Carry the Flame (35 page)

Without another word, she forced herself into the black unknown.

Chapter Seventeen

C
assie's arm shook from holding the lantern up like a shield. She changed hands, but didn't dare lower it. For the nine-year-old, the candle might ward off more than darkness. It might be the only way to keep all the unseen dangers of the long-buried prison at bay. Men had died horribly there. She sensed this in
her
bones. But even that instinctual understanding could not keep her from dwelling on the most grievous threat of all—the land mines she would soon have to carry.

She tried counting the cages, but the distraction proved unbearably grim: each held two skeletons, picked so clean they glowed white as the moon.

Who ate them?

Rats, she decided with a small measure of relief.

And who ate
them
?

Snakes. Her dad had told her all about the reptiles. But she didn't see any rats.

So what are the snakes going to eat now?

Me.
Me
!

She stumbled across a chunk of concrete and saw rubble spilled across her path. A massive ram of earth had battered open the left side of the cell block, leaving bricks and mortar scattered like pebbles. Just thinking about the planet's power to grind mountains into motes gave her a nightmarish chill. It was even worse than the cages—the bones that appeared behind bars every ten feet.

Cassie turned around to make sure she hadn't missed any debris that could trip her when she came back through with the mines, then moved on, tossing aside what she could until broken concrete hunks half her size blocked her way. She had to clamber over them, avoiding spikes of rebar as she tried to memorize each hand and foothold. That's what William had urged: “You've got to make sure you know every step you'll take. You want to be able to walk right through there.” But some of the blocks were too big to move, even for grown-ups, and other wreckage looked murderous, like a severed length of prison railing sharp enough to impale her. She lifted her leg over it carefully, knowing that once she started her mission, the cell block itself would become a minefield.

She passed sixteen cages, and twice as many skeletons, before coming upon a solid steel door folded almost in half by an outthrust of rock. She was so shaken by another demonstration of the earth's raw power that she mistook the mangled door for the one to the tower, which hung open a few feet away. When she finally spotted it in the candlelight, she imagined guards fleeing the prison in such terror that they didn't care if they left the tower open—or the prisoners to die. She wondered if any of the men had eaten their cell mates. Only the skeletons behind the first set of bars looked like they were hugging. Were they? she wondered now. Or were they killing?

The stairs were also concrete, broken apart as if the orange clouds that blew up the sky had breached the earth. Even the empty stairwell was filled with the gossamer presence of the dead, the unburied bones gathering dust that would inter them over centuries. And as she climbed the ruptured steps, starkly fearful of the evil that could issue from every crack, she worried about ghosts already risen from all the brittle remains of the prison. Mom, Dad, Jenny, and Maul had said there were no such things as ghosts, but the older girls on the caravan stewed about them whenever they spotted bones sticking out of the sand—and her parents and sister and Maul had never walked past cages with skeletons, or known the final enveloping darkness of the earth itself. No light. Just the candle. And as soon as she moved on, blackness surged behind her like a flood, sealing her off from the visible world, leaving her as unmoored as the ghost ships of the Gulf, sacked by thieves, soaked in oil, adrift on marbled tides and unsteady winds.

Nothing's living down here.
But instead of reassuring her, the thought gave rise to a question: If the dead had a home, where would it be?

The answer came with dreadful certainty. The dead always claimed the blackest, densest depths. They would gather in a compressing universe of prison cages and rubble and skeletons, where even walls burst apart with hidden rage.

The silence itself spoke of dark wands and brutal intent. Had she ever heard such quiet? Her heartbeat and nervous footfalls registered with unsheathed clarity.

That's good,
she tried to tell herself.
You'll hear them.

Them? Ghosts and snakes.
But they don't make noise.
A frightening reminder. And then, two steps from a black opening at the top of the stairs, she heard a scary pounding. Not her heart. A heavier, harder thunder above her. There it was again.

