snatched out the radio to hear a familiar voice addressing him:

  ‘… for your cooperation. Lay down your arms and present yourself to the GRIP unit in the station … terms of a ceasefire … will not be harmed in any way. Your safety is guaranteed.’

  It was Vonal, speaking over a series of alarms set at different pitches, all keening and wailing over one another. As the message was repeated, he pressed down his thumb and went to reply, to salute his comrades and friends, then thought better of it. A huge movement of people was underway, a movement he was not to be a part of. His own fate was different, written otherwise. Boom boom and away.

  He ran on again, ascending turn on turn through grey wefts of smoke that were steadily thickening. On reaching the stone circus, he ran coughing from one entrance to another until he thought he had the right one, and with his face buried in his jacket, he made his way to the lift and punched the call button.

  Nothing happened. He punched it again. A steely whisking began from behind the doors, then stopped. He was punching the button again when he heard a loud bang followed by a hissing roar, a sound like fires spraying. When he put his hand to the door he pulled it away with a yelp and was backing away from it as a draught of smoke whooshed out through the cracks and puffed and bloomed before him.

  He retreated down the passage, the radio blasting in his pocket: ‘We will make room for all personnel on board, whatever your allegiances in the struggle for a free Nassgrube. Although we have control of the City, neither side in this conflict has anything to fear. I say again — the train will be with us in less than fifteen minutes. Get to the passenger platform as soon as possible.’

  ‘Agent Vonal!’ he cried, ‘it’s me, Matthëus! I’m down here! I’m down at the lift! The lift! It’s broken! I’m trapped here! I’m trapped!’

  ‘… base is being evacuated. It is no longer safe to remain here. Leave your positions and come forward now. We will not be able to wait for you. I say again — we will not be able to wait for you.’

  On he ran, gasping. ‘It’s me!’ he cried. ‘It’s me, Vonal, it’s Matthëus! I-I’m down here under the basement! I’m down here. Help me, help me, I can’t get out!’

  ~O~

  ‘Make your way to the passenger platform,’ Lütt-Ebbins announced, adjusting the microphone. ‘That’s platform one, to the right of the station as you enter it. If you need assistance, get the attention of a GRIP representative and they will try to help you. There is an emergency evacuation underway. Do not inhibit people’s movement towards the platform. That’s platform one. I repeat — we’re evacuating Van Hagens, make your way quickly to the passenger platform. Do not bring supplies or personal belongings. They will block the way, and will be immediately removed.’

  He hesitated, looking down at the concourse through a broken window in the control tower, trying to gauge if his message was getting through. It was hard to judge: Vonal’s voice was also roaring through the tannoys, speaking from who knew where of years of broken promises and of a vicious and persecutory elite; speaking of their downfall, of an end to all war; of bright opportunities in the newly taken City; of a chance to lay down arms, to embrace the peaceful aims of the uprising. The speech went on and on, blending into the background whilst one recorded timetable announcement echoed over another in a cat’s cradle of voices that hung in a dense sea of red and green, lights which pulsed in a geometric dance as the smoke-fogged hoardings above the passenger platform flashed up shuttle updates from bygone months and years.

  Wiping his eyes, he could just make out a group of insurgents bringing people across from the cargo bay, many of whom appeared to be resisting. Just then, sporadic gunfire broke out from the entrance, and those able to move freely ran for cover. Others dropped to the ground, injured or dead or in fear for their lives, he could not tell. More shots came. He flinched, watching as the insurgents backed away, shooting back at their assailants and screaming instructions to the people under their charge. He was delivering another message, hoping to calm the situation and bring the shooting to an end, when the tower shook with the impact of another explosion. He clutched the sill to keep his footing, watching as a section of the roof collapsed above a row of containers. It fell in with a sustained series of crashes and a grinding downpour of brickwork and metal struts. Within the hanging haze he saw steel beams exposed where the cracks were widening. Flaming nests of cables were dangling uselessly amidst the wreckage, twisting and dripping as they burned.

