Sunscorched

by Jen Crane

  “…boyfriend…gorge…rather than…fag.”

  Nori gasped, her heart pounding with dread and fury. She’d heard enough to piece together Diesel’s intent. She looked up at Kade’s face, which had morphed into a mask of rage. And pain.

  His growl was so fierce Nori backed away from the ring. He swung at Diesel with the full force of his body, landing a hook that sent the shorter man straight to the mat. Out cold.

  Without a word or a look in her direction, Kade ducked through the ropes and stomped toward the tunneled hallway.

  “Goddangit, Kade!” Hank, who’d been silently observing the fight, jumped into the ring and checked Diesel’s pulse. “Stupid, son. That was just stupid,” he said to Diesel’s unconscious form. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

  Nori’s voice was reed-thin when she asked, “Is he— Is he okay?”

  “Not dead, but he won’t be fightin’ Saturday. Cost me a fight.” Hank went on to curse Kade’s temper and Diesel’s smart mouth with words that would’ve made a sailor blush with shame.

  Nori went in search of Kade, but didn’t find him in the locker room or showers. She left him to the privacy of his room after letting him know Diesel would be all right.

  18

  Alone in Town

  “Girl!” Hank’s deep voice rumbled through the hall and found Nori in the laundry.

  She slammed the door to the dryer on her way to his office. Maybe office was too strong a word. There was a desk. And a chair. There were stacks of papers in the underworld’s most disheveled filing system. Boxing gloves and other equipment in need of repair littered every spare surface of the room.

  Nori stood just inside the door, afraid to touch anything, afraid to move in case she caused an avalanche of junk.

  “There you are,” Hank said around his toothpick. “I need you,” he looked up and into her gaze, obviously doubting the intelligence of his plan, “to go to the square and find Doc Moore.”

  Nori started at his request, at the fact he was trusting her to leave the Pit by herself.

  “Diesel’s talking nonsense, and I think he’s got a concussion. I need to get him checked out by the doc to make sure he doesn’t die on me.”

  “Okay,” Nori said, and swallowed.

  Hank mumbled something else about the money Kade was costing him, and looked up with a frown. “You goin’ or not?”

  “Yes. Yes, sir.” Nori hotfooted it from the office and left the safety and confinement of the Pit in search of Doc Moore, though she didn’t have the first idea who he was or where to find him.

  About two minutes outside the Pit, Nori began to question Hank’s rationale in choosing her for the errand. Everyone she passed stared at her, and not because she was new in town. She didn’t look the part, didn’t fit in. Not at all. The citizens of Trogtown apparently had an agreement with grime. It could stick around on their clothes, their skin, in their hair. In turn, they would make more of it by throwing their food and trash on the ground. No wonder the whole town stank. The spitting was a nice touch, she thought. Very attractive.

  With a disgusted shiver that started at the back of her neck and went all the way down to her toes, Nori marched onward, head held high. Maybe if she looked determined, no one would bother her.

  That hope was short-lived.

  “’ey.” A man in his forties in old military fatigues waved his arm at her as she passed. “Come ’ere for a minute.” Nori picked up her pace. “I haven’t seen you. You up from the farm?” She ignored him and kept walking, facing straight ahead. “Rude ones, them farmers,” he mumbled after her. “Think they’re better’n e’rbody.”

  Nori recognized a face at the end of the narrow street. Peg. She approached the sturdy woman, finally letting her guard down a little. “Hi. I’m Nori. I saw you the other day when we were running.” At the woman’s blank look, she added, “I was with Kade.”

  No response.

  “Anyway,” Nori went on, “I’m looking for Doc Moore. You know where I can find him?”

  Peg’s gaze slipped to a window on the second story of a nearby building.

  “He’s there? Upstairs?”

  Peg nodded just once.

  “Thanks for your help,” Nori gushed. When the woman didn’t respond, Nori gave an awkward wave and left.

