Among You Secret Children

by Jeff Kamen

  He continued along the lower bank, shortly to notice something engraved on the pipeline’s rust-spotted flank. HAGENSFELD. There was no other explanation of its purpose, no other marking. He stood in thought. Shining the torch ahead, he saw that the pipeline extended into the dark without termination. It was about five feet in height and he might have climbed upon it for the perspective it gave but for the fear that he would fall, and so he climbed to the upper ridge of the embankment and let his burgeoning thoughts pass through him.

  Pipeline. Moth. Tunnel. The City. Home. He cupped his brow, straining to connect it all. Mountain. Father. Outside.

  Yes, outside, that was it. With a growing sense of urgency, he checked his live tank and the minis in his bag and saw he had a good supply of O2. Enough for a week, at any rate. Raising the intake level a fraction, he trekked away.

  ~O~

  A steady lapping brought him to a stop soon afterwards. He stood listening. Then he turned uncertainly and descended a little way and the moment he pointed the torch down he saw the water level had risen. Already the bottom of the pipeline was submerged in swirling liquid.

  He was studying the current’s movement when he noticed a glistening black line on the casing, marking where the water had reached. Something was being deposited there as the stream went by. A thin line, but distinct. Very carefully he went down a few feet more, finding other black deposits afloat on the water. Some were bubbling up from below. He watched as they spread across the surface, becoming glistening islands that stretched and broke up and reformed again as smaller islands that swirled together in endless combinations downstream.

  Death Moth death ...

  He went back a few yards, then further still, until he noticed what looked like a thick ribbon squirting from a crack in the metal. He crouched by the stream and dipped two fingers and brought them up with a dark film dripping from them, sensing a volatile presence tingling in his eyes. When he rubbed his fingers together he found no resistance. The black liquid was soapy. He hesitated, not liking what came to mind, then he tugged down his mask and found himself coughing at the stench of fumes and something like old dead mud. The black ribbon continued to inject into the water and he saw there was nothing he could do. Wiping his fingers on his clothes, he climbed away with the water creeping turgidly up the bank.

  Further up, the tunnel seemed to widen slightly. Death, Moth, death, the stream seemed to whisper as it rose, and when he angled his torch again, he saw another few inches of pipeline had been swallowed under. ‘Shit,’ he whispered. He would have to hurry. Have to get out.

  Climbing on quickly, he noticed debris floating in the water, bits of what looked like burnt leaves and twigs and branches. There was something that looked like a charred pole with a rag of cloth tied round it. Rough wraps of material, tarred and sodden. Wads of ash. All of it going by in a charcoal-coloured porridge, upon which floated the long glistening islands. Wobbling, dilating, glinting maliciously in the light.

  Death Moth death ...

  His expression hardened. No. He would not die now. Not while there was still oxygen strapped to his back and light to work by. He went on at a steady jog.

  Before long, a reddish glow appeared ahead. It was coming from the tunnel roof. He ran on to investigate and found sifts of dirt falling through a crack in the living rock. A long scratch of red up there like a torn eyelid. He squinted up at what appeared to be clouds, drifting vapour, and in a thrill of excitement he tore down his mask, yelling, ‘Hey! Hey! I’m here!’

  He waited. When nothing happened he surveyed the walls, the way they curved upwards, the shape of the rocks up there, and he thought again. Perhaps there was another way.

  He ran to the base of the wall and spread his hands and was levering himself upwards when it struck him that should he reach the top, he might not be able to climb back down. Glancing behind, he cursed his impatience, then he descended swiftly and ran to the bag and tore the neck in two places and sat and tied the ends in a slipknot around his ankle. On returning to the wall, he climbed again with the bag hanging off his trailing foot, and in this fashion slowly made his way up to the roof.

  ~O~

  When he was close to the opening he stopped for breath, gasping desperately. He’d done it in one spurt and it had all but sucked the life from him. Clinging on with his hair hanging down he looked muzzled and feral, wild in nature and ambition. He arched his body, craning upwards, and reached again. The crack was narrower than he’d thought. Although he could easily put an arm up inside it, there was little to take hold of and already his limbs ached horribly. Still the dirt sifted down, and changing his grip, he yelled, ‘Down here! I’m down here!’

