Rivers of Fire (Atherton, Book 2) (25 page)

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*** CHAPTER 30 A THOUSAND CLEANERS

Within the throng of a thousand people living on Tabletop there were three who could not bring themselves to leave the grove. Nobody knew they had decided to stay, and with so much commotion it was easy to ignore the fact that these three were making preparations of their own.

Charles and Eliza, Isabel's parents, were two of the three. The other was Samuel's mother, Adele. The three of them had formed a tight bond over their common loss. None of the three had any interest in leaving the grove, because it was the only place where they felt Isabel and Samuel might return to, if they were to return at all.

It was Maude's husband, Briney, who was first to discover their plans. He came upon them fortifying one of the abandoned houses in the village.

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"Charles?" interrupted Briney. Briney had come to like all three of them very much in the preceding days, and he felt terrible for their loss. "What are you doing out here all alone? We're about to leave."

"We're staying here," said Charles, lashing some boards together with twine made from the thin bark of the trees. "For when Isabel and Samuel come back."

Briney was fairly certain that neither of the children would return, that they'd been lost in the Highlands and could not have escaped the rising water. He felt he needed to speak the truth, but he didn't want to further discourage them.

Eliza could tell Briney was struggling with what to say. "It's all right, Briney," she said. "We know Isabel and Samuel might not come back. But they're all we have, and if there's even the smallest chance, we have to stay."

"But the Cleaners ...," protested Briney, yet knowing they would never listen.

"We appreciate your concern," said Charles. "But we're staying."

Briney couldn't help embracing all three of them, wishing them well, and telling them he didn't want to leave them behind.

"When they come back," said Briney, trying with all his might to encourage them, "race as fast as you can to the Flat-lands. I'll be looking for you."

Adele, the quietest of the group, spoke up. "Go take care of Maude. She's going to need you."

"Maude is the stronger of us two," said Briney. "But you're

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right, Adele. She does need me. I don't think she can keep going if we're not together to the end."

As Briney made his way back into the swarm of people preparing to leave, he felt they were like an army readying for a march into battle. There was an electricity about their movements, not desperate but purposeful, brought on primarily by Horace's leadership. It was true there was every reason to believe the day would hold death and destruction, but Horace led them straight and true and this made all the difference.

Before leaving, they lined the children and mothers up the very middle of the grove. In the paths between the trees next to the children, rows of men and women with supplies were positioned. After that came two long lines of men between the next row of trees, each with wooden spears. Through a final row of trees on both sides rode the remaining men from the Highlands on horses, ten on each side.

At the front of the procession were Horace, Maude, and Edgar, and at the back were a cap of twenty men prepared to fight off as many Cleaners as they could. Soon the party was moving, like a long arrow of humanity, steadfast on the outside, but delicate at its center.

Edgar was the first to sense something larger than a rumble from the Highlands and from the ground beneath their feet. "Something's changed," he said, walking alongside Horace and Maude. But then the feeling went away and he shrugged, though certain he'd felt a kind of swaying that he hadn't before.

Briney came alongside the group of three and told of Charles, Eliza, and Adele's decision to stay.

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"I suppose we should have expected that," said Maude. "There's not much optimism for where we're going. At least if they stay, there's a chance Isabel and Samuel will come back."

"They're not coming back," said Edgar. "They're underneath the Highlands, just like the rest. None of them are coming back."

Secretly, Edgar felt terrible for not staying in Tabletop himself. Losing Samuel and Isabel was devastating in a way he'd never experienced before, and he didn't think he would ever make another friend. Even though something told him they weren't dead yet, in his mind he could only envision them trapped in the laboratory, waiting for the water to find its way in. The waves had been so powerful that he couldn't see any other outcome but that the water would crush them in the end, if it hadn't already.

"Don't be so glum," said Horace. "You said they weren't dead when you last saw them. Maybe they found some other way out. Best not to think terrible thoughts based on what you don't know."

Edgar didn't respond. His mind was distracted as they came to the edge of the grove, for the soft swaying had returned under his feet. He put his arms out in order to keep his balance, while rows of men on horses stumbled back and forth and others began to scream. The ground was soon moving like an earthquake, uprooting the larger trees in the grove and sending people scattering in every direction.

And then there came the sound of crashing waves, so loud it made them all turn back. They couldn't see anything through

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the trees, but if they could have, they'd have been aware that the water had suddenly risen the last hundred yards without warning. The waves had crested Tabletop, a thin film of water making its way into the grove.

The ground stopped moving, and with it the sound of crashing waves subsided. But in its place there came a new sound in the stillness of the air. It was the sound of breaking bones, coming from both sides of the grove, through the fallen trees that lay in tangled heaps along the ground. The thousand Cleaners had arrived.

"Go!" cried Horace. "We must run!"

It was harder going than it would have been before the trees were knocked down. About half of the grove was still standing, but the other half lay in disarray. Most people had to maneuver around countless obstacles, with the sound of breaking bones growing ever closer.

Gill was waiting on his horse as the people reached the edge of the grove and burst into the open. "Stay in formation!" he howled. "And follow those in front of you!"

The lines of people stayed together as best they could, following Gill's orders as he moved back and forth along the line. When half of the people had emerged from the grove, the sounds of war welled up and overtook the world of Atherton.

