XOM-B (30 page)

As I peer across the wide open space, searching for a glint of color, I notice something else. “There’s no antenna.” I look at my friends. It’s clear they’re not sure what I’m talking about. “To send a radio signal like the one Mohr detected requires an antenna, right? A … broadcast tower.”

Harry nods in confirmation. “They’re typically quite tall.”

I continue searching. “When you visited this city before the cap, did you see one?”

“Never.” Harry furrows his brow in thought. “I searched much of the city and the area surrounding it. I never saw a radio tower.”

“And we haven’t passed any,” Luscious adds.

“What is your point?” Heap asks, sounding impatient.

“That this might be the wrong place.” I feel like I’m stating the obvious, but Heap has other things—like our survival—on his mind.

“A radio tower could be several miles away in any direction, connected to the city by a cable.”

“If it’s not—”

Heap cuts me off. “We still need to check beneath the cap.”

“It could be a waste of time,” I say. “And we don’t have much left. Every moment we spend chasing false leads is a step closer to oblivion.”

Heap looks down at me, his body tense.
“We’re checking beneath the cap.”

I flinch internally at what feels like a command from Heap.

“What makes you so sure?” I ask.

“You’ve learned a lot. Become a man. But you don’t know everything.” Heap stands and lifts one leg over the stone wall. He pauses and looks back. “You’ll just have to trust me.” With that, he slides down the hillside to the bottom.

Harry places his hand on my arm. “For what it’s worth, I agree with you.”

While I appreciate Harry’s support, Heap has a valid point. He
has
earned my trust and there are many things I still don’t understand about our world.

Harry follows Heap over the wall, trying to slide down the hill in the same fashion, but his foot strikes a stone and he spills forward. Heap manages to catch him, but the spill has attracted the attention of a nearby, unseen zombie, whose grunts and shuffling feet announce his approach toward the backyard.

I take Luscious’s hand in mine. “Let’s go.” We climb atop the stone wall and leap, sliding down together without incident. Congregated at the bottom, we pause for a moment, listening to a rising din at the top of the hill.

“I fear they heard me,” Harry says.

The lone zombie appears at the top of the wall. His eyes widen briefly as he sees us. A
twang
sounds out, quieter than Heap’s or Harry’s weapon, but still sudden enough to startle me. A hole in the undead’s head appears. His eyes freeze in place. Like a rigid log, the twice-dead man topples forward, over the wall and rolls down the hillside, stopping at our feet.

“What are you waiting for?” Luscious says, charging out onto the flat black city cap, cooling railgun in hand. “They’re coming!”

37.

“It sounds like a giant drum!” Luscious shouts, as we run over the hard, black surface of the capped city.

She’s right. Our charge toward the hatch is almost musical as the fast knocking of Luscious’s, Harry’s and my footfalls are mixed with the heavier thuds of Heap’s.

“Why is it so loud?” I ask.

“It’s just a shell,” Heap replies. “No sound dampeners. No shock absorbers.”

“And no city weighing everything down,” I guess. Also missing is the ambient sound of the city—vehicles, people and machinery.

“I think it’s safe to assume they know we’re present,” Harry says as we approach the hatch. “Both above and below.”

If Heap’s confidence is well-founded,
I think. Part of me—the selfish portion that is tired of running, and fighting, and zombies—hopes we’ll find the old city below devoid of the living, dead and living dead. But the rest of me truly hopes that this is it, that Heap is right and we’ll find the person responsible for the attack on Liberty, maybe with enough time to save what’s left of civilization.

I spot the hatch’s thin outline ahead. “Almost there.”

We slow, which should have changed the tempo of the drum-beat booming from the city cap, but the thunder continues unabated. For a moment, I think the sound is echoing below, resonating through the ruins beneath our feet, but the volume is increasing.

Someone else is beating the drum,
I realize, and spin around.

The horde.

Hundreds of them.

They flow down the hillside like a flood, spilling over each other, clambering with mad hunger.

“Here!” Heap says, stopping by the hatch, which is easy to see up close. He kneels down beside the door’s outline, reaches out through the layer of rainwater and pushes. A circular portion of the door sinks in and slides away, revealing a handle.

