Gray skies, p.5
Gray Skies, page 5
“This is crazy,” Sammi commented, pressing her hands against the ground.
“It reminds me of the energy-cells,” he suggested. “They sometimes vibrate.”
“Not like this.” She shook her head. “I think I can feel it in my feet, too.” Standing, she offered her hand to him. Declan reached grabbed it, and pulled himself up. As he stood, he closed the space between them. Still concerned, Sammi held Declan.
“What do you think this means? Is there something wrong with the machine?”
With just a hand or two between them, Declan lost himself in her green eyes. He could smell her hair amidst the salt stench, which stole the purity of everything good. Her skin was white and smooth, void of a single wrinkle or blemish. Her face was unlike most. Even his own face was already beginning to show stray lines deep around his eyes, tight and pulled from exposure to the fog.
Annoyed by the silence, Sammi thumped his chest with her palm and asked, “Well? What do you think this means?”
His cheeks flushed and felt warm, while he tried to think of what to say.
“My father said that when the five years of build-up and storage was complete, all of the VAC-Machines would begin the conversion. But what I think we’re feeling is the machine getting ready to start the change,” he answered quickly. “Think about it: together, the machines are going to change everything around us! All of this might just go away. Isn’t it amazing?” Declan closed his eyes, and thought about sunlight, and clean air to breathe. The excitement was short-lived, though. Unconvinced, Sammi tugged on his arm.
“But I thought you said that the machines stayed on? That they’d always been on?”
Declan stopped and considered this. “I don’t think the machines were ever turned off. Not completely, anyway.” Declan waved a hand until foggy streamers chased after his fingers. “When the clouds fell, the machines were adjusted to try to undo whatever happened. When they couldn’t fix it, they had to come up with another approach. Whatever that approach is, it takes all of them working together for five years to have enough, but no sooner than that.”
“Why, though? What difference is a day from a week or a year?”
Declan thought of his mother. She’d known more about the VAC-Machines than anyone else in their Commune. But, even then, his mother had spared little information to those closest to her. She was one of the few in their Commune who wore four black arm-bands. Her days were filled with leadership meetings, and working closely with the Selectmen and Oversight committees. On some days, she talked about conferring with representatives from Communes across their region, and even across the territories. But what intrigued Declan most was learning that his mother also worked with the VAC-Machine teams. Other than an occasional mention though, she never talked about it.
“It’s all such a big secret,” his dad had argued with her once. His mother had said a word or two, but it was nothing that they didn’t already know.
“There are some things I’m not allowed to discuss!” Declan remembered her yelling back to his father. He had asked his mother once about the VAC-Machines. She’d told some of what she knew, but she had died soon after. Declan didn’t think that his mother would mind if he shared with Sammi what it was that she had told him.
“It has something to do with what the machines are storing for the End of Gray Skies. The VAC-Machines are mining something. It’s how they work now, different from what they were built to do. At first, it was just the ocean water, but now they’re working deep into the Earth, deeper than any machine has ever gone. Every five years, they’ve mined enough to try again.”
“Mining something? Like what we learned in class? So they are going into the ground?” Sammi asked as her expression lightened. Uncertainty still weighed in her tone. She didn’t join in Declan’s smiles, or the waving of his hands to pull fog streamers in a game of fast-tag. Instead, she held a firm expression. “But, Declan, what if it doesn’t work? How many times have they tried to change things back? It’s never worked before. Not once,” she said.
There was doubt in her voice, which stopped Declan. He’d missed it earlier.
“Maybe the sun isn’t really there,” she exclaimed, her voice shaky and subdued.
Declan stepped closer to her. He took her hands again, and brought them up to his chest, unsure of what to say. There was plenty of doubt to share. Many had already decided that today would be no different than any other day, End of Gray Skies, or not.
“Does it matter? Really?” he asked. It was Sammi’s turn, and she knew the answer. Maybe little Tabby from the front row had been right. Maybe their world was enough for all of them, after all. “I mean, is this so bad? This is all we know… it’s all we’ve ever known,” he finished.