The Cleaners had come in from both sides, crawling hideously over one another in a rampage to reach the fresh food that lay hidden in the grove. They attacked as one powerful wave over the first line of defense--the riders on horses -- and the men of the Highlands stabbed with spears, holding the

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beasts back. The Cleaners were momentarily surprised and reared back on one another, slashing for position, their anger flaring up into a violent rage of swarming for the front of the line.

It was a chaotic battle in which horses and men alike were felled. But miraculously, the line held as everyone within the arrow of humanity exploded up through the middle toward the end of the grove, charging with all their might. Yet the walls grew ever weakened by the violence outside.

Soon the second line of defense--the row of horseless men with spears--began to engage among the many who fought the Cleaners. A group of men, Horace among them, fell into position at the very back of the line to help the twenty who were already positioned there. Meanwhile, Maude had been ordered to take Edgar and escape the grove.

Soon all but the tail end of the line was free of the grove, moving quickly toward the Flatlands. Only Horace and thirty or so men remained, trying desperately to hold back the relentless tide of Cleaners.

And then, without warning, the ground began to shake once more as it had only moments before. More trees toppled over, pinning man and beast, and the Cleaners were thrown into confusion. They attacked one another, clamped down on the trunks of trees, rolled uncontrollably along the shaking floor of the grove.

When the quake subsided, the sound of crashing waves returned, louder than before. Something about the sound sent the Cleaners scattering in every direction. No longer were they

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interested in fighting and destroying. It looked as if they seemed not to know where to go and could only clang their terrible legs and teeth together senselessly.

"What's happening?" cried one of the men.

Horace didn't respond. Instead he roused the men, yelling for them to charge with everything they had left in them and to leave the grove with the rest of the group. And so they did.
E

When they emerged from the fallen trees they looked back and saw that nearly all of the trees in the grove had fallen over. Within the knotted roots and trunks the Cleaners that remained could be seen returning to the felled animals and people. They were, for the moment, satisfied with the bounty before them, uninterested in the idea of chasing after more that would take work to destroy. One of the horses, free of a rider, came bounding out of the trees and galloped at full speed toward the Flatlands, the only one lucky enough to emerge unharmed.

Looking past the Cleaners, Horace could see that the water was like a great lake of blue, frothing with whitecaps and spilling over into the far end of the grove. He worried about Charles, Eliza, and Adele, then turned and fled with the remaining men toward the Flatlands. Gill drew up alongside them on his horse in a state of panic. He had the additional horse that had escaped the grove attached to a rope.

"Hurry! Our time maybe running out!" cried Gill.

"What do you mean?" said Horace. He'd run out of the trees so fast that he could barely breathe.

"We're sinking," Gill explained frantically. "Tabletop is sinking!"

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Horace couldn't believe what he was hearing. He'd imagined it, but it came as a shock to find that it was actually true. He and Wallace had agreed--if the Highlands had fallen, why not Tabletop? "Are you sure?" he asked.

"I've ridden ahead and seen it with my own eyes!" said Gill. "It's already come down five feet or more. If we get another quake like that last one I'm afraid it will be too late. We'll be trapped."

This was the sort of motivation Horace and the men needed. In an instant they were charging for the edge of the Flatlands, glancing back as they went. Some of the Cleaners had moved away from the carnage and began pursuit. They were fast, maybe fast enough to catch them before they could get out, and Horace could not help thinking he'd made a mistake staying in the grove so long.

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*** CHAPTER 31 THE FLOOD

While the people of Atherton raced for the edge of the Flatlands, chased by a growing number of Cleaners, another race was underway inside of Atherton. Isabel was barely breathing and Vincent had never felt so awful in all his life. He kept hearing a dreadful voice over and over in his head:
If she dies, it will be your fault. You will have failed her.

He carried her as fast as possible, even running when he could catch his breath, along the path that led under the Flatlands. It was the most open and expansive part of the inside of Atherton, and very soon it would be the only place inside that could ever be reached again. As Tabletop sank, so went the way in which to find the Inferno, the Nubian, all of it. Those things would remain, but it was uncertain if humans would ever see them again.

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The light remained, shooting up in fiery beams from the ground, and the mountains within Atherton rose all around them on every side. It was a stunning but desolate place, dry and lifeless, and yet it had an indescribable, haunted beauty.

Dr. Kincaid had tried to explain, to pass the time, that it was the Inferno that made light possible inside Atherton. The fire bugs, the cave eel, the flowing electric glass, all of it had something to do with how Atherton's underbelly was formed, how the sun could find its way through. He didn't claim to understand it, only that it was a delicate balance, and that all these things that were happening inside were important to what happened outside.

"How much farther?" interrupted Sir William. He and Samuel were keeping up better than Dr. Kincaid was, but Vincent was a remarkably fit leader. He had far more energy than all the rest, even while carrying a sixty-pound girl.

"If we go quickly and don't stop, only an hour. We have to get back to the rocks where Dr. Kincaid can help her before it's too late."

Sir William had already asked what Dr. Kincaid could do there that he couldn't do inside Atherton. He'd been told that there were certain medicines they should have brought along for just such an occasion, but that in their haste they'd left them behind. Dr. Kincaid had grave doubts, as did Vincent, that the medicine would do any good. Isabel was barely breathing and was cold to the touch. She might die at any moment.

***

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