Diary of the Displaced (9 page)

It took me a few minutes to negotiate my way down the rocks without injuring myself. I put the lantern smack in the middle of the corridor to get as much light on the area as I could. It was about forty feet long, straight into the rock. There was a filing cabinet lying on its side, the drawers pulled out and full of yet more junk. Nothing worth taking though.

The corridor ended abruptly in a flat wall of solid rock. No plaster on this wall, only smooth carved rock. Dead in the middle of the back wall was the source of the light.

A door.

There was no handle, no lock, no hinges or any other visible sign of opening it, only solid metal door all covered in scratches and dents, like someone had tried many times to get through it. At the bottom of the door was a thin crack, no more than a couple of inches high, and light was shining from it. As I said before, this wasn’t the same light as any I’d seen in this place so far. It was more natural and startlingly bright. I got to my knees and squinted, trying to make out something through the gap. I was greeted by a fresh, cold breeze. Not damp, not musty or humid.

Fresh air.

I breathed deep and filled my lungs with it, as I squinted harder against the glare, still desperate to see what might be on the other side of the door. After a minute or so my eyes adjusted enough to be able to vaguely see. Long days of being in this dark place had changed my vision I guess. Enough that the sunlight, and it had to be sunlight, hurt my eyes.

After more than three weeks in this dark place, I caught a glimpse of somewhere else, somewhere that lay beyond a seemingly unopenable door, a small slice of another place.

I could see grass, and amongst the grass was a single white flower dancing in the breeze.

Day 24

“You may as well stop now.”

It was Rudy, sitting on the filing cabinet, watching me.

I stopped hammering. I’d already broken one of the two hammers I found in the house. I’d even tried prying the rusty saw into the thin gap underneath the door, but there wasn’t enough leverage to cut. That knackered, old thing was never going to cut metal anyway. I stood for a moment, peering at him, and then realised he had known about the door all along.

“We tried. Me and Adler. He was more persistent than I, but in the end he gave in as well. It’s at least six inches thick, that door. I guess that’s what drove him away in the end. I think he went a bit bonkers realising that the only way out of here that we’d found was only a few hundred yards away, and we didn’t have the means to open it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me it was here? It’s daylight out there.”

“Yes. It is. But daylight where?”

I dropped the hammer and sat down on the hard stone floor, catching my breath.

“What do you mean?”

Rudy shrugged.

“Do you know where we are any more than I do? It’s alien enough down here without stepping out into daylight. Is that our world up there?”

“I don’t know, but you still could have told me why Adler really made his camp up here.”

“Yes, I could have told you, should have maybe. I’m sorry.”

“How long was he up here?”

Rudy shrugged again.

“Probably months, I don’t know. If I’m honest with you, I didn’t discover it. Adler did. I was here at the shack for a long time, years even, before Adler, and I never found the door. I mean it, I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to waste the stupid amount of time we did, Adler and I, trying to pry the damn thing open. I was hoping to save you from that.”

We sat in silence for a while.

“There’s no lock. No door handle. No hinges.”

“No. Whoever put it there, put it there to keep what’s in here locked away I guess.”

“And it’s the only way out?”

“Yes, well, as far as I know. I guess that Adler may know by now if there is, that’s what he left to find. I certainly haven’t found any other way.”

“And you never went with him.”

It was a statement more than a question.

“No. I don’t know why I didn’t. If I’m honest, I wish had. I’ve wished that so many times since then.”

“Why didn’t you take off after him?”

“Fear, I guess.”

I sat for a while, looking around, at the door, the junk strewn around the place, and Rudy.

“How long have you been here at the shack, Rudy? I mean how long before you died?”

He was quiet for a while.

“I don’t know how long since I’ve been dead. I haven’t been able to make the marks on the calendar for so long.”

“The calendar?”

He shook his head and sighed.

“Come. Come with me.”

