by Isa Marks
◆◆◆
Daryl sat at the edge of the tunnel. The fresh air blew gently in. Cathy lay beside him, still unconscious.
“Thanks for helping me get Cat here,” he said to the little girl.
“You’re welcome,” she said sleepily.
“I’m Daryl by the way, what’s your name?”
“Ehm . . . that is a secret,”
“A secret huh! that exciting.” So, what should I call you?
She thought for a moment and then pointed to the moon.
“Moon?” said Daryl. “Okay, I think that’s a nice name, Moon.”
Cathy suddenly sat up from where Daryl had laid her down. She had been half awake for the past few minutes, enjoying his conversation with the little girl. But now she was startled by something. She motioned him to dim the flashlight.
Moon crawled closer to Daryl. He put his hand on her shoulder and his finger on her lips.
A sound of slow approaching footsteps came from a side tunnel of the nearest cave, The footsteps were followed by a strange, gritty sound. They had company.
Daryl leaned over to Cathy and whispered in her ear. “We can take him, it is only one person.”
They crawled to the small cave and sat on either side of the tunnel entrance. Moon hugged the wall furthest from the exit. Cathy could hear little squeaks of fear in her breath from where she sat.
The footsteps slowly got closer and closer. If it was one of the teams they should have seen some light by now. Still the tunnel entrance was dark. It could be an outsider.
Cathy had once overheard Murphy speaking to someone about a group of three men and women he had seen in the city. He had watched them take supplies and then they disappeared in one of the buildings. He had lost track of them, but it meant there were more people out there.
Cathy would never forget the last time there had been an outsider encounter. She and her mom had prepared the entire day for that night’s celebrations. Mom decorated the Hospital’s main room with a flag line, made out of her old clothes scraps. The banner above the door read ‘Happy eighteenth birthday Cathy, you are now leaving the child zone.’ It made her grin.
She changed into her only dress, which had felt odd as she was accustomed to wearing pants all the time. The dress made her feel pretty, like those girls in the magazines that her brother had brought back from scavenging. She twirled around in front of the mirror, her dress flared out around her. It made her feel like a little girl again, like when she and Faye used to play dress up.
The party location was filled with homemade beeswax candles behind colored paper. The bundle of flickering colored lights lit up the room festively. The band played on stage, and people were dancing and laughing.
But the joy of that moment was gravely disrupted when a group of men barged in through the door. She saw them taking her mother by the arm, one guy on each side and then they hurried her out through that same door. Cathy wrestled her way through the crowd, following them through the hall. They were going toward the operating room.
The only words she could make out were ‘took plans from his office’ and ‘outsider attack’. She saw them go into the room at the end of the hall and followed them there. She tried to peer through the fogged window, putting her hands to the glass. Her mother sat on a stool beside the motionless bloody body, which lay on the table, her head in her hands. Cathy thought dad had been working late again, forgetting the time, making him late for the party, as he was always late for everything. But there he was, lying on the table in front of her. After that night she had definitely left the child zone.
Cathy shook her head. She had to focus on the situation at hand. The gritty noise revealed that someone was close now. She heard the crumbling and sliding sound getting louder, and she recognized it now. It was the grains that fall down from the walls when you touch it with your hands. The small pebbles dropping to the ground, sliding down the descending tunnel floor. She sat there crouching. Her left arm reached out and held Daryl’s hand from the other side of the tunnel entrance. She could hear breathing now and counted down in her head, readying herself for the attack.
Jake smacked to the floor, letting out a scream of fear. A knee pushed deep into his back and a big hand pushed his head against the gritty tunnel floor. From a bit further away he heard the cranking of a flashlight, followed by a beam of light so bright his eyes had to adjust to it. He had tripped over the two outstretched arms and was now trapped under the heavy weight of Daryl, who kept pushing him to the ground. He blinked a couple of times trying to focus, and found himself looking straight into the eyes of Cathy.
“Thank God, it’s you!” Jake sighed with relieve. “You are not going to believe what I have to tell you.”
CHAPTER 8
SEAWEED
“And how do you like Phase 4,” a familiar voice said while the door to his cell swung open. When Murphy turned around he saw the presumptuous face of Adrien.
They had kept him in solitary, it must have been for weeks, according to the stripes he had carved in the wall. He had no idea if it was day or night in the dark hole he was in. He counted the meals they brought, twice a day he estimated, if he was right about that. Gliding his hand along the wall he counted the stripes, it had been thirty days.
It was the first time in all this time someone had spoken to him. The words seemed almost foreign. He sat there naked, crouched together, his bruised skin pushed against the wall, his arms covering his head.
The first times he had tried to take a swing at the guards who brought the food. Sprinting from the wall when they put the plate in the middle of the room. He missed them by an inch and he crashed to the floor. The metal cuff around his ankle cut into his flesh under the tension of the chain anchored in the far wall from the door. They left him there in the puddle of water that had spilled from the wooden bowl and the food that was scattered around him all, over the floor. The sound had attracted more guards and a severe beating had followed, which left him crawling to his food for the next couple of days. There was no point in trying anymore, he had learned that by now.
