Ocean was surprisingly relaxed as she stood with her eyes closed, breathing in short gasps so she would inhale as little of their stink as necessary. She heard the rotters’ footsteps scraping against the asphalt, could imagine flakes of decayed skin drifting to the street like a blizzard of scabs. She could picture their hands reaching out for her; bony fingertips like ivory claws jutting through flesh that seemed to be perpetually sloughing off the cord-like mass of muscle, their teeth, yellow and brown and fuzzy with mold, whispered promises of infection and death in the rasp of gas over vocal chords.
But at the same time she could feel the rays of the sun warming her arms and face. There was just the hint of a breeze, enough to rustle her hair in a way that took her back to a time when everything had been simpler. The ruined city and the rotters who roamed it had always painted her view of life, they were just as much part of her reality as the clouds in the sky. But things had been better back then… hadn’t they?
Her hand thrust into the loose pocket her mother had sewn onto her top and she ran her fingers along the smooth, glass belly of a pig.
It wouldn’t be long now.
She had to cherish these few remaining minutes. To truly experience all the things she’d been too distracted by hunger and fear to appreciate.
How good it felt to breathe….
The rhythm of her heart….
Even the sound of her voice, so small and otherwise insignificant in the relative quiet of the afternoon. “I’m so sorry, Mama.”
She listened.
She waited.
She lived. If only for a few seconds more.
A savage cry echoed off the crumbling buildings and Ocean’s eyes snapped open as her body jolted with shock. The rotters closest to her were turning away, as if the introduction of this new sound held greater promise than the silent girl before them. Through the gaps between their bodies, she could see something moving, nothing more than a dark blur, really. Now that the echoed shout was fading, she was aware of another sound. It was a dull thud and sharp whack merged into a single noise, preceded time and time again by a swish that reminded her, somehow, of the toy Daddy had made her when she was very small.
He’d taken what he’d called fan blades from one of the cars and attached them to a metal rod. When the wind blew hard enough, the flat vanes would start to spin and the sound they made was very similar to this one.
As she watched the rotters move toward the source of the sound, Ocean saw a head tumble into the air. It almost seemed to rotate in slow motion as it arced skyward; she had ample time to notice how the face looked like it had been chewed away at some point in the past.
Then she saw him, spinning like a tornado of rage, kicking back the rotters closest to him with leaps and growls, a whirlwind of constant motion and violence. In either hand, he held the curved blade of a sickle. For the most part, the metal was pitted and flaked with rust, but the inner edges had been honed to perfection and gleamed as brightly as the reflection of the sun on a car’s mirror.
Surrounding him in a vortex of carnage were arms and legs, slabs of flesh cleaved from torsos, splinters of brittle bone, fingers, chins… and, of course, heads. Those heads fell like a grisly rain, trailing the thick, black blood of the rotters in their wake and bouncing across the street like pebbles that had been dropped from the hand of a giant.
Within seconds, there was only this strange man with his dark hair and clothes, standing within a ring of dismembered body parts, breathing heavily as he switched the sickles so that they were both clutched in a single fist. With his other hand, he reached toward her, his blue eyes seemed to flare with passion as he spoke.
“Come with me if you want to live.”
Ocean had been so caught up in the man’s flurry of destruction that she had entirely forgotten the rotters who were creeping up behind her. The man’s gravelly voice seemed to pull her away from the edge of a precipice, as the reality of the situation hit her with an almost physical force and everything around her was thrown back into sharp focus.
She felt a hand tentatively grabbing at the back of her blouse and she leapt forward with a shriek, reaching out at the same time. The man’s hand enveloped her own with it’s roughly calloused palm, and he yanked her forward so hard that pain exploded through her shoulder.
Then they were running. He moved through the rubble of the streets like the deer had before they’d been hunted to extinction—bobbing, weaving, leaping over piles of debris, his long hair fluttering in the displaced air. She stumbled and scrambled, trying her best to match his pace and to keep from tripping over her own feet. In her mind, she saw her hand slipping out of his as she tumbled to the ground, and he just kept running until he was nothing more than a tiny speck in the distance, leaving her panting, waiting for the rotters to claim her as their own.
Her lungs felt as if they were on fire, the muscles in her legs quivered and ached, yet somehow she managed to hang on to that firm hand; somehow she found the fortitude to keep running, to keep up with her savior.
