the guards cultivated the stuff and brought it back here. Use of the drug was prohibited for slaves, but Overlords, emancipateds, and guards were allowed to partake of it. Apprentices Above were rumored to use it, as well.
Trance.
Now there was an appropriate name. The drug had taken a while to work its magic, but once he began to feel its effects, he knew he was in for a unique experience. It seemed to really enhance the senses and open up doors of perception in ways other drugs were only purported to do. While under its influence, he was conscious of being tapped into the beating heart and lifeblood of the universe. Later, he doubted this, attributing the perception to mere intoxication. On some level, he understood he was only rationalizing the experience, but he was okay with that. Transcendental mysticism, even in the form of dazzling, drug-induced celestial light shows, wasn’t really his bag anyway.
He preferred good ol’ terra firma and alcohol.
And there’d been plenty of the latter.
When the drug’s effect finally dissipated, he’d stuck to what he knew, imbibing at a rate that nearly matched the singer’s almost supernatural ability to quaff spirits. Getting wrecked had seemed the only sane response to the insane circumstances he found himself in, but now he was regretting it. He felt the way he did when he went out on the rare weekend bender with guys from work-remorseful. He was sorry he’d done it, he’d never do it again, and so on. Please God. All bullshit.
Once the rote words of phony contrition were out of the way, he became aware of sensations other than the pain cleaving his skull. There was a sleeping body next to him. His eyes fluttered open and he saw Cindy’s face on his bare chest. Her eyes were closed and she was lightly snoring. She had an arm thrown around his waist and a leg curled over his crotch. They were both utterly devoid of clothing. He had to assume they’d engaged in some sort of sexual activity, but, regrettably, he could remember none of it. And he had to wonder just how “performance-ready” he’d been after giving his liver the workout of its life.
Chad had known guys, lots of them, who told stories about getting blind drunk and screwing bar sluts or strippers. In his experience, though, this didn’t seem possible. Once he achieved a certain level of intoxication, getting a stiffie was about as likely as being invited to a penthouse orgy by a bunch of hot bisexual supermodels.
How, then, to explain this?
He was drawing a big fucking blank on that one, he had to admit.
So, on to other things, like, where were they?
Because they sure didn’t seem to be in the back room of The Outpost anymore. This room was more squalid compared to the relative order and cleanliness of that place. No one had given it even a cursory cleaning in a long time. They were sleeping on a mat similar to ones he remembered from those rare camping excursions with his friends. It was none too comfortable. A gas lamp provided the room’s primary illumination. The walls looked like the walls of a tree house assembled by first-time users of hammers and nails. The boards were crudely fitted, and some were warped, admitting slivers of light from outside. Bugs scurried between the cracks in the wood, including some sizable specimens that made Chad want to jump out of his skin. He detected a faint odor of urine and shit, and he turned his head to the right to see a toilet resembling the ones in Porta Potties. He supposed there would be some sort of collection tank beneath this ramshackle joke of a domicile.
He had a disturbing thought.
Was this where Cindy lived?
He hoped not. Because she just didn’t deserve anything this horrible. Neither did anyone else, of course, but she was the only one he cared about. He studied her sleeping face, at once so beautiful and grubby. He wanted to take a clean, wet washcloth to that lovely countenance and wash the grime from it. He wanted to wash her whole body, erase forever the stain of this appalling place. He would do that for her if he could. He would do anything for her-now that he knew what he knew.
He was, apparently, an unwitting key figure in a conspiracy that aimed to accomplish a seemingly impossible task-the overthrow of The Master and the liberation of the banished people of Below. The conspiracy was built on what seemed to Chad a very shaky foundation, composed primarily of two very ephemeral components: faith in the ability of a resurrected Lazarus to stir the people to action, and a “vision” of the future by a woman few active participants in the conspiracy had ever met.
That was hard enough to swallow.
But then Lazarus told him the woman, whose name he would not reveal, had experienced this vision more than twenty years ago, and that was just too much. The woman had known his name and what he looked like as an adult when he’d been a little kid living hundreds of miles from here. That couldn’t possibly be true, yet Lazarus insisted that it was. The bitch of it was, he believed the old singer was telling the truth. How else to account for his foreknowledge of Chad’s identity?
He marveled at the insanity of it all.
He’d been an almost mythical figure in this place for decades. It was nuts. There he’d been in Nashville, contentedly living his successful urban life, surrounded by nice things and girls eager to fuck money, and all the while a handful of netherworld dwellers had been obsessing over him, praying for and awaiting his eventual arrival.
Awaiting deliverance.
Life could throw you some curveballs once in a while, but this was ridiculous.
Then there was the matter of Cindy, who’d been drawn into the conspiracy after she’d been called upon to nurse Lazarus back to health following a failed attempt on his life. With her connections, she could have attained emancipation long ago, but she chose to remain a slave to further the cause. She functioned as an undercover agent, finding out what she could by keeping her ears open when she was in the company of the Overlords. Her information saved the conspirators several times over.
They could never thank her enough.
An understatement of astounding proportions.
Her final contribution as a slave was volunteering to be in that jail cell when Chad arrived. It was her duty to see to it that he made it Below in one piece. The conspirators couldn’t risk exposing the few guards friendly to the cause. Their assistance would be needed later. So it fell to Cindy to use her ingenuity and daring to get Chad where he needed to be. An arrangement was made and she was there waiting for him.
The rest he’d already known, having experienced it.
The thing he was having a hard time getting his brain around right now was the uprising itself. It was supposed to happen tonight. This huge, momentous thing, a mad, impossible undertaking, and it was set to begin hours from now. Chad became aware of an impulse to run and hide. What these people expected of him wasn’t fair. He wasn’t what he’d call a coward, but he wasn’t really a brave man, either. He knew this. He accepted it. And these people just assumed he would automatically leap to fulfill this fucked-up “destiny” of his. He tried to envision himself wading into battle like Rambo, and he just couldn’t do it.
But then he looked at Cindy’s face again.
And the shame he felt brought tears to his eyes.
Couldn’t do it?
Horseshit.
He had no choice. What was he going to do, adjust to life Below and spend the rest of his years toiling as a slave and living like a fucking caveman?
No goddamn way, buddy.
He would do what he had to do.
He would, however, have to find a way to process and cope with the paralyzing fear that loomed like a storm cloud in his consciousness. That potential wrench in the works would have to be dealt with well before the uprising got under way. He suspected a few shots of the singer’s rotgut right before showtime might do the trick, but he would have to be sure he consumed just enough to take the edge off-it wouldn’t do to go up against an army of guards and shapeshifters drunk off his ass.
That would just get him dead.
Which, he supposed, would spell the end of the uprising.
And the beginning of a massacre of the banished people.
Chad shuddered.
