Half Way Home (16 page)

In the distance, I saw shapes moving, a train of vinnies sliding across the pale green carpet. Looking around, I noticed many more of them and saw the leaves rustling here and there as the large beasts burrowed down or reappeared. It was an alien landscape, even as I reminded myself that it was my only home. Nothing in the training modules had prepared us for this. And when I thought about the presence of so much air beneath me—separating us from the hard earth below—I felt faint. Like we were floating on a cloud and willing its firmness to hold.

Without a word—just a soft chorus of sobs—our little group tightened, our bodies pressing together like our first night outside the fence. Hands interlocked with other hands, no care for whose they were. They were all ours. All squeezing. All loving and all fearful. I rested my head on someone’s arm and gazed up at the stars, watching them twinkle through my tears, as mesmerized by the complete blackness between them as I was by their light. I soon found one patch that was startlingly devoid of anything, a lonely little patch, and I lost myself in it, drifting off to nothing.

I slept better that night than I had reason to and woke to a sight far happier than I figured any of us deserved: open sky—the sun washing out the black and most of the stars. It replaced them with a dull gray that started on one horizon and faded to a bright blue on the other. Sunrise. I could feel myself reading something mystical into it, like an apologetic gesture from the heavens for having to take one of our number away. As that sensation stirred within me, I found myself thinking of Oliver. I began to understand him, if only a little—mainly his seemingly irrational grope for joy in times of hardship.

Our sleeping tangle had loosened overnight as some of us tossed and turned and tried to get comfortable. I brushed Tarsi’s hair off her forehead and kissed her softly above the brow, so thankful nothing had happened to her. She stirred, her lips parting slightly, but didn’t wake. I worked my arm free and pushed away from the group, the ache in my joints demanding movement; or perhaps it was something in my jittery thoughts that made me feel compelled to force myself into motion.

I was the only one up. Not even the vinnies stirred as they had the night before. Turning to look for them, I felt overwhelmed with the vast sameness stretching out before me, the undulating carpet of several varieties of overlapping green leaves. Some of them were larger than a man with his limbs spread wide; some were small as my hand, dark green, and just as thick. When I spun halfway around and saw the mountains behind me lit up by the rising sun, my breath caught in my throat.

I knew what mountains looked like, just as I knew of earthquakes and guns and kisses. But once more, reality shattered concept. Majestic, towering pyramids of earth rose up beyond the canopy, their tops slathered in snow and tinged pink by the morning sun. The peaks were arranged in countless layers, each fading through various hues of blue until the furthest receded into purple. They seemed to stretch off into a forever that made the green carpet in the opposite direction pale by comparison. They even dwarfed the majestic trees, which had already upset my innate sense of scale.

A cool breeze drifted across the treetops from the west, the air seemingly chilled by the mighty blocks of ice-topped granite. They could have been a thousand miles away or ten, my sense of distance was so completely obliterated. Between the last glimmer of morning stars above, and the size of the leaves beneath me, the mountains provided one last blow to my ego—my sense of belonging to this universe—and made all else seem insignificant by comparison.

“It’s gorgeous,” Tarsi whispered. Her arms encircled me from behind and I rested my hands on top of hers, feeling a joy from our contact that somehow grounded me from the enormity of my surroundings.

“I can’t believe she’s gone,” I said, thinking of Britny. I wanted to say I wish she could have seen this, but it felt too trite and sad to utter. Tarsi replied by squeezing me. I felt her chin find a sore muscle in my back, her head sagging and heavy against me.

“We were supposed to
conquer
this?” I heard her whisper with sadness.

The thought stirred something within me. Something angry. Then it floated off on the freshening breeze, lost among the gentle flapping of blanket-sized leaves.

It didn’t take long for the growing light to wake the others. While everyone took in the amazing sights to all sides—the boys reveling in our delight as we saw it for the first time—a gradual giddiness seemed to conquer our loss. All except for Vincent, who remained silent and detached despite our efforts to include him.

