Scorched Read online

  SCORCHED

  By

  Michael Soll

  Copyright © 2014 by Michael Soll

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  SCORCHED

  All rights reserved.

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

  Website: michaelrsoll.wix.com/authormichaelsoll

  Facebook: facebook.com/authormichaelsoll

  First Edition: November, 2014

  Cover art by Anthony Jenny

  To Jonathan and Samuel

  PROLOGUE

  The golden nugget shimmers in the dim light, a shining echo of bloodlust and triumph. It lay helplessly, entombed within stubborn soil, held hostage by indifference.

  Beside the invaluable nugget, rusted iron strikes rock, shattering the prison and unleashing the beauty onto the dirt surface below. The nugget rolls down the uneven path and collides with a foot so filthy it’s difficult to tell where the dirt ends and flesh begins.

  The boy ignores the gold; he’s looking for something else. Something more valuable to his village. Something more important than precious material forged billions of years ago deep within exploding stars.

  No. The boy is looking for something that will help sustain the lives of the seventy-three people he calls his family. The boy is looking for the most essential natural resource to modern society.

  The boy is looking for clay.

  SECTION ONE

  Scorched:

  “This is the way the world ends

  Not with a bang, but a whimper.”

  -- T.S. Elliot

  CHAPTER ONE

  a Middle:

  I only know what they tell me.

  In 2031, hundreds of “years” before I was ever born, a massive solar flare released by our sun struck the Earth and incinerated the atmosphere. Every living creature on the surface was scorched and only the few who were lucky enough to be underground at the time survived.

  Most of the survivors starved within the first six months while the rest continued to dig deeper and deeper in search of new forms of sustenance. Those savvy enough to explore the possibilities of life under Earth discovered a world of oxygen-creating anaerobic bacteria that could be grown and cultivated fairly easily. Underground streams unaffected by the scorched surface dripped through cracks and crevices and into clay pots. Some insects and fungi survived alongside the human race, and with them, we discovered a world beneath the land we once called home.

  And it is and has always been my home. It is the only life I know so I cannot compare it to any other. It is neither good nor bad, it just is.

  My life is, what I assume to be, fairly normal to what life once was before we moved below. I have one father and one mother. My father has one son, my mother has 22 sons and daughters. She is one of three current breeders sturdy enough to survive the rigorous effects of childbirth. My mother has birthed 15 children since I was conceived, so I am currently in my 16th cycle.

  Like all my peers, I live alone with my father in a cubby he hand-carved. I am told our cubby was once twice the size in our old colony, but after the earthquake of 14 cycles ago and the death of a third of our population, we were forced to rebuild alongside our former home, constructing a sturdier colony reinforced with clay.

  I am a collector. My job is to dig until I find resources that can be used back in the colony: rocks we can shape, insects and fungi for food, and most importantly, clay. With clay, we build the tanks for our anaerobic bacteria which allow us to breathe. We use the clay to help heat up invaluable waste products, purifying and using the precipitation as clean drinking water. But no doubt, none of this is new information to you.

  I don’t mind collecting, especially since my partner is my best friend, Cotta. In our colony, you can only leave the main hive with a partner in case of injury or collapse. Cotta and I share the same mother, him being born the cycle after me. His father died in the great collapse when he was just a cycle old, so he was raised by an infertile elder named, Dover. Dover is weak and brittle, as most elders are, and risks a broken bone with a wrong step.

  When I’m not collecting, I’m in the cubby with my father. Last week, we started drawing on our walls with some charcoal like the other families. My father likes to draw pictures of my mother while I like to create images of things that could never exist. I imagine insects several feet high covered in hair with sharp teeth. I imagine they can run at incredible speeds and burrow to depths unseen by Man. I imagine the world above, creating pictures based on what elders have passed down generation after generation. A sun so bright you could only gaze at it for a second before it burned your eyes. A sky so blue, like Cotta’s eyes, plastered above, just out of reach. And a nighttime, a period when the sun vanishes and billions of faraway suns twinkle.

  I sometimes wonder how I’d be different if the sun had not destroyed the surface. I wonder how living above, albeit my daily tasks would differ, but how my mind would think. Would I ever consider what life beneath the Earth would be like? Would I still dream of large insects or would I be focused on other matters? What other matters are there to focus on besides survival and the ifs? If there’s one thing I have, it’s time. And with that abundance of time, I think. I think while collecting. I think while drawing. I think while sleeping.

  I wonder about other survivors and if they wonder about me. Is there another me somewhere on the other side of the world contemplating if there’s another him?

  And then, I try to stop. Thinking doesn’t do me any good; it doesn’t do anybody any good. My father tells me he’s grateful for my imagination, for the way I’ve rearranged our cubby and helped decorate and design our home. He tells me to never stop imagining, but the more I dream, the less free I feel. The dirt all around protects us from the danger above but it also encases and insulates our dreams; it is the barrier between here and anywhere but here.

