Freefall Read online

  His fists clenched, the old Styx walked slowly down the short row, stopping as he came to the last man, who happened to be the veteran. He turned fully to him and, with their faces separated by mere inches, the old Styx held the position for several seconds before dropping his eyes to the man’s battle tunic. Three short cotton threads of different colors protruded from the material just above the veteran’s breast pocket. These bright threads were decorations for acts of bravery — the Styx equivalent to Topsoiler medals. The old Styx closed his gloved fingers on them, tearing them out and then flinging them in the veteran’s face.

  The veteran didn’t blink, didn’t show the slightest reaction.

  The old Styx stepped back, then gestured toward the Pore as casually as if he was waving away a bothersome fly. The three soldiers broke from formation. They leaned their rifles against each other in a pyramid. Then they unbuckled their bulky belt kits and deposited them in a neat pile before the rifles. With no further command from the old Styx, they trooped in single file to the edge of the Pore and, one after another, stepped straight into it. None gave as much as a cry. And none of their comrades in the area stopped what they were doing to watch as the three soldiers pitched down into the abyss. “Rough justice,” Cox said.

  “We demand nothing less than excellence,” the old Styx replied. “They failed. They were no use to us any longer.”

  “You know, the girls might just ‘ave survived,” Cox ventured.

  The old Styx turned to give Cox his full attention. “That’s right — your people really believe a man fell down there and lived, don’t they?”

  “They’re not my people,” Cox grumbled uncomfortably.

  “Some myth about a glorious Garden of Eden waiting at the bottom,” the old Styx said playfully.

  “Load of guff,” Cox mumbled, and began to cough.

  “You’ve never thought of giving it a try yourself?” The old Styx didn’t wait for an answer, clapping his gloved hands together as he swung around to his young assistant. “Send a detachment to the Bunker to extract samples of the Dominion virus from the corpses there. If we can reculture it, we can keep the plan on track.” He cocked his head and smiled evilly at Cox. “Wouldn’t want the Topsoilers to miss their day of reckoning, now, would we?”

  At this Cox exploded with a cackling laugh, spraying milky spittle into the air.

  Chester refused to allow himself even a second’s rest. Whatever it was that had him in its grip, it felt oily next to his skin, and as he continued to struggle, he became all the more certain it was the source of the foul stench. While he was straining to get his second arm out, his other shoulder abruptly came free, and then all of a sudden the top half of his torso pulled clear. He roared in triumph as he sat up with a loud sucking sound.

  He quickly felt around in the pitch black. He was completely hemmed in by the rubbery substance, and he found he could just reach the very top, where it seemed to level off. He tore off small strips from the sides around him — it was fibrous and greasy to the touch, and he hadn’t the faintest idea what it was. But whatever it was, it seemed to have absorbed the impact of his fall down the Pore. Crazy as the idea appeared, it was probably the reason he was alive now.

  “No way!” he said, dismissing the notion. It was just too far-fetched — there must be another explanation.

  The lantern that had been clipped onto his jacket was nowhere to be found, so he quickly checked through all his pockets for his spare luminescent orbs.

  “Blast it!” he exclaimed as he discovered his hip pocket torn and the contents gone, the orbs with them.

  Talking rapidly to himself to keep his spirits up, he attempted to get to his feet. “Oh, give me a break!” he wailed. His legs were still firmly wedged in the spongy material and he couldn’t stand.

  But the gummy substance wasn’t the only thing holding him in place.

  “What’s this?” he said as he discovered the rope tied around his waist. It was Elliott’s rope; they’d used it to daisy-chain themselves together at the top of the Pore. Now it was restricting his movements — to his left and right it was firmly set in the spongy material. Without the use of a knife, he had no option but to attempt to unpick the knot. Drenched in the oily fluid, his hands kept slipping off the equally saturated rope, making the task difficult.