  There was another roaring thud and within moments the area where he and his team had sheltered earlier was clouded with plaster dust. Chunks of masonry were breaking up as they hit the floor, rolling on again in bumpy cartwheels. People were shrieking, running back into the dark, hiding behind barricades and burnt-out trucks. He saw figures diving down behind overturned pallets and benches and heaps of wreckage previously used as sniper shields. Someone with a raised gun span backwards and fell.

  ‘How are we doing?’ he yelled, turning to the engineers at the control desk. ‘Any sign?’

  ‘Still nothing,’ said the younger man, indicating a screen. ‘There’s nothing here.’

  Lütt-Ebbins socketed the microphone and ran across to them, rounding a table heaped with breathing gear. ‘That can’t be right,’ he said, peering over the younger man’s shoulder. ‘Damn it, it can’t be. They told me it was on its way.’

  ‘There’s nothing on the readings, Lütt.’ The engineer pointed to a grid with dots set at ten mile intervals.

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘The track’s live, right? Running on City power. If a train was moving we’d know.’ The engineer typed a command and the dots lit up briefly in sequence, then darkened. ‘See? They work okay.’

  ‘But couldn’t it be a mistake? What if the dots aren’t registering its movement?’

  ‘Maybe. So much of it’s screwed up, there could be a fault with the sensors. But you can see for yourself, this unit seems okay.’

  ‘Call them again, get them to confirm what’s happening. And ask for Gerhart, he’s the track inspector. Tell him if they haven’t done it yet, it has to be now. It’s that or we run for it.’

  The engineer turned to him, startled. ‘I can’t do that, Lütt. I can’t, it’s suicide.’

  ‘Then you tell them. Tell them if they can’t get a train to us, they’re to cut the supply immediately. Understand me? Tell them to do as you say or we’re as good as dead.’

  As the engineer snatched up the phone, Lütt-Ebbins turned his attention to the clamour outside. The lights had failed again and the station was darkly aglow. He shook his head. Everything was smoke-shrouded. Something ethereal about it ... as perhaps were the oceans ... even lands unknown to him, whether on earth or below it or beyond ...

  His gaze went to the ruined teat of the dome, web-like with its running cracks, then he looked further afield. Flames were rising behind the dark rows of containers at the back of the bay, the recesses flickering like a library of old brass vaults. Where lay the Oxtranox. Where lay the hot and steaming floor …

  Hearing his name, he turned to the older man at the desk. He’d propped open the face of an instrument panel. It housed a dense network of coils and transistors and the engineer was bent over it with a soldering iron, touching the tip down very precisely onto parts of a circuit board, his brow creasing as he worked.

  ‘Any luck, Rudi?’ he said.

  The engineer coughed as a stem of smoke rose up, then applied the tool again. Moments later, with
an air of resignation, he holstered it in its charging cradle. ‘Never seen anything like it,’ he said. ‘Never. It’s like half the system’s fried and the rest of it was never programmed in the first place. Nothing’s fully operational. Look.’ He reached into the panel and carefully drew out two wires. ‘This pair feed the air filter emergency override. Know what that means? Means it’s designed to work without anyone touching it. It just sits there, waiting. The moment the air goes bad it cleans it up, no matter what we do to the contrary. Now see what we’ve got.’

  As he touched the copper ends together, the room flooded with excoriating light. A wurmbad blackened and frothed. A ceiling bulb exploded in a tinkle of glass and outside a siren warbled briefly, then returned to its earlier shrieking. The engineer parted the wires and the lights dimmed again. ‘See what I mean? Nothing does what it’s supposed to.’

  Lütt-Ebbins cowered as nearby another round of shots were fired. ‘Keep at it, Rudi,’ he said, hurrying back to the microphone, ‘I need those alarms shut off. They can’t hear a thing out there.’

  He raised the microphone to speak, and as he did he felt the floor quake.

  ‘Gerhart, I need to speak to Gerhart,’ the young engineer was saying behind him. Another rolling thud shook the tower and he sank down until the tremor was gone, then stood again.

