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“THIS IS YOUR FAULT. This is all your damn fault.” Forty stood, hands on hips, surveying the scene in front of him. Thinking, trying to figure out a solution to what was undoubtedly a disastrous turn of events. It didn’t matter that you needed a brain for thinking, and as far as Thirty-Nine was concerned, Forty didn’t seem to have one.
He should know, too, because he’d been forced to partner him for almost five years. Leader had always, or for as long as he’d been down here, had Gang work in pairs. He’d never thought about why that might be but now, as he watched Forty trying to shift a rock that was almost as big as him, he could think of nothing else.
Strange, really. The only tunnel around the Gypsum Chamber was completely blocked, which meant they were trapped back here, and it was now, only now, that his brain had decided to focus in on why Leader sent his men out to work in twos.
Was it because he didn’t want gangs within Gang? Did he think they might rebel if a group of them got together and discussed his orders and ideas?
“You got nothing to say?” Forty gave up with the rock and snatched the lighter from his hand. “Or are you just gonna stand there and do nothing, like a dumb freak?”
“What do you want me to say?” Now that he could see they were doomed, he felt strangely calm. He didn’t want to die, but he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to live, either. Five years was a long time to spend underground, especially when you had a dipshit like Forty as your partner.
“I’m sorry, perhaps.” Forty turned and began to search for gaps in the heaped rock, holding the lighter close to the collapse zone.
“I don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“Oh yeah?” Forty marched back to him and shoved him, hard.
“Yeah,” Thirty-Nine replied and, without thinking, punched Forty in the face.
It had taken him five years to do what he’d wanted to do the day he’d met the arrogant, self-centered fool, but doing it brought him to his senses. As Forty stumbled back and crashed into the heap of broken rock that had once been the ceiling of their route past the Gypsum Chamber, the shock subsided, and he was filled with horror.
They couldn’t move the rock, and there were no air holes this far in. If they couldn’t get past the Gypsum Chamber, they would likely suffocate.
“What are we going to do?” He fell to his knees beside Forty and began trying to pull the rock away, scrabbling desperately, tearing his nails without registering the pain. After five minutes, he gave up and slumped next to Forty.
Forty remained silent, rubbing his jaw. The sight of him, sitting there among the pieces of broken rock, feeling sorry for himself, annoyed him. Why hadn’t he fought back when he punched him? Why hadn’t he retaliated, defended himself? Or at least called him out for breaking Leader’s rule, the one about not bringing violence against Gang unless told to do so by him?
He looked up. Above their heads, a slab of rock sat atop another, forming a T-shape. The top portion had begun to vibrate when Forty crashed into the rubble beneath it. His digging had resulted in its momentum increasing, and now it had begun to seesaw. Thirty-Nine scrabbled away.
If it tipped and hit Forty, it would undoubtedly kill him. He rushed forward, and Forty cowered, he actually cowered, from him.
“Come on, get up. You can’t stay there.” He offered his hand, bloodied from his desperate attempts to dig. Forty slapped it away.
“Leave me the fuck alone.”
In his peripheral vision, he saw the rock begin to tilt. He took a step back, leaned forward, and dragged Forty away, gripping him by the ankles, just before the rock crashed down. He’d punched him, sure, but he’d saved his life too, and that was what Gang was all about: backing each other up, letting Leader do the thinking, being a brother to the man you were paired with.
Even brothers fought, but they still looked out for one another when the chips were down. It was the reason he’d joined Gang six months into his life (or was it death?) sentence. He couldn’t have survived this place alone. He’d needed the security of belonging to something. In fact, he still did.
“I’m sorry I hit you.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, man, I just freaked out. It won’t happen again.”
Forty didn’t reply. Instead, he got to his feet, still nursing his bruised jaw and his bruised ego.
“What are we going to do? If we stay here, we’ll die.” Something about saying it out loud made it seem even worse.
Forty shrugged. “We’ll have to go through the Gypsum Chamber.”
There was no hope or optimism in his voice when he delivered his verdict, and Thirty-Nine knew why. It was madness, sheer madness, to attempt traveling through the Gypsum Chamber. When Leader had decided he wanted walls built around his compound, he’d sent men in to harvest the gypsum. Twenty-five of them, working just inside the chamber, chipping away at the huge crystals. He’d gotten his walls, but fifteen of the men had died. In twenty-four hours. They’d been less than thirty feet inside the chamber. He had no idea how big the place was, but he felt his stomach clench when he thought about going in there. It was so hot that you couldn’t sweat, that fluid would build up in your lungs until eventually you passed out and were boiled alive.
It was such a bad idea that Leader, a man obsessed with honoring his fallen men with decent burials, had left the bodies of the fifteen men to rot in there. He’d done so with a heavy heart, even using the last of his gypsum to have likenesses carved of the men (and then having the sculptor killed because he said they looked nothing like the heroes who’d given their lives to ensure his safety).
What other choice did they have? He didn’t have to think about it, he knew the answer.
If they wanted to live, they had to do it. If they wanted to find their way back to Leader’s compound, they had to take the risk.
“If we make it back,” Thirty-Nine said, “what do you think Leader will say when we tell him we couldn’t find Fifty-Eight?”
“We don’t tell him.”
“What?”
“I said we don’t tell him. If we tell him, he might send us back to look for him. There’s no way I’m going through the Gypsum Chamber twice.”
“We’ll be lucky if we get through once.” He tried to take the lighter back from Forty, but he dodged out of reach and the lighter went out. Forty sparked it back into life and began babbling, trying to justify himself.