Part of me felt guilty for taking excitement in anything, and we all seemed to pay homage to his greater sadness by tempering our enthusiasm. When one of us accidentally laughed or grew excited, a sheepish, apologetic look tended to follow.

We sorted through the gear that had survived the previous night’s ordeal, several of us bemoaning the loss of a precious item: a thermos, a strip of tarp, even an entire pack. We inventoried what was left, none of us speaking a word on what Britny had been carrying even though I’m certain we were all silently, guiltily, tallying her things.

The girls broke out what remained of the cooked vinnie meat while Karl and Samson crawled back down the hole to search for dangling bombfruit. We rationed our water carefully, the brilliant blue sky overhead a refreshing novelty and also a cloudless curse.

“We should have known that was a possibility,” Kelvin said, plopping down beside me and shaking his head. “Why would the tunnel be that size unless they came that big?”

“Yeah.” I nodded and picked splinters out of my calloused feet.

“You think those were the adults? Is that as big as they get?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Or it’s a male-female thing.” I glanced up to see several others following our conversation in silence while they toyed with their food.

“How do we get down?” Mindy asked me. Once again, faces turned my way, even though I’d shown no particular aptitude, nor willingness to lead. I dwelled on this tendency of the group to ask my opinion when what I should’ve been doing was thinking of an answer for Mindy. I wondered if it were nothing more than Stevens taking me aside that first day, or maybe the fact that only my flashlight had survived our escape. I bit my lip and mulled whether it would be best to put an end to whatever shred of authority I seemed to hold among the group, or if even my hesitating threatened to fill them with despair.

“Where’s the sign from Mica and Peter?” I asked Jorge, hoping to deflect the burden to someone more eager to shoulder it.

“Below,” Samson said, intercepting the question. “Right past that dip in the brambles. It pointed that way.” He gestured toward the nearest peaks.

“How long do you think we can last up here?” Leila asked.

“Without rain? Not long,” Kelvin said. “I say we head toward the mountains and scout below the canopy now and then. There have to be rivers flowing down from that snow and from the rain.”

“Yeah, but how do we find a way
down
?” Mindy asked. “How do we get past those
things
?”

“We can mark the tunnels when they come out at night,” Karl said. “We’ll gather some more up in a circle using the thick leaf chips they like. Maybe we’ll lead them ahead of us, just in case the canopy is thin in places.”

“But
then
what?” someone asked. “We head back down? Just take our chances?”

“Maybe it was the tremors,” I said. “It could’ve been a fluke.”

“Don’t call it a fluke,” Vincent said, not looking up.

An uncomfortable silence ensued.

“I’m sorry,” I told him.

He waved his hand. I wasn’t sure how to interpret the gesture.

“We’ll go down as before,” Kelvin said, rescuing me. “We’ll lead a long train of vinnies down ahead of us. They seemed to know something was coming. The more of them we have, the more warning we’ll get.”

“Good idea,” Tarsi said.

“We could cut some long sticks from the brambles,” Mindy said. “We’ll sharpen them in case we need to drive them back.”

“Even if that doesn’t work, if they were long enough to span the gaps in the tunnel, they’ll make it easier to hang on if we have to go over the edges again.”

“Especially if we rigged up bits of rope on them for our wrists.”

Kelvin and I looked to one another as the group started spouting out suggestions. I raised my eyebrows, signaling my appreciation for his help as a growing sense of purpose took hold of our group. The urge to survive seemed to be returning, bringing with it the motivation to move forward.

Wherever that took us.

I took the lead as we set out across the canopy, my gender giving me the right to risk my life and my comparatively diminutive size making me the least likely to go crashing through a soft spot or a hole. Tarsi had insisted on walking along beside me, but neither I nor Kelvin would hear of it. The two of them followed a dozen paces behind, trying to include me in their sporadic conversations.

The tight weave of branches and thick layer of leaves made for a relatively comfortable walk. When a stiff wind rolled through the trees, the canopy beneath us seemed to sway ever so slightly. It filled my stomach with a sickening sensation I might liken to being on a sailing ship or bounding across a small moon. I’d never done either of those things, of course, but both somehow seemed less alien to me than hiking across a treetop.

