Viridian (7 page)

Jay listened. He'd become used to the constant drip and trickle of water in the mine. But this was different. It was as if the rocks around them were coming alive, playing their own weird music. There were high piping notes like flutes; low booming ones, as water was forced, under pressure, through cracks and fissures.

‘Must be a terrific rain storm up above,' Dad said.

Jay realised there was water, foaming around his feet. He said, ‘My trainers are wet.'

‘I think we should go back,' Dad decided. ‘You get flash floods in cave systems sometimes.'

Jay felt something brush his trainer.

‘Dad, look!' Scuttling past their feet was a heaving sea of rats, tumbling over their shoes. Their eyes, where the lantern caught them, flashed like rubies. They were running
towards
the cave, escaping something.

Jay said, ‘Which way do we go?'

‘Back to the van,' said Dad. ‘We don't want to get trapped down here.'

They turned around, hurrying as fast as they could, but soon they were wading through swirling water.

‘There's definitely flooding somewhere,' said Dad, his voice worried.

Now they were out of the narrow passage, back in the old mine workings.

‘Listen,' said Dad again. They heard rocks shifting somewhere, grinding against each other. Then echoing through the mine came an ominous growling.

‘Wait here,' said Dad. ‘I'll just check what's ahead.'

‘Dad!' Jay protested.

But Dad was gone, his lantern light swallowed by the dark. Jay stood in the darkness, shivering, listening to the water moving in the rocks all around him.

He held up his lantern to see if Dad was coming back, and for a second he thought his eyes were playing tricks. There was a water surge coming from up ahead. Foamy waves were boiling along the tunnel towards him, glinting black in the lantern light.

‘Dad!' yelled Jay.

For a second he stood, frozen: not wanting to turn and run; knowing the way forward was blocked. He saw the waves snap one of the roof supports like a matchstick.

He turned and, splashing and slipping in a blind panic,
stumbled back towards the cave. Water chased behind him. He heard timber groaning and cracking, rocks crashing down as roof tunnels caved in. And all the time,
Dad, Dad
was sobbing through his mind.

Jay burst into a huge space. Water foamed past him but then slowed to a trickle. The main torrent hadn't followed him here. It had drained down a shaft somewhere, to another level of the mine.

Panting and terrified, Jay held up his lantern. The cave was as vast as a cathedral. Its walls glittered with black jet. Giant limestone blocks lay tumbled all around, piled in soaring slopes against the walls.

He heard movement, a sort of shuffling sound. Then a voice, barely more than a whisper, begged, ‘Let me see the light.'

Jay swung wildly round. ‘Gran!' he cried. ‘What are you doing down here?'

If Jay thought Gran would be pleased to see him, he was wrong.

She squinted at him in the gloom. Then both green hands flew to her mouth in horror. She backed off, stumbling out of the light.

‘There's an Immune down here!' she shrieked.

Jay shone the light on her panic-stricken face. ‘Gran, don't be scared,' he said, shocked by the fear in her eyes. ‘It's only me, Jay. I won't hurt you.'

‘Keep away from me!' shrieked Gran. ‘It's because of you I'm being punished!'

Jay stared at her. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘I was arrested as an Immune Sympathiser.'

‘But I haven't seen you in ages! And I'm your grandson!' said Jay, bewildered. ‘That's not a crime, is it?'

‘We must keep away from Immunes,' droned Gran, as if she was reciting something she'd learned. ‘We mustn't help or support them in any way. No contact is acceptable. The punishment is Etiolation.'

She crept nearer the light, with a look of desperate longing on her face.

‘I don't understand,' said Jay. ‘Etiolation, what's that?'

He'd heard the word before, or something like it. But he couldn't recall where.

‘We get put in the dark,' Gran moaned. ‘We don't like the dark.'

Jay closed his eyes, breathed deeply, tried to quiet his jabbering brain. ‘How did you get into this cave?' he asked.

‘The Cultivars put me in here,' said Gran. ‘I must be punished.'

‘Yeah, yeah,' said Jay. ‘
How
did they put you in?'

‘Up there,' said Gran. She raised her eyes to look into the dark. Jay held up the lantern.

‘Don't take the light away!' begged Gran.

