The Rivers of Zadaa (34 page)

“This is it!” Saangi exclaimed.

Loor spun the dygo so the window faced the direction of the treads. She was about to turn the whole vehicle so we could move forward into the opening, when I realized something.

“Stop!” I shouted.

“What is the matter?” Loor asked.

“Can we look down from here?” I asked.

Loor spun the sphere back so the window faced the open water. She then tilted the whole sphere so the window gave us a view down. What we saw made each of our hearts beat a little faster.

“That was almost a very big mistake,” Alder said.

What we saw was…nothing. The stone floor did not continue. It ended. We were not in front of the stairs. We were on the exact opposite side. It was the edge of the platform where we had launched the boat for Kidik Island. If we had gone forward, we would have toppled off the edge and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. We all let out nervous, relieved breaths.

“At least we know where we are,” I said. “We need to go in the opposite direction.”

Loor spun the dygo sphere a hundred and eighty degrees, lined up the treads, and followed the compass thing on the instrument panel to send us in the opposite direction. We still had to move slowly because visibility wasn't great

“What kind of air supply does this thing have?” I asked.

“There is no air supply,” Loor said. “The vents are closed to keep out the water. When we use up the air, we suffocate.”

“Oh. Just checking.” I suddenly felt more urgency to find the stairs.

While Loor drove, Saangi worked the headlights. She could direct them to scan in several directions. After driving for a few more moments, Saangi announced, “There!”

Up ahead and above us, we saw what looked like the top edge of an opening. We were passing out of the launch area, hopefully into the cavern at the base of the grand stairway. Loor pressed on. Alder and I leaned forward, desperate to see something that would tell us where we were.

“Look to the left,” I said to Saangi. “That's the direction the stairs would be if—there!”

Through the floating particles, we could make out the bottom of the giant staircase. We had made it! We didn't celebrate. We were still far from safe. Loor turned the dygo. Saangi scanned the stairs with the light until she found one of the ramps that cut through the steps. Loor directed the vehicle toward the ramp and in no time we were climbing up. The treads were on a steep angle, but Loor kept the sphere upright so it felt kind of like rising in an escalator.

I want to say that I was relieved, and I was. But all we had done was get to the next hurdle. There was plenty more to worry about, not the least of which was the time bomb that was ticking beneath us. Had the floodgates collapsed? Were we going to find that Kidik was flooded? I didn't know how much air we had left in the dygo, but I didn't think it would be enough to get us to the surface. I was already feeling the effects of the air running out. It was harder to get a breath. All we could do was keep moving, and hope.

We climbed the stairs, higher and higher. I was trying to calculate how deep we had been underwater, which would be a good indication of when we should break the surface. That is, if there was a surface to break.

A minute into our climb, the windshield of the dygo cleared. We were out of the water. Kidik was still dry. It meant the floodgates hadn't been destroyed yet. Loor instantly opened the vents, and Saangi cracked open the hatch to let air rush in. Man, it tasted sweet. I didn't mind that it was tunnel air. I took in a huge lungful. I exchanged a smile with Alder. We had come so close to disaster, but were still going. As Loor said, if we were alive, we were not done.

When we reached the top of the stairs, we were met with more good news. The lights of Kidik were still burning. Only the lights at the bottom of the stairs had gone dark, probably because they were underwater. Up here, we could still see. At least for now. Loor drove the dygo away from the top of the stairs and stopped the vehicle on the edge of the main street. Nobody said it, but we all needed to get out, if only for a few seconds. We needed to get our bearings back. Saangi pushed open the hatch, and we all crawled out of the vehicle that had saved our lives. It felt good to be on solid ground again, even if it was in a deserted city miles underground. I stretched my legs, enjoying the feeling of standing on two feet.

“They were here,” Loor said.

“Who was?” I asked.

She was looking at the ground. Sure enough, the fine sandy ground was covered with footprints that hadn't been there when we came in. There looked to be thousands of them.

“The Batu invasion made it to Kidik,” Loor declared.

“Where do you think they are now?” Alder asked.

“Fleeing for the surface, I hope,” Loor said. “If they saw the rising water, they may have realized the danger.”

“So they might survive this after all?” Saangi asked.

