Bedrock
Star awoke in complete darkness. Opening her eyes was exactly the same as keeping them closed. She felt the embers of a still warm fire nearby, but no light came from them. Star realized that when they had eaten jar after jar of the shelved supplies total fatigue had come over all of them.
She pawed around the floor close to her with her fingers until they ran across the remains of one of the torches. Carefully, she unwrapped cloth from the remaining dry pine needles. Making a small stack of them she took out her own flint piece and struck it against the steel of her flimsy belt buckle. Small pieces of needle glowed deep red before a flame appeared. With that small light Star spotted the pile of label papers Tal and Sol had torn from nearby jars and bottles of water. She fed the blaze until light filled the room.
One after another of the children came awake. All moved to join her at the small fire, some reaching for more of the wonderfully nourishing fruits. Star was relieved that there were no complaints of stomachaches or other symptoms. It appeared that the food was edible. It might not have the nutrients necessary to sustain them over a long period of time, but it did provide sufficient energy.
“What now?” Wren asked. “We can’t keep this fire going very long. It’s already beginning to feel like the air’s old and stuffy.”
Star sighed to herself, quietly. The inventory would have to wait. Wren was correct in his assessment, as she had felt the same way about the air when she had first awakened. They had to have more air and that need took precedence over everything else.
One wall was covered in painted metal, but not quite all of it. It hadn’t been noticeable when they had fallen from the vent earlier, as it was of a color very close to that of the bare concrete walls nearby. Star moved close to the strange surface. She noted that it was also the only wall without shelves stacked against it. When her face was inches away she saw that there was a very thin crack running vertically up and down the metal.
“Wren, I think this is a door of some sort. I don’t see any way to open it though, and we don’t know what might be on the other side.” She poked her fingernail into the tight crack. Tal and Sol joined her in exploring the surface of the metal panels.
“There are little doors,” Sol pointed out. “Down here. Little doors in the big doors. Play doors,” the child went on. “On my side too. A little door for you Sol, and a little door for me,” the girl said, laughing to her small constant companion.
Star knelt down near Sol’s feet to examine the ‘small door,’ which was about the two spread hands wide and tall. She took out the clippers she’d saved, and opened the sharp file end. It fit into the tight crack of the panel. Twisting slowly, the panel began to give. Star twisted harder. The panel snapped open, swung on two concealed hinges and banged gently against the heavier metal of the door.
She peered inside. A very solid looking lever was set deep inside the space behind the door. The lever was pushed almost to the back of the rectangular box-like area. Star moved to open the door on Tal’s side. It snapped open just like the other, and inside was an identical lever.
“I think that’s how the big doors open, “ she said, to everyone in the room.
“Wren, you pull on Sol’s lever while I pull on this one,” she instructed, grabbing the lever awkwardly with both hands. She and Wren planted their knees against and prepared to pull with all their might.
“Sure we want to do this, Star,” the boy asked, twisting his head to look her in the eyes.
“No air left in here. We’ve been lucky so far. Let’s hope we still are. Pull,” she ordered.
The levers did not take as much effort pull as either of them thought. Both pulled and then rocked backward as the levers pulled all the way out to the very edge of the openings. A linking series of mechanical movements seemed to resound throughout the room. The big doors slowly split down the center. The small crack almost too narrow to put a fingernail into became an opening larger than a balled fist. When it had grown to the width of a forearm the doors stopped moving.
Star peered into the ‘V’ shaped crack. She could see locking bars barely sticking out from the sides of the doors. The doors themselves were thick beyond belief. Star pulled on the outside edge of one of the doors but nothing moved.
“Come on everyone. We have to pull this open,” she ordered.
All the kids grabbed the edges of both doors. Sol fit right into the wedge of an opening. She pushed with both little arms. Very slowly the doors opened until there was room for one of them to fit through the space. Star noted that both doors were linked because they moved together or not at all. She’d never seen anything like them before. A shiver ran up and down her back. She’d been exposed to TWB materials all of her life, but nothing had been anything like the doors. They were obvious artifacts of a technology so far beyond that of the Collected Peoples that it was hard to imagine.
“Enormous,” Wren gushed, in wonder. They all stared through the big crack between the doors. It was a black crack, and it did not lead to an outside that was experiencing nighttime. There was no freshness to the air. The opening through the doors led to another room Star guessed.
“We need torches again,” she said to the assemblage of children. Get the strips we used for climbing and wrap the paper tightly with them. Those won’t be very good torches but we should be able to see what’s on the other side.”
The fire was almost out again by the time they had the flimsy torches burning. She turned to the doors, holding one of them when she noted that Tal and Sol were not in the room.
“Tal, where are you?” she asked into the crack, her voice a demanding deep whisper. “Sol,” she demanded.
“We’re in here,” Tal yelled back. “You can’t see us but we can see you.”The two six-year-olds laughed together in obvious glee.
Star breathed in and out deeply, and then proceeded through the opening between the doors. It was a squeeze, but she got through. She wondered whether the doors had been able to open farther back when they’d been built, but she couldn’t’ hold the thought. The sight in front of her was too grand.
She tried to scold Tal and Sol for their rashness in going through the opening first, but no words would form in her mouth. The small torch, soon joined by those of Wren, and the other children behind her, illuminated some kind of great station. It was a rail station. There were trains on rails, with tunnels leading form the station in every direction. All the children stood in awe. They had heard of trains at the orphanage, and the tracks that used to crisscross what was called the continent.
