The Flame Alphabet - Ben Marcus [123]
Weeks away from Forsythe, where the tunnel widened into a room-size cavern, I found a stash of jam jars, a cloudy red gelatin tiding inside. The lids pried off with a suck, and into the cavern drifted the bitter smell of skin. I used a pencil to spoon free some of the tinted jelly, which I rolled into logs. When these hardened overnight I subjected them to a long, slow heat.
Such little treats kept me nourished for weeks, and when I lodged one in my mouth, it released such a slow sweetness that for days, it seemed, I needed nothing else, not even water. I eat them still. Whatever’s in them is almost all that I need.
There is little else to report of this journey. I surged south, then took exploratory routes away from my path, emerged from underground, calculated coordinates, dipped back into the tunnels, and corrected.
When I saw the Level Falls horse farm stripped of animals, stripped of its barn, just a few troughs remaining that had been turned over and which I did not want to disturb, I knew I was close to home, but judging by the quiet open roads, the unprotected route south into town, I did not want to risk overland passage. I had come this far in the tunnels. Now I would finish my trip underground, where I was unfollowed, unknown, and I could get to my destination in secret.
I lurched east after that. It was trial and error, but mostly it was error, until one morning I shoveled into a crawl space that had no stable bottom, just slimy, flesh-like objects upon which I could not get my footing. These were the pink rubber balls Claire and I had dropped down the hole so long ago, coated now with something cool and slick.
I was below the old hut.
The orange cable elevated. I pictured Claire sitting at the mouth of the hole, waiting for me. She’d have a sandwich ready, a thermos of soup. She’d be laughing, that laugh of anger she delivered whenever someone else’s stupidity had been what she was waiting for, the perfect confirmation of all her suspicions. I’d yell up to her that I found the balls, all of them.
They’re at the bottom and they’re so weird all together, like one of those kid tents with balls in it, except the balls are all bloody. I’ll be right there!
I climbed into the corridor. At the top, the mouth of the hole was stuffed with shredded pink insulation.
Perhaps this was what had obstructed LeBov when he made his way out of the hut to Forsythe several Decembers ago.
I picked at the insulation until a sheet of it released past me and slid down the hole. Then I climbed up into the hut.
Everything was mostly as I remembered it. In the corner, undisturbed, was the wooden crate painted with the word Us, a tuft of bluish wool hanging out of it.
It was Claire’s winter hat, kept on hand for a just-in-case. I crawled over to the crate and put it on, smelling, I told myself, the very last remnant of her.
But the whiff I took returned nothing. It smelled only of smoke.
I walked outside, easily found the old path that dropped down to the creek, and beyond that, growing out of the embankment, was the still-recognizable profile of growth that Claire and I called the Seine.
This was it. I’d arrived. I was home.
Now I just needed to rescue my daughter.
51
Most of the rest you already know. The hut’s mechanics were fucked. The orange cable was not just cold but worm-gutted as well. I ignored it for too long, too fearful of town, at first, to trek in and get supplies, letting the wiring blister.
Meanwhile, one of those pink vermin got to it, started eating into the copper, rubbed his bald body against its length until the cable shredded, like bright splinters of candy.
Once, early on, I inserted a copper feeler into the frizzed wiring of the cable, and I wove, from memory, a conductive nest of wire that I slipped under my tongue to complete the facial antenna. When I kissed the wire against the nest, clutching a grounding rod for safety, the old prayer surged on and pushed its way out of my mouth.
You have commanded us not to know you and