“I know… I know, but…” she started to say, and then lifted her chin, tugging on his sleeve, “Don’t you want to see the sun? Don’t you just want to feel it, just once, even if for only a moment? I want to see and feel the sun on my skin. I want to know what it is like to have to squint from the brightness of it. I want to breathe it in, like the plants on the farming floors do when the fluoro-phosphor lamps shine on them.”
“Sammi Sunshine,” Declan blurted with a large grin. When she frowned at him, though, his eagerness to join her enthusiasm quickly faded. Declan realized what he’d said. The name was a painful reminder, and regret turned his smile down. He shook his head, apologizing, when Sammi punched her hand to her hip.
“Sammi Sunshine, it is, then. I’ll eat the sunlight, if that’s what it’s going take!” she exclaimed, raising her chin and then burst out laughing.
Declan nodded, relieved to be laughing with her.
Without warning, Sammi pulled him closer to her, and pressed her body against his. She stretched high on her toes until their lips touched. There were no words, and no sound. The surprise of her kiss waned, and Declan returned the invitation. She was fully in his arms, as he held his lips to hers. It was a small and innocent kiss, but for Declan, it was the biggest moment of his life.
“We can hope,” she said, and then pecked his lips with hers again. “I think that is what I’m going to do.” Declan held onto her until he could feel her heartbeat against his chest. When he opened his eyes, the moment ended. The fog had grown thick again. It sometimes did that; like the tidal waters of the great oceans, the heaviness of the fog needed only minutes to roll in and out, stealing visibility like the quick night falls during the cold season.
Declan saw concern in Sammi’s eyes as she motioned for them to move. He held her a moment longer, and asked, “Don’t you have a secret to tell me?”
Before Sammi could answer, they heard the first sound of footsteps around them, and it wasn’t the children playing fast-tag. These were heavier steps, maybe of men, and there were at least two or three, by Declan’s guess. He forgot about the question, forgot about the secret that Sammi held, and of the kiss they’d shared. Instead, he took Sammi’s hand, and turned back toward the school.
Just a few steps from the entrance, and the entire school building had already disappeared from their view. Declan knew it was there, though; it was always there. Their visibility was down to less than five hands, and maybe six. He knew that this was dangerous. A hollow ache filled his gut with urgency and unease. He waved his hand in front of them, losing his fingers to the fog. Worry grew, filling the emptiness in his gut. They’d need to start moving. The tidal change in the fog might leave them outside with no visibility, completely crippling them.
Most days, they could see up to nine or ten hands, giving them a full arm’s length of reach to see their outstretched hands. On the worst of days, visibility could be three hands, paralyzing any movement. On those days, nobody dared to venture outside. You were vulnerable. Everyone was vulnerable. Sometimes, you were dead, or worse yet: taken.
Both Declan and Sammi had heard the awful stories of people who’d risked the walks, with their arms stretched in front of them, staggering, and reaching blindly in every direction, only to have their hands grabbed by the Outsiders. Declan cringed, thinking of the Outsiders, and the stories that his parents had told him when he was a child. Some in his class had dismissed the stories, thinking that they were folklore; nothing but a scary tale used to keep them inside when the fog was thick.
Declan’s father and mother told him the stories were real, though. They had told him and his sister that the Outsiders were real, too. The Outsiders were the darker side of what humanity had become after the accident: a group of men and women who were the worst that the old world had to offer. They didn’t belong to any of the Communes. Instead, they’d chosen to wander in the fog from region to region, and across territories, taking whatever they needed, and whenever they wanted. They were said to be a group made up of molesters, kidnappers, and thieves. There was even a sect of Outsiders known as the Cannibal Gang, preferring human flesh over what the farming floors produced. Declan shuddered at the thought.
