Sink: Old Man's Tale (13 page)

It was a
battle of wills. Leader was small, but in the prime of his life. Jeremiah was bigger, but past his prime, and so they pushed against one another, with dominance passing from one to the other.

“Give it up old man,” Leader said through gritted teeth. “You’ve got nothing left to live for!”

“No,” Jeremiah said. “I’ve got a eucalyptus tree that needs me!”

Jeremiah pressed all his weight against Leader, holding him by the arms and forcing him back inch by inch. Their muscles shivered and shook under the strain.

Jeremiah was going to throw himself at Leader. After all, what else did he have to live for? If he died, plummeting to his death, who would care? He had alienated everyone in his life, had forced himself to live in purgatory. He was the man-island everyone always quoted as being unable to exist by itself, but they were wrong. He could survive by himself, and he had. But he had no intention of dying by himself. If his life meant nothing, then at the very least his death could have meaning.

But he hesitated.

He did have something to live for. He had his son, his grandson, his daughter-in-law. He had everything to live for. He wasn’t an old man waiting to die. He was an old man with a need to change. But his life had become a meaningless routine with no stimulus to change. Change cannot occur in a vacuum. He had a reason to live, and that was why he couldn’t throw himself over the side of the building with Leader. If Leader was going to die, he needed to do it by himself.

This left Jeremiah with a problem, but it was swiftly tugged away from him as a dozen pairs of hands seized him and pulled him back. He hit the stone floor hard and felt a tooth loosen.

“Let me up!” Jeremiah screamed. “Let me up!”

“Well done, men,” Leader said, straightening his robes. “If he’s out, the others will be too. Find them and throw them in the dungeon. This time under armed guard.”

The guards pulled at Jeremiah. The old man scrabbled and clawed at the ground for purchase. His fingers snatched a handful of thick carpet fibers. They didn’t tear. Instead, the whole carpet lifted up.

A shiny boot stepped on his twisted fingers.

“You won’t get away with this!” Jeremiah said through gritted teeth. “You won’t!”

“I already have,” Leader said, applying pressure.

Jeremiah lost his grip.

Chief Digger
138 ran ahead, playing out the same routine about Leader being in trouble. It never failed. And as he ran to each tunnel he required less and less acting to show how exhausted he was.

Meanwhile, Graham and Carlos ran along behind him, hacking at the thick bundles of cables. The shovels were blunting fast. At first they needed just a couple of swings for the cables to snap, now they needed two dozen. The digger inside the tunnel, still running on residual power, dug a few more inches before stopping. The locals continued to peddle, finding the resistance lessened, but none the wiser.

Graham wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his arm.

“Another one down,” he said.

“Only ten million more to go,” Carlos said.

“Let me go, you savages!”

Jeremiah screamed bloody murder as one troop of guards pulled at him from one direction, and a second pushed from the other. Several others worked on peeling his fingers from the castle’s doorframe.

“You keep going,” Graham said to Carlos. “I’ll go rescue the old man.”

“I’m not sure he’s the one needing rescuing,” Carlos said.

The guards pried one hand off, and while beginning on the other, Jeremiah grabbed the doorframe with the first hand. While he was distracting them Graham might actually have a chance to mount a good offensive. He ran, yelling, and threw his body against the guards, knocking them downhill.

Graham picked one up and spun him around like an Olympic hammer and let go. He sailed through the air and landed painfully three meters away. Graham kicked and punched at the little men in uniform. He’d long since lost his reticence. The guards might not have been bad people, but they were carrying out the orders of their leader, which made them culpable. They deserved to be punished.

Graham reached down with a hand to help Jeremiah, but the old man ignored it, and pushed himself up onto his own feet. He looked at the flattened little figures.

“I loosened the top,” he said.

“More than loosened it,” Graham said. “I’d say you near pulverized it.”

Jeremiah grunted. Graham thought he caught the hint of a slight lifting up at the corners of the old man’s mouth. Then his eyes bulged.

“Run!” Jeremiah said.

A fresh wave of guards was heading right for them. Graham turned to run, his legs aching to sprint. But Jeremiah still hadn’t fully recovered from his ordeal and limped forward.

“Get out of here!” Jeremiah said.

The guards roared, brandishing their swords.

“I said go!” Jeremiah said.

He pushed Graham, but it was so weak it had no effect. Anger flared up in Graham like a geyser. He would have laid the old man out if he’d been half his age. Instead, he gritted his teeth, grabbed the old man, and swung him over his shoulders into a fireman’s lift.

“You’re a fool!” Jeremiah shouted. “Imbecile! Moron! Idiot!”

“Maybe,” Graham said. “But I’m not decrepit yet.”

Jeremiah glowered at Graham, and then looked away. He might not like being manhandled but he knew he didn’t have much choice.

Jeremiah was light, but after a couple of hundred yards the weight seemed to swell. Graham shifted the old man like a bag of fresh potatoes onto his back. Jeremiah wrapped his arm around Graham’s neck, unmindful of whether he was strangling him or not. The locals, still peddling, pointed at the scene taking place.

“Stop them!” Leader shouted as he bounded out of the castle. “Stop them!”

The remaining guards still at their posts ran at the fugitives with swords raised. Graham met Carlos. They skidded to a halt. Within moments they were surrounded.

Leader pushed his way through the guards, a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

“Your childish attempts to stop us have failed,” he said.

“Why are you doing this?” Graham said. “Why punish all those people you’ve never even met before?“

“Because their ancestors used us and tossed us aside,” Leader said, eyes burning pits. “Do you know how that feels? To be used and then tossed aside like you were worthless?”