My first thought was that Saangi was right. The thousands of Batu who came down into the underground might have dodged a very big, wet bullet. It all depended on where they were, and how much longer the floodgates would hold. If they survived, Saint Dane would lose.

That was my first thought.

My second thought was that we were still in the depths and a time bomb was ticking. I was about to point that out when the ground rumbled. It felt like a short, sharp earthquake. We looked at one another. Our sense of victory was short lived.

“Could that be?” Alder asked.

Another short earthquake rumbled the ground. This one was so strong, it nearly knocked me off my feet.

“Back in the dygo!” Loor shouted.

We all ran for the vehicle. As we were about to climb in, a building that was thirty yards in front of us exploded. It was as if an atomic water bomb had blown up beneath it. A huge blast of water shot up into the air, much like what had happened when the main building on Kidik Island had exploded.

“They're starting to go!” I exclaimed.

On cue two more buildings exploded, sending rock and sand and water everywhere. We were pelted with debris. This was the beginning of the end for the underground. The southern gates were giving way. There must have been so much force surging through those first collapsing gates that the tunnels couldn't contain it. There was more water than space for it to go, so it found its own way.

Kidik was about to be obliterated.

ZADAA

T
he world was exploding around us.

We piled into the dygo. Loor powered up while Saangi sealed the hatch. “Go!” she exclaimed.

Loor hit the throttle, and the dygo sped forward. She told me these buggies were fast. She was right. We bounced along the main street of Kidik as the buildings to either side began to crumble. It truly was like an earthquake. The ground was being torn apart by the force of the water as it sought space. There was no stopping it, because an entire ocean was behind it, pushing it forward. More buildings blew out, while those on levels above toppled. It reminded me of a giant, elaborate sand castle that was being torn apart by the incoming tide.

The street directly in front of us erupted, sending a blast of water high into the air. Loor was able to steer around it. All I could think of was if one of those geysers shot up directly beneath us, we'd be blown over like a toy. I wondered what would happen if we were knocked off our treads. That would be ugly.

To our left a building looked as if it were lifted up into the air a few feet. The whole building shifted in one piece and slid into the street in front of us. It was too late for Loor to avoid it.

“Brace yourself,” she shouted. We hit the building. It was a hard jolt and we knocked around, but the dygo remained intact.

“We can't outrun this,” I said. “Eventually we're gonna get nailed.”

“There is only one thing we can do,” Loor said.

I was happy to hear that there actually was an option, because I was fresh out of ideas.

“Whatever it is, do it,” I shouted.

“Do we dig?” Saangi asked.

“We dig,” Loor said.

Loor stopped the dygo. She toggled a switch on the instrument panel. I heard a whine and saw the drill drop from overhead and settle down into its front position.

“Dig what?” I asked.

“Dig out,” Loor answered.

She toggled another switch, and the drill began to spin. She turned the dygo so we were facing one side of the street. In front of us was a stone house that was still intact. It wouldn't be for long.

“You sure about this?” I asked nervously.

“Brace yourself,” Loor commanded.

She hit the throttle and drove the dygo right into the building. The drill dug through the wall as if it were made of paper. A second later we were in somebody's living room. Good thing nobody was home. We blasted through, moving past stone furniture, dishes, and even clothing hanging on racks. It was a twisted experience. We ate through wall after wall, room after room. The ceilings collapsed on us as we tore through, but the dygo kept moving. I realized that the many levels of stone buildings that could be seen from the street were nothing more than the front layer of this city. Like all of the underground, Kidik was like a massive beehive. We charged through open areas that looked like market squares. We passed a huge amphitheater with rings of stone seats that would never see another performance. Loor didn't stop to sightsee. We crashed through more deserted homes. I was feeling kind of guilty, but knew it would only be a matter of time before the surging water did a lot more damage than we were doing.

“Is there a plan here?” I asked.

“We need to get to the surface as quickly as possible,” Loor said. “Following the route we took from Xhaxhu would be suicide. We could never outrace the flood.”

“So what are we looking for here?” I asked.

“We are looking for nothing,” Loor said.

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” Loor repeated. “We need to get to the rock that Kidik was built on. From there we can drill our own tunnel.”

