Wiped (6 page)

Part Anglisc. Part D’maru. And part something else altogether.

“What’s he saying?” Cardinal Beck asked.

“Shhh,” I snapped, leaning closer, trying to decipher the child’s stumbling words.

The other children moved toward him, as if to protect. The Cardinals all tensed.

And then Calvin said, “Uripean. There are hints of Teiamanisch in amongst the Anglisc and D’maru. Their language has evolved to include all three.”

“A pidgin Anglisc,” Alan added.

“Yes,” Calvin agreed. “I am attempting to extrapolate the parameters and will have a translation formula prepared in a few minutes.”

I smiled at the child, as his friends started jabbering away in the same multi-language as he had been. Nodding my head and encouraging them, as if I understood. And then I felt the child’s hand slip into mine softly.

His fingers were calloused. A hard nodule protruded from three of his knuckles. But a more promising sensation there had never been. There was hope here. There was a chance that we could achieve what we’d failed with their older counterparts. Children are such forgiving creatures. So open to change and progress, where their elders are stuck fast in their upbringing.

I held my breath as Calvin worked silently in the background, promise an emotion I gladly received.

And then my Shiloh announced, “I have it. Translating now.”

It took a second for Calvin to isolate my child’s voice from the rest, but I knew it was his translation that I eventually heard.

Because as he tugged on my hand evermore urgently, his young voice becoming desperate, Calvin said in our ears, “They are coming. They are coming. They are coming.”

A
moment’s
panic set in. Not our usual SOP. But Calvin’s words in our ears had done a number. It didn’t help that the kid holding Lena’s hand was getting quite agitated. Tugging her towards the deeper, darker shadows of the tunnel. Urging her on in that strange language they all used and were frantically muttering.

None of them raised their voices, and that was perhaps what set my body in motion. Had they screamed, I would have forced myself to take charge. To shut them up in any manner possible. Disregarding what they said in order to calmly control the situation.

But no assessment was necessary. They had decided to warn us, a warning they delivered in muted tones but with urgency. A warning that skittered down my spine and set alarm bells off inside my head.

They are coming.

As soon as Calvin had translated Nirbhay’s words, all the creepy crawlies had chimed in, backing him up. Unanimously agreeing to help us.

Although, as they’d clearly trapped the trappers, maybe this was all still part of the act.

I couldn’t tell. They weren’t any enemy I’d ever come up against. Wánměi is not exactly full of deformed, under-nourished children.

“Who’s coming?” a Cardinal demanded, as the panic still swirled around us.

“It’s a trap,” Lena advised steadily, making it obvious that she’d come to the same conclusion as me. She stood up, hand still clasped in Nirhbay’s, face set, body in liquid-like motion. She was always such a joy to watch move. Like a dancer with lethal abilities. I watched as she checked her own laser gun, attached to her upper thigh, and then her eyes found me.

“Very clever,” I murmured, checking my gun too. “But if it’s u-Pol they forgot one thing.”

“And that is?” Beck demanded.

“Never work with children or animals,” I muttered, powering up my gun and letting the whine of electronics punctuate that statement.

“Movement aboveground,” Calvin advised through the earpieces. The fact he was including us again meant things had turned south pretty quickly. Until he’d started translating the kids’ words, he’d been ominously silent in Alan’s and my ears.

I wasn’t sure I was entirely happy about the change up. But with an unknown threat approaching, a terrain we weren’t familiar with, and creepy crawlies as our only allies, I’d take any help I could get.

“Let’s go,” I announced. “I’d rather be on the move than standing here when they breach The Underground.”

“And if these children are leading us into a dead-end where the u-Pol are waiting?” Beck asked, all snark and then some.

“Then you better be ready,” Alan muttered, shouldering past the Cardinal, his own laser gun fired up and waiting.

The kids knew the layout, had obviously covered this ground a time or two before. They scampered over debris, ducked under low lying fallen beams, skirted more dangerous areas; basically provided a crash course in underground survival techniques.

I watched as Lena took it all in. Each move they made. Each compensated for injury. They may have looked like something out of a horror movie, but they didn’t let it slow them down one bit.

Which made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, because the speed in which they were travelling meant something.

“Who’s up there, Calvin?” I muttered, scraping my hand against a rough rock wall and feeling skin peel. I flexed my fingers once I’d gotten my balance back, but the sting of whatever coated the wall down here set my teeth on edge. How far were we from those no-go areas of Lunnon?