The unfamiliar streets passed in a blur, yet Ocean got the impression that this man’s trajectory wasn’t as random as it first appeared. He moved with the quiet confidence of someone who knew exactly where he was going, precisely were to turn in the circuitous route they were taking.
As if in reply to this thought, his voice boomed out. “Corduroy! I’ve got a breather!”
Ocean, feeling she could barely draw in enough breath to support life, was shocked at how smoothly the words flowed from this stranger. If she hadn’t been with him every step of the way, she never would have guessed that he’d been running for blocks.
In response to his call, the street was filled with a metallic, grating sound. About half a block away, one of the metal disks that were embedded every so often throughout the city, seemed to levitate above the ground. As they drew closer, Ocean was able to make out the hands that lifted it into the air, and shoved it to the side, where it dropped with a loud clang. By then they were standing directly in front of it.
Before her feet, Ocean saw a perfectly round, perfectly dark hole. She could vaguely sense something moving down there and assumed it was who the man had called Corduroy.
“Down, down, down!”
The stranger’s tone left no room for argument. Taking a deep breath, Ocean jumped into the hole feet first and braced herself for the shock of impact. She’d expected something hard and cold, but instead crashed into the warm, fleshy mass of the man who’d removed the manhole cover. He grunted and fell to the ground with a thump.
“What the fuck?”
Ocean scrambled to her feet and tried to apologize, but could only gasp for air. She leaned forward with her hands on her knees, gulping her lungs full of the cool, damp air. She glanced up to see the sickle man descending down the side of the wall, but light streaming in from the hole blinded her with its glare. She was able to squint just enough to make out the metal rings embedded into the concrete. A ladder? There had been a damn ladder?
The man with the dark hair cupped his hand beneath her chin, tilting her head back so she was looking into his eyes. He pursed his lips and raised a finger to them before taking her hand again.
The one called Corduroy glared at her through the semi-darkness; she returned his gaze just long enough to realize that his face was twisted with dark burns. It was so bad that, had she saw him in any other circumstance, she would have assumed he was a rotter. One of his eyebrows looked as if it had melted over his eye, causing a permanent squint, and she thought he looked older than the man who’d come to her rescue.
He climbed up the rungs, the sound of metal scraping over asphalt again assaulted her ears. After that they were plunged into a darkness more complete than any Ocean had ever known.
She felt the man’s now familiar hand take hers again, wondering briefly why it caused her stomach to feel as if every fly she’d ever eaten had suddenly come to life to flutter around in her belly. He was leading her again, deeper into the darkness this time, and at a much slower pace.
She could hear Corduroy behind her, his footsteps light and quick, and a dripping sound from somewhere far away. The entire place smelled old and musty and she began to wonder if she’d really died back there on the streets. Perhaps this man and his companion were actually angels, and even now, were leading her through the lightless void of death. They’d gone underground which of course meant she was going to Hell, but that was exactly what she deserved wasn’t it? After what she’d done to her mother…
She stretched her free hand into the gloom, needing to feel something solid, something real. Her fingers brushed over what felt like coarse stone, damp as the morning dew. Excitement drove away the pangs of remorse and guilt. She wanted to lean out and lick the cool beads of moisture from the wall until her tongue was raw and bloody.
“There’s water where we’re going.” The man’s whisper echoed in the darkness. It was funny how he seemed to know exactly what she was thinking, exactly what she needed… There was that strange fluttery feeling again, and why did her face and chest suddenly feel so warm?
“Food. Clean clothes. It’s not much further. But we have to stay perfectly quiet from here on out. Understand?”
She nodded her head quickly and then mentally scolded herself. Why was she being so foolish? He couldn’t see her any more than she could…
“Good. Shhhhh.”
After a while, Ocean’s eyes began to adjust to the darkness. She could make out the walls of the tunnel she was walking through; it was strange how she’d seen those disks in the streets every day of her life, and it had never occurred to her—not once—that there could actually be something down below.
What of this man? Now that she actually had time to think, she realized he wasn’t like anyone she’d ever met. He was tall, strong—the sleeves of his shirt practically rippled with muscle when he moved. He was more like the way people used to be. Back before the Food Wars her father had sometimes told her about…
Oh God, what must he think of me? She was a walking skeleton, only one step removed from the rotters he’d saved her from. Her hair was sparse and thin, not all full and silky like his, she was caked with filth and she suspected that she probably smelled bad as she looked.