  But with much fumbling and cursing, he eventually managed to undo the knot, then enlarge the loop around himself. “At last!” he bellowed and, accompanied by a sound like someone finishing a drink through a straw, he extricated his legs. One of his boots was left behind, stuck solid in the material. He had to use both hands to tug it out, putting it back on before he scrambled up.

  It was at that point he realized how much every part of his body hurt — as if he’d just finished the toughest rugby match of his life, perhaps against a squad of particularly belligerent gorillas. “Ow!” he complained as he rubbed his arms and legs, also finding that there were rope burns around his neck and on his hands. With a loud groan he stretched his back, peering up above to try to make out where he had fallen from. The strangest thing was that, after the start of the fall, when the air had been rushing against his face so hard he could hardly breathe, he didn’t really remember very much until Bartleby had brought him to by nuzzling his ankle.

  “Where am I?” he said repeatedly, remaining in the trench. He noticed a couple of areas of very dim illumination, and although he didn’t know what was causing them, the relief from the darkness made him feel slightly better. His eyes adjusted further, until he could also vaguely make out Bartleby’s fleeting silhouette as the cat circled around him like a prowling jaguar.

  “Elliott!” Chester called. “Are you there, Elliott?”

  He noticed that, as he shouted, there was a definite echo coming from his left, but nothing at all from his right. He yelled several more times, each time waiting for a response. “Elliott, can you hear me? Will! Hello, Will! Are you there?” But no one answered.

  He told himself he couldn’t stand there all day, simply shouting. He realized that one of the points of illumination was in fact coming from quite close by and made up his mind to try to reach it. He clawed himself out of his pit. Because he was soaked in the slippery fluid, he didn’t risk getting to his feet, but kept on all fours as he moved over the springy surface. He noticed something else as he went: He felt strangely buoyant, as if he was floating in water. Wondering if this was because the knocks to his head had made him a little dizzy, he told himself to concentrate on the job at hand.

  He inched forward with small, deliberate movements, his fingers extended toward the light. Then the glow seemed to catch the underside of his outstretched palm — and he realized it was coming from something embedded deep in the rubbery material. He rolled up his sleeve and stuck his arm into the hole to retrieve it.

  “Yuck!” he said as he pried out the light, his arm coated in the unctuous liquid. It was a Styx lantern. He didn’t know if it had been his or had belonged to one of the others, but that didn’t matter right now. He held up the lantern to assess his surroundings, his confidence building to the point where he decided to get to his feet.

  He found he was on a grayish surface — it wasn’t smooth by any means, but striated and pitted, with a texture somewhat akin to elephant hide. His light revealed that there were other things stuck in it, varying from small pebbles to substantial chunks of rock. They had evidently hit the material with some force and penetrated it, just as he had.

  He lifted the lantern higher and saw that the ground stretched away on all sides in a gently undulating plateau. Treading carefully so as not to lose his footing, Chester went back to his hole to inspect it more closely. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and chuckled in amazement. The light revealed a perfect outline of himself, sunk deep into the surface of the material. It brought to mind the Saturday morning cartoon with the unfortunate coyote that always seemed to end up falling from great heights and leaving a coyote-shaped impression when it hit th
e canyon floor. Here was a real-life Chester-shaped version! The cartoon didn’t seem quite so funny anymore.

  Muttering with disbelief, he jumped back into the hole to retrieve his rucksack, which took quite some doing. Once he’d freed it, he hoisted it onto his back and scrambled from the hole. Then he bent to lift the rope. “Left or right?” he asked himself, looking at the opposite lengths of the rope, which disappeared into the darkness. Picking a direction at random and steeling himself for what he might find, he began to follow the rope, heaving it out of the rubbery surface as he went.

  He’d gone about thirty feet when the rope suddenly came away in his hands, and he tumbled back into a sitting position. Grateful that the subterranean rubberized mat had absorbed his fall, he got to his feet again and examined the end of the rope. It was frayed as if it had been cut. Despite this, he was able to follow the line it had left, and soon came to a deep impression in the ground. He sidestepped around the shape, playing his light into it.

