Joshua and the Lightning Road (6 page)

My shift ended, but my legs still felt like they were moving back and forth on the wheel. I hit the floor and stumbled after Sam as he led the way to the bunkhouse. We followed him down dark paths lit by lanterns on poles, sandwiched between guards. Only Charlie’s tall figure in front of me gave me the smallest feeling of safety. It had grown darker since I entered the power mill for my shift. The mist now clung to the forest floor leaving the night sky a clear deep plum dotted with stars.

Shadows and fog obscured my way, and I banged into Charlie as we were halted in front of a long, low building. This time I clung to his T-shirt, not wanting to be separated from my one friend here. Guards were posted by the entrance, and around the building’s perimeter paced giant, snickering foxes. My eyes were so bleary I couldn’t read the words over the door as we were marched into a chilly room. A solitary torch lit the wall, and it spewed smoke, stinging the inside of my nose.

The guards led us through a shower room where we were hosed down with freezing water then dried off in a giant wind tunnel. This rough treatment revived me, and I rocked in place to get warm, but in the huddle of shivering kids I’d lost sight of Charlie until I spotted his head. He was led away with another group.
No!
My insides shook as I was marched away with my own group.

In a large hall we were given bowls of brown glop to eat and ordered to sit at sticky tables on cracked wooden benches. I peered into the soup, expecting to find something nasty like fingernails or mouse turds. I held my breath and slugged down the food. It was greasy and slid down my throat in bitter chunks.

The guard standing at our table glared at me. “Nasty Reekers. Hurry up and eat your gurgle soup. Off you go!”

Back in the bunk room, Sam assigned bed numbers and, after finding my bunk in the near dark, I spread across a bottom bed that smelled like pee. The mattress was just a wool sack stuffed with straw that poked into my back. A worn blanket with ratty holes was crumpled at the bottom of the bed, and I pulled it over my cold legs, squeezing them together for warmth.

I slipped my fingers around the crystal in my pocket and held it tight. In the dark it was hard to make out heads or feet on the other bunks.
Where was Charlie
? Kids whispered around me, some crying. The comfort of my moonlit room back home called to me, where bullfrogs bellowed goodnight and Bo Chez still turned out my light with his dumb baby rhyme.
Nightey nodz and toodley todz, don’t let the bedbugs sneak up your snoz.
He’d never mentioned vapes. Or beasts. Bugs I could deal with.

My body craved sleep, but it wouldn’t give in yet. Fear kept shaking me awake. Falling asleep on this world might mean never waking up.

“Charlie?” It came out a whisper, desperate for a friendly reply. None came. In all my twelve years I’d never felt so alone, and I tugged the blanket up to my neck.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness. Only one light at the entrance lit this bunkhouse that held hundreds. Guess they didn’t want to waste the light on us—the very light we generated.
Hurry up, sleep!
Dreaming was my one form of escape.

“Hey,” a voice startled me with a tap on my headboard, and a boy poked his head down. “When’d you get here?”

“Just today, I think.”

“I’ve been here for weeks now.” The boy climbed down and plopped on my bed. His chubby body squished next to mine. He looked like a little Bo Chez. A Lo Chez. He even smelled like cheese gone bad.

I sat up. “I’ve got to get out of here.”

“There’s a bunch of us planning the same thing.”

“I don’t belong here.”

“Oh, and what, the rest of us do?” He leaned in and poked me in the chest, blowing out a big, stinky cheese breath.

“Sorry, didn’t mean that. Are you from here or kidnapped, too?”

“Kidnapped.” He sat back and fisted my blanket, frowning at me. “We all were.”

The boy whistled long and low. Shapes moved toward us in the dark and kids crowded on my bunk bed.

“This is a new kid,” Lo Chez said. “So, newbie, we’re figuring out a plan to take Hekate down and escape.”

“How?”

“We sneak attack the guards when they do their early morning check, grab their vapes, and kill ‘em. Hekate will follow behind them, but we’ll vape her, too.”

“How will we get home?”

“Her brother, the Child Collector, comes in the morning for his special breakfast the chefs make. We’ll kidnap him, threaten to zap him too, and make him send us all home.”

The kids nodded at their leader, Lo Chez. Sounded risky to me.

“So are you in or what, new kid?”