“I’ve seen one of these,” Luscious says. “But they used a large machine to open it.”

Heap nods. “They’re not locked. Just really heavy.”

“Your hand won’t fit,” Harry observes, looking over his shoulder at the door, shotgun raised toward the approaching undead mob.

“No,” Heap says and then points at me. “But his will. And I’m not strong enough.”

Despite the oncoming wave of death, Harry and Luscious take a moment to shoot doubt-filled glances in my direction.

Heap stands and draws his weapon. “There isn’t time for doubt, Freeman.” With that, he takes aim and fires, dropping the closest undead. Luscious takes the shot as permission to engage and fires several rails into the mob, each shot cutting holes through several zombies, but only rarely actually striking one in the head. Harry manages to control himself, holding his fire.

While the others continue their losing battle, I bend down, take hold of the handle and pull.

The hatch resists, or perhaps it’s gravity, or both. But it doesn’t open.

“Heap…”
This is impossible.
“I don’t—”

“Open it
now,
” Heap says.

I yank hard, but the door only shudders.

Heap stops firing, turns fully toward me and leans down. He speaks in a harsh whisper. “If you don’t open that door right now, Harry will never paint again. We will never sit on another rooftop and look at the stars. And while you believe in some kind of energy afterlife, or maybe even God, you will never, not ever, feel
her
touch again, or look into her eyes.”

He doesn’t say who “her” is, but he doesn’t have to. I glance to the side, seeing Luscious’s curvy form and her wavy red hair fighting the wind and rain. More than anything in this world I’ve experienced, she is life to me.

My grip tightens. Teeth grind. A surge of power ripples through my body and I pull.

The hatch lifts an inch. Water sloshes through the opening.

I remember her foot on my leg.

The two-foot-thick, solid metal door moves steadily upward.

Her lips on mine.

I shout with exertion, pulling the hatch ever higher. I feel strands of muscle stretch and pop within my arms, but my strength never wavers.

The word
love,
as spoken by her lips, replays in my ears.

I fall back as the weight diminishes and the hatch falls toward me, bouncing to a stop at a 90-degree angle, held in place by Heap. Water roars into the hole.

“In!” Heap shouts, all but shoving Harry and Luscious into a rectangular black hole in the vast city cap. They fall quickly, shouting in surprise. I hear them land a moment later.

Heap is poised by the Hatch, ready to jump through. “Freeman! Hurry!”

The horde is behind him, rushing closer, just seconds away.

I dive forward, sliding over the smooth surface of the cap, slick with water, and slip right over the edge. I land on my back a moment later, having dropped ten feet. A rectangle of light overhead is suddenly blocked out by Heap’s bulk. His giant feet drop down toward me and I roll to the side to avoid being crushed. I look up again in time to see the rectangle shrink to a sliver. Heap has clung to the bottom of the hatch, pulling it down with his girth. A resounding boom echoes around us as the hatch slams shut.

Something strikes my leg and I look down to see a twitching arm, severed from an unlucky undead as the door dropped. I kick it away and scramble to my feet thinking that zombies need to be more careful with their limbs.

Heap’s large hands envelop my shoulders. “How do your arms feel?”

Remembering the snapping feeling in my arms, I move them around, flexing muscles. No pain. No injuries. “Fine,” I say, surprised.

He nods. “Good.”

Harry appears at my side. “How did you do that? The weight of that door! The strength!”

“I don’t know,” I say, and it’s true. I don’t know how someone my size could be stronger than someone like Heap. It doesn’t make any sense.

“Upgrades,” Heap says.

“Upgrades,” Harry repeats, but says the word in a way that makes it seem like he’s actually just said, “Ridiculous.”

It occurs to me that Heap is just guessing. He doesn’t really understand it, either. In fact … “You did know I could open the hatch, right?”

He just looks down at me for a moment.

I raise my eyebrows to let him know I expect a truthful answer.

He shrugs. “I hoped.”

“You
hoped
?” Harry says, sounding outraged. “We could have been killed!”