Jay put the lantern down on the rock. ‘It's all right, Gran,' he soothed her. ‘It's all right, you can keep the light.'

He shrugged off his backpack, got out a torch and shone it up into the cave roof. A great pile of stone blocks were piled up to the roof, like a magnificent ruined staircase. And right at the top, there was a trapdoor. Hope sparked in his swirling brain.

‘Is that the way they put you in, through that door?' Jay asked Gran, excitedly. ‘We can just climb out that way, go and find Dad! We can't go back the way I came, the tunnels are flooded, the roof's caved in. I lost Dad. I have to find my way back to the mine entrance – '

‘We're being punished,' Gran interrupted. ‘We're Immune Sympathisers. We must stay here.'

She seemed less distressed now she was crouching by the lantern. She began to lick water from the cave wall with her green, furry tongue.

‘We?' said Jay. ‘Are there other people in here with you?' He swung his torch around the cave, round the tumbled blocks and stalagmites, like giant melted wax candles.

There were Verdans everywhere, lots of them, staggering zombie-like from all corners of the cave, towards the light.

‘What's happened to them?' gasped Jay.

And then he remembered the sick plant in Gran's garden, the one she found under the plastic bucket, deprived of light.

These Verdans had the same symptoms. Their chlorophyll skin, even their eyes, had turned deathly yellow. Their limbs were long and spidery thin. Some were so weak, they could barely walk. Their bones seemed to have turned to jelly, their legs wobbled and they couldn't hold their necks up. Their heads flopped onto their chests like drooping flowers.

Those who couldn't walk slithered towards the light. They dragged themselves over rocks like giant yellow worms. Those who'd been in the dark the longest had fuzzy white fungus attacking their bodies and faces, the same fungus that was rotting away the mine's wooden roof supports.

Jay backed away, horrified. But they were harmless, too weak to hurt him, even if they'd wanted to.

Then he recognised two of them. They were Viridian's parents. The last time he'd seen them, they'd been drinking rain water at the Diner.

‘What are
they
doing here?' Jay asked Gran. ‘Why are they being punished?'

But Gran didn't answer that. Instead she looked up towards the trap door. ‘Guards!' she shrieked. ‘There's an Immune down here!'

Jay stared upwards, new alarm on his face. ‘Are there guards out there? Are they Cultivars?'

‘Guards!' Gran was still shouting. ‘Come and arrest him!' But her cries were too feeble for anyone to hear outside this cave prison.

‘Shhh, stop it!' said Jay. He couldn't believe Gran would betray him. ‘I'll get you out of here,' he said.

‘No,' said Gran cowering. ‘Don't touch me. You're a filthy Polluter. You're an Immune. All Immunes are enemies.'

‘Gran!' said Jay frantically. ‘If you stay here, you'll end up like this lot. It's horrible. Just look at them!'

‘I must be punished,' said Gran, almost smugly. ‘My sentence is ten days' Etiolation.'

‘For heaven's sake, Gran!' cried Jay. ‘Why are you talking like that? Like you
deserve
it? You haven't done anything wrong.' He grabbed her wrist and dragged her, weakly protesting, behind him. None of the Verdans tried to stop him. They were all too busy jostling to get some light on their sick, etiolated bodies.

To try and make her move faster Jay said, ‘We're going up to the light, Gran. You'll have all the sunshine you want,' even though he guessed it was still raining on the surface.

What if there were Cultivars up there too, to stop the prisoners escaping? Jay couldn't think yet how to deal with them. One thing at a time. He played his torch over the tumbled limestone blocks piled crazily, one on top of another. They had to climb those to reach the trapdoor.

It looked perilous. But if the prisoners had come down that way, there had to be a way up.

Jay's foot hit something soft. He shone his torch downwards.

‘
Eurgh!
'

He sprang back, sour bile rising in his throat. There was a Verdan down there. But unlike the others, she was chained to a rock. It looked like she'd been down here longer than the other prisoners. Her limbs were like soft yellow jelly: she couldn't lift them. The fungus from the mine had invaded her weakened body. Spores, like white dust, puffed out of her skin.

Disgust struggled with pity inside Jay's mind. ‘Why's she chained up?' he asked Gran. ‘Who is she?'