  The base of the building held a general store. The door was propped open, revealing stacks of batteries, lanterns, food packs, canteens--a hundred little survival essentials.

  “Can I help you?” someone said.

  Nori realized with a start she’d been staring. “Er. Sorry. Looking for Doc Moore.”

  The man raised his chin toward a set of stairs at the back of the store. “Second floor, second right.”

  Nori filed the supplies away for future reference, like the maps and notes she’d stashed in her room. In case the day came when she had to escape Trogtown. Waiting out the sunscorch at Hank’s Pit wasn’t too bad. She had food and a safe place to sleep. She’d made a friend, and was learning new skills. Like an underground survival camp, really. And she hadn’t felt this good—this healthy—maybe ever. Maybe she and her parents could live at least part time underground instead of migrating to the 25th Parallel. It had become impossible anyway.

  As Nori trudged up the stairs to Doc Moore, she wondered why some people had never followed safety recommendations and migrated to the 25th Parallel. Loyalty to their homes and homelands? Inability to let go? Maybe something much simpler: to keep away from the crowds. Despite billions dying in the first sunscorch, what was left of the world’s population migrating to such a thin strip of the globe caused serious overcrowding.

  As she stood with her hand raised, ready to knock on Doc Moore’s door, Nori shook her head at the insane turn her life had taken.

  “Enter,” a thin voice called from inside.

  “Ah, hello,” she said and pushed open the door. “Hank sent me. Diesel’s been knocked out cold and he’s worried. Asked if you’d come check him out.”

  The old man had to be in his eighties. What little hair he had was white and baby-fine. He looked up at her from behind his desk, and his spectacles, his wrinkled brow forming creases on top of creases. “And who might you be?”

  “Nori. Hi. I’m new.” She smiled and stepped inside. She’d always loved older people, though she didn’t know many. Most weren’t healthy enough to survive the harsh conditions, but she considered the few she’d known to be precious, fleeting resources.

  If he was as old as she thought, that meant…that meant he may have lived on the surface before the first scorch hit. She had no way of knowing how long the subterranean world had existed, how long Trogtown had been a town. Had these people been down here for generations, preparing for the apocalypse?

  “New is an understatement, I’d say.” The old man slowly stood from his chair and reached for a worn brown fedora lying on his desk.

  She couldn’t help it. She giggled at the sight of a man wearing a brimmed hat in the underground world.

  Doc Moore’s head whipped faster in her direction than she’d have thought possible. He caught her eyes dancing. “Old habits die hard,” he said with a wink.

  19

  Janie and the Lake

  “Boy’ll be fine,” Doc Moore said and clapped Hank on the back. “Rest. No fighting for at least two weeks to let the concussion heal. I’d say he should steer clear of ever fighting again, considering the head injuries he’s suffered, but you people never listen.”

  “Thanks, Doc.” Hank ignored the dig.

  The old man’s face softened. “How’s Janie today?”

  Hank’s gaze shot to Nori, his mouth pressing into a thin line. She took the hint and backed silently from the room.

  “Who’s Janie?”

  Nori was forced to talk to some of the other fighters since Kade and Diesel were both out of commission. She obviously couldn’t ask Hank.

  “Hank’s wife,” Bron grunted as he spun a jump rope so fast he made a full-b
ody halo.

  “I didn’t know Hank had a wife,” she blurted then said, quieter, “When did Hank get a wife?”

  “Always had one, I guess.”

  “I mean, how come I haven’t seen her around here?”

  “Hates the violence.”

  Nori watched his face to confirm he wasn’t kidding, and shook her head at the irony. A tender-hearted woman married to the town’s pit boss.

  “Has she been sick?”

  A line of sweat ran from Bron’s smooth temple to the top of his copper beard. “She’s got the deficiency.”

  “Oh.” Then, “What’s that?”

