A City Called Smoke: The Territory 2 (23 page)

Their focus had been on nothing but the blue line on the floor for hours and hours and hours. Squid had lost all concept of how long they’d been down in the dark, a whole day maybe? Their entire world had shrunk to the halo of yellow that surrounded them. Everything else was blackness, empty and cold. Other lines, red, yellow and green, ran along the ground in some places, joining the blue line from a branching tunnel and staying with it for a time before turning away and heading off to another long-forgotten place. Perhaps they led to other outposts, or to something else entirely. They stayed with the blue line, the path that would lead them, step by step, to Big Smoke. Also, Squid realized, it was the trail that promised to guide them home, like the breadcrumbs dropped in an old story the Sisters had once told. He just hoped things worked out better for them than they had for the breadcrumb children.

The light ahead of them caught something that shone white on the wall of the tunnel. It was so obviously different from the gray they were used to that Squid stopped. It was a metal sign bolted onto the tunnel wall, red writing on a white background. The paint was flaking away, revealing the metal beneath. The outline of the now pink letters was still visible, though. Squid held up the lamp and read the sign out loud.

“‘All persons entering New Sydney subject to mandatory six-hour quarantine.’”

“We must be getting close,” Nim said.

“They must have used quarantine to try to keep the ghouls out,” Mr. Stix said. “To stop people who’d been bitten from getting in.”

“Didn’t work, though, did it?” Nim said.

“No,” Mr. Stix said. “By all accounts it didn’t.”

Squid was still trying to get his head around the fact that so much had happened before the Reckoning. Most people in the Central Territory considered the Reckoning to be the beginning of everything. It was as if all time was measured from then. There were artefacts around, family heirlooms, prized possessions, antiques, but records of the time before were sketchy. Everyone knew there had been a time before the ghouls, a time when the Ancestors had lived spread out across the world, but it was almost an academic knowledge, something that had no real bearing on their life. The world was the way it was. They lived the way they lived. To some extent even Squid had thought that way, even once he was outside the fence. He knew something must have happened before, but it hadn’t truly struck him until he read the words on that sign. People had lived out here, people from the time of the Reckoning, and probably had done for hundreds or even thousands of years before that. People had built Big Smoke and called it New Sydney. They had built these tunnels, they had walked through these tunnels, they had known a world before the ghoul. It was a thought that filled him with hope, but it was hope that swam in an ocean of fear.

“Can you hear that?” Nim said.

Squid stopped and listened, holding his breath. He was about to say he couldn’t hear anything when he heard it. Carrying softly through the stale air of the tunnels was the sound he had dreaded hearing since they’d first made their way down here, the guttural groan edged with a harsh screech that could only be uttered by a ghoul.

“Where is it?” Squid asked.

“It’s hard to tell,” Mr. Stix said. “Somewhere ahead, but whether it’s this tunnel or some branch I don’t know.”

“We need to keep moving,” Nim said. “Probably better than staying still.”

“Agreed,” Mr. Stix said. “Squid, you want to turn back or keep moving ahead?”

And so again they turned to him to make the decision, and again he felt the burden it was to be a leader – to decide whether to send them forward into danger, or to give up and turn back. But there was really only one choice he could make.

“We keep going,” Squid said. “Ernest told us this is the safest way into the city, so this is the way we do it. We’re not giving up.”

They continued on, and to Squid’s dismay the sound of the ghouls grew louder. Each time they passed the shadowy entrance to another branch of the tunnels he tensed, waiting for the decaying, dry-skinned face of a ghoul to burst from the dark and lunge at him with its rotten teeth bared. But none did. Squid realized that the way the tunnels curved, turned and joined played tricks with sound. At times it sounded as if the ghouls were in front of them, at other times Squid would have sworn they were behind; sometimes they seemed close, at other times far off.

They had walked through the dark for almost an hour without encountering any ghouls when Squid noticed that the yellow glow of the lamp was beginning to dim. The darkness of the tunnels began creeping toward them as it won the battle against the light, until eventually the torchlight succumbed. This wasn’t the first time this had happened. Squid knew it meant the battery in the light was almost empty. He would need to wind again to recharge it, a simple thing that would re-energize their shield of light. Still, Squid felt this time was different, as if the dark were a living thing, a creature of the underground who was slowly suffocating the life from their only source of light.