“We could die,” I said. They just stared at me as if that was obvious. “I’ve got to get back home to my grandfather.”

“We’ve all got someone to get back home to.”

The kid next to Lo Chez started to cry. “My mom’s real sick. She’s in the hospital and I don’t think I’ll get to see her again, even if I do get home.”

Lo Chez draped his arm on the kid’s shoulder. “You’ll see her. Right, guys?”

One by one each kid spoke, their dirt and tear-streaked faces floating in the dim light.

“My dad is going overseas in the Army. I wanted to say goodbye.”

“My family’s going to England to visit my cousins. Don’t guess I’m going now.”

“We’re moving this month. I won’t know where to find my family even if I do escape.”

The crying kid wiped his nose. “We’ve all got to get out of here.”

I smiled at the kid with fake confidence. “We will.”

“Back to your bunks,” Lo Chez said. “Wait for the sign.”

The kids slunk away, except Lo Chez who darted his eyes around, then focused on me. My fingers slipped to the crystal in my pocket. Share it or not? My heart thudded, trying to decide. I would wait. Besides, could it even help us?

“Are you in?” He thumped my bed.

“Okay.” What choice was there? Maybe Charlie was here somewhere too and we could escape together.

“Get some sleep. You’ll need it to be ready to go.” Lo Chez climbed back on top of his bunk.

He never told me his name, or the others. I don’t guess it mattered. We were all the same here, just a brand and a resource for the world of Nostos. And we were lost in this Lost Realm.

I stretched out on my bunk and gave in to the dark. And, finally, in the cramped warmth of my dark prison, sleep dragged me away.

Shouts rang out. I jolted up and hit my head on the bunk with a painful whack.

Lo Chez hauled me out. “They’re on to us!”

Sleepy-eyed, I stood up. Sam must have turned me in!

“You!” Lo Chez grabbed me, his nose touching mine. “New boy. You told!”

“No, it wasn’t me.” Terror ran through me. “I swear!”

“Bunk four hundred and two, get over here.” Hekate’s voice crawled over us.

Lo Chez’s frown fell, and he let me go.

Hekate stood outlined in the light from the entrance as Lo Chez made his way to her.
No, don’t go!

The other kids stood in the silent dark.

“You think you can take me down, Reeker?” Hekate said, her voice rising. “I’m older than you know and have more power than you can imagine.” Two guards stood beside her. I shrunk into myself, wishing to be anywhere but here.

She grew taller, as if by a magical spell, her shadow rising like a monster on the wall behind her. “Who helped plan your takeover?”

Lo Chez shook his head. “N-no one.”

“Liar!” The guards pointed their vapes at his head as the lights flickered, casting ghastly shadows across their faces. The panting of hundreds of kids pulsed around me, and I pressed my fingers into the bunk bed frame, waiting for death to strike.

Hekate held her hands high.

Blue light blazed and the air crackled with electricity and smoke. When it cleared, Lo Chez still stood there.

“Back to your bunks, Reekers.” Hekate’s shrill voice pierced the air. “No rest for anyone tomorrow unless those involved in this escape plan confess.” She turned and left. The guards remained standing at the entrance.

There would be no prison break. The kids skulked back to their beds as I clutched the wobbly bedpost, waiting for Lo Chez to return. He shuffled toward me as his large body moved in and out of the light behind him. Strange moans carried to me. What had she done to him?

Finally, he stood before me, his hands covering his face. Then he clutched my arms. That’s when I saw the nightmare that he’d become.

His mouth was gone.

His eyes bulged out with the scream he couldn’t voice. It sucked me into a deeper world of horror and held me frozen in its image. His nose flared and he shook all over, shaking me with him. Tears spilled down his cheeks, his mouthless flesh working with silent sobs.

I wrenched away from Lo Chez and fell on my bed, hiding my own face in the scratchy mattress. He crawled on the top bunk, groaning from somewhere deep inside. I felt bad for reacting the way I did, but his monster face freaked me out. There was no comfort here, only work and punishment … death.

Just then, a face popped out from under my bunk. I almost yelled when a hand pulled me by the shirt, yanking me to the floor.

It was Charlie.

And Sam was with him.

Sam put his finger to his mouth. Charlie nodded, then Sam disappeared. I looked to see where he’d gone and felt a cool breeze. A sweaty hand pulled me down into a dark hole under the bed, and Charlie followed close behind.