“Night has fallen, it is difficult to see anything on satellite imagery,” the Shiloh answered.

As far as plans went, this one sucked beyond all comprehension. I shook my head, angry at myself for allowing us to get caught in such a predicament and, I’ll admit, angry at Lena for getting herself into such a situation. Again.

This was not going to end well.

We needed backup, but as all the Cardinals were down here with Lena, and the only person I trusted back at the base was Si, that left just one conclusion. And Lena was not gonna like it.

“Lena,” I whispered as we came to a brief pause at a difficult to navigate section.

Her stunning blue eyes swung towards me. In the dim glow of our torches they shined, lighting up this shit-hole better than a Christmas Tree. She arched her brow, but didn’t speak. Like a true professional, she instinctively knew the less verbalised the better. We were deep in enemy territory. Being hunted. Any noise now could mean our end.

“We need help,” I whispered in her ear.

“The children…” she started, her face turned to mine, soft breath across my cheek. I closed my eyes; now was not the time to fantasise about make-up sex.

“I think we have to let your father know what’s happening.”

And there went any chance of getting Lena horizontal.

“I trust them,” she argued, nodding towards our new found allies.

I sighed, looking at the conviction I could see on her face, in her eyes.

“You shouldn’t,” I whispered, regret making my words raspy.

She knew. I knew she knew. Lena was not stupid. She’d laid a trap for them, and they’d flipped the trap on end. Just because it looked like they’d changed their minds, decided to disobey their orders, and help us, didn’t mean it was real.

“Ten minutes ago these kids were attacking us,” I murmured. “Ten minutes ago they were the enemy.”

Lena blinked. Long lashes coasting over cream skin. Utter perfection. I’d always thought her stunning, but dressed in combat gear, laser gun in hand, several knives strapped to her torso, hair tied up in a messy bun, she was out of this world incredible.

“I’ve never thought them the enemy, Trent,” she said. “That’s always been your angle. Not mine.”

And then she was up and following the last person to cross a spindly arse plank of wood across a deep chasm that must have gone on to the centre of the earth for how pitch black it seemed at the bottom. No hesitation. No arms outstretched for added balance. Gun in hand, feet light as a feather, she rocketed over the makeshift bridge to the other side and then waited.

Well, all right then. I gritted my teeth, muttered several times, “Do
not
look down,” and took the plank a whole lot slower, but at least not embarrassingly. I might have moaned a little in relief when I reached the other side.

Alan followed and then the rear guard; two of Beck’s most trusted Cardinals. It’s not often that Alan would be comfortable with someone at his back. But right now comfort was a luxury we’d long since bypassed.

Lena didn’t carry on our conversation, she simply nodded her head at Nirbhay once we’d all made it across the divide, and then we were off. More dark spaces. More fallen masonry. More too tight holes to climb through.

Until we came out into a vast space.

The night sky was once again visible, stars like you never see in over-illuminated Wánměi shone down from above. The moon lit up everything. Shattered remains of what had to have been a huge station lay all around us, like skeletal fingers the brick walls jutted out from the ground spotlighting a huge target area for all to see. X marks the spot. If there was a better place for an ambush, I’d never seen one. But the kids didn’t hesitate, keeping their heads down, they moved out across the vast space, ensuring we kept to the natural shadows.

We’d never have been able to cross the area unseen without them. If they were leading us into a trap, they were taking their time about it, and ensuring we got there in one piece while they did it.

I wasn’t sure what to make of that; I didn’t trust them. But then I didn’t trust a lot of people. Alan. Si. Paul. Lena, and even then lately she’d been doing things I questioned. Certainly not a bunch of forgotten kids in a broken city working with the enemy.

We needed to get a handle on this situation and fast. I could feel the reins slipping out of my fingers. I could almost feel the laser sight in the centre of my back.

But then we made it across the shooting gallery and into the darkness of The Underground again.

This time it was different. This time there was clear evidence of the path down having seen some action. Forget about alarm bells clanging inside my head, I had a fucking klaxon blaring a warning, the loud sound reverberating throughout my entire body.

“Calvin,” I said softly, the uncertainty clear in my tone.

“I can’t help you under there, Trent,” the Shiloh answered. “I have no eyes nor ears to scout.”

“You let us go down there before,” I pointed out.

“I let Lena do what she had to do to make contact with the indigenous of this city.”

“And now we have?” I pressed.

“You’re on your own.”

