Falling Water: A dystopian climate change novel

by Isa Marks

  “Maybe we should just let things rest for a minute,” he tried to change the subject. “I would like to show you something else, when you feel a bit better. Sometimes it’s good to see things from a different perspective. Maybe it will give you a better understanding of this place.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Glider trip

  The wind was calm for this time of the year, there was even a little bit of sun. It made the glide through the air feel fairly smooth. He wouldn’t have taken her otherwise. Teagan had been on worse flights than this during his training, way worse. She would be able to handle it with this weather, enjoy it even with a little bit of a hangover.

  Cecilia pulled her sunglasses down. The world was covered in a pleasant brownish hue. The pounding in her head had miraculously disappeared after the vitamin boost; the benefits of hanging out with a doctor’s assistant.

  She had been worried about getting in this machine at first. It turned out to be less scary than she had imagined. She had closed her eyes when they took off from the mountain, but once in the sky it reminded her of the dreams where she was able to fly. It made her want to stretch out her arms as wide as possible, but the lack of space inside the cabin kept her from trying.

  The glider moved smoothly through the sky. It gave them a good view over the north side of the mountain. She wondered what the south side would look like now the water had risen. Would there be anything left of her old home? Would she be able to see the buildings and streets from the sky, sunken deep below the water? A gray fog hung over the ocean below, limiting their view. Below this water would probably be a lot more villages, like the one she had left behind.

  “Just like a safety cushion, right?” Teagan said. “It also reminds me of whipped cream.”

  What’s whipped cream? Cecilia thought, never having eaten anything like it in her life. “It reminds me of smoke,” she said.

  “It does indeed,” Teagan said. “It is something completely different though. There’s a difference between condensation and combustion . . .” He looked at her and gave her a shy smile. “Sorry, you’re probably not interested in any of that. I get carried away sometimes.” He kept quiet, letting her enjoy the view, pointing out the various landmarks.

  “Is it hard to fly this thing?”

  “What, the glider? No, it’s really easy. Do you want to give it a try?”

  She hesitated, not sure if she would be able to understand the technique. The last thing she wanted was to crash this thing in the sea below.

  “Don’t worry, the basics are very simple. It all works as you expect it to work. Just like a in a video game.”

  Video games, another thing she didn’t know anything about.

  “You just put your hand on the control stick in front of you and pull it towards you a little,” he said.

  She did as he said and the nose started to lift up, taking them higher above the fog. “Aaah,” she yelled and smiled at the same time. It was probably the most exciting thing she had done in her life. Not that that was hard to top, as her life had mostly consisted of sitting behind a desk, eating, or sleeping.

  “Good, now push it a little bit forward.”

  The glider leveled and then started to dive down. Fear filled her eyes. This was a lot scarier. Teagan took over, stabilizing the machine at their original height.

  “We do not want to go down into that fog,” he laughed. “But it’s easy right? Forward, back, left, right. Nothing to it really. I learned when I was fourteen. My dad used to be a pilot, he would take me to work sometimes. I was five the first time he let me steer.”

  “That’s the Sea Farm,” he pointed to the square floating fields below them, neatly arranged around a metal platform. “Remember my pet project? The one I told you about?” He pointed to an almost empty field with some black strands in between the green brown squares. “That was this years autumn attempt, it pretty much all died. But that one right there, that right plot is my newest strand of spring weeds. As you can see it is not quite as dense as the other fields yet, but I hope it has grown enough by spring to give us a good harvest. It already shows potential, it is starting to grow, you can tell by the bright green color.” He knew he should probably quit talking before boring her to death, but he couldn’t help it, he was quite enthusiastic about his work.

  “If you look back you can get a very nice view of the Bunker. You can see the Field on the right, where we grow our other food. And you can see the Ocean Lounge.”

  She could see the railing and the terrace behind it. The colored lights were off and the seats were now covered with white cushions, which gave it a luxurious feel, like those beach resorts she had seen in the old magazines.

  “What’s back there?” Cecilia asked. She pointed to a dark black pillar of smoke in the distance. Below it was a bright yellow light. “Is something on fire?”

  Teagan took a moment before answering her question. “Maybe I should show you,” he said. “It’s part of my project as well, in a way.” He steered the glider in the direction of the smoking pipe coming from the platform.

  “Is it another Sea Farm?”

  “No, you should see it more as a back up system. The bunker uses a lot of energy, as you have noticed. Most of our energy comes from the Sea Farm. But the winter and summer weeds are not enough to cover all of it. And certain things are not able to run on our biofuel yet, or not on biofuel alone. That’s why we still have this old rig.”

  They circled around the metal rig, keeping their distance from the fire and the smoke. Below them she saw men in yellow work suits. They seemed tiny, like ants. The top view gave a clear image of a strange black marbled pattern in the water surrounding the platform. Like when you drop ink in a glass of water, one drop at the time, she thought. On top of it was a strange metallic blue shine. It looked kind of beautiful, but the smoke made her cough and left her feeling nauseated.

  “That doesn’t smell very nice,” she said.

  The glider had flown full circle and was now on its way back.

