Home Planet: Apocalypse (Part 2) (14 page)

I hadn’t realized that I’d fallen asleep until the urgent voice of a woman woke me.

“Outlander! Outlander, wake up!”

Rolling over, I saw a cloaked figure emerge from her hood outside the chain link front. I recognized her as the dark-skinned beauty from Valdus’s harem.

“What are you doing here?” I said, groggily.

Before she could answer, my neighbor, Myleene, stepped into view beside her. She now wore pants and a thick woolen sweater, my jacket in her hand.

“Luker, this is Alexa. She’s breaking us out of here!” she whispered urgently.

I got up, to see Alexa was already chopping away at the chain link with some wire cutters.

“Nice to meet you, Alexa. I’m all for escaping, but I hope you have a plan because this place is an absolute warren of—”

“Don’t worry Luker,” she said, continuing her work. “I’ve lived here for a long time. I know it well.”

She cut quickly and efficiently, making light work of the rusty wire.

“That should be big enough,” I said, quietly.

I kicked open the little flap she’d fashioned and ducked down to get through. Like Myleene, she was of small build. Nearly everyone around here was. Something to do with poor nutrition. I’d seen at a lot of people during the Games yesterday and I couldn’t even see how you could feed ten let alone hundreds.

Looking up and down the gloomy walkway, I saw a guard standing in the distance.

“Quick!” I said, “A guard!”

“Relax,” said Alexa, with a calming smile. “I’ve paid him in Valdus’s food. He is keeping watch for us. Come on, this way.”

I took my jacket from Myleene and put it on, then took a left from the cell and into the darkness beyond. Alexa drew a small flashlight and we took another left when we reached the concrete wall of what used to be the underground parking lot. Then we continued past a row of empty cells.

“These are used in times of war, when there are many prisoners,” explained Alexa.

We jogged through the cold, damp darkness. Water dripped somewhere to the left and the distant cries of some poor soul echoed from behind.

“Why are you helping us?” I said.

“Myleene is my good friend. We grew up together in the same tribe. Valdus’s men captured us both—me when I was seventeen, Myleene when she was fifteen,” she said, with anger in her tone. “She insisted that we take you too; that you are a good, noble man. We do not see many good men like you in this forsaken place.”

“That bastard has taken us from our families, robbed us of our years and done unspeakable things to us. Now he would have me killed in the pit for his pleasure. We
must
escape,” said Myleene, desperately.

“Don’t worry, sister. You must trust me,” said Alexa.

We reached the corner of the old parking lot and what used to be a fire exit. A piece of rotting plywood covered the doorway. Alexa crouched down and tried to liberate it from its nails. The bottom third was free, the wood next to the jamb having rotted away completely.

“Let me,” I said, moving Alexa aside before smashing the rotten wood in half with a firm thrust-kick.

We pushed through the parting in the center and I let Alexa take the lead once more. Up the ancient concrete steps we climbed.

“Which level?” I said.

“To the top,” said Alexa. “It’s a lot of stairs.”

“No kidding!” I said, laughing. “I bumped into Juliet here when they still had elevators. We had our first date in the top floor bar.”

“Was that your wife, Luker?” asked Myleene.

“Yes… Well, we planned to marry.”

“So what happened?”

“She died.”

“Oh, sorry…”

I said nothing.

We climbed in silence after Alexa warned us that some of the levels were inhabited. Valdus had his spies everywhere, apparently.

The higher we climbed, the more I noticed a slight incline in the stairwell.

“Why isn’t the stairwell vertical?” I whispered to Alexa.

“Something to do with the ice moving—different speeds at different depths. I’ve never seen it move, but people say it does move gradually.”

After a few more minutes, we reached the top. The emergency exit lobby was a concrete room with big chunks of the stuff littering the floor. Part of the wall bulged inwards, the pressure of ice pressing in from outside. I’d counted thirty-two floors since the parking lot prison. Alexa’s light flashed across the walls. The exit doors were gone, replaced by bricks and mortar. There seemed to be no way out. A sinking feeling grew inside of me as she continued searching the ceiling for something.

“What you looking for, Alexa?”

“There it is!” she said, sighing in relief at the knotted rope above.

It ran over the side what was the concrete landing to the roof exit and hung down within reach. Only an irregularly shaped six-foot-wide ledge remained of the level above.

“Take this,” said Alexa, handing me the flashlight.

She mounted the rope and started climbing while I did my best to light her way. Myleene went next and, on reaching the top, I carefully threw the flashlight to Alexa and ascended to the ledge. I pulled up the rope behind us in case someone followed then turned around to see a narrow ice tunnel and the silhouettes of my brave companions. These young women had known fear like few would have imagined in the world I’d grown up in, the world that seemed just days ago in my mind.

As we ran up the ever-steepening tunnel, I thought back to all the ridiculous first-world problems that had consumed people’s daily lives. Should I buy this gadget or one of a hundred models that are more or less the same? Why does the hot shower run cold in this house when someone runs the faucet? Why are they out of my favorite peanut butter today? Not to say people didn’t have real challenges, but so many spent so much time focused on nonsense. Myleene and Alexa had real problems. Even if they got back to their tribes, then what? Unless they relocated out of Valdus’s reach, they’d always be at risk. And it was too small a society to stay here and evade his detection. I was sure he’d save a special kind of treatment for the two women that dared escape.

“We’re nearly there,” said Alexa.

“Where’s
there
?” I said.

“The cache… There, up ahead! See the marking to the left? Just like he said.”