“I mean, I feel bad about lying to him, about breaking the rules, but I’m scared, okay? I was never scared down here before, but I am now. I’d sooner take my chances in the Cotton Cave with the plague than in the Gypsum Chamber.”
With that, the two men headed away from the blocked tunnel, Thirty-Nine switching to Forty’s other side when he saw a large rat ahead of them. He was scared too. But, unlike Forty, he’d always been scared down in the SUIC. That was the reason he’d joined Gang in the first place. Now, he wondered if pledging blind allegiance to Leader was going to be what cost him his life, and he wondered if today was the day he would lose it.
****
SOAMES SHOOK HIS HEAD from side to side, his long, silvery hair flicking left and right. He was looking down, frowning. Gabe had thrust the sharp-edged, tapered rock out in front of him. The hand that held it shook violently.
“You should put that thing down. I’m not your enemy.”
A strange thing for this sociopath, this sadist, this predator, to say. This was the demon of Gabe’s childhood nightmares. Shadows dipped in and out of the lines on his face, the lighter casting an orange glow that wasn’t quite bright enough to fully unmask the man in front of him. It was Soames though, of that he was certain.
“I know who you are.” Gabe’s voice came in a whisper, his mind trawling through the 3D map it had made of his surroundings, trying to figure out the best way to flee.
“You think you know who I was.” Soames took two steps toward him and spoke in a low, confidential tone. “I’d feel better talking with the light off. You think you could put the lighter away, Gabe?”
He took a step back, staring into the dark, brooding eyes of a man who’d killed more than forty men and women. “How do you know my name?”
“It pays to know, down here.”
When he took another step, Gabe didn’t move. Instead, his eyes went to the rockknife in his hand, then back to those dark eyes, the sclera almost as dark as the pupil, the intentions impossible to guess.
“Go away from me. I’m not afraid of you.” He knew his body language said the opposite, that he was terrified, that he wanted to turn and run, but that he was frozen in place.
“Relax, please. I’m not who you think I am.” He smiled then, and Gabe was surprised to see that he still had all his teeth, at least, all his front ones. But his statement provoked a sudden burst of anger.
“You’re Bill Soames. You killed forty people. You’re the guy everyone fears down here, never mind up there.” He flicked his chin at the rock above him.
Soames’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I prefer William, but that’s okay. No hard feelings. And actually, it was closer to fifty, if you want to talk numbers, but I had my reasons.”
“Reasons?”
“I never took the life of anyone who didn’t deserve it, and I never, ever messed up. If I killed you, you deserved to be killed.” Soames nodded as he spoke, and Gabe wondered which of them he was trying to convince.
He took a second to think before answering. “Things were bad enough up there, without people taking the law into their own hands. Murder can’t be justified, same way rape can’t.”
“Hold up. I never raped anyone.” There had been a hint of a smile on his face, but the mention of rape made it disappear. Gabe felt good about that, felt like he’d scored a point.
“You stabbed and strangled and burned them. Those things are worse than rape.”
He didn’t believe his declaration that the people he’d killed deserved it. It was a grandiose thing to say, a self-centered thing. Something someone with a god-complex would say. Something a serial killer would say.
“There was no law, not practically at least, not after the war ended. There was no such thing as civilized society by 2120, only predators and prey. The laws were written down, sure, they were there on paper, but they weren’t enforced. Society needed a man like me. You don’t know how bad it was, you were just a child then.”
“You made yourself a predator to avoid becoming prey, is that it?” He edged away, the rockknife held stiffly in front of him, his body side-on to Soames to make a smaller target of himself.
Soames shook his head. “No. I made myself a predator to stop the weak becoming prey. I couldn’t help them all, but I did my best for those I could. The people I killed, they were the predators. Super-predators, you could say. You know I was a police officer, don’t you?”
“You were?” This information surprised Gabe. He’d known the man in front of him had killed dozens of people, known it had taken them a long time to catch him, but he didn’t know that was because he was a cop, with the means to cover his tracks. The revelation sickened him even more.
“Uh-huh. Lot of people forget that, paint me as the worst villain to ever walk the earth, but I saw and heard a lot of things because of my position. Every cop out there knew who the bad guys were, but we were told to wait for the SUIC to be completed before we arrested them. They wanted people to send down here, see? But I couldn’t wait. When I saw cartels depriving people of food, I killed the bosses. People who took in children orphaned by the war just to have a plaything to abuse, they had to go. Corrupt cops were the worst offenders of all, but they were harder to get to. They were supposed to help people, not make things worse for them.” He shook his head ruefully, thinking, Gabe supposed, of cops he knew that had done very bad things and still walked free above ground. None of their crimes could be as bad as the ones Soames had committed. Then a thought came to him. He’d said he’d killed abusers, people who did bad things to children. What if he’d known what Bodge’s mother was allowing her boyfriends to do to him? Would he have killed her and saved Bodge the fear and misery of the SUIC?
Soames continued. “The World Alliance was too busy digging a hole in the ground to put criminals in, while the criminals were having a party. They thought they were moving toward making things better up there, but inaction helps no one. People who were starving, kids who were being abused, they couldn’t wait. They needed help right there and then, and I helped them. That’s the simple truth of it.”
There was sorrow in his eyes, and he turned away, placing a hand on the hot wall and bending slightly, breathing deeply. A lengthy period of silence passed between the two men, as Gabe sized him up, wondering if this was a sign of weakness, or a trick to coax him closer, to make him lower his guard.
“You weren’t afraid of being sent down here?”