Loor's plan was incredible, and incredibly simple. It didn't matter where we got to the surface, so long as we got there. She had decided to create her own route. From what I'd seen of the dygo, it was possible. The only thing stopping us would be time. We had to outrun the water.

I looked ahead to see we were no longer moving through open space. We had reached the bedrock of Kidik and were drilling our way through. There wasn't much to see. Looking through the hollow drill bit, all that was visible was the rock we were drilling through. If we were lucky, the next thing we would see through that hole was sky.

I felt myself being pushed back into the seat. A quick glance at the compass thing on the instrument panel showed me that we were headed up. It was like flying through a cloud. There was no way to know when we would come out of it, until we were out. A few times we hit an open air-pocket. I couldn't tell if they were tunnels, or natural gaps in the rock. It didn't matter. The treads of the dygo took over, moving us forward until we reached the far side, at which point the drill would go back to work. I didn't know how fast we were going; there was no point of reference. But I figured it couldn't be all that fast. The spinning drill cut through the rock like it was Jell-O, but even going through Jell-O took time.

I tried to get a sense of how long we had been sealed inside the dygo. Ten minutes? Fifteen minutes? Saangi, Alder, and I made a point of not talking. We didn't want to disturb Loor's concentration. She drove the dygo as easily as if she were driving along a quiet country lane. If she was nervous, she didn't show it. Then again, she never looked nervous.

We kept digging. My teeth were chattering from the constant vibration. I hoped the fillings in my teeth were strong. I had no idea where to find a dentist on Zadaa. A few minutes later I learned there was something more important to worry about. I felt something tickling the back of my foot. I looked down to see…

“Water!”

The floor of the dygo was wet. The flood had caught us.

“Close the vents!” Saangi shouted.

Loor quickly flipped the air vents shut, stopping the leak. I noticed a trickle of water creeping its way onto the windshield. I looked to the far side, where another trickle of water pushed across the outside of the glass.

“Do you see that?” I asked Loor.

“The water is filling up the tunnel behind us,” she said.

“Is that bad?” I asked.

“I do not know, Pendragon,” she said. “I have never done anything like this before.”

Good point. This was a new experience for all of us. All we could hope was that the water wouldn't hit us with such force that the dygo couldn't take it and we'd be squished. I forced that gruesome possibility out of my head, only to realize there was yet another gruesome possibility to worry about. If we had to keep the vents closed, we had no air. We had to make it to the surface before our air gave out. It had become a race.

Loor angled the dygo steeper and drove it faster. The drill whined in protest. I saw smoke coming from the rock in front of us. Loor wasn't taking any chances. This was the final push. We had to get to the surface, fast. We were pressed back into our seats. I felt like an astronaut being launched into space. I was sweating. Breathing was getting difficult. There was no way to know how much air we had left, but it couldn't be much. The situation was dire. If we didn't break through the surface soon, we would suffocate. We all sat still, trying not to waste any energy that would burn precious air.

I was getting dizzy. I knew I was about to pass out. I closed my eyes and tried to think of something other than death. My head went back to Second Earth. Home. I didn't do that often; it was just too sad. But I did then. Why not? If these were going to be my last thoughts, I wanted them to be good. I thought of my family, and Marley. Man, I missed them. I thought of you guys. We were hanging at the beach. All of us. It was a beautiful sunny day. The sun was so bright, I had to cover my eyes. I felt its warmth on my face. This was a good last thought. The strange thing was, it was like I could really feel it. I wondered if this is what people talked about when they were at the moment of death? Was this the bright light at the end of the tunnel that I was supposed to walk into?

It wasn't, I'm happy to say. I opened my eyes to see bright sunlight blasting through the windshield. For real. That's what I was feeling. We were out! But we weren't safe, not by a long shot. The dygo had stopped drilling, but we continued on upward, lifted by a powerful jet of water that was pushing us from behind. Rather than settle down to the ground on our treads, the force of water lifted us into the air. We couldn't have gone very high, but it was high enough to flip us over. We crashed back to the ground, upside down. It was a good thing we were strapped in or we'd be dead. The dygo hit, bounced, and flipped over more than once. With one final shudder, we landed…on our treads. It was a rude arrival, but we were upright and alive.