I collected my things, including the broken hammer, just in case I could fix it, blew out my lantern, and then we made our way over the rubble and back down the rope. I was surprised to see Rudy still climb down the rope, I don’t know if he had to, being a ghost and all, but he still did it.

He took me to the back of the shack and there he showed me something that I hadn’t noticed in the couple of days I had been there. I hadn’t thought to look behind it.

At the back of the shack was a fifteen foot gap, before a sheer wall about eight feet high. It spanned the entire length of the shack and was covered with a makeshift lean-to made of corrugated metal and wood, much like the rest of the shack.

“You’ll need your lantern, or see if one of the ones in the box over there still work.”

I took a quick look in the box near the arched entrance, and took my own lantern out of my pack and lit it.

The light flickered for a moment and then glowed brightly as I turned the gauge to get as much light as possible. Across almost the entire back wall of the lean-to, scratched into the rock was Rudy’s calendar. Row after row of small marks in bunches of six then crossed through the middle. Every so often there was a small letter carved between the marks. J, F, M, A, M, J, J, A, S, O, N, D and then a few marks after the D came a number.

Months, and the numbers were years. My heart jumped a little when I saw the last number, with only three scratched marks after it.

31

“You were here for over thirty years?”

“Yes. Thirty one years, as it says. I don’t know how many passed after my death though. It’s hard to keep count when you can’t make a mark anymore, and since I don't sleep anymore, it just been one long day to me.”

“You could still leave though. Leave this place and look for Adler, look for a way out. Nothing could hurt you either.”

He shook his head.

“No. Unfortunately it seems I am stuck here, and when you go I will remain here still.”

“How do you know that?”

He sat down on a stump of wood that was leaning against the rock wall.

“I’ve tried. Many, many times I’ve tried. I get as far as the bottom of the plateau or down to the foot of the hill where the river from the waterfall meets the swamp, where the pods grow, and I can go no further.”

I traced my hand across the lines etched into the wall. It was almost like reading Braille. Not that I could read brail, but it was how I imagined it would be. Except this brail calendar had taken thirty one years to write.

“How? Why can’t you go any further?”

“I don’t know. It gets harder to move the further I am away. Then at a certain distance I can no longer move any further forward. It’s like being held by a giant leash that won’t stretch any further.”

“From what? Where’s the middle? Have you tried to find out what’s stopping you?”

“Yes, I’ll show you.”

We left the calendar room and I followed him down towards the river, across the small rock bridge, and over to the other side.

“That.”

He was pointing at his body.

“It seems that I cannot travel far from the spot that I died, and even worse, I can’t see any further than my prison.”

“How so?”

He looked up and over towards the swamps.

“What do you see when you look that way?”

I followed has gaze.

“I see the river, and the swamp, the gargants over there, a line of pods on the river bank, and then more swamp.”

“Yes, well, I can see where the river ends, but only a few feet of the swamp. I can see up to the cave, but I can no longer see out of the door and into the light. Darkness like a fog is all I see, even when I stand right up close to it.”

As Rudy was talking something had flashed in the dim light, a glimmer of some kind, shining off of something on the ground. I crouched down and reached amongst the grass. It was metal, a chain or a necklace, but most of it was buried under the soil.

“What have you found?”

“I don’t know. A chain of some kind.”

I grabbed the nearest thing I could find to dig with, one of my knives, and prized the chain out of the ground. It was a necklace, silver or steel. Dangling from the end of it was a compass.

It seemed that Rudy couldn’t contain his joy.

“It’s my compass! I thought it was lost!”

I cleaned off the dirt and held it up so I could see it clearer. As I turned the compass round the hand moved. It still worked, the hand pointed out over the swamp and past the gargants.

“Please. Can I see it?”

I held it up so that Rudy could look. He reached out but his hand passed through it. He looked disappointed.

“Will you keep it for me? Will you bring it to the shack?”

“Of course.”

I was tired. Climbing the rope and hammering at that door for hours had worn me out. We settled back into the shack and I got the fire going. As I sat reading aloud some of Professor Adler’s earlier memoir entries, Rudy stood gazing at his compass hanging on an old nail jutting out of the wall.