Great. No vid-cams to hook Calvin into. No Net to allow him access to visual feeds or pick through various media for clues. Even the fact nightfall had arrived curtailed his assistance. Something was out there. Something that made the kids run, leading us… where?

These were just children. They might have been raised in a world that didn’t care, become tough enough to exist there, but they were still kids. Minors. Barely out of nappies. Snotty noses, shitty bums, and all the rest.

And what do kids do when they’re scared?

They go home. They go to their safe place. They run and hide.

Well, fuck. If it was the u-Pol who hunted us, who expected these kids to hand us over without a care, then they’d know where these kids lived, right?

Fuck.

“Calvin,” I whispered, as the tunnels narrowed and the ceiling closed in.

“Yes, Trent,” he said just as quietly, as if his voice could cary farther than my ear.

“Let Carstairs know we’re about to be FUBARed.”

“I’ll advise him, Trent,” the computer said. I had the feeling he’d isolated our conversation. Better to land me in it later with Lena? Without a doubt. But I couldn’t complain. We were heading towards a whole lot of trouble, and I never went into a fucked up situation without a plan.

And the plan? Shoot first, ask questions later, and hope like hell that Carstairs’ Merrikan soldiers could dig us out after the fact.

T
his was not good
. Even I could see that. And if I could, then Trent sure as hell could, too. Anticipation and anxiety rolled off him in waves. His trigger finger twitching. If I didn’t calm him down, our one chance at reaching these people would be lost to us forever.

But the more wound up he got, the more I did too. I’d told him I trusted the children. It wasn’t entirely the truth. I trusted that this was our only chance at making peace with the Lunnoners. I trusted in our ability to win them over, given that chance. But I did not trust them completely.

Despite that lack of trust, though, I ached for them. So small. So alone. So fragile. And facing up to odds that made my heart weep.

Nirbhay led the way, continually looking over his shoulder at me, as if I might evaporate in the stifling heat down here. Every now and then he’d reached out for my hand. Squeeze my fingers, as though he could see I needed encouragement. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? He couldn’t have been older than ten.

But as he led us through the dark of The Underground it was the child who consoled the adult.

“Movement at the entrance to your tunnel,” Calvin advised over the earpieces. Trent swore softly. Alan snarled something indecipherable, and Cardinal Beck started issuing orders to his men making up the rearguard.

There was no way we were going to make it to wherever it was the children were leading us. Not now. The thought was sobering. And regretful. How much danger were we bringing to their world? To ours?

“Nirbhay,” I whispered, gaining our guide’s attention. “We’re being followed.”

He nodded his head, but whether he understood what I’d said, or simply wanted to make me feel better by agreeing, I couldn’t say.

The tunnel branched off suddenly. The fork appearing out of nowhere in the gloom. Both avenues looked dark and foreboding. Nirhbay chattered in that pidgin Anglisc to a couple of his friends, and then several split off in one direction, while Nirbhay reached out and tugged my hand in the other.

“Lena,” Trent growled in warning.

“I know, I know,” I mumbled, but what else could I say? I had no idea where we were going, just that we were being followed. If we abandoned Nirbhay and his compatriots now, we’d be blind down here. Worse off than we currently were.

But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be prepared.

“How many, Calvin?” I whispered into the heavy silence.

“I estimate twenty,” my Shiloh replied. “But that is an estimation. There are simply too many shadows aboveground for me to be certain I didn’t miss any.”

“So, minimum twenty,” Beck muttered.

“Can you at least confirm if they were u-Pol or armed?” Trent demanded.

“Identification was impossible, but none have remained aboveground,” Calvin supplied. “And yes, Trent,” he added. “They were definitely armed.”

“Lasers?”

“It appeared so.”

Trent was silent a moment and then with a sigh he said, “And Carstairs?”

“A contingency of soldiers is on the move from the base as we speak.”

I twisted around to look over my shoulder at Trent, my eyes full of accusation. His met mine, head on, challenge undertaken. Not an ounce of guilt or shame in the blue staring back.

“What did you expect, baby?” he murmured, only loud enough for me to hear. “There is
no
way I would let you walk alone into a trap. No way.”

I couldn’t argue with him. I didn’t want to anymore. He was right. This was probably a trap. But that didn’t mean I was giving up all hope.

“Translate for me, Calvin,” I announced.

“When you’re ready,” the computer replied.

I tapped Nirbhay on the shoulder, drawing his attention. He looked up at me expectantly as he reached out to grasp my hand, tugging me forward at the same time as he waited for me to speak. The fact that he wasn’t mucking around scared me. The fact that he’d split his team worried me even more. Just what was he up to down here?

