Bunker Bird

12. Shite

"No one," Amy said, vigorously shaking her head, and then she studied the wall behind the machine.

Ed sat down next to the panel. "There are screws here. I could try to open this." He reached for his toolbox.

"Amy bird?" Lilly approached from the other end of the hall. "Would you mind getting some taters for us from the gardens?" She pointed towards the ladder leading up to the tunnel with the garden.

"Mum!" She rolled her eyes. "I can't. I'm fixing the pump here, with Tim and... the big one."

"I guess that Ed can cope without your help for a moment. Please?"

"Okay." She shrugged, then she looked at me. "But you've gotta come, too. Getting taters is hard work. I need some help."

Lilly laughed and winked at me. "You'd better do what this lady says. When it comes to gardening, she is the boss around here."

"Do you need my help, Ed?" I wasn't in the mood to dig the dirt with this lady.

"Huh?" Ed looked up at me from his toolbox. "Er... no, I'm fine." He was already lost in his tinkering.

I sighed and nodded at Amy. At least, she'd be a more entertaining companion than Ed right now.

She grinned. "Then come. Ye might even learn a thing or two. Ye've heard it. I'm the boss of the gardens." She strode off towards the far end of the hall.

When I joined her at the bottom of the ladder, she held one of the lights in her hand and pointed at a bucket at her feet. "Take that." Then she turned and clambered up the rungs.

I hooked my arm through the bucket handle and followed her slowly.

When I emerged into the garden tunnel above, she was waiting for me, tapping her dirty foot in a puddle and swinging the candle in the glass box. "Ye're slow."

"Usually, I'm faster. But my foot's hurting."

"So, ye admit ye're slow. But everyone knows that ye cavern dwellers are soft." She tapped the puddle once more, stronger this time, sprinkling me with water. "It's bloody wet today."

Her remark about us cavern people being soft irked me. "Everything is wet down here. You people must all have grown mould between your ears."

Some of the water had even been dripping down here, last night when I had tried to find some sleep.

She didn't react to my jibe. Instead, for a moment, her eyes glazed over as if in deep thought. Then, she studied the gardens, scratching her chin. "Usually, it ain't that wet. More water's been comin' from that way since yesterday." She gestured at the tunnel that led to the staircase, the one I had taken with Sam and George. It loomed dark beyond the illuminated mounds.

"So, ye admit 'tis wet." I grinned as I imitated her accent.

"Don't ye grow smart on me, eejit! Let's get the taters." She padded through the water, brushing past me.

I stepped back, but she still managed to splash my legs.

She pointed at a stand of greenery close to the remote end of the garden, the one away from the staircase. "Here's where them taters are."

I followed, trying to avoid the puddles she so relished to step into.

"I've been tending the gardens all my life," she said. "Also the big ones we had. Ye should have seen them. They were almost as large as those in the upper cavern. The plantation, we called it. We even had a village there, just like you people. But then..."

The cave-in, that George had mentioned. "What happened?" I asked. These people were a mystery, and I wondered why we had never heard about them.

"T'was about a year ago, I guess." She shrugged. "The tunnel that went to the plantation... it just collapsed. A mighty long tunnel t'was. We have tried to open it up again, but we couldn't. Boss thinks that everybody on the other side died 'cos all the air and water went through that tunnel."

She stopped as she reached her taters and placed the candle high on a shelf running along the wall. "Here we are."

We stood next to a mound overgrown with plants, their leaves a sickly yellow-green under a bluish lamp. "Ye choose a large one. Then, you dig, but be careful not to hurt the others. Or I'll hurt ye." She started digging with both hands. A moment later, she held the prize in her hand.

"Oh, a potato!" I said. I had been wondering what taters were. Now I knew.

She held the vegetable under my nose. "Yes, a potato, that's how you noble and soft folks from the caverns call it. My mum told me so. She knows some of ye. But down here, us honest folks call it a tater." She dropped it into my pail. "Ye know what? Ye can hold them while I do the digging. I don't trust yer grubby fingers with the vegetables if ye can't even name them proper."

The potato was much smaller than the ones we had, not even the size of an egg. On our compost mounds, they grew at least twice as large. But I doubted that Amy would want to hear about that, so I kept my mouth shut.

She was digging again, her buttocks now facing me. Her jacket and the grimy shirt beneath it had slid upwards, revealing a section of skin above her pants. It was even grimier than the shirt.

A cracking noise came from the direction of the ladder.

Amy looked up. "What was that?"

"I don't know."

"I know ye don't know." She hesitated, squinting into the dark tunnel at the other end of the garden. Then she continued her digging. "Ye people with your holy manuals and large houses think ye're all so smart, but ye ain't."

"Do you know the Manuals?" I had always thought everyone knew them, at least the important verses, but I hadn't been sure about Amy and her people.

"Me mum told me about them. Why ye wanna know?"

"Just curious," I said. "I know all of the verses by heart. There's a lot to be learned from them."

"Such as?"

I tried to find one that would fit.

"Plant with care, and you will be rewarded with the harvest you deserve." I gestured at the mounds surrounding us.

She straightened her back and pulled down her shirt. "Oh, really? I wouldn't have thought of this without the wise guidance of yer holy manuals." She handed me another potato.

I had to admit it—there were better verses than that one.

"Oh, what about this one..." This was one of my favorites. "Our lives are naught if not spent serving."

She tilted her head at me and tugged her ear. Then she nodded. "Oh, I see the wisdom in that one."

I grinned, happy she appreciated it.

"Ye should heed it well, boy. Ye can serve while I do the bossing. Ye can—"

Another crack echoed down the tunnel, and she stopped. It was louder this time. A hissing sound followed it.

She looked away from me, gazing across the garden into the unlit tunnel beyond.

"What's going on?" I asked, trying to discern anything in the darkness on the other side of the mounds.

"Dunno." She craned her neck.

The lamps flickered, and something hissed, like water meeting embers.

"Shite," she said.