Bunker Bird

17. Loo House

We may not see the Engineers, but their watchful eyes are guarding us.

The Manuals of the Bunker, Vol. 1, Verse 30

"The church killed the Engineers?" I shook my head in disbelief. The thought was so bizarre. It didn't make sense. The Manuals taught us how important the Engineers were.

"Yes." Amy took another bite from her carrot and chewed noisily. "'T'was before me mom's time. A fight it was, between the bishop back then and the Engineers. Bishop wanted to have things his way, and the Engineers didn't go with that. So they were snuffed by yer church. A few could flee from the caverns to live in the tunnels. They were me mom's grandparents or something."

"But the Manuals—"

She threw the green of her finished carrot at me. "These manuals of yers were written by the church." Her chewing muffled the words. "Do you think they'd tell ye the truth? Forget it. They're just so much bug shite. Propagander, my mom called it." With that, she rose. "Let's go. We need to be out of here before it gets light."

Without looking back, she crossed the garden and climbed its wall.

I stared after her, my thoughts churning. The bishop protects the Engineers, the Manuals said. The church would not kill them. And the Engineers' realm is the tunnels. Now Amy said the tunnels were their hideaway.

And what was propagander?

I rose and hurried after her.

When I caught up, I seethed with questions. But we had almost reached the city, and I didn't dare raise my voice.

We passed a shed of straw. The path widened, and I recognized the setting. "This way," I whispered.

A row of shrubs stood between the city and the gardens, and we kept to their shadows until we reached a square. On its one side, the painted dwellings gazed out at us from dark, unlit windows. In the pale nightlight, they looked gloomy and forbidding.

A whiff of garbage and latrine wafted from a small stone building on our side of the square—the loo house for those who didn't have their own pits. Heaps of waste leaned against one of its walls.

I knew the place from earlier visits. The city people left their garbage here. It was one of our tasks to collect the stuff here and haul it to the chutes at the other end of the cavern.

My bladder was full. "I need to pee, and that's the loo house," I said, gesturing at the building.

"Have fun." She crossed her arms. "But hurry. No time to rub it."

Digging my brain for a good comeback and drawing a blank, I noticed something moving in the shadows between the houses.

A woman emerged from one of them.

"There's someone in the street." Amy had seen her too and pushed me towards the loo house. She peered around its corner. "She's coming this way. Probably wants to have a crap, too."

There were two stalls here—one for the men, the other for the women.

"Come," I hissed and made for the former, pulling her after me.

The tiny room was crammed with the two of us. We barely had space to close the door. Faint light entered through slits at its top and bottom, illuminating chalked walls and the bench with its back hole.

Footfalls passed outside and entered the next door. Our new neighbor sighed, and then she started to hum. The familiar tune carried through a wide gap above the panel between the stalls.

Amy's shoulder was warm against my chest and her hair right under my nose. I remembered her smell of stale sweat, down in the tunnel, but the water must have washed it away. Instead, a faint fragrance of wet stone tickled my nose, almost drowning in the stink from the latrine.

Water burbled, accompanied by the woman's humming.

Amy turned her face towards me. The light came from behind her and touched the curve of her cheek with a shimmer, but it didn't reveal her features.

A short grunt replaced the humming, and a plop replied from the cesspool below.

An urge to giggle itched my throat. Amy held a hand over her mouth, shaking with silent laughter.

Had our neighbor heard us?

The humming resumed with a gaudy refrain and ended in a rustling sound, followed by the click of the door.

The footfalls passed our own stall and tapered into the distance.

Amy lowered her hand. "Shite."

I grinned. "And pee."

She snickered. "Right." Then she opened our door, breaking the contact between her shoulder and my chest, leaving a tingle there. "Ye're coming?"

"Give me a second alone here." I still had to pee.

When I finally emerged, I found her leaning against the wall, watching me with a smirk or smile on her lips.

I smiled back.

Irritation flushed merriment from her face. "What are you grinning at?"

"Nothing." I washed my hands at the faucet outside, and then I drank.

She joined me. "Hey, don't drink it all."

"Wait for your turn." I drank more—the water was but a trickle, weaker than I remembered it. Then I let her at the tap.

While she quenched her thirst, I studied the buildings. Anyone could see us from their windows. "Let's hurry," I said.

"It wasn't me who had to pee." She wiped her mouth, and we set off.

I avoided the concourse and took a side alleyway that ended at a corner of the temple.

The building stood quiet and solid. At its top, the bishop's Tower looked much larger than from afar, strong enough to be actually holding the weight of the cavern's roof. The electric light on the second floor of the temple, the one we had seen from afar, was out now, but a faint glow emanated from the arched ground-floor windows. They had real glass in them—colored pieces held in a framework of metal.

"That's the temple's hall," I whispered. "The candles are in there."

"And what's that light inside?"

"Candlelight, stupid." I peered through the windows, but the thick, irregular glass distorted the view.

She pushed her elbow into my ribs—hard and bony. "I know it's candlelight, stupider. But why do they have it on? Is anyone inside?"

"How should I know? I've never been here at night." I eased my way towards the large double doors at the hall's entrance. Their panels were slate-dark. The handle's cold metal made me shiver as I touched it.