On days when the count of hands was less than five, it was their cue to come into the Commune and feed. Smaller children had been known to be snatched right from the school’s entrance. There were stories of hysterical mothers who pulled back frayed tether straps that had been cut by the Outsiders. Their young had been taken, and were never seen again. Some of the older kids said that it was the Cannibal Gang, in need of fresh meat. Others said that the Outsiders needed children, because they could no longer have any of their own. Declan placed his hand over Sammi’s, and held it firmly. Whether they could see five hands, ten hands, or the vastness of twenty hands, there were still things to be afraid of in the fog.
Sammi squeezed his arm, and moved nearer to him. From the heavy mist, she came into his view, with her breath on his neck. Gray mist laced in and out of her red curls before thinning away. He looked into her upturned face as she put a finger to his lips, telling him to keep quiet, but he already knew that. Now was the time for them both to remain quiet. More footsteps could be heard around them. They were hidden in a thick pocket of fog; silence was their greatest tool now. With a shake in his legs, he tried to relax, but couldn’t. He was afraid.
When Sammi motioned down, Declan saw their feet. While the pocket of thick fog remained less than five hands, they could see the crushed stone. Fog hugged the world, but there were some heavier pockets that didn’t reach the ground. Declan couldn’t remember why that was, just that it had something to do with the fog condensing back to water on the ground, or anything it touched, for that matter.
Today, he didn’t care. His expression lightened when he saw what Sammi was motioning to. Declan locked his eyes on hers, and they breathed a quiet sigh. They were standing on a collection of painted white markings, called morse lines. Well-maintained by the workers that wore one or two black bands, the morse lines gave them directions to just about anywhere they wanted to go.
Bread crumbs, Declan thought. His mother had called them that once, borrowing the name from a fairytale that she’d liked to share with them before bedtime. When he’d grown too old for fairytales, he called them by their proper name.
Every Commune was responsible for establishing and maintaining their own set of morse lines. While their Commune had a dozen or so of the dash and dot-shaped markings, other neighboring Communes had two, and sometimes three, dozen morse lines. Every Commune shared a set of styles in common: there was the solid morse line, which connected the Communes, and then the dash-dot-dot shaped morse line, which lead to different food markets. Right now, he was fixing to find the set that led to their dwellings.
Declan considered the path that they walked from school to home. How many times had they followed the same set of morse lines? How many times had they walked with their heads down, and eyes set on the white markings that kept them from wandering blindly? The path to their dwellings was to follow the base solid line until they reached the second intersection. They then followed a double-dash-dot morse line until they reached the next intersection. Both his and Sammi’s dwelling were in the same building, an ancient concrete box layered with centuries of resin to protect it from the caustic salts.
For a moment, Declan fixed his eyes on the base solid line. Their Commune was closest to the great ocean. They could follow the base solid line away from their Commune, to the beaches and breaking waves. From there, they could turn left, and walk the sands until they reached the VAC-Machine. Or, they could turn around, and follow the base solid line out of their Commune, eventually landing them in the next Commune.
Sammi pulled his arm, drawing his attention back to their situation. His heart quickened and thumped in his chest as the hurried sound of footsteps shuffled around them, and then stopped. His breath stopped. Sammi stopped breathing, too, and he wondered if she might scream.
“They know we’re here,” he whispered. Sammi gripped his hand, and Declan braced himself. Three, maybe four sets of feet were closing in, and, with only a few hands of visibility, they were outnumbered. Declan blinked down at the morse line, and stepped in the direction of their building. Sammi followed, tightening her fingers with his. They pushed further, faster with each step. Beyond the fog, footsteps paced theirs, moving closer to them, and stomping the ground without any care, or furtiveness.
