The people of the caverns are unity.
They stand together.
The Manuals of the Bunker, Vol. 2, Verse 5
"He's from the caverns. Must be."
"Naw, them people don't come down here. Their laws forbid it."
"So what's he doing down here?"
"He was inna heap, at the bottom of the shaft. I dragged him here. Must've fallen and hit his head." A woman's voice.
"Sure looks like that. Battered'n smacked."
"Them cavern dwellers are soft. Even softer when battered. Makes it easier for us."
At least three voices. A woman and two men.
"Skinny, he is."
A prodding against my calf.
"Dark like the deepest pit, too."
"Yeah, he needs a wash."
Laughter. Another prod, and this one stung. But there was even more pain growing in my foot, the left one, and creeping up my leg. My heart drummed against the back of my head—its beat inescapable and nauseating.
I must have fallen from that ladder and hurt myself.
"Turn him. I wanna see his mug." A man's words, almost whispered, yet sharp as needles.
My arm was yanked—and me with it, jerking my head around. My heart's beating turned into a hammer battering my skull. I groaned.
"I think he's awake," the woman said, close by. "Lemme check."
Cold fingers probed my face and my eyes. Light seeped through my lids.
"Awake?" This was a man's rumbling voice. "Bad that. Now we'll have to snuff him."
"Hold yer snuffing, George," the whisperer replied. "We'll first wanna question him. We need to know what he was doing in the tunnels. And then we'll give him a trial. And then you can snuff him."
Snickering.
A weak draft brushed over me, leaving its chill in my wet clothes. Water dripped and trickled somewhere, and a machine's hum vibrated in the air.
I opened my eyes, and light struck me. A candle flickered in a glass-windowed box, mere inches from my nose. Not far above me, almost within reach if I stood, a roof of rock spanned whatever place I was in.
They had candles in the temple, but the temple's ceiling was smooth. This one was irregular, made of hewn stone. I had to be elsewhere.
"He's opened his eyes," the woman said.
She crouched at my side. About my age, her roundish face pale. Harsh, white light from somewhere behind her gave the strands of her hair a coppery sheen.
"That's bad," the whisperer whispered. He stood next to my feet. Dark stubble covered his cheeks and chin, and his beady eyes gleamed. "We should have bound him while he was out. Do it now."
"Let's use the strut here," the guy with the rumbling voice said, his massive bulk clad in a hooded, brown coat. He stepped around the girl and me while she placed her candle on a shelf above. Then they both grabbed my arms and dragged me against a wall into a half-upright position. My foot hurt as it scraped over the uneven ground.
"Ouch!" I said. "Stop it!"
"Hey, the cavern bug can talk," the young woman said and wrenched my arm backward. Her stale sweat lay heavy in the air.
A rough rope cut into my wrists as they tied them.
When they were done, the trio gazed at me. The bulky guy, George, towered over the whisperer, and the woman was even shorter than her companions.
Rough, slate-gray rock surrounded us on all sides but two—a tunnel.
"He's safely bound?" the whisperer asked.
"Sure," the woman said and scratched her belly under a shirt that may have been white, a long time ago.
"Okay." The whisperer nodded. "Let's do council. George, get Boss and Lilly."
"Okay, Sam." George strode away from us down the tunnel towards the harsh light. It came from a series of lamps strung along wires suspended from the ceiling. I had never seen anything like them. Some were tinier than a small pebble, yet too bright to look at, some larger than eggs, emitting a yellow sheen. Others sat in rectangular boxes of metal, their light unsteady and flickery.
Plants grew below them, their leaves in shades of yellow and sickly green.
A garden in a tunnel.
Amidst the greenery, George reached a ladder that descended through a hole in the ground. He stepped onto it and was gone a moment later.
The redhead nudged me with her foot. "What we gonna do with 'im?"
"We'll do council over him," Sam whispered. "Then, we'll..." He slashed a finger over his wiry neck and grinned at me.
"Can I do council, too?"
"Naw, ye're too young, Amy. And ye're a woman."
"But Mom is a woman, too," Amy replied, "and she's doing council all the time."
"Yeah, but Lilly's old. Not really a woman anymore." He snickered.
"Fuck you, Sam."
"Anytime. Where do we—"
He took a step back as Amy swung her flat hand at him.
"Apologies, my lady." He held up his hands.
"Hey, hold your temper," another woman said. She was climbing the ladder George had descended.