  “Why don’t your people stop using so much power?” Cecilia asked. It seemed the most logic solution.

  “That’s exactly what I told my father when I found out about the oil rig,” Teagan replied. “But things are more complicated than they appear sometimes. For instance we need the Sea Farm to grow the seaweed, for food, fertilizer for the crops and more. But we can only get to it with our boats, which do not run on the biofuel alone. We tried to get it to work, but the engines can’t take it, they keep breaking down. Finding a new engine costs days of scouting by boat, which costs a lot of fossil fuel. If you can find an engine at all that is, because they don’t make new ones anymore. In the long run it’s better to pollute a little than to use clean fuel and ruin the engines. So we need a little bit of bad fuel, to feed our people, until we get the engines to work on the biofuel alone.”

  “It’s all connected, if you think about it. The Sea Farm gives us the opportunity to make a lot of biofuel, which replaces a lot of the bad fuel that we used to use. So that is another positive side effect. And I know it looks like we are using a lot of it, and some some of it seems less necessary than others. But just imagine what life would be like inside a mountain without lights. People would go crazy. Just like they would be bored to death without the entertainment area. These things were all created for a reason.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. Life in the mountain would be terrible without any light or any entertainment.

  “That’s just a couple of examples,” Teagan continued. “It also gives us a chance to gather solarpanels with our gliders, and fix the wind turbines for instance. We don’t need electricity to glide these, but starting them requires some energy, and if we have to extend our flights we sometimes need the engine as well to gain altitude. We’ve rebuilt regular motor planes with fuel engines into semi electric motor gliders. We try to only use the electric system, but on long supply flights we sometimes need to switch to fuel. If we didn’t use them we would not
be able to reach the furthest windmills, and would lose that clean power source.”

  She understood what Teagan meant, sort of. In a way it made sense, and she liked how the Bunker looked like those places in the magazines of the good old days. She had dreamed of such a life when she was a little girl. And now she was here, and it was real. It took some getting used to after the sober life she had known. New things were scary, but she started to enjoy it more and more. Still the use of energy for the video games seemed excessive. They could use less and then they would not need to make so much biofuel. They would need less fossil fuel for the boats to transport it. To her it seemed like a win win situation. But maybe it was more complicated, like he said.

  “Get ready to land,” Teagan said.

  She looked at him and wondered if it meant she had to do something. The opening in the rock face had seemed so large when they took off, but from the sky it looked like they had to fly into a snug hole. Like a mouth of a monster waiting to devour her. She hoped they would stop before hitting the back wall. The glider started to feel like those tree eating chairs at the Ocean Lounge. Like an evil man made machine that destroyed the world. However wonderful the sensation of flying had felt, the machine was just another one of those things she was raised to hate. It did not feel right, and she just wanted to get away from it.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE HARBOR

  “Daryl, wake up.” Cathy spoke softly but her tone was pressing.

  “What’s wrong?” He was not yet able to open his eyes completely. Instead he peered through the little slits at the softly illuminated face of the girl next to him. He saw fear in her eyes, something had spooked her.

  “I heard footsteps, I think,” she said. “They seem to come from the northeast tunnel. I don’t see any lights though.”

  “Wake the others, and take them in there.” He pointed to one of the other tunnels that connected to the cave.

  That one would take them south to another safe spot. Cathy woke Jake and Moon, and did what Daryl said. Daryl himself went the other way, towards the sound. He heard it now too, it did sound like footsteps. They seemed slow and sliding. That’s not a guard, he thought, unless his flashlight stopped working. He stopped and listened again. The sound grew louder, he must be closer now. Amidst the grinding sound of the sand and the crumbling from the wall’s grit hitting the floor he could also hear a faint, high pitched wheezing.

  He focused on the breathing sound. The pitch was high and quick, much different than his own low and heavy breathing. A girl most likely, and she sounded afraid. Should he call out to her? It might scare her and make her run off, which ran the risk of her getting caught and exposing their existence as well. What if she was a guard and took him prisoner, what if there were more? He could not just leave her there though, could he? What if she needed help? She sounded like she needed help . . . the wheezing sound was getting closer, followed by a shuddering exhalation.

  He pointed the flashlight at the floor before turning it on. He had to take the chance. If it was a guard he could always fight, or turn the light off and run for it. This part of the maze was clear like a blueprint in his head now, he could find his way like a rodent in the night. A light glow shone from beneath him when he pressed the on/off switch, spreading the light out over the tunnel floor. The footsteps stopped abruptly and so did the wheezing. The glow revealed the shape of a girl. The light reflected the white vertical stripes on the apron she held, close to her body, like she had to protect it with her life. Her big eyes stood out, like a deer in the headlights. As Daryl’s eyes adjusted to the light, he started to recognize her.

  Faye could only see a silhouette, of a dark figure crouched on the ground. At first it scared her, causing a shiver to run through her body. The light had hit him from below, like those faces on the covers of horror novels. The dark shadows below his eyes made him look like an evil monster. But her fear was quickly replaced by a feeling of relief when she recognized the man in front of her. The tension in her muscles disappeared, and she smiled as she called his name.

  “Daryl? It’s me, Faye.”