Our hideaway was dank and damp. My eyes soon adjusted to see a slant of light glowing above. There was a soft creak and a click, and I got a whiff of dead and rotting things as near total darkness covered us.

“What’s happening?”

“Shh,” Sam whispered back, just an outline before me. “We’ve got to run. Quick!”

He shot off into the dark with a sack over his shoulders, but I pulled him back by his shirt and handed him my pen flashlight from home, grateful it still worked after my ‘shower’—and grateful my mother’s photo was laminated and didn’t get ruined. Sam hesitated, then took the flashlight from me and moved it around, casting light on the walls as if fascinated, then motioned for us to follow him with his new toy. Charlie shrugged at me from across the shadows, and we ran after our rescuer—if that’s what he was.

The dark tunnel seemed to move in and out on either side as we ran. I reached my hands out to the cool walls for balance. Bits of earth brushed off, and who knows what other slimy, squirmy things came with it.

Remembering the crystal, I felt for it in my pocket. It warmed my hand and glowed blue when I pulled it out, like the first time. Charlie bumped into me and gasped when he saw it.

Sam turned around and gasped too. He reached his fingers out toward the crystal, then pulled them away. “A lightning orb!”

I was scared of dropping it now, afraid it would explode like a grenade. Sam’s eyes were huge in the blue glow the crystal shed as clouds moved across its tiny space, rolling angry and stormy inside the glass. A spark flared. Charlie backed up and the blue light cast long shadows down his face, which bobbed like a ghost before me.

Sam pointed at my crystal. “How’d
you get one?”

I decided to change the subject. “What’s in the bag and how’d you get us out?”

Charlie nodded, still staring at the crystal … or lightning orb.

Sam shook the bag. “Food to keep us going. And I put you and Charlie in the two bunks with secret tunnel doors under them. They’ve been sealed shut for a long time, but I re-opened them and got your friend for you.” He stepped closer then, his eyes widening. “By the gods, I’ve never seen a lightning orb though, just heard of them. They have great power.”

Bo Chez had said so, but how would he have gotten hold of it?

Then Sam added, “Storm Masters from our Sky Realm carry them.”

My gut cramped.
Storm Masters were real?
“Sky Realm?”

That’s when he said something even stranger. “Zeus rules there. It’s where he created the lightning orbs, after he left Mount Olympus.”

I bounced from foot to foot, my legs eager to flee while my thoughts paralyzed me.
Mount Olympus was real, too?
But it couldn’t be. In school that was mythology, which means “not real.”

“
Non! Vraiment?
Mount Olympus like the Greek gods?” Charlie stuck his jaw out as he echoed my thoughts.

Sam nodded, his eyes white moons in the dark. “Vray-what?”

“
Vraiment
. It means ‘really’.”

“Then,
vraiment
, the Greek gods.”

“What can the orb do?” I really didn’t want it blowing up in my hand.

“I don’t know,” Sam said.

Big help.

“Did you steal it?” Sam tilted his head at me.

“From my grandfather.”

I wasn’t sure how to feel about Bo Chez now, and the fact that this orb—this weapon—had been in our house. This thing from another world—from the Greek gods! They were supposed to have superhuman powers, and this orb of theirs had just been on a shelf over our fireplace.

Sam peered about as if expecting guards to burst upon us any second. “Enough for now. Let’s move!”

I pulled him back. “Wait, you need to help me find my other friend, Finn, but I don’t know where he is.”

“No time for that,” Sam said. “I got Charlie here for you as asked.”

“Then we don’t go with you.”

Charlie nodded, following my lead, and crossed him arms. “I’m here because of Joshua and his friend. We can’t just leave him.”

Sam glanced back and forth between us then sighed. “Fine. We’ll find him first. There’s only a few places he could be anyways, but time is not on our side.”

This all sounded good, but I still didn’t know whether to trust him. “Why help us at all?”

“My days are numbered here, and I need a new home.”

“New home?”

“I want you to help me escape, too,” Sam said.

I glanced at Charlie and then back at Sam. “What do you mean help
you
escape?”

“To a new home with you on Earth.”

“But we don’t know how to get back.”

That’s when Sam surprised me even more by saying, “I do.”