by Kevin George
“At least a few days,” he said. “Depending how easy it is to get everything in order, I’d say probably longer. . . yes, certainly longer.”
He grabbed one of his tools—Carli couldn’t see which one, nor could she focus at the moment—and started to pry the panel off his jetpack.
“You’re going to start that now?” Carli asked.
Wyatt shrugged. “Don’t you want to leave here as soon as possible?”
“I do, but I. . . I don’t know what I can do to help,” she said.
“Don’t worry, I can handle things. I’m used to working alone,” he said, staring at nothing for several seconds before blinking and getting back to work. “I usually figure things out quickly.”
Before Wyatt could remove the outer shell of his jetpack, a realization dawned on Carli.
“Stop!” she snapped, removing the jetpack from her back, realizing how much its weight had been pushing down on her. “Use mine. It wasn’t working properly when we left the city.”
She gave a quick account of the jetpack sputtering on the rooftop of the city building. Wyatt frowned and his single-minded focus faded when he looked at Carli, apologizing—with the utmost sincerity—for putting her in danger. Carli nodded her forgiveness and explained that she didn’t want him risking his functioning jetpack if hers could be used for parts. He nodded and got to work, back to ignoring her as abruptly as he’d focused on her.
Carli stared at Wyatt’s jetpack, wanting to take it, doubting Wyatt would notice if she did. Carli walked around the room, but every time she crunched a piece of glass or inadvertently kicked a piece of debris, Wyatt glanced up. Since he seemed to work fine under the reddish glow, Carli quietly excused herself from the comm room, using the flashlight to explore the rest of the HASS.
Every creak threatened to send her running back to Wyatt, but she constantly reminded herself that she’d leapt off the Main HASS without ever testing the jetpack, that she’d learned how to fly on the fly, that she’d landed atop the HASS and flown into a snowy city and soared far away from her home. Such thoughts made Carli chuckle at the idea of being frightened by the dark HASS, though the feeling lingered nonetheless.
I’m sure this won’t be the last time I have to overcome fear of being in a different place, she told herself, surprised that of the countless hours she’d spent thinking about exploring the world below, she’d never once considered facing the unknown around every turn.
She wandered from room to room, not finding serious damage structurally, despite the incredible mess. The Comm HASS wasn’t altogether different from the Main HASS, despite being on a significantly smaller scale. The HASSes general layouts were similar, the living quarters were similar, the location of entrances and exits were similar; Carli was half tempted to crawl into the vents and see if they followed the same path as those from her home.
My former home, she thought. Carli couldn’t help but enter certain areas and imagine that her room would’ve been there, that her sister’s room would’ve been right next door, that her father’s room would’ve been down the hall, that the control room and meeting room were both nearby. She hoped Ashley and her father weren’t too panicked about her leaving, but she couldn’t imagine how she would’ve felt had she watched one of them fly off. Don’t think about them. . . don’t think about that life. . . focus on what you’re doing now if you want to return a hero to the Main HASS. . .
She found the ladder leading up to the Comm HASS’s small grow room. The Greenhouse HASS had been responsible for the majority of food produced for the cloud society, but each HASS contained a small grow room of its own, to supplement supplies and be used in case of emergency. I think this qualifies, Carli told herself, not sure if the thought made her want to laugh or cry.
She shone the light around the grow room, much of its greenhouse glass cracked, but none of it completely shattered. Dirt and grow boxes and greenery were scattered everywhere, some of the fruits and vegetables ripped out of the soil, their roots unmistakably damaged and beyond repair. Had they had the Greenhouse HASS to feed them, Carli may have deemed the room beyond repair, turned around and never come back. She used her free hand to right a few boxes and scoop handfuls of dirt back into place. She worked up a sweat but managed to replant several boxes of potatoes, carrots and a variety of greens. She’d barely scratched the surface of getting the room in order when exhaustion hit her, undoubtedly aided by the heat. Carli kicked her way through piles of dirt to reach the ladder, sweeping the beam of the flashlight around the room a final time.
None of this will matter anyway, she told herself, trying to ignore the nagging thought that she was lying to herself. Wyatt will fix the GPS in no time and we’ll be out of here soon enough, headed somewhere that has plenty of food and water and shelter and people who’ve survived, people who’ll show us how to survive in this new world. . .
Carli repeated these same assurances over and over in her mind, breathing faster and faster as she climbed down the stairs and stomped through the halls, finding it harder and harder to breathe. She stumbled toward the entrance, struggling to push open the door, struggling to lift the deflated metallic envelope, struggling to crawl her way through the snow, but finally emerging amidst the storm. Cold wind blasted her face and she closed her eyes, ignoring the snowy ground beneath her feet, pretending she’d just emerged from the Main HASS’s vent system and leaped down to the platform.
When she opened her eyes, she saw only whiteness, nothingness, a daunting future with the impossible task of finding a way to survive. Not for the first time—and she knew it wouldn’t be the last—she wondered where she’d have been at this moment had she chosen to shake her head when Wyatt offered her the jetpack.
Feeling just as hopeless as I had been my entire life. . . maybe more so, she told herself. Just as hopeless as my mother felt. She wouldn’t have turned down the jetpack if she’d had the opportunity.
