Borderlands: The Fallen (24 page)

There was a date, from several years earlier, with a question mark after it. And then it read:

Hymus is coming for another of my fingers today. They seem to have some superstition about my fingers because I’m a technician. They’re very primitive, except for a few little peculiarities. They have odd superstitions. They apparently believe if they eat my fingers, it’ll increase their technical prowess. They let me work on one of their trashy, wired-together mining machines.

But if they keep lopping off my fingers I won’t have anything to work with—or to write with. I found this empty diary book and this pen in the pocket of an old coat left by a previous prisoner. It’s someone to talk to besides the tunnel rats—I guess I’m talking to myself,
and whoever might find this later. Good thing the rats can’t read much.

I might also use the pen to gouge out Hymus’s eyes at some point, if I’m swift. But I only have two fingers left on my left hand and four on my right, to do it with. Fortunately he gives me a spray of deadener to stanch the pain before he cuts it off. It doesn’t hurt so much. What hurts is despair. It’s strange how physical the feeling of despair is.

I wonder who Hymus is selling my fingers to? I know he’s eaten at least one himself. I look at him and think of him chewing on my severed finger. He hopes to be the Great Engineer here soon, I understand.

I hope he chokes on one of my fingers, and dies from it. I’d take such delight in that, were I to see it happen.

Perhaps I might convince him my finger’s more potent if he bites it off when it’s still attached. Then I can shove it down his throat and choke him …

But before I do anything that desperate, I must think about the soft stone about the ancient columns. There might be a way to dig at the cell’s corner, and get out to one of the corridors. They do sleep during daylight hours, though it’s always night down here. There are sentries at all times, but I could slip past one or two.

Probably that’s a dream. But if I give up hope, I die all the sooner. I won’t give them the satisfaction. Keep looking for a way out! Keep looking! It must be there!

It was signed.
Two Finger Frank Finackus.

Marla stared at the page. Were they going to start lopping off her body parts?

But something else arrested her attention.
There might be a way to dig at the cell’s corner, and get out to one of the corridors. They do sleep during daylight hours.

Frank Finackus. Had he died here? Or had he escaped from this cell? And—was there a way out?

Cal was relieved,
very
relieved, to get out of that crater, away from the stench of death, the memory of skull-crushing crunches …

“You guys figure out what that thing was?” Cal asked, getting in the outrunner beside Roland. “I mean—that stuff sticking out of the Psycho’s head.”

“That stuff” had been like jointed worms made of a strange, iridescent metal, short tendrils whipping out from the back of the skull …

Roland shrugged, starting up the outrunner. “I’m not sure, kid. We got nothing but theories.” He drove up the ramp of sand that led to the edge of the crater, and over into the sunny morning, the light glancing painfully from the glassy surface of the plain. Behind them came Crannigan, Rosco, and Rans Veritas in the only other surviving vehicle, the sandtracker. It was slow, so Roland held the outrunner in check.

“What kind of theories?” Cal asked, holding on as they bumped over a wide crack in the crude glass surface.

“Well—Rans has seen skags with implants. Anyway, he says it
seems
to be implants of some kind. You know, wiring stuck in your head. Like that colony world Singularity where everyone’s sixty percent gear. Cyborg types—I never could stand those snooty bastards. And I never needed any extra anything stuck in my brain. Anyhow, he
says it’s the same technology as the crashed ship. It’s the same aliens. But … he says don’t touch it. Not that stuff. It can crawl right up your arm. So they’re not taking it as a sample. Some of the alien artifacts are safe to handle—and some aren’t.”

“But—did the Psycho Midgets put that stuff in there themselves … or did something put it in there for them?”

Roland glanced at him, eyebrows raised. “Can’t get anything past you, kid. You’re a quick study. Yeah. Seems like those things were
put
in there … Rans claims it’s the alien ship itself that does it. Maybe some kind of computer on the crashed starship, see. And it manufactures these gizmos, uses ’em to take control of people and animals, sends ’em out, sometimes, to protect itself.”