  He sank a little, coughing, knowing that if he just had some rope he could do it, could lasso something up there and winch himself into a better position; but he had no rope on him. He looked down at the bag spinning slowly beneath him in the roseate dark. Down at the gradually submerging pipeline. Down at what he’d fall into should he lose his grip. He tensed his muscles again, and with a great lunge threw up a hand and found a hold. This time, shaking, throwing up another hand immediately afterwards, snatching and gripping, he managed to pull himself away from the curvature of the roof and get up inside the crack itself, wriggling and searching for footholds until he was able to drive his head up alongside his fist. He struggled harder, feet jammed apart and his mask scraping against the rock, scraping his skin away.

  Gasping for breath, he thrust himself upwards and managed to put his head outside, and took his first trembling hold on the twilit world above.

  He was somewhere at the bottom of the mountain’s lower slopes. It took another breathless effort for him to see over the lip of the fault, at which point he found himself encircled by a mass of loose rock and stones. He tried to heave a shoulder out, but either his tank strap or the tank itself was caught fast and he could not rise any further. Gripping the rimrock, he searched his surroundings for signs of life, surveying the rising terrain in tearful wonder, the steep hillsides of shale and thorny scrub, the blackwoods and split peaks ranging high above, and as he did, an image came to mind of a tall bearded figure addressing an old woman on a bed, a figure who remained with calm dedication at her side as wrinkled folk in heavy cloth went about their tasks. A man who later was coming to the lens, his sad eyes lifting in a grief that spoke to him anew and made him search the landscape for signs of human life, for anyone who could drag him out of there.

  He turned a little more, straining. Cutting a scar through the slopes and rising away into the distance was a twisting road. His eye followed it up and back again and he found that it passed close by on its way out to the wilderness. The road was flickering all the way uphill, as were the trees standing spearlike beside it and the ledges and peaks beyond, for overlying the surface world was a smoke-filled and troubled evening sky. Pushing down, he managed to turn himself a fraction more, wondering what was going on to produce such a strange alteration of light.

  It was as he scanned the uplands again that he noticed shadows on the move. Some were lone flecks and in other areas there were swarms of them. Human shapes coming downhill, some travelling away from him and the rest coming in his direction. Many were using the road, following it along the turnings, while others were heading towards rocky outcrops or dark belts of forestland, navigating the rough terrain with difficulty as they attempted to lug their goods along. He followed their progress with a sense of watching a dream unfold, startled as jolts of recognition told him who they were: people he’d known from a screen in a life spent underground ... people he’d lived among in his mind for many years.

  And the man coming to the lens was …

  For M. I hope you understand.

  Klaus. A name thudding like a heartbeat. Klaus, his father. And these the people his father had gone to in order to survive.

  ‘Hey!’ he cried. ‘Help me! I-I’m over here! Here, over here! Help me, you have to help me!’ He cried long and loud and was still
crying out when he noticed a series of hot yellow wires appear along the upper ridges. As a low rumbling began, he saw them thicken, divide away in spurts, turning gradually into burning rivers. One by one they went forking unevenly downhill, dividing into numerous rivulets as obstacles jutting across the landscape diverted them.

  On hearing shrill screams from on high, he looked up, then turned a little to see flames spilling onto a line of cliffs that overlooked the roadside.

  He could see people moving along the upper ledges, a large group that appeared to be trapped in the place they’d gone to for shelter; people who were being forced ever further backwards as the torrent grew. He followed their movements with fascination and dread, for it seemed that a handful had broken from the group and were attempting to climb to the ledge above. He began muttering, urging them to make it, but as the torrent expanded, bubbling and fuming over a jutting lip of rock, the cries he could hear grew ever wilder. Seconds later, he saw a tiny shape go plummeting down from the heights like a comet. A burning shape that trailed behind it a breathless icy squealing.