She froze. A smell, worse than any she had ever suffered, threatened to strangle the little air she could take.

Cassie felt a touch on her neck then. It slid down her back. She wanted to scream, but fright alone forced her silence. She spun to the side and the sensation vanished. She looked down. No snakes. Then she raised the lantern and spied a thin stream of sand spilling from the stairwell ceiling, so fine it might have been mist. As she watched, the flow thickened, as if it had broken through its own obstacles to empty the world above, grain by grain, enough for all eternity.

The pounding resumed, a loud
boom
right over her head. More sand poured down, a wider, faster stream. She worried about a cave-in.

Boom. Boom.

The stairs vibrated. So did the ceiling. And the awful odor grew worse, infecting more than her nose. It left a feculent taste on her tongue. She wanted to run until she could hurl herself into the river and rub her face frantically, rinse out her mouth, and scream below the placid surface. Empty her anguish into a silent, soothing flow.

The noise stopped. Now she heard only her heart.

Find a place for the mines,
she told herself sternly. Close to the ceiling was best, William had said.

She climbed up the last two stairs. Her lantern opened the tower's darkness. Rock and dirt had broken through the tall windows, forming a head-high ledge directly in front of her. It angled out like an anvil. She thought it could hold the biggest mine, and maybe a couple of the smaller ones. She pointed the lantern around the defeated post, compacted to half its size by the flood, gravity, and the enormous pressures of earth's fitful crust.

No other place looked as suitable as the ledge. But would the pounding set off the mines? She'd ask William.

It felt wrong to Cassie that a device so delicate should be so deadly. A delicate device should heal the sick, or store the sun to light the darkness. That's what she wanted most of all—to light the darkness. Not to kill. She was sick of the killing, first at her camp, then at the Army of God, and now here. She wanted all the guns and bombs to go away so she could live in caverns filigreed with sunlight, and swim in the river and enjoy good food and drink all the water she wanted.

And not kill.

She turned back for the land mines, led not by her heart, but by her feet in rapid retreat.

J
essie clutched herself at the boisterous approach of the guards. She and Burned Fingers had eaten, and spent the afternoon and early evening hoping for whatever action Linden had promised. They hadn't glimpsed a hint of resistance, and now faced her tormentor and his goons.

She tried to brace herself for more abuse, but could not have prepared for what followed. As she stepped past the barred door—and two of the tormentor's minions slapped chains around her ankles and wrists—the thickly muscled guard described in excruciating detail what would happen to Bliss after Fight Night ended. “But by then you'll be in a big dark belly,” he said to the amusement of his fellows. “Wonder which one.” That brought more laughter. “But you'll still be hearing your kid, because a porn queen always gets to
scream
-ing.”

As eager as he was to talk, the tormentor said nothing of why she would see Bliss and Ananda before the fight, as the Mayor had revealed only hours ago, much less why Ananda might show up during it. Jessie figured the guard's prerogatives didn't extend beyond celebrating the savage death of her older daughter.

The guards rushed Burned Fingers and her through the city's darkening shadows, a route that offered brief views of dusk graying the desert beyond the massive roof. The men held them so tightly and moved so fast that Jessie's chained feet were lifted from the ground as she was swept into the open arena with the “special pit.” Tall torches were sunk like stakes along its broad perimeter, casting shadows on the sand where she and Burned Fingers had barely escaped Tonga.

The dragon's gate had been repaired, but what seized Jessie's attention was the gruesome spectacle a few feet from it. Two women maddened by the virus were beating a third to death with rocks, crude weapons that must have been tossed into the pit for the entertainment of about seventy men shouting and crowding the edge.

She recognized the larger, older woman as the prisoner who had smashed the girl's face into the bone bars then screamed, “Why?” before knocking herself out against a brick wall. A smaller, wiry woman didn't look familiar. With only a few patches of white hair, and a horribly scabbed scalp, Jessie knew she would have sparked her memory.