We reached the small red cross beneath which was a hidden hollow carved from the ice. Inside was a hessian sack, which Alexa took out and emptied on the tunnel floor. There was a selection of warm clothes for both women, including woolen hats, some socks and two pairs of leather boots. I had to admit, I was disappointed to see no weapons, but once outside the clothes would be vital. They put on several layers, adding bulk to their slim bodies.

Myleene stuffed the sack back in and we were on our way again.

The tunnel ended abruptly up ahead, but I couldn’t see what was beyond—just a dark space.

We got closer and the flashlight began to reveal what was there as we crossed the threshold into a building. Past what looked like several rows of market stalls, I could see the glow of artificial light. Clearly, trading hours were over as the place was dark and deserted. I could tell it was an ancient office block from the aluminum window frames of the outer wall. A selection of plywood and rusty sheet metal covered most of the solid ice, which had entombed the place.

“What’s
this
place?” I said.

“This is the Cube—an old tower used now as the city’s trading hub. Deeper down, there are dwellings. Many southern tribes people live here and trade here,” said Alexa in a whisper.

“Is this the western-most building of the three sticking up above the ice?”

“Yes, the shortest of the three—the Cube,” she said, repeating its name. “We need to keep moving!”

She walked quickly with Myleene and I trailing. Once we reached the pool of light from a single bulb, Alexa switched off the flashlight and looked around.

An old man, bearded and tanned with kind eyes, emerged from the shadows.

“Uncle!” cried Myleene, throwing her arms around him as he kissed her cheeks.

“Myleene!  How you’ve grown! We’ve been so worried about you.”

“Where’s dad?”

He bowed his head, shaking it sorrowfully.

“He passed away. Two years ago,” he said.

Her smile melted away and tears welled in her eyes.

“No… How?” she said, her lip wobbling, tears starting to fall.

He said nothing.

“Valdus?”

“Yes. His men.”

Her sorrow turned to anger. She pushed herself from her uncle’s embrace.

“His men killed my father. Your brother and you still trade with him?”

“Myleene, we have no choice. He is too strong; you must know that, my dear child.”

She looked resigned.

“I know, uncle, but one day that bastard must pay for all he’s done.”

“That is what we all dream of,” said her uncle.

He turned to Alexa, a smile growing on both their faces.

They hugged briefly and he said, “Everyone will be so pleased to see you again… Especially your family. Your mother and brothers never stopped talking about you, even to this day.”

Alexa looked skyward, hardly able to contain her joy.

“Thank you for doing this, Cortez,” she said.

“It is my duty and pleasure. And who is this man?” he said, looking up at me.

“This is Luker,” I smiled and offered my hand, which he just looked at.

Maybe they weren’t big on handshakes around here anymore.

He returned my smile, though.

“Nice to meet you, Luker. I am Cortez, a trader from the same southern tribe as Myleene and Alexa.”

“Luker is a brave and kind man. We must help him any way we can,” said Myleene, to her nodding uncle.

“So what’s the plan, Cortez?” I said.

“Follow me.”

He led us through the dark labyrinthine levels of the Cube and up seven levels of stairs. We reached a set of rusty steel doors, which Cortez pushed open to reveal the well-lit space and the dark ice fields beyond. What had once been an open plan office was now a concrete-floored room created between three roughly constructed walls of cinder block. The outside wall had been knocked away completely, exposing the space to the icy climate outside. Rifle-toting guards wearing numbered, once-white coveralls and woolen hats stood in pairs watching the outside world. Another pair manned a sandbag protected heavy machine gun that looked like the sort the marines or army used to use. It probably
was
ex-military—I doubted these guys could make such a well-engineered piece. Others sat manning more than a dozen tables positioned against the three inside walls. Aside from the guards, the place was empty. Several of them started eyeing us suspiciously, no doubt wondering what four such incongruous characters were doing here in the dead of night.

“What is this place?” I said to Cortez.

“Trade Control,” he said, which I guessed was something like customs.

He walked over to the nearest desk, manned by a youngish guy with a ginger beard.

“Papers,” he demanded harshly.

Cortez said nothing and handed the guard a folded piece of paper accompanied by a plastic bag. From the sounds of it, it was full of coins.

A smile grew on the young man’s face as he slipped the bag into the desk drawer and stamped Cortez’s papers.

“You may pass,” said Gingerbeard.

We followed Cortez toward the gaping exit and I noted that Gingerbeard had not looked at us once. It was as if the women and I were invisible. We passed the outermost guards and the machine gun nest to the merest of passing glances.

“Glad to see bribery’s alive and kicking,” I said, hearing the satisfying crunch of freshly fallen snow under my boots.

The cold hit me and I zipped up my Arctic jacket and pulled up the hood. Cortez led us left and toward a sled the size of a small van with eight giant dogs harnessed out front. They sat lazily, sleeping and resting, their thick fur insulating them from the sub-zero temperatures. The sled looked like an elongated skip fashioned from sheet metal, all rusty with the first signs of holes. It sat atop narrow metal skis and had a platform up front with two molded plastic seats bolted to it. A filthy nylon tarp sat rolled up above the bulk-bucket, still attached to its rim at the front.

“Get in the back,” said Cortez, walking over to the tarp and unfastening it.

We climbed into the dirty bucket full of dark brown dust and some small fragments of lignite—the brown coal they used in the power plant below Sigma Tower.

“No return load?” I asked.

“I’ll have to forgo my profits if we are to escape before dawn.”

“What else do you trade?”

“The south is warmer than here. In summer, the ice melts for a while. We catch fish, seals, and some seabirds. There are places, far away with even longer summer melts. The great city on Hawaii is legendary, but no one that has set off there ever returns.”