“I’ve never been afraid of this place. What scared me was watching society being torn apart, so I sacrificed myself to try to make a difference. I don’t expect thanks for it, but I don’t want you to think I’m some sort of a devil, either.” He stood straight and tall once more, seemingly over whatever had affected him. “The planet was lucky to survive the war, and they say there were only one billion people left once they got done dropping nukes on one another, you know that?”
“I know history, yes, but ten years went by after the war before you started killing. Things were getting better.”
“Wrong, things were getting worse. I saw it every day, what people did to one another. But that doesn’t matter to you or me, not now we’re under the ground. You’re conditioned to fear me, but I haven’t taken a life since I was sent here, and I don’t want your life. If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have done it already. I’ve been following you for the past hour.”
Gabe’s head whirled. This man, called the Executioner by the misery-hungry press of the post-Cascade days, lauded on social media by twisted minds, was saying he’d had noble reasons for his murders. A string of copycat killings had taken place after he’d been caught, leading many to speculate that someone else was the guilty party, that Soames was a scapegoat. Those crimes had eventually been traced to a collective on a social media platform who idolized Soames. They’d decided to have a competition, playing at being the serial killer, seeing who could come up with the most original way to kill a person. The World Alliance had tried to shut down social media, thinking it too dangerous a tool, too full of warped minds and propaganda to be allowed to exist in a society so shattered. But some figured out how to hook into orbiting satellites, and social media remained, society kept unraveling, despite men like Soames being banished from it.
While he’d been thinking, Soames had taken two more steps. Now, he bent forward, reached over the rockknife, and plucked the lighter from his hand.
“You’re not Gang. So, indulge me. How did you manage to get your hands on this?”
“I found it.” Gabe could hear the whumping of his heartbeat in his voice when he spoke. The old man had been lightning-fast in his approach, but he’d taken the lighter, not the rockknife, away from Gabe.
“Ah, you heard an explosion and took a dead man’s light.”
“No, that’s not true.” He felt color rising in his cheeks.
Soames tugged at his long beard, which reached halfway down his chest. “Well, whatever’s true, whether you found it or took it from one of Leader’s fools, it’s yours now.”
He handed the lighter back. Gabe, too surprised to speak, stared into the flame, wondering just what the hell was going on.
“You can’t always judge a man by his past, that’s all I’m trying to say. I had the chance to take a life once down here, and I should have taken that chance. I didn’t, and that’s why I’m standing here in front of you now.”
Soames reached out to his right. His hand disappeared into a cavity in the tunnel wall, and Gabe held the makeshift knife at chest height, readying himself in case Soames produced a weapon and tried to attack him. Something very strange was happening and, right now, he didn’t know whether to stay or run. Soames had to be seventy-five years old. He should easily be able to outpace him, but he didn’t want to get lost and separated from Bodge, not when he’d promised to look after him.
Soames removed his hand from the cavity and held out a bottle, identical to the one shoved into Gabe’s waistband except for one difference: it was full.
“Here, drink some water.”
Only now he saw it did he understand how much his body craved it. He was dehydrated, making mistakes. He’d been walking in circles, drawing attention to himself, like an inexperienced hiker, Soames the mountain lion silently tracking his every move. Maybe he was lucky it was Soames who’d been following him, and not Gang. Gang would have already beaten him to death for the lighter and the bottle.
“Take it, it’s not a trick.”
Soames placed the bottle at his feet, turned, and walked ten feet down the tunnel. He stood with his back to Gabe. “See, I’m not trying to distract you so I can attack you. I know that’s what you’re thinking, but you’re being paranoid.” He put a hand against the wall again as he spoke. With his other, he pounded on his chest, then spat onto the ground.
“It could be poisoned.”
Soames laughed, then abruptly cut himself off. “Please, don’t make jokes. I doubt either of us want Gang to know we’re here. The water isn’t poisoned, but it’s up to you. You can choose not to drink it. You could choose to cut my throat with that weapon of yours, but as you can see, I have no weapon. I have nothing with which to defend myself.” He turned and held his hands out at his sides, then walked back to where Gabe stood.
“I’m not a killer,” Gabe said, and Soames raised his eyebrows in response.
“I have some things I’ll share with you. My way of proving to you that I’m not trying to hurt you. May I?” He reached toward the dark cavity.
“Don’t do anything stupid.” Gabe glanced over his shoulder and took a step back, gripping the rockknife tightly enough to make his fingers ache.
As he watched Soames’s hands disappear into the hole in the wall, he thought about Bodge. If this man was duping him, if he caught him off guard and killed him, Bodge would think he’d deserted him, broken his promise to take care of him. The thought of that was almost worse than the thought of dying at the hands of Soames.
When those hands reappeared, he was holding a bowl, carved from rock, and a bag of rice.
“That’s...”
“Real food, yes, and it’s yours if you can get over how you feel about me. What do you say?”
“What’s the catch?”
“There is no catch.”
Gabe didn’t speak.
“Well, okay, there is kind of a catch.” For the first time, Soames sounded almost nervous. “Why don’t we boil up some rice, how does that sound? I’ll tell you what I need you to do for me while we eat.”
“I, um, I can’t.”
“Why not? You’re too proud to sit down and eat with someone like me, is that it? We’re all subhumans down here. You’re no better than anyone else.”
Gabe wanted the food, wanted it badly, but he couldn’t sit here eating while Bodge was alone, starving, wondering why his friend had abandoned him.
Could he trust Soames? He was starting to think maybe he could, as crazy as it seemed. Like the man said, he’d followed him for an hour, he could easily have attacked him if he’d wanted to. But he hadn’t, and Gabe came to a decision.
“I have a friend. I can’t eat with you, knowing he’s starving where I left him. If you share your food with us both, I’ll listen to what you have to say.”