‘She's an Immune Sympathiser. A traitor. Her punishment is death.'

‘What?' said Jay. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. ‘What's she done?'

‘It must have been something bad,' said Gran.

Fighting revulsion, Jay knelt down. ‘What's your name?'

The prisoner tried to lift her head. She couldn't. When she spoke, fungus spores came in clouds out of her mouth. Her voice was so feeble, Jay had to bend closer. She smelled like mouldy graveyards.

‘Teal,' she whispered.

Her pale yellow eyes were glazed over. She was dying and Jay knew there was nothing he could do. Even if he could free her from her shackles, there was no way he could get her up to the surface.

He let go of Gran's wrist and got the other torch out of his backpack. He switched it on and placed it on the rock near her.

Teal turned her head towards it and it seemed, for a moment, to bring life back to her ravaged face. But it was only her eyes reflecting its beam.

Jay knew it wouldn't save her; it was sunlight Verdans needed. But it might comfort her, down here in the dark.

Jay got up. His whole body felt heavy, weighed down with despair.

Then he ordered himself,
Get moving. You've got to find Dad.

Gran bent to pick up the torch. ‘No, leave it for her,' said Jay angrily.

Teal's eyes were closed now. She wasn't moving at all. But he wasn't going to let Gran steal her light.

Jay grasped Gran's hand. She tried to pull away again.

‘I'm not an Immune, right?' lied Jay, desperately. ‘Soon as we get out of here, I'm going to get myself injected with the virus. So you're not in any trouble, Gran.'

‘Will you tell the Cultivars?' said Gran. ‘Will you tell them I'm not an Immune Sympathiser?'

‘Course I will. I'll tell them as soon as we get out of here.'

Together they started the long climb up the limestone slope, with Jay's one remaining torch lighting the way.

Jay didn't look back. He forced the image of Teal out of his mind. It was one burden too many.

Instead, he asked, ‘Gran, why do Verdans hate Immunes so much?' He was desperate to know. It was terrifying when Cultivars wanted to kill you and Verdans hated you and you didn't know why.

But Gran just repeated, ‘All Immunes are enemies.'

Jay sighed, looked upwards. They didn't have far to go. He'd worried that Gran wouldn't make the climb. But, even Etiolated, she moved creepily fast. Springing from block to block like a green monkey, more agile than she'd ever been as a human.

Jay caught her up, just below the trapdoor.

Cautiously, he tried lifting the door. He'd already decided it was probably locked. So when it opened easily, it took him by surprise.

It was grey outside but daylight hurt his eyes after so long underground. His heart thumping, Jay gently lowered the trapdoor again, in case any guards saw.

‘Keep quiet, Gran!' he hissed, a finger to his lips. He didn't want her shouting out to the guards, like she had before.

But he needn't have worried. Gran was lapping at a pool in the rock, lost in her own Verdan world, where only water, sunshine and nutrients mattered.

Gran hadn't felt any pity for the dying Teal. She didn't seem to care about finding Dad.

Jay slumped down on a rock to think. He had no idea what was waiting out there. He felt more alone than he'd ever done in his life.

He looked down into the dark cave, far below them. The lantern had gone out. He saw the torch he'd left for Teal, its white beam shining out like a star. But he knew the other prisoners would soon be slithering and staggering over to take her light for themselves, like Gran had tried to.

It hardly mattered, because Jay instinctively knew that Teal had died. She didn't need the light any more.

Jay suddenly had to get out. Not caring who saw, he flung the trapdoor wide open. He'd rather take his chances with the Cultivars than stay in this hellish prison.

He climbed out, blinking in the cloudy daylight, pulling Gran behind him. ‘Get ready to run,' he said.

But there was nobody there.

He rubbed his eyes, stared round again. But he couldn't see a living soul, human, Verdan or Cultivar.

Jay crouched with Gran in tall grass beside the trapdoor. He made a spy hole between the green stems.

‘There's nobody here,' he whispered to Gran.

He wasn't in the scrubland anymore, with those strange, round hills. He seemed to be in some kind of industrial estate – there were several of them on the edges of Franklin. But the whole place looked derelict. Grass was growing in the car parks. The units had broken windows with green shoots of ivy sprouting through. A fork lift truck was rusting away.