Squid stopped and turned to his companions. Mr. Stownes, the last of the party, was almost lost to the clutches of the dark.

“I need to charge the light again,” Squid said.

“Better do it then,” Nim said. “We don’t want to be down here in the dark.”

Squid unlatched the small handle and began to wind. With each whirring turn of his wrist the lamp grew brighter, but this was accompanied by renewed screeching from close by, and this time the bone-scraping call of the ghouls was accompanied by a scraping noise. Squid realized too late that it was the sound of feet dragging on the tunnel floor. He swung around and the edge of the lamplight fell on the tick-tock stagger of a ghoul.

The monster had been a man, elderly when he had been sucked dry. His flesh was falling away from his bones in a dusty shower. Who knew how long this thing had wandered down here, lost in the tunnels, with no living thing to suck the moisture from? Squid had never seen a ghoul so decayed; its flesh had nearly completely disintegrated into gray dust. There was no blood-like sludge working its way out through cracks in the skin, no shine to the rotting flesh, no moisture in the body at all. The ghoul resembled little more than a skeleton with a thin layer of muscle and skin stretched like fabric over the brittle bones. It looked as though the creature hadn’t moved for a hundred years. When it lunged for Squid the thin skin over its back popped and ripped, tearing open in a long split down its spine.

The ghoul collapsed forward and Squid took a leaping step back. It hit the ground in front of him, its hands snapping and cracking audibly as its fingers closed around Squid’s ankles. Squid drew his shortsword and swung it at the ghoul’s neck. The blade passed right through the desiccated skin and bone and hit the floor with a clank, sending a shock of vibration up Squid’s arm. His aim had been right on the mark and the head parted ways with the body, the grip on his legs instantly loosening. Squid felt an instant of proud surprise. There had been a time when he couldn’t do that, when he couldn’t hit the crack in a log with his uncle’s axe, when he couldn’t hit a ghoul’s neck with his sword. He whispered a quiet thanks to Lynn for helping him master the sword – well, at least for giving him enough confidence to slice the head from a decrepit ghoul.

As he stared down at the head of the ghoul rocking gently on one bony cheek, he heard the calls of more ghouls behind him and the sliding ring as the rest of his group pulled their blades free.

“Light!” Mr. Stix called. “We need light!”

Squid spun and held the lamp toward them. It flickered, the battery running so low that it struggled to generate a constant light. He saw Mr. Stownes cut into a pack of ghouls as more ancient dust-decaying faces emerged from the black. For a moment the light cut out completely. It was only for a few seconds, but the darkness that encroached on them was absolute. For the shortest time Squid believed that perhaps he’d gone blind, because there was nothing but complete black.

When the dull, trembling light returned, Squid saw Mr. Stix swinging wildly at the ghouls, guided by sound alone in the dark. Squid turned to look behind him. He could see no ghouls in that direction, so he dropped his sword, letting it clatter to the ground, and began winding the crank handle on the lamp as fast as he could. Just as the light began to brighten, spreading out from him, Squid heard a ghoulish moan behind him.

“I got it,” Nim said, “just keep that light on.”

Nim rushed past Squid, launching himself at the ghoul as it entered the circle of light, removing its head with a clean blow. Nim had certainly picked up the use of a sword much faster than he had, Squid thought. Another ghoul came from behind the one Nim had decapitated. It was as if they were coalescing out of the dark. How many more were there? Nim swung at this one. His sword entered the creature’s neck but he had struck on an angle and the blade continued down, lodging in the ghoul’s opposite shoulder and not passing cleanly through.

“Bugger it,” Nim said as he struggled to pull his weapon free. While he was doing so, another ghoul pushed its way past, and as the light fell on its face Squid saw that its mouldy eyes were focused on him. He kept winding. He had to make sure they had light. He knew that if they lost the light they were dead. He stepped back from the creature as its head jolted to the side and then back up, the unnerving movement they always made when they were watching you. Squid jumped as he felt his back hit something. He turned to see that it was Mr. Stix. He had gone as far as he could. All four of them were being pushed in together as ghouls came from both directions out of the dark.

