Let Fear Outweigh Your Curiosity. Mom started sewing that one minutes after she finished stitching a knife wound on Josh’s thigh. He was curious whether or not a Fec would actually cut him if he didn’t give the Fec something to eat. There was still blood under Mom’s fingernails as she jabbed the needle and floss into a stained linen napkin.
I stand in a narrow cement hallway that smells like soil and rock and moss. The beam of my flashlight illuminates about thirty feet of darkness in front of me before it is swallowed by black. The hall is utterly silent and I stand still, wondering if I should explore. Wondering if I dare explore. Fear and curiosity are waging a battle inside me.
Taking a deep breath, I grip the flashlight in one hand, pat the gun at my belt with the other, and then start walking. My mother would be furious.
My feet scrape on the cement floor, and the damp cement walls throw the sound back at me. In several places, water is seeping through cracks in the walls. I trail my fingers over one of these drippy cracks. The wall is slimy with a nearly invisible sheen of moss. I wipe my slimy-wet hand on Kevin’s pants and smirk. “You totally deserve that, Kevin,” I whisper.
As I continue along the narrow hall, my heart starts to pump harder. Every time my shoe scrapes cement, I whirl around and look back the way I’ve come, waiting for Kevin to appear out of the darkness and get me. But I don’t stop walking because, for once, my curiosity outweighs my fear.
After a few minutes of walking, everything changes. The cement floor turns from a straight walkway to a twisting and turning path, and the cement walls are replaced with jagged rock. The ceiling disappears, and when I shine my flashlight up, it reflects off of rock high, high above.
I run my fingers over the jagged earth wall as I walk. There’s a new sound here, a gurgling like boiling water. I take a step forward and icy water fills my shoe all the way to the crevasses between my toes and splashes up onto my borrowed pants. A narrow stream crosses the cement path before disappearing down a crack in the rock. I shine my flashlight at the source of the water and see a spring bubbling up out of the ground. Someone has built a small pool around the spring, trapping a decent amount of water, and there are pipes sticking into it.
“The source of Kevin’s water?” My voice echoes and dances through the cave. I start walking along the cement path again—haven’t taken three steps—when it begins to slant upward and the air loses a bit of its mustiness. I follow the sloped path for a few minutes and then bam. I am up against a wall.
I shine my flashlight around and discover I’m in front of a wooden door braced with rusty metal, making it look like a metal and wood checkerboard. I place my hand on the knob and turn. It doesn’t move.
“No!” I glower at the door. “You have to open!” I try the handle again and find it is stuck fast. Shining my light on it, I see a lock, so turn it. The lock clicks, I twist the handle, and the door opens. A gust of warmer, drier, wood-scented air hits me. I step through the door and shine my light around. My jaw drops open.
I am in a massive warehouse-size room with cement pillars every ten or so feet. They look like immense tree trunks that reach up to the smooth cement ceiling. There are rows and rows of wooden shelves as far as I can see, loaded with half-gallon tin cans labeled with tan stickers. I shine my light on the cans and start walking. There has to be a decade’s worth of food here. At least! Dehydrated beef. Dehydrated chicken. Soy beans. Pinto beans. White beans. Chili. Beef bouillon. Dehydrated clam chowder. The types of food seem limitless. I come to a section of shelves with brick-size vacuum-packed yeast and almost cry. I could make hundreds of loaves of bread with a brick of yeast and the forty-eight cans of flour spread all over the kitchen floor.
I keep walking to the other end of the room and find a metal door with bright-red words painted on it: ENTERING COMPROMISED ZONE. I unlock it and step into the next room. A blast of even warmer air wraps around me, leeching the dampness from my skin.
I’ve entered a room filled with empty wooden shelves and broken glass bottles. Fancy, stained paper still clings to some of the shattered bottles. I crouch down and read one of the labels—Chardonnay—and frown. I’m in some freaky, trashed wine cellar and the door I’ve just come through is covered with the same wooden shelves that line the rest of the walls. I never would have known there was a door here if I hadn’t opened it from the other side.
I take a big chunk of broken wine bottle and prop open the door, then keep going.
I come to yet another door and open it. I flinch and throw my arm up over my eyes. Sunlight burns against my eyelids. Peering through my lashes, I see a stairway leading up. I’m on the surface of the world again, where everything is wrong. Fear makes my legs heavy, as if they’re trying to keep me underground, trying to warn me. I pause, close my eyes, and listen for any type of human sounds. My heart and my breathing are all I hear. My hand moves to my belt, and I remove my gun. With my finger on the trigger, I go up.