“We need to do something,” Kameron
muttered out of the side of his mouth, “or we are going to have a mutiny on our
hands.”
“I ran out of ideas an hour ago,” I
muttered back, pacing in front of the door.
We had trapped the little ankle-biters in the room that we
used for sports. “Room” was a nice way of saying cave. I mean literal cold,
dark, hole-in-the-rock cave. It had been almost five hours and the thirty-seven
kids we were tending were bored and restless. But they weren’t the only ones. I
had started pacing awhile ago.
“This is ridiculous. How long do they expect us to stay in
here?” I said, frustration coloring my tone.
Kam stood just to the side of my pacing circuit, his arms
folded over his chest as his hazel eyes flicked between the crowd of kids and
me. His raven hair hung almost to his shoulders and a young man’s beard had
started growing on his face. I had teased him about it for awhile, but dropped
it when he persisted in keeping it.
“Well, this is the meeting that will determine the rest of
our lives, however long that may turn out to be,” Kam replied with his
infuriating, infinite patience.
Ah, yes. All of the adults were in the next cave over trying
to come up with a solution to our problem. Meanwhile, Kam and I were left to
keep a group of rowdy kids from tearing each other apart. Were we bitter that
we weren’t invited to the grown-up table? Yes. Yes we were. We are the
‘tweeners of our community. I am two months shy of being a legal adult, and Kam
is twenty-one. Kameron and I are the oldest of the kids. Technically, we should
have been considered part of the adult community, but nobody else saw it that
way. There is a seven year difference between me and the next oldest of the
kids and about a dozen years between the youngest adult. It is quite an age gap
and makes for lonely living. It didn’t always used to be that way…but that was
Before…
“Even if they are deciding our fates, what is there to talk
about that could last five hours?”
The corner of Kam’s mouth quirked up in amusement, but
before he could reply, a little girl who was about five tugged on the leg of
his pants. I think her name was Kristi, or something like that.
“I want my mommy,” she mumbled to the floor.
Kam knelt down in front of her so that he was at her
eyelevel. “Your mommy is at the meeting. She’ll come and get you as soon as she
can.”
“I WANT MY MOMMY!” Kristi shrieked, her voice echoed around
the cavern. There was complete silence for half a second before several of the
younger kids started to cry and the rest started whining at top volume for
their mommies.
“This is bad,” I said as the mob of tiny humans turned their
eyes on us. Since we were in charge, we were the easiest people to blame for
their troubles. Kam stood up so that we were shoulder to shoulder, backed up
against the door. “Any bright ideas?” I asked desperately.
“Just one.”
“Well?”
“I’m going to do something drastic,” his tone warned me to
stop him before it was too late.
“I’m not going to like this, am I?”
He smirked at me before walking to the center of the room.
“Friends! Kids! Underdwellers! Lend me your ears!” Kameron’s voice echoed
around the cavern.
The kids fell silent for once in their lives. There were
still a few sniffles, but their curiosity was stronger than their need for
their mommies for a moment, which is the best we could hope for.
“For today’s show, I am going to need help from my lovely
assistant.” He made a grand hand gesture towards me.
I did my best to imitate Kameron’s showman-like behavior and
walked to the middle of the cavern. The midgets stared in fascination as they
wondered what the heck we were doing, and I was wondering the same thing.
“I need three volunteers!” Kameron continued.
Almost every hand was in the air. Kameron wandered through
the crowd and picked three kids. The fact that they were all older than nine
didn’t escape my notice.
“You three are going to be the judges.” Kameron turned and
smiled at me.
Uh-oh. My brain finally caught up with Kam’s. Now that we
were on the same page, I was going to kill him.
“Madison and I are going to put on a little exhibition match
for everyone. You three,” he said turning to the judges, “have to make sure it
is a fair, clean fight.”
“But it isn’t fair already!” a ten year old boy with sandy
hair protested. His name was Malcolm…maybe.
“Why is that friend?” Kameron asked.
“She’s a girl!”
His comment echoed for a moment.
I growled slightly. Even in a cave underground, we haven’t
managed to get rid of sexist pigs. Before I could react, or overreact as it
were, Kameron intervened.
“I know,” he said in a carrying whisper. “I’m not sure I’m a
match for her, but I will try to last long enough to make it fun to watch.” He
winked and ruffled the little boy’s hair.
“Judges, state the rules while the combatants get ready,” I
called, still angry about the ‘girl’ comment.