"This slugnose here wants a beating, Mom," Amy said, still glowering at Sam.
The newcomer—Lilly and obviously the redhead's mother—stepped into the garden and wiped her hands on her apron. "You can beat the crap out of him for all I care," she said. "But not now." She strode towards us. "Show me what you've found, Amy bird."
Behind her, George's head popped up from the hole.
"That's what I've found." Amy pointed at me.
Lilly twisted her long ponytail of gray-brown-streaked hair in her fingers as she gave me a hard stare. Then she turned to Amy. "George says you've found him at the bottom of the shaft, right?"
"Right." She nodded. "And he talks."
Lilly's stare fixed me. "You're from the big cavern?"
I shook my head. "No, I'm from the small one, the lower one."
"Eww, that one stinks," Amy said. "I don't like to go there." She spat on the ground, her phlegm stirring a puddle fed by a stream gurgling along the tunnel's floor.
Maybe our cavern was stinky, but I didn't need a girl smelling of stale sweat to tell me that. "At least, we wash," I said.
She took a step towards me and kicked my leg, fortunately the right one, not the one with the hurting foot. "Oops, almost sorry." She towered above me—grimy trousers, grimy arms crossed over an open, sleeveless jacket with bulging pockets. Her oily hair hung limp on both sides of her face. Darkness loomed in her nostrils.
"Where's Boss?" Sam asked.
"He can't come up," Lilly replied. "His back's worse, he says. Can't climb the ladder. Told me to get up here and have a look at... this. Then we'll go downstairs and do council with him."
She tilted her head, still squinting at me. "Whatcha doing here?"
What to tell them? Who were these people?
This time, Sam kicked me, with more force than Amy and right into the leg that was already hurting. The pain made me hiss.
"Answer her," he said.
"I ran away from home and found a door," I said. "There was a ladder. And... I fell. Next thing I remember, I'm here." That was close enough to the truth without making things complicated. I doubted that these people were into complicated.
"Was someone trying to beat ye up?" George said. He had joined our group again.
"Er... yeah." Well, they actually had wanted to arrest me or shoot at me, but it was true enough.
"Don't your manuals say it's forbidden to enter these tunnels?" Lilly gestured at the rock around us, making the breasts under her threadbare, grey shirt swing back and forth.
I nodded.
The breasts settled back.
"Okay, so ye'll understand that we'll have to snuff ye," Sam whispered.
Lilly held up a hand. "Wait, that's not up to you to decide alone. We'll do council with Boss."
"But there's no other way, Lilly." George placed a hand on her shoulder. She shoved it away. He grunted and gestured at their paltry garden. "We can't keep him alive. There's not enough food since the cave-in."
"But there's less people, too," Amy said.
"Yeah, but there still ain't enough food," Sam hissed. "With him, we'd have to nip even more from the fields in the upper cavern. And we can't let him go back. He'd prattle about us."
Lilly shook her head. "But it ain't right... snuffing someone just like that. Even if he's from the caverns." She tugged her ponytail as she looked at me. "Whatcha do, boy? What's your work?"
"As I said, I'm from the lower cavern." I sat straight, intent to make a competent impression. "We recycle the waste there, and we clean the water."
"You res... what?" George asked.
"It means he's carrying the shit," Sam explained in his whisper.
"We don't need no one to carry our shit." George stooped forward and held up his palms as if they supported a heavy load. Sam guffawed.
Lilly shook her head. "You're idiots, both of you. Let's go downstairs and have a chat with Boss."
"Mom," Amy asked, "can I do council?"
"No, Amy bird," Lilly said. "When you're eighteen. You know that Boss is adamant about this. Just wait a few months and you can join us. Now, we need you to guard our young guest. Show him some hospitality." She pointed at me. "Let's go." As she gave me another look, she pulled her mouth into a thin line. Then she turned away towards the gardens and the ladder.
George followed.
Sam lingered and grinned at Amy. "See, birdie?" he said. "No council for ye. But I'll get back to yer offer." He winked at her and turned away.
"Hey," Amy shouted at his back. "Yer dick is showing... No, wait... it's yer head."
He held up a finger as he waited for his turn at the ladder.
Moments later, all three of them were gone.
They left us alone—me, the woman they called Amy bird, the dripping of water, and the hum of machines.
"Show our guest some hospitality," Amy murmured, repeating her mother's words. "Fat chance!"