Soames looked up, tapping at his lip with a long fingernail. “Do you have a place where fire can’t be seen?”
“Yes. You have to climb into a hole in the ceiling to get to where my friend is hiding. It’s safe.”
Soames nodded, holding out the bowl and the rice. “Take these. You know how to find that place in the dark?”
“I think so.” Gabe stepped forward, just far enough to reach for the items. Overstretching, he dropped the lighter and the rockknife to the ground. Before he had a chance to bend and retrieve them, he heard a flick, and light was restored in the intersection between the two tunnels.
He looked from the lighter Soames held to the one at his feet, and thought about him asking if they had a place fire couldn’t be seen. Initially, when he’d said he preferred darkness, he’d presumed it to be because he was so used to it, thinking light must hurt his eyes after so long down here in the dark. But no, he was afraid of Gang, just the same as Gabe and Bodge. That was the reason he’d asked him to kill the flame.
The realization was a leveler. He lost his fear of Soames completely and, when he bent and retrieved the lighter, Soames didn’t move. Only after he’d straightened again, tucked the rockknife into his waistband next to the empty water bottle, and slipped the lighter into a pocket, did Soames step forward and hand over the rice and the bowl.
Then he reached back into the hole and retrieved a second, larger bowl, also shaped from rock. He held the lighter between his teeth as he did so, and Gabe caught a faint whiff of burning whiskers.
“Here, let me hold that.”
Soames placed the bowl at his feet. “There’s only one more thing I need.” He held out the lighter. “Hold it close so I can see what I’m doing.”
Gabe stepped close and took the lighter, then watched Soames thrust his arm into the hole again. The bag he brought out was made from a cotton shirt with the sleeves tied together and the neck crudely stitched.
Soames grabbed the smaller bowl, set it inside the larger one, then dropped the water inside it. He stuck his hand into the cavity one final time, and when he brought it out again, he was holding three more water bottles. All of them were filled to the brim.
****
“BODGE?” GABE WHISPERED into the darkness.
For twenty seconds, there was nothing, and he began to wonder if his mind-map had let him down.
He lit the lighter, stood on his tiptoes, and shined light into the hole above his head. There, he saw Bodge, fast asleep. A wave of relief washed over him.
“Hey,” he hissed.
Bodge opened his eyes, yawned, and smiled widely.
“Hi, Gabe. You been out catching rats? I’m hungry.”
“I got something better than rats. Jump down here, will you?”
He backed up, hustling Soames back to make room for Bodge in the narrow space.
“I can’t. I’m scared to drop on my foot.”
With the stress of running into Soames, he’d forgotten about the injuries Bodge had sustained when they’d jumped from the ledge. Now, he felt guilty, wondering how long Bodge would have stayed up there if he hadn’t returned. Maybe long enough to die of thirst.
“Okay, Bodge. Drop down the rope. You can pull me up.”
The rope dropped from above, and he grabbed it, gripping with both hands.
“Pull,” he said, jumping simultaneously, and feeling the hands that had done so many brutal things under him, propelling him up and into the hole.
Bodge pulled him inside and hugged him. “What you got that’s better than rats?”
“I got a person.”
He looked disappointed. “You got a person? We can’t eat a person, Gabe.”
“I don’t mean for food. Come on, help me pull him up.”
“Okay.” Bodge moved along the tunnel, and Gabe reached down and took the bag from Soames. He placed it in front of Bodge, then called to Soames. “You got hold of the rope?”
“Sure do.”
“Okay. Three, two, one, jump!”
Between them, they pulled Soames up easily. Once they were all safely inside, Gabe fired up the lighter and they made their way along the tunnel and up into the second chamber. He took his rockknife from his waistband, carved a hole into the wall, and set a fire going using cotton torn from their rope. He’d wanted to save the rope in case of emergencies, in case one of them needed rescuing from a hole, but they’d already used up a quarter of it.
“Bodge, meet Soames,” Gabe said, studying Bodge’s expression to see if he knew who the man was. It seemed he didn’t. To Bodge, who’d only been born fifteen years after Soames was banished to the SUIC, this was just another guy.
“Hi,” Bodge said nervously.
“Hello, Bodge. That’s a great name.” The playful tone in Soames’s voice told Gabe he saw that Bodge was different from most down here. He didn’t speak to him like he was a human or a subhuman, he spoke to him like he was a child.
“You think so?”
“I sure do, and it’s a pleasure to meet you.” Soames held out a hand, and Bodge’s face lit up in a big smile. He slapped him five.
“We don’t need to be scared of Crossmen if there’s three of us, do we?”
“We always need to fear Gang,” Soames said, his voice slightly sterner.
“Soames is right. We need to keep our voices down; we don’t want Crossmen sneaking up on us.”
Bodge shook his head. “What’s in the bag?”
“Why don’t you take a look.” Soames gestured toward the bag with an open hand, his long, skinny fingers wiggling slightly, making Bodge look even more excited to find out what was inside.
He pulled the bag open and stuck his head in. “I can’t see.”
“Take the stuff out of the bag.”
“Oh yeah, okay.” Bodge smiled, then took each item out of the bag and laid them down in front of him. He looked bemused.
“What’s up?” Soames asked.
“There ain’t much here, and my grandma says I’m still growing, so I need lots of food. You should’ve got some rats, too.”
Gabe and Soames exchanged smiles, and in that moment, Gabe felt like he saw past his reputation. There was something unguarded about the man labeled the Executioner by the world so far above.
Soames spoke. “It’s rice, Bodge. We heat water in this rockbowl, then put in the rice, and when it cooks, it grows into lots more food. There’s a whole heap of food in that little bag you’re holding.”
