Tonk-tonk. Tonk-tonk-tonk.
I sat up, picked farm dirt out of my eyes. I'd been dreaming about Mumshine ironing my laundry each morning. She never used to let the mechmaid do it. Mumshine was the only person in the world allowed to touch my underwear. The car ride here. Fighting with mum. Wanting to slap her. I'd expected to die last night, expected Anya to wade ashore and drag me out of the hole and beat me to death. Instead, I woke from a dream dotted with the irritating sound of that robotic drum, donk-donk. Tonk. I tucked Mumshine down in my brain and crawled out of my grave.
'SHUT UP!' I screamed toward wherever the tormenting sound was coming from. Ducks wings beat the water as they flapped away. 'Whatever you're doing, Adam, you leave me alone. Quit making that noise. Just stop. Stooooop.'
Tonk. Tonk. Tonk-tonk.
'STOP IT. STOP IT STOP IT STOP IT.'
The sound was coming from the field, a few metres from the ground behind my bed. I toed the soil, moved around, toed it some more. I picked up a stick. If there was a speaker stashed in the tree, piping in noise to drive me nuts, I'd whack it like a baseball.
Tonk. Tonk.
I bent over. My baby churned. I grunted and continued bending. On my filthy, sticking, soiled knees I clawed at the earth. I found the flat surface, hard and metal, tinged with rust.
The manhole cover.
Tonk-tonk-tonk.
'Meeim? Meeim?'
The voice was trying to say Eden.
'I can't get it open! I can't!'
The voice was muffled. It could have been any invader down there.
'Mayip,' the voice commanded. A steady voice, but an aggressive voice. A little bit of authority. Demanding. Frightening.
I put my palms in the earth on either side of the manhole, lowered my body, put my ear against the metal.
'My ip. Aftoo my ip.'
I put my ear flat against the metal. 'I can't –
'BUKF DOW HERE, EE.'
Sucks down here, Ede.
Ede. Ede? Who calls you Ede?
There were two holes in the cover of the metal, a few inches apart. Without a crowbar, I tried my fingertips, jamming them into the ugly little black holes and lifting with all the muscles I could bring to the job –my forearms, my biceps, my triceps, shoulders, back. I felt the strain move down my back. Even the muscles in my butt and the tops of my legs were called into action. The metal seemed on the verge of letting go of the ground, then fell back down. It was unlocked, at least.
I ran and got a plank of wood from the barn. I lay the plank on the ground by my foot, angled it so I could kick it into place. I hauled the manhole cover up again, saw a crescent of black, kicked the wood in, let the wood take the weight of the manhole cover.
Fingers came out. I took a step back, raised my foot, prepared to stomp the fingerbones into dust.
Skinny fingers. Afro with blood and grease and dust in it. Manic eyes on caramel skin.
'I'm your Uber,' the dirty ground beast said, and winked.
Omar took the weight of the cover on his back, hauled himself halfway out of the hole. I dragged him out and we lay on our sides in the grass while the lid crashed down.
Omar was blinking and spitting out gunk and I squinted and turned my head away, grossed out. He hadn't seen morning in ages. His right hand was caked in brown, crusty dried blood. His ankles were all chewed and caked in red scabs. He had cobwebs in his eyebrows.
Omar had brought food. I pounced on him. He surrendered his peanut butter and jam sandwich, laughing so hard that more gunk came out of his mouth. He had a Transformers drink bottle. I emptied it. Omar said Anya has asked him what he wanted for his "last meal." 'Their little dress-up kangaroo court was gonna murder me,' Omar explained. He'd been amazed to see the ice cream freezer in the BP was being used and inside were frozen bread and peanut butter AND jam, so that's what he chose.
He kept wiping yellow gunk off his lips as he talked. His skin was yellow too, I noticed, though the skin turned purple in every crevice. Under his eyes was dark blue.
When my stomach was full I went toward my shallow grave to gussy it up for him to sleep in, arrange the feathers and ferns, but Omar wouldn't go more than a foot from the manhole.
'God damn girls, man, always dithering. You left me in there all night, woman. Hope you used the time to get ready.'
'Ready for what?'
'Ready to get your fat ass underground so we can FIGHT. Duh.'
*
Omar moved faster than me through our black wet cramped tunnel, guided by light from his organiser that wasn't white, it wasn't even orange – it was a thin blue. His body must've been seriously depleted of energy. Omar's ankle dragged and the concrete ripped the skin and he left stamps of pus and blood. Little fibres were drizzling down too, from the arm holes of the pillowcase he was wearing.