  That is why during the celebration of the next newborn’s birth, Cotta and I will leave through a hole we’ve been digging all cycle which leads back to our old colony. From there, we will journey farther than any before us, in search for a dream contained only by our imaginations instead of the walls we have constructed to isolate ourselves from the outside. As they say, the surface is the limit.

  CHAPTER TWO

  an Ordinary Day:

  I awoke to find Cotta hovering over me. “You sleep like you’re dead.” I pushed him aside and grabbed my pickax. I had built the ax myself, using clay as the handle and shaping sturdy rock for the top. I finished off the ax by tipping it with the very little iron we had.

  “Hey Spec, you wanna swap picks for today?”

  I looked over at Cotta’s dull equipment and simply gave him a look.

  “C’mon, you might like it. It’s sturdy and worn in.”

  I stood up and grabbed my clay lantern. “I told you I’d help you make a new one.”

  He stared at his ax with pride. “I love it. I just wanted to let you use it so you could enjoy it too.”

  I checked my fuel level. “I need to fill up before we leave.”

  “Why don’t you ever remember to fill it up at night?”

  I grabbed a bowl and poured some chum in for later. (In case you call it something else, chum is our staple food, a concoction of fungi and insect larvae mashed up into crunchy flakes -- it’s high in protein and easy to make)

  We left my cubby and headed down the winding path toward the Central Tank to fill
up. It’s the hub of our little colony and the place where we deposit our solid wastes. Thanks to Maggot, one of our colony’s Founding Fathers and a bio-engineer, we were able to convert our waste into usable methane gas. The gas is harnessed and used to light the Central Flame at all times. Every day, collectors can visit the tank and siphon some of the methane into their lanterns when they go on their excavation.

  As I gathered some fuel, I noticed a pair of dark brown eyes peeking out, staring at Cotta and me. I knew instantly who it was; it wasn’t the first time she had followed me.

  Her name is Kaolin, and some say she’s the future of our colony. She’s in her 14th cycle and her job is to wait. Wait until it is her time to breed. She is the only young female in the breeding zone and the colony’s longevity sits upon her ovum. And if I’m chosen by the elders, for one day, some time in the future, she and I will create a future and I will have a child to build my own cubby for. It’s one of several thoughts that float within my mind, but at the moment, her body is not ready and when it is, Cotta and I will already be long gone.

  I fill my lantern and we leave behind wandering eyes. We make way for the normal excavation site in case we’re being followed, but then we double back and reach our secret exit point. Years ago, after the quake that decimated our old colony, a new initiative was put forth to build a smaller and more durable home. After the new colony was created, the elders demolished the opening to the old as they deemed it dangerous. But after a cycle of chipping away at rock and stone, we could feel the gap only inches away.

  Cotta twirled his ax carelessly as we pushed forward. “How many grains of dirt in the world do you think there are?”

  Cotta had an affinity toward questions that could not be answered. Not the ‘ifs’ and ‘whats,’ but the ‘how manys’ and the ‘could there ever bes.’

  “I mean, I know there’s a lot and everything, but I guess it’s probably impossible to know. You think there could ever be a device made that could figure it all out?”

  We hunched through the back tunnel and came to The Great Divide, the place where one path turns into dozens. We hoisted ourselves up to Rungded Route and crawled up the narrow path. The tunnel is one of the oldest in our new colony, having been constructed after the Great Quake.

  Cotta went first since he’s smaller while I anchored behind. The tunnels created in the last several cycles are fairly sturdy (having been reinforced with clay) and collapse is fairly rare, but there is some danger in traversing through the older tunnels. Another risk is the bacteria we’ve cultivated for oxygen. In the main colony, we have constructed large tanks to grow the bacteria, flooding the cubbies and centralized tunnels with breathable air, but in the routes further from the central hive where the oxygen is thinner, the bacteria has spread within the soil. It benefits us in that we have air to breathe, but were we to have some sort of cut or abrasion and come into contact with it, it would mean certain death.

  “How many people do you think have ever existed in the entire world?” Cotta pushed himself out of Rungded Route and we hunched through the larger tunnel until we came to our excavation site. It had once been the tunnel leading from the old hive to the new, but now, only dirt and rocks were left. We pushed a couple boulders aside which we had used to disguise our entrance. We looked up at the winding path we had dug --

  “Who’s going first?” I asked, eager to be the one to finally break through.

  “You went first yesterday.”

  “Yeah, but you went last yesterday.”

  Cotta twirled his pickax. “Fingers? Best of three?”

  “Best of one.”

  Fingers is a quick game a lot of us play to decide generally mundane tasks. Each player puts out a fist and on the count of three, holds out how many fingers they want to play. The person who holds out one more finger than the other wins (1 finger counts as one more than 5). It’s considered a draw if there isn’t a one finger differential and the play continues through the next round.

