The Girl Who Found the Sun Page 8

  Could it?

  Even the poncho, so many little blotches of green in different shades, might have been a branch of leaves wobbling in a strong gust. Reluctantly, she lowered the binoculars from her eyes and sighed.

  “They tell us it’s deadly out here just like they tell us we’re the only people left.”

  Raven finally understood what kept her father going back out here. He’d known the air wouldn’t kill him even though everyone firmly believed it would. Curiosity burned in her to find out what else might not be true.

  From the vantage point of Tower 14, she looked out over the land in all directions. Opposite where the glint came from, larger shadows darkened the haze, riddled with rectangular holes. Her binoculars revealed the remains of great structures many dozens of stories tall miles away. They’d crumbled into tattered skeletons of steel and concrete wrapped in green plants.

  She knew that people before the Great Death lived in such places, cities above ground. Some of those cities had been so large it could take a person hours to walk from one edge to another. One book she’d read made reference to a single city being home to over a million people. Raven couldn’t even fathom such a number. The 2,000 that initially lived in the Arc sounded outlandish enough, but a million?

  Temptation to go explore the ruins almost won out. But… she couldn’t simply charge off into topside with no plan and no provisions. She also couldn’t disappear on Tinsley no matter how much she trusted Sienna to take care of her. Despite the allure of exploring ancient ruins, reality had to come first. People in the Arc depended on her essentially to keep them alive, even if they didn’t know how perilous their situation had become. Raven long suspected problems, but now she couldn’t figure out what would fail first: the CO2 scrubbers or the power system.

  Scowling at nothing in particular, she climbed down the ladder and headed across the dirt field to Tower 8.

  There’s no way Noah wouldn’t know about people going outside to work on the turbines. He’s definitely been lying. Ben… He’d appeared genuinely guilty when asking her to check on number fourteen. No, he believes it’s really bad out here. The possibility remained that she’d walked out into a lucky patch of good air. Nothing guaranteed the conditions would remain safe. However, all the plant growth tended to suggest it would. Intermittent toxicity would not have allowed anything to live here. Trees did not reach that size in months. Shifting areas of poison and not-poison couldn’t be cycling around based on weather.

  Tower 8 appeared relatively solid. A cursory examination didn’t find any missing rivets nor did the structure sway and creak as much as Tower 14. Raven set aside her growing urge to explore, and committed to the task at hand. She climbed to the maintenance deck and approached the primary hatch. The latch didn’t want to move at first, but a little jimmying at it with a mini pry bar from her tool satchel unstuck it. She gripped the underside of the huge door and pushed it upward, grateful for the shade it threw over the interior.

  The massive primary gear rotated at the same speed as the fan assembly, however the subordinate gear it drove slipped as much as it spun, having suffered damage from wear as well as environmental exposure. Multiple teeth on several gears had worn down to smooth metal. Someone also set the fan blades at a shallower angle to slow them down… most likely to prevent the gearbox from being totally stripped.

  Crap. We’re going to have to rebuild this entire transmission to save this turbine.

  A cursory check of the generator unit confirmed it in passable shape. Fixing this generator would require replacing at least three of the transmission gears, but to do that, someone would have to completely disassemble it—a multi-day project for a small team. Hopefully, the brake on this one wouldn’t fail. She pulled out a small notepad and pencil, using it to make a basic sketch of the gears and note the damaged ones.

  Nothing I can do here now. Ben should be able to machine new gears for it, but it’s going to take a while.

  She lifted the hatch cover off the post that held it open and let it swing down to close with a whump.

  After one last look around at the landscape from an elevated position, Raven descended the ladder. Another clank came from the vicinity of Tower 17, a hunk of metal bouncing off the steel lattice.

  “They’re falling apart in real time.”

  Again, she considered trying to breathe without the filter mask but chickened out due to too many years of hearing scary stories. Not all poison had obvious smells. Excessive carbon monoxide, lack of oxygen, and even some lethal gases could build up without smell or taste.

  Upon reaching the hatch back to the Arc, she crouched to open it. Spending over an hour outside had allowed her eyes to acclimate. The sunlight only hurt a little. Since she could see normally again, she studied the hatch, curious about the crud that fell on her earlier. Small hunks of grey material littered the dirt around the opening. Nervously, she picked up a larger chunk, a piece about the size of her thumb. It crumbled when she squeezed it, breaking apart into dust.

  Dried out rubber.

  Raven opened the hatch, releasing another burst of the same material. The gasket seal in a recessed groove around the lid as well as around the base had completely failed. Bare metal sat on bare metal. The emergency exit looked about as airtight as an ordinary interior door, if even that. Outside air had been leaking into the Arc for some time, probably years. If the story Jose told her about the locked door was true, someone left this hatch wide open for however long it took people to notice. Hours? Days? Yet, she couldn’t remember anyone falling ill.

  There are no vents in that long hallway. Whatever leaked in could have stayed there. It wouldn’t have gotten into the whole Arc.

  She twisted to peer over her shoulder at the direction the glint came from. The longer she stared into the haze, the more she wanted to trust her instincts.