Sickened by the sight, she turned away. Her tormentor snapped his fingers in front of her face.

“You don't keep watching, you'll lose your damn eyes before it's your turn.” He squinted and held out his arms like a blind man lost in a crowd, drawing more laughs from the others.

Jessie forced herself to look into the pit. He leaned close to her ear. “It's a fight to the death. I don't think your girls would do real good down there.”

The possibility ignited her blood pressure so fast she thought the top of her head would lift off, but she stifled an impulse to demand to know what he meant. Cruelty was like blood, always seeking an opening.

He forced her closer to the edge. Pie and a large, unruly contingent of marauders were screaming at the surviving combatants to go at each other. Six other men, dressed alike in what might have been rudimentary uniforms, ran up and joined the fray. They were surprisingly well-groomed, with short black hair and closely trimmed beards. Three of them quickly merged with Pie's ragged-looking crew, running alongside the pit and bellowing in a language Jessie didn't understand, though their meaning was as clear as the marauders' barbaric demands.

“Russians,” Burned Fingers said a moment before one of them tripped and tottered over the edge, gasping for help. The comrade beside him calmly grabbed his arm, saving him from the fifteen foot fall. But the third Russian, whose eyes had never strayed from the carnage—or the two women now circling each other—stumbled and bumped him. The first two fell.

The surviving women raced to attack the stunned Russians, who were trying to drag themselves upright. Jessie almost cheered the prisoners. One of the Russians' compatriots shot the smaller, scabbed woman. But before he could kill the older one, a Latino guard shoved his pistol into the man's back.

“You do not shoot anyone in the City of Shade,” the Mayor said. “It is not yours to rule.”

A tall Russian appeared to understand the Mayor. He nodded at his comrade, who lowered his gun as the big woman turned from the first man, whose skull she'd meanwhile bludgeoned. She then advanced on the second man, who favored his right side as he squirmed like a one-legged crab toward the center of the pit. Wincing, he tried to draw his gun, but failed; his shoulder looked injured as well.

“If she gets his weapon, kill her,” the Mayor ordered the Latino.

But the insane woman smashed the Russian's face so hard the
crack
from rock and bone carried beyond the bleachers. Someone moaned in sympathy; Jessie's still lay with the woman, who whirled around, eyes glazed as she spotted the man she'd left bleeding by the wall. He looked woozy, but pulled out his gun. When he started to raise it, she threw her rock, missing him by a wide margin.

The Mayor nodded once more at the Latino, who had prevented the woman's death moments ago. Now he executed her with a clean head shot before the blood-streaked man could violate the Mayor's edict.

None of the Russians spoke. They looked as shocked as their battered comrades. Only the marauders carried on, laughing and toasting the monstrous turn of events. Three women lay dead in the pit.

Fight Night had begun.

“I
heard something,” Cassie exclaimed to William through the steel bars. “Something really big.” She spoke to him so fast she had to catch her breath. “And there was a really bad smell.”

“That's good, Cassie,” he said smiling. Till then, she'd never noticed that he always frowned. “If you're really careful,” he went on, “this will work.”

He had the land mines laid out next to his pack. She gazed at them. One big round antitank mine—which he called an AT—and four smaller ones disguised in the long ago to look like teddy bears.

“So what was that thing I heard?” she asked him. “Do you know?”

“Don't worry about that. It's not going to matter as long as you can get these there without dropping them.”

“But it sounded really close.” William lifted his gaze from the ball of wire he'd started to unwind. “I
want
to know what it was,” she said insistently.

“A Komodo dragon.”

“A dragon? Right
there
?”

“It's just a big lizard, Cassie,” William said patiently. “They've
never
gotten down here.”

They?
“There's more than one?”

“There are two of them. What we're doing will kill them.”

“What we're doing will make a big hole. You told me yourself,” she sputtered. “They could escape.”

“That's not going to happen, and they're the least of your worries.”