I took off my jacket and shoes as one of the judges started
calling out the rules. Our training wasn’t meant to be put to this kind of use,
but Kam did say he was going to do
something drastic.
“No hair pulling. No groin kicking. No biting or eye
gouging. Weapons are prohibited. The first one to give up or pass out loses.
Fighters, take your positions!” The way the girl rattled off the rules, you
would think we did think kind of thing all the time.
Kameron stood before me bare chested and barefoot. Even on a
restricted diet, he managed to be well-muscled. Sometimes it was easy to forget
that Kameron had grown up. I still thought of him as the scrawny kid I used to
run around with, but clearly that was not the case anymore. I could tell that
Kameron was having similar thoughts as he gave me a once over.
“Go!” the audience shouted at once.
I needed no second invitation. I attacked fast and hard. I
made my kicks high and flashy. Kameron caught on pretty fast. We both knew
better than to kick high or punch wide. It left us vulnerable, but this wasn’t
a real fight. I did a spinning kick at his ankles. Kameron, in true show-off
fashion, flipped over my head and grabbed me from behind. I let him do it. It
had the right effect. My supporters gasped. Kameron’s supporters cheered. I
pretended to struggle against Kameron’s grip.
“You can give up any time,” he said loudly.
Like a snake, I slithered out of his grasp and did a
backhand spring across the room so I was a safe distance away.
“Don’t let her get away!” a rambunctious boy cried in
anguish. “Take her out!”
“You heard Jordan,” I called. “Take me out.” It was a
challenge to stop this kiddy game and be serious.
Kameron scowled. I smirked back. Without warning, he leapt
at me and tackled me to the ground. His shoulder connected with my stomach,
knocking the air out of me. We rolled around in the dirt, each of us trying to
stay on top. I was sorely at a disadvantage. Kameron easily outweighed me by
fifty pounds. I kept trying to break away, but he dragged me back. My body was
wearing out. I was using three times more energy than Kam. Every move I would have used to gain an
advantage would cause serious injury to my opponent, in this case, my best
friend. This little scuffle wasn’t worth it. My pride would probably be wounded
for awhile, but I would get over it. I was about to make a move that would have
solidified my defeat, but on the last turn right before I was about to call it
quits, I got a lucky shot at his eye with my elbow. Kameron was forced to let
go and I scrambled away. We both paused in order to catch our respective
breath. I attacked this time, forcing Kameron to fight in a style where I stood
a chance. Before I had a chance to gain any sort of advantage, the door to the
cavern creaked open causing me to look. Pain exploded through my jaw as Kameron
punched me. I hit the floor completely disoriented. He jumped on my back and
pinned me to the floor. He looked up when there was no cheering from the crowd
and saw who was standing in the doorway. Kam let go of me like my skin burned
him.
I pushed myself off the floor and wiped the blood from my
chin. Several adults stood in the doorway staring at us like we had somehow let
them down. My cheeks burned in shame, but I wasn’t sure why. This wasn’t the
worst thing we’d ever done by far.
“Kameron Hawkins and Madison Weston. The two of you need to
come with us,” a man with graying hair commanded. I recognized him from the
High Council.
I quickly jammed my feet back into my shoes and pulled my
jacket on. Kameron joined me by the doorway fully dressed and covered in dirt
and sweat. I grimaced when I realized that I probably looked worse than he did.
And, unless I missed my guess, I would say that we were about to be taken to
the meeting. I tried to brush the dust from my pants, but wasn’t very
successful. Even worse, the left side of my cheek had started to swell and
Kam’s eye was turning a lovely shade of purple. As we stopped in front of the
council doors, we made eye contact and shared a look that said “we’re screwed”
before the doors were pushed open. Every head swiveled to look at us. The conversation
halted abruptly. The expressions on the faces varied from shock to disapproval.
The feeling that I had done something wrong increased.
Kameron brushed against my arm as a gesture of reassurance
and a signal to sit down. We shuffled to a couple of empty seats in the middle
of the tallest stone stair.
“A raid isn’t going to fix the initial problem,” Dennis
argued, apparently picking up where the conversation had ended. “We have to do
more than hide and wait for things to change!”
“What would you have us do?” My father bellowed back. “We
lost so many people the last time we tried to fight back.” His voice was thick
with emotion.
“We’ve all lost loved ones, Peter,” Dennis countered half
exasperated, half pityingly.
“Why should we lose more? There is nothing wrong with our
lives now.”
