Atlantic Pyramid

by Michelle E Lowe

  “No,” he admitted, sounding completely British now. “The man I stole me identify from was. Years ago, the real Carlton Malone went underground and got caught by our people. I was a prison guard then. I talked to him and he told me his life story. One day, while doing repair work, he tried to escape and got killed. Not by me, mind you.”

  “Why did you take his identity?”

  “I didn’t want to live underground anymore.”

  “Too good for us, he is,” Killian snarled.

  “Shut it, big brother,” Carlton snapped. “At least I had the guts to come to the surface. Unlike you, coward.”

  “So, it’s true,” I cut in before a sibling feud broke out. “Your kind can adjust to the light.”

  “Of course we can,” Carlton said. “It takes time, depending on how old we are, but we can adjust.”

  “Speaking of age, how long have you been living up here?”

  “Ten years. Since the real Carlton lived in South Village, I came to North Village, where no one knew him. I kept to myself while I practiced my southern brogue. I always thought whenever I got old enough for people to take notice, I’d claim I was sick.”

  “We know how to destroy the island,” Starr interjected. “If your people want to live, they need to get out of our way.”

  “An evacuation will take time, my boy,” Carlton explained. “We’re talking about moving an entire society.”

  Carlton was right. Below us was a small town. Getting them onboard for a major change would be time-consuming and delicate work.

  “Get them ready or they can die with this creepy place,” Starr said before storming out.

  “Forceful little shit, isn’t he?” Carlton said.

  This was the in-your-face Starr I didn’t want coming out. “I’ll talk to him. Killian, I don’t want to hold you against your will anymore, so I’m asking you to stay. The lives of your people depend on it.”

  Killian sighed and rolled his eyes, like a lazy roommate being asked to take out the trash. “I’ll stay, but not because you ask me to. It’s because I’m sick. You’ve probably killed me bringing me up here.”

  “Stop your complaining,” Carlton said. “You’ve always been such a whiny little cuss.” And to me, he said, “I’ll watch him.”

  I hurried to catch up with Starr as he ran down the stairs. The rain fell like tiny stones on my shoulders. “Starr, wait up!”

  He stopped, and when he turned to me, I said, “What the hell, man? You can’t throw your weight around like that. We got to plan things out before we make a move.”

  “I’m the soldier here, not you,” he fired back, water and spit flying out of his mouth. “We need to act on this right now, before those things attack us.”

  “Those things are people,” I reminded him. “And I don’t think they’re going to try anything.”

  “You don’t know that. We’re in a critical situation right now and there’s no time to piss around.”

  I hadn’t fought in the Gulf War with Starr. I’d never fought in any war. But it seemed to me his instincts as a soldier had kicked into high gear. He considered the underground dwellers a threat that needed to be controlled.

  “What exactly are you going to do?” I challenged. “Do you even have a plan to destroy the island?” His blank expression told me he didn’t. “All right, then, go to the bar. Have a drink and clear your head. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  As I headed up the stairs, I hoped he’d take my advice. For as long as I’d known him, he’d been a straight-up guy. I’d seen him fist-fight someone at a bar over something stupid and then have a drink with him. Maybe if he had time to relax, he’d return to an understanding, cooperative guy and not an alpha dog with rabies.

  When I rejoined Carlton and Killian in my hut, I had questions of my own. “Is there anyone else in the village like you two?”

  “Some,” Carlton replied. “I won’t give names. You should just be grateful we’re living among you. We’ve shown your people how to use plants for medicine, among other things.”

  “How long has your kind been doing this?”

  “We didn’t start until the turn of the century, when a band of our youngsters left to experience the world above. Except they were killed after they came back. Still, most who live underground wanted to come up, but because the traditionalists…” He stared at his brother. “They portray the surface as being overrun with death and monsters. Only so many of us try making a living up here.”

  “Well, everyone down there is going to have to adjust pretty damn quick after word spreads about this,” I said.

  “Are you really going to try to destroy the island?” Killian asked.

  “Yes.”

  He snorted. “You’re mad. How are you going to destroy an entire island? Get pickaxes and break it apart?”

  Again with the critical question how. It seemed to be the question of the day, yet I had zero time to think about it.

  I asked Carlton to take his brother back to his hut. I needed some time to think. I wished Ruby was here. We could have collaborated on a solution.

  “Ruby,” I lamented to myself.

  Shit, I’d forgotten about Calla and West, where they were and if they were all right. I doubted after the time we’d spent underground they’d stayed by the hole. I couldn’t search for them now, though. I needed time to think.

  I lit some candles and stretched out on the floor. “Have any ideas?” I asked Gavin.

  “About what?”

  “About the island, how we can destroy it.”

  “Got me. I skipped the whole ‘How to Destroy an Entire Land Mass’ course in college.”

  My chest rose with the breath I took. While I slowly exhaled, Gavin said, “Ruby said now that you’ve found that weird pool, you guys could kill the fragment.”

  “Right, that pool is the life source.”

  “Isn’t there a way to, I don’t know, drain the pool?”

  “I doubt there’s a cork at the bottom.”