I pushed it all aside and said, “Are they u-Pol?” Calvin translated, his voice coming out of the speakers in my wristwatch.

Nirbhay glanced down at the device, his footsteps halting momentarily. Wide eyed, his free hand reached out, then he thought better of it, and started tugging me forward again instead.

“u-Pol,” he said. No translation required.

“What do they want?” Calvin translated again. But Nirbhay just shook his head, frantically pulling me forward with one hand, the other up to his face, finger pressed to his split lip requesting silence.

“I don’t like this,” Alan grumbled over my shoulder.

“You and me both,” Trent agreed.

“Quiet,” Beck hissed, but I couldn’t help feeling it was his way of throwing his vote in with Trent and Alan.

If I could have spoken then, I would have agreed. None of this was good.

We walked on for several more minutes, until we reached a rock fall in the tunnel. God alone knew how long it had been there. It was hard to tell if Nirbhay was surprised. But there was no denying our way forward had been crushed under a roof collapse. Panic started to crawl up my throat as I turned around and looked back down the tunnel that we’d just traversed.

“Fuck,” Trent muttered.

“Trap,” I think I heard Cardinal Beck say.

But all I could do was look at the men I’d brought down here, at their faces as realisation hit. I’d brought them here. Trapped them in a no-win situation. Took a gamble and now they’d pay the price. This was all my fault.

My heart beat a frantic rhythm in the centre of my chest. Sweat beaded my brow. An ache had started up deep down inside; guilt, shame, desolation taking up residence.

I pulled my laser gun from its holster and powered it up. Beck looked across the small space toward me and nodded, firing up his as well. My eyes found Trent’s.

“It’s OK,” he whispered and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. “It’s OK.”

It wasn’t, but he was doing his best to reassure me. Forgive me. I held his gaze, saw the conviction in his eyes. Saw more than I had any right to claim. I’d wondered if he did in fact love me recently, what with the over-protective way he’d been behaving. But there was no doubt now. Love, so deep, so consuming, shone back at me. Lighting up the dark tunnel as if it blazed with the power of a million lights. Dear God, no matter what, he loved me.

And I’d done this.

“This is not how we go,” he said, stepping closer, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear. “This is not the end.”

“Then what is it?”

He huffed out a breath of air. I would have said it was amused, if not for the fucked up situation.

“They want us? Then they’re just gonna have to fight to get to us.” He lifted his laser gun as if to punctuate that point.

Fighting words from a man who had spent the better part of his life fighting. And it would all end in a dark underground tunnel in a forgotten city that was meant to have been our hope.

Pain like I had never experienced coursed through me, centring in my heart. I lifted a numbed hand to rub at my chest, but nothing alleviated it.

“It’s OK,” Trent repeated and then with one last kiss to my temple, turned to face what was coming.

It took so long my fingers had started to cramp around the laser gun’s grip. I flexed them as sweat ran over my cheek and down my neck. My heart pounded against my ribs. My lips felt dry and cracked. The air stuck to everything with a soot filled stench that clogged our lungs. I couldn’t fathom how anyone could live down here.

I couldn’t fathom that this would be where it ended.

In that second before they came I thought of Wánměi. I thought of the difference in the dense air between here and there. I thought of the clean rain and the heavily scented flowers. The lush greens and the vibrant colours. Wánměi was life. Lunnon was death.

How had we ever thought it held the answers?

Someone shuffled on their feet, getting better footing on the uneven rail ties. I could hear the laboured breathing of someone else. No one spoke. What was there to say? With our backs to a wall of debris, and our eyes trained for any sign of movement ahead, we waited.

And then a rumble sounded out.

For a second or two I couldn’t decipher what it was. A collapsing tunnel? Some sort of weapon Calvin and failed to see?

And then recognition flared, along with several synapses. My mind whirring, my heart thumping, my emotions in a tumult of hope and despair.

“Is that coming towards us?” Cardinal Beck asked. He’d crouched down as soon as the sound had started, just like the rest of his team of men. Ready, but not really prepared.

“The tracks were damaged farther back,” a Cardinal advised, his voice full of misguided hope.

“Won’t stop it if it’s going fast enough,” Alan offered. He’d recognised the sound too, it seemed.

“Nirbhay?” I whispered, then felt him step up to my side.

“Not… long,” he said, in relatively good Anglisc. “Wait,” he added, making the moment stretch.

