Endworlds - Nicholas Read [29]
Some appeared to be classrooms full of children interacting with colorful touchscreens, several more rooms were for storage, and as his companions nudged him downwards he saw that a lower level held multiple dormitories of hundreds of bunks.
Lion veered sharply to the right through another tunnel, and suddenly they were in an identical chamber, another in what Eastwood realized was a subterranean honeycomb of significant size.
He spied the gleaming stainless steel and steam of a working kitchen. A nearby dining area was crowded with children and youth of all ages eating and chattering on long low benches and tables. Over the railing on the lowest level, the floor was covered in orange rubber mats across which dozens of teens in tight black apparel sprinted, vaulted, and climbed an assortment of exercise equipment.
“So many of them . . .” he started, incredulous.
A hand came down on his shoulder. Looking around, he saw Castle grinning back at him.
“Welcome to your temporary lodgings, Eastwood.” Glancing upward and pointing a finger back in the direction they had come, he elaborated. “We entered through Waterloo Station. So this is kind of like Waterloo South.” Moving past the visitor the older boy started slipping out of his coat. “There are other Chimneys scattered around the world under the big cities.”
“Why is it called a Chimney?” asked Eastwood, still taking in his surroundings.
“Central core, shaped like a tube,” pointed Vector, “Looks like a bleedin’ chimney dunnit?”
“And,” Castle added, “you’d be surprised how many large abandoned chimneys exist in every city that nobody pays any attention to. They drive past them, play around them every day, and just don’t see them anymore because they’ve been there so long. This one’s even painted bright blue topside, jutting out of a building nobody ever visits, and people just don’t think to ask what it’s for anymore. They’re a perfect hiding place for us in the middle of the action. Where you see a tall empty chimney in the middle of a town, chances are a Longcoat base isn’t far away.”
Past the dormitory, his companions found him an empty cot in a small side room with an iron barred door.
“This’ll be yours, mate,” Vector told him. “One of us will be just outside the door till morning. I suggest you get some sleep. Monarch will want to check you out.” The members of the Longcoat crew gave him one last curious glance as the door creaked shut, then went their separate ways.
Peeling off his soaked outer garments, Eastwood rifled through a selection of neatly folded dry clothes in a basket they left him. He managed to find one set of black coveralls that offered a reasonably good fit.
When he had finished dressing, he lay down on the makeshift bed and ran a hand over his shaven head, thoroughly perplexed and completely exhausted. Sleep crashed upon him in seconds.
THERE IS A BELIEF among the Algonquin Indians of Quebec that whenever you dream, you walk in a world of spirits. As believers that man should find and live by ‘midewiwin’, or the right path, they contend that at all times we are surrounded by many spirits from other realms, and that when we sleep we can dreamwalk amongst them and receive instruction on our true path.
Whether dreaming or awake, the boy now called Eastwood found himself in a field of yellow waist-high flowers that had overgrown a black tarmac road, long since abandoned. No, not a road, but a runway, once busy, now still.
That was the way of it with dreams. Things seen for the first time came with their own explanations. When you saw a thing, you knew the thing. And Eastwood knew this runway as he knew his own hand, which he held against the sky in silhouette, studying the way the light and shadow played off both sides of his palm.
When he looked down again a white jet plane was before him, perched within the golden field with no rearward path to denote it had landed any time in the recent past. It had always been here in this field, belonged here. As did the faint beat of his heart.
Climbing narrow stairs to the open fuselage