"I think Mikkel is dead."
"Give him some more time."
"Should we just be sitting here? We scared them off, but the ghouls may be back soon. And in greater numbers."
Perhaps my memory of their exact words was skewed by the event. Someone helped me up. And got me walking. Someone went over the situation with me.
When the catwalk had collapsed, that had put a chasm between the ghouls and my allies. The ghouls were still pissed and began to throw spears. This is where Delilah unshouldered her P90, screamed at the ghouls, and began firing. Diego also started taking shots with his hunting rifle. Meat pulled out his handguns but waited for the opportunity. The ghouls couldn't overrun us due to the gap between us. All they could do was screech at us and throw spears. Even the best spear is nothing compared to a modern firearm, so they ghouls took heavy casualties.
Technically, they could have gotten to us. Around the circular walls of this massive room there was an additional, but much more narrow crosswalk. Only wide enough for one person, it did come around to this side. But it would have taken the ghouls some time, the same time during which Diego could get them on his scope and kill them. Five tried going that way before the ghouls gave up. The shaman ghoul had stayed behind the ghouls - I knew because Diego mentioned how much he tried to get a shot at the shaman and hoping to solve the whole problem by taking out their leadership. Instead, the shaman barked some orders and the remainder of the ghouls broke off, taking their wounded with them.
"Odds are we demoralized them enough that they won't try that again," said someone, I think Meat. "That said, I agree we should get moving. We need to make camp somewhere and this is not it. Let's put at least a little distance between us and this place."
Not far from there we did find a place that seemed perfectly suited for our purposes. This was another cavernous chamber with water flowing through it quickly, like a rapidly moving stream. Large pipes spilled out water from about fifty feet higher than our elevation, luckily not near us. A network of catwalks ran through this room, but there was no solid cement platforms near the bottom, only a network of noisy metal bridges. High above all the other catwalks and the large pipes feeding water into the room was a cement platform that jutted out from the wall. Only a long ladder connected to it, the other end of that ladder ending where catwalks intersected. On that platform was a small building, not larger than a shack. We suspected that it was a maintenance rest station, a supervisor's office from the construction, or perhaps even a radio terminal. Szandor suggested it was an Overseer's Office, because it oversees everything. Nobody thought his joke was funny.
Whatever its original purpose, we found the small building trashed. Someone had been through here and stripped everything of value. There was a rotting wooden desk, a small mishmash of what used to be paper documents that were now stuck together after their ink had run from them, and the saddest wooden chair I had ever seen. At Meat's direction, we hauled the rotted furniture out and threw it off the side of the platform into the raging waters below. Szandor was responsible for the chair, which first clattered loudly on a catwalk before then falling into the water, much to everyone's chagrin.
The platform was ideal to all the tactical-minded members of our crew. It had high visibility of all entrances to the chamber. It had only a single way to get to it, which might be a problem for a retreat, but it also meant that we could see and fire upon any ghouls or others that tried to get up here. It was above the raging river, the catwalks, and the pipes into the room, so while it was damp, there wasn't a risk of actually getting wet or encountering falling debris. Besides the lack of a secondary retreat, the only other possible issue was the stability of the platform. We had already seen one set of Avalon's well-made Undersystem engineering failing after all these years, nearly killing my brother and I. But everything about this platform seemed solid.
We knew as we pulled the backpacks off our weary shoulders and started to pull out our gear that we couldn't all fit in the building. Since we had no wounded, it was also obvious who was going to sleep in the little shack. Jericho and Fala took it over without a word and the rest of us couldn't be bothered to complain. Other than having a water-stained roof and some privacy, there really wasn't a lot of advantage to it. The platform around the shack was wide enough that there wasn't any problem with us all setting up tents. Time to rest, a less wet floor, and a safe place were the most valuable things to all of us.
After the tents were setup, Meat designed a watch schedule. At all times through our "night" there would be two people awake. I could see the worth in that; double the set of eyes, extra protection for such things as someone falling asleep "accidentally" or goofing off, and should calamity happen to hit, one of them could guard the ladder while the other could make sure the rest of us woke up to combat the threat.
I figured I'd be on the watch with my brother. We could go over the day, share our thoughts, I could point out where he'd been kind of an ass so he could try to be less offensive, and he'd tell me to fuck off in the nicest way. So I was shocked when I found out I wasn't on watch with Szandor. I'd find out from Meat later that he had designed the shifts to prevent goofing off and distractions. That meant only one Nowak per shift. It also meant he split up Diego and Delilah, having noticed the hint of their flirting earlier. It also meant that only one person could be trusted to take watch with Jericho and not cause the unrest that had been festering to come to a head: that was Meat himself. Though there were seven of us, Fala did not get a watch shift. If Jericho had made the schedule, it could be argued special treatment. Since Meat had made it, we acknowledged that none of us were happy with her contributions so far and did not want to put our lives in her care.
