Root (48 page)

“
I’m not stopping till I find them,”
I whispered to myself.

***

I must have opened a dozen pods of uniformly
ungrateful souls before I realized it was not worth the trouble. I
found that most souls who make it to Root are strongly committed to
their fate. Those who wavered, who could swayed to explore other
possibilities—Weavers—were an even rarer breed than I had
thought.

So many of them looked drugged—all blank-faced
and devoid of will. Some simply curled up in fetal balls beneath
their busted open pods and refused to move. One man, all calm, sat
in a lotus position, turned his palms up and hummed a
kōan.

“
A monk asked Ummon: `What is
Buddha?' Ummon answered him: `Dried dung.’”

“
What the fuck?”

He smiled and winked at me.

“
Do you realize what’s going to
happen to you if you just sit there?”

“
It’s all good,” said the guy.
“Lightning flashes. Sparks shower. In one blink of your eyes, you
have missed seeing.”

“
Good luck fool,” I said, moving
on.

I altered my tactic after that, just opening
windows into pods, just wide enough to see who was inside. I
released only those who showed any semblance of spunk or
initiative, any distress or curiosity about what lay beyond their
pods. Souls like these turned out to be very scarce, indeed. Who
knew? Maybe some of them would go on to be Weavers.

Most of the windows I opened revealed only
husks of humanity, long stripped of any life force they might have
once had. Even for these lost causes I left behind an opportunity
for redemption—a patch of loosened strands that they could readily
escape through if the notion inspired them. Not that any did, while
I was there. But even the most hopeless deserved a second
chance.

I stubbed my toe on something hard, reached
down and picked up a hammer. There was so much junk in these
tunnels, not trash per se, but useful things, things people might
actually miss Things like mismatched socks, sunglasses, car keys,
passports, you name it. I got a cell phone to power up, but
wouldn’t you know it—no bars. It would have really been something
if I picked up a signal, except who would I call?

I wondered if there was any way any of this
stuff could be brought back to the other side. I kept my eyes
peeled for a side arm. That would sure come back in Inverness
Station when I faded, not to mention here, against the Reapers. But
who would ever lose track of a handgun? That’s the kind of thing
that you remember where you put it.

When I tired of all the ingrates in the pods,
I went behind the walls and opened up a little niche in the roots,
kind of like the beds that deer tamp down for themselves in the
tall weeds. I laid back and wondered how long I had left in this
existence and what, if anything, would come next.

After marking my little encampment with some
red strands, I pushed through the roots over to the next tunnel
system. I broke out into soft purple glow in a dusty and bristly
tunnel. The pod stalks here were all shriveled and desiccated. It
looked like no Reapers had been through this one in
years.

The purple led me, though, to a crossing that
was another story altogether. The walls were slick with slime. It
was a Reaper superhighway that led to a complex branching that was
like the central nexus of an umbrella.

On a whim, I walked away from the branching,
even though it rose to the right. Lille and Bern had told me never
to do such a thing, but the tunnels were quiet, and I felt like I
had to do my due diligence.

The tunnel was wide and dull here, and thick
with the smell of Reapers. I tore off a root and turned it into a
glow stick to light my way. There were no pods anywhere, not even
traces, but I continued on, drawn by the queer buzzing I could hear
emanating down the other end.

The buzzing resolved into a cacophony of
snuffling and rasping as I got closer to an opening into what
seemed to be a cavern of mammoth proportions. I landed my footfalls
as softly as I could. As I came to the opening, sound grew louder
and the vastness of the space consumed what little light my glow
stick could produce.

So I made it glow brighter, only to gasp at
what I had gotten myself into. The floor of the chamber was
undulant with mounds, each wave a slumbering Reaper, which
apparently formed themselves into perfect globules of blubber in
their relaxed state. They were like lumps of yeasty dough, deformed
only by gravity, devoid of all appendages and armor. An orifice,
like a blow hole of a whale, opened at the top of every mound, and
they sneezed out puffs of spray with every snorting
breath.

Man, if I had a blade or a grenade about now,
what carnage I could reap. But to what end? They were part of the
circle of life, no? My charity towards them might be limited
though, if I knew for sure my friends were on their lunch
menu.

I just stood there with my glow stick all
helpless and mesmerized, watching their bodies heave in delayed
synchrony, originating at the center and spreading to the fringes
where the smaller of the Reapers had been delegated. Some of the
largest even had babies snuggled up to them. I shuddered to think
of how they were fed.

There was a ring of openings all around the
periphery, and when I looked up, I could not find a ceiling. The
blackness just seemed to go up and up forever.

The smell was starting to get to me. I started
to back away when I spotted something move in one of the other
tunnel openings across the way. It hung back cautiously in the
shadows before stepping out onto the rim.

I amped up my glow stick. Another soul stood
there, staring back at me, lithe and lean, clothed in leggings and
a loose shift. Shocks of jet, black hair frizzed out in all
directions, with one flap combed low over her left eye.

Karla.

Chapter 45:
Awakening

Karla stood at the brink of the pit, her eyes
wide with alarm. She tried to signal me with this quick, waving
motion, but I was caught up in the thrill of seeing her and
couldn’t understand what she was trying to convey. She pointed at
me, mouthed a no, and slashed her finger across her
throat.

I raised my palms. “What are you saying?” I
said, in a half shout, half whisper.

She waved me off and shook her head, before
ducking into a tunnel, out of sight.

“
No! Karla! Don’t leave!” My heart
did a loop de loop.

