Raiders (26 page)

And then, as a wave or flood would come, a wall of Raider soldiers punched through the outer light cones, a hundred so or more abreast. They yelled and they shot ahead and advanced quicker than anyone expected. Kama yelled, “GO!” openly to everyone. The Citizens that remained alive bolted into the darkness, back to the street that was behind them.

Julian, Dusty and Aurelia ignored her as they continued to shoot. The Raiders’ front line was now about fifty meters away, closer now. Kama shot as fast as she possibly could. Five seconds later she lifted her Coilgun and repeated, “Let’s GO!” And then she ran.

“Ah screw this shit!” Aurelia said and with that all three followed Kama as she disappeared into the darkness beyond. Unsure of where to go Dusty slowed down a little. Aurelia said, “The big stairs are this way!” Kama soon found herself about twenty meters ahead of them. She turned round and vigorously waved. “Come on!” They ran to catch up to but it was difficult to see whether they would trip over anything or anyone in their path.

Level Seven was at the extreme bottom of the grand stairway, a wide and gently sloped spiral affair situated in the center of the Polar City near Center Link. Most people simply referred to it as the big stairs, often they would verbalize it as one word,
Bigstairs
. When they arrived at the Bigstairs they soon found themselves amidst thousands of fellow Citizens all with the same goal in mind. Everyone knew well enough to go down to Level Seven in an extreme emergency. Nobody, however, had ever actually ventured down there before.

Until now.

Bigstairs was in actuality one giant spiral ramp that was a good forty meters wide. There were no physical stairs on it yet the nomenclature somehow hung on through the generations. Aurelia smushed herself into the interior railing of Bigstairs and looked down. She saw the blurred shadow that was Kama who had already reached Level Three, two levels down. “Shit she’s already down to three!” Aurelia yelled to Dusty and Julian then broke into a controlled sprint broken up with shuffles to avoid collisions with other City evacuees.

Kama knew that the further ahead she was the more motivated the others would be to catch up with her. So down she went, quickly down to Level Four, Five and then Six. She stopped for a second to look up the giant spiral’s inner column that towered overhead. She leaned over the banister and grabbed onto a decorative finial for balance. She didn’t see her friends but the fantastic scene revealed thousands of Polar City citizens as they descended Bigstairs. Some walked while others jog-shuffled their way down. It was almost as if Bigstairs held the entire City population upon the shoulders of it’s singular construct.

It was their only chance now, Level Seven. It was either that or they die and Kama knew it to be true just as strongly as she knew her former fellowmen, the Raiders who presently spirited closer upon the fleeted City.

Kama arrived at the Bigstairs final landing and looked around. It ended at the extreme bottom of the massive cavern complex that made up the Polar City. Level Seven was poorly lit and cobwebs and dirt were everywhere. A palpable dampness suspended all round her that was not felt at the higher levels above. It was cold and stale and everything smelled like water and moss and moistened rocks.

Five minutes later Julian, Aurelia and Dusty caught up to her. “Now what?” Aurelia asked through her shorted breaths.

“I think we’re supposed to go there,” Kama said and pointed toward a large mouthed cavernous opening. It was a rectangular shaped entry that was crudely carved into the deep. They looked further across and discovered that there were five similarly shaped entryways each spanned twenty meters side to side. They were interposed with vertical rock columns that were three meters thick.

The group were soon nudged in the direction of the entryways as people emerged from the Bigstairs and walked toward the entries. They found themselves in a huge mega-cave. It was roughly cut for utilitarian space and volume with little concern for aesthetic appeal. Scattered throughout the mega-cave otherwise known as Level Seven were crates. There were thousands of crates with labels like PC3/MODULAR TENT Model No.466 and CCX/WOOLBLANKETSxGROSS and PCX/IOWATER EXP 10x2558 stencil-sprayed onto them.

Throughout the five hundred meter deep cave people stood and sat and huddled in the damp, shocked and numbed into a silent, soul-barren state that only those who have been through hurricanes or tornadoes or wars know all too well.