“Yes,” Graham said in a small voice. “I do.”

Leader blinked, but he quickly recovered.

“I won’t let you do it to us again,” he said. “We have the right to purpose.”

“No one wants to take that away from you,” Jeremiah said. “But you can’t destroy people because of what our ancestors did to your ancestors centuries ago. You have to let go. There are places on the surface that are making the same mistake as you. They focus on the past, to get vengeance. They never develop, instead relying on the forward-thinking of other nations.”

Graham peered around at the guards and locals close enough to hear. Jeremiah was playing a trick. He was looking at Leader, but speaking to them.

“We’ll create giant sinkholes under the cities of the world, and take them for ourselves!” Leader said, madness flashing in his eyes.

“The world is too big,” Jeremiah said. “You’ll never sink all our cities.”

“We just want what was promised to us!” Leader said. “We want our promise fulfilled!”

“Sometimes people don’t keep their promises,” Jeremiah said. “Sometimes you have to go out and get what you want.”

“That’s exactly what I intend to do,” Leader said.

“With peace,” Graham said. “Not war.”

“Easy to say when you’re the ant before the boot,” Leader said. He turned to the guards. “Seize them.”

“Hey!” a voice shouted. “Pick on someone your own size!”

It was Chief Digger 138. And he wasn’t alone. A whole retinue of town folk stood beside him. The other town folk, still on their power generators, slowed, and then stopped.

“Get back on your generators!” Leader shouted. “Get back on them now! Guards! Guards!”

The town folk didn’t flinch. Chief Digger 138 stepped forward and stood with Graham, Jeremiah and Carlos.

“We’ve been led by bad blood for too long,” he said. “It’s time we lead ourselves.”

“Attack them!” Leader screamed. “Hack them to pieces!”

“You’re our sons, our daughters, our wives and husbands,” Chief Digger 138 said, addressing the guards. “We shouldn’t be afraid of you. You should be our protection from Leader. Be on our side now. Defend us.”

The guards wavered.

“Useless!” Leader said. “The lot of you! If you won’t restore the honor of our ancestors, I will.”

He jumped on a power generator and peddled, cycling with every fiber of his being. The digger he was powering thrummed and carved its way through the soil. There was a loud crack from the end of the tunnel, and an echoing rush that made the little people’s eyes widen to the size of saucers.

“Stop him!” Carlos said. “Stop Leader now!”

A second crack followed, louder than the first, and a heavy rush spilled down the tunnel. It burst into town, knocking the first few rows of shacks flat.

Leader looked up at the last moment, and was caught full in the face as it smashed into him, knocking him aside and out of view.

The town folk screamed and ran for the castle, the highest point in the domed space. The water rushed through the town’s streets, submerging the low buildings. The water roared as it spewed out. It took only a matter of minutes before the town was flooded. The last of the deluge dribbled out the end of the tunnel.

“You tried to destroy us, and ended up destroying yourself,” Carlos said. “There’s a parable there somewhere, I think.”

“I’ll make sure to enjoy it when I’m sipping on a mojito on a Caribbean beach,” Graham said.

“This is your fault,” Leader said.

He was drenched head to foot and crawling out of the water onto the muddy embankment. Two guards bent down to help him up, but he waved them off.

“Don’t touch me!” he said. He turned on Graham, Jeremiah and Carlos.

“This is your doing,” Leader said. “You were sent here to destroy us. Yes, I see it now. You only pretended to help us! You knew this was going to happen the whole time!”

He launched at Jeremiah with his long nails drawn. But Chief Digger 138 was faster and seized Leader by the arms.

“Take him to the dungeon,” Chief Digger 138 said.

And just like that, Leader’s power was transferred to Chief Digger 138. It could have been anyone who’d said it, and they would have become the new leader in the others’ eyes, but it had been Chief Digger 138.

“You can’t do this!” Leader said, kicking and screaming. “I’m the leader! It’s my born right! Let me go!”

“Now what?” Jeremiah said.

“Now we go home,” Graham said.

“What about these poor people with no homes?” Jeremiah said.

“We’ll be all right,” Chief Digger 138 said. “Now we’ve got a castle to live in.”

“Where does the exit come out?” Carlos said.

“Who cares?” Jeremiah said. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“I’ll lead you,” Chief Digger 138 said.

Graham turned to address the locals.

“I’d like to thank you all for a wonderful stay but… you know,” he said.

They pulled a wedge of driftwood from the ruins and floated across to the exit tunnel, the mud sucking at their heels. They followed the darkness of the tunnel up and up and up.

Where would they emerge?
Graham wondered. He didn’t care if they emerged in Pyongyang. He’d be glad to be out of that hellhole with a god-like ruler and military state.

Graham frowned, cocking his head to one side. Maybe they’d been in North Korea the whole time.

Beneath the
corner of a large rock was a hole. A passer-by could have easily mistaken it for a rabbit hole. Its edges began to crumble and fall away. It grew wider. Several pairs of hands dug at the edge from the inside, widening it further. Then a pair of eyes looked out.

The sun was low, burning a deep glowing red like iron left in a furnace. It hovered just above the horizon. It was the most beautiful thing Graham had ever seen. There was a chill in the air. He climbed out, before helping the others.

There was a gasp behind Graham.

“So that’s what stars look like,” Chief Digger 138 said. “You’re right. Not very beautiful at all.”

He beamed, clearly loving the view. A shooting star skimmed across the sky, swiftly followed by a second and a third.

“I should be getting back,” Chief Digger 138 said.