“Let me see!” Elly excitedly hobbled alongside him, realising he had finally overcome the enigma of the container. Her lip curled. “Doesn’t look too appetising to me.”
Dramble licked his finger then dipped the moist appendage into the cylinder and drew out a number of grey crystals sticking to the tip and touched them to his tongue. The crystals quickly soaked up his saliva and tantalised his taste buds. With an abrupt swallow, the brew slid down his throat and energised his body, making him feel revitalised.
“Well...?” Elly prodded. “What does it taste like?”
“Strange, but nice. It almost seems like some kind of souped up survival ration.”
“Can I try? I’m hungry,” Elly begged.
“Not yet! Please be patient, Elly; I know you’re hungry, but we have to make sure this stuff is okay.”
Elly sighed and turned away, feeling her stomach complaining bitterly but she knew Dramble was only protecting her well-being and she reluctantly complied with his request. The hours seemed to drag by as Elly kept vigil over Dramble’s activities, closely watching every movement with great interest, but he seemed to be just fine and didn’t display any side effects of the grainy meal.
Finally, he relented when he felt nothing but satisfied gurgling coming from his stomach and a revitalised stride in his step. “Okay, Elly, I think it should be alright for you to eat now,” Dramble conceded, handing her the tube. “Just a little at a time though!”
Elly’s face broke into a happy grin as she took the tube from Dramble and poured a handful of granules into her palm and then licked the grains with hungry desperation. Quickly the substance drew the moisture from her tongue and then with a satisfied swallow, the brew warmed every part of her body and chased the hunger far from her mind as if she had eaten a three course meal.
“Mmm, that feels so much better already,” Elly purred. She turned her palm over to brush off the remains of her meal and as she did, the breath escaped from her lungs in a heavy insufflation.
“Dramble!”
*~*~*~*
Chapter 10
Elly’s exasperated cry caught Dramble off guard and he spun urgently on his feet, abandoning his searching gaze surveying the scenery beyond the shelter through the crumbling window frame and refocused on Elly’s frightened face. She was staring at her upturned hand in shock, as if it was a foreign addition grafted on instead of her own limb.
Dramble quickly crossed the floor and took hold of her wrist, examining the strange crystals vibrating ever so slightly on her skin and wondered what this could possibly mean. “How much did you eat?!” Dramble quizzed, but the worried frown on his face disturbed Elly even more.
“About a handful. What’s happening, Dramble?!” she panicked.
Dramble fingered the vibrating grains, teasing them with his touch to see how they would react, but the tiny granules continued to pulsate, undisturbed by his prodding. “Do you feel alright, Elly?”
Elly’s blue eyes were big and round as she listened to the sounds and monitored the trembles of her body. Swallowing hard after a thorough mental search and discovering nothing untoward, she finally nodded. “I feel fine.”
Dramble swiped at the remaining granules with his fingers, knocking the remnants from Elly’s hand to the dirty concrete floor. “I don’t know what’s going on, but this is giving me the creeps,” Dramble muttered.
The matter-of-fact statement was laced with memories of Elly’s previous musings: You don’t suppose this is a trap, do you? sending an immediate prickly shiver through him.
“We need to monitor our bodies tonight for signs of trauma and maybe we should push on tomorrow and try to find another shelter or some answers about this strange environment. I desperately need to find drinking water for you, too,” Dramble worried.
Elly nodded in agreement; the granules, although filling, had left her mouth dry and now that Dramble had drawn her attention to the need for water, she felt even thirstier. Sliding her back down the wall into a sitting position, she became fearful her body would betray her and shut down under the duress of the strange meal. She held her breath, listening and feeling for signs of illness but nothing untoward appeared, while Dramble returned to his position by the window frame, resuming his survey of the surrounds.
His piercing gaze was intensely searching but his mind was diverted, concentrating on the strange vibrating crystals and the mysterious people who had deliberately set them out for someone to find.
What were their intentions and what effect would the strange substance they left behind have on Elly? Dramble’s troubled thoughts kept eating at him. Maybe I should have scrutinised the grey material longer before offering it to her.
His concentration refocused on the scene and for the first time his curiosity began to burn, deliberately asking the hard questions he had filed away at the beginning of their adventure while he tried to stabilise Elly.
The world she was used to was nothing like this new place, totally devastated and bereft of life. The residents who once populated these destroyed houses were gone without trace; and not even a bird or cricket moved or sounded in the breathless atmosphere. If not for the clear evidence that something had once been here and functioning, the scene may well have been acquiescent with the surface of the moon. Obviously something catastrophic had happened to cause such endless destruction; even the sun hadn’t escaped the melee and seemed to have suffered some kind of near fatal trauma.
Dramble stared directly at the huge red ball, but his eyes were unaffected by the celestial light’s usual burning power and seemed as if he was staring at the moon instead.
Then another disturbing thought crossed his mind. He hadn’t seen the moon at all the previous night and the sky was so dark with only one red star desperately trying to shed its injured light upon the situation.