  He appeared and paced back and forth by my feet. “That place was weird, huh?”

  “Yeah, it was. Especially the breeze.”

  “What breeze?”

  I’d forgotten he could no longer feel anything. “The breeze that came in and out. It was caused by the energy pool.”

  “’Cause it was breathing, like Ruby said?”

  “Yep, it . . .”

  I sat up, my heart pounding hard and my palms sweating, like I was about to ask the head cheerleader to the prom. “It is breathing.”

  “A breathing island,” Gavin snorted. “Weird.”

  “The holes scattered all over the place must be the island’s nostrils.”

  “Okay, even stranger. What should you do? Go around stuffing up the holes to suffocate the damn thing?”

  I went back to what Killian had said about how the crawl space we’d escaped through should have been sealed off. For years, these underground dwellers must have been sealing the caves, cutting off the island’s airflow, slowly suffocating it.

  “Suffocation. That’s it! If we can cut off the pool’s airflow, the island won’t be able to breathe.”

  “Great,” Gavin said, giving me a thumbs up. “Stuffing holes it is, then.”

  “No, we need to do something more extreme than that.”

  “Like what?”

  I thought about it. The answer came to me when Gavin’s smart-ass remark abruptly resurfaced in my mind. Like one day, this dude blew up my dead body and next thing I knew, I became a walking, talking stick of beef jerky. And then what I’d said to Starr inside Darwin’s house. In war, if you were given an order to complete a mission and the only way to do it was to blow up an entire village filled with innocent civilians, would you do it?

  Two key words were in both sentences—blow up. I felt like Michael Bay conjuring up a movie script.

  “I got it,” I said, raising my eyes to Gavin. “I know what to do.”

  * * *

  I went to C
arlton’s hut. When I got there, he was giving his brother something to drink.

  “This stuff is bloody bitter,” Killian complained. “Have you just poisoned me?”

  “It’s tea, idiot. Jeez, use the honey with it.” Carlton turned his attention to me. “Thought you needed time to think.”

  I stood dripping water on his floor. He didn’t seem to mind. “I did, and I came up with a something. We blow the island up from the inside. The explosion might cause it to cave in on itself and fill the pool with large sections of stone.”

  “And what will that do?” Killian asked with a sniff.

  I didn’t want to go into everything I’d learned about the island, about how it was really a living fragment of a collision between two moons, so I said, “It’ll kill the island. If it dies, the people might be able to go home.”

  “Killing the island might also kill everyone living on it,” Carlton said bluntly. “Ever think of that?”

  I hadn’t.

  “And where are you going to get enough explosives to blow up a small mountain?”

  “John T. Shubrick.”

  Carlton let out a hearty laugh that reverberated against my eardrums. “Shubrick? The ole’ loony sea king?”

  “Yep. He has barrels of gunpowder and crates of TNT.”

  Carlton’s face turned grim. “You’re really gonna do it, aren’t ya?”

  “It’s our only shot. And I won’t be the only one who’ll figure this out. I propose that Killian goes back underground to get his people ready to leave. You and I should hold a meeting with everyone and explain everything to them.”

  “Where are we supposed to go?” Killian asked.

  “There’s an abandoned village on the other side of the island,” I said. “Go there after dark. In a few days, I’ll come by and fill you in. You may have to go into the junkyard in case there’s a landslide.”

  “Landslide?” Carlton bellowed. “How much explosives are you planning to use?”

  “All of them.”

  I’ll admit, I was leaning more toward setting off explosives rather than dealing with the responsibility of the people underground. I wanted them to stay alive, that was no lie, but I was going to be juggling other problems too. First, Killian needed to talk to his people while Carlton and I brought everyone else up to speed. We needed to get organized before anything drastic happened. Then I thought about the Ancient Ones. How was I going to find them and get them to understand what was going to happen?

  As I left the hut, I spotted someone running down the stairs. I assumed it was Carlton’s next door neighbor willing to get drenched for a drink. I needed to relax.

  Calming my nerves, I went to Khenan’s hut and told him everything over a drink.

  “You tink it’ll work?” he asked.

  “I hope so. Tomorrow, we’ll get everyone onboard. My only concern is Starr. He could stir up a lot of trouble if he wants to.”

  “You said ’e doesn’t know ‘bout your plan. I’m sure someone else won’t tink up da same idea right away. Dat’ll give dem people below time to leave.”

  That put my mind at ease. I relaxed and drank a few more beers before passing out in his armchair. Now, looking back on it, I wish I hadn’t let my guard down. Every concern I had turned into full-blown realities.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  A banging came from the door. It felt like a nail being driven into my brain. Khenan rushed past me just as I opened my eyes to the darkness. He swung the door open. Whoever the visitor was held a lantern and stood against a black backdrop.

  “Jeez, mon, wah is it?”

  “Is Heath here?” Calla asked.

  “You got a visitor,” Khenan said with a deep yawn.

  Uh-oh. The drinks from earlier made my body ache.

  “Hey, Calla,” I said as she stepped into the hut.

  I was in for the scolding of a lifetime. When I received it, I knew my head would explode. I prepared myself to tell her the bad news about Ruby. Like ripping off a Band-Aid, I decided to go ahead and tell her.

