Gone to Ground

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room.

So, when she left our quarters every few days claiming to volunteer in the greenbays, I knew she was lying. I had behaved in much the same way once.

I awaken to silence and know she has gone. No sleepy breathing sounds from the bunk below and when I roll over to turn on a lamp and peer beneath me, her bed is made. The unmistakable sign of someone who doesn’t plan on returning for the day. She isn’t just out for a wash.

I flatten my own sheets in a clumsy attempt to leave them looking neat, hang my legs out over the bunk and drop to the floor.

The sink in our cramped quarters is next to the bunkbed. I use it to wash my face, take a mouthful of water to swish a toothpaste capsule around my mouth and spit. With Layne gone, my thoughts begin to wander to the window. It’s her second visit to Oris’s observatory this week.

After my first encounter with it, looking out of the window had lit sparks of hope in my chest that were fanned to flame with each visit. Far beyond the rocky outcrop that keeps its wide tempered panes sheltered from the elements, one can see hints of trees swaying and if they’re lucky, even see the glint of one, single star by night. I visited often in the beginning, starved of it, clinging to it, missing it, until reality crowded in with the passing of time and the flames in my chest were choked and smoldered to ash.

Over time the window started to feel more like a curse than a blessing. I began to hate the reminder it became: We are likely never getting out. The world outside is changed. It will never be safe again. I will never feel grass again. I will never see the sun again.

I clean the sink, fold my nightgown, and force my arms through sleeves of a sweater that is getting too small for me. Boots and slacks follow, each a little tight as well. I’ll have to go to Textiles to swap my clothing in soon.

It would be easy to stop Layne from visiting the observatory. She’s a kind soul. She’d think deeply on what I had to say if I spoke to her about my experience with the window.

A part of me wants to stop her going, wants to have someone to commiserate with.

The bigger part of me knows that she deserves to hope. Hope has dwindled to bitterness over the years. And so, I leave her be. With any luck, her own experience will lead to a more positive certainty.

The rains started seven years ago. They began gently. Eased us into a false sense of security. After a while, we noticed that it wasn’t stopping. And worse than missing the feel of sun on your skin, strange things began happening to anyone who ventured out under the open sky.

For some, the rain didn’t do a thing. To others, a lingering itch of the skin may have been attributed to something completely different. Children began to break out in blisters after playing in puddles, and complaints began to emerge of feeling sick or sore after exposure to the humidity and the storms. Concerned citizens began to speak up, but their fears were waved aside by the authorities.

So, we learned to stay out of the rain. We sat in our homes watching news reports that soon began to play down the severity of the weather. We adapted to a slightly different normal. This within the span of three months. But when heavy storm clouds settled into the sky, and hospitals began to fill with screaming civilians bearing the mark of acid wear to any part of them that touched the downpour, leadership couldn’t ignore the truth any longer:

Everything manmade was beginning to melt under the rains, including man himself.

I was seventeen when the evacuation alert was issued. Our homes and communities were beginning to dissolve amidst thunderclaps and deluge. The promise of safety according to leadership, whom many were beginning to doubt, lay deep within the mines outside of the city, deep within caves unexplored.

The directive was simple: Go to ground.

My stepfather, heavily bandaged, had thrown what was left of home – including Layne and I – into the back of his truck and followed the caravan of vehicles screeching toward coordinates given by leadership’s emissaries.

I remember watching one of the bandages on his hand dissolving, while he clung to the steering wheel and grit his teeth against the pain and worry. He lost two fingers that day.

I slip on boots and seal the door to our quarters behind me. The tunnel outside is bright with lamplight, and I pause to check one of the weaker bulbs along the wall and adjust its fixture. The flickering ceases, and the light grows brighter. I pad further into the tunnel until it splits into a fork, and take the right path leading to the mess hall. The greenlabs are to the left; where Layne will say she’s been when she returns.

To this day, theories are scattered among those of us who made it to the caves. Some believe the rain phenomenon was chemically constructed in some far-off lab. Some believe we created it by being foolhardy and extravagant with our use of resources, draining the earth of its finite supplies for survival.

I prefer to simplify and remember the facts that I do know: Acid rain ruined everything. Now we live as we must. I don’t believe that knowing how the disaster came about would change anything about how I live my life. Theorizing makes people panic and worry unnecessarily.