“Nothing wrong? Nothing wrong! We are living in a constant
state of fear while those monsters hunt us down, and the only way we survive is
by stealing food so we don’t starve! I want to create a better world for my
children.”
“While sacrificing mine!”
There was a stunned silence. My mouth had dropped open in
shock. Kameron stiffened at my side. I suddenly realized why we had been
summoned.
“Enough!” One of the elders shouted. “We can worry about the
Shadows later. Right now the priority is food. We can’t delay a raid any
longer; otherwise, we will starve before we can do anything else.”
Dennis “hmphed” and sat back down. My father refused to look
at me as he sat down.
“Until the raid can take place, rations will be reduced.
Raiding assignments will be made at the conclusion of this meeting…” the elder
continued drowning on, but I had stopped listening.
Fear percolated in my stomach. When we talk about Shadows,
we don’t mean harmless little puddles at our feet where sunlight doesn’t touch.
They are monsters from another dimension who possess humans and use them to do
their bidding. The possessed are worse than dead, trapped in their own bodies
with no control. The only reason the council would have called from our babysitting
duties would be because we would be part of the raiding party. We would have to
leave the safety of our cave and sneak passed the shadow-monsters to steal
enough food to feed the community for a year or two and then sneak back. It
rarely happened without casualties.
An odd ringing sound filled my ears, and I felt oddly
detached from my body. I haven’t left the cave since I was first brought here
over eleven years ago. The thought of leaving and being exposed to the threat
was horrifying. My eyes roved over each of the council members until stopping
on the oldest lady. Her eyes locked on mine. I was unable to look away. An icy
tingle slid down my spine, freezing me in place.
It is up to you to save our people.
A voice echoed inside my skull. I thought the voice belonged
to the council woman whose gaze I couldn’t break, but her lips weren’t moving.
I tried to look around to see if someone else was talking but couldn’t move. I
could only listen.
It is written that you will be the
one to restore the sun and banish the shadows that have overrun our world. You
will become one of them. You will become one of them, but you must not succumb.
Our hopes and lives are in your hands.
The voice repeated itself over and over. Different parts of
the speech echoed and overlapped. Certain phrases were louder than the others
such as “must not succumb” and “restore the sun” and “save our people.” Flashes
of images joined the voice. An intense pain was building in my head from all
the information being processed. It was nauseating. I must have looked sick,
because Kameron whispered something in my ear, but his voice seemed to be
floating to me through a long tunnel. When talking had no effect he grabbed my
hand. His physical touch broke that terrible connection.
“No!” I gasped, jerking as if I had fallen asleep. I shook
my head and willed the images to disappear.
“No… what?” Kameron asked confused.
I stood up and started to make my way back up the aisle,
stepping on several people’s toes. Almost everybody’s attention was on me as I
ran out of the room, leaving a stunned silence in my wake. I fled to the unused
tunnels. It was so dark that I couldn’t see, but that little fact didn’t
matter. I knew these tunnels just as well as the lit ones. Nobody else would
bother me down here, except maybe Kameron. I’m the only one who is brave enough
or stupid enough to explore them.
Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up, I chanted to myself. It didn’t
work.
The palms of my hands half caught
the edge of the rocky shelf and I vomited into the chasm. It was mostly water,
but it still burned my throat as it came back up. I dry heaved a few more times
before the nausea subsided. The
pounding in my head was worse than ever, and I was weak and shaky. To add to
my list, my face where Kam had punched me ached. I rested my cheek against the
cool stone of the wall next to me. It was almost as good as ice. Almost. I sat
for awhile torn between hyperventilating, crying, or puking. Kameron showed up
about ten minutes later. Luckily, I hadn’t hyperventilated or cried. Kam showed up sooner than expected.
I figured he’d maintain some sense of responsibility and stay at the meeting,
but I overestimated his maturity.
“Maddie!” His voice echoed off the walls.
“Shut up Kam,” I moaned.
“Keep talking so I can find you.”
“Go back to the meeting. I’ll join you in a minute.” I must
have sounded as terrible as I felt because Kam didn’t leave. He followed the
sound of my voice until he rested his hand on my shoulder.