Day 25

It’s been a long day and I have a lot to write. Right now I’m hunkered down in what appears to be the cellar of a ruined building. It’s dark down here. I’ve got the lantern turned down as low as possible to conserve the fuel, just bright enough to be able to write. I can see the faint glow that Rudy emanates coming from the stairway. It’s strange to think that so much has changed in a few hours, and I still can’t think what it might have been that caused it all.

I’d been asleep, over tired from climbing up into the cave. The noise that woke me made me jump up from my sleeping place near the fire, my heart was pounding. Rudy was there, peeping out of a small hole in the wall. Outside what could only be described as a war was raging. The screams and groans of the zombies were almost deafening, though not as loud as the growling and the howls from the maw.

I fumbled around and finally found where my mace lay, grabbed it and ran for the door.

Rudy yelled at me not to go.

“Don’t. It’s too dangerous.”

 But I was acting on gut instinct and ignored him. Instead I flung the door open and stepped outside.

Zombies everywhere. Hundreds of them.

Littered across the ground all the way from the river to the house were the torn remains of dozens of the things. The maw darted backwards and forwards, bringing down zombie after zombie and tearing them to shreds. The zombies seemed strangely oblivious to the demon dogs and were mindlessly intent on getting up the hill to the shack.

I know that I didn’t need to join in, but something told me that my doggie friends were defending me, and I couldn’t let them do it alone. I ran down the hill, the mace raised ready, my common sense screaming at me to stop and go back. I charged at the nearest zombie that wasn’t being munched on by one of the maw.

Crunch. Splat. That was the noise as well as I could describe it. I swung the mace, this time not throwing my whole weight into it as I had my first encounter. I’d learned a clumsy lesson that day, and wasn’t going to make the same mistake. The zombie barely saw me coming but I swore there was a brief moment of recognition before I smacked the thing across the side of the head.

I was hoping that I could take one down if I wasn’t as clumsy and tried to aim, but I wasn’t expecting to end it so quickly. The creatures head exploded, its body lurched sideways with the force of the blow and hit the ground hard.

I didn’t have time to rejoice my victory though, two other zombies were stumbling towards me and I didn’t know if it was hunger or hatred in their eyes. One of the zombies only had one eye left, but I swear that eye hated me.

Three swings of my mace later and they were both down. I hadn’t hit the first of the pair hard enough and had to draw back, take a step away and swing again. The last was jumped upon by Mo after my first strike. She dragged it away from me and tore its throat out before I could even judge whether I’d killed it.

I backed further up towards the shack, gave the maw some space to do what they do best and I waited, taking out any odd zombies that managed to get past them.

Half an hour. That’s about how long I think the battle had taken before every zombie was down. I’d killed twenty of them and the maw had killed countless numbers, possibly hundreds.  Some of them still crawled, still tried to carry on, and as I moved around with the maw, watching them finish off those that hadn’t died, a horrible realisation struck me. They hadn’t been heading towards the shack at all. They had been trying to get to me.

Somehow I had become a target again. After my flight from my first camp the few zombies that I had seen during my brief stay at the bus had ignored me. Now this was no longer the case. They had come there for me.

Rudy was waiting at the door to the shack, looking worried.

“Are you okay? What you will do now?”

“I don’t know.”

I sat down, breathing heavily and watched the maw as they milled around and prodded at the bodies of the zombies.

“Why do they want me do you think?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never known them to bother anyone. They are usually mindless and only focused on wherever it is they are going. I’ve never had one of them even register that I was there, even when I was not far away.”

“Somehow they seem to have noticed me.”

“Yes. For some reason, you bother them.”

I sat in thought for what seemed a long time. The maw eventually calmed and wandered back to their rock hollow near the plateau.

“I don’t know if I can stay here. Not if they are going to keep coming here. But is anywhere safe from them? Will they follow me wherever I go?”