Some Fine Day (30 page)

There’s no weather to worry about in here, but some of the residents have erected plastic tents, for privacy, I guess. I hear a few snores and the far-off crying of an infant, but the main sound is the eerie howl of the storm playing on TV. I ignore the chalkheads; they would have sold their Piis long ago, and they’re too young anyway. One of them glances at me as I pass, empty doll eyes in a gaunt white face, then returns to the screen.

I scan sleeping faces on the ground, but they’re all in their twenties and thirties. Life expectancy can’t be very long here. Then I notice a little girl. She’s clutching a ragged dog toy, and her eyes are open. I crouch down next to her nest of blankets.

“Hi,” I whisper.

She studies me for a minute. “Hi,” she whispers back.

“I’m looking for my sister and brother,” I say. “They’re old, like me. Do you know anyone like that?”

“What’s their names?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Are you a cop?”

“No.” I open the box, take out a coin. “This is for you if you can show me the oldest people you know here.”

She takes the coin, examines it, slips it into a pocket. “OK.”

“Take it to a collector, if you can. You’ll get ten times what they pay on the street.”

I know I’ll never find two people who look
exactly
right, but I don’t think I need to. We’re old and therefore off the radar. If the photos are reasonably close, we might just slip through. If we can move fast enough.

She leads me across the arrivals hall to a side tunnel with Track 44 carved in the stone archway. The platform is cluttered with rusting carts and tools and heaps of garbage. Large cockroaches skitter beneath the rubble. I take quick, shallow breaths, not just because of the smell but the pain in my ribs.

Roaches are one of those species we didn’t have to bring on purpose. They hitched a ride.

“How much further?” I ask, acutely aware that our chances of boarding a train without detection are dwindling by the minute. As soon as Miles starts talking, the description will change and the noose will tighten around our necks. That could be happening right now. Why didn’t I just kill him?

The girl turns around and her blue eyes flicker for just an instant over my right shoulder. I start to spin but it’s too late. Something crashes into the back of my skull, driving me to my knees. The colors still floating at the corners of my eyes erupt into a glowing white starburst. Hands yank the metal box away. I grope blindly, feel a calf, grab the ankle and twist. There’s a soft thud as a body hits the ground next to me. I start pummeling it and the guy cries out for his friends, but they’re already gone, feet slapping on the stone of the platform.

The guy lands a blow to my cracked ribs and it hurts bad, really bad. He’s a scrawny thing, all nose and elbows, with skin just a shade too pale. A first-stage user, then. I kick him in the face and savor the look of astonishment just before his head snaps back. I guess they thought an old lady would be easy prey.

I’m thinking about breaking his neck, one quick twist to the side, when there’s the soft crunch of shoes on broken glass in the darkness. The friends are back, one of them at least. I roll away and try to stand, but my brain feels like it’s sliding around in my skull. I look for a weapon, anything, and spot a rusty length of rebar a few feet away. Too far. But I start crawling towards it anyway.

The footsteps come faster. I glance behind me and find myself looking into a pair of mismatched eyes.

“I told you to stay in the car,” I say as my fingers close around the rebar.

“Well, I followed,” Will says, looking from me to the chalkhead sprawled motionless on the platform. “I didn’t want to lose you again.”

He sounds whiny. Weak. The thing in me stirs, lifts its head.

“Are you OK?” he asks.

I run a hand through my hair and it comes away bright with blood. I stare at it, fascinated. It’s warm and sticky. It feels good on my skin.

“Jan?”

“What?”

“You don’t look OK.’’

His voice buzzes like a wasp. I can hear his heart beating, a rapid thump that scrapes my nerves raw. The rebar is heavy in my right hand.

“Go away, Will,” I whisper.

He holds my eyes. “No.”

The thing shifts, stretches. I feel my pupils dilate. Every speck of dust on the platform snaps into focus.

“Run,” I say, and it sounds like someone else talking. “I’m not safe.”

“You have to fight it,” he says.