  He moaned in horror, watching as the body hit the ground like wet laundry slapped on stone. Pieces of it went flapping off in two or three directions, the clothing ablaze. The screams from the others were rising eerily in pitch and scale, turning to that of a quavering and sinister choir as they scrambled to get to safety. He clung on rigidly, hideously agape as a second body came flickering down after the first. Descending in a long slow arc of kicking flames. As if such a death was preferable to that which would befall the rest of them.

  He watched as the torrent broadened, sweeping over the ledges, sweeping over the knot of stranded figures, and then he turned away, struggling to get free before the same fires reached the lowlands and descended upon himself.

  It was in attempting to loosen his strap that he slipped, dropping down suddenly with both feet cycling in the air and his arms taking the full groaning strain as he jabbed and scrabbled with his fingers. He found a hold, then lost it in scrape of bloody nails and grabbed at a small protrusion. He clung on in despair, shouting, sagging down further until he was able to plant a foot and use it for leverage. Like a man strapped to a rack, he then flexed himself and pulled himself up and put a knee on the protrusion, and he reached up further and pushed with his feet until he was able to climb up crack and look out again, bloodied and shouting in fear.

  By this time people were fleeing the encroaching flames in their hundreds, reckless silhouettes with ever-lengthening shadows that leapt and sprang on and in some cases faltered and dropped and did not rise again. Charging down towards him on the narrow turns were carts piled high with crates and wrapped belongings, some pulled by animals, some drawn along by gangs of yelling people. They grew larger and louder with each level of their descent, and before long their looming shapes were accompanied by a roar of voices and stampeding beasts and pounding wheels. ‘Help! Please help me!’ he cried, as people fled past him on the road. He saw a driver bellowing at the ponies he had in harness, lashing at them, half standing in his seat, while the woman at his side covered the head of a bawling infant. They clattered away with his screams unheard by them and the passengers at the back clinging to the raised wooden panels that held the goods in place, half-crushed by the look of it as the vehicle slewed around and careered downhill. A riderless pony galloped after them, swinging its head and kicking, its loose reins trailing hazardously as it nudged past the cart, following the tight turning round. Others on foot came sprinting after the pony, shouting, calling the beast back to them. More carts and other runners passed by, among them two stocky men carrying a woman he took to be their mother on their shoulders. Others in the family were following at an agonised caper, lugging poles and blankets and baskets. He saw cooking gear and rolls of hides drop from their possession and bounce off into the dark but none stopped to fetch them. ‘Here!’ he begged, ‘I’m over here! You have to help me! I’m here! I’m stuck! Please, you have to help me!’

  But they were locked in horrors of their own and did not hear him, did not see him jerk and move his head and do what he could to attract attention. Then he spotted a figure moving his way. It was an old man, lean and angular, scrambling to keep his balance as he negotiated the treacherous ground.

  ‘Help,’ he sobbed, ‘please, you have to help me. I’m here. Here!’

  The man halted as though shot at from the darkness.

  ‘You! Please! I’m talking to you! Please, I’m over here.’

  The man stared in his direction, and then as he realised where the voice was coming from, he drew up like a spooked horse and stood groaning with his hands to his ears, aghast, as though horrors worse than those he knew had appeared before him.

  ‘Please. You have to help me. I’m trapped, I need you to take my hand.’

  But instead of rushing to his aid the old man wailed at him senselessly and wove his head around, crying, ‘Since he drowned, he drowned, since he drowned ...’

  ‘No! No one’s drowned. Help, I need help quickly,’ he cried, raising his voice to a screech as the old man backed away and ran off howling. ‘No,’ he pleaded, ‘come back! Come back!’ but it was too late, the man was cutting across the humped and rock-strewn slope, his elbows jabbing and his filthy coat flapping at his back, scrambling about with a kind of insect mindlessness as he ran off towards the road and fled from sight.