  It certainly looked as if someone had been there, but the outline wasn’t as perfect as his, as if whoever had made it had landed on their side. “Will! Elliott!” he called out again. There was still no reply, but Bartleby suddenly reappeared, fixing Chester with his big unwinking eyes. “What is it? What do you want?” Chester growled impatiently at him. The cat slowly turned to face the opposite direction and, with his body low to the ground, began to creep forward. “You want me to come with you — is that it?” Chester asked, realizing that Bartleby was behaving precisely as if he was stalking something.

  He followed the cat until they reached a vertical surface — a wall of the gray rubbery material down which water ran in rivulets. “Where now?” he demanded, beginning to think that the cat might be taking him on a wild-goose chase. Chester was reluctant to wander too far from the embedded rope and get himself lost, but he knew that sooner or later he might have to bite the bullet and explore the whole area.

  Bartleby, his skeletal tail sticking out behind him, was pointing his snout at what appeared to be a gap in the wall. Water was splattering down over the opening in a continuous shower. “Inside there?” Chester asked as he tried to shine the Styx lantern through the water. In answer, Bartleby stepped through the streaming sheet, and Chester followed.

  He found himself in some sort of cave. Bartleby wasn’t the only one inside it. Huddled over and surrounded by discarded sheets of paper, someone else was sitting there.

  “Will!” Chester gasped, almost unable to talk, he was so relieved that his friend had made it through.

  Will raised his head, relaxing his fingers, which had been tightly clenched around a luminescent orb, and allowing the light to dapple his face. He said nothing, staring dumbly at Chester.

  “Will?” Chester repeated. Alarmed by his friend’s silence, he squatted down beside him. “Are you hurt?”

  Will simply continued to stare at him. Then he ran a hand through his white hair, which was slick with oil, and grimaced and blinked one eye shut as if it was too much effort to speak.

  “What’s wrong? Talk to me, Will!”

  “Yeah, I’m all right. Considering,” Will eventually answered in a monotone voice. “Other than I’ve got a blinder of a headache and my legs hurt like mad. And my ears keep popping.” He swallowed several times. “Must be the difference in pressure.”

  “Mine, too,” Chester said, then realized how unimportant it was at that very moment. “But, Will, how long have you been in here?”

  “Dunno,” Will shrugged.

  “But, why … what … you …,” Chester spluttered, his words tumbling into one another. “Will, we made it!” he burst out, laughing. “We actually made it!”

  “Looks that way,” his friend replied flatly, pressing his lips together.

  “What is wrong with you?” Chester demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Will mumbled. “I really don’t know what’s wrong, or what’s right, not anymore.”

  “What do you mean?” Chester said.

  “I thought I was going to see my dad again.” Will bowed his head as he answered. “All the time all those terrible things were happening to us, one hope kept me going…. I really believed that I’d be back with my dad.” He held up a grimy-looking Mickey Mouse toothbrush. “But that dream’s gone now. He’s dead, and all that he’s left behind is this stupid toothbrush he nicked from me … and the wacko stuff he was writing in his journal.”

  Will selected a damp piece of paper and read a sentence scrawled over it. “‘A “second sun” … in the center of the earth?’ What does that mean?” He sighed heavily. “It doesn’t even make sense.”

  Then he spoke in barely a whisper.

  “And Cal …” Will shook with an involuntary sob. “It was my fault he died. I should have done something to save him. I should have given myself up to Rebecca….” He clicked his tongue against his teeth, correcting himself. “… to the Rebeccas.”

  He raised his head, his lackluster gaze resting on Chester. “Every time I shut my eyes, all I see are her two faces … like they’re pressing into my eyelids, into the darkness itself … two vile, nasty faces, ranting and shouting at me. I can’t seem to get them out of here,” he said, slapping his forehead with some force. “Oh, that hurt,” he groaned. “Why did I do that?”

