MiNRS (6 page)

Chapter Eight

Food Fight

Jimmi’s snores woke me up
not long after. I flicked on my headlamp and checked my watch. It was morning, early morning. Jimmi had three empty chocolate bar wrappers on the ground next to him. I frowned. We needed to ration the food, not devour it. Jimmi had had his breakfast; now I needed to make sure everyone else got some too. I stood up, stretched, and walked back toward the infirmary.

The red emergency lights kept everything lit like some kind of haunted house. The batteries in our helmets were only going to hold their charge for so long before they died. I needed to get the main lights back. There was probably a central panel or something that
turned off the emergency system and rebooted the central lighting. I just needed to find it.

Mandeep was asleep in the hall outside the infirmary, wrapped up in a pile of uniforms. I tiptoed past her.

I heard whispered voices as I opened the infirmary door.

Maria was trying to calm Darcy, who’d woken up in a panic.

“I want my daddy and mommy,” Darcy said, hugging Friendly so hard, she was practically crushing him.

Maria looked exhausted, but she was trying to soothe Darcy with cooing sounds and pats on the back. “It’s okay, Isabel . . . Darcy.” She choked up on saying the name of her little sister, and had to turn away.

Finn was sitting up in his bed, looking dazed. Alek was still on his side, staring blankly at the poster.

Pavel was standing against the wall, his hands in his pockets, looking annoyed by the whole scene.

Darcy saw me and jumped up from her bed. She rushed over, hugging my legs so hard, she almost toppled me over. “Christopher, where is my family?” She pointed at Finn. “When he was sleeping, he kept talking, and he said his daddy and mommy are dead.”

Pavel gave a snort and smirked. “Pathetic,” he said. He walked past me and out the door.

Finn looked shocked. “I didn’t . . . I don’t want to scare . . . I . . .” Then he just shook his head, his bottom lip trembling so much, he couldn’t talk.

“It’s okay, Finn,” I said. “It’s okay.” Maria walked over and hugged him. They held each other silently.

I knelt down and looked straight into Darcy’s eyes. “I know this is scary. I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t know where our parents are.”

Her lip trembled, but I continued.

“That thunderstorm you heard wasn’t a real storm. It was an attack. People attacked us.”

Darcy narrowed her eyes and frowned. “You mean like pirates?”

I nodded. “Yes. I think. I’m not sure. They dropped bombs. All of us down here in the mines, we are the only ones who I’m sure are alive.”

Darcy hugged Friendly and took this in. “I hate them,” she said at last. Then she turned and ran and tucked herself down into a corner of the room. “I hate them!” she screamed.

Maria and Finn continued to hold each other.

Pavel was probably outside punching the walls again.

Alek was comatose.

Mandeep appeared at the doorway, groggy and
rubbing her eyes. “I
just
got to sleep. Can’t anyone shut up for a moment?” Then she turned back to the hallway and slammed the door.

I hung my head. How was I supposed to help get everyone through this? I had a hard enough time talking to people when things were normal.

Elena had been different.

She listened to me no matter what stupid thing I said.

But Elena was dead.

I had to do something. If we all sat around stewing in our grief, we’d never survive the Blackout.

I walked over to Darcy. “Hey, you know what I need right now?”

Darcy looked up at me and shook her head.

“I need a brave girl to help me find the light switch for down here. And we need to go find some food. There’s a cafeteria down the tunnel with lots of chocolate and desserts. You want first dibs?”

Darcy nodded.

I smiled and held out my hand. She gripped it tightly, and we walked toward the door.

Finn raised his head off Maria’s shoulder.

“Can I come?” Finn said.

I looked down at Darcy and raised an eyebrow. She nodded.

“Okay,” I said. “But Darcy still gets first dibs on the desserts.”

Finn gave a quick smile and joined us, wiping his eyes and nose on his sleeve.

“Maria, you want to come too?” I asked.

She shook her head and crawled onto the cot, pulling the sheets up over her head.

Well, at least the younger kids are moving,
I thought.

We walked past Mandeep and Pavel, both sleeping or trying to, and headed toward the entrance to Tunnel 1. Finn was quietly humming the “Heigh-Ho” song. Darcy noticed too and joined in.

The sides of the tunnels were incredibly smooth. The ceilings arched above us about ten feet high in an almost perfect semicircle.

I marveled at this underground world. Diggers had carved out small exploration shafts with excavators following, carving out the full tunnel and then using shovel-arms to grab copper, iron . . . whatever.

For really precious metals—like gold or titanium—or jewels, they used something called a grinder. I’d never seen one, but I’d picked up from bits of conversation that these machines could get into small cracks and holes the bigger machines would destroy.

