The White Rosebush

Chapter 8: Childhood Allies

Chapter 8: Childhood Allies

In my fighting efforts to escape from Alfred and my slightly racist aggravation that I had been manhandled by an American of all people, I hadn’t taken the time to get a decent look at my new surroundings. I was in a network of tunnels that seemed endless and undoubtedly spanned underneath all of London; possibly other cities as well. Whoever had designed this had definitely been either very intelligent or had a lot of free time on their hand to have managed such a feat. When I had first entered, it was all dirt carefully hidden by a large rock, but as we got deeper into it, the terrain changed. It was suddenly made of stone; glossy, smooth, and well-warn stone that covered not only the ground, but the walls and ceiling too. It gave the feeling of a train tunnel, or even a cavern. Alfred noticed my incredulous expression and said in a rather proud voice,

“It’s for support. It isn’t safe to be living in a dirt tunnel, you know.”

“How did you manage this?” I’ll admit I was quite impressed.

“I didn’t," he said dismissively with a wave of his hand, as if the fact that he had nothing to do with it made it unimportant. 

"They who?" I pressed, a tiny bit annoyed.

"That was all Gabrielle’s project. All I know is it took a lot of time. As our divisions in other countries, mostly France, sent us more cement and stones, we’ve slowly added on.” I had no idea who Gabrielle could be, but something told me I’d know soon enough.

“Divisions? What are you, some kind of army?”

“Not quite,” he laughed. I was waiting for him to say more, but apparently he wasn’t going to, so I decided to ask more questions.

“How long is this thing?”

“Most of the passages are right here in London. This is our base, but we have at least two entrances to every town, village, valley, and city in England.”

“Wow.” I really didn’t know what else to say; this tunnel was a marvel. But then a new idea came to my mind. “Why would a bunch of teens need access to every settlement in England?” He looked at me before replying almost painfully,

“I’m afraid I’m not authorized to tell you that.” He looked quite depressed by this fact. I realized that he must be dying to tell me everything, to brag about whatever group he belonged to and all their accomplishments. It was causing him internal turmoil to not answer my persistently cruel questions, which I found slightly humorous for about ten seconds, although I couldn’t forget that he had just saved my life, so I decided to spare him and stop pestering. Instead I continued to take in my spectacular environment.  Probably the most amazing thing about these tunnels was that they were lighted, and quite brightly at that. There were lights every few feet; I couldn’t imagine how many it would take to cover all the tunnels throughout England they claimed to have dug.

Every few minutes, there would be a rectangular block of wood that broke the stone. They were doors that led to all new tunnels that we occasionally passed through. The first time we went through one of the doors, however, it was an enormous shock. Rather than allowing me to enter a new tunnel, a gun barrel was thrust through the open passage and into my face. I leaped back with a startled yelp just as Alfred magically reappeared to coax the gunman away. My heart was racing as I got a good look at the man. He was also young, perhaps a bit older than me, and had features that suggested he was Chinese. He had the obvious Asian face, long black hair tied into a ponytail, brown eyes, and was wearing a brownish-green military suit.

“It’s alright,” Alfred was saying, “she’s with me.” I must have been deathly pale because the boy tuned toward me, bowed his head apologetically, and said,