Among You Secret Children

by Jeff Kamen

  Stoeckl looked at him as if he’d just spoken backwards. ‘What are you talking about? The start of what?’

  Lütt-Ebbins seemed to weigh the matter heavily in his mind. ‘I’m not sure. Depends how our people are doing at Gablestad. Or Ostgrenze — that’s the real battle. If there’s more of those things hidden, then there’s a long hard fight ahead of us.’

  Stoeckl stared bleakly at the fire as it continued to irradiate the plains. ‘But what can we do?’ he said. ‘We can’t just burn everything ...’ He turned back uncertainly. ‘... Can we?’

  But Lütt-Ebbins was facing away, surveying the flickering cliffs. The cavemouth was no more than a dot among the rock folds. ‘Let’s get back up,’ he said, ‘someone might come down to look.’

  They were gone from the cave before daybreak. Halfway through their descent, they stopped to observe the base again. The hole lay in the desert floor like something that should not be looked upon, something execrable, a withered socket staring upwards into eternity like the dead. Around it a few carcasses still lay smouldering. They looked like slain beasts left over from a prehistoric war. Other than that, there was little other evidence of the fire, little evidence that anything had lived there at all.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Lütt-Ebbins said, and from here they climbed away through the shattered rockfalls and ran out across the stones. By noon they were far out into the wilderness, following the remains of an old road leading south.

  Chapter 34 — In Blackness

  Backing away from the rubble wall where he’d found himself shouting, baying helplessly, Moth descended the spilling muck and went slithering down a long embankment and splashed into yet more wet muck, an ongoing vat of it.

  He clambered along wheezing, groping along the slick rock for handholds, and then he was climbing up again, lugging his supplies after him like some bogwraith dragging its kill. He floundered about with the torch and on reaching the top he threw himself down and lay there dragging at his oxygen.

  After a while he drank from his pack, his head pounding. He felt around his scalp and there was a painful knot that he touched delicately, then touched once more. Concussion. He tried to think what he knew about concussion. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps that was all. But he doubted it. He couldn’t understand where he’d come from; as if he’d been cut from a patch of blackness and thrown into the world to work it out for himself. Nor, when he flicked the beam about, did he have any idea where to go.

  A wall of loose and scattered rubble. Scratchmarks and scuffs on the ground. He got up trying to think, numb and silent, his clothing half unbuttoned and his lank hair dripping behind his ears. Something was wrong, very wrong about it all.

  He trod along the spine of the rise until the ground was dry underfoot. Here he stopped to listen and caught the sounds of the water’s passage below. Then at the centre of yet more scratchmarks he noticed the remains of a fire. His expression as he surveyed the darkened mass was distant, uncertain. He thought he’d seen it before somewhere ... but how?

  He stood listening again. Then he turned. Nothing. But when he looked back to the fire it was as if flames were billowing up from it, and the eyes he saw were not those of welcome.

  What eyes.

  Pictures flowing through him in a sluggish pulsebeat. Figures viewing him from on high as if behind a flickering pane of glass. Things looming and cupping him as one might cup another’s broken hand, ready to swathe what was swathed too much already. He saw a maned figure rising from a slouched position and its great head turning, turning so slowly round. In the background a begging noise and something by the embers with a shoe missing and a little crooked arm working — and then the maned figure lurching upright.

  He recoiled, pleading silently as he raised the torch again. Swinging his head about. Feeling strange; disturbed. A dim noise was beginning inside him, and within it that awful screaming in the dark, the screaming and the screaming and the echoes of the screams rallying back at him with such a strange and deathly tone that in his mind he was screaming at his own screaming, a vile and cyclical din that seemed always to have been with him and which seemed unable to end, a suffocating vortex of noise at the centre of which his consciousness knew only fleeting images. He held his head, crying out, but it would not go. A spiral of horrors framed in low and shuddering flamelight and the horned beast at the back of it all and he was running and running and it was chasing him down and he turned with the torch and stabbed it at the dark and searched the craggy walls and then he swung back the other way and stood shaking, his face sheened with sweat.