With that thought in mind, Carli told herself that organizing the mess inside the HASS was the best she could do to help the situation and the best she could do to keep her mind preoccupied. She lifted the metallic envelope and nearly ducked beneath when she stopped to look toward the clouds, unable to fight off the crushing disappointment of still not spotting the Main HASS among the clouds and snow.
SIX MONTHS LATER
CHAPTER TEN
Chadwyck Upton’s eyes fluttered open to the early morning light peeking in through the slats covering his bedroom window. His sleepy mind had a moment of clarity where it had the choice to wake up and get moving, or go back to sleep. He reached out, grabbed his blanket and pulled it over his head, blocking out the light and drifting back into a deep, warm, comfortable sleep. . .
When he woke again, he had the same moment of sleepy indecision and considered pulling the blanket back over his head. He instinctively stretched his muscles, lifting his arms over his head, straightening his legs. A jolt zapped his knee, making him sit bolt upright. He reached for his knee—an instinct he’d developed over the past six months—and gently massaged it, pulling the blanket back to look down at it. It was tender for sure, but the pain was gone.
He sat at the edge of the bed and bent his knee up and down several times, pushing away hope even as he continued to be pain-free. Wait for what it feels like when you put weight on it, he told himself, almost afraid to find out that answer.
He stood slowly and hobbled a few steps. His knee remained strong as he walked out of the bedroom and down the ISU’s small hallway. As he passed the door to the small hallway closet, he turned his head the other way, trying not to think about what he’d left inside, trying not to think about what it would mean when he opened that door.
After stopping in the kitchen for a drink of water and a light breakfast, he went to the library, carefully maneuvering around dozens of books scattered on the floor. He considered cleaning his mess but decided against it. Plopping down onto his reading chair, he flipped to the end of his most recent book. Upon reaching the end of a page,
he realized he hadn’t focused on a single word. After repeating this process several times, he stopped and sighed, tossing the book onto the floor.
His mind raced, but not with information about the past world, not with information about what else might remain in the world, information he’d learned from books all around him. His eyes lingered toward the hallway, toward the hatch he couldn’t see from his chair, toward what lie beneath that hatch and beyond the supply room underneath the ISU.
“Still not strong enough,” he croaked, his voice strained from lack of use.
He reached to the side of the chair, where he had a bundle of books tied together with a short length of rope. He tied the other end of the rope to the ankle of his injured leg and began to lift the books, feeling his knee straining with the effort. Still, no pain existed and he pushed himself to do more leg curls than he’d ever done. He switched the bundle to his other leg and worked that one out, too; he’d read in one of these books about the importance of balancing his rehab to both legs.
He tried to read another book to no avail. Once his exercises were completed, he walked to the shelves—most of which were empty—and perused the remaining books. None interested him, nor had the books he’d read the last few months. His thirst for knowledge of the past had waned, no matter how many hours he’d spent trying to convince himself otherwise. He’d never been the greatest reader or learner, nor had his parents ever stressed the importance of either.
Artie was the reader and Emma was the smart one, he thought with a frown, feeling an ache in his chest at the thought of his two best friends—his two only friends. They would’ve devoured these books.
He sat back down and looked around, listening to the utter silence within the ISU. He distantly heard shrill wind on the other side of the window, but his mind returned to Artie and Emma and his parents. Most of his quiet time was spent thinking of them, thinking about the City Below, thinking how everyone and everything that was ever important to him was either dead or destroyed—
He leapt out of the chair, finally feeling the slightest twinge in his knee, ignoring it as he hurried around the reading room, picking up books and putting them on the shelves, putting them in alphabetical order by author only to then change his mind and order them by title, anything to distract his mind. When he was done in the library, he flitted around other rooms, completing mundane chores he’d ignored far too long, still ignoring the hallway closet, eventually ending up in the greenhouse to tend to the plants. His garden had grown abundant, so much that he hadn’t tapped into the supply of canned or freeze-dried food for months.
Convinced his leg was now healed, pent-up energy coursed through Chad, who finally opened the hatch and climbed below, heading into the radio room. He turned different dials and knobs on the radio, still not sure how any of them worked. He’d tried desperately to find information about how to work the radio—or how to fix it if it was broken—but the only training manual he’d found had a large section of pages torn out of it. Still, he closed his eyes and listened intently to the static, turning up the volume as loud as it would go, hoping to hear the strange squawking or any other noise. Most of all, he hoped to hear a human voice. Any human voice would’ve been a massive relief, but there was one voice he wanted most of all, one voice he’d actually prayed to the Lord and Jonas to hear.
Sally. He recalled the only time he’d heard voices through the radio. Though he’d woken on the radio room floor in a fever-induced haze after passing out, the memory of her mentioning The Mountain was one he recalled clear as day. Unless her voice had only been in my dreams. . .
No matter what Chad considered—no matter what wild story his mind conjured—he came up with no possible scenario about how Sally could’ve been on the other end of the radio, no possible scenario about how she was talking about The Mountain. To this day, common sense told Chad he’d been dreaming—or hallucinating after tearing his knee and barely surviving a beast attack—but the idea of Sally being out there somewhere—the idea of her heading toward The Mountain or already being there—made his mind constantly wander to one particular section of ISU.