  Bron stopped jumping, the rope limp but the handle still firmly in his grip. He cocked his head at Nori, studying her as he would’ve a mushroom sprouting unexpectedly from the damp earth.

  “Maybe it’s called something different where I’m from,” she added hastily.

  He squinted so hard his blue eyes were barely visible when he said, “Not enough vitamin D. Depressed. Doesn’t get around well cause her bones are brittle.”

  “Right.” Nori nodded. “Well. Doesn’t she take vitamins or supplements or something?”

  “Hank can afford them, sure. But her body can’t process ’em right, is what I heard.”

  “How sad.” Nori knew too well the mental anguish that came with physical restrictions.

  Bron nodded and took up his rope again, and she left to finish her chores.

  “Kade,” Nori yelled as she banged on the cold metal door. “Kade, get out here.”

  Not a single sound escaped the room. Probably holding his breath.

  “You can’t stay locked in your room all day,” she said then amended, “again.”

  “I can, too.” His deep voice was faint but firm. “Go away.”

  “Well, you’re not holing up in there today.”

  “Oh no?” There was a challenge to his voice. It was better than desolation.

  “No.” Nori put hands on her hips even though he couldn’t see her. “You’re taking me somewhere.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Bron says there’s a lake not too far outside town. I want to see it.”

  Silence. Then, “Hank’ll never let you go.”

  “Already cleared it with him.”

  There was faint rustling inside the room, like he was throwing on clothes, and then the door flew open. “How the hell did you work that deal?”

  “He gave me some kind of test yesterday.” She shrugged. “Guess I passed.”

  She didn’t mention the real reason she suspected Hank had agreed to her plan: to get Kade out of his room—and out of his head.

  “Plus, he knows I’ll be with you, and you’d haul me back if I tried to run away.”

  “That I would,” he said, brushing past her as she crowded his doorway.

  “Here.” Kade thrust a flashlight in Nori’s direction as they descended the same steps she’d taken into Trogtown just four days before. “I got us both a light. The overheads stop just past the steps.”

  She didn’t need the light, but pressed the button anyway, illuminating a narrow swath of the tunnel. Though artificial light didn’t hurt or burn her the way natural sunlight did, it affected her night vision. In Trogtwon and the Pit, the low-wattage overheads created a sort of permanent twilight. Never too bright, and not completely dark until the town-wide lights out at nine. When the artificial overheads were on, she was on a level with everyone else. She’d have to be careful Kade didn’t catch her eyes with his flashlight.

  When Kade took a right at the steps a thrill of excitement bubbled inside her. They were leaving town in the opposite direction she’d come. Maybe she’d learn another way back to Ralston.

  Though she was trying to make the best of it, being held against her will in a world she didn’t know left her humiliated and angry. Life underground wasn’t as bad as she’d thought it would be. But at night, when it was quiet and she was alone, fear nearly strangled her. Was she really safe with Hank and Kade? How long could she live like this? How—and when—would she escape to find her parents.

  The day was coming when she would have to risk Hank’s wrath and escape. She’d been straining to overhear the conversations of people coming in and out of the Pit, listening for any word of the sunscorch. Surely she would hear about it even underground. Right? But what if word never came? Her chest tightened with dread. What if most people, like Kade, thought the surface was uninhabitable, that the world only existed on their subterranean level?

  Didn’t matter. Nori sniffed and straightened. The people predicting the impending sunscorch were experts. If they said a scorch would occur within the week, it undoubtedly would. Another week for the after effects, and she should be good to go. But she had work to do before then—planning, and recon, and food storage. A twinge of guilt pulled at her gut at the thought of stealing from Hank, who was surprisingly trusting of her already. She shrugged. Couldn’t be helped. Nori made a mental note to begin dry runs to test her escape. She had to be ready when the time came.

  “How much farther?” she asked Kade after a while. She was glad to learn more about the tunnel and search for a potential way out, but they’d been walking for miles.