  “Ruby’s dead,” she said as I opened my mouth to speak.

  “How do you know?” I asked, dumbfounded.

  “I just came from the village on the other side of the island and found her. She was badly cut up. What happened?”

  I told her how Ruby had gotten wounded as we’d escaped the underground. I also explained that Ruby had said nothing about her injuries. I didn’t want Calla thinking I was an asshole for not trying to save her, which I would’ve if Ruby had allowed me to.

  Calla bowed her head. “She didn’t want to live anymore. I’ve known that for some time but I ignored it because I wanted her to stay with me.”

  That sparked an important question. “You didn’t—”

  “She’s free now,” she said abruptly. “At least I hope.”

  “What about West?”

  “You mean that crybaby? Jeez, I’ve never heard a grown man complain so much. He wouldn’t stop whining or go back to the village alone, so I took him there.”

  Night had descended but I didn’t know how old it was. People ran past the doorway, although I hardly paid it any mind. “When did you get here?”

  “Just now. I took a shortcut through the mountain.”

  “Through the mountain?”

  She gave me a hard stare and something suddenly occurred to me. “You’re one of them. All that shit about being a researcher is a lie, isn’t it?”

  That would explain why she hadn’t known what a chameleon or a zoo was, and why she didn’t want anyone going into the caves.

  “Yes,” she replied. “I took the real Calla’s identity and everything I knew about her past, even that bit about being claustrophobic because she’d been trapped in an ice box.” She chuckled. “I don’t even know what those are. But that was why I didn’t tell you about the holes. Not to save my people, but to keep you out of their cages. Then Ruby decided to sneak away to see you. She saw something in you.”

  “What?”

  “Courage. She thought it was a sign you’d come to us when you did.”

  “You mean while the island is weakening?”

  “Yes. She and the real Calla told me that when the three of us lived together. They’d asked me about the underground, but it wasn’t until Calla . . .” She trailed off, grief-stricken. I gave her time while she gathered her thoughts. Finally, she said, “I told them about my people and that they were dangerous.”

  “Why didn’t you tell them about the pool under your village?”

  “What about it?” she demanded. “Is that what Ruby was looking for?”

  “Yes.”

  “I never thought too much about it.”

  “That’s why you didn’t want to go with us. You didn’t want to run into your people. Why?”

  “I ran away thirty years ago. I never returned because they’d kill me if I went back. I can’t live the way they do. Hardly anyone down there lives past forty. They either die of disease or in childbirth.”

  “What keeps them down there?”

  “The elders tell horrible stories about flying lights that took people away and brought them back broken. Ruby confirmed the abductions were true.”

  Holy shit! Was it those aliens before Ruby that had run experiments on the island? They’d taken the people too?

  “Still, that was hundreds of years ago. Yet the elders continued to describe the world above as a wild and dangerous place, infested with pain and death. They believed people marooned on the island weren’t people at all, but savage hunters, which was true when the Vikings arrived. Killian helped keep that fear alive, like his mother and father before him, and his grandparents before them.”

  “What about the soldiers? Why did you tell them to go underground if you knew what could happen to them?”

  “They’d been imprisoned before I was even born. The real Calla told them to go because she was claustrophobic. You see, when I left, I met the real Calla Newbury. Ruby was with her even then. They t
ook me in, helped me adjust to the light. Later, I told Calla about the men. She thought they’d died down there. After they helped build her house, she told them about a cave nearby and wanted them to go in. When I told her what had happened, she died going after them. I was leading her when she slipped and fell. She cracked her head open. I took her identity, and ever since, Ruby and I have lived together.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner? It would’ve saved me a hell of a lot of trouble.”

  “I didn’t think you’d find anything, and I didn’t want to give away my true identity. Anyway, you had Ruby with you. I knew my people would be afraid of her.”

  “Well, believe it or not, the life source does exist. It turns out to be that pool you failed to mention.”

  Outside, people kept rushing back and forth. Finally, I went outside to see what all the ruckus was. People raced to and from the docks, some carrying barrels.

  “That’s my powder!” a man cried from the new docks. “You never asked my permission to seize it!”

  “Hey,” I said to someone rushing toward the water, “what’s going on?”

  “Some guy found an underground world and we’re gonna blow the hell outta it!”

  “Whoa, wait a sec,” I said, catching his arm when he tried to leave. “Who are you talking about?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know the man. He just said it might get us outta this shithole.”

  My heart fell like a stone inside my stomach. “Goddamn it, Starr.”

  “Wah is it?” Khenan asked.

  “Starr managed to come up with the same plan I did, but he’s going to go through with it before we get those people out.” My eyes came in contact with Calla’s. “I need you to lead me to your people’s village before the explosives are in place.”

  “I know a shortcut. Come with me.”

  “Wait,” Khenan called. “I’m coming wit you dis time.”

  We hurried across the pier, about to head into the forest, when Carlton called to me. “They took my brother! That friend of yours and some other sods.”

  “Why?”

  “He said he needed Killian to guide them to the pool to blow it up.”