Dramble’s concerned unanswered questions were starting to crowd out his ability to think clearly and once again, his thoughts drifted back to the accident and his interference in things he had no business interfering in.
Even if it was to save the girl’s life he was desperately fond of and didn’t want to lose.
He began to turn from the window and face the young woman to get perspective again. Elly was sitting on the concrete floor with her back against the wall, her knees bent slightly making an arch under her legs while her long blonde hair fell around her shoulders and lazily hung over her waist. Her head lay against the crumbling brickwork and her piercing blue eyes were closed, leaving her face expressionless but deep in worried concentration. Even in this unattractive stance, she was beautiful and Dramble’s heart melted all over again. He still needed to protect her and make the best of a dreadful situation.
*~*~*~*
The cold red shadows of dawn painted eerie shapes on the charred brick wall behind Dramble’s head. Elly was still asleep, laying across the concrete floor and using Dramble’s leg as a pillow; he stroked her soft blonde hair spread across his lap, enjoying its soft velvety feel under his hand. But sleep evaded him and he kept vigil with the inky night devoid of a moon, worrying about Elly and the bizarre events of the past two days and his part in manipulating their current circumstance.
He needed to find water for her also and quickly; the human body can survive weeks without food but regular water was a necessity to keep it functioning properly and alive. His tired gaze fell on Elly’s sleeping form; her regular breathing showed no signs of distress and to all intents and purposes, there didn’t appear to be any side effects of the grainy food they had consumed the night before.
Dramble peered up at the dull red sky through the open ceiling where the roof should have been. The atmosphere, confused by spiralling wafts of sulphurous vapour, insulated the wounded sun’s warming rays even further and deflected its heat back to the source, leaving the earth shivering in a numbing chill.
As he contemplated the awakening sky, an impression near the top of the wall caught his eye. He stared at the silhoue
tte for a long moment, trying to decipher the pale white outline etched onto the charred black wall. Tracing the profile with his eye, he finally made sense of the contour and his mouth dropped open in shock as a cold shiver grasped at his spine.
The perfect shadow of a human body lay stamped onto the wall as if a bright light was reflecting the shape, but the sinister light–or the body–was nowhere to be seen.
Dramble couldn’t take his eyes off the ghoul-like brand, horrified by the implications the silent shape was alluding to, thankful it was high enough on the wall that Elly most probably wouldn’t see it. After the episode with the pulsating crystals on Elly’s hand, the unnerving imprint disturbed him further and added to the already nervous desire to evacuate the shelter at the earliest possible opportunity.
Elly suddenly moved, dragging his concentrated stare away from the image high above his head and refocused on the young woman, slowly grinding awake.
She lifted her head from his lap into a sitting position, yawning and stretching and then offered a revitalised, “Good morning, Dramble. Did you sleep well?”
With another stolen glance at the top of the wall, it took a few moments for Dramble to connect the movement from her lips to the question she was asking, but the tired gaze must have given him away and Elly interrupted his thoughts.
“No, you didn’t, did you?”
“H... how are you feeling, Elly?” Dramble managed to reply, diverting further questions.
She held his gaze for a few seconds and wondered why such an innocent question deserved the evasive tactic Dramble was becoming more proficient at. She was beginning to recognise when he didn’t want to answer a question, and it usually had to do with protecting her from some unseen trouble. Not wanting to pursue her already sleep-deprived companion down a frustrating road of avoided questions, she decided to trust his judgement and conceded the game until he wanted to talk.
She offered with a slight smile, “I feel terrific and even my foot seems almost new.” She twisted the injured foot in all directions to demonstrate her mobility.
Dramble stared at the foot gymnastics Elly was performing, adding to his concern and all too aware a badly twisted and bruised ankle did not usually repair itself overnight. “We have to leave here today and find water and another shelter,” Dramble abruptly changed the subject.
Elly reached for one of the granule tubes and turned it over in her hand. “Do we take any of these with us?”
Dramble studied the tube laying innocently in her hand and contemplated her question, but he couldn’t shake a nagging suspicion that the tubes were more than just a food source casually placed by a philanthropic benefactor. He also couldn’t deny the fact Elly seemed healthier this morning than she did when she went to sleep.
The small boy unintentionally glanced up at the roofline above them again and then quickly diverted his gaze, hoping Elly hadn’t noticed. “Yeah, okay, but just enough to keep us going and not enough to hinder our journey; we can stash the rest in a safe place. We have to move quickly and I’m just not certain what awaits us beyond the safety of these walls.”
*~*~*~*
Chapter 11
A silent figure stole along a skinny, darkened tunnel using small hand grips equally spaced and meticulously carved into the hard face of the underground passage wall as a guide. Different recognisable shapes impressed into the hand grips indicated the traveller’s location throughout the extensive burrow, negating the need for telltale lighting to navigate through the labyrinth. If a dweller lost their bearings in the darkened maze, a quick examination with their fingers of the coded, guiding hand grips would soon reorient them and find their way back to safety.
Keeping the vast network of underground passages dark, quiet and unobtrusive was the only way to ensure the family survived the prying butchery of the feared black hooded ones. The superstitious and barbaric Alama Masu didn’t like the total darkness and only the desperately militant with something to prove would enter the subterranean world, searching for the family’s blood.
