"Yeah, oops! That's great! Just great!" Chester gulped as they both took a hasty step backward. "Look at what you've done!"
As the cloud settled, Will peered shamefacedly at the small mound of bones and grayish ash before him — it resembled a pile of old branches and twigs left over from a bonfire. The body had simply disintegrated.
"Sorry," he said to it. With a shiver, he realized he still had the bracelet in his fingers; he dropped it on top of the heap.
Any thoughts of taking pictures now abandoned, Will squatted down by his pack to put away his camera. He had just secured the side pocket when he noticed he'd picked up some dust on his hands in the process. Right away he began to inspect the ground on which he and Chester now stood. Making a face, Will quickly stood up and wiped his hands on his pants.
They were treading on several inches of dust and bone fragments from decomposed cadavers.
They were tramping in the remains of many dead bodies.
"Let's go back a bit," Will suggested, not wanting to upset Chester even more. "Away from these."
"Works for me," Chester answered gratefully, without inquiring why. "This is all way creepy."
They both stepped back a distance, pausing as Will regarded the silent ranks against the walls.
"Thousands of them must be buried here. Generations," he said thoughtfully.
"We should really—"
Chester stopped in mid-sentence, and Will reluctantly tore his eyes from the mummified corpses to focus on his friend's anxious face.
"Did you see where Cal went?" Chester asked.
"No," Will said, immediately concerned.
They raced back into the central chamber, paused to peer into its corners, then edged around so they could see the far end, past the flame, which once again was beginning to hiss loudly and stretch its wispy apex toward the roof.
"There he is!" Will exclaimed in relief as he spotted the lone figure making its way determinedly into a distant corner. "Why does he never stay put?"
"You know, I've only known your brother for… what… forty-eight hours, and I have to tell you I've already had enough of him," Chester complained, watching Will's reaction carefully to see if he was offended.
But Will didn't seem to mind in the slightest.
"Maybe we could tether him to something?" Chester smiled wryly.
Will hesitated for a second. "Look, we'd better go after him. He must have found something… maybe another way out," he said, starting after his brother. Chester glanced sidelong into the chamber containing the massed ranks of bodies. "Good idea," he muttered and, giving an involuntary groan, took off after Will.
They ran at a trot, giving the flame a wide berth as it peaked at its full height again and radiated its intense heat. They could just about see Cal as he left the farthermost reaches of the central chamber and passed under a large, roughly hewn archway. They followed him through this and found themselves on an area of ground the size of a soccer field, with a high canopy above it. Cal had his back to them and was clearly looking at something.
"You can't keep running off by yourself," Will reprimanded him.
"It's a river," Cal said, oblivious to his brother's irritation.
Before them was a broad channel, the water sweeping quickly past and throwing up a fine, warm spray. They could feel it on their faces even from the bank.
"Hey! Look there!" Cal directed Will and Chester.
Jutting out over the water was a pier some sixty feet in length. It was constructed from rusting metal girders, which looked irregular and handmade. Although it didn't appear to be well built, the pier felt solid enough underfoot. They didn't hesitate to go to the very end, where a circular platform edged with a railing fashioned from odd pieces of metal was suspended.
As their lights, which barely reached across to the opposite side of the river, picked out the white flecks of spume in the otherwise unbroken sheet of speeding black water, their minds played tricks on them and they felt as if they were racing along. Occasional splashes drenched them as the fast-flowing water dashed against the stanchions on the platform's underside.
Cal leaned forward over the railing as he spoke.
"Can't see the bank, or…" he began.
"Careful," Will warned him. "Don't fall in."
"…or anywhere to cross it," he finished.
"No!" Chester immediately spoke out. "I, for one, am not putting a foot anywhere near that. The current looks really strong."
Nobody disagreed, and the three of them stood there for a moment, welcoming the warm spray on their faces.
Will shut his eyes and listened to the sound of the water. Behind his calm exterior, he was grappling with his emotions. A part of him said he should be insisting that they cross the river, even though they had no idea how deep it was or what lay on the other side, just to keep forging ahead.
But what was the point? They had no idea where they were going, and there was nowhere they had to be. At this very moment he was deep in the earth's mantle, farther down than anyone from the surface had probably ever been, and why? Because of his father, who, for all he knew, was already dead. Difficult as it was for him, he had to consider the possibility that he might be wasting everyone's time chasing a ghost.
Will felt a light breeze ruffle his hair and opened his eyes. He looked at his friend, Chester, and his brother, Cal, and saw their bright eyes gleaming in their grubby faces, entranced by the vision of the underground river before them. He hadn't ever seen either of them look more alive. Despite all the hardships they had suffered, they appeared to be happy. The doubts fell from his mind, and he felt in control of himself again. He knew it all had to be worth it.
"We're not going to cross this river," he announced. "Let's just go back to the railway track."
"Yes," Chester and Cal both immediately answered.
"Fine. That's decided, then," Will said, nodding to himself as the threesome turned together and walked side by side by side back down the pier.
7
Sarah strolled casually down Main Street, in no particular hurry. She couldn't explain it to herself, but there was something deeply reassuring about returning to the place where she had first broken out to the surface.
It was as if by coming back, she was reaffirming that the specter she'd been running from for so very long now, the Colony hidden down below, really did exist. There'd been occasions in the past when she'd actually wondered if she wasn't just imagining the entire thing, if the whole basis of her life wasn't just some elaborate self-delusion.
It was just after seven in the evening and the interior of the rather uninspiring Victorian building that proclaimed itself to be the Highfield Museum was in darkness. Farther along from the museum, she noticed with some surprise that Clarke Brothers, the greengrocers, appeared to have closed up shop. The shutters, painted with many coats of a treacly pea-green gloss, were firmly sealed. They must have been that way for some time, since a thick crust of fliers covered them, the most prominent advertising some recently reunited boy band and a New Year's used car sale.
Sarah drew to a halt and stared at the shop. For generations, the population of the Colony had relied on the Clarkes for regular consignments of fresh fruit and vegetables. There were other Topsoil suppliers, but the brothers and their forebears had been trusted allies for as long as anyone could remember. Short of the possibility that they had both died, she knew they would have never closed shop, not voluntarily.
She contemplated the sealed shutters of the storefront one last time, then moved on. The closing of Clarke Brothers bore out what the note from the dead mailbox had said: The Colony was subject to a lockdown, and the majority of the above-ground supply links had been severed. It underlined just how far things must have gone down below.