(No spoilers to book#1 and book#2, this chapter introduces a new storyline with new characters).
Brock stopped moving as the plank creaked under his weight. Willie turned to scold him, but Brock didn’t need Willie’s reminder to be quiet. He’d be careful and focus on gradually shifting his weight to avoid waking Old Gregory before getting what they had come for. The cabin’s squeaking and moaning at the slightest intrusion made this so much more difficult than he’d expected. They paused to listen to the old man’s snoring. It resonated in the small space, uninterrupted. They continued their search.
The tiny kitchen was a total mess. The moon beamed its light through the window above the sink onto the small table in the corner. The table was crowded with clay jugs, piles of dirty dishes, and flies that buzzed around them. Willie carefully lifted the jugs, one by one, swirling them around to see if they contained what they were looking for. From the look on Willie’s face, they’d been emptied to the last drop.
Brock searched the countertop, which was covered in more dirty dishes, potato peels, and mouse droppings—nothing of interest. Underneath the counter it was pitch black. Brock reached out to grope his way around, finding storage bags of vegetables, by their shape he figured potatoes, and another one, more oblong and tapered, carrots or parsnips. He shifted the bags aside to feel if a stash was hidden behind them. As he reached to touch the wall, a mouse raced between his legs, making him jump back, startled. Willie mocked him with a quiet “Boo!”
Finding nothing in the kitchen, Willie moved on to the adjacent room. Brock followed, slowly, making an effort to step on the floor’s supporting cross beams. They found Old Gregory lying in his bed, his arm dangling down and over the side, his fingers loosely wrapped around the neck of a clay jug. Willie pinched his nose and grimaced at the unpleasant stench, a medley of urine, aged body odor, and rotten food. Willie tiptoed next to the man and crouched down to uncurl the old man’s fingers from the jug.
“What’ll… wat… wa…” the old man mumbled in his sleep. The boys held their breath in stillness, ready to dart out if needed. Old Gregory lifted his dangling arm onto his belly. He swallowed a gulp of saliva and continued with a grinding snore.
Willie lifted the container and turned to Brock with a thumbs up and a victorious smile. He placed a finger up against the jug to show up to where the liquid remained; it was three-quarters full.
Willie scanned the floor, looking for something else. It took Brock a moment to realize Willie was searching for a cork to plug the opening and not spill the contents while riding out.
The floor was covered in clothes or rags; even when worn by Old Gregory it was difficult to tell the difference. Brock kicked around a pile of socks and found a cork that seemed to be the right size. Willie took it from him and shoved it tightly into the jug’s opening. He lifted the jug above his head, and with a strong inhale, he filled his lungs and let out a high-pitched gleeful cry.
They ran out the back, where their geery birds waited for them, ready. They jumped on their harnesses, wrapped their hands around the birds’ thin necks, and with a tap of the heel, the birds raced away, swiftly crossing the prairies with their long strides. The sounds of Old Gregory’s incomprehensible cursing faded away behind them.
Willie was a good hundred yards ahead of Brock. He rode one of the fastest geeries from the settlement—it had even won races on several occasions, with Willie as the rider. Brock was too heavy for the long thin legs of the quicker birds. He had always been too big. His mother never failed to remind him that he wasn’t only born twelve pounds, but a heavy twelve pounds. Dense as a brick and hard as a rock.
The settlement spanned over thirty miles, bordered on one side by the Gemini River and by a rocky ridge on the other side, less than five miles inland. The ridge was nicknamed The Wall and was surrounded by a young forest. Teens hung out on the higher escarpments that offered a view of the settlement, the forest, and the river. They came to The Wall to climb boulders, to escape their daily tasks, or to do the forbidden things teens were drawn to do.
Brock and Willie had climbed to a spot with a view over the agricultural fields. A place where Brock often came to watch the patchwork of crops grow and evolve over the season. A place to appreciate the work done to tame the land into neat geometrical forms.
“Good job,” Brock congratulated his bird, brushing the underbelly feathers with affection. Willie’s geery nudged its head into Brock’s armpit, wanting some love too. Brock called out to his friend, “Hey, Willie, you should show some love to your bird. It saved your ass tonight.”
Willie ignored Brock’s comment. He was already sitting on the flat-topped boulder, trying to remove the cork jammed too deep into the jar. Brock shook his head, laughing at him; this was typical Willie. He had the attention span of a chicken, unable to contain his excitement for a few extra seconds and do things in the proper order. It got him into trouble sometimes—especially when Brock wasn’t around to watch out for him.
Brock patted Willie’s bird and fed them each a handful of feed from the satchel attached to the harness. He set the electronic collars on the birds’ necks to send them home to rejoin the flock. Brock and Willie would walk back to the village later. They didn’t want to risk getting injured. They’d heard plenty of horrible stories of people falling from their birds after having consumed too much drink.
“You really had to wake him up, didn’t you?” said Brock, joining Willie, who was still struggling with the jug’s cork.
“Made it a bit more exciting, no?” said Willie, amused.