  So many plants.

  One minute slipped into another. She crouched there listening to the faint howl of the wind and the creaking turbines. Finally, she got up the nerve to reach up and pull the scarf off her face, tucking it under her chin. Cradling the filter mask in both hands, she tugged it away from her cheeks, allowing a rush of cool air to wash over her skin. Her mask imparted a rubbery flavor to each breath that she only noticed by its sudden absence.

  The unidentifiable scent in the air somewhat reminded her of the hydroponics room if the chemical-poop stink of the growth fluid didn’t exist. Some plant nearby must have flowers giving off a fragrance. Grass had a distinct aroma as well. Beneath it all, she picked up an oily-metallic essence, perhaps contamination in the dirt. That might explain why the rampant growth hadn’t invaded the windmill farm.

  Raven filled her lungs again and again with outside air, making herself dizzy. An instant of worry dissipated; light-headedness came from breathing too fast, not poison.

  The air’s okay… We’re not gonna die if the scrubbers fail.

  Giddy, she pulled the filter mask off entirely and stuffed it in her satchel before hurrying down the ladder.

  8

  Hallucinations

  If we’ve learned nothing from the old government, remember that whenever someone tries to hide something, they’re up to no good. – Ellis Wilder.

  Going underground plunged Raven into darkness. The LED brick lights on the ceiling gave off such a feeble glow she could barely see the walls. It seemed impossible that the electrical system in the Arc had failed during the two-ish hours she’d been outside. For a brief moment, she worried that something in the air outside might have damaged her eyes… but she hadn’t taken her goggles off.

  Ugh. Stop freaking out at everything. It is my eyes, not the lights. I’ve been out in daylight.

  She stood still for a little while waiting for her eyes to compensate for the drastic change in light level. A few minutes later, the passage had brightened somewhat, though still felt dimmer than she remembered from before. That, she blamed on her want to be outside.

  Even though she knew
it would take hours for Ben to consider, discuss, and implement a plan to go out and tarp the turbines, Raven jogged along the evacuation tunnel. Already, the staleness of the air down here grated on her. The unusual fragrance she didn’t recognize outside might simply be the way air should smell. For all twenty-two years of her life, she’d breathed continuously recycled air, artificially oxygenated by machines. More than ever, her idea of using outside air sounded like the only way to save the Arc.

  However, such an idea faced one great challenge. The primary purpose behind the Arc had been to isolate the residents from the surface, protecting them from all the toxins. As such, it did not have many conduits leading topside, and certainly lacked a dormant exterior ventilation system. The designers intended for the Arc to be self-contained, isolated from the world. To draw in outside air would be a massive undertaking.

  However, a crapton of back breaking work appealed far more than suffocating to death.

  The alarmist graffiti on the walls took on a comical irony. Maybe at the time people wrote that, it had been true. After all, something killed the Saints. Her father used to say that everything healed after a long enough time period; perhaps that included the planet.

  She rushed to the door at the far end, hoping Jose—or whoever got stuck with sentry duty—hadn’t gone off to the toilet and locked it.

  Jose screamed in surprise when she shoved it open, nearly falling on his ass.

  “Sorry!” She gasped, out of breath from running.

  “Good to see you back in one piece.” He patted her on the arm. “Don’t know what they’re thinking sending a young woman out there.”

  She folded her arms. “I’m quite capable of fixing things.”

  “Not that…” Jose patted his belly. “You’re too important to our survival to risk.”

  Being thought of as a baby factory annoyed her, but she couldn’t argue the necessity. People had to reproduce or there wouldn’t be any people left. Then again, the population had already dwindled down under 200 souls. They’d probably already passed a point of no return. Eventually, everyone would be related to everyone if it hadn’t happened already. The notion that Chase Oakley might be the only person in the entire Arc she could have kids with safely made her skin crawl.

  “Yeah, yeah. I know. But…” She pointed down the hall. “There’s nothing to worry about. It’s fine out there.”

  Jose shook his head, sighing. “If it was, we wouldn’t be living down here.”

  “That’s because people believe the stories and won’t look for themselves. Go climb the ladder and peek outside.”

  “No, thanks. I like my face un-melted.”

  She lifted the goggles off her eyes, setting them atop her head and struck a pose. “My face isn’t melted… is it?”

  “Doesn’t look like it, but could be you got lucky. Found a good shift in the wind before a killer cloud rolled by.”

  “My father went out and came back over and over again. We’re scared of stories, not reality. There are plants growing everywhere outside. Seriously. Go look.”

  He waved her off as if declining an extra helping of potatoes.

  Sighing, Raven gave up on arguing with him. It would be difficult enough to convince Noah, but she couldn’t wait to try. She hurried down the hall and went straight to the big man’s office.

  Noah Hayes had been the chief administrator of the Arc for about twenty years, being voted in after the previous admin—an elder named Owen—died. Previously, Noah managed the water processing group. Only section administrators were eligible to become the big boss. All admins from the woman in charge of managing trash to the big boss remained in their position until more than half the people in that group wanted them gone, at which point, a vote happened. For the big boss, more than half the people in the Arc needed to call for a vote. As far as anyone knew, he’d been the youngest ever head admin, assuming office at age twenty-one.

