Borderlands: The Fallen (25 page)

“I dunno unless Bizzy can carry us. You got a jetpack on you?”

“See that fold in the rock there, not much more’n a crack from here? Don’t look like much, do it?” Berl chortled. “Just you wait. Let’s pick up the pace—it’ll be dark soon. Want to get in the pass before dark.”

They trekked onward, and at last, as the half-moon began to rise, they came to the cliffs abutting the glass plain. The cliffs beetled over them, leaning out above the plain as if about to rush it. Bizzy had already climbed the cliff, was poised at the top, looking down at them, his yellow eyes glowing against the deepening night.

The seam in the rock Berl had pointed out appeared to be just that. They came closer, and Berl skipped ahead, and seemed to disappear.

“Berl?” Zac looked up to see Bizzy staring down at him. There was no running off now, even without Berl to watch
him. Because his giant pet was watching. And Bizzy always knew what Berl wanted.

Berl’s head seemed to appear in the wall of stone, jutting out sideways. “Get on in here, boy!” He vanished again.

Zac reached out, touched the stone, and felt his way along it—and suddenly no longer felt the rock under his hands, though he could still see it there in front of him. He stepped through what had seemed like impenetrable rock—but it was just an image. Something shimmered, and then he found he was standing in a shadowy crevice just wide enough for two men, a little light shafting down from overhead.

Berl was there, combat rifle in hand, grinning at him. Zac turned and looked back at the plain—and saw an open entrance, a meter wide, as high as the cliff, the “seam” he’d seen earlier. “Some kind of optical illusion?”

“It’s more’n that, boy. Someone way long ago hid that entrance there. I think it was the ship done it. And I think it did it so it could bring its took-overs up here without anyone seeing where they went.”

“What are took-overs?”

“The Vault had its Guardians—these aliens do it different. Come on, there’s a way up, nice ’n’ smooth. When we get to the top, there’s a cave we can spend the night. We’ll want to go about our ‘fishin’ early in the mornin’. Let’s just hope we don’t run into any took-overs on the way.”

Berl gestured with the rifle and Zac went on ahead. They climbed a ramp, at the widening back of the crevice, that zigzagged upward in short switchbacks, up and up … to the foot of the hollow volcanic cone, and the outer region of the alien debris field.

“We can’t drive up any higher than this?” Cal asked as they stood at the edge of the plain in the moonlight-damaged darkness.

“Nope, not in either vehicle,” Roland said. “The passage is too narrow. Way too steep. Anyway it’ll be stealthier this way. And we’ve definitely got to be stealthy. And I think we oughta go and have a look right now. See what we can see. We’ll be too visible come daylight. May as well use the night to our advantage.”

Rans snorted and complained, “We could fall into a damn crevice or something, in the dark!”

“There’s just enough light,” Roland said patiently. “I think we’ll be all right …”

They were at the foot of a short cliff, maybe forty meters high, below the rugged foothills under the shell of the volcano. A break in the wall opened up in front of them; a tumble of broken rock offered a route up to the top of the cliff. It looked like loose rock, and a dangerous way to go. But it was the most expedient.

“Let’s go!” Cal said. He was excited on several levels. First the possibility existed that he might find his father up on the volcano. Second, the sheer excitement of being at the end of a journey. And then there was the mystery, the alien mystique, nestled in the ancient volcanic cone …

Rans glared at him. Cal could only see his eyes in the uneven light. “We stay here and rest! I’ve got a bum leg—I’m not going to climb that now! We can go up just before dawn. It’ll still be dark.”

Crannigan shook his head. “You’ve lard-assed your way through this whole trip, Veritas! Now you want to
lie around some more! We need to move! We’re burning moonlight!”

“I ain’t going, I tell ya! I haven’t been able to pay for a rebuild of my leg! It hurts like the devil!”

“Oh hell, let’s rest, I could use some too,” Rosco said.

Roland nodded. “We’ll have to move the vehicles out of sight, around that point there,” Roland said. “They’ll attract too much attention if we leave ’em here. Me and Rosco can do that. It’ll take us a half hour or so to walk back. Cal, you help the others set up camp—see there, up the crevice, there’s a shelf of rock. We’ll camp there. But a cold camp—no fires. That was our mistake last time …”

Cal opened his mouth to object—he didn’t want to be left here with Rans, even for a few minutes, without Roland. Some instinct warned him against it.