“So it was watching us somehow? It knew we were getting close?”

“Must’ve been watching us—or listening to transmissions. I don’t know for sure. Rans talks like he knows. But I don’t think he does.”

“I don’t trust him.”

“That’s another good call, kid.”

Ahead of them the volcano loomed, its lower slopes perhaps twenty kilometers away. Roland had told him the volcano was their destination. It looked like it had been a complete, hollow cone, later broken open on the eastern side, its interior dark and misty. Anything could be waiting in there …

Cal turned around, looked back at Crannigan and the others, riding in the sandtracker. “We’re getting pretty far ahead.”

“Yeah. I’m keeping about this distance between us. I
don’t trust any of those three. Rosco might be all right. But the other two … I hate to have them at my back.”

“They need you, after that mess back at the crater. All those men killed. They’re shorthanded now.”

Roland grunted assent. “True enough, kid. They need me for a while. And I need them for a while. But that’s one treaty that just isn’t gonna last—whoa, better slow down, what the hell is that?”

Roland slowed the outrunner, brought it to an idling stop on the edge of a dark spot in the plain. He got out and walked up to the edge of the big blot on the glassy ground.

Roland stared down at the slick ground, shook his head, and growled, “What the hell! Kid, stay in the vehicle.”

Cal was annoyed at that—but he’d learned not to argue with Roland when he used that tone.

Roland turned and waved at the sandtracker, signaling them to come, but slowly. In a couple of minutes the sandtracker caught up. Crannigan switched the engine off. “What’s going on? We need to get moving!”

“Not through here,” Roland said. “Looks like something’s hollowed out the plain in this spot. Kinda looks like it might’ve been done deliberately.”

“He’s right,” Rans allowed, getting carefully out of the sandtracker. He studied the glassy surface, then walked gingerly over to Roland and looked down at the dark blot. “They’ve expanded their tunnels. They didn’t used to be this far out. Might be true what I heard—they have some kinda tribal gathering out this way …”

“Who’s
they?
” Crannigan asked, getting out and walking over with Rosco.

“Tunnel rats,” said Rans, spitting.

“I was afraid of that,” Roland said, lifting his goggles to wipe dust from his eyes. “Goddamn tunnel rats.”

“Which is what?” Crannigan asked.

“Screwballs who live down in tunnels, most of which they dig themselves,” Roland said. “Went kinda wacky, hiding out from the Psychos. Never came back up. Inbred and mean and filthy motherbuggers. And if that wasn’t enough—cannibals.”

“They stay down there, out of our way?”

Rans Veritas shook his head. “Can’t be sure they’ll stay down there. They come out at night and nab people. And they lay traps … which might be what this is. One thing for sure, if Roland hadn’t spotted it, it would’ve collapsed under him. He’d be down there with the kid right now …” Rans turned to look at Cal in a speculative way that made Cal shiver. There was something sinister in that conjectural look.

Crannigan was giving Rans a sour look of his own. “You didn’t know about this? We didn’t get any warning about it from you. And you’re no good in a fight—you hide under the vehicles! So what good are you?”

“You’ll see,” Rans grumbled. “You’ll all see when we get there. Right now we got to find a way around this.”

“Let’s get back in the outrunner, and drive around it,” Roland said, shrugging.

“Looks like these dark spaces go on a ways,” Rosco said. “Branching out all over. Hey—is that someone down there?”

Cal stood up in the outrunner to try to see what was down in the sheathed pit.

He couldn’t see much in the glare of reflected light on the slick ground, just a sense of depth he hadn’t noticed before on that glassy plain.

“Yeah—looked like a tunnel rat to me,” Roland muttered. “Let’s get out of here.”

Tunnel rats,
Cal thought.

His father might have come this way. For all he knew his father, or mother, was already down there.

Vance got in the outrunner; the others got in the sandtracker. Roland backed up a little more and drove around the edge of the dark spots in the glassy surface.

