Root (10 page)

My capsule slammed to a sudden halt like a
bridge jumper using steel for bungees. It swung and twisted wildly,
until its movements dampened to a gentle sway kept alive by a
breeze.

I was like the egg mom made me drop from our
roof as part of a physics experiment. But unlike the poor egg I had
ineffectively swaddled in cotton balls and bubble wrap, the roots
flexed and stretched and actually cushioned my fall.

I was a human pendulum, and as I swung, the
strands of the hammock-like pod shifted and adapted to my contours.
I peered through a lattice of roots into a tunnel much larger and
darker than the one I had experienced before. Some of the roots
lining it gave off a soft orange glow like the last dying embers of
a campfire. The fibers comprising the tunnel walls writhed and
pulsed in a communal rhythm.

Occasional blobs of light shuttled along the
length of a lonely root here and there, but I saw nothing like the
Times Square at New Years light show I remembered from the last
tunnel.

Not that I minded. I was cozy in my capsule,
happy to be back and enjoying that mind-blurring buzz that kept the
real world insulated from the front burner of my thoughts, kind of
like a couple shots of vodka mixed with a squirt of endorphins. I
just laid back and watched the tunnel walls spasm in peristaltic
waves, as the individual strands lining its interior shifted slowly
like a stop-action video of kudzu vines spreading.

I just hung there in that cage of roots, naked
as a newborn and happy as Goldilocks in the wee bear’s bed—not too
hot, not too cold, just right. I felt like I had returned home
after a long trip, in the bedroom of my Ohio childhood.

What happened in that other world didn’t
matter anymore, not even mom’s death. A residual pang of loss
remained unshakable, but that was there and this was here. Root
seemed a completely separate plane of existence.

An earthy, mushroom scent pervaded everything,
but I didn’t mind it. I liked mushrooms, especially on pizza. The
only things that bothered me were the dimness and those sounds. I
could hear things happening beyond the tunnel—distant belching,
feet scrabbling against tunnel walls. Not that I wanted to know
what made those noises. I just wanted them to go away.

I don’t know if I was getting bored or annoyed
or what, but that buzz was wearing off. Thoughts intruded no matter
how hard I tried to shut them out. I couldn’t believe mom was gone.
It seemed impossible, and so I kept forgetting and then remembering
over and over in an endless loop of grief.

I stared at a root and tried to make it glow
like before, but no matter how hard I tried, it stayed dark. As I
recalled, the trick involved slipping my mind around a mental
corner but this time my head was not cooperating. I seemed to have
lost the knack.

I didn’t let my failure disappoint me. I
settled in and let the roots embrace me. The strands adjusted
around my pressure points like memory foam, softening around my
hips and elbows, firming around my back and bottom. Those roots
under my head fluffed out to form a pillow. For whatever reason,
they wanted me calm and comfortable.

But the deep rumbling kept me from getting too
relaxed. Something large seemed to be dragging itself along the
outside of the tunnel wall, perhaps in a parallel tunnel. The wall
bulged inward as the thing squeezed past. At one point a bulbous
appendage stabbed through and probed the air.

It was a pale and worm-like thing. I freaked
at the sight of it and when it veered in my direction, I tried to
squirm away. But the more I struggled, the more the roots clamped
down on me.

After the longest while, it slipped back
through the wall and the thing it belonged to lumbered off. But I
could still hear it grunting somewhere below.

A light flickered like slow, blue lightning,
illuminated an entire row of pods like mine along the roof of the
tunnel, all of them weighted down by occupants. I was not alone.
The realization bothered me. Maybe this wasn’t my own private
hallucination.

I was no longer cool with the idea of hanging
out in this pod. This was no fucking hammock. This was one of those
cocoons a spider wraps its prey in to save it for later. I had
vision of myself as Frodo Baggins in Shelob’s lair, only there
would be no Samwise Gamgee coming to rescue me.