“
This
is it?” Aurelia said with exasperation while she rested her battle rifle’s stock on her left foot. “
This
is Level Seven?”

“What were you expecting?” Dusty asked her. “Should we go somewhere else? You got a better idea?”

Aurelia waved her free hand in the general direction of the entryways. “I was expecting a fucking door is what I was expecting!” She said, then laughed nervously almost as a resign. “Holy shit! Fuck this,” She said.

Julian put his hand on her shoulder pad. He really could say nothing to her or offer any words of comfort for no other reason than he agreed.

A voice announced from hidden speakers built into the rocks somehow. “Attention! Please stand clear of the Barrier!” It was Veliosa’s voice.

“
Barrier?
” Kama asked. “What barrier?” While she shook her head in disbelief, hundreds of vertical red lasers illuminated the entryways.

Veliosa repeated. “Please stand clear of the Barrier!”

People shouted from the Bigstairs as they ran to the entryways. “Wait! Wait! People still comin’ down! Wait!”

Veliosa’s voice announced, “Barrier will be lowered in three minutes thirty seconds! Stand clear of Level Seven Barrier! Attention!” She said.

Everyone inside backed away from the ominous laser lines while more evacuants ran across them as they scurried from the Bigstairs final landing and into Level Seven’s massive cave room. The laser beams briefly reflected from the tops of their heads as the citizens passed under them.

“Who is that?” Aurelia asked. “Sounds like that Assistant that was announcing all the stuff about getting everyone ready.”

“Yeah sounds like her,” Dusty replied. “I don’t know.” A few minutes later the last of the Citizens who managed to escape the Raiders ran into the cave.

Veliosa announced, “Closing barrier now! Please stand clear of the red lines!” Some held onto each another in search of comfort, others cried or simply watched the cave’s maw. And then someone ran back out of the cave toward the Bigstairs base landing.

It was General Berg. “Anyone coming down?” He yelled as loud as he could, his mouth cupped with his palms directed up. “Anyone coming down? Hello!” He repeated again. Everyone fell silent and listened with intent.

General Berg yelled up the Bigstairs once more. He heard a woman shriek and scream but it was so far away and removed, probably back up on Level One or Two he thought. She would certainly never make it down alive. Her soul-fought scream lingered for a good five seconds while it bounced off the rocks.

The silence reigned.

“Anyone up there?” The General volleyed one desperate and last time. He waited for anything but heard nothing. He saw no motion or anima from the levels above as a few other joined his brief observance upward. Three-tone alarms resounded as he slowly walked back to the cavern room entrances.
Whoa-wooo-waaa
the alarm echoed forth in ascending notes. It sounded strangely pleasant although it carried subtle undertones of genuine caution.

And then a sound, like glass rubbed against steel, resonated throughout the cavern. Large transparent blocks of what looked like solid glass about two meters thick, maybe even three, descended from previously unobserved openings in the entryway ceilings. The red lasers remained lit from above. They refracted against the glass blocks as they slowly lowered at a rate of three millimeters a second. The glass barriers slammed down with a ear splitting
ttttthhhoooonnngg
when they met steel plates that lay on the entrance floor.

The people quietly lined up to look out of the heavy glass barriers. The Military men and women, the civilian police, the medical personnel still dressed in their hospital wear right down to their isolate slippers, the teary eyed children hugged by their mothers, the cooks, the shopmen, the Dome technicians who grew most of the food for the Polar City, the cleaners who still smelled of steam and solvents both, the scientists, the teachers, the students, the engineers.

None had words to share but everyone looked one to another moment and again, stranger to stranger because under the crushing press of crisis they truly were strangers not evermore from this moment forward.

The Raiders arrived at Level Seven after descending the Bigstairs en masse. For about ten minutes they stood at the glass barrier edge and looked into the cavern where the Polar City survivors stared back at them on the other side. A Raider soldier rammed the glass with her rifle stock which slid off and away, almost as if the glass's surface was greased down. She stumbled at her unexpected change in balance and then shook her head in disgust.

“Can you make out what they are saying?” Julian asked Kama who stood and faced her former clan.