Beside him Mr. Stix swapped hands with his shortsword, drew one of his mechanical pistols, lifted it toward the ghoul bearing down on Squid and fired. In the confines of the tunnel the sound was remarkably loud. It reverberated in Squid’s ears, leaving them ringing with a high-pitched wail. As if the sound had annoyed them, the screeching of the ghouls grew louder and more aggressive.

“Bugger it!” Squid heard Nim repeat. He roared as he finally pulled his sword free, but another ghoul had managed to pass the first one and it was going for Nim.

Squid saw his sword on the ground a few steps away. He stopped turning the handle on the lamp. His efforts would give them light for a little longer and it would have to do for now. Nim needed help. He picked up his sword and attacked the ghoul, which had its teeth bared ready to suck the life from Nim. As it reared up to pounce, Squid swung and hit the ghoul square in the side of the neck. The ghoul’s head remained on its shoulders for a split second after Squid’s blade passed through. For a moment Squid thought he had missed completely, that the ghoul was turning to look at him, but then the head slid off the neck and the body collapsed, landing with a crunch and a spray of dust.

“I think that’s all in front of us,” Nim said.

“Go then!” Mr. Stix said. “Make a run for it.”

Nim hesitated until Squid realized he was waiting for him. He didn’t want to run headlong into the dark, and Squid could hardly blame him. Holding the lamp in front of him, Squid ran with him, turning his head to look back at Mr. Stix and Mr. Stownes. They were still fighting as the darkness took them. Squid’s heart seized in his chest until he saw them at the edge of the pool of light, running after them.

All around them the light bounced and waved as they ran. Squid did his best to keep the lamp steady but it swung with the cadence of his desperate running. Each side of the tunnel was light then shadow, light then shadow, light then shadow. One moment he could see the gray wall beside him, the next there was just the dark. It wasn’t a surprise then that Squid didn’t see the opening to another branch of the tunnel until the very last moment, and when the light swung back toward him it was accompanied by a lurching ghoul.

Squid’s feet tangled as he tried to dodge to the side, jumping away from the rotten brown-fingernailed hands of the reaching monster. His legs were tired and he struggled to control them. He tried to catch himself against the opposite wall but with the sword in one hand and the lamp in the other he wasn’t able to. With a few faltering steps he collapsed forward, arms outstretched. The lamp hit the ground first and with a sickening smash they were dropped into darkness.

Squid felt someone groping at the back of his shirt, grabbing hold and trying to pull him up. In the pitch black he didn’t know whether it was one of his companions or a ghoul. Nim’s voice reassured him that the ghouls hadn’t got him yet.

“Get up!”

“The light,” Squid said pointlessly, “I dropped it.”

“Doesn’t matter now,” Nim said.

“What do you mean?” Squid said, but it was as he was finishing the sentence that he realized he could see Nim’s face. He was looking at him. He couldn’t see him very well – his features were still lost in the blackness – but there was the faintest shape of him, his white tattoos standing out a little in the dark.

“The ghoul,” Squid said, suddenly remembering the creature that had caused him to fall.

“I got it,” Nim said. “There was just one. Come on, look up ahead.”

Squid looked up the tunnel. He couldn’t see much but it was unmistakably lighter than everything they had walked through so far. Somewhere in front of them was a source of light, and it was leaking down into the tunnel as if reaching out for them, trying to guide them in.

Screeching echoed down the tunnel from behind them and though it was distant it was a reminder that they weren’t out of danger yet.

“Keep moving,” Mr. Stix said.

Abandoning both the light and his sword to the darkness, Squid ran after Nim. Their feet slapped against the floor, the blue line beneath them gray in the thin light, but with each footfall, each moment, they drew closer to the light at the end of the tunnel, and the subtlest amount of color returned to the world. The ghouls, still screeching and moaning behind them, were old and dusty, and because they hadn’t fed in so long they were slow. Squid knew he and Nim were pulling away from them, but he didn’t stop running.