“Really?” Bodge eyed the rice like it was magic beans.
“There’s probably enough there to keep us going for a week.”
“Really, Gabe?”
“Really, Bodge.”
Somewhere in the distance, a muffled pop sounded, and they turned their heads in its direction. A few seconds later, the ground rumbled.
“That might be the end of Thirty-Nine and Forty,” Gabe said, and Soames nodded thoughtfully.
“Two of the dumbest men Leader ever branded.”
“You know those guys?” Bodge asked.
“Well, why don’t we cook up some rice. We can talk after we eat. Sound good, Bodge?”
“Yeah, I’m hungry.”
Soames eyed the four bottles of water between them. “Bet you’re thirsty, too. You and Gabe can drink one of those, we’ll still have plenty left for cooking with.”
Bodge drank half a bottle before handing it off to Gabe and hiccupping.
Soames directed Gabe to add more cotton to the fire. Surprisingly, it burned strongly. The downside to that was the clearing became increasingly unbearable. Gabe wafted at the white smoke that filled the place, trying to cool himself and clear the smoke simultaneously, as Soames added water to one of the rockbowls, and they watched as it slowly heated over the fire. When it was as close to boiling as it was going to get, he added rice, and they were silent as it cooked.
When most of the water had boiled away, Soames asked Gabe to tear off another piece of cotton, so he could handle the bowl without burning himself, and placed it down in front of Bodge. He began the process a second time as Bodge ate greedily, scooping the rice up and cramming it into his mouth, despite Gabe cautioning him to slow down.
As the second batch of rice cooked, Soames watched it silently, Bodge hiccupped intermittently, and Gabe wondered how he could afford to give away such valuable resources.
Soames finally handed him a bowl of rice, and he ate slowly, savoring its texture. When finally he finished his meal, Soames began to talk.
****
SOAMES INTERLACED HIS long, slim fingers and quickly flexed them, causing several knuckles to pop. “I take it you know what that rumble was earlier?”
Gabe nodded. Bodge remained silent. The food in his belly was making him drowsy, but each time his head began to drop, a hiccup brought him out of his slumber.
Soames continued. “The more times that happens, the more danger everyone is in. You know, this place wasn’t so bad in the early days. There were only around thirty of us in the first year. You know the Cotton Cave, of course.”
“Yes,” Gabe answered, recalling his time there. The cramped, squalid conditions, the constant threat from Gang, the bit of blessed daylight that found its way in from the shaft.
“We dug that out of the wall down there.”
The statement brought Gabe back from his memories. “You did?”
Soames nodded. “Took us four years.”
“That’s some achievement,” Gabe said. “That place was hell when I was there.”
“It wasn’t always like it was when you were there, but then, there wasn’t always Gang.”
Gabe tried to imagine what the SUIC must have been like without Leader and his followers. Dark and hot, yes, but it was fear that made his time there unbearable, not the squalid conditions. It wouldn’t be heaven without Gang, but it wouldn’t be quite so hellish.
Soames crossed his legs. “Leader was just like you and me when he got here. Just scratching out survival, one day at a time. Except he was brainwashing people as he went, little by little. By the time there were a hundred people in the Cotton Cave, he’d convinced twenty of them to dig him his own compound. That gave him power and a reputation, so he could impose his will, start taking things from people, gathering more followers, having those who challenged him killed. Once something like that gathers momentum, it becomes a hard thing to stop.”
“Yeah, I know it.” Gabe turned to look at Bodge. He’d drifted off to sleep, his chin resting on his broad chest.
“I stopped it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was there when you arrived, Gabe. You walked right past me, and I never saw you again until today.”
“But what do you mean, you stopped it? All the time I was there, the place was awful.”
“Indeed, it was.”
“So how, and when, did it change?”
“It changed on the day I spared Leader’s life.”
“Yeah, right. No one ever gets near him. Even when he comes out of his compound, for the brandings, he always has his strongest men guarding him. Do you seriously expect me to believe you got past his guards?”
“They weren’t guarding under his compound.”
Gabe’s eyes narrowed questioningly.
“I dug my way in. I dug right under that little weed’s security. Took hold of him by his neck and told him to make a deal or die. The deal was this: you can take people’s lights and their water bottles, you can look like you’re the boss down here, the man with all the power. But when people make their home in the Cotton Cave, you will leave them alone. They will be safe there, from you and your thugs. I told him half the rice that was lowered in belonged to the men in the Cotton Cave, no negotiation, and I told him Gang ended with those who were already in, that he couldn’t have any new recruits. He didn’t like it, of course. Said he had two new men ready for branding the following day. I told him he could brand them, but that he was never to heat that little cross he wore around his neck again after those two.”
“What did he say?”
“It’s not what he said, it’s what he did. He pissed himself, and when he did that, I laughed. I asked him how someone who called himself a leader pissed himself at the first sign of danger. He knew who I was, everyone did, of course, and he was terrified of me. But it was that puddle of piss that clinched it. He told me he’d meet my demands, for as long as I kept that puddle a secret.”
“And now it’s not a secret.”
“Can’t be.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’s blowing this place up. He’s blowing up our home. It’s not much of a home, granted, but it’s the only one many good men have. I don’t know why he’s doing it. Maybe to get back at me, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that, with each passing day, the risk of major collapse grows.”
“What can we do about it?”
“We can take back control. I should never have let him keep his power. I should have killed him.”
Gabe shook his head. “There are too many of them.”
“At least thirty have already been killed. He had eighty or ninety men, so that means he’s down to sixty, at best, and more will die every day. It can be done.”
