Scarred City by Joshua David Bellin

Author:Joshua David Bellin [Bellin, Joshua David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

TWICE ORPHANED, ALEKA followed Javier without caring where he was leading her.

He didn’t seem the slightest bit lost. Map in hand, he turned at the intersections it told him to, chose the correct branch when tunnels bifurcated. Each time she helped him lift the cart over debris or steer it through a half-open doorway, she glanced listlessly at his drawing, but the combination of weak light and defeated will made it blur into illegibility, a faded landscape of gray and black through which her body floated like a wraith’s.

No matter where her feet went, her mind was on her mother, alone in the room where they’d left her without food or water or the ability to run. If there were Skaldi elsewhere in the complex, if the parasite that had demolished the containment vault was only one of many such monsters haunting the hallways, they’d find her in time, possibly before she had a chance to starve. Was that better, to die in a single instant of soul-draining agony than to linger for days while hunger consumed her body and wracked her mind?

But she already knew the answer to that. She’d lived through starving times in Auntie’s camp, months-long stretches of drought when the adults walked around dazed and hollow-eyed while the children took to chewing hunks of desert clay to keep the hunger pangs from tormenting them all night. Those times had been nearly unendurable, and yet they were nothing next to the torture Aleka had felt during the starvation phase of Skaldi existence. As a human being, you could only starve once. As Skaldi, you starved again and again and again, and there was no end to the cycle short of crumbling into dust. The thought of her mother being forced to endure such hell—and all to give her daughter a second chance at life—opened a jagged scar in her heart that she knew would never close.

Javier had unlatched a bolted door and Aleka had helped him lower the cart down a stairwell, pausing to rest at a landing then taking a switchback to the next lower level, when he consulted his map and announced, “This is it.”

Aleka looked around them. They stood in a gloomy compartment at the bottom of the stairwell, the light of the torch reflecting off a closed metal door. Black streaks that looked suspiciously like claw-marks covered the cement stairs and floor. “This is what?”

“The rail line,” he said. “We’re here.”

He pointed to the map, his finger resting on a tube-like shape that snaked off the edge of the page. She might have marveled at how he’d produced the illusion that the tube lay deep beneath the other levels, but she couldn’t muster any enthusiasm either for his artistry or their arrival.

“It’s cold,” she said, hugging her shoulders and feeling goosebumps up and down her arms.

“Probably because we’re so deep underground.” He inspected the torch, which was sputtering badly. “Help me out with this.”

He set the torch on the floor and extinguished the meager flame with his boot, then held out a hand toward her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.