  Coughing, he peered haggardly through the broken window, finding some kind of burning liquid dripping from the filters of the charred cupola, the bright flames fluttering as they fell. Beneath it, the concourse was littered with smashed lumps of concrete and broken bricks and tiles.

  He surveyed the destruction with streaming eyes. It had all happened so quickly. He wondered how long they had left. Someone had told him the Oxtranox was stable until it reached five times the temperature of boiling water — and only then would it go through the turbulent phases leading to ignition. Yet what if they were mistaken? What if one of the containers had been leaking all along? What if some of it was at boiling point already, even a small pool of it? Surely then it would all be over. All that they knew destroyed in the way that worlds were born, dissolving in a whitehot hell ...

  ‘Calling all personnel!’ he announced, gathering himself, ‘calling all personnel! A ceasefire is in progress under the authority of both sides. Stop firing and listen. This is an emergency announcement. Make your way to the passenger platform. That’s platform one. Now. Leave your belongings where they are and use all the space leading up to the tunnel. Van Hagens is being evacuated. It is no longer safe to remain here. Leave your positions and come forward. We will not be able to wait for you. I say again — we will not be able to wait for you.’

  Chapter 31 — The Cavern

  The hissing stopped. The stubbie was lit but there was nothing on any channel. He punched the pad one more time and listened, then removed the battery and tossed the radio away.

  He thought they must have gone at last; he wished them well. On he went, approaching the quarantine cell, carrying supplies he’d mustered from among a series of deserted rooms and offices. He’d known what the cell was the moment the chrome door appeared, flashing in the torchlight. Set into the rock like some kind of polished steel mirror, it seemed to be waiting for him. So much more than a mere exitway: more a portal of change, the end of all that had been and the beginning of all that would follow.

  He pushed a button and the door opened into a narrow chamber. His breath steamed. It was like entering a refrigerator. A recorded voice spoke through the mesh panel on both sides and a violet glow throbbed at him from coiled lamps. He stood pulling on his breathing gear as he waited, shivering. He wore over his ragged clothes a second pair of overalls he’d found, but the fabric did little to warm him. Then the lamps went out and the far door opened and he walked through guardedly into a narrow passageway of hewn stone, rectilinear, cold, the bulbs lit starkly along a white cable. He nodded in recognition. Surely this was the passage they’d used in the early days, when the pioneers had travelled on foot from the City, his father among them. He went on a short way and peered ahead, then turned, startled, as the door clanged shut. He stood silently in its echo. Then went on again.

  The gouged and chiselled walls flickered and went dark. He waited, but the bulbs did not come back on. His torchbeam picked out an empty carton on the ground, the trace of a few dusty footsteps. How long they’d been there he could not tell. A short distance ahead there were no fluoros at all, and with his torch guiding the way he hurried on.

  ~O~

  Chalk markings, old scratches in stone led him through one passage after another. An arrow marked the way to a destination marked simply as Hagensfeld. Another read, Höhlen.

  On selecting the latter, thinking it more likely to lead him upwards, he walked ahead until he came to an officer’s cap on the floor. The fabric was new, the inner band freshly stained, oil and sweat rimming it in a familiar odour. He looked ahead. An array of other passage openings stood dimly. His torch picked out one stitched white eye after another. Squinting uncertainly, he went on. The white things were cobwebs, matted and hoary. Leaving the cap where it was, he went closer to find the passages more or less choked with them, strung from wall to wall like dead creatures stretched in torment. Bits of debris clung to their parts and things unknown hung furled in dry and ratty balls. He peered into the wraith-like depths and watched the webs breathing softly in long dense corridors. He checked back the way he’d come, then continued his investigations, going from one opening to another until he came to a passage where someone or something had ripped through the hideous yarns like a cannonball, leaving them in tatters. He looked about anxiously, but saw little alternative to continuing ahead. Then he thought of the cap, its wearer charging bravely homeward. Raising an arm against the wispy threads still hanging, he followed where it seemed the officer had gone before.

  ~O~

  Lütt-Ebbins watched grimly as twin points of light emerged from the tunnel. Long sprays that clouded in the churning black smoke and disappeared briefly before emerging anew, shining powerfully upon the gleaming rails.