I was on the verge of insisting that
he go back to the meeting, but another wave of vomiting stopped me. My left hand slipped, and I dropped
dangerously low over the edge. Kam grabbed a fistful of fabric on the back of
my jacket pulled me back to safety. My head was still throbbing at a
nauseatingly painful level, but my stomach had stopped trying to empty its
contents. I sat back from the edge a little, far enough that Kam released my
jacket and sat down next to me. We sat in companionable silence for a long
moment. He didn’t ask for an explanation, and I didn’t give him one. I wouldn’t
know what I would’ve said if he had asked. That I was hallucinating? Maybe. But
whatever “it” was was too jarring and confusing for me to make any sense out of
it. It almost felt like something was trying to force its way into my mind. I
thought about the weird look from Calpurnia before this episode of madness
started, but brushed it off as coincidental. Maybe Kam had hit me harder than I
thought. Instead of confiding in Kam about my insanity, I broached a different
topic.
“We’re going on the next raid,” I croaked. “That’s why they
called us into the meeting, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
I exhaled loudly. This wasn’t good news, not unexpected, but
definitely not good. My stomach clenched uncomfortably again, but I didn’t
throw up. I massaged my forehead with the heels of my palms, trying to ease the
pounding that was threatening to split my skull in two.
“Have you been sick all day? If I had known, I never
would’ve suggested sparring.”
I snorted. “Suggested? Tricked or forced would be a more
accurate word choice.”
Kam chuckled ruefully and bumped his shoulder against mine.
The force of the bump reverberated through my head. I groaned and resumed
massaging my head.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you have more important things to be doing than be
audience to my misery?” The words were meant to be sharp, but they just sounded
pathetic.
I could practically see the bemused smile on his face in the
dark as he replied, “What could be more important than taking care of my
friend?” The word friend sounded awkward and forced, because we both knew that
it is a gross understatement of our relationship. But anything more would’ve
been an overstatement. We’d been each other’s only support for so long that
friendship could no longer adequately describe what we were, but neither of us
had made any romantic moves either. So we were stuck, too scared to take the
next step. What if something went wrong?
“You should go back. At least one of us should be present at
the meeting.”
“Yeah right. They didn’t need us for the first seven hours;
they will get along fine without us for the rest of it. Besides, do you really
think I would leave you alone like this?”
“Fine. Stay. But you have to shut up. My head is killing
me.”
“Let’s at least move you away from the edge.”
I didn’t resist when he grabbed under my arm and pulled me
up, leading me to a hole in the rock wall and sat down inside it. Kameron
scooted next to me and looped his arm around my shoulders.
“You are freezing!”
“Oh,” was my genius reply.
I hadn’t noticed I was cold until I realized how warm Kam
was by comparison. He pulled me closer in an attempt to warm me up. I rested my
head against his chest and closed my eyes. Just as I was about to drift off to
sleep, Kam started talking again.
“By the by, I’m sorry about punching you. I didn’t think I
would get you.”
“I’m sorry I elbowed you, but it was deliberate. You didn’t
leave me much of a choice.”
“I’ve seen you in training. You could’ve beaten me ten times
over. You were holding back. Why?”
“I wasn’t going to hurt you for stupid entertainment for
children.”
“You care about me.” The grin colored his voice.
“Don’t sound so shocked,” I muttered. “We will be going on a
raid soon. Who would watch my back if you were in the infirmary?”
“I’m touched. I think…”
I didn’t reply. The silence and the dark did wonders to cure
my headache, as did actively not thinking about the raid or the voice or the
vision.
“Let’s head back up.”
I slid off the ledge and Kameron followed suit.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You realize we have to go back to the meeting and get our
raid assignments, right?”
“Ugh,” I moaned.
He led me gently with one hand around my waist and the other
grasping my hand. It was probably overkill, I wasn’t that sick, but I didn’t push him away as he ushered me back toward
the council room. Kameron left me at the door to go in to receive his
assignment. He was only gone a moment before he was back, then it was my turn.
As I re-entered the chamber, the council members looked
annoyed. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t about me ducking out earlier,
but that was probably a lie. Only one person in the room looked relatively
happy and that was Calpurnia. I made the mistake of looking at her directly.
The voices and images started up again causing me to break into a cold sweat.
“Madison!” Webster said sharply.
Luckily, that was enough to break the trance. I was shaking
from head to toe.
“Are you alright, child?” Calpurnia asked. I might have
imagined the smugness in her voice, but that was unlikely.
I nodded, not trusting my voice. Just give me the assignment so I can go lie down, I pleaded
silently.
“You will train with Shawn and be part of the rear guard,”
Webster said in answer to my silent plea.
An odd hollowness filled my body. The mortality rate of the
rear guard was almost one hundred percent. If the weird voices weren’t enough,
they were going to sentence me to death! I swallowed the growing panic, nodded
curtly, and left before I could fall down.