Sammi stopped, and then jerked his arm, pulling him to his knees with her. He wrestled with the injury to his leg, and bit his lip, trying to hold his tongue. She pointed to the space between the ground and the fog, and then leaned forward. His eyes followed Sammi, as long strands of her red hair splashed over the stony road. She moved her ear nearer to the ground, as though secrets were being whispered only to her. But she wasn’t listening to anything. Declan understood what she was doing, and knelt closer to the stony path. He leaned into the ground, feeling the wet gravelly surface on his palms and cheek. He could see a hundred hands in every direction; there was terrific visibility. He wanted to laugh at their luck for having found a pocket of fog that hovered. Sammi pinched him, and pointed to their left. It was there that he found two sets of padded coverall shoes. He turned back in the other direction, and found another set of coverall shoes. He recognized them as being from their Commune; they were not Outsiders. He and Sammi were safe—for now, anyway.
4
Sammi watched as the corners of Declan’s mouth curved up in a smile, hesitant and slow at first, but then broad and relieving. He stabbed the fog with his finger, pointing to the padded coverall shoes a few hands away. She pressed against wet pebbly stones, keeping her eyes beneath the gray canopy, and waited to see if the shoes were going to move. They were just like the ones that she wore; just like the shoes that everyone in their Commune wore. Before she could say anything, Declan was already on his feet. Blood pushed through his coveralls where he’d fallen earlier. Most of the fabric around his knee was stained, and the drying blood was turning brown, while the edges faded to the absent color of his coveralls. Blood caked on the fabric, but she couldn’t tell if he was still bleeding, or not. Concern hung in her next breath. Any blood could be a bad thing.
Standing next to Declan, she suddenly felt tired of hiding, and stepped forward into the fog, where the padded coverall shoes had been standing. Declan followed her, and then took hold of her arm.
“Wish we had some tether straps,” he mumbled jokingly. She nodded in agreement, and then locked her hand in his.
“And miss this?” she answered, lifting their hands between them.
“How convenient, the two of you together like this!” A familiar voice rang out. At once, unease took Sammi’s attention from Declan, and she searched the fog, hoping not to see the face that belonged to the voice.
Do we have time to run? She wondered. But they were in a light patch of fog now. The heavier patch was behind them, and they were now given twelve, or maybe fifteen, hands of sight. She knew the voice, and the sound of it filled her with dread. If another heavy patch came, she decided they’d run.
From the fog, stepped Harold Belker, and his two sidekicks, Peter and Richie. Sammi’s hands grew clammy, and her heart leaped into her throat. More thoughts of hiding and escape consumed her; they needed to run. She didn’t care about the patchiness of the fog, or that pockets of gray might be hiding Outsiders, waiting patiently to pounce. There was danger here, vileness, and they needed to be somewhere else.
She glimpsed Declan’s face: his expression remained the same, unchanged by their new circumstance. He didn’t know of the threats that Harold had made toward her, toward them. He didn’t know that Harold wanted her. Sammi knew the danger, though, and she was afraid for the both of them. Harold curled a nubby finger, and bounced it in a mock wave. She felt a sickness inside her, as if every place that Harold had ever put his hands and fingers became poison, burning her, like the violations they were.
“You missed the last class before the End of Gray Skies,” Declan said, turning an inquiring expression.
“Don’t think we missed much of anything,” Harold began. He moved to within an arm’s length of Sammi, and raised his nose up in the air, smelling her. “Nope, nothing, yet,” he finished, and snorted a piggy laugh. Richie and Peter joined in. Declan’s expression turned to confusion.
“We need to get going,” Sammi interrupted, and grabbed Declan’s hand, stepping to the edge of the pocket of fog. Harold’s sneer and laughter vanished, and he jumped in front of Sammi, blocking their exit. Harold pushed his body closer until his face and piggy nose were within a hand of hers. She could feel the warmth of his foul breath on her face. Certain that her skin would be stained by his breath, she tried to step back, away from him. But fear played a coy joke, leaving her motionless, unable to move.
She felt Declan loosen his grip on her hand, and step in front of Harold. Panic took her breath away. Before she could stop Declan, Harold surprised her by backing away, lifting his hands, and resigning to keep a civil distance.