  The train was braking, the driver turning to his mate in a dubious exchange as they realised what they had come to. Somewhere seething, infernal. The station’s lights were still out and from certain quarters there was the glow of roaring fires. The flames encircling the dome were pulsing wildly, breathing in and out of the filters as though some terrible burning god lay with its mouth clamped over them, wheezing out its last. The horn sounded, travelling as far as it could go amidst that din of alarms and sirens, amidst so many human yammerings of pain and fear. Those grouped along the platform began to paw at the doors and windows, some jostling alongside the moving carriages as if to lay claim to a place. The train eased to a halt, its lights blazing foggily into the termination blocks. The crowds pressing against its flanks bristled in expectation, and as soon as the doors hissed open, whatever restraint had been shown until that moment was lost to savagery, to a terror of abandonment, and in a hail of screams and elbows a vicious scrummage broke out as people fought their way inside.

  Lütt-Ebbins broke off and handed his megaphone to a comrade, leaving her to bellow out instructions while he helped the stewards in their attempts to keep control. The stewards were struggling, and he thought that had the train not arrived they’d have been forced to leave the enemy imprisoned while they organised their own escape. Although they were well armed and the state forces generally acquiescent now, most with their hands cuffed behind their backs, the numbers they were facing were too great to restrain for much longer. As fresh fighting broke out, a number of the guards punching and kicking out at their captors, he gave the order for greater force to be used, yelling hoarsely in his mask. Immediately, and in some cases gleefully, the insurgents began to hand out the kind of beatings they had suffered themselves in the preceding hours.

  He turned from the violence with other things in mind, disturbing things, and went to the draped corpses at the platform head. Here lay the bodies to
be stored in their own section at the front. Wiping the sting from his eyes, he knelt in dread at one body and then another as he checked among them for the two faces he had yet to see. As the carriages filled up behind him, stormily, aggressively, with scuffles continuing to breaking out, he shone his torch under the sheets, finding pale visages glaring back at him with blank disapproval. He could hardly bear to do it. Some of them were people he’d known well; others, mostly thickset men in uniforms, he’d never seen before. Many more lay burnt or damaged beyond recognition. Figures with their cold limbs angled woodenly as if to reveal to him the true horror of their sufferings, offering dark volcanoes of gore that did not belong to them, that they had briefly hated. Pile after pile of them. Bloodsoaked, bullet-pocked. Bodies like waxwork dolls, bland creatures of a kind more usually carried in ritual formation from nightmare to nightmare, and which now, on this night of catastrophe, were to be carried away by train, and at his appointment. He searched in grief and growing regret, but neither of the pair he was looking for were present, and as soon as he’d finished checking he called for assistance so that the dead could be taken aboard. As a party of recruits came over to help, some bringing stretchers, he left them to take over while he continued his search among the living.

  All he could do was go from carriage to carriage and pray that they were there. He put his head in at each door, yelling out their names, pulling collars round and pushing people aside, quizzing their friends, quizzing guards, picking among the fallen. ‘One’s big and blond,’ he cried, ‘one’s smaller and darker. Wears goggles.’ He did this all the way to the end of the train, situated just a short way from the tunnelmouth, where once more he stood inside yelling, his long face soot-smeared and taut with desperation. But still nobody had seen them.

  He looked back, panting heavily, wafting a hand as the smoke hung hot and thick about him. Then a blast sent him scrambling to the ground. There was a sharp downrushing of air. Fragments shot rattling across the concrete like teeth fired from a gun. For a few moments all he could hear was his breathing, the insane racket of alarms. Then the smoke around the train seemed to coalesce, reforming in a thick black fog that gathered itself like old dusty skirts which swept upwards and began to swirl around the roof. As he rose, he saw that a gaping hole had opened over the cargo bay. A great slew of debris was raining down through it, some of it on fire and clanging off the containers below. Tiled blocks were smashing on contact, breaking up further as they rolled across the floor. Amidst this torrent of wreckage were hundreds of sheets of burning paper, sailing out in eddies, spiralling like candles in a floating carousel.