  Nothing there. He was alone. Alone with the dead fire. He looked down.

  It was then that he noticed something in the ashes. He stared at it as though he was lost, or had lost something. Mesmerised, he went to his knees.

  It was a small frail skeleton. Burnt and fleshless, lying sprawled in the embers like the corpse of a bat or bird. Yet it was no such creature at all.

  As he stared at it, he felt a terrible sensation that spoke purely from his heart, yet which on speaking did not heal him, rather left him to suffer a growing and pitlike emptiness. He placed his torch on the ground. Then, without knowing why he did it, he took up a stick to dig the creature out.

  It moved woodenly, a pathetic little carcass with its upper limbs bent inwardly like wires and the blackened fingerbones splayed from the wrists like threaded claws. He tilted it, studying the fragile pelvis. The femurs like stalks of ebony. The slender beadwork of the spine.

  Wounded inexplicably by what he saw, he descended into long racking sobs that he could not contain. ‘No,’ he wept, ‘no, no ...’ for however it had got there, it had been alive, and in this the two of them were united in such a dismal place.

  He wept for a long time. Then, sniffing, he looked around again. He wondered what had happened there, what dreadful and lonely fate had befallen it, a thing that had been stolen, or perhaps tempted away, carried far from light and company to this awful darkness. To flames and silence. He studied it closely, tenderly, the charred skull gawping up at him with such a plaintive expression he was almost moved to cradle it. As if it would in some way speak to him, sing in horror of its loss.

  He didn’t want to leave it there, but in the end realised the best he could do was bury it so that it would not be discovered. He carried it off and dug it a grave and when the earth was trodden down he stood looking ahead. As if something in the dark might offer up some clue as to his circumstances. ‘Moth,’ he said, and the word resonated dully.

  The dead fire receded as he moved on again, his torchbeam shrinking away from it like the glint of a leaden eye closing.

  Behind him the black walls slathered and dripped.

  Chapter 35 — Fire Over The Tarn

  ‘We were divided into groups. Staš sent out spotters to see how it was developing. To mark the wind direction, things like that. The rest of us went down to the western approach to try to head it off.’

  ‘How do you mean, head it off?’ the woman said.

  ‘By making a fire break. People were saying how they’d done it before one time, though it wasn’t clear to me. The memory of it. Anyway ... when we were down there, we stopped at different points along the track. Some people were going all the way to the lake, although I wouldn’t go down there. I ... I didn’t want to see it. I suppose I ended up about halfway down. We were to bring down as many trees as we could, and saturate the ground with mud and water.’

  ‘Sounds like a huge job,’ the man said. ‘How were you able to do it?’

  ‘We didn’t. We thought we’d be working there for days, at least that’s what everyone said. They were thinking of the last time it happened.’

  ‘Sorry, you had the same trouble before?’

  ‘Not with the oil. Just a fire, apparently.’

  ‘But you weren’t there.’

  ‘No. Well, I ... I wasn’t me, then, I was Grethà. I mean Grethà was there, not me.’

  The woman murmured something and t
he man peered at Jaala over his spectacles. ‘If you need a break, Jaala, we can ...’

  ‘No, I’m okay. I want to get it out. I need to.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘We did what we could, cutting, pulling those ... all those trees down. There were birds screeching, animals running. The smoke was thick and white, then it got darker. We didn’t have any news for hours, we just kept at it, chopping, pulling ropes, then messengers came running through saying it was spreading fast, even though the wind was low. We tried harder, it was desperate. Some of us even managed to block a stream with rocks to alter the flow. But it was useless. Staš told us to retreat, he sent people further west to clear the fields and orchards, in case sparks carried that far. Lucky they moved when they did, otherwise we’d have had nothing to take with us.’

