The other boys move away. Quickly, as if they know what’s going to happen next and want no part of it.
Cassie takes a tentative step toward Matthew. Her eyes are shaking in their sockets, glistening over. “You’re so tall now.” She reaches up, is about to touch his face, then withdraws her hand. “And skinny. How long has it been? Since you were . . . sent here?”
“One year.” Softer and with sadness, he continues. “Three months, twenty-three days.”
“Where’s Timmy?”
His eyes cast downward.
Cassie’s lips wobble as tears pool in her eyes.
Matthew rubs his arm. “Come with me. I’ll get you some clothes to change into.” He looks at the rest of us. Maybe it’s the change in light, but a softness touches his face. “Bring your friends, too.”
Five
IT IS A world of metal and garish light. With only narrow, low-ceilinged corridors to maneuver within. Every corridor we walk down is identical to the previous: metal and light, metal and light. On each side of us, recessed into the walls, are enclaves, rows of them stacked three high in perfect alignment and spaced apart with mathematical precision. Each is the size of a large coffin, steel plated and embedded deep into the wall.
But it’s the other humans we gape at the most.
They mill around aimlessly, or gather in small groups of three or four. All young, mostly boys. Pale, gaunt, emaciated, often staring off vacantly at the walls. They blink as we pass, gazing back at us with neither hostility nor warm hospitality. Just mild curiosity bordering on indifference, as if the arrival of newcomers is commonplace. Occasionally, Cassie would gasp with surprise, her face paling at the sight of yet another familiar face from the past. But none call out to her or acknowledge her. They only avert their stares quickly.
Matthew leads us to the end of one corridor. Inside an enclave are stacks of clothing. All the same drab garb worn by everyone else, brown and bland, mildewy. I slip into the clothes quickly and approach Matthew as the girls get dressed.
“My name’s Gene.”
He regards me with narrow eyes.
I point to the boys. “And that’s Epap—”
“No names,” Matthew says curtly.
“What?”
“We don’t have names down here.”
“But you’re named Matthew.”
He shakes his head. “That’s . . . from before.” He purses his lips. “Listen, we just don’t do names here.”
“Why not? You all—”
“We all disappear. Inevitably and suddenly. So there’s no sense in giving names. No sense in forming bonds.” He turns his back to me, starts walking away.
I take his elbow. Gently, but with insistence, I stop him. He flinches but does not snatch his arm away. “They take you for food, don’t they?” I say, remembering what Krugman had told me about this place. “Randomly, you never know when you might get taken.”
Matthew doesn’t say anything, but he gives the slightest nod.
“Tell me how,” I whisper. “How do they take you?”
He resists at first. Only after the girls join us, Cassie standing closest to him, does he speak, mechanically, with only the slightest tremble in his voice.
About once a week (at least they think it is a week; there is no way to measure the passage of days and nights in these underground catacombs), an alarm goes off. You have one minute, he tells us, to climb into one of the enclaves in the wall. Only one person per unit. Then a glass window will snap down, sealing you inside. That is a good thing. Because it protects you. The lights go out—the only time they ever do—and the darkness is morbid and terrifying. And then they come down into the catacombs to gawk at the hepers. The Ruler and his retinue. Up and down the corridors, looking and staring, drooling and shaking. The Ruler will inevitably point to a particular heper. If it’s you, you’re as good as dead. Because within the next hour your enclave will be retracted into the walls, then whisked away on some transportation system. From bed to coffin, just like that.
“To where?” David asks.
Matthew’s lips stretch into a sad, horrific smile. “The kitchen.”
“You know this for sure?”
The smile droops. “No. Some think you end up in the Ruler’s private chambers. But nobody’s ever come back to say, so it’s all conjecture.” He spits on the ground. “Empty, useless conjecture. ’Cause you’re dead, either way.”
Cassie speaks, her voice strained and tense. “Girls are taken first, right, Matthew?” She gazes down the corridor. “Because girls are the choicest of morsels. That’s why there are so few here. We’re the first to get chosen.”
Matthew doesn’t reply for a moment. “Not necessarily,” he says, but his voice lacks conviction. “The Ruler likes to spread out the girls. Save them for special occasions. You might not get selected for a while.” He says all this with his eyes staring down at his feet.
We’re quiet for a minute.