Today was different though. He recognized Adrien’s voice and curiously peaked through the gap between his arms. He looked different, more self assured than he had appeared on guard duty. Even though he hadn’t known him very well before, he had seen him around. Just your usual guard, dumb enough to follow orders, strong enough to make people listen and obey him.
After what happened at the Spring Cabin he didn’t have a very positive view of the guy, but he knew now he had missed something vital. He had enough time to think about what had happened in the tunnel. Adrien must have infiltrated them long ago, working with the outsiders. But he couldn’t figure out how or why, yet. Maybe he was a spy or something. ‘Special Forces’ they had said, whatever that meant. ‘Officer’ though meant he was somewhat in charge of something. The guards outside his cell seemed to obey him.
Murphy remembered what Adrien had said in the tunnel, he had ‘something special’ in mind for him. Maybe he shouldn’t have pissed him off after all. He crawled back into a ball, nervously laughing, this whole situation was FUBAR!
Adrien watched him from a safe distance. It looked like the guy had lost it. Finally . . . It wasn’t the first time he had locked someone up in a dark hole. But it was the first time it took someone a month to break. He smiled triumphantly.
“Take him to see Doc,” Adrien ordered the guards. “You’ll like Doc, I have the feeling the inside of your bags have pretty much the same content,” Adrien laughed.
Murphy thought about the stash that he kept in his military box, he probably wasn’t just talking about the cigarettes.
◆◆◆
They pushed the crates into the van. The work on the Field was hard and the food little. The weeks had passed quickly but time crawled at the same time. The days were repetitive and seemed endless, but it was a lot better than that first week of solitary confinement in the cells. At least they were outside, in the fr
esh air, and they were together.
The other side of the mountains looked different from the side where they had grown up. The water level on the Hospital side would probably have reached the same height as here by now. Faye tried to estimate how high it was, it had to be at least a couple yards above the Spring Cabin.
The waves hit the rock face in the late autumn wind, the storms had gotten really heavy indicating winter was on the horizon. She looked out over the part of the land that had flooded years earlier when the first dams had broken. The mountains had served as a giant safety barrier protecting the land behind, their village, the Hospital.
The six of them had been placed together at the Field, a flat area on the northern mountainside, a couple feet above the water level. It was green and beautiful, the air smelled salty but fresh. The soy crops came almost to their waists, surrounding them by a field of green. High above them they could see the snow, there was more of it here than on the south side. The mountains on the south side were bare and rocky, the sun must have burned most of the vegetation and melted the snow. Here on the North side it was a bit cooler.
Vehicles ran on and off through the large opening in the mountain wall. Above it, a clock with large illuminated numbers was counting down. The tunnel led to what the guards referred to as ‘The Bunker’, the innermost parts of the mountain, where it was connected to a network of other tunnels. It was a maze in which you could get lost for days if you weren’t careful.
That was not something they had to be worried about however. They were under constant supervision. At the end of the day they loaded the crates into the vans. The guards forced them into the empty vans that were waiting to take them back to their living quarters, which were on the outskirts of the Bunker area.
They sat in a circle in the dorms, which were nothing more than a couple of naturally formed caves inside the mountain. They were connected to each other by a straight tunnel system. Tonight’s meal was a mash of the same unidentifiable stuff they had every night.
“I heard someone say this is mashed leftovers from the Bunker,” one of the guys said with a challenging look.
“You believe everything you hear?” Faye laughed. It wasn’t a typical reaction for her, she was usually the type to fall for all the stupid jokes. This time she tried to stay ahead of the group’s mockery.
“Well it’s not just soy or seaweed”, he replied. “I’ve been to the Sea Farm and believe me you’d smell it if it was.”
“What’s the Sea Farm like?” Faye asked. “I’ve never been there.”
“Be glad, it’s smelly and dirty. Do you know that metal point that sticks out of the water, that you can see from the Field? The one surrounded by those rectangular things in the water?”
“Is that the Sea Farm?”
“They took me and some other guys there in an underwater machine. It was really cool. The cities are still there you know, deep below the water. It’s awesome, you can see the streets and buildings, though most of them are collapsed. There are these graveyards of crashed vehicles, all piled together.”
“Do you think the others could be there?” Faye kept her voice low, hoping the guards that were handing out the food didn’t hear them.
“On the bottom of the ocean?”
“The Sea Farm, stupid,” one of the others chuckled.
“Stupid, huh, at least I’ve been there. That’s more than you can say.” It was true, he had been the only one of their group that had seen what that place was like.
“And to answer your question, no, there’s no way they’re there. It’s all open structure, no place to hide. The only thing there is a bunch of guys farming seaweed. That makes me think, do you think you can smoke seaweed?”
They all tried to hold back their laughter and chuckled softly.
“Probably, but do you think it can get you high though?” the guy next to him speculated.