“I had faith in Councilman Mohr, that he did not exaggerate when he first described you to me. He said you would be the strongest of us.”

“He could have been talking about Freeman’s moral compass,” Luscious says.

“Or his willpower,” Harry adds.

“I was under the impression that he was referring to everything,” Heap explains. “And I knew he was stronger than me.”

Luscious shakes the wetness from her hair and it bounces back to its perfect form. “We’re alive, so thanks, I guess. And, hurray, we can see.”

The observation is so painfully obvious that Heap and I both grunt as we turn our heads up toward the glowing sphere above our heads—a lightbulb, one of many lining the ceiling of the long hallway.

“Are city caps typically powered?” Harry asks.

“I’m not sure,” Heap says. “But I don’t see why they would be.”

“Well, where are we?” Luscious asks.

Heap shakes his head. “I’m not a maintenance worker. It’s an access tunnel. That’s all I know.”

“Then we’ll just have to see where it leads.” I pick a direction and strike out, leading with my railgun.

Despite the overhead lights recessed into the ceiling, the hallway is quite dark as the walls and floor are composed of the same solid black metal as the cap. It seems to suck in light and not let it go. The air in the hall smells old and full of rot, but not like the forest. It’s drier. Brittle.

I walk slowly, trying to stay quiet, though it’s probably unnecessary. The horde, now above us, sounds like thunder as they wander over the cap, perhaps looking for us, or just dumbfounded by our sudden disappearance. Who’s to say what a dead person is thinking, or even if they’re capable of thought beyond violent instinct.

The hallway ends in a staircase. I take the first two steps down and then lean over the rail, looking down. The perfectly square spiral of stairs descends straight down thirty-five flights.

“That’s a long way down,” Harry says, peeking over my shoulder.

Luscious walks past us. “Let’s get started.”

We take the stairs in silence. The path is lit by dim yellow LED lights mounted in the walls at the top of each flight. The rumble of undead feet above fades with each flight until it’s almost unnoticeable. If our unknown adversary is down deep, perhaps our run across the cap went unheard. I decide that to believe such a thing could be dangerous. We’re in enemy territory now. Danger is everywhere, except maybe the staircase. I’ve looked all the way to the bottom and seen no signs of life or anything else.

The door at the bottom is very similar to the hatch that allowed us access to the cap’s interior. It’s a large rectangle, tall enough for Heap to pass through, but nearly seamless. I run my hand over its surface until I detect a subtle circular outline. I push and a handle is revealed, popping out of the smooth door. “Ready?” I ask, gripping the handle.

Heap nods. The others agree. I give the door a tug and it swings open easily and noiselessly. The six-inch-thick door is far lighter than the hatch above and operates smoothly. Expertly hinged.

Light spills into the dark stairwell.

Twin gasps behind me are cut short. I glance back. Heap has clamped his hands over Harry’s and Luscious’s mouths.

I step forward, into the light, and crane my head slowly from one side to the other. I’ve seen the ruins of the Masters’ world, but never like this, never in such pristine condition.

Or with power.

38.

We step through the door, one at a time, staring at what should have been ruins. But there is no rot, no debris, and no sign of past turmoil. Nor are there any signs of life. The streetlights blaze. Many of the buildings glow from within. But there is no movement. No breeze. The massive cap overhead, like a black sky, prevents airflow from the world above. While the city looks almost new, the air tastes old.

“Smells like books,” Harry says.

“Books?” I ask.

Harry turns his head to me, but takes a moment to pull his eyes from the pristine downtown. “Information in text form printed on paper.”

Paper,
I think.
Thin sheets formed of wood pulp, straw or other fibrous material, for writing and printing.
“How inefficient,” I conclude.

“They bound vast quantities of paper into books,” Harry says. “At one time, it was the only form of communicating ideas and history to large numbers of people. There was even a time before books, when all information was passed between people orally.”

This strikes me as less strange for some reason, perhaps because it’s what we’re doing now. “I would like to see a book,” I say.

“Later,” Heap says. The city has him tense and on guard. Luscious, too. “Stay in the shadows and keep an eye out for security cameras—they might be functional.”

“What are we going to do?” I ask.