They all stood for many minutes, staring in awe at the greatest collection of TWB materials imaginable.
“I thought they’d be bigger. The trains,” Star stated. “But they’re small, like they were made for us, not adults,” she finished, the torch burning down near her fingers.
“I don’t know,” Wren answered her. “Maybe the teachers had never seen a train. Not that it matters. The trains ran on some kind of liquid that hasn’t been made in many years.”
“Not that it’d matter,” Star said, flatly. “The Collected People’s would never allow any of the them to run again. It must have been wonderful. Where do you think the tunnels all go?” Her torch finally burned down to the flesh of her fingers.Tossing the burned out husk onto the tracks in front of her, she scrounged around for something else to burn. A pile of wood in a corner not far from the doors caught her eye.
“Let’s light this wood, Wren,” she indicated to the boy still standing and staring, like all the children except Tal and Sol. Both of them had already climbed into one of the engines sitting on a nearby track.
“There’s no way we’re going to burn up all the air in this place,” she commented as he transferred his torch to her hand. He stared at the ceiling high above.
“From the outside it looked like a big hill, covered with trees,” he said to Star.
“Let’s hope that Sly and his band believes that. If they find the end of one of those tunnels we have no place to go.
“They won’t,” a deep voice from above their heads said.
Star froze, her gazing having fastened upon a stranger descending down upon them.
“And who might you lads and be?” the voice inquired.
It was a man, Star noted. The other children were also deathly still as a possible new threat climbed down from a spidery ladder, barely visible, built into the concrete dome wall.
The man was not really a man at all, Star observed, once he was standing on the abutment none of them had moved from, with the exception of Tal and Sol who’d wisely disappeared from view and gone silent. Although a foot taller than Star, the boy was almost as young. His deep voice, however, made him sound like he was an older adult.
“You got the door open! How did you do that? I’ve been working on it for a year.” The boy stepped over to the crack they’d all squeezed through. Star noted the deep scratches and worn exterior of the steel door’s surface.
“You’d never get through those things with anything other than TWB explosives. Who are you and what do you want,” she asked, her voice flat and defensive.
They faced one another. The boy looked from child to child.
“You can tell those little one’s to come over, if you want. They’re in that train over there,” he pointed after he was done speaking.
Star said nothing, feeling very uncomfortable. The boy was wearing wonderful looking clothing and real shoes, not the pasted together sandal things common to everyone at the orphanage. TWB clothes, she realized.
“What State do you belong to? What tribe? Who are your people that they let you wear that stuff? And where did you get it and what are you doing here? She stopped talking when she realized that she was babbling one question after another without giving the stranger any time to answer.
“My name’s Jameson. Named after the whiskey,” he replied, not answering any of her questions.
Star stared at the boy blankly, saying nothing. The other children waited without moving or talking either.
“You know, the Irish Whiskey?” he said to her, his tone indicating exasperation. He shook his head after getting no reaction. “Who are you people and what are you doing in my secret place?” he went on, spreading his arms to take them all in.
Tal and Sol climbed up from the tracks located a few feet below the concrete abutment the rest of them were standing on. Each gripped one of Star’s hands. They stared at the stranger intently.
“Cute kids,” Jameson observed, smiling at the two small children. Tal and Sol did not smile back.
“It’s okay, guys. This one looks harmless,” she assured them, disengaging her hands.
“Harmless? Harmless? I’m anything but harmless,” the boy stated, raising his voice in real protest. “I’ve got more stuff than you can imagine. I’ve got a real gun with real ammunition.”
Star literally took a step backward. The children collectively breathed inward all at once. Guns were among the most forbidden of all objects from the before times. Only religious leaders and certain designated members of some tribes were allowed to have them, and then only for preservation of history purposes.
The bow and arrow was the only true throwing weapon used throughout the Collected Peoples.
The boy turned to push his body through the huge open doors they had all come through.
“Is there food in there? Food is what I don’t have. I know it’s in there,” he called back through the opening, once he was inside. They could hear him pawing around in the dark, as the fire’s light did not extend far into storeroom. He returned with a jar of the fruit. It was one of the jars the six year old’s had peeled the label off to feed their original fire.
“This is food. I just know it,” Jameson murmured, working to force the rusted screw cap.
Star walked over to him, eased the container from his hands, then leaned over and quickly tapped the bottom of the glass on the concrete. A round piece of it fell with a clink. She gave the fruit back to the boy, upside down.
Jameson frowned at her, and then tipped the jar up and swiftly ate all of its contents.
“Oh gosh,” he intoned, neatly cleaning his mouth off with one wipe of his beautiful long sleeve shirt.
Star wanted to reach over and caress the material, but she restrained herself.
A loud clang sounded from way above their heads.
“What the hell?” Jameson asked, looking upward. “More of your group still out there?” he asked.
Star noted the boy’s lack of fear or real interest in the loud sound. “No. They’re a different really a bad group. We came down the vent pipe to escape them. I think the little ones would already be dead if they’d caught us in the open.
If they get in we’re in real trouble.” She stared fearfully upward while she talked. Tal and Sol had once more physically attached themselves to her.—James Strauss