  Raven largely ignored politics and didn’t much care who ran what. As far as she knew, all the admins did a reasonable enough job. If someone turned into a power-mad fool or displayed a severe lack of competence, she’d want them gone, but as long as they could do the job, it didn’t matter to her who sat in what chair.

  Her feelings toward Noah remained mostly neutral. She neither admired nor disliked him, though could count on one hand the number of times she’d been in the same room with him. The only one she remembered with any clarity had been the time he’d approached her about having a child. However, if he’d been hiding people going to the surface routinely to check on the turbines, she’d question everything he said.

  That he resembled a pale, somewhat younger, version of her father made it more difficult to challenge him. Both men had short salt and pepper hair and approximately the same build. Her father turned fifty-nine a few weeks before he disappeared four years ago. Noah’s forty-first birthday ‘party’ happened months ago. Everyone in the Arc received a cupcake decorated with the number 41.

  Noah occupied a large office at the end of a side corridor out of the administration section. It had once been quite fancy, having a big sofa, table, and even artwork on the walls. The years had not been kind to the furnishings. Most of the space in the huge room held darkness, as the only working light sat on his desk. That exemplified the mindset with which he ran the Arc. No point lighting empty space. She had a feeling he’d have made his office smaller if he could have.

  “Raven…” Noah looked up from his old terminal screen, one of perhaps six working computers in the whole Arc. “How did it go?”

  “Good and bad.” She approached the desk.

  He leaned back in the chair, giving a faint chuckle. “I had a feeling it would be significantly bad news if you came to me rather than Ben.”

  “Yeah. The turbines are all in rough shape. I got number fourteen working again, but there’s a problem. They’ve become so deteriorated that the housing is rusting and falling off in pieces.” She explained the jam, the holes, her fear about rain getting into the mechanism, and the need to cover them with tarps. “Another problem is that some of the towers are starting to buckle under the weight of the windmills. Rivets are falling out. I don’t think we have much time left before they collapse.”

  Noah mulled her words, pursing his lips.

  She didn’t like his complete lack of shock at seeing her return alive. That implied he already knew the outside world didn’t have the instantly deadly mix of poisons everyone believed it to. It baffled her how everyone could know how her father had been out and back so many times, yet still somehow fear they’d melt on contact with topside.

  “There’s something else… I think I saw someone out there.”

  “What?” He flinched, then blinked at her. “Saw someone?”

  “I think so. Something flashed far off. I found these”—she pulled the binoculars out of her satchel—“and used them to look in that direction. Pretty sure I saw someone run off.”

  Noah leaned forward. “What did they look like?”

  “Umm.” She fidgeted. “Just a shadowy figure. The air was hazy that far away and they moved real fast. I only saw them for a second or two. Might’ve been wearing a poncho, but it looked weird.”

  “Ahh.” He sighed. “There are toxic chemicals in the air out there. Our filter masks are, as you know, quite old. There’s only so much they can do to protect us. Most likely, you hallucinated seeing something move.”

  Even though she’d questioned her eyes at the time, hearing him say she hallucinated annoyed her. But… she didn’t trust her memory enough to take a stand that would end up having everyone in the Arc thinking she’d gone insane. She wouldn’t abandon the notion she might have seen something move, but that didn’t mean she had to make a big deal out of it and try to tell everyone. Before he pushed too far in that direction, she’d throw him off balance.

  “Actually, I feel fine. The air’s better outside than in here. You know, something seemed odd about the turbines. They’d recently been
lubricated with vegetable-based grease. The same stuff we make. It doesn’t seem possible that those machines have been out there on their own working fine for centuries and are still going.”

  Noah shifted his weight to the left, folded his arms, and propped his chin up on one hand. “Even if you really did see someone out there, we have no idea what they could possibly do. They could be dangerous.”

  “Yes. That’s true.” The novels she’d read often had different rival groups prone to violence against each other. Strange people not from the Arc could very well be violent and hostile. “No idea what they’d be like if I really saw someone.”

  “All the more reason… for the safety of everyone here, we cannot be discovered.” He fidgeted at the log book in front of him. “The Great Death filled the Earth with poison of every type imaginable. It made mutants and other things. Your father returned with some wild stories.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “You think I might be hallucinating for seeing another person, but not him for seeing monsters?”

  “Uhh.” Noah opened and closed his mouth a few times, seeming at a loss for words. After a moment, he shrugged. “I’m only trying to keep everyone safe. We don’t know what anyone’s motives could be. If there is someone out there, they’d have to be primitives. Who knows how they’d react to people like us with technology. Probably attack us to take it. Hopefully, you imagined it… but if someone was there, let’s keep our fingers crossed they didn’t see you.”

  It might have been coincidence they ran away as soon as I spotted them. Could the other person have seen me from so far away? I had binoculars. She pictured the flash that first caught her attention. Maybe they did, too.