After the End

Underground Fire - Part 1: Arrival

She had come down from the surface, staggering and red-faced, breathing slow and close to death. People rushed at her in shock and wonder, catching her as she collapsed, carrying her to the makeshift hospital area. They spoke loudly in the echoing underground, wondering about her story, where she'd been when the end came, how long she'd been up there, how she was still alive. No one ever truly found out the answers to any of these questions; she spoke words few and far between, and only then in a crackling whisper.

I was scared of her. Soon as I saw her standing there, wavering, in the midst of the crowd, her colourless, red-rimmed eyes raving crazily around at her surroundings. Eyes that constantly constantly looked up to the sky that we can't see above our crumbling concrete roof, above our protection from the surface. Her expressions, her actions, her words.

Most were curious, curious about her story. Others kept away, or as far away as you can get when your city is held in a long cavern underground. She had come down from the surface, the place we had only ever heard about, been warned about, kept from. We only knew of the end as the end, not an actual event of billowing fires, savage heat, oxygen deprivation. We'd never been on the surface, never seen what the end had done to the world that we'd never seen. We were hidden underground.

But with everything she brought, I'm glad we were.

~~~

"Hey! Hey!" Stella shouts. Her voice bounces around the underground cave, mingling with our own echoes that can be heard up the entire length. She tries grabbing at Lucas's arm as he runs past her, shouting. I try ducking under her arm as she reaches out for me too, but her hand grips my upper arm firmly, chipped nails digging into my skin. I cry out, mostly in denial, but in pain too, and she loosens her grip, not enough to let me slide away, though I try.

Mitch runs up to us, slaps me hard on the shoulder, shouts, "You're it!" and runs away before Stella can grab him too.

"Not fair!" I shout, and try again to pull myself away, groaning.

They laugh mockingly and the three of them stand together in a row, making faces.

"Who taught these boys this infernal game?" Stella asks herself, massaging her temple with her free hand. "Boys! You're using up all the good oxygen down here. And making a god-awful racket."

She releases me and I waste no second in running free. The boys scatter, shouting again. I hear Stella give a cry of indignation behind me, but no way was I going to finish the game as 'it.'

But it seems it would have to be that way as a great booming voice thunders down the cavern.

"Marcus!"

We all halt and turn to the stairs where Marcus's father stands, a foot still on the lower step.

"Game's over. You should be helping in the farms. You boys too." He gives us each a look, heavy brows lowered over dark eyes, then turns and stomps back down the stairs to the lower level.

We hear a low chuckle come from the group of women scattered along the edge of the platform, legs dangling, and see Stella with a hand over her mouth, eyes staring down at her piece of sewing. Marcus sighs and tromps by. "Guess that's it," he mutters.

The four of us march down the tiled stairs, walk along the platform for Line 2 subways, balancing on the yellow lines that old signs tell people not to cross. Ahead, the glow of lights grow brighter and the clanking whir of rusty bicycle wheels grow louder as we approach the patchwork farms.

Plastic buckets and lunch containers, glass jars wrapped in foil, steel garbage cans, are arranged in wobbling rows with greenery sprouting from their depths. Roots buried in human waste and gravel and bits of cut-up plastic water bottles, or floating in chunky water mixed with the bones of rats and shredded leather. Some plants hang suspended in the air from gratings torn from the floor and balancing over backs of chairs torn from subway cars. Young children, glassy-eyed with boredom, spray their roots with another questionable mixture of nutrients. Two sweating and panting teens furiously pedal the bikes hooked up to the flickering LEDs.