Now that his knee felt better, it was no longer just his mind wandering. With no other noise joining the static, he hobbled out of the radio room and headed into the supply bunker. He hadn’t needed supplies for a long time and hoped staying away would ease his urge to attempt something foolish. Now, he passed between several rows of shelving units, paying no attention to what was stacked on them. He ended up at the back wall, trying to look through a stack of boxes he’d dragged to their current spot many months ago. He stopped just as he exposed the outline of a door beyond the boxes.
“It’s too soon,” he said into the darkness. “Just because your knee feels better now doesn’t mean you’re healed. Use this chance to do what needs to be done here.”
Chad located several boxes on the shelves and dragged them toward the ladder, struggling to hold them and climb up the hatch. He was exhausted by the time he piled everything by the front door, but his knee felt strong and he didn’t want to waste this opportunity. He donned his pelt for the first time in weeks and opened the front door. Frigid wind struck him in the face, a stark reminder of the bleak, frozen world he was now in the middle of, a far cry from the warmth and safety of the ISU.
He looked from side to side, listening for roaring or grunting or crunching footsteps in the snow. He heard none, nor did he hear shrill wind. The weather wasn’t as cold as Chad remembered. The sun shined through light cloud cover and only the occasional flurry fluttered from above. He may have even enjoyed being outside had the remnants of his vehicle not sat less than twenty feet away.
My second vehicle, Chad thought bitterly, not that the makeshift frame could be considered an actual vehicle.
Most of the time he’d looked out of his windows, the second vehicle had been covered in snow, but a lot of that had melted away. It was a shell of the first vehicle he’d ever built, a true masterpiece he’d spent his entire life planning, a masterpiece stolen away from him soon after escaping the City Below. Chad stared into the distance. Visibility was farther than he could remember, but he only saw more nothingness.
His surroundings clear, he wrestled the supply boxes to the side of the ISU where a small ladder was attached to the wall. He climbed atop the roof, following the small walkway between the solar panels and greenhouse glass. He inspected the glass first, searching for any hint of damage but finding none. That should’ve been good news, but Chad found himself frowning. Next, he turned to the solar panels, finally spotting the tiniest crack in one of them. He’d had no issues with power in the ISU—and the ISU’s maintenance manual pointed out that a replacement wasn’t required unless the panels suffered severe damage—but Chad couldn’t bear to return inside without accomplishing something.
He hauled a new solar panel onto the roof—his knee seeming to find more strength with each step he climbed—and quickly completed the replacement, knowing exactly which wires to switch after studying the manual for weeks. Once done, he climbed back down, leaping from a few steps above the ground, landing on his feet without a single pain in his knee. He frowned again, staring into the distance for several more minutes, wondering what the lands once looked like when other ISUs had been present. It was almost unbelievable to think that beneath the snow were ISUs that had been lowered, never to be raised. Many probably held long frozen inhabitants of a village that would never be seen again.
After heading inside to complete general maintenance on the ISU’s hydraulic system, Chad had nothing left to do. He stared long and hard at the reading chair—doubting he could focus on any of the books—but ultimately returned to his bedroom, knowing his racing mind wouldn’t allow him to fall back asleep. His eyes landed on the folder atop the small table beside his bed. If there was one history he’d read most, it was the handwritten account of the man who’d spent a few days in this very ISU—sat at this very table, slept in this very bed—countless years ago,
the ISU acting as a waystation between two very different worlds.
Not that I can say what life was—or is—like in The Mountain, he told himself, thinking again about Sally and if she might’ve ended up there. He reread the folder’s contents, praying that wherever Sally ended up, it was far away from the horrors of The Mountain. The tale of Horace Jonas’s escape was the only one he’d read time and time again without growing bored. The story—and more specifically, the final scrap of paper containing the secret about the true Jonas family history—made him wish he could return to the City Below and tell the citizens of One that they’d been following the wrong leaders for countless generations. If only Emma knew she was the rightful heir to the city. . . if she’s still alive. . .
It was difficult to focus on the future when the past still loomed largely behind him. By the time he finished with the folder, he wished he hadn’t read it again. For that matter, he wished he hadn’t read it in the first place, wished he could’ve left the City Below behind him forever. He had a hard enough time thinking about the “Jonas” rulers torturing his friends without knowing that Emma should’ve been the true leader of the city.
Determined never to think of the name Jonas again, Chad shoved the contents back into the folder and marched out of his bedroom, finally allowing himself to look at the closet door as he headed toward the library. He considered placing the folder back into the hidden compartment on the shelf but ultimately decided to lean it up, face out against the books in the middle of the shelf, in a prominent location for the next visitor of the ISU. If there’ll ever be a next visitor. . .
He scanned the books a final time, wondering if these books were the last link to the past, the last link to the history of a world that had once been. If he left them behind and this ISU suffered a hydraulics breakdown and dipped beneath the surface forever, would the past simply disappear?
Chad’s eyes narrowed, his brow furrowing.