“You want to start a war?”
Soames shook his head from side to side emphatically.
“Then what?”
“I want you to start a war.”
****
GABE SAID NOTHING FOR the next five minutes. When he finally spoke, he asked a question.
“Why did you leave the Cotton Cave?”
Soames shook his head, took a deep breath, pushed his hair behind his ears, and leaned closer to Gabe.
“After I got into his compound, he had the men who were supposed to be guarding him killed. He needed a reason to do that, and an explanation as to why he’d decided, suddenly, to stop terrorizing the Cotton Cave, why he suddenly wanted to share the food. He told those closest to him, the men tasked with killing his former guards, that the guards had been asleep on the job. He said nothing about my threat to him, or the puddle of piss, of course.”
“But you’d never have got in a second time. I’m guessing he placed guards inside, to stop that happening again?”
“I’d have found a way in if I wanted to, believe me, but the point is we made a deal, and he honored his side of it. His men still got the bottles and the light from the new arrivals, but they stayed out of the Cotton Cave, for the most part, and they shared the food. Things got a lot better for the men in the Cotton Cave.”
“You still didn’t tell me why you left.”
“I’ll get to it.” Soames leaned back and took a couple of deep breaths.
A distant rumble made Gabe wonder how much time they had. The whole place could fall in at any moment. If the front half of the SUIC crumbled, it would cut off the oxygen flowing in from the shaft. The cooling holes dug down through the earth didn’t deliver enough oxygen to keep them alive for long; they’d suffocate on the carbon dioxide they were exhaling. Nobody was coming to rescue them.
“People in the Cotton Cave found out I was the one who brokered the deal with Leader, the one who made sure they didn’t starve, and they made me a kind of honorary leader. They changed their opinion of me, from a man to fear to a man on a pedestal. Truth be told, I was embarrassed. I was used to being a pariah, even down here among killers and rapists and pedophiles. If people in the Cotton Cave didn’t have to worry about Gang, they’d be happier. Things would get better if they had access to food. In turn, I thought that would mean my life would be easier. It was good for a while, but nothing ever lasts. Certainly, good things don’t last down here.”
“They defied Leader, started terrorizing the Cotton Cave again?”
“No, Gabe. The men Leader told came after me. I’d made a deal that took food out of their stomachs, and they didn’t like it. Angry, bitter men need somewhere to direct their ill intentions.”
“Let me guess. That somewhere was a someone, and that someone was you.”
“Exactly. I was the one who made the deal, so they blamed their hunger on me. Not Leader, because they knew to try to kill him would mean death for them, one way or another. So, they came after me.”
“I still don’t get why you left. If the men of the Cotton Cave had you on a pedestal, then surely they’d have looked after you, stopped you from being killed?”
“Ah, but they did look after me. Where do you think the rockbowls and the water and the rice came from?”
“And the lighter?”
Soames laughed. “The lighter I took from Leader myself. To show him he didn’t have power over me, that I wasn’t afraid to take something from him.”
Gabe understood the symbolism of that, and he admired it.
“So, people come from the Cotton Cave with food and water and other things to help you, I get that, but I still don’t understand why you left. Wouldn’t they have guarded you like Leader’s men guard him?”
“You ever meet a guy called Adams? Had a missing thumb on his left hand?”
Gabe blinked, the change of subject surprising him. “I know Adams, yes.”
Adams was a squat guy with huge biceps. Only 5’5, he was the most unthreatening man Gabe had met down here, until Bodge. He lived a quarter of the way along the Cotton Cave, and he’d sometimes come to the tunnel at Gabe’s end and help him set traps for rats. To show his appreciation, Gabe would often share with him what he caught.
He’d made his living above ground robbing Metroline machines and selling pre-paid travel tickets for half their face value. That was a big deal to many, because the cost of building the networks for the self-driving, levitating system had to be paid for by someone, and the World Alliance had higher priority things to spend money on, like digging more SUICs. They means-tested anyone with employment, figured out what they could afford to pay for their commute, then doubled it. Sometimes tripled it, for those earning a decent wage.
Cars were, of course, a thing from a bygone era, since fossil fuels were more or less exhausted, and due to the fact the companies designing better batteries for the electric ones had gone bankrupt during the Cascade.
Adams had gotten his thumb blown off by a World Alliance cop during the commission of a crime. He’d managed to evade capture, but hadn’t been able to stop the bleeding, and had turned himself in to a World Alliance Medcenter. They’d already known who they were looking for from the DNA bank by then and, as Metroline fraud had been designated a subhuman crime as a strong deterrent to would-be thieves, he’d found himself two miles down. He’d accepted his fate without complaint, as far as Gabe could tell. He blamed himself, not his jailers.
“Great guy,” Soames said, smiling.
Gabe nodded, returning the grin. “You know how he’s doing?”
“Yes. He’s in the Cemetery.”
“What?” The smile dropped from Gabe’s face.
“He caught two Gang creeping up on my place in the Cotton Cave and tried to stop them. They killed him. Ripped him open with their bare hands.”
“Shit.”
“I knew I had to leave then, to stop that from happening to anyone else. Things are hard enough down here without carrying guilt. Without me in it, the Cotton Cave would be a safer place, and I knew they’d always take care of me.”
“But now you want me to start a war. That’s crazy.”
“Why is it crazy?”
“Because my plan was to stay out of trouble, make it to where Gang has made the most progress, and find a way out of the SUIC.”
“And you think my idea is crazy?” Soames didn’t wait for a response before continuing. “I don’t expect you to do it alone. That’s why I traded you the food and water, in return for you delivering a message.”