“If he says something,” said Brock, “our parents will suspect us.”
“When’s the last time you see anyone talk to Old Gregory?” Willie asked. Brock shrugged. Willie had a point. Old Gregory had become an outcast, especially after all the fuss raised about his production of drink, or as Brock’s father called it The Devil’s Drink. His father was bitter with regards to anything that compromised an honest day of work. The drink was on the top of the list, and it annoyed him that the settlement wasn’t doing more to eradicate the stuff. Willie continued, “Besides, by the time someone talks to him, he will have drowned away any memory he might have of what happened tonight.”
“You’re probably right,” said Brock as Willie snapped a twig he’d been using to pry out the cork. “Here, pass it over.” Using the tip of his pocket knife, Brock easily removed the cork. He sniffed the contents.
“Whoa, that’s potent stuff.” He held the jug over for Willie to take a whiff of the fumes. Willie cringed.
“You think it’s supposed to smell that way?” Willie asked. Willie held out his hand to stop Brock, who was about to take a chug from the jug. “You do realize that Old Gregory had his mouth on that thing.”
Brock considered Willie’s comment and the old man’s scabby mouth, then stuck out his tongue to lick the jug’s opening.
“You're disgusting,” Willie said, laughing.
Brock downed several generous gulps, forcing himself to keep a straight face, despite the scorching of his throat. Wanting to imitate Brock’s bravado, Willie downed two gulps without hesitation.
“Damn,” Willie said, exhaling as if his mouth were on fire. “Wasn’t expecting fermented potato juice to burn a hole through my throat.”
Brock laughed and said, “This was your idea, after all?”
“I did this for you, buddy,” said Willie. “Admit it, you were curious as to why your dad was all worked up about it.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t want to miss my chance of trying it,” said Brock, taking another sip.
“You think they will ban it?” said Willie.
“Probably,” said Brock. “From the way I hear my dad talk with the others, they think the settlement will be a failure if this stuff stays around much longer.”
“Fermented potatoes will destroy the settlement. Oh man, we might be in some serious trouble if that’s all it takes to screw it up.”
“If we all become like Old Gregory because of it, I can see their point,” said Brock. He lifted the jug and cheered, “To Old Gregory!”
They passed the bottle back and forth, the initial harshness turning to comforting warmth. They waited, expecting the magical effects they had heard about to take over their bodies. But all Brock felt was the stirring of thoughts that had been bothering him lately. He wasn’t sure if he could really blame these thoughts on the drink. Perhaps it was simply the quiet night and the starry sky.
“Don’t you find it annoying how they treat us?” Brock said.
“What are you talking about?” asked Willie.
“The adults, telling us how we should think and stuff.”
“You’d rather live up there?” asked Willie. The dark mass of the abandoned space station floated slowly across the sky, its edges visible from the reflected moonlight.
“At least I wouldn’t have to break my back working the fields every day,” Brock said.
Willie turned to him, clearly appalled by Brock’s comments. “You’ve got two hands and two legs, don’t you?”
“Figured you wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re right I don’t understand,” said Willie. “You’re lucky, Brock. You’re one of the strongest and most resilient. Many would kill to be tough like you.”
“Aren’t you curious, Willie? Don’t you want to know where things went wrong in the past?”
“You can get that information, if that’s what you really want. Just ask Quincy or Miss Crummings,” said Willie, finishing the last drop of drink and tossing the jug over the edge to hear the hollow clay jug shatter against a rock.
“I ask them all the time. All they give me is technical details. I want to know what people felt. I want to know why they kept doing the things they did knowing it was going to destroy them.”
“They screwed up. We won’t. That’s all that matters.”
“We can’t understand because we don’t know how it was living in that world. Sure, they’ll tell me how they toasted bread three thousand years ago, but nobody will let me know how they felt about their toasted bread, or why they wanted fancy gadgets to do it.”
Willie laughed.
Brock wasn’t joking, but clearly his friend wasn’t understanding what he was trying to get at. “What I’m saying is, I want to know what really happened and how people felt about it.”
“Drop it, Brock, it doesn’t matter,” said Willie. “We are doing things differently, and The Qintellect will make sure we stay on the right track.”
“We aren’t robots, Willie. You can’t just program us to follow the plan without fully understanding who we are and where we come from. Do this task. Think this way. Make sure to be grateful for your lucky outcome. It just doesn’t work that way.”
“Sure, it does, if you let it,” Willie said. “I think it’s the drink going to your head. You’re just being silly. You’re the hardest working guy I know.”
Doesn’t mean I like doing it, Brock thought. He let the subject drop, irritated by Willie’s lack of understanding. But he should have expected this of him. Willie found security and comfort in doing what was expected of him. He liked following the traditional path. The little risky adventures like tonight gave him just enough sense of freedom to be happy.
The drink had nothing to do with how he felt, Brock was sure of this. His frustrations with the settlement had been bothering him for some time. He wished he could just move on. Be like Willie and the others, be complacent and satisfied with building the settlement according to some plan that was passed down onto them. But he couldn’t shake off his curiosity of the past, what it was like, and why had they failed. He couldn’t just drop these things; he wished he could, but he couldn’t.