Just beyond the entrance to the tunnel, we came to a
large door with
cafeteria
spray painted on it. Someone with a sense of humor had added
Abandon all hope ye who enter here
in marker across the top.

The door wasn’t locked, and cool air greeted us as we pushed the door open and walked inside. There were more motivational posters up on the walls, with slogans like
FOOD AND WATER ARE AS PRECIOUS AS GOLD
,
DON’T WASTE,
and
REUSE AND RECYCLE
.

The fridges and freezers were still working, so that meant there had to be some emergency batteries or power cells somewhere down here.

I tried the stoves, but they didn’t ignite. Keeping food from spoiling was a priority; cooking it was apparently a luxury. So it was going to be raw veggies and salads until we got some actual power down here.

I turned on the taps and water flowed out. I quickly shut it off. Who knows how much clean water was left. The ponds up top were probably polluted from the battle, and I didn’t want to think too much about that.

As promised, Darcy got to choose first and elected for an entire chocolate custard pie. I noticed the pie had been made on Earth in a place called Brighton, Ontario.

I’d never even heard of it, but a pang of homesickness still hit me.

Finn grabbed a chocolate bar and happily munched
away. “This is what I needed!” he said. “You want some?” He thrust the bar in my direction.

“No, I’m good. But don’t eat too much. We do need to save some for the others.”

Finn smiled and took another bite.

We completely inventoried all of the food in the fridges and on the shelves. There wasn’t as much as I’d hoped. Worst-case scenario, we’d need food for three months: two until the Blackout ended, and then a month or so until we got rescued. There was nowhere near enough food down here to last that long, even with rationing.

Darcy grabbed another piece of pie, giggling as she pretended to share it with Friendly. Finn sat down next to her and opened yet another wrapped candy bar. The rationing could start tomorrow.

My parents’ voices rang in my ears: my father ordering me to be a leader, my mother telling me to run. They both wanted me to survive. That meant staying underground. It was still dark, but now we had some food. If we were lucky, we could stay put and ride out the Blackout. Then we’d signal Earth and get saved. I didn’t have it all worked out yet, but one thing we had was time.

“Okay, guys, let’s grab some veggies and head back to camp.”

“Aww,” whined Darcy and Finn together.

“And make sure you wash the evidence off your hands and faces. I don’t need everyone demanding dessert before breakfast!”

They got up, and we grabbed some food and headed back. I did stash some treats in my bag.

Mandeep and Pavel were up. Jimmi had woken up too but was still yawning as he leaned against the wall, stretching.

“I’m sorry,” Mandeep said as we approached. “That wasn’t really like me to yell like that.”

“It’s all good,” I said.

Darcy hugged Mandeep and nestled into her arms tightly.

Finn and I passed out fresh beans and carrots to everyone. Alek and Maria were still sleeping, so I set theirs aside.

“Beans and carrots?” Pavel said, sticking out his tongue. “What, no Brussels sprouts left for dessert?”

I frowned. “Look. The fresh stuff, like the carrots, needs to be eaten first. There’s not a lot of extra anything, and we can’t afford to waste. Food is like gold for us, unless we can find some more, we have to get by with what we have.”

Pavel scoffed but took a giant bite out of his carrot and sat, chewing it loudly.

But then I pulled out a box of chocolate bars. “If we eat our veggies, we’ll get a treat.”

Jimmi reached out, but I grabbed his hand before he could take one.

“After the veggies,” I said.

He was ticked. “Who died and made you king?” he said under his breath.

I started to say,
My dad,
when I remembered he’d lost his family too.

“Never mind. Sorry. Just grab one.”

“No, thanks. I don’t want it anymore,” Jimmi said, stomping away.

I walked into the infirmary. Maria woke up and crunched on her veggies. She stared at the chocolate bar for a long time, then slid it into her pocket.

“It was Isabella’s favorite kind,” she said. But she got up and walked outside to join the others.

Alek was in worse shape. I offered him chocolate and water, but the food stayed in the wrapper, and the water trickled down the sides of his mouth.

He just stared straight ahead, barely even blinking.

•   •   •

Three nights in, nothing had changed. I was on watch duty alone. I settled into a comfortable spot on a corner of the locker room, and pulled out the copy of
Oliver
Twist
. I hoped reading it might help calm me and help me remember happier times with my mom and dad and their newborn baby boy.

I hadn’t even cracked the spine when I heard a trickle of debris falling down the shaft of the ruined elevator. The bits pinged the sides on the way down and bounced off the remains of the elevator at the bottom. I put my hand on the ground to see if there were any tremors that might have dislodged some of the rubble.

Nothing. The floor was cool and calm.

