I had to look away from the lumpy shape lying inside the plastic-shrouded cart. This fungus.
This goddamn fungus.
The cart’s motor grumbled a little louder as I dialed up the speed setting on the remote strapped to my arm, but Beth slept on. At least her brain was fine. There had been fungal breakouts that left the body functional while eroding the mind. It had flourished in the hot damp conditions just before the war broke out, and once the bombs knocked out pharmaceutical production, there were no anti-fungals to keep it in line.
Nuclear winter had saved us from those strains. It probably saved us from the complete ecosystem-breakdown global warming had promised us, too, only we still didn’t know how the environment was coping after planet-wide thermonuclear devastation. We’d sent out expedition after expedition to look for some sign things were turning around, but the news they brought back—the times they actually did come back—was never good.
A line of graffiti on the tunnel wall made me laugh: Don’t forget your sunblock!
“What’s so funny?”
I rushed to Beth’s side. “Hey, you’re awake.”
“Sort of. You laughed? This new hearing aid is pretty good.”
“Graffiti from one of the expeditions. About sunblock.”
The hiss of air in her microphone might have been a laugh. “Just wait. We’ll come back with skin cancer.”
“You morbid bitch.” I rapped my knuckles on the side of her plastic shields. In my hazmat gloves, they didn’t so much knock as gently thump. “Almost to the second airlock now. Gotta keep moving.”
Her cart could only carry so much oxygen and still roll. This little expedition had a definite timeline.
At the airlock, I entered the one-time code in the keypad and made sure the cart went in before me. Once the door closed, I’d have to radio in to the city to get a new one, and the computers running the airlock system were over a hundred-fifty years old. They took their own sweet time, oxygen tanks or no.
I slipped inside as the airlock began cycling shut. The cart’s tires crunched in darkness. I froze. The lights should have turned on at the cart’s movement.
“Henry?”
Beth’s monitor flickered a big blue question mark that cast a submarine light on the floor and walls.
In the blue light, the shreds of hazmat suit all over the floor were barely visible. I forced my feet forward, stepping very carefully. “It’s okay, Beth.”
“What is it? Why is it so dark, and why haven’t you turned on your suit light?”
I made it to her side. She was just a dark shadow inside her fragile little air bubble. “Hey, aren’t you supposed to be resting, instead of backseat driving?”
“What is it?”
“I’m turning on my suit light.” I found the toggle on the side of my helmet and fumbled with it. Joel had made it look so easy back at the Quarantine Sector.
“What is taking you so long?”
“Have you seen this suit?” I snapped. “My fingers are like sausages!”
“At least you have fingers.”
The light snapped on. “I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing for me to say. I just…” I couldn’t bring myself to move, to let my light shine around me. “I’m… I’m scared.”
Her monitor flashed a pink heart at me. “I know.”
I wanted nothing more than to rest my head against the plastic bubble Joel and I had built around Beth’s cart and just listen to her voice with my eyes closed. Getting her here had been hard, but it had kept me from thinking about what we were about to do.
I took a deep breath, even though the triple-filtered air tasted stale and fake, and let myself look at the dead people lying all around us.
“It looks like Expedition 82,” I said. “I can see numbers on the helmets.”
“How many of them are there?”
“It’s hard to tell.” I took a few steps away from the cart, hunching down so the light could play over the ground. “Two, no, three… Their suits were definitely damaged. Probably why the city wouldn’t give them the new key code.” I risked nudging a yellow heap of fabric with my boot. I swallowed my breakfast back down. “There’s a lot of decay, but I don’t see any fungal growth on the remains.”
“None?” Excitement colored her voice.
“None that I can see. They’re pretty mummified after eight months down here.”
“Damnit,” she grumbled. “I wish I could get out and take samples.”
I went back to the cart with its soft light. “They’d never let you back in. You’d be like these bastards—stuck out in the tunnels to die.” I shuddered, just thinking of it. “Now, come on,” I said. “Airlock One is a long ways away.”
“I’m going back to sleep, if that’s okay.” Beth’s voice was barely audible. The adrenaline from our little adventure must have been wearing off.
“Sleep well, sweetie.”
The monitor showed z’s.
Airlock One held no unpleasant surprises.
It hissed shut behind us, and I stood beside the cart, blinking stupidly at the tiny dot of light at the end of the tunnel. It took me a minute to remember to turn off my suit light as we rolled slowly toward daylight—the first daylight of my life.
The tunnel was massive up here, wide enough for four of Beth’s carts to roll side-by-side. It had been a subway tunnel, once upon a time. They’d poured concrete over the rails to help the digging equipment move faster. We came out of the tunnel mouth slowly, our eyes adjusting to the soft sunlight, the rain pattering all around us.
I had only ever read about rain. I held out my hand and caught a droplet. It was so tiny, and yet it hit with surprising force. I hadn’t thought you’d be able to feel the power of its falling, all that momentum building up to drive right into my palm.
My legs went loose and I dropped onto a crumbling concrete platform—the ruins of the old train station—beside the tunnel mouth. It was raining. There was water coming out of the sky because there was a sky and there was a sun and there was air, air everywhere like I could just float away. I grabbed the platform edge and swallowed again and again before I could vomit.
“Is it moving? Is that the sky? Does it move, Henry? Tell me what I’m seeing.”
I forced myself to get up and kneel beside her. “Yes, that’s the sky. It’s not like the pictures because it’s full of clouds, and the clouds are leaking.”
“It’s raining?”
“It’s fucking raining!” I threw back my head so I could see what she saw laying on her back. “And look, oh, wow, Beth, there are trees—oh, God, I’ll have to move the cart because you can’t see from there, but there are trees. You’d probably know what kind. They don’t have any leaves right now, so I think it might be winter.”
“It’ll be spring soon.”
I wanted to wipe the tears out of my eyes, but I couldn’t because of the stupid suit. “We made it. Just like you always said we would. We’re aboveground.”
I could hear her trying not to cry. It was the same trying-not-to-cry sound she’d been making since she was seven and Mrs. Meacham told her she was too old to cry over a scraped knee. That had been the first time I’d kissed her. I told her that day I was going to marry her and make sure she never cried again. She told me she could keep her tears under control herself.
It had taken me eleven years to kiss her again—eleven years of being her best friend, eleven years fighting to catch up with her on the playground, in the classroom, in the labs. Eleven years of watching her fly through the world, as dazzling as Elvis in a spangled jumpsuit. When she finally let me catch up with her, I hadn’t really minded settling for second-best, because she had chosen me and I could kiss her as much as I liked.