As abruptly as it started, the screeching stopped. The dwellers still didn’t move. I held my breath, assuming they would lurch back into action. I eyed the one nearest me cautiously. Its mouth gaped, sensors dripping with glistening toxin, but it still made no advance.
I tightened my grip on Luna. “Come,” I whispered.
Her hands dropped from her ears as I pulled her back to my side. She exhaled, and I felt that breath shudder through me.
“Fowler?” she asked, her voice shaky. “What’s happening? Why aren’t they moving?”
I knew her well enough to know that even without vision, Luna behaved as though she could see. There were very few instances where one was alerted to the fact that she was blind.
I eyed the army of dwellers all around us and opened my mouth to reply, but that savage scream started again with renewed force.
I winced, and Luna covered her ears again. I could just barely make out her eyes in the near darkness, jammed tightly shut as she covered her ears, as if that would somehow help ward off the sound. I shook my head, but the action only seemed to bring more stabbing pain to my ears.
The dwellers turned almost as one body, still ignoring us. Several passed us, their cold, pasty bodies brushing against us with slow drags. It was almost unbearable, being this close to them. Feeling them, smelling their stink. My throat tightened as one passed, a chunk of its hairless skull missing, someone’s hatchet still embedded there.
They moved in the same direction, walking away from Luna at the briskest pace I had ever seen them move. I didn’t know they could even move at that speed. Most of the time they doddered, and this was the salvation of many lives.
“They’re leaving.” Bewildered, I held her close as dwellers passed, parting like a tide around us. We stood holding each other, two pebbles undisturbed in their path. It was like they didn’t even see us anymore. We were invisible . . . unimportant.
Whatever that scream was, wherever it came from, it was manipulating them. I watched for a paralyzed moment as they shuffled along, fading away and leaving us alone in the narrow tunnel. The deafening scream continued, punctuated with brief pauses, and I wondered if it was their language, or a code dwellers alone understood. I had long thought they communicated with each other through their shrill cries . . . and this scream was the mother of all that I had ever heard in the years that I journeyed the Outside.
It was only supposition. I didn’t know what was happening, and I didn’t know how long it would last. It couldn’t last long.
Luna stretched up on tiptoes to speak in my ear. “They’re following the scream.” She pressed a hand against the earthen wall, her slim fingers splayed wide as if requiring the balance. “And it’s more than that. There are vibrations, too. I can feel them in the earth. In the air.” She lifted her chin as if she was detecting those sound waves now. Her next words confirmed what I suspected. The chill of my skin wasn’t only from the cold. A sick dread took hold of me—a suspicion that there was something down here bigger, more powerful, than any single dweller. Something strong enough to control an army of dwellers. Whatever that something was, we needed to remove ourselves from it.
“There’s something else down here. It’s controlling them,” Luna finished.
I shook my head as though it didn’t matter. I slid my hand down her arm to seize her hand. By some miracle we had our chance, and we needed to take it before the window of opportunity disappeared. “Let’s go.”
I led us. She pulled on my arm at one point when I tried to take a right turn. “This way,” she instructed, guiding me.
Of course, she would know the way out. I followed her. Luna never forgot a path taken. I hardly remembered being dragged down here. It was all a blur of sound and pain.
She stopped at a slippery slope and started to climb upward, stabbing her knife in the slick wall and using it for leverage. I came up behind her and gave her a boost. It was slow progress. For every two feet she advanced, she slid back down one. I grunted, fighting the pull of weariness, shoving her up, struggling to keep her moving. I was so damnably weak.
She wiggled higher, taking the momentum of me pushing to claw up the incline until I couldn’t see her head and shoulders anymore.
I started after her, ignoring the ache in my muscles and the burn in my arm. Freedom was close. I heard her suck in a deep breath and surge up through the quagmire above our heads. Her legs disappeared, followed by her feet, until she slipped totally out of sight, vanishing into the marsh above.
I followed, dragging a deep breath inside my lungs, filling them to capacity before I plunged into the icy muck. I kicked and used my arms, assisting gravity in bringing me to the surface, where the water was a few degrees warmer at least.
I broke clear with a gasp, tossing my head and filling my aching lungs, pulling sweet air inside me.
Lifting my face, I let the paltry rays of midlight wash over my face.
“Fowler! This way!” Luna was there, hauling herself out of the bog. She turned back over her shoulder to call for me.
“Here,” I said, scarcely recognizing the hoarseness of my voice.
I swam through the dense bog, forcing my leaden limbs to move. My strength was dwindling. I hefted myself up, pulling my legs free. For a moment, I collapsed on the sodden ground, resting, facedown and panting with labored breaths.
We made it. We were alive.
“Fowler.” She breathed my name somewhere above my head. “We can’t stay here.”
I pushed up onto my trembling legs, knowing she was right and trying not to collapse on the spot. Not after all she did to rescue me. I had to keep going. “Of course.”
The hour would end and darkness would descend again. With it dwellers would return. We couldn’t count on that thing that had called them down there to hold them at bay from us forever. “We’ll find shelter.” She nodded as though this would be a simple matter. “This way.”
We tromped through the marsh side by side, avoiding where the water was the deepest. I fixed my gaze on Luna, focusing on her and not the excruciating discomfort pounding through my body.
She was a mess. Her shorn, muddied hair jutted about her head like black straw. The milk of her skin was nowhere to be seen. Not an inch of her was spared mud and that greenish sap from the dwellers’ nest.
She was the most beautiful thing I ever set eyes on.
“You saved me,” I uttered, a fair amount of awe creeping into my voice. I doubted anyone ever went belowground and returned to tell of it.
“A fair exchange. You saved me first by jumping from the tree and letting them take you so that they forgot about me.” Her strides struck harder and she almost overtook me. I increased my pace to stay abreast with her. “Fool thing to do! What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking of you. There was no sense in both of us dying. Which is exactly what would have happened if I didn’t jump from that tree when I did.”
The ground grew more solid beneath our feet. Rocky and uneven. I scanned the hazy landscape, spotting rises and outcroppings ahead. Maybe we could find cover there.
“So you thought to make a grand sacrifice?” she snapped. “No one asked you to do that! I didn’t ask it of you! I don’t want anyone to die for me. Not even you.”
“Oh, but it’s a familiar concept, is it not?” I shot back, letting her feel my full temper. Gone was the moment of that kiss when we pushed aside every anger and betrayal. We were alive and safe for now, and our differences resurfaced with nowhere to hide. “Senselessly sacrificing yourself for others is something you’re only too willing to do?”