For some reason, these thoughts made her eyes burn with tears and she heard her Mama’s voice say, in the back of her mind: wasted water. That made it even worse. She wanted to slip away from the man’s grasp, to run so deep within these tunnels that he’d never be able to find her.
She wanted to curl up on a bed of dry leaves, and simply waste away.
He squeezed her hand gently and she was pulled along on a current that roiled with emotion. Everything had been so simple the day before. Life was hard, but at least it had made sense. Now, it seemed as if she had slipped into a bizarre dream where her heart and conscience fought one another in a battle for dominance. They exchanged blows so rapidly that it physically felt as if the world were spinning around her. She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, to praise her good fortune or damn herself.
None of this would have happened if Mama were still alive. She’d be laying in her room, perhaps playing with her collection of glass animals as she thought about her father; she’d wonder where the next meal would come from, how she would manage to find some clean water to ease the burning in her throat.
Instead, here she was, with the promise of food, of drink, of something other than the grimy rags that wrapped her wasted frame, and her mother was still back there, staring up with eyes that would never see again.
Ocean stopped as suddenly as if she’d been turned to stone; her stomach twisted into painful knots that seemed to climb into her chest and wrap around her heart. She pulled her hand away from the stranger, hugging herself as she doubled over. She squeezed her eyes shut so tightly that the tears which had been threatening to fall were forced out, and she began to shiver with delayed shock.
Mama is dead, truly and really dead. There was a tire iron sticking out of the side of her shattered skull and her blood was everywhere; on the ground, in her hair, on her clothes. Oh Jesus, Mama’s blood is on my clothes, and what if that means her ghost is here too, what have I done, Good Lord, what have I done? My own mother, I killed…
The stranger’s breath was warm in her ear and she felt herself pulled into his arms. He hugged her just like her Daddy used to, allowing her to bury her face into his chest as he stroked her hair and whispering the entire time. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay. You’re safe now. You’re safe…”
She didn’t want to cry. Not in front of him, of all people. She tried to suck all the pain back inside her, to store it away in some dark and secret place within her soul. That only caused a low moan to tremble out of her throat, and she pressed herself even more tightly against the reassuring solidity of the man’s chest.
“That’s okay. Let it out, let it all out. That’s a good girl.”
It took a while, but eventually she composed herself. She wiped away the tears and snot with the hem of her shirt, trying to look anywhere but into his eyes when he asked if she was sure she was okay. She wanted to show him that she could be strong, too, that she wasn’t just some frightened little girl who’d foolishly wandered into a pack of rotters. They walked on in silence, with him leading her by the hand once more, and she taking in every detail of the journey. Every so often, they’d pass little rectangles of light, shining down from up near the ceiling. She knew what they were, of course. After heavy rains, she and her mother used to hold cans inside them, to collect the water that flowed down into the darkness. Even with that experience, she’d never thought to ask where the water they couldn’t catch went.
As they scurried through the tunnels and past the drains, she sometimes caught glimpses of feet. More like silhouettes, really; there wasn’t much daylight left on the surface and detail was washed out in the coming shadows. She knew instinctively what they were: rotters. And here they were, passing right underneath them… she’d had to cover her mouth to keep from giggling the first time this thought had bubbled up in her mind.
After what seemed an eternity of walking, Ocean become aware of a faint scent drifting though the darkened tunnel. The aroma immediately set off a rumbling in her stomach so loud that Corduroy must have heard it, for he started chuckling behind her. The smell was maddening and her mouth began to water as it grew in strength. They were cooking. Cooking meat. How long had it been since she’d had hot food? Six, seven moons maybe? She remembered losing the flint and how angry her mother had been with her. She spent days searching on hands and knees for that little stone, but it seemed the earth had opened up and swallowed it whole. From that point on, meat—when they were fortunate enough to find it—was raw and bloody.
“Just about there,” the stranger said. “In time for dinner, too.”
He wasn’t whispering anymore and Ocean had forgotten how
rich and deep his voice was; and now his words caused tiny shivers to tingle along her spine.
“I’ll need to introduce you, of course. What’s your name, darlin’?”
She couldn’t suppress the grin that spread across her face.
“Ocean.”
“Well, now… I think that’s just about the prettiest name I ever heard.”
Ocean felt like hiding her face within her hands and giggling but managed to resist the impulse.
“I’m Gauge. Corduroy, you’ve met already. There’s two more of us, Levi and Pebble. I think you’ll like Levi. She’s a little older than you, of course, but she’s a sweetheart.”