We worry about enough already.

The tunnel I walk opens into a wide hall filled with several lines of stone counters, with stools sitting out on either side. One upside to carving tables out of stone is that you don’t have to sweep under them. More lamplight fills the hall.

This early there are only a handful of individuals sitting and eating. The chatter is quiet, and as I pass between the counters to head for the kitchens, a few people look up and give me a nod. Two of them are women, their faces lined and covered in dirt. I assume that they’re from the Textiles wing until I spot the yellow tape dispensers hanging from their hips, the tools hanging from their belts and the flare guns sitting on the counter next to them. A shudder ripples down my spine: They’re from Explosives.

I make a fist and touch it to the center of my chest as I make eye contact with one of them. It’s a small way to acknowledge the work that they do. Her expression softens, and then closes again as she turns to respond to her companion.

We’d assumed leadership hadn’t had time to plan before the evacuation, but when we’d streamed down into the caves expecting only to find dark and cold, we were surprised to find that they had been preparing for longer than expected. People had complained before; they had wondered why leadership had taken so long to admit that the rains were a true natural disaster. Confusion had been cleared in seconds as we had driven through fresh tunnels and warm light.

Leadership had spent the last month before evacuation tunnelling. Or, better put, Explosives had.

“Coffee?” A kitchen worker lifts a pot up and nods at me as I enter the kitchens. I pick up a clean cup and accept a pour of the black stuff, swallowing the searing liquid in two gulps. “Thanks.”

“Off today?” He rushes to move a pan off a stove and watches me over his shoulder. I peer distractedly into the room and observe a handful of chefs preparing for the first meal of the day. “Yes.”

“Take my advice, go for a walk. The air feels thinner today, I heard they might be turning it down for a few days. There was a bulletin about another expansion happening this week, maybe they’re making plans in case they blow something important up.” The worker wipes the sweat above his eyebrows with one of his arms and opens an oven behind him to let hot air escape. He dons mitts and pulls out a tray of fresh scones. “Take one before you go,” he says, putting two on a napkin and handing it to me. “If you’re looking for David, he’s in the observatory. You can take one for him too.”

I’m surprised that he knows who I am, and then a second wave of confusion passes over me. “Wait, the observatory?” My stepfather hasn’t gone anywhere near topside since our arrival.

“Said Layne wanted to show him something.” The kitchen worker shrugs.

I take a few minutes to collect myself. “You know Layne?” I ask. The scones are too hot to hold, so I place them on a nearby surface and fold my arms. The worker is a little shorter than I am, and short pieces of ginger hair peek out under his hat. He has a significant freckle over his right nostril that I mistake as a mole until I look closer.

He blinks. “Sure, my son used to walk her home from class, and David comes in every morning.” He takes my hand and shakes it gently. “I’m Garland,” he continues, leaning against the oven. “He doesn’t talk about me?”

“Geeeee!” A sharp shout further into the kitchens jolts the two of us, and we look in the direction of the voice to watch a very short woman with a very bright red apron storming toward us. Instinctively, I grab the scones in both hands without thinking and shove them behind my back. They’re still so hot that for a second I have to fight for my life to keep my expression calm. “What are you doing, keep an eye on those pots! Pots!” The chef screeches. “Did you take the scones out! Out!”

“Yes, yes Malda, they’re done, here, look-” Garland stammers. He flashes me an apologetic smile and I take it as a cue to leave, backing away slowly and slipping back out into the mess hall just in time to hear Malda shriek. “What do you MEAN you burned some! Some!”

I source a pair of napkins and wrap the scones inside, shaking crumbs from my hands and checking my palms in case they’re burnt. Luckily the skin is only tender and nothing worse. A cold dread begins to sink into me as I scan the hall. David is nowhere to be seen. What is he doing up in the observatory? I stare at a directory sign on the opposite wall indicating routes to different areas. The arrow to the observatory points left.

I fidget uncomfortably. Maybe I can wait outside the door. The thought of the window makes me uncomfortable. Nevertheless, my feet start to shuffle toward the appropriate tunnel. I exit the mess hall and breathe easier as the space around me begins to shrink.