  Feeling his feet slip again, he dropped the shoulder over which the tank was slung and tucked in his tubing with fearful little grabs to streamline his shape. He did not dare remove his mask but yet he knew this to be his last chance of freeing himself. He let himself sink a fraction more, then with a snaking of a hand he freed the strap behind his shoulderblade, so that his tank was attached to him by just a single buckle. Twisting his upper body, he tried once more to thrust himself clear of what was wedging him. He stretched himself further, using his feet to push, and then snorting, tearing muscles and skin, he put his cheek to his raised arm and boosted himself and realised he was almost clear.

  He was struggling to dislodge the other arm when a great hollow boom resounded from the uplands. He saw the clouds brighten over the mountain and then a whorl of flame appeared in the sky, rising upwards with pharaonic splendour, black fields of smoke rolling outwards from its core. People on the road stopped at the sound of it, looking back. Eyes lighting up in a cast of carnival faces.

  Faces he soon watched distorting. Grimacing. To turn away in horror as a gale of hot winds came billowing down.

  He thrust again, stretching until his bloodied hands were clinging to the outer rocks, and when he yelled this time he was staring in disbelief, for there on the nearest turning was a woman he thought he knew. And when she turned in his direction he realised why. For it was her, her, the girl on the disk, already turned to woman, dark and raging, doing what she could to help the people around her.

  ‘Help me!’ he screamed, ‘please, it’s me! It’s me! You know my father! Help me! I’ve escaped! Help me! I’m stuck I’m stuck I’m over here!’

  But his cries were in vain: the noise was that of a battleground and her attention was fully on the task at hand, seizing animals by the halter and slowing them down, forcing the drivers to take the bend more carefully, even now, even with fire in the air, even with trees ablaze across the lowlands.

  He was sobbing in frustration, but even so, the sight of her seemed to energise him, lift him from what he feared would happen that night, and steadying himself, he tore at his overalls to unsnag them, and with another pained cry threw himself forward and pulled. The tank scraped free of the hole and with a furious scrambling kick he pushed himself out further. ‘Help me, someone help me!’ he screamed, and with his upper body buckling out of the hole, he twisted the other way and raised his weighted foot, only to find it stuck fast. He pulled, bellowing. Pulled and turned and pulled again and suddenly the foot was free. With a scream of joy he went sprawling backwards, out into the world at last. Out into a world on fire
.

  He slid down the rocks with the tanks clanging in his bag, and as soon as he could he undid the knot and snatched up the bag and restrapped himself and ran yelling towards the crowds. Everywhere he looked there were people running. ‘Father!’ he cried, ‘Father, I’m here, it’s me, Marty!’

  And then he was almost among them, people coming down the hillside with their hastily packed baggage and folded homes, stumbling, advancing like runners at the end of a long and terrible race, their features anguished and disbelieving, cruelly distorted.

  ‘Father I’m here, it’s me!’

  There were animals scattering and children screaming and there were people getting trampled down and left to be killed or wounded by their neighbours and their neighbours’ vehicles. People he felt he knew personally, had met before, men and women that ran cowering and wailing, throwing up their hands as if to bring the nightmare to a stop, but it continued without mercy. People leaping and hurdling, dressed in night and fire and something far from innocence. He looked for the dark-haired woman but she had gone, was lost among the families lurching downhill with their wretched chattels.

  He did not dare join them on the road, and instead kept to the slopes, wincing as small fiery droplets came raining down, droplets which fell sizzling in the dry grass and began to ignite areas as yet not within reach of the burning downpour. Glancing behind him, he saw a landscape turning to a blistering haze. Islands of trees stood ringed by flames as the deluge continued from the uplands. He saw people stranded on the hillsides go climbing from projection to projection as they sought a way out, whilst lower down groups of families were scattering apart with the casualties dropping away like dolls and screams rising in all directions. Out on a lone dark bluff he witnessed a sea of flames breaking on the rocks, spraying out in great thundering rosettes, and in that awful shuddering heat he looked back up the road and saw legions of stragglers, people who, even as the fires advanced upon them, were stopping to go back for loved ones, figures lethally hesitating whilst others ran past them in a stumbling shouting pack.