“Just make sure,” Matthew says, “when the siren sounds you get into one of these enclaves. Immediately. Drop whatever you’re doing. The glass separations will come down sixty seconds later whether you’re ready or not. If you’re not, you’ll be stuck out in the corridors. Completely unprotected and vulnerable. And when they come down . . .”
“What happens?” Cassie asks.
Matthew pauses. “That’s when the rest of us roll toward the wall, shut our eyes, clamp hands over our ears.”
We stare down the brightly lit corridor at the rows of recessed enclaves on each side. Arms and legs dangle out from a few.
“And this siren,” I say. “You said it goes off about once a week.”
He nods. “Thereabouts. You guys are lucky. The siren just went off yesterday, so you’re safe for a few days yet.”
David sits down halfway into one of the enclaves, his face drained of color. “It never ends, does it?” he says quietly. A flash of anger crosses his face. “We should have listened to Gene. We should have headed east when we had the chance. Going back to the Mission was naïve and stupid. And what did it accomplish? The whole village was wiped out anyway. We did nothing. Even the girls who escaped with us by train—they’re now dead. So we saved Cassie. So what? We lost Jacob, and probably Ben, to save one girl?”
“David!” Sissy says. “Stop.”
“No, it’s true,” he says, his eyes glistening with tears. “We wouldn’t be here if we’d only listened to Gene.” He looks up at Sissy. “We’d be free, all six of us, journeying east. Not stuck in this place. Not sitting here like food on a platter ready to be served up for their consumption.” His lips tremble, and as he closes his eyes two tears slide down his cheek.
Sissy sits next to him, puts her arm around his shoulders. She doesn’t say anything. Because David is right, and she knows this.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“We’ll find a way out of here,” Sissy says. She nudges his face. “Hey, chin up. We’re survivors, remember? We’ll find a way out of here.”
He doesn’t answer, only stares at the steel floor.
I look at Matthew. “You’ve been here over a year now. Tell me the weak spots. We can find a way out of here.”
Matthew opens his mouth to say something, stops. His face ripples with ambiguous emotion.
“Can we backtrack our way to the train?” I say. “Down the elevator, back to the platform? Not now, of course, but later when the station is empty?” An idea lights in my mind. “Then we could all board it, trigger the train controls, set the train in motion, escape out of here?”
“That might work,” Epap says, catching on, his excitement growing. “Back to the Mission. It’ll be safe. The duskers there would have been destroyed by the sun days ago. Then we could set off on foot eastward. Yeah, that really might work.” He looks excitedly at Matthew. “Is that possible?”
All Matthew does is stare back. And then he starts giggling with a shrill laugh, his body jiggling up and down like it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. The sound of his laughter sends chills down my back. And still laughing, he walks away, leaving us to stare and wonder. And then to realize.
There is no escape.
Six
FOR THE NEXT hour we’re left to explore on our own. But it’s all the same dreary, monotonous repetition: brightly lit narrow corridors, glaring light reflecting off the floor and walls. Only the recessed, shadowed enclaves offer a break from this garish sameness. The boys in the catacombs, their eyes vacant and dark, stare ghoulishly at us, but when we meet their gaze they flick their eyes away. They walk away from our questions, ignore our greetings.
We discover two large spaces—both about the size of a large lecture hall—at opposite points of the catacombs. One space is the dining room, although that’s too fancy a term. It is really little more than a feeding area for animals. Troughs run from one end of the room to the other, filled with slop-like porridge. The boys (and a sprinkling of girls) mill into the room, and eat quickly with their hands, cupping the food into their mouths. Another trough is filled with water, and it is there we head first. The water is brackish and lukewarm, with a metallic tinge to it. Other boys—giving us little more than a curious look—slip in and out of the dining hall, spending only about a minute at most. I realize this is how they dine: in small doses and quickly, only enough to quell hunger pangs.
Nauseating as that realization is, nothing prepares my stomach for what awaits in the other large room. We smell it long before we reach it. It’s the communal restroom, but again, that’s too grandiose a term. It’s really just an open cesspool of raw sewage. We stand at the cusp, none of us daring to go in.
A young boy walks out, shows only faint surprise on seeing us. “Don’t urinate or defecate anywhere but here. We don’t have many rules down here, but this is one of the few ironclad regulations. Do your business in here and nowhere else. Or else.” He walks away, hitching up his pants.