Szandor and Diego had the first watch shift, so I climbed into our tent and the warm folds of my sleeping bag. I was still spacey and dazed since my experience dangling from my brother's boot in that vast black space. Rather than keeping me from rest, this allowed me to easily lapse into a deep sleep. I dreamed about falling, but it wasn't in a scary way, not at first. It was actually nice, like floating, the air warm and pleasant. Everything was dark around me, but that was okay. But this was only until the dream's turning. From out of that blackness there was a voice. Bring them to me. Uncertainty and fear set in, and it seemed these jostled me out of my warm reverie. I was floating no longer and I began falling, the wind whipping by me as I accelerated toward the blackness below. Out of that darkness erupted two massive jaws, opening to snap at me and swallow me whole. As they closed around me, I jerked upright in bed, the dream vanishing as if in a cloud of smoke. My heart raced, my lungs gasped for air. I sat alone in my tent for a few minutes to calm down. I couldn't get back to sleep, so I lay back down and rested. I wasn't at all dazed, but I did have a headache that was more lingering than sharp and painful.
My brother and Diego were still on their watch shift. Szandor was recounting the events of the Ingstrom job to Diego. He was skewing the truth here and there, but the thing that amazed me most was that he was retelling it like it wasn't a total and utter clusterfuck. Had he forgotten that it cost him his apartment, his job, possibly a girl, and we never got any money for it? The way he told the story, it almost sounded like we had a damn good reason to conduct a raid on a multinational corporation. I blame too many Dead Kennedys albums messing up his brain. But maybe the boasting was good for him in the short term. He was in a good mood when he crouched to come into the tent. He smelled of cigarettes, the familiar scent of those Pall Malls he loved.
"Hey Mikkel, it's time for your - oh, you're up already."
"I... couldn't sleep," I said.
"You sure you're okay?" he asked with some genuine concern. "I'm really tired - the adrenaline crash from all that shit earlier has definitely fucking hit me - but if you can't do your shift, I'll take it. Gives me some time to impress that hot Delilah -"
"Not happening!" came Delilah's voice from a little ways off. Tents are not very private.
"W
ell, gives me more time to smoke at least," he finished.
"I'm fine, brother," I said. "And thank you for the uncharacteristic concern."
"Eh, sounds like someone woke up testy," said Szandor as he settled down into his sleeping bag.
My watch shift with Delilah wasn't a problem. Other than confirming I was feeling good and that I didn't have a concussion that she didn't know about, she left me alone and paced the platform with her rifle over her shoulder while I sat on the edge, my legs dangling. We were both wearing thermal goggles and the lights were off. I smoked a Lucky Strike cigarette. Delilah said the typical "Those things are gonna kill you," statement, but I didn't think she was saying it antagonistically, so I let it pass without comment.
I noticed that she took off her own goggles to check her GPS.
"Are we close?" I said. "After all that walking today, I expected us to be in another state by now."
"We're pretty close," she said. "We're under Southend. That big chamber where you... that big chamber is roughly under Jaffe Park by my calculations. Weird, but it seems to match up. Are you sure you're okay?"
I nodded again. I still had that headache, but telling her about that was just going to make everyone worry and I otherwise felt fine.
"You can't fault us for making sure," she said, putting her thermals back on and returning to pacing.
I nodded. While I absolutely did not have a concussion, I didn't feel myself. Something had gotten under my skin. It wasn't just the shock of nearly dying, at least I didn't think so. It was something about those feelings I felt while I dangled. I only half remembered them now. As I smoked my cigarette, I had a feeling of forgetting something, of things left undone. Of course, it wasn't a new feeling, it was just more acute at that moment. I'd had this feeling for a long time. Now I just recognized it for what it was and how it had been undermining my happiness for a while. Combine that with the realization of my near death and all the things I would have lost, and I had regrets. Well, maybe not regrets, but at least something I wanted to do before I did regret not doing it. Before my chance disappeared.
Delilah looked away when my phone's screen lit up - she was using thermal goggles, so the light would have been jarring.
"You know you're not getting any signal on that thing," she said. She had been setting up relays dutifully, even one on this platform, but we hadn't had any connection at all over them. I hoped Paulie appreciated our pointless task. Knowing him, he had some long, long game to this all that would utilize them at a later date. Taking over the world or unmasking government conspiracies or something.
I nodded. "I know, I just need to type something up before I change my mind."
"Everything you learned from nearly dying? Insights from an almost grave? Or from beyond the grave?" Her voice was teasing. She had heard from Szandor that I had Bad Feelings. But because she heard it from Szandor, she now probably expected that I thought I had some bullshit psychic powers. She wasn't hostile in her teasing, but she clearly thought the claims were worthless. I didn't blame her. I didn't have psychic powers. I just had a very specific thing that made my head hurt and sometimes saved my life.
"Just an email, I think."
"Last will and testament," said Delilah with a smile. "Let's hope you make it top side to send it."
I shook my head dismissively and she gave me some space. Truth be told, the fact that it wouldn't be sent immediately was to my benefit. I'd write it now, and right before we hit the surface, if I had changed my mind, I could just delete it. No harm, no foul. I could call it a moment of weakness in the still of the night. But if I still felt this way or even somewhat this way, I could send it and see what happened.