“Well, that covers the whole understanding us part,” Trent offered, his eyes toward the end of the tunnel, where we’d come from, and where the sound of the oncoming train roared from now.

“What are we waiting for?” a Cardinal said, fear coating every syllable.

“Steady,” Beck ordered, not moving a muscle, laser gun raised, but what he thought he could do against a fifty ton train engine with that, I couldn’t guess.

The walls started to rattle, bits of broken brick and dust raining down on the gravel floor. A howling wind blew down the tunnel towards us; superheated, heavy, grim. The sound became deafening, as if the train was on top of us, but still we could see no movement ahead. And then mortar coated us, as a couple of tunnel wall bricks clattered to the ground, and the vibration started sending shockwaves up our shins.

Within a second or two it passed. The walls slowing down in their rattle and shake, the floor undulating more gently, the dust a light coating not a full-on powder shower. Through out it all I’d held my breath. I let it out slowly now.

“Time to go,” Nirbhay said carefully. His command of Anglisc was rusty, taking all his effort not to slip back into the pidgin language they all preferred.

I stared down at the dirt smeared child, my eyes no doubt as big as saucers inside my head.

“What the hell?” Alan said, voicing what was on all our tongues.

“Distraction,” Trent replied. “The kids in that other tunnel. The ones who split off. How the fuck they managed to get a locomotive engine going, though, is anyone’s guess.”

“I think there might be more to the Lunnoners’ survival than meets the eye,” Calvin offered in our ears.

“Come,” Nirbhay encouraged. “Come now.”

I raised my eyebrow at Trent. He shrugged his shoulders back.

We’d come this far, we might as well go the rest.

Because there was clearly more to see, and as the u-Pol who followed us were busy chasing that train, it was now or never that we make our escape.

I stared at the back of Nirbhay’s head as we followed him along the tunnel the way we’d come, taking the branch that the others had split off down not ten minutes earlier. If he was leading us to the u-Pol, then he wasn’t doing it the easy way. Bait and switch involving trains was not exactly straight forward, was it? I couldn’t help feeling that the longer we spent in his company, the more obvious it was that he didn’t want to hand us over to the enemy.

But Trent had been right when he’d said the children had been our enemies too at first. Part of me wanted to trust Nirbhay. But part of me had seen too much, been through too much, lost too much to ever be so complacent again.

“Where’s my father?” I said to Calvin.

“Back at the base,” he replied immediately. “The Merrikan soldiers have entered The Underground now and are following your trail.”

“Here’s hoping they don’t come face to face with retreating u-Pol officers,” Trent said, but he didn’t sound convincing.

“I have warned them,” Calvin advised, making Trent puff out an annoyed breath.

It’s not that he didn’t want the soldiers’ assistance, I was sure. It was more to do with the fact that they were controlled by my father.

Trust had never been an easy thing for Trent. And in that, I’d have to agree. My father wanted something. What? I didn’t know. Just like the rebels did. But the rebels I understood. The rebels I’d learned to trust.

My father had been dead to me for ten long years. Him being alive should have been a blessing; one I should have accepted readily. But for some reason it felt like a betrayal.

“Light ahead,” Cardinal Beck called out, his laser gun glinting in the soft illumination that sprayed back towards us.

The children started running, some using their hands to speed them along, some limping and hopping in their enthusiasm to reach wherever the light came from.

“Get ready,” Trent murmured.

“Always ready,” Alan replied.

And then we were there. In a vast room with vaulted ceilings, candlelight flickering here and there, the smell of food cooking wafting up to meet us, and evidence that they had access to power over in the corner; electrical light shining down on a work desk. My eyes scanned the room for danger, but danger lurked everywhere I looked.

“They’re all women, elderly, or very young,” Beck murmured. But the observation was correct. And not all there was to see, either.

“And those that aren’t,” I said, “are injured or infirm.”

“Is this
all
there is left?” Trent asked, his voice hinting at devastation.

Even knowing what we now knew, he’d still held out hope. Hope that Lunnon would hold answers. But with the mere fifty people that we could see before us, and the men we’d killed amounting to only twenty or so more, it was obvious that survival in this forgotten city was not a given. I felt his desolation along with him.

“Bloody hell,” Alan murmured, his laser gun still held high enough to use should he need it. The Cardinals all held theirs up as well.

Even Trent. Even disappointed to such a degree, he maintained the rebel leader.

I lowered mine and took a slow step into the room. Trent stiffened.