I contorted my shoulders and twisted around.
The roots squeezed me tight. Clearly, they did not approve of my
newfound anxiety. They tried to nudge me into a fetal position, but
this time I fought back.

They were strong, these roots. Direct,
physical actions got me nowhere, prompting only an equal and
opposite reaction. I struggled again to recreate the mental trick
that had let me manipulate them. I wrangled and twisted my mental
energy to no avail. It was so frustrating. This had come so easily
before.

I had an itch on my nose and tried scratching
it, but the fibers circling my wrist prevented me and it made me
mad. I gave one ornery patch the evil eye and when I did, it kicked
off a flurry of tightening and raveling in that one spot, as if to
spite me. That only made me madder.

I felt something flip in my mind. The fibers
went limp as if the power to them had been cut. I was beginning to
recover my little knack.

I looked at another strand, and tried to make
it glow, but when I did, the patch I had made sag took advantage of
my flagging attention to recover their tone and slap a loop along
my wrist. That infuriated me. The little buggers wouldn’t mind
their own business.

I bent my mind around again and made the
offending fibers flinch and shrivel, curling away from my flesh in
surrender. One of them burst forth with light, and right after a
whole tangle of them became illuminated. My heart swelled in
triumph.

I kept reaching around that corner of my brain
until I had most of the pod glowing, and some of that glow began to
creep up the stalk of thick, ropy strands that attached me to the
roof of the tunnel. I scowled at the stalk until it untwisted and
unwound a bit, spinning the pod around, lowering it from the roof
of the tunnel until I dangled halfway to the floor.

The thumping and rumbling grew louder. A belch
erupted and a warm breeze kicked up and buffeted the pod, twisting
it one way and the other like a kid goofing around in a swing. A
stink like a mixture of rotten meat and old man’s breath
overwhelmed me and made me gag. Something big was coming my
way.

I laid my hands on the strands encasing me and
willed them to part. They resisted fiercely. Gaps opened only to be
mended shut by other strands looping down from the roof of the
tunnel. I slammed my fist through a spot where the weave had
thinned and the strands clamped down on my arm. I peeled away back
with my other hand, assisted by every bit of mental warp I could
muster.

I flexed my mind. Something clicked. Mental
energy that had been buried somewhere deep burst free, stunning the
strands that were resisting me, paralyzing them, rendering them
passive and inert. I slid my other arm through the hole, giving me
leverage in the gap.

I pried apart the writhing cords that had come
down to seal the rent and butted my head into the parting. Scratchy
fibers latched onto my hair and scraped against my ears. I kept
pushing, tearing out clumps of hair, getting angrier and more
determined until my head popped through.

By that point, all my uncertainty had vanished
and I was determined to leave that pod. I pressed my right shoulder
into the breach and set all the force of my will against the
strands that still refused to submit.

The pod swung wildly as I struggled. Strands
fired out like harpoons from the tunnel walls to support their
struggling comrades. I knew deep inside they were no match for me.
They were strong, but so was I. If I kept at it, my will would
prevail. That was clear.

Groaning. Thumping. A slap of leather on wood.
Something or someone was coming up the tunnel.

Chapter 13:
Karla

The sounds down tunnel made me pause and the
roots took advantage of my distraction. A writhing sheath swung
down from the stalk and unwound, tugging, prying and nudging me
back into the pod.

I re-gathered my strength and resisted,
refusing to yield what progress I had made towards freedom. It was
like wrestling an octopus with wooden tentacles. For every root I
snapped, two more uncoiled to take its place.

Something came bounding out of the dimness. It
was a person—a young woman in tights and a baggy shirt that
engulfed her slender form. She carried a stick with something
sparkly mounted at the tip and a small cloth sack that tinkled as
she ran. She stopped below me, her eyes wide and
staring.