  Daryl flashed the light three times when he was back in the cave. The sign for Cathy, Jake and Moon to come out from their hiding place. Cathy fell into Faye’s arms and Moon hugged Faye’s leg.

  “You made it out!” Cathy said. “I’m so happy you made it out. Are you alone? Where are the others?” she added, causing Faye to tense up again and stare at the floor.

  Faye shook her head. “They had no chance, we all know what happens to people that do things that are not allowed,” she said. “I was lucky.” She explained what had happened that past twenty-four hours and how she had gotten out.

  “Did they follow you?” Daryl asked. Worried about their safety now as well.

  “I don’t think so,” Faye replied. “I didn’t see anybody on my way.”

  Good, that gives us a little bit more time, he thought. He didn’t like that they hadn’t been able to come up with an escape plan before Faye escaped. The guards would get suspicious, security would go on high alert, making it harder to move through the bunker unseen. He had to focus on a way out now more than ever.

  Faye could not think that far. Her mind was with the people she had left behind. Every time she closed her eyes, blinked even, she would see them lying on the ground. “I made it out,” she whispered to herself, over and over again, but it didn’t help.

  Jake and Moon sat beside her, sharing some of the food she had brought with her from the Field.

  Daryl took Cathy aside, “We need to talk.”

  She looked at him, not sure if she liked what he had just proposed. It was a risk, it scared her. But they had to try. They needed a way out and they needed to get Murphy. And most of all they needed to do it soon, time was of the essence now. The guards would find out Faye was missing eventually.

  “We leave first thing in the morning,” she agreed.

  They had only a couple of hours to rest. She tried closing her eyes but sleeping seemed impossible. Before she knew it Daryl came back out of the tunnel, the light of his flashlight illuminated the cave.

  “It’s time,” he said.

  He had stayed awake to observe the tunnel lights in the green zone. They had switched back to full power, indicating that it was morning.

  Cathy hugged Moon. “I’ll be back tonight,” she whispered into her ear. “You listen to Jake and Faye while I’m gone, okay?” Moon nodded.

  Daryl put on his camo cap and smelled his sand colored shirt. He frowned, but it would have to do. He walked up to Jake and gave him one of the flashlights.

  “Keep them safe now, okay,” he said.

  Jake started cranking the light toy with a proud smile. He had deserved it and he had the responsibility to keep them safe now.

  Daryl gave him a nod and patted him on the shoulder before disappearing into the east tunnel. Cathy followed him closely.

  “Are you ready for this?” he whispered.

  “As ready as can be,” she sighed.

  “Okay, we’re almost out of the safe zone. Let me help you with this apron thing.”

  Daryl took the apron Faye had worn out of his bag and stood in front of Cathy. He put the top of the apron over her head and pulled the side ribbons behind her back. She lifted her arms and felt the warmth of his arms around her.

  “Daryl?” she whispered.

  “Yeah.” He bent his head closer to hers to hear what she had to say.

  “If we don’t make it out . . .” She lowered her hands and rested them on his chest.

  “Shhh, we will,” he said, looking down into her eyes.

  She lifted her hand and touched his neck. Her thumb stroked the bottom of his jaw.

  “Cat?” he sighed. He had always tried to suppress what he was now feeling so vividly. His breathing was faster than usual and he couldn’t think clearly.

  “Shhh,” was all she said. She stood on her toes and pulled his head closer to hers. Then pressed her lips fi
rmly against his.

  He closed his eyes and a sense of calm washed over him. The ribbons slipped from his hands. He put his hands gently on her hips and pulled her a little closer.

  He smiled and scratched the back of his head. He looked at the floor, then back up at her.

  She hadn’t expected him to be so shy. Cathy wrapped the long cords around her back and back to the front, fixing it in place with a bow on her belly.

  “Let’s do this,” she smiled, squeezing Daryl’s hand.

  The east tunnel led to the beginning of the green zone, where the tunnels were lit. Daryl straightened his back, his chest forward. He let Cathy take the lead, walking a few paces in front of him. As if he was escorting her somewhere. The first supply room they passed he grabbed a pile of towels.

  “Here, hold these,” he said while pressing the towels in her hands.

  It helped, she looked less insecure. As if she had a purpose now, as if she was going somewhere because someone needed towels.

  They took the main road, which was just wide enough for two vans to pass each other. To the right they could hear the humming of machines, the slicing of knives and boiling of pots. The smell was a strange combination of mushrooms and sweets, like the carrot cake Cathy’s mom used to make for her birthday.

  They passed the area marked ‘Kitchen’ on the map. The main road curved along the outside of the mountain. There wasn’t much traffic this early. The occasional guard passed them, saluting Daryl in the usual way. One of the doors opened and closed, as someone carried a box across the hall. No one looked up, everyone just did what was expected of them. As if they were part of a bee colony, working together like a well oiled machine.

  They had to make their way to the inside ring, to get closer to the Lab. That was where they hoped to find Cecilia’s workspace, and therefore their best chance to find Murphy.

  Cathy focused on the doors to her right. Looking for a passageway through, an empty room perhaps. But Daryl pulled her arm and dragged her into an exit on the left.