I stashed the book in my backpack and walked over to the elevators. More pebbles or bits of whatever trickled down.

Then I heard a sound that sent a chill down my back.

One of the working elevators began to ascend back up its shaft.

Chapter Nine

Scorched Perses

Someone was at the other
end of that elevator shaft. That was certain.

I did some quick calculations.

The chances that it was one of our parents or more kids making their way down to the basement couldn’t be discounted. If that were the case, we should stay here and wait. That was my hope, the story I wanted to tell myself.

But I knew the concrete facts were against me. The debris that had crushed my elevator compartment that first day had been smoky and burning. That meant it had been freshly blasted, which meant the battle had reached the roof of the core-scraper just minutes after my father had left me.

The tremendous blasts had ended while I was saving Darcy, which meant the battle was over. I knew who had won that.

So the chance that it was one of our attackers in the elevator, getting ready to descend into the core-scraper to look for survivors, was
far
greater. And the chance that they wanted to keep those survivors alive? Zero.

We had to get away.

And we didn’t have a lot of time.

I hustled back to camp. Mandeep and Maria were the first ones I saw, so I shook them awake. I tried to sound calm, but I could hear my voice rising to a high-pitched squeak.

“They’re coming after us. We’ve got to get moving.”

It didn’t take a room light to see the panic in their eyes.

“Now,” I said, firmly.

They scrambled to their feet.

“Gather as much food and water as you can.”

“What about you?” Maria asked.

“I have a plan.”

I actually didn’t have a plan yet, but I quickly ran back to the locker room as one began to take shape.

I passed a storage locker filled with detonator caps and stopped. I remembered a book Elena had once read to me about something called the Russian Campaign of
1812. Napoleon, one of Elena’s favorite historical nutjobs, was attacking Russia. Instead of staying and fighting, the Russians retreated but burned everything first, making sure Napoleon wasn’t able to salvage anything he could use to help his troops or attack.
Scorched-earth policy
, she’d called it.

Napoleon eventually ran out of supplies.

The Russians won.

Running wasn’t enough. I needed to make sure they couldn’t get at anything they could use to follow us. I stared at the teeth of the blast door.

I needed to figure out how to trick it closed and keep it closed for as long as possible.

I tried the handle on the cage door of the storage locker. It was locked. I looked around for anything I could use to break in.

I grabbed a shovel and jammed the metal blade into the space between the panels. I had to lean to one side with all my might, but it worked. The lock snapped and the door swung open. I grabbed a helmet from the nearby lockers and put as many caps in it as I could fit. Then I gathered an armful of flares.

I dropped everything in a pile in front of the blast wall, then picked out one of detonator caps.

In case of an explosion or fire, the wall would crash
down. But there was a keypad on the core-scraper side that allowed someone to open the door once things were clear.

If they knew the code.

I didn’t know the code, but someone else might, and I couldn’t risk leaving it intact.

The pad was just above eye level and stuck out from the wall. I pushed the red ignition button on the detonator and placed it on top of the keypad. I now had five minutes to get clear before the cap blew. At least I hoped I had five minutes. My dad had only ever showed me one of these caps in a safety manual.
In case you ever find yourself working in the mines
. He must have been clairvoyant.

I walked back underneath the jagged teeth of the blast door, searching the ceiling with my headlamp until I found what I was looking for, a small metal box about fifteen feet away from the opening. It was a smoke detector.

I arranged a bunch of uniforms in a pile right underneath. It looked a little like a fire pit, the kind we’d make on camping trips back on Earth, which is exactly what I was going for.

Then I lit a flare. One wouldn’t be enough, so I tossed it into the middle of the pit. Smoke began to rise. I lit
another flare, and then another and another until the whole pile was in flames.

The smoke rose higher and higher, pooling around the sensor, getting thicker and darker.

Then the cloud began to descend, which was a bad thing for our lungs. If this plan didn’t work, I’d have to put out the fire and then get the kids to run away as fast as we could, which I was willing to bet wasn’t as fast as an armed shooter.

I could hear the others back down the tunnel starting to move, their helmet lights bobbing in the gathering haze. My father had said he was going to buy us time. I might need to do the same thing to give those kids a chance to escape.

I fumbled the remaining detonator caps between my fingers, ready to throw them into the fire if it came to that. The explosion might destroy this tunnel, taking me with it, but it would stop whoever was coming after us.

The elevator must have been descending by now.

Why wasn’t the blast door closing? I fought a rising sense of panic.

I waved my arms to send more plumes toward the ceiling.

Then a light shone at my feet. It started as a sliver, then grew wider and wider.

The elevator had returned, and it was opening.

Just then the cap on the keypad exploded. The force of the blast knocked me to the ground.