“Open the vents!” I shouted to Loor.

Loor flipped the switches, letting in fresh air. Truly fresh air. Surface air. We all took a deep breath to fill our lungs.

“Where are we?” Alder asked.

Through the windshield we could see that we were in the middle of the desert. Only a few yards away was the geyser of water that had rocketed us out of the tunnel. The ground rumbled. Right next to us another geyser burst out of the ground, shooting into the sky like a huge water cannon.

“It is not safe here,” Loor said.

That turned out to be a huge understatement. We weren't even close to being safe. Geysers of water burst out of the ground everywhere. It was like the underground couldn't contain the massive pressure that the water had created. It had to go somewhere, so it blasted up. All around us. There was nowhere for us to go. Nowhere to hide. We didn't know if we were safe, or sitting on the next geyser. All Loor could do was react to what was happening.

We weren't alone. Dygos kept popping up out of the sand. It reminded me of when Bokka and Teek and the others had magically appeared out of the sand at the farm. I didn't know if the drivers of the other dygos were Batu or Rokador. It didn't matter. With each new dygo that appeared, it meant that more had survived. Now we could only hope that we would all live through the onslaught that was roaring up from below.

The ground continued to shudder. Loor came to a quick stop, barely avoiding a cave-in directly in front of us. Another dygo wasn't so lucky. It teetered on the edge and tried to reverse. The sand gave way beneath it and it tumbled over the edge, falling into the deep crevice that had appeared out of nowhere.

Loor positioned the giant drill bit directly overhead. It gave us a better field of vision. What we saw was Armageddon. The sand rolled in every direction like there were giant serpents moving beneath. Dygos were flipped around like pinballs. We nearly went over a few times, but Loor was able to keep us upright. I don't know how. All around us giant geysers kept spewing up from nowhere, without warning. One blasted up so close to us that it pushed us up on one tread. Loor drove us away from harm on the one tread before we bounced back down.

The most frightening thing of all was that we had no idea how long this would last. Every second seemed like a lifetime. If this continued, I was afraid that every dygo that had escaped from the underground would be destroyed here on the surface. How wrong would it be to make it this far, only to be scrambled inside the very vehicle that got us out. As it turned out, this frenzy didn't continue much longer.

It got worse.

We had rallied together with what looked like a dozen other dygos. The ground had stopped moving. There were no more geysers.

“Is it over?” Saangi asked.

Nobody answered. We didn't dare believe that we were safe. There was a rumbling. It was like nothing we had experienced so far. It was deep, and low, and coming from somewhere underground.

“Does anybody feel that?” I asked.

“I hear it too,” Loor answered.

Sure enough, it sounded like there was a rumbling freight train coming closer. We looked around at the desert, but there was nothing unusual. Aside from the dozens of geysers that were spewing water into the sky, that is.

It was Saangi who saw it first. She didn't say anything; she simply pointed. We looked straight ahead to see something far in the distance. It appeared as a jagged line in the sand…that was headed directly for us. The line moved fast. Behind it, the desert opened up wider and wider like some giant, demonic zipper.

“It is tearing the desert in two,” Loor said in awe.

“Move!” I shouted.

All the dygos reacted at the same time. Some moved left, some moved right. The idea was to get away from the growing chasm as quickly as possible. There was no telling how wide it was going to get. Loor spun the dygo and hit the throttle. We bounced over the sand, desperate for distance. I could lean forward and look out the far end of the windshield to see that some dygos weren't fast enough. The widening chasm caught up with them and they fell back into…what? We had no idea what was beneath this rip in the desert.

I said one word to Loor. I said it calmly, but I felt as if she needed to hear it. “Faster,” I said.

Loor poured it on. There was a fine line between speed and loss of control. If we hit a rise in the sand that was a little too steep, we'd crash, and the crack in the earth would catch us. It was a chance we had to take. If the growing chasm caught us, we'd be doomed for sure. The point of the tear moved behind us and continued on. I looked out the other side of the window to see it continue to rip its way across the desert. We didn't dare stop. If the gap continued to grow, it would get us. We churned our way across the sand, along with more and more dygos that we picked up along the way. It became clear that there were many survivors of the disaster below. It remained to be seen how many would survive the disaster on the surface.