But he saw Roland looking at him and decided he didn’t want to seem weak.

“Sure, okay,” he said. “I’ll start moving the tents.”

He and Rosco took the camp supplies out of the vehicles, and then Roland and Rosco drove off toward the point where the cliffs thrust out into the plain.

Cal, Crannigan, and Rans—who was carrying as little as possible—toted their gear up the crevice, over the shale and loose rock, toiling in the darkness, sometimes falling and barking their shins.

At last they reached the shelf where they’d take their rest. They set up camp, and then Crannigan said, “I’m gonna climb up, see if I can see anything. I wanna know if any of those weird brain-controlled bastards are hanging around up there. Keep an eye on the kid, Rans, will ya? Roland’ll be back soon.”

Cal snorted. “It’s not like I need anyone to keep an eye on me.”

Crannigan ignored him and started climbing the rocks, vanishing into the darkness above them.

Cal was looking for something to eat in the packs when a big, grimy hand closed around his mouth, clamping down hard. “Hold still, kid,” Rans said, “or I’ll break your neck right now.”

Cal stopped struggling—and bit Rans hard in the hand.

“Ow!”

Then came a thumping crunch, and a big splash of darkness, as Rans hit him hard in the back of the head—and Cal lost consciousness.

He was on his back, moving backward on the slick ground …

Someone was dragging Cal along by the collar. He was no longer at the camp. He was out on the glassy plain. He could see it stretching out to his left, and the half-moon rising over it. The moon was reflected, dull and smeared, in the surface of the plain.

That’s when the pain hit him. The throbbing in the back of his head crackled with a piercing hurt.

Cal reached back, tried to pull his collar loose from Rans’s grip. He wasn’t strong enough.

“Forget it, kid,” Rans said. “The thing is, I don’t like loose ends. And you’re one. Your old man’s gotta be dead. And that means you and your family’ll blame me. If you come out of this alive—you’ll come after me. You or some other Finn putz. And another thing is, I don’t like the way you talk to me. No respect.”

Cal struggled again, trying to wrench loose. It hurt to do it but he had to try. “You’re just guilty, that’s all—you know what you did to my dad! You don’t like me around to remind you!”

Rans twisted Cal’s collar angrily—the kid had hit a nerve. “Shut up, boy.”

“They’ll know—Roland’ll know what happened. He’ll figure it out. And he’ll kick your ass up over your head!”

“Naw. I’ll tell them about the skags that jumped us and dragged you off. Happens all the time on this planet. And they’re sure not going to find you where you’re going. Bye, bye, kid.”

Marla guessed it was near dawn because of the way that Flemmel was sagging. The tunnel rats were accustomed to sleep during the day. No one came to relieve Flemmel, and eventually he squatted down, leaned back against the wall. Soon he was snoring, clutching his submachine gun to himself much the way a sleeping child hugs a stuffed toy.

She’d slept fitfully, her stomach burning with the bitter mash of seed pods and roots they’d brought her to eat. There had been meat too, but she’d picked that out and put it in the waste bucket. She didn’t know what—or who—it might be.

The lantern was still glowing, but weakly now. She had just enough light to see what she was doing, as she got up, stretched, wincing at her aching muscles, then went to the far, darkest corner of the cell, half-hidden by the stone bench. Here she was partially concealed from anyone who might watch from the corridor. She might be able to dig a certain amount … but with what?

She scraped at the wall near the floor with her fingers, and found it was indeed fairly soft stone here—not quite soapstone soft, but almost. But she could make no real progress with her hands. She soon had bloodied nails.

Then she remembered the diary. Checking Flemmel again, and finding him still asleep, she pulled the diary from under the rags, removed its metal cover—noting a corner of it seemed bent, and dirty—and used it as a crude shovel. Now she made real progress, using the small metal rectangle to dig out the soft stone.

She might try to slip out, find a way past the tunnel rats, without even dealing with Flemmel. But …

No. She would need his mask. His clothing. That was the way to do it. Disguise herself as a tunnel rat. She’d have to kill Flemmel to get his mask and clothing.

No problem. She’d grab the gun from him, and smash his head in with its butt before he had time to think. It wouldn’t do to fire it and make a ruckus, draw other sentries here.