'I don't think even a sewer croc could shuffle through here,' I complained, my voice echoing, buzzy and robotic as the concrete dispersed the soundwaves. My belly kept hitting my knees. 'How the hell did you escape, anyway?'
'Dunno if I have escaped. Still stuck inside the snow globe, aren't I? They were tryina drag me to the top of the pyramid and I was like noooo way.' AY-AY-ay-ay-ay-ay, his voice echoed. 'They tossed me into the sewer, head-first. Fat Boy whistled so his dog came out of the blackness, this is down outside the library where they have their pantry all tucked away in the sewer. And yeah, Anya just pretty much took the gin trap off my ankle then kicked me into the sewer. Shut the lid on me. You know what goes in a sewer? Shit, Shepherd. Shit.'
We crawled on. Wet feet. Water dripping on our brows. Fingers of dribbling slime hanging from the ceiling, stroking my ears.
'It's in the poo stew, just so you know,' he grunted, urging his broken body on.
'What?'
'You're gonna need it. My stash. My mil, Eden. In a suitcase, one of those fancy-ass Travelogue ones. I biffed it in that swamp where Kane got his ass drowned.'
'You chucked it in the latrine? Where people have been taking dumps?'
'Anya's been finding people's banks, one by one.'
'God she was good at ballet. And long jump. And hurdles. And did you see that time she did the 200 metres butterfly and wasted the Catholic girls? D'you think I should've been nicer to– EEW! Dog poo! What the hell? I thought you said you killed that mutt they sicced on you?'
'I never said that. I just dealt with her. Held her underwater for a bit. Gave her a bath.'
'What, in the water?'
'Where else?'
Else, else, else, el, el, el….
We moved some more and I began bumping into Omar's behind regularly. 'Go ahead of me if you want.'
'No way. I never want you out of my sight.' My guts seized, pulled inward, squashed my organs, then released. I'd peed my pants twice already, my juicy belly unused to crawling, which made litres of fluid slosh against my vagina and bladder. 'How do you know where to go, anyway? What if we get lost?'
Ost ost ost. The wet concrete throat swallowed my words.
'I remembered it like this: so I got out of that place by going down the main hole, the sewer outside the supermarket, right. And I moved like lightning, okay. Bout ten metres from the mountains of spam-in-a-can, there's your first junction. One pipeline heads north from the compound, that's gotta run under the biggest cluster of houses, like Mahony Road and the playground and stuff.'
'A direct line from the playground to Adam's compound? We NEED that, dude.'
'Let me finish. Okay so that's one route. There were two other routes. The other route's north to you. We're in there right now. We're about to hit a junction. I think it goes west.'
'I have zero idea which way we're heading.'
'Girlfriend, you wouldn't last one day in the wile– GARGH!' Omar clutched his ankle, caressed his own flesh. My light illuminated a few droplets of liquid pain leaving a trail down his sooty cheeks. 'It's getting worse. I'm sorry, babe, but when we get to the larder, that's me. Leave me underground so I can die eating chocolate fish. No point in bringing me six feet to the surface if I'm just gonna end up six feet under.'
'You're so Hollywood. Wait til I get the medikit. You'll be sweet.'
I promised myself I'd wriggle through another 100 metres before we had more discussion. It took 11 minutes to move that 100 metres. When I was sure the west junction was coming up, I stopped, caught my breath, listened for Ome.
Omar took a minute to catch me up. He coughed and I could hear him trying to suck the blood and goo out of his mouth. 'See these cracks in the wall, the slimy ones?' he said, panting, arranging his legs awkwardly so he could sit on the ledge and dangle his feet in the water. 'Those are leaks.'
I willed some power into my org, guided the light so I could see what he was talking about. I stroked the wall and stirred the watery sludge with my toe.
'What, the soil's wet or something?'
'If you wanna call it that. It's more silt than soil.'
'What's silt?'
'The dusty crap on the bottom of a river.'
'What river? Where are we?'
'You probably scraped this very pipe when you were kicking all around, swimming over to your personal island. We're under the bottom of the river, darl.'
My lungs spasmed, my skin sprouted sweat. My clothes became instantly sticky. I clawed my thighs and squeezed Omar's shoulders. 'GEMME OUTTA HERE GEMME OUTTA HERE OMAR YOU HAVE TO GEMME GEMME – '
'Breeeathe. That's it. Breeeathe,
Eden.' He coughed and my faint light revealed his spit was pink. There had to be blood in his throat and lungs. 'It's less distance to go forward. Only one way, sorry. The walls aren't going to cave in… if we hurry. Pretty sucky intrastructure, isn't it.'