I retreated from the brink of the pit and
hurled myself into the tunnel wall, ripping into the matrix,
practically swimming through the roots. They fought with me, almost
as if they sensed my desperation and it inspired them to thwart me.
They hooked around my neck and coiled around my arm.

My frustration exploded. I obliterated all
that touched me with a shrug that made them droop and melt like
candle wax.

I pressed forward, bursting out into the next
tunnel, crossing it in a single bound and knifing into the opposite
wall.

The matrix of roots, was denser here, and
again I found my path resisted. Across this jungle, through the
gaps I could see whole sheaths and towers of root cleaving and
falling. I caught a glimpse of Karla, struggling to get through.
When she spotted me, I feared she would reverse her course and slip
away.

She diverted her path. But she didn’t flee.
She came straight to me.

I just stood there, agape, as she slammed into
me, her body melting into mine. She dug her chin into my chest, and
draped her arms around my back. I held her close to me, kneading my
fingers in her hair.

The moment felt so surreal. It seemed
impossible. I shuddered and started to quake. What was happening?
My tears broke out in big, heaving sobs.

Karla stayed calm, sinking deeper into me, the
two of us congealing into one.

“
Karla … I don’t understand … in
Inverness, you said—”

“
It was the only way,” she said.
“The only way for us to be together.”

“
You … planned this? You knew you
would find me here?”

She looked down. “I did not know for sure, but
I had a hope ... and I dashed its brains out. It was the only way …
that we could be … together.”

“
Why didn’t you tell me that was
what you were doing?”

She scrunched her nose. “Then it wouldn’t have
worked. Only accepting the worst, possible case makes it work. I
told you. That is what we call the surfing. Riding the storm. You
need a strong mind to stay free in Root. To escape the bad things …
not just here, but on the other side.”

She tilted her head and looked up at me. “You
still don’t get it, do you?” She sighed deeply and patted my
shoulder. “But maybe you are learning, because I see at least you
are not in a pod.”

Something very large coughed and rustled in
the pit. It sounded very close, despite the tunnel walls and layers
of root that separated us.

“
Did you hear that? That one is
restless. What were you thinking, shouting to me? And that light
you carried. It was far too bright. You were standing by a nest of
Reapers. What were you thinking?”

“
I don’t know. I saw you and … I
couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to lose you … again.”

“
Lose me? What you think, I would
run away?”

“
Well … yeah. I—”

“
Stupid boy. You don’t know
anything. And you learn so slow.”

She pulled free of my embrace, her eyes grim
and determined. She had yet to shed a single tear, and yet I was a
total gloppy mess. “Come. We need to find Isobel. She is here. I am
sure of it.”

***

We waited for the Reapers to settle back into
their snuffling slumber. Karla grabbed my hand and yanked me back
towards the ragged hole she had ripped in the tunnel wall. Free
roots waved across the tear like the antennae of wary cockroaches,
knitting together when they touched. She ripped through them again
with a slash of her hand and we passed into the lumen.

“
How do you know she’s here …
Isobel?”

Karla studied the pattern of nubs on the roof
of the tunnel.

“
You think by now I don’t know the
look of someone who is destined for Root? Believe me, I know this
when I see it. The total surrender. The dark happiness of giving
up. You should know, too, the wall that goes up between the mind
and the senses.”

She turned and laid her hands on the opposite
wall, working her fingers between the tightly packed
roots.

“
And besides … I find the pills she
has collected … under her mattress. And I saw that she takes some.
Not enough, I don’t think, thank God she doesn’t know yet how much
it takes to die.”

I tried to imagine what it was like for Karla
to have a sister going through this crap. I never had a sibling, so
I didn’t know what that whole deal was like, but I would never wish
Root on anyone. It was a refuge only for the most desperate of
souls. At least Isobel had someone looking out for her here.
Unless, it was already too late.

We crossed the interspaces to the next tunnel,
whose surfaces were slick and bare and just as devoid of pods as
the others this close to the Reapers’ lair.

“
Maybe we’re better off up-tunnel?”
I said.

“
We check here, first,” said Karla.
“We must, just in case. Pods will be made even this close to the
Reaper’s nest, but they do not last very long. We would have less
time to save Isobel if she came to this place.”

We wrestled our way through to yet another
tunnel. The roots in this particularly matrix were extra ornery.
Weird, how each patch seemed to have its own disposition and
personality. Maybe the proximity of the Reapers was making this
batch cocky. I missed dealing with the more passive, compliant
roots we knew from the ‘Burg.

Again, the tunnel was stripped of
pods.

“
Karla. I think they’re all gonna be
this way down here.”

“
We do not know this for
sure.”

“
It’s pretty clear to me. Every
single one so far—“

“
We will check them all!” she
snapped. “This is my sister we are talking about.”

I hushed up, and went through the motions with
her as we worked our way farther and farther around the ring of
tunnels. Karla would not be satisfied until we had made the
complete circuit.

She took my hand and squeezed it when I wasn’t
expecting. That little act sent chills down my back. She looked at
me funny.

“
What’s wrong?”

“
Just … thank you,” she said. “I am
so glad that you are here ... with me. That I do not have to do
this alone.”

Ripples roiled my stomach. “Um … there’s
something I should have told you. I don’t know what’s gonna happen,
but … I got issues on the other side.”

She looked at me perplexed. “Issues? What you
mean, issues?”

“
Remember those drug dealers I got
messed up with? I think they tracked me down at Inverness Station
and I ... uh … I think there’s a bounty on my head.”