  “But —” Chester began.

  “We might as well just pack it in. What’s the point?” Will interrupted him. “Don’t you remember what the Rebeccas were saying about the Dominion plot? We can’t do a thing to stop them from letting the virus loose on the surface, not from down here.” With great ceremony, he dropped the Mickey Mouse toothbrush into a greasy-looking puddle, as if he was drowning the crudely painted rodent that composed its handle. “What’s the point?” he repeated.

  Chester was quickly losing his cool. “The point is, we’re here and we’re together and we showed those evil cows. It’s like … it’s like …” He floundered for a second as he tried to express himself. “It’s like in a video game when you get a respawn … you know, when you get another go. We’ve been given a second chance to try to stop the Rebecca twins and save all those lives on the surface.” He plucked the toothbrush out of the puddle and, shaking the water from it, handed it back to Will. “The point is, we made it, we’re still alive, for God’s sake.”

  “Biggish deal,” Will muttered.

  “Of course it’s a big deal!” Chester shook his friend by the shoulder. “C’mon, Will, you’re the one who always kept us all going, dragging us after you, the loopy one who —” Chester paused to draw a quick breath in his excited state “— who always had to see what was around the next corner. Remember?”

  “Isn’t that what got us into this mess in the first place?” Will responded.

  Chester made a noise halfway between a “hmm” and a “yes,” then shook his head vigorously. “And I want you to know …” Chester’s voice quivered into nothing as he averted his eyes and fidgeted with a piece of rock by his boot. “Will … I was such an idiot.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Will replied.

  “Yes, it does. I was acting like a prize muppet…. I got so fed up with everything … with you.” Then Chester’s voice became steady again. “I said a lot of stuff I didn’t mean. And now I’m asking you to do your exploring, and I promise I’ll never, ever complain again. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s OK,” Will mumbled, a little embarrassed.

  “Just do what you do best … find us a way out of here,” Chester urged him.

  “I’ll try,” Will said.

  Chester fixed him with a look. “I’m counting on it, Will. All those people on the surface are, too. Don’t forget, my mum and dad are up there. I don’t want them to get the virus and die.”

  “No, of course not,” Will replied immediately as Chester’s mention of his parents brought the situation into sharp focus for him. Will knew how much his friend loved them, and their fates and those of many hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of people
might be sealed if the Styx plot went ahead.

  “Come on then, partner,” Chester urged, offering Will a hand to help him up. Together they stepped through the waterfall and out onto the rubbery surface.

  “Chester,” Will said, becoming more like his old self, “there’s something you should know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Notice anything weird about this place?” Will asked, giving his friend a quizzical glance.

  Wondering where to start, Chester shook his head, his mane of curly, oil-drenched hair whipping around his face and a strand catching in his mouth. He plucked it out immediately with a look of disgust and spat several times. “No, other than that this stuff we landed in smells, and tastes, unbelievably awful.”

  “My guess is that we’re on a dirty great fungus,” Will went on. “We’ve ended up on some sort of ledge of the stuff — it must be sticking out into the Pore. I saw something like this once on television — there was a monster fungus in America that stretched for more than a thousand miles underground.”

  “Is that what you wanted to —?”

  “Nope,” Will interrupted. “This is the interesting thing. Watch carefully.” The luminescent orb was in the palm of his hand, and he casually tossed it a few feet into the air. Chester looked on with stunned amazement as it seemed to float back down to Will’s hand again. It was as if he was witnessing the scene in slow motion.

  “Hey, how’d you do that?”

  “You have a go,” Will said, passing the orb over to Chester. “But don’t throw it too hard or you’ll lose it.”

  Chester did as Will suggested, lobbing it upward. In the event, he did apply too much force, and the orb shot some fifty feet, illuminating what appeared to be another fungal outcrop above them, before it floated eerily down again, the light playing on their upturned faces.

  “How —?” Chester gasped, his eyes wide with amazement.