Half Way Home

We all laughed at that, and the shared levity seemed to wake us up and signal the start of a new day—or at least the continuation of a very long one. As a group, I think we were still wary of the tunnels. Maybe that’s why we were huddled up near the miserable rain, and why we shrieked whenever one of the smaller, harmless vinnies passed.

“Screw it,” I heard one of the girls say. “I’m gonna go check on the water in the tarps.”

“And I’m gonna head down,” Karl said from directly below me. “Might as well explore this tunnel some.” He said it like a question, with some lilt of doubt at the end like he needed to buttress himself. We were all silent for a moment, waiting to see if he would really do it.

Kelvin reached over and patted my arm. “Let’s go with him.”

I nodded, even though it was too dark for Kelvin to see me. Maybe I was just steeling myself, or perhaps I felt too anxious to fake the decision verbally. We followed Karl down to the soaked dip below us, all three of us likely feigning a confidence we didn’t truly feel. One of the vinnies made its way past us, keeping high up the curved wall of the tunnel to stay out of the water.

“Vinnie coming,” Karl shouted back to the rest.

I fumbled in my pack for the flashlight, even as each minute seemed to bring a tad more filtered light down through the canopy above. I flicked it on and its bright cone revealed a tunnel similar to the hole we’d ascended through two nights ago. The steep slant worked its way down through a dip before rising back up and falling down again.

I cursed myself for not using the flashlight the previous night when others wanted to explore further. We wouldn’t have gotten any sleep with the vinnies passing through, but it might’ve been more comfortable on flat ground. If we could’ve gotten over our fears of what had happened the last time.

“It’s like a plumber’s trap,” Kelvin said. He splashed forward into the puddle of water at the bottom, the level coming up past his ankles.

“A what?”

“The curved pipe below a sink,” he explained.

“Like I know what those are for.” I splashed past him, twisting up my nose at the smell of rot and mildew. Karl had already picked his way up the rise to where the tunnel leveled out again.

“It’s to keep the rain out of the tunnels in the tree,” Kelvin explained. “Whatever drips down from above collects in this low spot and leaks through the tangled limbs. The vinnies must’ve evolved the habit of chewing their tunnels this way.”

“Or they’re just smarter than they look,” I said. A short train of vinnies crested the rise by Karl. I moved to get out of their way, but they swung to the side, up the slope of the tube and away from the water.

“They don’t like to get their feet wet,” Karl pointed out.

Kelvin and I followed as he continued forward, and I kept his way lit from behind with the flashlight. Several dozen paces further and the tunnel began a gradual descent. We stumbled down until we came to one of the familiar openings in the gear-like side of the tree’s trunk.

“Hell, yeah,” Karl said. He smiled back at us, his teeth flashing in my cone of light.

“Good call on picking this tunnel,” Kelvin said, slapping my back.

I could feel myself beaming, even as I again lamented the less miserable night we could’ve had in the lower portion of the tunnel if only I’d agreed to go look. Then I thought about something bad happening, something like Britny, and realized it would’ve been my choice that made it happen. I had a sudden desire to hand the flashlight to Kelvin and run back, up to the treetop. I wanted to leave my decision-making behind, along with my responsibility for all future ones.

Kelvin and Karl knelt by the hole and looked out, oblivious to my fears. I crowded in behind them, resting my hand lightly on their shoulders so they wouldn’t turn and bump into me, or get startled and fall.

Above us, the heavy patter of rain could be heard against the leaves, the thwaps of each impact ringing out like pops on a tight drum. Below, we could see the ground with far better clarity than we could each other, as if the light of the world were rising instead of falling.

“We must be facing the mountains,” I said. “The canopy’s not blocking out the light in that direction.”

Kelvin and I craned our necks to see more of the landscape, but a large limb rising up from below cut most of it off. I trained my light up the limb and toward the canopy, the falling rain sparkling as it streaked past. We could see dozens of bombfruit hanging from above, and it dawned on me that the rain we had felt back at base was nothing more than the delayed drippings from the real storms as the canopy leaked its puddles through its tight brambles.

Karl left us and walked down to the next few openings to see around the limb. He didn’t get twelve feet away before he shouted back to us: “Fucking shit, guys. You’ve gotta see this.”

Kelvin and I hurried down to join him, the three of us crowding along the edge of the opening. Karl pointed below, out past the far edge of the canopy’s overhang where the rain fell heavy and unobstructed. Through the gray veil it created, out where dawn’s storm-strained light seemed to surf down the face of the nearest mountain, we could see manmade things. Colony things.

Two tractors were parked by a module, which sat in a distant circle of mud.

••••

“It’s gotta be the mine,” Leila said as soon as we reported our findings to the rest of the group. All nine of us huddled below the entrance to the large tunnel, eating bombfruit cut from the underhang and drinking fresh rainwater.

“I thought this planet had a major mineral and ore deficiency. Are you saying Colony lied to us?”

“No,” Leila said, shaking her head. “It’s probably abandoned. How do you think Colony figured out there weren’t any metals to begin with?”

“From the original mine,” I said.

“Bingo.”

“I think Colony even mentioned a mine site that first night,” Tarsi said, “but it said the thing was a few days drive away.”

“Maybe it is. If you have to go around the trees, that is.”

Kelvin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and spoke around some bombfruit: “You think that’s what Mica and Peter were heading toward?” he asked me.

“Maybe.”

“What do you mean?” Jorge asked.

“Mica was interested in the mine,” Kelvin said. “She and Porter talked about minerals or something one day over lunch.” He looked to Leila. “And didn’t you say she was a geologist?”

“Do you think she escaped to find something?” Leila asked me.

I shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. Maybe—” I turned to Kelvin amd snapped my fingers. “That rumble we heard earlier, when I fell through the canopy. I know what that was, now.”

“An engine,” Kelvin said, his eyes wide. “A mining tractor?”

“I think Colony knows where Mica and Peter were heading. If that tractor is on its way, we need to get down there.”

“Slow down,” Jorge said. “If Colony’s heading that direction, we need to stay up here, where we’re safe. Besides, we still haven’t talked about how we’re gonna get down safely. We can’t spend another day walking through these tunnels hoping another earthquake doesn’t occur.”

“I’m going down,” I said to Tarsi and Kelvin, ignoring Jorge.

“Same here,” Kelvin said. “I don’t feel much safer up here. I need dirt under my feet.”

Most of the rest of the group agreed, which left the question of how we mitigate the dangers of the descent.

“I liked the idea of forming a long train of vinnies,” Tarsi said. “That way we have a lot of warning. Besides, with the rainfall there’s hundreds of them up here we could gather.”

A drop of water smacked me on the top of my head; I could feel it worming through my hair and across my scalp. I looked up at the source of the drip, the dim light of the stormy morning finally filtering through the massive leaves. The drips had been tormenting me all night, filling my head with schemes, ways of keeping the moisture out completely. I couldn’t blame the vinnies for crawling up the sides of the tunnel, trying to stay out of the wetness—