Ocean tasted a bitter flavor in her mouth and noticed that the muscles in her neck and shoulders had grown tense.
“She’s been with me since almost the beginning…”
“What about Pebble?” The words came out more quickly, and much more sharply, than Ocean had intended and she felt herself blush in the darkness. Corduroy snorted a laugh, but Gauge seemed unfazed by the question.
“Pebble? He’s… different. Doesn’t really talk much. Or at all, now that I really think about it, but I don’t think you two would have much in common. He’s just a little kid.”
Ocean felt as if her chest were inflating, smiled like she’d just seen the most beautiful rainbow on the most perfect of mornings. Just a little kid. She savored every syllable of the words, repeating them over and over in her mind. So he knew somehow, that she was a woman, but it shouldn’t have been a surprise. After all, he seemed to understand her in a way no one ever had.
Gauge led them through a gaping hole in a wall and Ocean suddenly found herself standing in a cavernous room. Square in shape, it had brick walls that reached up to touch a ceiling that seemed to curve gently inward like the inside of some massive dome. The top of the ceiling was so high that only the silhouettes of pipework could be glimpsed through a gloom that gradually darkened into a space as black as the night sky.
With no windows or openings to the outside world, the entire chamber would have been obscured by darkness had it not been for rows of candles that flickered from all sides. The candles were housed in containers of every imaginable shape, size, and material—the tops of tin cans glowed with hidden fire alongside glass bottles, large globes that looked as if they’d been scavenged from lamp posts, and ceramic cups with broken handles. Behind each candle were shards of broken mirror, amplifying and scattering the light so that the brick walls danced with shadows.
A few candles where clustered on the floor, but the majority of them had been placed between concrete supports that jutted out from the walls at regular intervals. The space between each column formed an alcove of sorts and the group who lived there had taken advantage of that feature. Somehow, they’d managed to wedge pieces of wood and old street signs into these otherwise empty spaces, forming shelves that were nearly twice as high as Ocean was tall.
For a moment she simply stood in the mouth of the tunnel as her eyes darted from feature to feature in an attempt to take it all in. Across the room, and directly caddy-corner from her, looked to be another tunnel leading out of the chamber. The interior wall that ran parallel to it had places where bricks had been knocked out, leaving gaps that made it look as though the wall were a puzzle with missing pieces.
The largest hole was closest to the other tunnel, and it was big enough that Gauge and Corduroy could have passed through shoulder to shoulder, still having enough room to flex their elbows. Several feet away was a smaller opening, this one leading down to the soot stained floor, and a fire crackled within it. The smoke from the orange and yellow flames curled upwards and disappeared into the remains of a broken pipe that looked as though it had once been entirely encased within the brick. The light from this makeshift hearth illuminated the other through another hole, just enough for Ocean to see walls that looked as if they were made of dirt. Pieces of root and stone were embedded into the hard-packed earth and the young girl quickly deduced that the room had been dug out by hand.
The third opening on this particular wall wasn’t as wide as the first, only having just enough space for one person to pass through. Without the benefit of light, however, this once concealed its secrets in darkness.
The other walls of the chamber fared better. She could just make out the hint of another opening halfway along the wall to her right and the one directly across from her only had a single hole punched through it. The interior of that one was also hidden from view, but because they had hung a heavy blanket on the other side, which caused Ocean’s curiosity to burn as hotly as the flames in the fireplace.
Dozens of questions flew through her mind, but refused to pass through her mouth. She simply stood there, mouth agape, as she turned her attention to a large, wooden table that dominated the center of the room.
At the table sat a small boy, his face as round and pale as the full moon, with a mop of red hair hanging down in front of his eyes. He cocked his head to the side as he took in the newcomer and something about the way his ears peeked out from the sides of his head reminded Ocean of a monkey.
“Pebble,” Gauge said. “This is Ocean. She’s going to be living with us.”
The boy blinked twice but his expression remained as impassive as the cobblestone floor. The blinks must have meant something to Gauge however, because the man frowned and shook his head. “Now, Pebble… give her a chance. Ocean is nice, you’ll like her. You’ll see.”
Ocean stepped toward the table with her hands in her pockets. She smiled at the boy, wanting so badly to make a good impression, and he looked up at her. Again, he blinked twice but this time his brow furrowed, and his mouth reduced itself to a thin, tight line.
