Simoom Rising

Chapter Eleven

Harmony

Oh, I love love stories. They always start off so full of hope, and they keep me occupied, being , incarcerated can be quite boring. I suppose it's my turn now. Well, it's also a love story of sorts.

***

Pit District, Simoom
Four years ago

I knew that lots of people in the pit had dug their own bunkers—grey blizzard shelters—beside their shacks, but I didn't know about the main bunker. Mancy took us to a latrine house by a broken-down shack. It was Omari's, but I didn't know that then. I had never used that latrine because it smelled something awful, besides it was too far down the slope for me. Mancy lifted the plastic sheeting off of one of the waste holes. Only it wasn't a waste hole, but a tunnel with a rope ladder—twisted and old. All the while, I was breathing through my mouth so I didn't have to smell the stink, and I looked down the hole and it was deep and dark, no light and the rope looked frayed. So, I balked. Travers and me didn't want to go down that hole. But, Mancy, gorgeous Mancy, talked us into it. He cracked open some light sticks and put them on a string around our necks. He told me I had to go first, then Travers, then him, cause he had to shut the lid of the hole behind us.

I was still stalling, when he whispered in my ear: "Go on. You can do this. It's simple. Turn around, and swing your leg into the hole, find the first rung with your foot." Then he said, "You want to save your son, don't you?"

'Course he knew exactly what to say to get me to move. The mind link between us started when he grabbed me to haul me off that mattress. It was strong even after only a couple of days. His voice was like simsilk to me.

So, Travers and I climbed that rope ladder down into the darkness, with Mancy whispering us encouragement the whole way down, and it seemed to me the ladder never stopped. It was the galaxy's longest rope ladder. Until finally we touched bottom. It was cool and dank—a relief from the heat at the surface. Low-ceiling passages, walls shored up with bits of plastic and metal sheeting, moved in three directions. I didn't know exactly what I expected, but it wasn't this underground maze. Mancy led us off down one of the passages toward the sound of humming and then we came to this big cavern with this big high ceiling, lit by lights. It wasn't something they had dug out, it was a natural cave in the rock wall of the Pit—Omari had found it years before, when he was digging his grey blizzard shelter. There were bundles everywhere—crates and barrels of food, clothing, machinery, tools, bottled water—water! Brand new. Stuff we hadn't seen since leaving WAVE Corp housing on the Plat more than a year ago. "Holy Shit!" I burst out. "Holy shit!"

There were five people in the room; they were unpacking crates and bins, and they all stopped what they were doing and stared at me and Travers. Then they looked at Mancy like he'd lost his mind and then they all started arguing. They were moving their hands at one another, but no words came out of their mouths. It was like streaming a show with the mute button on. At first, I thought I had gone deaf somehow, but I could still hear the generator humming and the crackle of the electric lights.

Travers tugged on my arm to point out the red dust—we watched it start to lift from all the surfaces and hover in the air. I felt fear, anger and anxiety move through me in waves, coming from these mute people. All these feelings were in the air like energy, and dust swirled with them.

No one had told me outright about mind-links. I had felt stuff before—connections, feelings. I'd seen some pictures and heard some words in my head, specially with Sila when she was so sick at the end, but I hadn't really put two-and-two together, until that first day in the bunker.

I blurted out to them: "Sorry, sorry. We didn't know. We won't say nothing—my kid and me—about all this stuff. We don't care. We just need a place to crash for a while that's all."