  We held our hands out and I played a four while Cotta played a three. “You play a three every time.”

  “I know, but I was hoping to trick you into thinking I was going to play a five to beat your four.”

  “But that would mean you would think I was playing a one, so you should’ve gone two.”

  “Oh, yeah, guess you’re right.” He smiled at me. “Guess you’re going first.”

  I gave him a questioning look and then squirmed my way through the narrow tunnel, ax and lantern tightly in my hands. I crawled for awhile until I reached the end of our path. I looked up at the rock I would soon demolish and there, a picture very recently drawn in with charcoal stared me in the face.

  It was a picture of a giant penis.

  CHAPTER THREE

  an Ordinary Night:

  The light in my lantern flickered as the methane sputtered out slowly. It was about time to get back. In the tunnels without light, you’re dead. It’s as important to our society as food, water and oxygen. One time, before the buddy system was implemented, a collector by the name of Chip was out excavating when his methane ran dry. He was on a newly built trail when it happened and he hadn’t yet grown accustomed to the routes’ nuances. He yelled for help, but deep within the tunnels, it’s impossible to know where the echo’s coming from. He was found a week later, having fallen into another tunnel and broke his neck.

  I’ve heard in past civilizations that death is mourned, but when somebody in the colony passes, we celebrate the person’s life and don’t dwell on their death. Not just because all life is to be celebrated and appreciated, but with their death comes a feast for the rest of the village. A ceremony is held for the individual, culminating in a thanksgiving meal.

  Every part of the body is used. The blood is siphoned and evenly allotted to the community. The organs and meat are cooked thoroughly on clay pots over hot coals, and the bones, skin and hair are used for tools and household items. And the heart is given to the closest relative of the deceased. It’s more of a symbolic gesture than anything else, but it’s also one of the most nutritious parts of the body.

  Luckily for us, even if our light were to go out, Cotta and I would be okay. We know these tunnels like we know our cubbies and we’d be able to make our way back safely. So, our hearts for now are our own.

  I sat beside our makeshift tunnel waiting for Cotta to finish his shift. There was nothing more I could do than just sit and stare at the grains of dirt all around…

  I never met my father’s father. He passed a couple of cycles before I was born. Each person has their own unique heritage that dates back to the beginning of the new world when Man moved below. My ancestor who once lived on the surface was named Janathon Weshington. So the story goes, passed on from parent to child, Janathon was a machine operator, a doctor who fixed cars. On the surface, cars were the main source of transportation with rounded wheels and exploding engines which would propel the machine forward at incredible speeds. When parts would fall off the cars, Janathon would find and replace them.

  On the day of the solar flare, Janathon was with his breeder and son touring a coal mine. When the surface was scorched and atmosphere incinerated, the mine sealed off and he and the survivors began the first underground colony. And the rest is history…

  I think about that story often. I think, what if Janathon had decided not to tour the mine or if they had left early or gotten there late. Such an irrelevant decision at the time has had such great consequences in my life. I would not be were it not for those series of events. I think about the moments I spend while awake, the moments I spend digging and thinking and how inconsequential certain decisions may seem at the time. Often, I consider leaving early from scavenging because I’m tired, while other times I decide to collect longer. I might find some extra larvae or bits of clay, but staying longer or leaving early doesn’t wholly affect me at that time. But what if each choice, though meaningless at the moment, is the reason a future child lives and breathes and thinks of me?
What if my thinking this right now sets off a series of events that will ultimately lead to somebody’s demise or somebody’s saving? Every choice I make, every seemingly meaningless decision now is undoubtedly a cause to an effect, cycles in the future. And then, that effect is a cause to another effect.

  “Hey, Spec.” I looked up at Cotta who had apparently been standing in front of me for some time. “We’re really close to breaking through.”

  “Yeah…maybe tomorrow?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Echo’s gonna squeeze that baby out this week. Hopefully not before we get through.”

  We collected our belongings and headed back while Cotta chattered away. “Her milk is the tastiest right after the baby comes out. We should bottle some up for our journey.”

  I ran my fingers against the side of the tunnel as we hunched through. I watched as grains of dirt dribbled down and landed quietly on the floor beneath. I had caused those specs to tumble from their place on the wall to their place on the ground. Without my decision to run my fingers, they would not be where they are. I did that. It seems so meaningless now…

  “Could there ever be a tunnel so big, we couldn’t see the top?” Cotta balanced the ax on his finger as we reached the hive. We entered the Cove and deposited our collections for the day – some rocks and clay.

  We collected our daily chum and milk and headed to the Grotto which was the biggest room besides the Central Hive. There, we socialized with our peers before the Head Elder commenced the meeting. As always, Ceramy was the first to greet us. He was the youngest of the collectors, halfway through his 6th cycle.

  “Heya Spec! Get anything good today?” The boy placed his lantern on the ground and waited for me to pull something magical out of my basket.