“Hi, Pebble.” She wasn’t really used to meeting new people and wasn’t exactly sure what to say. Instead, she thrust her hand into her pocket and pulled out a little glass chimp with a missing tail.”I… I want you to have this.”
The boy immediately brightened, and he blinked once, very slowly, as he reached out for the figurine. From behind her, Ocean heard Gauge’s laughter echo through the hall and she took a long, slow breath through her nose.
At the same time, a woman appeared through one of the many holes that gaped in the walls of the room. She was wearing what appeared to be a shirt so long that it came down to her ankles, only it was tied around the waist with some sort of purple ribbon. Her hair was dark and long like Gauge’s, and she smiled when she saw Pebble playing with the glass animal.
“Well, it looks like someone has made a new friend.”
Ocean tried not to stare at the tray the woman carried.
“You’ve come on a special night. We eat well around here. But only this well every few months.”
Sitting atop the tray was one of the largest chunks of meat Ocean had ever seen… other than in dreams, of course. It was pale white with tendrils of steam rising from the top and little rivers of clear juices ran down its side. On either side of the meat were two metal cans with faded labels.
My God, do these people actually have canned food?
Ocean shook her head as if she half expected to wake up at any moment. She wanted to be polite but the food drew her gaze like her body drew flies.
“My name’s Levi.” the woman said, as she placed the platter upon the table. “Don’t be shy. Come, have a seat. Oh, and be a sweetheart and grab that those cups over there, won’t you?”
Ocean followed Levi’s line of sight. There was a small recess in the wall and lined along it were four metal goblets sitting atop a tray similar to the one that beautiful, beautiful meat was resting upon.
“I guess we’ll need to find another one now, huh?”
“She can share mine for tonight.” Ocean caught her breath at the sound of Gauge’s voice and closed her eyes for a fraction of a second. “Her name’s Ocean, by the way… and I think she’s just a little overwhelmed right now.”
“No… No, I’m okay. I’ll get them.”
She scurried to the alcove and reached for the cups, anxious to show Gauge how well she would fit in. Her hands were trembling worse than she realized and, as she reached for the second goblet, she somehow managed to bump against the platter. It slid from the alcove and though she scrambled to catch it, it seemed to bounce off her hands. It hit the floor with a loud clang, amplified by the dome shaped ceiling so high above.
Almost immediately, Ocean heard a thin, warbling cry from one of the other rooms. It was tentative at first but quickly grew in strength and soon echoed through the room. At first, Ocean didn’t understand what she was hearing. She stopped, mid-crouch, with her arm stretched toward the platter and simply listened to the cry.
“Shoot.”Levi sounded disappointed, but not angry. “You woke the baby.”
Baby? Baby?
It had been years since Ocean had heard, or even saw, an infant. People just weren’t strong enough for it anymore. There were barely enough nutrients to support one life… much less two. On the surface, at least. Down here, there was apparently life; fresh and new and crying so loudly that, in her world, it would have drawn the rotters to it within minutes.
The room shimmied through a veil of tears as the infant continued bawling.
No, not again. I won’t cry, damn it. I won’t cry…
“I’ll take care of it.” It was Gauge’s voice. “You’ve been slaving over the oven all evening. You set the table and I’ll put Baby back to sleep, okay?”
Ocean felt as though the floor had dropped out from under her feet. Levi. Gauge. The baby… It all made sense—how could she have been so stupid? To think that someone like him would ever be interested in her?
Ocean saw her reflection in the silver platter—the oily tangles of hair, sunken cheeks, and hollow eyes, the little cracks at the corners of her dry, flaky lips. Even compared to Corduroy with his disfigured scars, she looked like a monster. She was stupid and ugly and…
“Come on and eat, sweetheart. Don’t worry about that, I’ll get it later.”
From the other room, the baby continued to cry but she could hear Gauge’s voice, singing softly. There was the scrape of chair legs against the floor, Corduroy saying something in a nightmare voice about how good everything smelled….
At that moment, Ocean decided. She would be beautiful, too. She would eat and drink and wash. She would wear clean clothes… pretty ones like the ones Levi had on, and she would be helpful and she would grow strong.
And then, one day, Gauge would see her as the woman she truly was. He would hold her hand like he had in the tunnels and sing to her in the same soft voice that was slowly lulling the baby back to sleep.
She walked to the table, hoping the others couldn’t hear the gurgling she from her belly, and smiled.
She would be happy here. She’d make sure of it.