The Wounded (The Woodlands Series) (9 page)

When my
feet hit the ground, I didn’t want to turn around. My body resisted it. I heard Matthew cry out, and the others muffle their distress. Pelo put his hand on my shoulder and turned me slowly.

Simply, and without all the agitated enthusiasm he usually spoke with, he said, “I’m sorry.”

I closed my eyes. Because I knew once I opened them, an image would be buried in my head so deep that it would never leave. I needed a second. Just one. To lie and tell myself I would be able to handle this. Because of course, I couldn’t. No one would.

I opened
them, blinking furiously, the light hitting my eyes and blinding me momentarily. I swiped my eyelids with the back of my hand and stared down at the grey smudge on my skin. Matthew was squatting at the edge of the crater, rocking back and forth, clasping his charm like it had magical powers. Pelo was somber, his head bowed and his hands together in prayer. But he didn’t know these people. The other Survivor scanned the Hole frantically, until he cried out and sunk to his knees.

“Hana, Hana
,” he cried.

A streak of sunken ash led to bodies
, which were scattered everywhere. Some were pressed together, and some had tumbled almost to the center. All unmoving.

My eyes
jumped from one face to another, searching for Joseph or Orry, but it was futile. From this distance, only the very closest could be identified. The rest were blurred or buried. I realized what I should be looking for was someone small. And my thin composure started to tear. I needed to know if the children were down there. My gaze flew from group to group, feeling my heart dying inside my body each time. One looked slight, her head buried in ash, perfect blonde hair fanned out behind her. It could have been Apella, but I couldn’t tell from here. I started to shake, the wind battering my arms and legs. Each mote of ash felt like a shard of glass hitting my skin. I took a step downwards, my leg sinking knee-deep in ash. I had to get closer. A hand grabbed the back of my jacket, holding my body out over the crater at a forty-five-degree angle.

I turned
. Pelo’s strong arm was straining from the pull of my weight and my will to go down.

“Let me go
,” I barked. “There are people down there. I have to see… I have to make sure…”

He shook his head. “No. I won’t let you go. The ash is
too deep. You won’t make it back.”

I s
truggled against his grip, but he snapped me towards his chest and held me tight. “I have to… I have to… what if it’s…” I cried into his chest. “Oh God. Why would they do this?”

“Sh
h,” he whispered. I pressed my ear to his chest and listened to his heartbeat, quick and drumming. Restless. “It’s not them.”

I pulled back and looked up at his face.
His eyes were new. They hadn’t seen this kind of devastation. It was horror he was holding inside, for me. I knew he was lying to make me feel better. He didn’t know any better than I did who was down there. He didn’t even know who I was looking for.

I let him lie.
Even though it didn’t feel quite right, I let him comfort me for all the times he hadn’t in the past.

I stayed like that for a few minute
s until I heard the shuffling of pushing on. We were grief stricken and desolate, a new kind of emptiness echoing out of the Hole and trying to swallow us. But that wasn’t everyone down there. We had to keep going. No one looked down. We held our gaze in front of us and held out hope that someone was waiting for us on the other side.

I missed Rash. I didn’t want my father’s help or comfort. I wanted someone here with me who understood me.
Who knew, even without me really telling him, what I had been through. To me, Pelo was a half, even less, a tiny thought of what he once was in my life. Joseph and Orry kept me going, kept me planting each foot down in the path of ash. I watched my footprint, slowly blowing away like it was never there. If anyone was going to get out, it would be Joseph. Then dark dread crept over me because I knew Joseph was also the kind of person who would stay and fight.

There was nothing to do but keep pressing on. The
light dimmed and the wind snapped, iced teeth tearing at any exposed skin. It swirled around the base of the crater and brought the smells of the dead towards us in a foul, cold bouquet.

A
head, Matthew turned and motioned with his hands to pull away from the edge again. I was relieved. The raw, torn edges of the ripped-up road and eaten-up buildings resembled my crumbling nerves. We were all clinging to the edges of our sanity like ants to the corner of a leaf. I needed to get away before I felt compelled to give up and dive over it. I needed to hear Matthew’s voice, hear something alive, human. The howling wind was like a thousand voices, as if the dead were clawing their way back up. I followed him quickly, imagining hands were about to grab my legs and pull me under.

*****

We dipped under the torn bridge towards a narrow alley, where two buildings supported each other, forming an apex. The wind suddenly ceased its screaming. Thick, green vines snaked up the walls and through the windows, slowly reclaiming, like lazy worms, pulling the buildings to the earth. I had no doubt they would eventually get their way.

We
caught up and huddled around Matthew, rolling and knocking against each other like aimless marbles. He dusted his hands off, painting his pants with black streaks. Pulling off his mask left a wide, black, drawn-on smile around his mouth like a clown, where the dust had collected in the meeting between mask and skin. We all did the same. “Does anyone suffer from claustrophobia, a fear of small spaces? Although I probably should have asked you this before we left…” he said in a worn, cracked voice. The other Survivor had been here before. His question was aimed at Pelo and me.

I hugged my body tight. “I don’t think I’m going to like where you’re going with
this, am I?”

Frederick, the man who had identified his daughter, Hana, as one of the dead
, stepped forward, his ash-stained face striped from tears. “I’ll help you, little rabbit,” he said kindly. I liked his rumbling voice, comforting in this ridiculously unfamiliar situation.

