Bunker Bird

15. Chickens

The bishop is the Engineers' minister, and the guards are their stewards. 

They carry the burden of rulership, and their order must be followed.

The Manuals of the Bunker, Vol. 2, Verse 2

Amy blew out the lantern, put it down on the grid, and stepped through the hatch out into the cavern, motioning me to follow. She closed the door behind us.

"How are you going to light your lantern again?" I asked.

"I've got a lighter." She padded one of the many bulging pockets of her jacket. "Now move yer ass."

Lighters were rare and precious, old Engineer technology. Wondering where she had got it—or rather, who was missing one—I followed her into the gloom of the night.

We walked a narrow trail running between the wall of the cavern and the cornfields. The ground under my feet yielded to my steps. The welcome familiarity of its texture and its ripe scent told me it was fresh loam from our compost heaps, so different from hard stone floors and the smell of water and metal that dominated Amy's tunnels.

My wet trousers rubbed my thighs as I hobbled behind her.

When we reached an intersection with a trail cutting into the field, the cavern's ceiling came into view. Higher than ours, vaulted, and almost endless, it was studded with countless lamps. Some of them were dark. The rest cast their soft, grayish nightlight over the corn, not enough to rip into the brooding darkness between the stalks.

I knew the place from numerous visits up here. We had to fetch the garbage, the one they didn't throw down the chutes.

Amy and I were near the lower side of the cavern. The city and the temple were at the other end.

We continued between two fields, reached a wider track, and took a few more turns, all the time heading further into the cavern and towards and the city at its other side. The plants stood deserted and still, but I kept turning my head and watching the dim shapes of cornstalks, rice, and other plants—I couldn't name all of them.

The space between the stems and leaves was rife with shadows. Anyone or anything could hide there.

Ahead, our path ended at the concourse, a central passage leading all the way through the cavern. Its surface was smooth and black, unlike anything we had down below. The Engineers had crafted it, my father had told me.

Amy slowed down before she reached it and stepped closer to a stand of shrubs to her right.

A rustling noise made her jump back.

In a flutter of wings and hysteric cackling, two hens scuttled from the bushes, scampered over the concourse, and dove into a shadowy path on the other side. More clucking, then everything went still again.

"Dammit," Amy hissed. "Bloody critters."

My heart hammered against my ribs, but she looked more scared than me. "Afraid of chickens?" I said, remembering the mocking tone when she had explained about the bats. I couldn't resist teasing her.

She looked back at me. The shadow cast by her hair made her face impossible to read, but her fists and crouched stance yelled anger.

"Just kidding." I held up my hands to stop her from jumping at my throat.

She huffed, turned away from me, and approached the concourse. Staying close to the—now hopefully hen-free—shrubs, we peered along its length.

Same as in our cavern, the ground rose through fields and gardens towards the dwellings at the upper end. But where our patchy plots were hardly a few meters by a few meters each, some of the fields here were larger than all of ours put together. Plants stood tall in many of them, some higher than me. And while we lived in a handful of huts of straw, the city here had houses of painted stone. Even the pale hues of nightlight couldn't subdue their gaudy colors of red, orange, and green.

Yet what, as always, drew my attention most was the temple itself. Hugging the cavern's far wall, the building ruled the city with its sheer size. It had two floors with the temple hall at the ground level and the bishop's private quarters right above it. From its roof, the Holy Tower reached all the way up, merging with the cavern's ceiling.

Some windows of the building glowed with the steady white of electricity.

"Now what?" I whispered. The people here would not welcome strangers intent on stealing their candles and food.

Amy pointed at the concourse. "We can't take this road. Anyone would see us. There's a smaller path on the other side. My..." She hesitated. "Me mum told me about it."

The pain in her voice hurt me. I was tempted to touch her shoulder in comfort, but I doubted she'd appreciate it.

I decided to stick with the facts instead. "She told you about it? You've never been here yourself?"

"Sure, I've been here." She gestured at the road, her hand flat as if about to chop it up with the edge of her palm. For a moment, I was afraid she'd lash at me for doubting her, but then she deflated and dropped her arm. "I've been as far as here. Then, the others told me to wait, the eejits. "They said the city's dangerous. Then, they'd go without me. But me mum... she knew the place well. She was also a woman, and she was here all the time. Robbed the cavern dwellers blind, she did. And she told me all about it." She studied the ground.

So, she'd never actually gone further. I was tempted to mock her for being clueless, but her contrite stance stopped me. "So, where did they go, your people?"

She pointed at the fields on the other side of the concourse. "That way. And that's what we'll do, too. The weak ones hide, the strong ones explore. Just follow me." Without giving me a chance to reply, she peered once more left and right, then she crossed the concourse and made for the shadowy path on the other side, the one chickens had taken.

The track took a turn after less than a minute or so, then it ran parallel to the big street, right towards the city. The ground rose, and we entered an area of small, walled gardens.

I looked for water, wondering how they irrigated them. My throat was dry once more.

Trees grew here. I knew these plants from my earlier visits, but their sheer size—at least twice the height of a man—still awed me. The one closest stretched its dark, leafy arms towards the ceiling as if about to strike me with its huge branches. Next to it stood a shed of piled-up stones.

It looked familiar.

"Wait," I whispered at Amy's back. These weren't just any trees.