“
You did this? By yourself?” she
said, her English strongly accented. Her face was pale and ghostly,
punctuated by a delicate chin. Her glossy, black hair was cut in
asymmetric wedge, shaved close on the right with her left eye
obscured by long, slanted bangs.

I strained to unwrap a coiled root from my
neck. “Did what?” I grunted.

She reached up and swiped her stick across the
pod. She hadn’t even touched them, yet the roots fell away as if
slashed by a razor. She reached in, grabbed my leg and
pulled.

She may have looked slight, but she was wiry
and strong, hauling me free of that pod with a single tug. I slid
and tumbled to the floor of the tunnel. Severed strands lashed at
me like angry snakes.

She glanced towards the darkness she had
emerged from, to the source of the thumping. “We must go. The
Reaper, it is coming.”

I got up and wobbled. My legs felt like jelly.
She grabbed my hand and yanked me to my feet. I lurched after her.
Conscious of my nakedness, I covered my privates with my free
hand.

“
Don’t worry about your pee pee.
Just run! You think I don’t know what boys look like?”

I recovered my balance somewhat and we dashed
up a steep and dark passage. The thumping behind us accelerated.
Vibrations shook the tunnel floor. Waves of peristalsis made it
feel like we were running across a semi-solid ocean, the roots
rippling under my bare feet.

We came to a ledge where the tunnel forked
into two narrower tunnels, each about twice the width and height of
a school bus. Around each bend, blue and lights flickered and
flashed.

The girl vaulted nimbly onto the ledge. “Going
up, always go left,” she said, helping me over. “Remember that.
Right takes you toward the core. Never go near the core. Never.
Understand?”

“
O-kay.”

Little blobs of bluish light shuttled in all
directions. This tunnel looked just like the one I had seen after
the beach incident. A single pod clung tight against the ceiling. A
row of shredded nubs marked the scars of old stalks.

Above our heads, a person lay inside the pod,
whimpering. The girl glanced up and kept on going. But those sobs
got to me. I grabbed the tail of her shirt.

“
He needs help.”

She twitched her head. “Nah. This one is
hopeless.”

“
But you helped me.”

“
You are different. You helped
yourself.” Her gaze flew down the tunnel. “Quickly now, a Reaper
comes!”

A dark, hulking shape appeared at the far end
of the larger passage, silhouetted against a wash of orange light.
It reared up and ripped a pod from the ceiling, wolfing it down in
a series of spasmodic jerks. It groaned and dropped back down and
scraped up the passage on stubby appendages like clawed
flippers.

She jabbed her stick into the wall and the
wall recoiled violently, dilating and rippling down the passage we
had just left, with oscillations so violent they pinched the tunnel
closed between each wave.

“
Run!” she said.

The tunnel spiraled counterclockwise,
narrowing gradually until we reached a stretch only wide enough for
a small car to pass. The walls were shaggy with roots dark as ebony
and fine as corn silk. Beneath the shag, bubbles of light shimmied
through some of the larger roots.

She made a quick vertical stroke with her
stick. The wall split open. “Follow me!” She thrust her arms into
the slit, parted the strands, and plunged head first into the wall.
I followed right behind, entering a forest of unconsolidated roots,
mostly vertical. It reminded me of a birch thicket that used to
grow behind our old house in Ohio.

“
Stay close,” she said, slipping
through that thicket like a deer. Roots sprang back and slapped me
in the face. My knees and elbows kept catching on loops, forcing me
to backtrack to free myself. I lost sight of her and struggled to
follow the vague trail suggested by the residual swaying and
writhing of roots that had responded to her touch.

And then the entire forest shuddered and
flexed. From the sounds of it, that grunting thing had arrived in
the side tunnel and was flinging itself about. I surged ahead in a
panic, running headlong into a curving, dome-like wall. Prongs and
thorns studded its shiny, brown surface.

I worked my way around the wall. Where the
heck had she gone? I searched for an opening but the wall was
seamless. Why hadn’t she waited for me?