  The man looked up. ‘Was it clear to you why it was spreading so fast?’

  ‘No, the messengers had no idea. And none of us could see. It was only when the fire came out the lake that we knew it was different.’

  ‘Different, how?’ said the woman.

  ‘It’s hard to explain. It was like a whirlwind. Like a ... a waterspout. It kept on growing. I heard that people working in the lowlands were celebrating to begin with. They thought it was raining, but it wasn’t rain at all. It was coming from the head, where it was spitting droplets out. Once the droplets caught fire it spread even further. It came all the way uphill towards the settlement. You can imagine it. The panic. I didn’t see much because I was helping to set up a rest tent. We had a lot of people injured by then.’

  ‘Did you see the spout?’ the man asked, clicking his pen.

  ‘Briefly. It scared me. It was just like walls of fire behind black smoke. All of it rising from the Tarn. Parts of it were burning blue ... like underground gas does, so maybe that had something to do with it. Do you think it did?’

  The man coughed bronchially. He sat a moment with his fist to his mouth, as though considering her question. ‘You could be right, we don’t really know. We’re aware of chemicals on the base that could have caused a lot of damage, maybe even caused reactions deep underground. So yes, some kind of gas could have caused it. I think one way or another we could account for the oil, too, but ... it doesn’t explain the spout you saw.’

  ‘You don’t know how it could have happened?’

  ‘The spout, no. Possibly some kind of ongoing explosion, or pressure of gases building up.’

  ‘But if it was yours, how could you not know?’

  ‘Well, the problem is that we weren’t the owners of it. We were working there, but we weren’t in control. Ironically, that’s what started the fighting, and ... well, may have led to the fire in the first place.’ He coughed again, sitting forward. ‘You said it started in the northwest area?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He glanced at Nina. ‘That’s the area nearest to the base,’ he said. ‘I can think of one or two causes. I’d even ...’ He hesitated, as if he had more to say, then he looked down. ‘I think all I can say for sure is that some kind of heat transfer’s likely.’

  ‘... Heat transfer?’

  ‘I mean it’s highly likely we caused it. In fact, definitely. Yes.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  There was a silence. Nina smiled awkwardly, tying her hair back with a band. Jaala watched the elastic stretch and snap back again. Then averted her eyes as Nina noticed her looking.

  ‘But regards the oil,’ the man continued, spreading his hands, ‘our guess is that it originated from a deep-lying source or reservoir. Unfortunately, the records we have don’t show anything useful. You can imagine it wasn’t a priority for us, bringing documents here.’ He coughed again. ‘When we were first looking into it, we saw pipelines in some of the plans, but nothing else. It’s only speculation of course, but it could have come from a source pre-dating anything we know about. Pre-dating all of Nassgrube, I mean. Whether our leaders had knowledge of it, we’re still in the process of uncovering. As you might expect, they’ve not been too cooperative.’

  ‘They’re the ones in the prison?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s been a long process so far.’

  ‘I see. We just assumed it came from you.’

  ‘Right. It could have done. As I said, we don’t understand exactly what happened. It’s possible that the larger oil source, whatever its origin, was located near to our local supply, our tank system. Meaning it could have leaked through somehow. Once that happened, an explosion could easily have followed, and the rest of it would have been like a dam bursting. That’d account for why it all flooded through at once. And we do have some evidence for this. We’re certain that Ostgrenzers were drilling near the base without us knowing. Us ordinary people, I mean. Any drilling in such a sensitive area could have caused serious damage.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m sorry I don’t have more than that. A lot of this is still guesswork.’

  ‘Tell us more about the fire,’ said the woman.