“And what if I don’t want to deliver it?”
“Then I guess you won’t. But this is the place your conscience comes in. It’s on you, Gabe, it’s all on you.”
Gabe sighed and looked at Bodge, fidgeting in his uneasy sleep, sweat rolling down his forehead. The confines of the tunnel were beginning to feel claustrophobic. “Why is it all on me? If you want to start a war, start one yourself.”
“It’s not as easy as that. You’re the only man who can get my message to Rosselli. Listen to me, Gabe. You wouldn’t survive ten seconds if you got out of here. They’d pick you off in a heartbeat. But down here, without Gang? Things would be a lot better for everyone.”
“We’d still be living in the dark, eating rats.”
“You could live in the Cotton Cave, or even under the shaft where sunlight gets in. Without Leader, you’d have all the light you wanted. You’d have hundreds of lighters, and you’d have all the rice you could eat.”
Gabe could see the logic in what he was saying. His options were to think of himself, or to think of the other men down here. And Bodge, of course. He glanced across at him.
What about Adams? Shouldn’t he think of Adams too? The hours spent hunting and trapping rats with him had been some of the few good ones he’d had down here. Without Leader, Adams would still be alive. Without Leader, a lot of the men buried in the Cemetery, Gang members included, would still be alive.
“Who’s Rosselli, anyway? What’s so special about him?”
“Lots of things special about Rosselli. He’s the guy who brings stuff to me. He’d walk through a minefield for me. In fact, he’d do the same for you. He helps everyone in the Cotton Cave, no matter who they are or what they did before they got here. This place would be a whole lot better if there were more men like him in it.”
“Why can’t you deliver your message when he brings you stuff? Or go to the Cotton Cave and deliver it yourself?”
“That’s part of the message. Want to hear it?”
Gabe closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, but you’re going to tell me whether I want you to or not.”
Soames nodded, all at once looking somber. “The message is in four parts. First, I want you to tell him I’ve left where I was before. Don’t tell him where I am. I don’t want him, or anyone else, coming to look for me.” He paused. “Because I’m dying.”
“You’re dying?” Gabe thought about how he’d put his hand on the wall, how he’d looked like he was struggling to catch his breath, how he’d pounded his chest.
“Yes, that’s the second part of my message. I don’t have much time. Not such a big deal, happens to all of us, and after spending the last thirty years down here, I’m ready to go.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Soames shrugged. “Cancer, probably. I dropped maybe sixty pounds in the last three months.”
The revelation was a blow. Not because he cared about the guy, but because he couldn’t deny a man his dying wish. He was going to have to go to the Cotton Cave and find Rosselli, or his conscience wouldn’t let him forget.
“Okay, Soames, I’ll deliver your message.”
“I’ve only told you half of it.”
“What’s the other half?”
“Well, the third part is to tell him I said it’s time to fight, time to overthrow Leader. The only way for the Cotton Cave to be safe now is to stop the digging, and the only way to stop the digging is to kill Leader.”
“What’s the fourth part?”
“That, my friend, is the best part. I want you to tell him I buried a gun. It’s near where I used to live in the Cotton Cave, under a square rock on the left side. I carved an S into the rock, so my old place is easy to find.”
“Bullshit you managed to get a gun in here.”
“No, I didn’t. Someone dropped it down the shaft. Maybe it was an accident, or maybe it was a deliberate act. There are men down here who were gangsters on the outside. There are others who had money and influence. Doesn’t matter why it was dropped into the hole. Just so happened I was right there when it landed. Damn thing almost caved my skull in.”
“Does it fire? After falling so far?”
“I never had a chance to test it, but it’s loaded with six bullets. Tell Rosselli to put them all into Leader, if the thing works. Will you do that for me, Gabe? Will you grant a dying man his last wish?”
He flashed his grin again, not looking at all like a terminally ill man.
“I’ll try to find Rosselli.”
“Thank you.” Soames rested a hand on Gabe’s shoulder, an expression of gratitude on his face. Then he turned and shuffled away along the narrow tunnel, before dropping down and making his way to the hole through which they’d entered.
Gabe listened to him go. He never saw him again.
****
“BODGE, WAKE UP.” GABE gently touched the sleeping giant’s shoulder. Bodge opened one eye, then the other.
“Has he gone?”
“Yes, he’s gone.”
“He left his light. How come?”
The fire was still burning, down to its last embers. In the fading light, he saw something glinting. Bodge was right, Soames had left his lighter. Something in his gut told him he’d left it behind on purpose. A gift to help them navigate their way to the Cotton Cave and set his plan in motion.
“I guess he thought he didn’t need it.” He retrieved the lighter and returned to Bodge’s side.
“Because he’s dying?”
“I thought you were sleeping?”
“I was faking. I think maybe I had a bad dream with him in once, a long time ago.”
Bodge had likely seen Soames’s image on the giant Subboard, set up in the city above to act as a deterrent to would-be criminals by showing the faces of men who’d been banished underground.
He wondered how long he’d pretended to be sleeping, and how much of the conversation he’d heard.
“I guess you know what he wants us to do, then?”
“No.” Bodge broke eye contact with him, looking like he’d been caught in a lie. It seemed he’d slept through most of the conversation. That meant he didn’t know about the gun, or that Soames wanted him to start a war. Bodge wouldn’t like that. As big and mean-looking as he was, he was as gentle as they came. Fighting wouldn’t come naturally to him.
“We should get moving. Smoke from a fire will get Gang’s attention, and we don’t want to get ourselves backed into a corner, do we?”