  “Not long now.” Kade’s long strides forced her to hustle to keep up.

  “Couldn’t we have taken a bike or something?”

  His deep laugh rumbled through the enclosure. “Hank’s trusting, but not that trusting.”

  “Would you really chase me?” she asked.

  “If you tried to escape, you mean?”

  Nori nodded.

  “You bet I would.”

  Fists flew to her hips. “Why?”

  “A deal’s a deal.”

  “Oh, but I didn’t make a deal,” she argued. “Some jerks kidnapped and sold me to Hank without my permission.”

  “That’s how it works,” Kade said with a shrug.

  “I can’t believe you’d get behind this kind of moral injustice.” Nori threw her hands up as the heat of indignation spread from her neck up to her cheeks. She ground her teeth and growled, surging forward with such fire Kade had to catch up with her.

  “It’s just a part of life,” he said. “It’s not fair, but it’s the way it is. Anyway, who’s gonna stop it? You see any moral—or civil, for that matter—authority around here?”

  “Surely somebody’s tried to stop this.”

  “People have revolted, sure. They’ve run away. But these guys know what they’re doing. They find people like you, and me, and Grant, and Diesel, who have no connections, no family. And who’s going to do anything about it?”

  “Us!” Nori said with conviction. “We could fight. We could escape.”

  “Been there; done that,” Kade said. “Got the beating to prove it.”

  “No,” Nori breathed. “From Hank?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Before I came here. But Hank would make you regret the day you tried to escape, believe me.”

  She scoffed, but Kade pinned her with a look that said he wasn’t exaggerating.

  “Is it just me, or is getting humid in here?” Though a general dampness always permeated her new world, this was different.

  “We’re close to the lake. It’s fed by underground springs, so, yeah.”

  They’d made two right and four left turns since leaving Trogtown. Nori jotted that down in her mental notebook under the heading “Escape Plan.”

  Some intersections had directional signs indicating the next point. Trogtown - 3 mi, or Incinerator with an arrow. The last fork in the road said Debajo - 67 mi.

  “What’s Debayjoe?” Nori asked with feigned nonchalance.

  “Deh-BAH-ho,” he corrected. “Spanish for underneath.”

  “Okay, what’s Debajo?”

  Kade ignored her mocking tone. “It’s the next town over.”

  “Surely you can’t take this tunnel for another 70 miles,” she scoffed.

  Kade shone the light toward her and she cl
enched her eyes shut. “You can take this tunnel all the way to Canada,” he said. “How do you not know that?”

  Nori kept her eyes closed for several long moments. Keeping her business to herself was more difficult than she’d anticipated. To make this work, she would have to be smarter. And she would have to do a better job of keeping her big mouth shut.

  “I just got turned around.” She shrugged, but didn’t dare look in Kade’s direction for fear he’d spot her deception.

  If the tunnels went all the way to Canada, she wondered, did they go to Mexico, too?

  “Here it is.” Kade bent onto hands and knees in front of a three-foot opening. “I’ll go in first. You hand me the light once I’m inside, and then I’ll help you in.”

  Nori’s heart was in her throat. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Have you been here before?” Kade’s right eyebrow shot toward his hairline in a cynical arch.

  Nori shook her head.

  “Do you know some other lake?”

  Another shake.

  “Then hold this light while I climb through.”

  She took the light, grumbling. “Why is the entrance so small? Isn’t there another way in on the other side or something?”

  “Not that I know of,” he said. “This thing is like four acres wide, and it’s still intact because it’s so hard to get to. People keep a tight lid on it, like a treasure, because it’s the source of the stream that runs through town. I still can’t believe Bron told you—wait. Yes, I can. Did he try to bring you?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  “But Hank said you should have me take you instead.” When Nori didn’t answer, he prodded. “Right?”

  Kade had pieced Hank’s plan together; no sense denying it. She shrugged noncommittally.

  “Bron just wants in your pants. You know that, right?”