The City - The Underdead-Part3

It’s a joint effort between the two of us to make it down this steep embankment, with the bandage on Jack’s leg already soaked with blood, should have pulled it tighter, and my lack of knowledge concerning the paths leading down the gorge.  Trash, shards of metal, discarded equipment, and sludge from heavens knows what, blocks our path left and right.  Jack is saying nothing, just quietly pointing to one direction or the other as we traverse the pits, and I guess I should keep the silence as well, so I do.

These were good shoes.  Now covered with something black and sticky, my jogging shoes are picking up papers and tissues everywhere I step, and who knows who blew their nose or wiped their rear ends with them before I came along.  And Jack lives this way?  I’ll have to ask him how he manages, but I get the feeling that noise would call in trouble, so I’ll just zip my lip.  Besides, my words probably won’t come out right, with my nerves on edge.  

I can’t stop looking around, thinking that at any moment we would be seen and captured, or even killed.  Jack himself seems tense, which is strange and somehow unreal, since he was always a tough and aggressive kid with nerves of steel.  I guess living as an Underdead changes you, forces you to be more wary.  I’ll have to get used to that.

The weight from my friend’s need for support is heavy on my shoulders, but with the way my attention is strictly set on navigating and observing our surroundings, I barely notice until my breathing starts to shorten.  Jogging, lifting weights, bicycling, and the insane number of crunches I have done in my lifetime doesn’t seem to help as much as I would expect.  It must be the anxiety.

I have never been in the gorge, let alone down this far, and the sight from the bridge hasn’t prepared me in the least for the view I now encounter.  We’d been following a runoff stream the whole time, with only the junk and the trash-strewn banks at our sides, while above now and then you can see a house from the town, or just simply walls.  I guess the walls are there to not only keep the Underdead in the gorge, but keep the townsfolk from discovering what lives so close to them.  I’d seen the walls before from the town’s side, but the signs tell of either government grounds or toxic waste.  Now I know the truth, or will soon.

It’s all quite shocking, to be honest, but when we come to the edge of a concrete precipice which seems to be made to hold the earth back from what lies below, that’s when the truth is revealed in its fullest.  What strikes me as unbelievable first, I guess, is that I had never even heard rumors about...this.  It’s something you read in books (the ones hidden in the attic), not something just around the corner, just beyond the walls, vast walls you are forbidden to climb or even question.  Unless you want the Officials breathing down your necks.  Nobody wants that, not even the town snobs.

“It looks like a city...”

I can’t help but say something, and if he glares at me for making noise, so be it, but one can’t hold their tongue for so long when they’ve just seen something they had never before seen.  The roads are barely recognizable with several buildings turned to rubble, but one can tell how well developed the city must have been.  I can even see the remains of skyscrapers which seem to have been either bombed at one time or fell of their own accord due to lack of repair.  All this seemed far below us.  Call it a city in a concrete crater.

Jack doesn’t seem angry at me for speaking.  In fact he seems more at ease now that we’ve left behind the majority of the town, but he still says nothing until we start down what seems to be a long descending stairway built into the wall.  There’s barely anything left of the steel railing, which doesn’t at all help my fear of heights.

“Yes, it was a city, once.  It was a pretty prosperous society, but leadership changed and outrageous laws started to be enforced.  Freedom didn’t really exist anymore, and when they started to practice with Reprogramming, there was a revolt in the heart of the city.  The government destroyed their own city to wipe out as many rebels as possible, in the meantime subjecting the remainder to Reprogramming, building a new development above the Ruined City.”

Despite being terrified by how far the bottom of our descent seems from where we are, my curiosity kicks in and I start the questions.

“I thought the Underdead lived beneath the town.  Have they always lived in the Ruined City?  How were there so many Underdead if the city was destroyed and everyone was Reprogrammed?  And how in the world do you know all this?”

“One question at a time, Lila, you’re going to run out of breath.”

His laugh has never failed to ease my anxiety, and doesn’t fail this time either.  I stop looking down and start averting my gaze from the ground below to his careless grin.  If anyone can help me overcome my fears, it’d be him.  I remember when he dared me to climb to the roof of his house to get used to heights.  I guess when I stopped practicing that four years ago, my acrophobia crept back in, but now I just need to focus on getting down these stairs.  His hand is still on my shoulder, but he doesn’t seem to need as much support, and one glance to his leg tells me the bleeding has finally stopped.  Perhaps his hand is there to offer me support...

“To answer your first question, Lila, Most of the Underdead used to live under the town, but it’s become dangerous, so we’ve all moved into the Ruined City.  That itself is risky.  Bounty Hunters and the chances of the remaining buildings collapsing is what we most often face.”

Before answering my other questions, he stops to look down below, then up to the top of the walls while his forehead creases with concentration.  Perhaps he’s making sure we’re not being followed.  I too have the feeling that we’re being watched, but again, that could be my nervous nature putting ideas in my head.  Jack seems to shrug off the idea easily, though, so we continue.

“Some members of the Revolt escaped and acted as the new Reprogrammed, one of them being my Grandfather.  Dad was Reprogrammed against his will, but he and Granddad let me know about the Ruined City before the Officials found them out.  I’m still searching for an Uncle of mine, who is said to be a leader of a pretty strong rebel group, but they’re hard to find.  That could be a good thing, though.”

“Do you happen to know if my Dad’s father was into any of the rebellion?”

A nod was all I needed, but hey, his hint of a grin is a plus.

“Very much into it, I’d say.  Seems your Grandpop put in a lot of effort to take the guise of a government Official and free several of the rebels who were captured, while in the meantime he seemed to have discovered something rather important that some of the Underdead believe would help them overthrow the government.  He never really told them what it was.  Some doubt he knew anything and was just trying to encourage them to keep the Resistance alive.  After making the rounds in various groups, I’ve come to believe that he did find something.  Maybe you can even help us out with that.”

Alright, now I’m excited.  I always knew something was strangely different about my Grandpop, and giving me the camera, photos, and video chips to hide in my attic meant more than just “going against the government rules to save family treasures” as he’d explained.  Something important must be in those chips...  I’d relay this to Jack, but we’ve reached the end of the stairway, standing on the edge of a road which is in relatively decent shape and runs along the walls.  That’s when we realize that we were being watched...