'Infra,' I said, 'In-FRA. Like infra-red.'
'You got the app? My organiser does infra-red. Let's switch it on. Could make the journey a bit cooler. We can have a lunch break when we get to the west junction.'
'What lunch? What have you got? Give it to me.'
'Gotta catch me first.'
With that, Omar barged past me. His good foot was crashing down in the trench, splashing foul water everywhere, and his bad foot was up on the concrete ledge. His arms touched the ceiling and the left wall and the right almost all at once.
He was fast; I was faster. I caught him at a junction. There was a ladder leading up to a manhole. I instinctively grabbed the rungs, scrambled up it and started heaving at the lid.
'HEEELP! LET US OUT!'
My knuckles made an insignificant tonk sound. I stopped and sucked my poor knuckles and realised how much pain Omar had put himself through to bang for hours, hundreds of hits. No wonder his hand had turned grey and was swollen and wouldn't stop shaking, and hurt every time he put his weigh on it.
And all this for me.
I climbed back down the ladder. 'Lunch better be good.'
'It's better than good,' he said, and unscrewed the lid of a jar he had in his pocket. We crammed our faces with peanut butter in the dark, in a catacomb in the middle of nowhere. We sucked our fingers clean and crawled on. Nothing to slow down for in this shitty place – and a creeping sense that something was breathing on my neck.
Apart from spider and glow worms, there were no milestones. Just numbers in our heads. Another metre. Another hundred metres. Another kilometre. More bat guano – or was it dog turds?
Finally I got something in my eye, an irritation, a white spot I kept trying to rub out, but it wouldn't go, and Omar made this sort of giddy-up horsey whinnying noise at me and I found the right coordination to get through the tunnel faster, my hands on the ledge, my feet in the trickle of sewer water.
The white spot in my eye slowly widened, brightened. It was a stain I couldn't blink away. I envisioned the cataract blinding me, bumping my head hard enough to go unconscious, awakening during labour underground, splitting in two, being left forgotten by society. Maybe found a millennium from now by mech archaeologists in the year 2134. A fossilised teen mother clutching her baby. They would invent some name for me that sounded normal, call me Lucy or something. Put me in a museum.
Omar interrupted the quiet darkness.
'Just so you know, we've got something kinda unavoidable coming up.
'W.T.F.? You tell me this now?'
'If you wanted to flush someone out of a confined space, what would you send in there?'
'Vampire bats? Bloodhound? Don't dick around, dude. Tell me.'
'Yyyyyyyeah, like, bloodhound's a reeeealll good idea. You know that mutt I was complaining about before?'
Hand, ledge, right foot, splosh, left foot, left hand, squelch. Another 2.5 metres.
'OMAR. What do you know?'
'Just don't be surprised if we get surprised.'
Hand, ledge, right foot, left foot, left hand. Another two and a half metres. The white spot in my eye was widening. It had to be light. Real actual daylight.
'WE'RE ALMOST THERE!'
'Bit premature, but yeah. Couple hundred metres and that's us.'
'We're… we're under King Adam's place?' I whispered. 'God – oh God, I didn't – I've never called him that. Not til now.'
'Easy, girl,' Omar said, ignoring me. 'Sorry I ate your puppies. Don't… do… don'tdoanythingcrazy. EEEEASY.'
'What'd you call me? OME. Answer me. What's going on?'
rrrrrRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrRRR.
'EDE!' Omar hissed, 'You got a weapon or something?'
'OME. WHAT IS – A DOG? THERE'S A DOG? It's got… you can see its boobs and stuff. Omar? OMAR! What do we do? I can – I can see its teeth, it's – '
'EDE. GET. A. WEAPON. NOW.'
Whatever it was began running at us. Something heavy and hungry and relentless. Its overgrown toenails clacked on the concrete. Its tongue slapped against its face. The dog wheezed and muscle smacked against muscle and Omar's singlet made a flapping sound as he somersaulted. The dog's wet fur slapped against the concrete. Omar wrestled the animal. I stepped two metres back up the sewer, back the way I'd come.
'DO SOMETHING,' he roared. Umthing, mthing, ming, ming, ming–
Omar slammed the hard-to-see mass of fur and legs and tail onto the ledge, put his back against the wall which ran along the water. Then the animal launched at him, knocked him down and I could see it force his head underwater.
'OME!' I grabbed the dog's tail and raised it. I sucked my finger clean – I'll never know why I sucked it, just instinct – and rammed it against the dog's butthole.
The dog revolved its head, took a quick bite of my hand, turned back and continued nipping at Omar's chest, pulling up his pillowcase t-shirt, letting go, each time biting a mixture of flesh and fabric.