David and my mother were a fling. At least, my mother had certainly thought so. She’d barely recovered from giving birth to Layne before she took off with the doctor that had pulled my half-sister from her, and David has been picking up the pieces since. I chose to stay with him and Layne, and I’ve never looked back. I don’t think I’ll ever summon the courage to tell him but calling him my stepfather is more out of habit than necessity. He has saved me in more ways than one, and I’ve thought of him as my father figure for longer than I’ll admit. I’ll never be able to repay him.

I pass by the Ward tunnel as my path turns upward, an expanded wall with curtained off bays where the sick and wounded are quarantined. I’ve never seen a healer without either a portable oxygen container strapped to their back, or a mask and face shield. If they go, so do the rest of us. I hear someone crying and look at my feet instead of staring at one of the frantically gesturing silhouettes behind a curtain.

It’s taken years for us to figure out a modicum of organization to our way of life underground. In the time we’ve had, we have structured specialties, divisions, jobs, and set up an order to things that leadership has allowed us to maintain. This does not mean they haven’t stepped in when murmuring has threatened to tip the scales from peace toward unrest.

Recently, the more argumentative of theorists are beginning to claim that the acid effects of the rains were an illusion, that it was a long-time plan by leadership to lock a significant portion of the population away. This, to retain more resources for leadership and the more well-off. Their methods are subtle but when the complaints grow too loud, leadership cuts the head from the snake.

I’ve seen a crazed man in the mess hall vow that life topside is flourishing. I’ve also heard his wife in the days afterward asking if anyone has seen her husband. I have seen children struck for parroting what their anxious parents have said behind closed doors.

I was old enough to work when we first settled underground. I hadn’t had much experience, but those of us young and able were eventually divvied into units, lines of work. We had to learn fast; our lives depended on it.

I frighten a pair of roosting bats as I turn a corner, and they take off shrieking down the tunnel, their berry bright eyes gleaming as they seek shadow.

The only way for us to measure the passage of time is by the colours and behaviour of the lamps. In the morning they are bright, a cool white that warms to yellow by the end of day. In addition, all lamps flicker at noon and midnight.

Working in Lighting, I’m on a rotation of night shifts this month. My primary responsibility on shift is to work with my colleagues to arrange the “midnight flicker”, which involves crosschecking a variety of wire and button hookups in the electrical wing, and checking for issues before launch. I don’t get to press the button, though. That small honor is given to our division head, Julie. A strong-shouldered woman with short hair and a square jaw. Her name is soft but she’s anything but. I love and fear her equally.

David took up in Expansion planning, coordinating the efforts of former construction workers to implement safe ways to expand space and gather resources for our colony. We stopped being able to drink topside water very quickly after evacuating, and we’ve relied on groundwater ever since, in the form of underground lakes and aquifers. The problem is that groundwater is finite. Leadership limits repopulation to control the growth rate of the colony and save resources, but water is necessary to preserve the life that already lives. The Expansion, Explosives, and Science divisions work closely to source, document, and research what is needed to keep us going into the future. Whatever that future is.

Layne is training to join the Textiles wing, to rework used fabrics into clothing and gear to dress us. Roots we’ve found underground, and the skins of burrowing mammals have been added to their supplies. Every day, the brightest minds in Textiles work to find solutions to the issues of common wear and tear.

Layne has always loved sewing and crafting. There’s a straw-stuffed bear by my pillow in our quarters that I haven’t slept without since the day she gave it to me, and I’ll cherish it no matter my age.

A thought occurs to me as the tunnel continues to climb, and it makes my stomach churn. There is another division that David works with in Expansion, less frequently mentioned but essential to the colony’s survival.

It feels like stereotyping to refer to those within it as the elites, the strongest, and the smartest, but I feel that there’s a special kind of strength a person needs to be able to do what they do: Reconnaissance, or Recon, as they’re more often referred to. Recon is along during the explosions as whatever support is needed, whether it’s cover fire or defense against foreign creatures, or reactionary cover-up in case Explosives accidentally blasts a hole into the surface and bares our operations to the rains. Anything can happen, and at such times it’s important to have them there. If the rains ever cease, it’ll likely be a Recon specialist who first steps out into the new world left behind.

I remember Garland mentioning plans for another expansion and my steps quicken.