The terrain ahead was full of bumps and dips, including some very long ridges that possibly indicated major branches underneath. I stuck to those, not just for the promise of stability but to stay out of the small puddles of warm water that had collected in the valleys. A quick taste led to even quicker spitting, but someone suggested it could be boiled and made safe. The few vinnies we saw in the daylight seemed to prefer these lower areas, especially any that dipped down far enough to provide shade.

When the ridges petered out and I had to cross over a lower spot, I did so carefully, testing my weight on one foot before shifting the other forward. After a few of these crossings without incident, I stopped being so conservative. And that’s when my leg crashed through the canopy.

It happened so fast, I never felt any sense of danger. There was a loud crack of snapping wood, and then I was on my butt, my entire leg hanging through a hole in the canopy. Kelvin slid forward on his belly and pulled me back. Exploring around the thin section, we discovered another of the large tunnels beneath. We made our way around it and up to another ridge before stopping for a ration of water and some bombfruit.

While everyone else ate, Kelvin gathered every scrap of rope we had and began splicing them together. I watched him with mild curiosity as he looped both ends of the line and tied a series of complex knots.

He came over as I took my two sips of water and showed me his creation.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Your new leash.” He held the rope up and snapped it tight a few times to demonstrate the general idea. “We both get to wear one end.”

“I’ll be fine,” I told him. “That was a fluke back there. Besides, that thing will just pull you off after me.”

He looked me up and down, and then laughed. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“He’ll wear it,” Tarsi said, taking the water pouch from me and taking a sip.

“Fine,” I said, knowing better than to argue with both of them. I lifted my arms and let Kelvin lower the loop down around my waist. He cinched it tight, somewhere between nervous-tight and paranoid-tight, then played out the line and worked the other loop around himself.

“You’re welcome,” he said to me, glancing up after he checked his knots.

“Thanks,” I said, feeling ridiculous.

After everyone refreshed themselves, we set off again. As the hours passed, the heat of the overhead sun bore down unlike anything we’d ever experienced. I took my shirt off and draped it over my head, having seen what exposure to those rays had done to the boys who had spent just a few hours at the top, and most of that with clouds overhead.

Around noon, the vinnies started making more frequent appearances. They popped up from the foliage and gathered by the warm puddles or chewed contentedly at the thicker chips of leaves. All the vinnies we saw were of the smaller variety—none like the ones that had stampeded us and caused Britny’s death.

Also making an appearance after noon was a dark band of clouds—great billowy gray things that smothered the distant peaks and rolled across the surface of the range. Verbally, we decided the clouds were a good sign. Karl had sampled a few of the shallow puddles and agreed with me that they didn’t taste right. However, despite the relief of fresh water and the cooling cover the clouds promised, I felt terrified at the sight of so much
stuff
coming right for us. Especially as bolts of light began flashing through the dark mass. A storm was brewing that managed to out-grumble my stomach.

“We’ll need to find shelter before that gets here,” Tarsi called up to me. I watched the vinnies scurry about with greater urgency and wondered if we shouldn’t start looking right then.

We hurried along, the danger ahead and above taking my mind off the one below. I stopped picking my way as closely and no longer tested my footing in the depressions. After half an hour of forgetful and impatient marching, I fell through the canopy. Completely.

It happened without a sound, just the swish of a giant leaf as it flopped down into one of the vertical caves. By the time Tarsi shrieked out, I had already crashed into the bottom eight or so feet down, the rope coming tight against my armpits just as my knees landed on a slope of brambles. It was over before I could even feel a sense of danger. If anything, I just felt embarrassed for getting careless. I picked myself up, feeling for bruises, as Kelvin and Tarsi appeared above.

“Are you okay?” Tarsi asked.

I looked up. “I’m fine. Just feeling stupid.”

More heads appeared around the hole as the rest of the group caught up.