Poking the dog in the sensitive zone hadn't had any effect. I grabbed its hind legs instead, stretched my arms away from one another, and the dog reacted, kicking me onto my back. It continued biting Omar's chest. I got up and grabbed one of the dog's hind legs, wrapped my legs around its other leg, put the pressure of my bicep against its rear right thigh, pushed up with my shoulder until I was sure the dog was going to be torn in half. I reached around with my left hand and snapped its ankle easily. The dog hopped off Omar, began limping south down the tunnel toward. Something blue-ish, grey-ish, almost white. Could it have been light?
I crawled over Omar, put my weight on the dog's back, crammed its head underwater and pushed down. I wriggled forward inch by inch, kept the snout underwater, putting the weight of my belly on its back. I watched the dog convulse, then hiccup, then stop.
We hauled our exhausted legs through concrete and cold water til we reached a bluish area where the light was coming in. We knew it was the larder and that the manhole was above – if we wanted to emerge in Adam's compound, that was.
We'd reached the larder, the pantry, the holy grail of food. The weather stopped, politics stopped, the march of the mechs stopped while we ate. King Adam's tyranny stopped, our breathing stopped. Nothing was more important than scoffing maximum food in minimal time. Omar pulled open a tin of sardines and scraped the sauce-covered fish into his throat. He had little strength left to chew. It oozed down his chin. I bashed and pulled and stomped the lid of a bottle of ketchup until the goo started coming out, then I sucked pure sauce. Omar found a packet of liquorice allsorts, muttered for a second some complaint about old lady lollies, then crammed them into his dry, bleeding lips. I found a salami so wrinkled its texture was like a stiff sock. I pulled the hard meat into my mouth, chewed, washing it down with gulps of tomato sauce and the sweet juice from a can of pineapple rings. Omar opened a sleeve of Pringles. I swiped the tin, tipped chips into my hand and let them smash against my teeth. Omar sucked back a tin of sweetcorn and glugged the salty juice. When he dumped the can, I picked it up and slurped the dribble he'd missed.
With the dirty light coming down I could see there was blood on my fingers and dog poop, I think, and salt and sugar. I cuddled my hands, pulled my knees up, slumped against the wall.
So exhausted. Heavy with fluids, sick with adrenaline. Dog fur under my fingernails. Scraped elbows and knees. I had to shut down and recover. Let the thugs creep down like ninjas and pounce on me. I didn't care.
'DON'T SLEEP,' he said, 'You can take a nap after we overthrow that prick bastard wanker, but not now. They know we're down here.' Then he gasped, touched his hand between his legs. His hand looked like it was covered in black oil. Something dark was running down his wrist, pooling and splattering.
'I'm staying down here for a month,' I told him, trying to find a comfy position on the concrete and moss. 'Catch up… meals… .'
Omar tried to sit up and slumped on his side. 'Man my ankle's wasted… I think she bit my feminine artery. It's all you now.'
Blackness. Pancakes. Pillow. Duvet. Robopup. Dad whistling as he walks around the house with his tablet, pressing buttons, shutting curtains. Mumshine humming as she kisses my sleeping cheek and I pull the duvet –
'UPPITY UP! EDE!'
Something sharp smacked my head, hit the ground and rolled away.
'Some baked beans for ya.' He cackled and spat out something chunky and wet.
'OMAR SALEH. Let me sleep.'
'Look, bossypants, your time's,' he began, and stopped for breath. I could hear bubbles in his lungs. 'Time's almost up,' he continued, and took another wet bloody breath. 'We can't both… it's on you… They would've checked your, check your island, babe.' Bubbly breath. 'They know you… escaped, shoulda… .'
Omar gargled and spat. I could smell it: blood was rolling into his throat.
I pulled myself up, stroked the rungs of the ladder, looked up at the hint of light that we'd killed to get to. I wiped the back of my hand against my mouth, all sticky with sauce and juice. I licked my own wrist like a cat.
I had never been this exhausted, this shaky, this scared.
'How long til you get that – PTOO – baby-thing over with?' Omar said, trying to nod towards my pregnant tummy. He spat blood out again.
'20 days, ish.' I scooched over and stroked the hair off his forehead.
'Serious, Ede.' Gargle. 'Enjoy my. Joy my. Joy my toilet-money.' He laughed until his lungs seemed to scrape his ribs and he slumped on his shoulder and rolled into the water.
I stepped over where my friend had lain, tore open a bag of candy corn, stuffed energy inside my mouth. I didn't look back.
I climbed toward the daylight, rising up.