It could work. It
had
to work.

She glanced at him, and saw he was still squatted down, and snoring softly.

She went back to scraping at the soft spot in the wall. It was even softer than she’d supposed, sometimes falling apart without her having to push hard. Which suggested that it had been dug out before, and filled back in.

This was the darkest part of the cell—much of her digging had to be done by touch. But by degrees her eyes adjusted a little, just enough to see a piece of paper, barely visible, buried in the soft material of the wall.

Marla stared. Then she dug the paper carefully out
and brushed it off. It appeared to be one of the pages from Frank’s diary. She checked Flemmel—he was still asleep—and held the paper up to read the writing on it in the dim light from the lantern:

You’ve gotten this far. I’m going to put this page in the wall, and then close up the wall after me—if I have time—so they won’t see someone’s gotten out. I’ll try to pile up the rags so they think I’m sleeping. They don’t watch very well during the day. I estimate that it’s late morning. When I was taken out to work on their machines, I memorized the route to the nearest escape. You go out this hole, head right, take a left turn, then a right and go all the way to the old elevator shaft. The elevator may or may not work.

The problem is, the escape takes you close to the volcano, and there are other dangers there. But I’m going out that way if I can, because it’s the shortest way. I have one of their gas masks, I’ve swiped it, and I can use it to conceal my identity. I’m sorry I ever came to this accursed planet. I yearn to be back in the good old chemical works on Toxic Tomb 7. Sure, the atmosphere of that planet is deadly poisonous, and except for our dome there’s no life on that world—but there were no murderous cannibals there, and no skags, no rakks, and no crab worms. I hate crab worms. If I escape this world, I’ll try to go back to work on Toxic Tomb, perhaps stop off on the homeworld to get some new fingers regrown.

Until then, I am sincerely yours (whoever you may be),

Two Finger Frank

She smiled, feeling a flush of hope, and then folded the paper up, tucked it in her blouse, and murmured, “Bless you, Two Finger Frank.”

She scraped away at the lower corner of the wall for another hour. It was dark here, it would be hard for him to see what she was doing, with the bench in the way, but she was hoping to get all the way through before her tunnel rat sentry woke.

But then he moaned in his sleep, and looked sleepily about, smacking his lips and yawning. She hid her simple tool and went to lie on her bench.

“What are you doing there?” Flemmel asked sharply, squinting through the bars at her in the dim light. “You were doing something in the corner.”

“I had to pee, if that’s okay with you.”

“What? There’s a bucket right here!”

“I don’t wish to do my business in front of all the world. I found a shallow hole in the corner to pee in. And to do a bit more than that. Would you like to
examine
it?”

“No, no, not I, what a revolting thought. You suppose we have no niceties here? You think we defecate just anywhere like … like rats? In our own quarters we have vacuum toilets and privacy.” He yawned. “All right. It is daylight, so you’d best lie down. You must acclimate yourself to our hours if you are to bear children for us. Personally I think you may grace the feast table instead—we have little enough to sustain the feast. But it’s the Great Engineer’s decision to make …” He yawned again, muttering to himself. “Great Engineer … Broncus … the scum … Imagines he can …”

She stretched out, every muscle tense, waiting. Listening and praying for Flemmel to go to sleep …

We have little enough to sustain the feast.

She had to get out of here and soon. Or die trying.

A few minutes passed—and then came the scrape of booted feet. She looked over and saw Flemmel was standing at the cell doors, glowering at her through the bars, his eyes large and moist. “I could not get back to sleep. Not with the injustice of Broncus’s pretentions—and the feelings you bring out in me. Why should Broncus think he could mate with you? Why not I? Because he is slightly higher in tunnel status? Bah! If they’re likely to feast on you anyway—why should I not know the touch of a woman first?”

She sat up, trying to block his view of the corner where she’d done her digging. “Daylight’s nearly done, Flemmel! It’s nearly time for someone to check on us. They’d catch you at it if you … had your way with me. You’d be doing it without the Grand Engineer’s permission! I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”

“They won’t be along for a while.” He turned a key in the lock—his gaze fixed on her. “If you are discreet about it, I’ll see that if they do plan to cook you, your death comes quickly and with little pain …”