Days passed in a blur. Trina didn’t leave the apartment, barely left her mother’s side. They lived off the supplies they’d been gathering for their voyage. Trina only slept when Katie forced her to, unwilling to miss a moment of what time their mother had left.
The medicine bottles emptied, first one and then the next, with little sign that the potion had any effect. Trina remembered how Katie thought Mother wanted release. “Hold on,” she whispered, more of a mantra than actual words. She refused to accept what she knew to be true.
Mother wouldn’t survive long enough for them to escape.
Trina rose from where she knelt by the bed. The cold had seeped into her from the tile floor, making her bones ache. She wiped her face clean with her sleeve as she walked from room, wondering if Katie had done the same before she came out to face Trina when the latest decline had started.
Her sister had fallen into an exhausted sleep on the couch.
Leaving Katie to slumber uninterrupted, Trina headed for the kitchen. There she found two meals gone cold.
Trina picked up a block of cheese and raised it to her mouth, but her stomach roiled. She forced two sips of water down before replacing the cup. Then she relit the fire, using up precious wood. At least Katie would have hot water when she woke.
Katie came in as the water reached a safe temperature.
“Here, this will help.” Trina shoved a cup into her sister’s hands, knowing she’d be just as chilled as Trina had been without blankets to keep them warm.
“Thanks,” Katie mumbled. She sat on one of the stools, pushing the plate in front of her away as if the sight of food turned her stomach.
“You need to eat.” Trina pushed the plate back.
“You haven’t touched yours either and I don’t want to. It seems wrong.”
Trina abandoned the fire to hug her sister, squeezing hard. “I know how you feel, but Mother wouldn’t want that for either of us. We have to eat. We have to survive.”
Katie pressed her face into Trina’s shoulder. “I know. It’s just hard. Why now?”
They walked back to Mother’s room, neither surprised to see the blanket still. Mother hadn’t cried out in hours, and only death could have brought her that ease. “No spacer cure can help her now.” Katie murmured.
Trina dragged her gaze away from the peaceful look on her mother’s face. “She wouldn’t have wanted us to stay.”
Katie rewarded her effort with a weak smile. “No, she wouldn’t, but she was a shafter. She deserved a shafter death.”
Unsure how to react to that statement, Trina just turned to the doorway. “I’ll wrap Mother’s body. There’s a place I can take her.”
While their mother had dreamed of leaving the shafts, she’d been born and lived her whole life here. Trina could have asked Grandfather to give Mother a polit burial, but this seemed more appropriate.
They lifted their mother’s head and slipped the shroud Katie had made her over the frail body. Trina whispered one last goodbye before pulling the shroud down over her mother’s face and hiding her from view. The body seemed too light to have ever carried a soul, especial one as vibrant as their mother’s once had been. Trina tied the foot shut with a braided cord she’d helped Katie make many days before, her only contribution to their mother’s death dress.
When she raised the stiff body into her arms, Trina staggered under the awkward weight. She’d lifted her mother before but it was different without a steadying arm wrapped around her neck and a smile on her mother’s face. Trina would never see that face again except in memories.
Katie put her hands under Mother’s legs, easing the burden. “I’m coming with you.”
Trina nodded. Bad enough they’d have to take their mother’s body to where the poorest left their kin. Better to have a proper procession of loved ones.
She moved over until they shared the body evenly, her shorter height making her mother’s head hang lower than Katie carried the feet. Flames took all shafter bodies so disease and rot couldn’t spread. She wondered if, in the place that souls went, her mother could still feel what happened to her body. Trina hoped not.
Her sister said nothing as they made their way to the cave where the dead were left. Trina had only been there once, on an errand to find a grieving shafter for Fence. The smell overwhelmed her then, and the sorrow from those still living seemed to have a life of its own.
When they went through the final twist and found only a few bodies, Trina sighed with relief. The death cart must have cleared the room recently. Those were probably as fresh as Mother’s. Scented candles masked the worst of the smell as the sisters stepped toward the attendant and met his smile with their sorrow.
He took the body, hefting it to judge the weight. “Sister or brother?”
“Mom,” Trina answered, using the shafter term for the first time. He didn’t know who they were and wouldn’t care. She’d have the proper saying over her mother’s body even if they risked discovery.
Hands now freed, she hunched to mask reaching for her purse and shuffled through the coins by touch. Two coppers should buy Mother a good burning with fresh fuel. The worn symbol pressed against her finger as she found first one and then the other.
“Treat her well.” She handed the coins to him, letting the copper flash in the cold red light.
He raised them to his mouth, tasting the bite of metal before tapping both coins against his forehead in acknowledgement. “As you wish. She’ll be treated right proper.” He placed their mother on top of two bodies already stacked on the floor behind him.
Katie whimpered and Trina pulled her close. The man returned and eyed the two of them.
“Many more at home?”
Trina didn’t like his intent look. Just as she’d feared, without parents, they were vulnerable.
Bringing tears to her eyes with too much ease for her own comfort, she sniffled like the child she should still have been. “Dad works. Bro’ too. We had to bring Mom.”
He nodded, a tightening of his jaw the only sign of his disappointment. He wouldn’t want to chance the wrath of an unknown adult. “Stay here ‘til they come, or go now. No matter to me.”
Trina pulled Katie away. The longer they stayed, the more likely someone would recognize her.
“I want to stay. Mother shouldn’t be alone.”
“Shush,” Trina hissed, glancing around and seeing the stares at Katie for using the surface term. “We can’t. It’s not safe.”