Attempting to confirm the figure’s location with the tips of their fingers, they grasped the next hand grip and together with the sounds of dripping water deeply wrapped around the stench of sulphur told the figure they were approaching the contaminated Pool of Strange Fire.
The pool, enticingly clear, was only a hundred metres from the concealed entrance to the extensive passageway system and the surface world, but its waters held a deadly secret to the uninformed thirsty. The life-giving liquid was contaminated, leaking the toxic adulterate of the charred ruins into the water and killing an unsuspecting parched victim in minutes with a horrifying flame that burned from inside out, if they were tempted to drink from its unconvincingly polluted reservoir.
Breathing deeply of the pungent sulphur and confirmed by the presence of loudly plinking water droplets, individually diving from the roof of the subterranean cavern and into the clear, deep water below, the figure stopped abruptly in their footsteps and turned in the darkness to face the direction they had just come. Holding their breath and peering back, listening for sounds that their intrigue had been detected but satisfied the tunnels were empty and their sojourn from the warm dark world would go unobserved, they pushed on into the chill and sudden dull light of the red shadowy surface, quickly disappearing among the chaos of the blackened ruins.
Eventually finding the barren hillslope and then backtracking to locate the drop-off point, it took several intense hours of frantic searching until finally, the object of their hunt came into view.
The unobtrusive table was roughly positioned where it had been agreed, leaving a determined smirk stretching across the wrinkled face and a hungry growl emanating from the depths of their stomach. It had been a long time since they had tasted real food and they were sick of the muck the family shared. It was just refuse, unbefitting a human being, compared to the invigorating and revitalising grey crystals now tempting their imagination.
The information leaked to the barbaric enemy was risky, but the food offered was well worth the gamble.
As the figure drew nearer to their prize, the smirk dropped and a concerned frown settled instead, leaving a betrayed glint rankling in the smouldering eyes.
The tabletop was empty and the tubes were nowhere to be seen.
Staring with an enraged glare and burning with treachery the figure swept the charred ruins, searching for a trap, until their glower settled on the palpable imprint of a struggle. The tubes had quite obviously been there, their impressions clearly evident in the dust of the coppery coloured soil, but disturbed by the tracks of another unidentified intruder.
Disapproving eyes scoured the scene, looking for evidence of the culprit’s whereabouts and the missing booty, then written in the coppery soil were two sets of footprints leading over piles of rubble and into a nearby ruin.
With clenched fists the figure fumed, someone or something had so easily stolen their expected rewards and left them with empty hands after they had borne all the risk. Or just maybe this was a deliberate betrayal. After all, the Alama Masu were known for their treachery and cruelty, while integrity wasn’t a key characteristic.
Feeling a shiver recourse through their body in a spiteful tingle, the chilling atmosphere bit at the nape of their neck and the teasing growl of a hungry stomach only fuelled their betrayal even further. The rancorous heart plotted revenge and with a determined huff, they spun on their heels and followed the track to the ruin, unsure what they would do to regain their spoil from the thieves.
Within metres of the blackened ruin, the hunter stumbled while attempting stealth, crossing a large pile of rubble. They stopped, motionless, chiding themselves for being so clumsy and announcing with absolute clarity their presence, at the same time listening intently for signs that their mission had been discovered.
But after many moments of undisturbed silence and standing perfectly still, they regained their nerve and continued towards the devastated buildin
g, following the tracks, driven on by gnawing hunger as well as a deep sense of violation.
The figure tentatively stepped up into the shattered building and peered around the crumbling door frame but the structure was empty, all except for the disturbed patterns in the dust of the concrete floor. Studying the patterns on the floor, it was evident that someone or something had been here and they had the prized tubes.
Not finding any clue of the prize or the thieves, the figure turned with a disgusted flounce, murder burning in their heart and retraced their steps, searching for the concealed path leading back into the warmth and security of the dark subterranean world before they were discovered missing.
*~*~*~*
Dramble and Elly had been walking for what seemed like hours, but the scenery hadn’t changed and they were still cautiously picking their way through destroyed buildings and piles of charred rubble, all the time watching for treachery.
The horizon in all directions seemed to offer the same answer to Dramble’s unspoken question, with apparent cataclysmic devastation going on ad infinitum. Not even a bird or insect moved in the polluted sky and what plant life he could identify, was long dead and withered.
The stillness of the day and the absence of wind suddenly struck Dramble as he watched his own footsteps kicking up copper coloured dust like small puffs of smoke in the violently silent and undisturbed atmosphere.
He waited again for Elly to catch up to the brisk pace he was setting. “Are you okay, Elly?” Dramble called back, reaching for her hand to help her over another pile of perilous rubble.
She took his hand, obviously struggling with his pace and used his strength to steady herself, descending off the latest charred mound and then stopped abruptly beside him, staring at her runners in disgust. They were black and the cuffs of her jeans were filthy, reflecting the dusty terrain surrounding them in all directions.