  ‘Well, like I said, it was too smoky to see much where I was. I didn’t see the flames again until later, when most of us were in the fields, saving what we could. I remember thinking it might burn itself out, once the lake oil had been used up, but it just kept growing. People were terrified, some were already running away. We held together, though, the clan. We stayed. It must have been late in the afternoon. The sky was full of smoke by then and people were leaving the fields. So did we, in the end. If ... if I’d gone back to the settlement I’m pretty sure I’d have seen Annie there. I could have made her leave, got her packed up like everyone else. But I went to the lower camp first, to help them. Staš ... he’d seen us at the edge of the fields and told us to run, told us everyone was relocating to the other side of the mountain. I think that’s when I knew it was out of control. He said we’d fight it the next day when we regrouped, but I didn’t really believe him. I suppose as headman he had to say it, give us hope.’

  As she said this, she was staring. The Nassgrube pair exchanged a look.

  ‘Anyway, we’d already loaded the carts with crops and fruit, and as soon as we were packed we headed away. It was like night coming down. I didn’t recognise the settlement when we got there. Everyone was clearing out, pulling down their shelters. I remember ... well, I remember wanting to look for Annie then, but I was told my own shelter was burning. I ran to save it, but it was too late. Someone had done it deliberately. Probably they thought the fire was my fault. I’m sure that’s what it was.’

  ‘They burnt down your home?’ the woman said incredulously. ‘How could they think it was your fault?’

  ‘Because people ... some people say I’m cursed. And if you’re the kind of person who thinks that, well, it’s not a hard connection to make.’

  ‘Did you lose everything?’

  ‘Not everything. I got my trunk out in time, a few other bits. If it had happened any other time, I’d have gone after them, whoever did it. So cowardly. No one would have dared do it while Sandor was around, I know that much. He’d have done the same thing.’

  ‘So what did you do? Was anyone still fighting the fire?’

  ‘No. You couldn’t fight it. It was just ... rising up, spraying flames out wider and wider. All the lowlands were burning, it was chaos. People were running, screaming. By the time we’d reached the southern side to set up for the night, you could see it glowing through the smoke. It was still rising, getting higher. We talked about running to the desert even then. You could tell something was going to happen. It wasn’t like a normal fire.’

  ‘Did it ... I mean, was there an actual explosion?’ the man asked.

  ‘No. Nothing like that, really. It just ... kept growing. It was almost like daylight when we left. Almost like sunrise.’

  Chapter 36 — Exodus

  Before long he came to a slope of fallen rocks and began to climb. He could feel the rise of the gradient in his calves and ankles, feel it working the breath out of him.

  He climbed
for what felt like hours, changing batteries when he rested, and then he continued at a crouch through a low damp cavern. He was part of the way through it when he stopped, looked back, hung on a worrying intuition. But there was no sign of others there, neither following at a stealthy march, nor waiting coldly in the shadows. Uneasy, he continued through the cavern, still hunched, his feet frozen and blistered. Eventually he followed an icy stream down a series of turns, the water gushing in from all sides as the torch passed along the smoothly ribbed walls of what appeared to be a tunnel.

  Hagensfeld, he thought. Or caves. Thoughts came to him in whispers. In a disconcerting wash. Strange images that flowed and flowed ... and with them a pair of glinting eyes. A shuddering. And in those eyes no terror at all but views of a mountain … views of bleached and jagged rock. Woods, the furred blackness of trees … the whorl of black-green branches …

  Two figures running, hot calls and breathy promises … a life he did not know and yet which was not entirely foreign to him … overhead a canopy of trees in a stewing green light and a shrill sound that could only have been birds ...

  He was struggling to uncover their meaning when a saurian shape appeared ahead, dark and rounded and motionless. It looked like something built not born and he trod along the midpoint of the bank with a wary eye on it, soon to discover the huge steel body of a pipeline where it emerged from the mud. It did not look old, yet the casing was patched with grime and rust. Going alongside it, he noticed a raised collar where two sections had been joined together with heavy bolts, and these too were badly rust-stained. Thoughtful, he descended the bank. When he placed a hand upon the casing, he felt a hum of activity inside it that prompted him to wonder if people were near. He found his mind seeking structures, manmade topographies. Sureties.