Katie pulled against her for a moment longer then slumped as she gave in. Trina ushered her back onto the familiar routes without any response from her sister.
Shadows crept through the red light behind them.
Trina cursed her inattention. Whether someone recognized her or heard them say no one else was home, shafter rats now followed them.
At the next junction, she turned away from their apartment, pulling a protesting Katie along. “We’re being followed.” Her whisper sounded overly loud in the dark tunnel.
Katie tried to glance back but Trina jerked her forward. “Don’t look. If they know we’ve caught sight of them, they’ll become bolder. Nothing to lose.”
She regretted the impulse to ease her mother’s trip. What shafter had two full coppers to throw away on a body already gone? Mother wouldn’t have wanted that. She wouldn’t have wanted her passing to risk their lives.
Trina took first one turn and then another in rapid succession. Katie stumbled after her as she tried to keep up.
Focusing on her memory of the map, Trina thought about how to lose their tails this high in the shafter system. There just weren’t that many tunnels so close to the surface. Shafters had added the lower ones years after the system once using these tunnels had shut down.
She hesitated when they reached the bend after the last junction. She leaned out slightly and listened hard.
There, a whisper of sound and the shadows came through the junction. The rats still followed and were getting closer.
Had Trina been alone, she would have taken the path up to the surface with the next turn, but Katie’s breath came out in quick pants, and her sister didn’t know how to blend in above, especially not in their shafter clothing. There was no time to consider or plan. She had to go toward home.
Trina grabbed Katie’s arm and pulled them into a run. If they could just get a little space, she could lose them.
Katie stumbled and went down hard, clutching the stitch in her side. “I can’t run anymore.”
“You have to. We can’t let them catch us.”
Her sister pulled on energy reserves Trina didn’t know she had and put on another burst of speed, but Trina could tell it wouldn’t last.
Trina wanted to check to see if they’d lost the pursuers, but couldn’t chance stopping. They ran through darkened tunnels, avoiding even more shafter rats by pure luck rather than skill. Her mind narrowed in focus to the one route they could use. The lock would have to be strong enough, the thick window the same.
When the faint light showed around the curtains they’d started using to block the window since Mother became too ill to care, Trina accelerated, no longer able to hear whether footsteps pounded behind them over her heartbeat. She fumbled with the key, and jammed it twice before it slid home into the lock.
“Hurry, Trina, hurry.”
She blocked out her sister’s urgency, blocked out everything as she steadied her hand enough to turn the key, but it had stuck. The roar of blood through her ears deafened her while she had to blink sweat from her eyes. Her fingers felt slick against the metal key as she tried again, twisting hard enough that she thought the length would snap off in her hand.
It turned.
Katie’s hands closed over hers as they grabbed the handle together and pulled, but nothing happened.
The key slipped from her trembling fingers.
Katie caught it, thrusting the end into the lock a second time and turning it a bit more.
The snick as the lock gave way seemed overly loud despite Trina’s thrumming blood, but this time they were able to push the door open and jump inside.
Katie collapsed on the first step while Trina slammed the door shut and used the key to lock it once again. She leaned against its surface, straining to hear anything from the other side. Her hands twitched enough to send her knife-tips to her wrists before they retreated again.
After a moment, she brushed sweat-slicked hair from her forehead with a trembling hand, the salty liquid tasting like tears.
“Did we lose them?”
Trina jumped at the sound of Katie’s voice then pressed a hand over her sister’s mouth to quiet her.
Into the silence came words.
“In here. It’s powered. See the light?”
The door shuddered with the impact of first one body then another, but the lock held.
Trina pulled Katie into her arms, and they huddled there, staring at the only thing between them and shafters out for whatever they could get.
“Damn. What kind of lock is this?”
They seemed so close.
Trina thrust her feet against the door as though her feeble weight would make a difference when they tried again to break in.
No more words came through, but she could hear scrabbling sounds and vibrations from the lock. Again her knives descended, and she shifted away from Katie so she wouldn’t cut her sister. If they broke through, they’d find this win harder than they’d hoped.
“I can’t get it. Try pushing.”
Again, bodies slammed against the door.
Katie stifled her cries with a fist jammed into her mouth, but Trina just glared at the door.
More slams then what sounded like a fist.
“Can’t get it open. Won’t budge.”
“What’d ya want to do?”
“Can you pry it?”
“No. Edge’s recessed.”
“Window’s too high to reach even if we could break it.”
“Is this some big man’s space?”
Trina couldn’t tell how many from the words coming through the door, but the last gave her hope. If they thought the apartment belonged to some shafter big man, fear would send them running.
“Can’t be. What big man hides down an unused tunnel? Where’re the guards? It’s just squatters.”
“If squatters, probably nothing worth taking anyway.”
“But the power?”
“You want to live out here? Power ain’t portable.”
“Worth watching though. Power might mean more.”
“For how long? Not likely many come this way, and those girls ain’t coming out any time soon.”
Trina itched to do something, but there was nothing she could without making the situation worse. Listening to the rats discuss their fate felt like torture.
“You’re right. Sure you’re right. Might as well go back. Check here later. They can’t stay holed up there forever.”
Trina pressed her forehead against the door as the voices grew fainter. She released a breath she hadn’t known she held. Her heart still raced, each beat pounding against a fierce headache.
Katie reached out a hand to touch her leg, and Trina could feel how her sister’s fingers trembled. “Are we safe now?”
The rats would come back. They’d never be safe again.
“Yes,” Trina told her sister. “We’re safe for now. Just keep the door secured.”