I landed on my side. I flipped onto my stomach and prepared to jump up and fight, but before I could, the smoke detector finally kicked in.

The last thing I saw was a pair of black boots running toward me, and then the blast door slammed shut. The logo for Melming Mining glowed brilliantly in the light of the flares.

I quickly got back up and ran to the fire extinguishers. A wave of relief washed over me.

We were safe—for now. But whoever was on the other side knew there were survivors. The blast door would slow them, but if they wanted to come after us, I worried they’d find a way.

I doused the flames, then turned to run.

I realized with a sudden sense of dread that this was our life now. Every step we took would lead to one more decision, one more escape.

Every time we put out one fire, another would spring up.

There wasn’t going to be an end, not until we found the beacon, and not until the end of the Blackout.

I hurried to join the others. I passed the infirmary.
Alek was still lying on the cot. Mandeep was shaking him to try to get him to move.

He didn’t budge.

“Mandeep. Why aren’t you moving?”

“Pavel said to leave Alek. He said he was going to slow us down. I can’t leave him.”

The lights ahead were still going up and down, illuminating the walls of the tunnel. The group wasn’t moving nearly fast enough. I stepped into the infirmary and whispered to Mandeep.

“We need to run now and get far away fast.”

She looked at Alek. “He’s so weak. He needs our help.”

“There are other kids out there who are going to need our help. Life down here is going to be dangerous. They’re going to need your medical expertise.”

“I can’t leave him. He’s sick,” she said, her voice shaky.

I drew a deep breath and looked at my feet. Was that something I could do? Leave Alek behind?

Then I saw something I hadn’t noticed before.

The cart Alek was lying on had wheels.

“Mandeep, help me unlock these. We’ll roll him, or wheel him with us as fast as—”

“No,” Alek said. The sound of his voice shocked me.

“Alek, we have to go!” Mandeep said.

He shook his head violently. “No.”

I ignored him and reached down to unlock the wheels. His fist slammed into the back of my head, and I saw a yellow flash in front of my eyes. I braced myself for another blow, my head swimming.

“Alek! Stop!” Mandeep yelled. I heard his fist connect with Mandeep, and she fell back, sending a cart of medical tools skidding across the floor.

I got up and peered through the bursts of light. Alek was swinging wildly. I lunged at him, wrapping my arms around his chest.

“Alek, we’re all dealing with stuff. But you need to come with us. We need to go now!”

He was much stronger than I expected, especially for someone who hadn’t eaten in days. He flexed his arms, breaking my hold, then spun and swung at me. I ducked just in time, but I slipped and fell back.

Alek reached down. He grabbed a small hammer, like the kind doctors use to make your knee kick, and for a horrible instant I was sure he was going to attack me.

Instead he began pounding one of the wheels, bending the metal support until it was a twisted useless mess. Then he destroyed the others. Each time he thought we were coming to stop him, he would glare and swing the hammer in the air.

“No,” he said, standing up. He threw the hammer away and then lay back on his cot, staring at the poster.

Mandeep’s lips quivered. “Alek? We can’t just leave you.” She looked at me. “Christopher, we can’t just leave him.”

I took a deep breath. I took a step toward the cart, but Alek kicked out with his good leg, crunching my outstretched fingers.

“No,” he murmured.

“Alek, there are people out in that tunnel who are your family now. We’ll help you get through this.”

I hoped the word
family
might tweak something, some kind of reaction. It didn’t. He was as still as stone.

“Alek, please.” I stepped toward him. He leaped from the cot, screaming and swinging wildly again. Mandeep and I retreated back through the door. Alek slammed it closed, then we heard him topple a large cabinet in front, jamming it shut.

I leaned my head on the door. I could hear Alek shuffling back to his cot.

“Alek.”

He didn’t answer.

I turned my head and stared at the blast door. Someone was on the other side. They’d come through eventually, and Alek would die if he were left here alone.
Maybe that was what he wanted? I pushed the infirmary door as hard as I could, but it wouldn’t budge.

Mandeep put her hand to her mouth, tears welling in her eyes. She leaned against the wall of the tunnel.

“Alek,” I said. “There’s food in the fridge. There’s water in the taps.”

I debated my next words. It was a risky move, but I had to leave thinking there was at least a chance I wasn’t condemning him to die alone.

“I know you’ll want to follow us once you’ve had a chance to think about it. I’ll make us easy to find. We’ll go down Tunnel 3 and then take the third subentrance on the right. Then we will alternate left and right six times, that’s three each, starting with a left turn. Remember the threes. You can find us.”

Nothing.

I turned and took Mandeep’s hand, and we ran to catch up to the others.