They hadn’t gone more than thirty meters before the silicon sheath underneath them began to crack. Roland stopped the outrunner, backed up a little, and watched the glassy surface. The cracks stopped spreading.

“Can’t go on that way … Hard to see with all the sunlight shinin’ off the glass. We’re gonna have to head over to the edge of the plain and go the long way. Makes me nervous, though, taking the extra time. Too many people seem to know about the alien crash …”

“Roland,” Cal said, “I’ve got an idea. Suppose you give me some tinted goggles. There’s a pair in the sandtracker. Then I walk real slow up ahead of the vehicles. I don’t weigh much—I probably wouldn’t break through. I can point you to a safe route.”

“Kid, you don’t know for sure you don’t weigh enough to break through. Those little bastards might’ve undermined it so almost anything’d fall through.”

“Looks solid enough for someone my size. Come on, Roland. I want to be good for something out here.”

Roland looked at him with a grim seriousness. Then
he sighed. “Can’t argue with that. That’s what any man should want. Okay. Get out and wait by the vehicle.”

Roland went back on foot to the sandtracker, found the tinted goggles, and brought them back to Cal. He tossed them over, and Cal put them on. The world shifted into a cool blue. Details he hadn’t been able to make out before came through. Rocks that had looked blue now looked gray, or flat black, or reddish.

“Okay, kid. You’re on. Head away from those cracks—off that way, toward the edge of the plain.”

Cal swallowed hard, but walked out in front of the outrunner, in the direction Roland indicated, testing the ground as he went. Treading lightly, he moved slowly to the west, away from the cracked areas. Even more slowly, the vehicles followed him, inching along.

There were a good many dark areas, indicating undermining tunnels. But with the goggles, and being close to the plain’s surface, he could see a way past them, on the glassy ground where there was solid support. They kept going roughly the way they had been, but wending carefully between the dark tunnels, visible in outline beneath the translucent surface.

At last they reached the end of the maze on the glassy surface. Up ahead, between here and the volcano, it looked mostly clear.

But to his left, in the single dark shaft still visible under the scratched, translucent glass, something moved. He peered down through the glass—and caught a face goggling up at him.

Tunnel rat
. Manlike, but with a rubbery face and glass
eyes, the creature clasped its hands together, wringing them …

Suddenly it pointed up at him and gestured with its clawed finger.
Come here.

Something about the tunnel rat’s gesture hinted that coming down there was Cal’s destiny.

W
e may be going the long way around,” Berl was saying, as sunset began to turn the glassy plain a streaked, rusty orange. “But we’re more likely to get there in one piece than any of them others. Sure, I seen ’em too, boy. Mercs. And way far off I spied some folks in a truck. I asked Bizzy was it you. He said no. And those mercs ain’t gonna make it, no sir. The tunnel rats, and the ShipGrowth—that’ll get ’em. But the way we’re going … we’re good. Up to a point, anyhow. Ha! Up to a point …”

They were tramping along the curving edge of the plain, Zac carrying most of their baggage, getting closer to the lower slopes of the old volcanic shell. Bizzy was well ahead, ranging back and forth, looking for trouble. Zac wondered if he could knock Berl down, take the gun—use it to control the old man. Berl would keep Bizzy off …

But how would he know what Berl said to his pet? One
spit of that corrosive venom and Zac would be a mass of dying, bubbling flesh.

It occurred to Zac, then, that he was going to where he’d planned to go anyway. When he got close enough, he could turn the tables on the old hermit.

An undertow of excitement began to tug at Zac. He was going right to the alien crash site. Maybe he would die there. Or maybe it would make his fortune. With enough money, he could find his family.

Because they
were
alive. Definitely. They had to be.

“Now—you see that wall of rock up ahead?” Berl asked him suddenly, pointing to the cliffs under the foot of the volcano shell. “Tell me, boy—how you think we’re gonna get over that?”