It can be any kids dream to join Recon. I coveted the specialty at one point as all young people do, but growing up takes sandpaper to dreams and shapes them into closer alignment with reality. My work in Lighting is important and it’s where I’m most needed. Without me, you can’t see anything. The good, bad, beautiful, ugly. Anything.

The tunnel finally curves around another corner and as I round it, the observatory doors come into view. There are a pair of guards standing on both sides of them. Understandable, since the window to the outside world is the only one. It’s not the only way out, but most people understand that escaping the caves means running straight into conditions that will slough your skin from your bones and liquify you from the outside in.

I’m reluctant to enter. I decide I’ll stay outside the doors and lean against a wall, pulling one of the scones out of my pocket and sniffing it. There’s some sort of shredded root in it, and I take a small bite and screw up my face against its bitterness. To my surprise the bitterness soon fades into a warm, well-rounded aftertaste.

The guards watch me eat, the only interesting thing in the tunnels aside from the doors they guard. The doors are metal, inlaid with spirals of gold to make them more appealing to the eye. I remember them as being heavy. Even so, I can hear animated voices coming through from the other side. The doors must be open a crack.

David’s voice. Oris’s voice. David again. Layne. I recognize her high pitched squeal. I look regretfully at the half scone in my hand and wonder if I should save it for her, and then shrug. She thinks I think she’s in the greenbays, helping water the plants. I don’t have to feel bad for not having a scone for her. I finish the rest of the scone and wipe my hands on my pants.

“How long have they been in there?” I ask the guards. The one on the left shrugs. She looks around the same age as I am. “No idea, we just changed over. Oris has been in there all morning though,” she supplies unhelpfully.

“That implies that he leaves. I don’t remember seeing him outside of here since… Well, ever.” I roll my eyes. Oris has a fixation on the past and on the outside world. He’s a man in his sixties, with half a head of hair, square glasses and a round belly that pops out over unnaturally spindly legs.

He wears cardigans. Remembering this makes me wonder whether Layne visits more to fix his cardigans than to look out the window, but I dismiss that thought immediately and let out an audible chuff of amusement. She’s definitely here for the window. For the star. For the trees. For the grass. For the sunlight. So is Oris. He studies the rain from afar, and dreams aloud of walking out into the sun. I think he has some lofty goal of healing the clouds. Leadership has never interfered with his obsessive window-watching; maybe somebody within their shadows hopes that he will succeed.

The conversation inside the observatory begins to rise in volume, and the guards straighten up and look at one another, surprised. I look up too. “Is that normal?” I ask, but I already know it isn’t.

Oris is shouting. So is David. I’m already on edge, but there is a serious note in David’s voice I haven’t heard since the day he threw Layne and I in the truck and yelled for us to cover up from the rain. Layne is pleading. Crying? I push off the wall, my heart suddenly racing, my hands immediately sweaty. “Something is wrong.”

The guards rest their hands on their holsters. They lean in to grab onto the door handles, and I head over to help pull the doors open, but together we find that the door refuses to move. I look up at the guards, and the one who spoke to me fumbles with her pockets as though searching for a key. “That’s not supposed to happen,” the other one, a young man, states in confusion. He and I pull hard at the doors, but something catches my attention out of the corner of my eye, and I stop.

One of the lamps is flickering. I make a mental note to adjust its configuration on my next shift and turn my focus back to the door. “Come on, get it open!” I urge. The female guard pulls out a chain heavy with keys and begins to rifle through them. I gawk. “How many keys do you need? You only guard ONE door!”

The lamp is still flickering. As I turn around to stare at it, another begins to flicker further down the tunnel. And then another one. My stomach goes cold. I don’t like shouting, and I don’t like the dark. Both have come out of nowhere and suddenly, for a reason my brain can’t decipher yet, I am absolutely terrified.

The guards manage to find the right key and jam it into a hole I didn’t know existed, and in the millisecond it takes for them to turn the lock open:

I see the lamplight go out along the entire tunnel in a rippling wave.

I hear the shouting turn even more intense.

I feel the earth begin to tremble under my feet.

I hear the guards swearing in confusion.

I hear Layne screaming.

I feel sweat roll down the back of my neck.

I feel the heat of my fright against the sweater that is getting too small for me.

And an explosion rocks the earth around us.