“No, I can’t. Too difficult to tell,” Kama responded.

While Kama and her friends continued to closely observe the Raiders they almost forgot about the thousands of Polar City people who surrounded them. Everyone watched and wondered what on earth would happen next.
Hard to believe
, Aurelia thought, that they could be so close to so many of the Raiders and yet merely stand there. And yet there they were.

An Elder emerged from the enemy line. He was unmistakable for he was accompanied by two Chosen women, younger replacements that Kama did not recognize nor even know from her previous life. They clung onto the Elder’s arms which were spiraled under his Temple silk wraps similar to the ones Julian and Kama used for their escape from the Reso prison ring.

The Chosen on the left whispered in his ear, then looked at Kama through the glass. She laughed although no sound carried through. And then she slid her tongue into his ear and bit into his lobe, then laughed and playfully patted the Elder on his arm.

Dusty knew that the girls represented what Kama was once. Her previous world, her life was presently quite dead to her inside. Kama quietly stood in line with her newly found friends. All that power simply fell upon her as chains and binds and folds over her eyes, as power often does.

And it occurred to her once again that all her life she was a prisoner and it was now, at this precise moment while she stared across the glassed block barrier into her past, that to be truly free a pivot must bear down. A pivot that must be birthed and breathed into life. A moment where everything truly changes forever.

And as she stood there she did not move nor blink nor heave her chest or shuffle her feet, not so much as a single centimeter while the Chosen woman pulled her hand away from the Elder’s arm. The Elder grabbed a Coilgun from a nearby Raider fellowman who stood in brief surprise as he pulled the weapon out of his arms. The Elder fired the weapon straight at Kama’s face, straight in. Everyone nearby except Kama ducked and recoiled in response to the sudden assault.

The Coilround bit hard into the glass. It slowed to a stop even as it came to within twenty centimeters from an otherwise deadly exit. Whatever the glass barrier was made from, it held.

It held!

The small tunnel created by the Coilround oozed away as the glass, if you could even call it glass any more, liquified and healed its newborn wound. The Elder waved his hands up in a rage and pointed to the glass. He clearly shouted a command then every Raider within view aimed their Coilguns and other weapons into it and fired all at once. On the other side faint sounds came through, like hums,
wuuummm wummmmm wummmm.
Everyone backed away from the glass in horror. A few screamed in shock at the massive attack. Yet the barrier did not fall as the bullets buried themselves and halted somewhere in between. Kama however still stood directly in front of the glass, alone, unmoved. She stood there as magnificently and beautifully as anyone made of this earth or even elsewhere for that matter could possibly stand.

The Elder laughed and smirked and then shook his head. He threw the Coilgun away, now useless as anything against the cavern floor. He stared at Kama and she at him, his face red and pulsed with venom and scale against the traitor Chosen.

He shouted out to the Raiders around him even though no words could be heard from the other side. And then the Elder walked away and disappeared beyond the crowded warriors.

The people of the Polar City slowly made their way back to the glass barrier where Kama stood alone. “What is this stuff made of?” Julian asked while he stared at the Coilrounds embedded deep within the glass, like so many flies trapped in fossil amber.

Kama looked at him with a glossbare faraway smile. She shrugged and said, “I don’t know.” She peeled off her leather battle helmet and continued to look at the Raiders who shuffled around and discussed the situation in small circles. She recognized a few of them from days gone by.
So strange
, Kama thought. She never imagined in her most eccentric dreams that she would someday stand in opposition to her old clan in an alien underground city a thousand kilometers away, the glass between. Once she could have any of them executed with a simple wave or word. Now they gathered against her, against the barrier as they relentlessly inspected the cavern walls for any sign of an exploitable crack or imperfection to end her days alive.

A few moments later the Elder returned to the glass with a cloth rolled around his right hand, probably a coat fragment borrowed from a fellow Raider. He held it up to the glass and drove a small fighting knife into it to hold it in place. A barely audible
wwwuummm
transversed the glass as the knife’s black-steel blade bit into it. Written onto the cloth were three simple words in English.