“You hear that?” Willie said, looking over his shoulder.
Brock listened quietly but couldn’t hear whatever it was that had gotten Willie’s attention. Willie paced along the boulder’s edge, pausing to listen, shifting to another side.
“Come,” Willie said.
Standing to follow Willie, he felt the drink’s effect, the ground tilting and slanting, making him stagger sideways. He secured himself by placing his hand on boulders and trees. Willie didn’t appear to be affected in any way by the drink.
Willie paused and crouched down, placing his ear next to a hole at the base where two giant boulders leaned against each other. Brock could now hear the sound clearly. Voices. Friendly chatter. It appeared to be coming from the hole, yet the distance of the sound suggested they were much farther.
“Do you have your light?” Willie asked Brock.
Of course he did. At night, Brock always carried his pocketknife and a light globe. Willie took the globe and twisted its upper and lower half to activate it. Lying on his belly, Willie leaned into the hole with the light held at arm’s length.
“You see anything?” Brock whispered.
Willie shook his head. Then he added in a low voice, “But I know they are down there.”
Willie turned around to slide himself in feet first. Brock followed behind him. Willie held up the light as they examined the rocky walls of the cave. It was no bigger than a cabin’s room. Willie pushed against a waist-high boulder that was too heavy to move. He paced around, trying to figure out the source of the approaching voices. They could hear them clearly enough that they could recognize the male and female voices.
“Is that Jane?” Willie asked, whispering.
“I think it is,” Brock said. And he recognized the other voice as Arthur, another teen from their school.
Willie tugged on Brock’s shirt to pull him back into a dark corner. Willie twisted the light globe to turn it off, leaving the cave pitch black. Lights pierced through cracks in the ground less than ten feet from where the boys hid. A flat rock, flush with the ground, was pushed aside to let them out. Jane climbed out first. She reached down to grab a light globe from Arthur.
Jane sniffed at the air in the cave as Arthur climbed out.
“You smell that?” she asked.
“Drink?” Arthur said. With his feet, he pushed the flat rock back over the hole in the ground.
Brock wasn’t sure why they were hiding from them, but he held his breath and felt Willie’s hand resting steady on his back.
“You think someone else came down here?” asked Jane.
“Probably, to hide and drink, that’s all.” Arthur kicked some loose dirt to conceal the cracks in the ground.
“Don’t worry, they won’t find our little secret.”
“We did,” said Jane.
“We got lucky,” Arthur said, scanning the cave but not seeing Willie and Brock, who held their breath.
“Let’s get out of here. We don’t want to attract any more attention than we have to.”
“What do you think is down there?” Willie said, once the voices had faded away. He turned the globe back on.
“There’s only one way to find out,” Brock said with a smirk.
They removed the cover and entered the passageway below. The tunnel’s walls were cut out of the same stone as the cave but with an unnatural polished finish. Willie cautiously advanced, holding the light at arm’s length to guide them forward. The discomfort from the drink that had bothered Brock was replaced with a rush of adrenaline.
“Holy shit…” Willie said, pausing to touch the wall where the rock stopped and where a metal surface began. Beyond that point was a perfectly cylindrical tunnel, made of an unblemished metallic surface that reflected the light like a mirror. “What is this place?” Willie said nervously.
“A mine…or an alien construction?” Brock said. Brock advanced past Willie, taking the light from his friend’s hand.
“Maybe we shouldn’t be in here,” said Willie, who remained stiffly behind.
“Don’t worry,” said Brock, “Jane and Arthur made it out just fine, didn’t they?” Brock continued beyond a curvature in the tunnel, out of Willie’s sight.
“Come see this,” Brock called out. “They left their things.”
Willie joined Brock to find the tunnel blocked shut by a barrier consisting of two metal panels. The center seam showed damage from failed attempts at trying to open it. The tools left behind by Jane and Arthur included a crowbar and an ax. Brock grabbed the crowbar and jammed it between the panels to try to pry it apart.
“What are you doing?” asked Willie.
“What does it look like I’m doing,” said Brock. “Don’t you want to find out what’s beyond this barrier?”
Brock pushed his whole body against the crowbar, but nothing moved. He stopped to run his fingers along the seam where the panels entered the tunnel’s wall, trying to understand the mechanism and how it could be forced open.
“I’m not feeling so well,” said Willie. “I think we should get the hell out of here.”
Brock scoffed at Willie’s sudden wimpiness. He was a brave and adventurous boy as long as things stayed familiar to him. He could break into Old Gregory’s house to steal drink only because he’d known the man since he was a boy. At the mysterious he recoiled like a sissy, fearing the unknown like children fear the dark.
“Can we go now?” Willie insisted.
Brock agreed, seeing Willie’s ashen face, and not wanting him to puke in the tunnel. He’d return another time, sober and without his friend.
Comments ()