“Yeah like, regular land weed will get you high, but sea weed grows under water so it will probably get you down. The only way to turn it into a high would be to smoke it underwater, right? Try lighting a cigarette down there, though.” The laughing continued and started to attract the guards’ attention.
Faye’s mind had drifted away. Maybe the others hadn’t been caught, and somehow escaped? But she knew they had Murphy, why wasn’t he here? He seemed smart, or at least cunning enough to get out. Maybe he could save them? But then again, they had something special in mind for him, Adrien kept saying something like that. Daryl would probably be in the infirmary, she didn’t expect the little girl to be placed among the workers. But Cathy and Jake, they weren’t here. They would have put them here if they had them, right?
◆◆◆
The countless stripes on the cell wall had turned into a decorative pattern. Sessions with Doc had become more frequent.
“What are you doing to me?” Murphy mumbled while he lay numb in the corner.
“You’re helping the future of the human race Murphy, whether you want it or not. Embrace the suck,” Adrien chuckled when he turned around and left the cell.
The guards lifted him by his arms, dragging his numbed body towards the vehicle right outside the cell door. He knew he was passing through the tunnels, but he wasn’t registering it anymore. The people just flashed by as vague lines of color, he was unable to focus at this speed. The distorted sounds of people talking was like music, it came to him in waves, as he drifted further away into his mind.
When he opened his eyes he saw Doc, the typical slick haired side part, shirt and tie, white lab coat professor he had expected. His corner teeth were pointy and sharp. Did he have fangs? Was he a vampire? His heart pounded in his chest.
“Do you remember me?” Doc asked. Murphy tried to make sense of the distorted words, but all he could focus on were the fangs coming closer.
“I’m Doctor Miller, do you remember me?” the man repeated while placing his fingers around Murphy’s left eye, opening it wider. His other hand shone a bright light in it. Murphy averted his head. Shivers ran down his spine.
“That last hybrid strain is not responding as expected,” Doc grumbled to himself as he looked into Murphy’s bloodshot eyes. “It shouldn’t be so variable, anxiety levels should have been way down by now. Hallucinations even seem to have increased.” He threw the light on the desk that stood against the wall. “On the upside it has been over forty-eight hours, the effects are lasting longer than last time.”
“I need time to think,” he grumbled at the guards that had waited inside the room. “Take him back, let him sleep it off.”
Doc left the lab and withdrew himself to his office. Apart from the rounded wall you wouldn’t have guessed the office room to be inside a mountain. The heavy oak desk was filled with papers and illuminated glass plates were covered with equations, standing on the sides of the room. He sat down in his luxurious leather office chair and shuffled through the papers on the desk.
“Where are my glasses?” he snapped just loud enough for his secretary just outside his office to hear.
CHAPTER 9
THE BUNKER
They had checked most of the tunnels on the west side of the mountain. Most were dead ends going down into the depths of the mountain, which were flooded by the seawater coming in from beneath. There was still no sign of the others.
Daryl’s leg had healed pretty well in the last months. After that first day he had felt feverish and the pain was killing him. But he was thankful for the antibiotics Murphy had given him. It had gotten him through the first weeks, and the risk of infection had now passed. All he had left was a single bottle of mild sedatives that he had taken from the Hospital’s infirmary. As much as he had longed for it in the past few weeks, he tried to save it for emergencies.
It was a challenge to keep out of sight of the guards. The inspections had been quite severe in the beginning, with some very close encounters. But they must have given up the search, there were hardly any guards anymore in these parts of the tunnels, aside
from the usual checks at the basin.
Cathy chiseled a tiny cross mark near the bottom of the tunnel entrance. Another dead end. They had almost eliminated every possibility from within this cave now. They knew one of the tunnels led outside. It connected to a field of crops. The only time they could sneak into the field was at night, during daytime it was filled with guards, supervisors and workers. At night it was empty, apart for some guards who made their rounds at regular intervals. If they kept low to the ground, to the edge of the field, they were able to grab some of the food without being noticed. It would be a risk to try and make it across the field. Any disturbance would make the guards radio for backup; they had almost been caught last time. They were trying to find a way around, so far without much success. But they had hope. It had to connect somewhere, despite not seeing any logic in the design of this place.
“Can I mark it?” Moon asked. Cathy gave her a sharpened pebble to carve another cross into the wall. Another one checked, she thought. That leaves only two options.
Silently they progressed through the next tunnel. There was light up ahead.
“You stay back,” Daryl whispered to Cathy and Moon, gesturing Jake to follow him.
In front of the tunnel exit they could see a man wearing camouflage. Jake recognized the uniform from the night they had taken the others. Creeping up closer to the guard his hands became sweaty. Daryl had been training him for this, but he wasn’t feeling the confidence he had hoped for. He prepared himself for an attack, when another guard came around the corner. They heard a quick exchange of words before the two started to walk away from them in military pace. When the guards turned the corner Daryl and Jake signaled the girls, and helped them crawl out of the tunnel. They made their way to the next intersection, the guys went ahead to check for incoming visitors.
“The coast is clear.” Daryl said.