I can smell the fear on him, a sour adrenaline stench, and it makes my hackles rise. I’m dimly aware that something is terribly wrong, but the thing is awake now. Hungry. He sees me coming and finally understands, turns to run, and I’m on him, teeth bared, using the rebar to drive him to his knees.

I’m raising it over my head and he’s screaming my name, over and over, when the red mist lifts a little and it suddenly dawns on me that I’m about to murder the person I just risked everything for. My stomach clenches hard, and I turn away and vomit onto the tracks until I’m empty. Will holds my hair as the madness ebbs out of me.

“Will it come back?” I ask, when I feel able to speak again.

“It might. We have to be ready. Now you know.”

Yes, now I know. But I’m not sure how much good it will do us.

The guy I kicked is starting to twitch a little when my palms, which I’m leaning on, begin to tingle. Faint vibrations ripple through the stone platform and I half expect a mole to burst out of the ground in front of me. Then I feel a breath of wind and remember that this used to be a train station. I’d always assumed they walled it off, but maybe they didn’t. Maybe the tunnels still connect to the main terminal.

Which means there’s a back way in.

If a civilization is measured by its cultural appetites, what does it mean that in the year 2065, Raven Rock’s number-two rated television show, exceeded in popularity only by the HYPERCANE NETWORK!, was season four reruns of
Celebrity Wife Swap
?

The chalkhead’s name is Luka. He’s not happy about being our tour guide, but he doesn’t want to get shot either so he leads us through the tunnels with minimal fuss. It’s about half a mile to the new terminal. Luka walks in front. He has the only flashlight, and it barely illumines the path in front of us. I keep scanning the shadows, thinking he’ll lead us back to his friends, but he must realize we have nothing left to steal. Every few minutes, the wind and vibrations pick up, then fade away.

“Are you sure these tunnels aren’t active?” I say. We’re walking single-file in the center of the tracks.

“Not for years,” Luka says. “One time a guy wandered off to pee and got hisself squished, but he didn’t know his way like I do. Was high too.”

“Where are the trains to Cheyenne?”

“South side. I’ll show you.”

In the next hour, or maybe sooner, they’ll find the car. When they find the car, they’ll have a pretty good idea of where we went. Twenty minutes after that, Luka and his friends and every other pathetic soul who lives here will be sweating it out in interrogation cells. So I have no intention of telling him where we’re really going.

The tunnel we’re in joins another tunnel. Luka leads us to a small platform and an emergency door that opens onto a flight of stairs.

“Take it to the top,” he says. “Can I go now?”

I nod and he disappears into the darkness without another word. We climb the stairs and I press my ear against the door. It’s quiet. I turn to Will.

“In junior year, I learned the basics of maglev trains in a sabotage course. Some of the cars have a trap door that opens onto the tracks for maintenance. I intend to find one.”

“Where are we going?”

“Nu London. There’s a man there, a family friend. He offered to help us. I think.”

“So you trust this guy?”

“Not entirely,” I say. “But there’s no one else.”

Will looks at me long and hard. Dried blood streaks his face. It’s obvious that something inside him is very close to snapping. Not the drug, just his own emotions. “I’m not staying down here. It’s like being buried alive.”

I think about the tons of rock over our heads and try to imagine what it’s like for him. How much he must hate it. How much he must hate
us
.

“We’re not. We’re going to a surface substation next to Tisiphone. Then we steal a plane and fly through the cane.”

“What about Fatima and the others?”

“We’ll find a way to help them. But we have to get out of Raven Rock. Immediately.”

Will seems to accept the truth of this because he nods once and eases the door open. We’re in a tunnel about thirty feet from a brightly-lit platform. There’s a few well-dressed people hugging and saying their goodbyes, and porters pushing luggage carts. Also soldiers. Lots of soldiers. Their gear is black and shiny; the segmented body armor makes them look vaguely insectile.