I tipped my head up
. He was a hulking man, tanned, with grey-tinged sideburns that grazed his jawline and exaggerated its already large size. His grey eyes were wet, and he kept wiping his nose with his sleeve.

“You don’t have to do that
,” I whispered, touching his arm. He had enough to worry about.

He wiped his nose again and stood up straight. “It’ll give me something to
concentrate on.” He extended his leathery paw. “Take my hand.”

I put the thought of snot out of my head and grabbed his hand
, seeing a slight slump in Pelo’s posture as I did.

Ma
tthew stood with his hands on his hips, pausing while he searched the ground. He was mustering courage or preparing himself, I wasn’t sure which. Finally, he spoke, “We need to climb up into that car park.”

I raised my eyebrows. Pelo
asked before I could. “Car park?”

Matthew
nodded, and I saw a tiny smile that was quickly replaced with seriousness. He pointed to a sandwich of thick concrete slabs, haphazardly sitting on top of each other. “See that? People used to park their cars in these buildings for the day while they worked, shopped, or whatever.”

Pel
o scratched his chin in puzzlement. I knew he was thinking the same thing as me. The mind boggled at the idea that there were so many cars in the world that they had huge buildings to put them in. In Pau, I had only seen one electric van in my whole life. That and the garbage trucks were the only wheeled transportation I’d ever been privy to.

We walked to the end of the alley until it was so narrow we had to walk single file. I kept a hold of Frederick’s hand. He ducked under the metal bars and beams that jutted out overhead
and warned me about piles of broken glass. We came to a dead end, and Matthew pointed up. A concrete slab had been torn in half, leaving the iron bars set inside it exposed. The Survivors had fashioned a crude ladder out of the bars. I hesitated, because at the top of this ladder was a black slant of an opening barely high enough for a body lying flat, and I knew Matthew was going to tell me we had to go in there.

Frederick squeezed my hand. “If I can
fit, then you’ll be fine, little rabbit,” he said. I frowned and mused that yes, if I were a rabbit, I would fit. I had my doubts about a full-grown Rosa squishing her way through there. I watched Matthew climb up, grip his hands on the top edge of the opening, and arrange himself so his feet were pointing into the darkness. He held his torch between his teeth, gave me one last look of concern, and disappeared.

The others followed
, including Pelo, who shot up the ladder and into the dark like a thin-armed monkey before I could blink. I heard scraping and grunts, saw the occasional flick of light as someone’s torch swung back towards the opening. I hung back, determined to be last. Frederick bumped into my back and urged me forward.

I bit my lip and started climbing.

“You go first, and I’ll shine the torch ahead of you. Don’t worry, I’ve been down before. I’ll direct you,” Frederick said.

I nodded
slowly and swung my feet so that they were pointing down the incline and into the dark. Everyone was too far in front of me. All I could see was a triangle of light at the bottom of what seemed to be an ever-constricting crack between two concrete slabs.

The bulky man slid in next to me and whispered, “Go.”

The only thought that came to mind when he said ‘go’ was ‘no’. But I didn’t have a choice. I shimmied downwards, the back of my shirt lifting, exposing my skin to the cold concrete, a hundred little scratches roughing up my skin. I thought I might just slide down swiftly and then wedge at the bottom, but the concrete was coarse. I had to wiggle my hips and use my hands to push off the concrete above me to get any downward movement at all.

With my fingers pressed to the ceiling,
I imagined Joseph doing this with Orry on his front. I stopped breathing. I could see my little boy’s forehead dragging across the ceiling. I could hear his cries getting swallowed up by the cold dark. He would see nothing, his only comfort the steady heartbeat in his father chest as they scrambled down.

The slabs were getting closer together. I could
n’t get my arms above my head any more. I had to put them at my sides and wiggle like a snake. I stopped, listening for other voices. I could hear Matthew and Pelo; they sounded close.

“Rosa, are you there? Turn ri
ght when you get to the end and crawl through the pipe,” I heard my father say. I rolled my eyes. A pipe. Of course.

Frederick’s boot tapped my head
not so gently. “You all right?” he asked.

“Uhuh
,” I managed as my head rattled from the tapping. I moved faster. My breath quickened. I needed to get out of this place. The thought of being crushed was overwhelming me, and I started to panic. I shimmied down until my boots hit the end. I looked right but could see no pipe. Light was coming from somewhere, but I couldn’t find the source. My heart was hammering in my chest. Did we take a wrong turn? My hands searched frantically around for an opening to the right, and I cut my finger on a piece of jagged iron.

“Damn it
.” I put my finger in my mouth, tasting metallic blood.

T
orchlight skimmed my hands. “Look up,” he said calmly.

I looked up and to my right
and, sure enough, there was a round opening. I heaved myself up and into it, scurrying along the pipe on my hands and knees like I was being chased. I fell out of the end abruptly, landing on the men who were waiting to catch me.

Pelo laughed in a short, stressed kind of way.

They righted me like a toppled bottle and then Frederick came out, landing on his feet with a thump. He smiled at me gently and then turned to the others. We were clustered at one end of a brick corridor, which was scrawled with angry black characters I couldn’t read. Everyone stared nervously at a shining, steel door. It was solid and ominous. It held every possibility to the point where I didn’t really want to open it.