I was writing an email to Carly. I'm sure this doesn't surprise any of you. Near death experience, ex-girlfriend recently back in town, sitting in an underground cavern in what I believed was the dead of night. You're going to say I had the What's This All About freakout that many men supposedly have when confronted with their own mortality. You're also going to suggest that I had the most common response to that freakout: I went running back to the last familiar person who I had felt anything significant with.
Except it wasn't that, not really. It wasn't fear. Something else besides fear had stayed with me since they had pulled me up from that broken catwalk. There was something left over. Something that was calm despite everything else that was shaken and confused. Let's call it a form of clarity. It helped me realize one very obvious truth: Carly was probably the best thing to ever happen to me. I knew if I let her go again it would be a mistake.
I also realized that the neutral ground was the most dangerous. I couldn't be even handed in dealing with her. There was a lot of pain and history tied up in her and I - many deflections, old wounds, and old arguments. It was an emotional minefield. While love made me want to charge forward, fear of pain wanted me to pull back and run away. Neutral would be the middle ground: play it cool, play it safe. I could interact with her, keeping myself guarded so that I didn't step on any mines. And what I realized in this clarity is that strategy would be the worst possible thing. In that neutral ground I'd never make a leap of faith. I'd never go for broke, never charge in with passion, and honestly, probably never do anything romantic with her again. All out of fear of pain.
And neutral would be worse than the other extreme: running. I could cut all ties with her and go with my fear. That, while cowardly, also wouldn't be so damaging. Running would have me absent. Things would be left open, unsaid, unresolved. In the neutral path, things would not be left open. Staying near her and playing things cool and safe would destroy our relationship. I'd let her go by creating a habit of painless, passionless interaction. I'd cement a wall between us with guarded pleasantries and drain all our time of anything that would ever make it wonderful. Yes, there'd be no argument or pain... or anything else of note. Squeeze all the passion and life out of love and it's just a bitter comfortableness. One day we'd meet other people and never even properly regret what we missed out on. It would be a slow death to a relationship.
This clarity told me that no matter how much pain I would feel, this option would be so much worse. The clawing pain of trying to make it work, floundering or even failing, would be nothing compared to the searing and immortal pain of regret.
So I wrote an email to her. I don't think I was foolish enough to put down all my feelings in each and every verbose detail, to truly pin my heart to the table and dissect it in the most sappily gory fashion. But it was still brave and it was still forward. I told her I wasn't willing to sacrifice her in the name of past dignity or the worthless satisfaction of being right. I told her that she meant more to me than I had words for. I'm not proud that I finished it up with something that was the email equivalent of a middle school passed note - "If you feel the same, give me a call and maybe we can talk." Strong performance ruined by the dismount.
I got frustrated with myself and I put my phone back to sleep. I slipped it back into the ziploc bag inside my jacket. I let out a long sigh and lit another cigarette.
"Not the email you hoped to write?" said Delilah.
"You ever feel like when you bare your soul there just isn't enough there to be interesting?" I said, feeling kind of emo.
She gave me a wan smile that said more about the ten or so years she had on me than I expected. "All the time."
When we broke camp, we were all surprisingly chipper. I didn't know what time it was topside, and didn't bother to ask Delilah, but we all considered this "morning" even if there was no more light than what we created ourselves. We all chowed down on MREs. A bitter breakfast for champions.
"We're very close," said Delilah. "Unless there's some complication or a problem with the tunnels, we should hit the sword pretty soon today. It's just figuring out the approach and how cautious we want to be."
"Finally!" said Szandor. "I want to get this all over. Tomorrow's an important day and I want to be topside for that!"
"What's so important a
bout tomorrow?" asked Diego, knowing he was taking the bait.
"It's my twenty-first birthday!" said Szandor. "I'm going to get drunk and sloppy!"
"Jesus, kid, you keep finding new ways to make me feel old," said Diego.
Szandor just shrugged. "I'm going to celebrate by cutting up my fake ID. Now I can drink legally!" If you knew Szandor, you'd know how this was one of the weirdly rare times he was 100% positive about something without being already drunk or wanting to start a fight.
"Was I ever that young?" Diego shook his head. "Tell you what, kid, if we make it out of this with a minimum of bullshit, I'll even buy the first round. What's your poison of choice?"
"Whiskey. Lots and lots of whiskey." Szandor looked around. "Anyone else want to sign up to get me completely blitzed tomorrow?"
Meat chuckled. "What about your brother?"
Szandor looked over to me. "Him? He's got the most important role. He's there as my bodyguard, as my nonexistent conscience, as the one who scrapes me off the floor of the bar, the one who apologizes to everyone I insult - spoiler: there will probably be many - and who makes sure my ass gets back home at the end of the night. It's a dirty job, but somebody has got to do it."
I nodded solemnly, not mentioning that this was my job far more often than just on his birthday.
"I'll buy you a round, sure," said Meat.
"Can't I just get you a bottle from the liquor store and then leave?" said Delilah.
"Proposition accepted!" said Szandor happily, pointing at Delilah. "Maker's Mark or Bushmill please. I never get Bushmill. Everyone's always so stuck on bourbon. Please get Bushmill!"
"Let's get going people!" bellowed Jericho, coming out of the shack.
"I don't think he'll be getting a round tomorrow," said Szandor to me.
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