I realize how naive I was to think we could have boarded a train, even with perfect fake Piis. They clearly expect us to run, to panic and do something stupid. Which almost happened. I whisper a silent thanks to Luka and his drug addict friends for beating and robbing me.

Most of the soldiers are looking back at the platform and the rest are blinded by the lights, so no one notices Will and me sneak across the tunnel to the far side. The tracks in the new terminal run parallel to each other, with yellow-edged platforms in between. We creep across the tunnels, passing through rectangular doorways where train crews can hole up when the tracks are in use. 

Then I hear an announcement for Nu London. It sounds like the 12:13. I have no idea what time it is now, but the train is there, its long, aerodynamic snout jutting into the tunnel mouth.

“This is it,” I say. “We have to crawl.”

Will looks doubtful, but he drops to his knees and follows me. The train is hovering a few inches above the tracks, but the clearance is still minimal. We wiggle on our bellies, which kills my ribs. I try to remember the diagrams we studied in class. Suddenly there’s a deep humming over our heads.

“What’s that?” he hisses.

“Power,” I say, and try to crawl faster.

There’s supposed to be a panel under the luggage car, which is either the second or third after the engineer’s car. Thank God I don’t have any metal on my body, because I’m right in the middle of two gigantic magnets. We clear the first coupling and the humming ramps up a notch. Someone yells on the platform, and though I can’t hear the words, I have a bad feeling it was one of the conductors doing a final call.

Then I spot a square on the underbelly of the train. The seams are barely visible in the dim light down here, and I don’t see any kind of mechanism to open it. That’s probably on the other side. I push against it with my palm. Nothing. There’s an ominous series of clicks as the brakes disengage.

Heart hammering, I squeeze my knees up until the soles of my shoes are flat against the bottom of the panel. Then I kick as hard as I can, exerting every ounce of force I can muster. It’s not easy, because the tight space won’t let me get much momentum behind it. I empty all the air out of my stomach and kick harder. The panel bends, gives an inch, then snaps back into place.

It’s not steel, thank God, something more lightweight and pliable. I kick again, grunting with the effort, and this time it pops open. I shove it to the side and pull myself through the hole just as the train starts its slow glide into the tunnel. Fortunately, it’s moving
toward
Will, so I’m able to grab his arms and hoist his torso through as it passes over him.

I’m just replacing the panel when we hear voices. Coming closer. Will grabs my arm and drags me behind a stack of steamer trunks.

“. . .delayed by three minutes thanks to the extra security protocols. Control says we’ll have to make it up during the run.”

“Not a problem. We could make up twenty.”

“You got the programming codes?”

“Yeah. . . Here, hold my coffee for a sec. . .”

The door to the engineer’s car opens and closes.

“How long to Nu London?” Will whispers.

“About six hours.”

“We need a better spot, then.”

The baggage car is packed with boxes, cases and trunks according to an efficient system that leaves very little extra space. We finally manage to create a small niche in one corner and cram ourselves in. The floor is speckled white and blue and grey, and the compartment smells of pleather and boiled cabbage. I rest my head on Will’s shoulder. The ride is so smooth it’s like we’re not even moving. Still, the nausea I felt on the platform is back, or maybe it never went away. I feel terrible.

“I need a little nap,” I say. “Can you keep watch?”

Will murmurs something inaudible. I feel his breath, warm on my cheek, and then I’m sliding down into nothingness.

Someone shakes my arm and for a second I think I’m with Jake on that trip back from the Academy a million years ago when he woke me just before Raven Rock. My head aches, pretty much everything hurts, actually, but I’m still happy when I realize it’s Will. More than happy.

I’ve never needed anyone before, not since I was a little kid. It’s an alien concept. Yes, the Academy trains us to be self-sufficient, not to trust anyone but them. There’s no place for emotion in the cold calculus of survival. But the truth is I’ve always been like that anyway. It’s why I was drawn to them, why I was so good at it. But Will has changed me. Cracked me open. And I won’t let them separate us again, not so long as I’m still breathing and able to fight.