Bodge shook his head, still avoiding eye contact, still looking frightened. Gabe felt like a parent with his child. He would have to manage things carefully if he wanted Bodge to go along with him. If he knew the plan, he’d likely freak out and refuse to go, and Gabe didn’t want to have to break his promise to him, or the one he’d made to the dying Soames.
“Are we taking the rockbowls and the rice?”
“Sure we are. The rice was good, wasn’t it?”
Bodge brightened. “Filled me up real good.”
“Maybe made you a little sleepy, huh?” He smiled to show he was joking, to make Bodge feel better about being caught in a lie, and Bodge laughed his deep huh huh huh laugh. He didn’t tell him to keep it down this time. He needed a happy Bodge.
They grabbed their possessions, including those Soames had given them, and put them all in the bag. Then they left, Bodge dropping awkwardly out of the hole and into the darkness below, trying to avoid putting weight on his twisted ankle, not using his swollen wrist to bear weight.
Gabe passed the bag down, lowered himself, then sparked the lighter. They followed the tunnel, Gabe hoping they were headed in the right direction.
****
SOAMES HAD TOLD GABE he preferred to be in the dark, and Gabe thought he knew why. it was much safer to travel in darkness down here. Now that they had two lighters, he had no excuse to make Bodge walk in darkness, at least until one of them ran out of gas.
Having light brought one major benefit. It meant they could see holes in their path, either manmade or natural. There were plenty of them, too. Some small and deep, others wide yet shallow. In the darkness, they’d walk right into one of those holes. At the very least, that would slow them down due to twisted ankles. At the very worst, they could fall into a deep hole, one from which ten feet of rope would be useless. He was sure there were holes down here where a thousand feet of rope wouldn’t reach the bottom.
The ever-present danger of turning a corner and running into Gang worried him. He was as fearful of the light as Bodge was of the dark. He’d prefer, much like Soames, to douse the flame that danced on the walls like a glowing sunrise. It would slow them down though, and that was as much a problem as any they had.
They heard explosions that, as several hours passed, grew more frequent. At this rate, there would be no need for a war. The bombs were picking them off two by two; there would be few of them left in a matter of days at the rate the explosions were detonating.
Then again, the whole place could cave in. Game over. No war. No escape. No matter about Soames’s gun.
They had to move fast, the damn place was like a maze. He was sure he was seeing the same holes in the ground, the same narrow, partially-dug tunnels neither of them could fit more than a few meters into, the same puddles of undrinkable water.
But water wasn’t the problem. They had water, for now. Going in circles was the problem, and he thought that was what they were doing.
When they’d set out, looking only for a place to shelter, any one of those half-dug tunnels would have been ideal, even though they were too low to stand up in. After two hours of walking, hearing explosions ahead of and above them, Bodge began to wonder, began to ask questions.
“We seen lots of little caves, Gabe. Why aren’t they good to live in?”
“Too small,” Gabe answered, thinking on his feet, deflecting the question.
“That last one was bigger than our cave, the one where I helped you.”
“We need a special kind of cave.”
“Why?” Genuinely curious, hanging on Gabe’s every whispered word, completely trusting him, and he felt like a dirty liar, leading him on despite the dangers he knew were ahead.
“We need to find a place where we have clean water nearby, and somewhere we can catch rats. I haven’t seen either, have you?”
“No,” Bodge said glumly.
“That’s why we have to keep moving.”
“Can’t we even stop just for a little while? My ankle hurts.”
Gabe thought about it. There was no excuse that would sound reasonable when levied against forcing Bodge to walk on an ankle that was obviously very painful. He was limping badly, slowing every minute. He told him they could stop at the next cave they came to. Ten minutes later, they came to one three meters deep and two meters high, and went inside. They sat side by side, their arms touching, the heat making them sweat profusely.
“Here, drink some water.”
They had one and a half bottles left. In a day’s time, they would have none. Bodge took two gulps from the half-full bottle and handed it back. Gabe drained the rest. One bottle left.
“Can we cook up some rice?”
“No, Bodge. Not until we find more water.”
“How about catching some rats? I’m hungry.”
“We can try for rats, but we’ll have to walk in the dark. It’s easier to catch them that way.”
“That’s okay. I can wait. I don’t wanna walk in the dark. Please tell me we don’t have to.” His fear was so great he gripped Gabe’s arm using his bandaged hand, seemingly without registering the pain it must have caused him. And if his wrist was broken, that pain had to be huge.
Bodge leaned on him then. Within a couple of minutes, Gabe felt the tension leave his body. He was sleeping.
Could he take care of him? If a war broke out among Gang, if the Cotton Cave staged an uprising to gain control? He didn’t think he could, not in those circumstances. There would be catastrophic loss of life in a war like that, he was certain of it, but the alternative was just as bad.
If Gang kept digging up, he was sure everyone would die. Gabe, Bodge, Soames, Rosselli, Leader. Everyone. Continuous explosions would destroy the place.
His plan was risky – it meant they had as much risk of being killed as they did fighting in a war – but wasn’t it better to die trying to get out than fighting in a battle for supremacy between egos? He thought it was. Or suffocating slowly when the earth crumbled around them? His plan was definitely better than that.
And this was his plan: make it to the Cotton Cave and find Rosselli. Tell him three parts of Soames’s four-part message – he’d moved, he was dying, they had to fight for control of the SUIC. The part about the gun? He would keep that to himself, because he wanted that gun for himself.
Once the fighting began, he would find a way to get them up and out of this place – him and Bodge – and he would need the gun to protect them against those guarding the SUIC.
If they died pursuing freedom, so be it. This was no place for innocent men, and that was just what they were.