Griffin and Beet didn’t find us. I spent the entire week watching the rocky hills and the dusty horizon, hoping to see a six-legged machine appear, but nothing. I guess it makes sense. They don’t know where we came to shore. They have no tracks to follow. It might take them a while. And now we’re going deeper into the mountains, on a steep road surrounded by gray canyons.
“We’ll get there before nightfall,” announces Jude.
His face is still a map of colors. From purple to yellow, his bruises are only halfway healed. I’m not much better. One of my teeth was loose for a few days, and I feared losing it.
“How come you know so much about Bunkertown?” I ask.
He sighs. “I’ve been here before. I escaped. They caught me again a few months later. And here I am.”
Jude seems to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And yet, he manages to get out of any situation. He leads an eventful life, even by my standards.
“Have you met their leader?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I took off before the auction. I’ve only come as far as the gate. But I’ve met a few survivors scattered in the mountains. I’m not the only one who escaped. The place where we’re going used to be a massive bunker built for the members of the government.”
“That’s why it has such a stupid name,” I muse.
“Yeah. But you’ll see. They never reached the bunker. And it stayed intact for twenty years before it was discovered. Everything inside was mostly intact. And they have been digging deeper, building new galleries and tunnels to create their underground city.”
I would be impressed if I didn’t hate being underground so much. I hate places with nowhere to run. Places that could just fall over my head at any moment.
There is a reason why the idea of living underground never stuck after the Rise. First, most gods tend to shake the ground where they walk, which is not ideal when you’re under. Second, most of those gods slept underground for millennia. They can dig their way through almost anything. Some even spend ninety percent of their time down there. There was a god who slept in a glacier since the last ice age. He broke out of three miles of black ice.
I shiver. At least when they’re flying in the sky, you can see them coming.
Five hours later, I notice the first abandoned vehicles on the plateau. Cars, tanks, trucks… Most are hidden under overgrown flora. They have been here for a while.
“Those were from the government convoy,” Jude says, pointing at the wrecks.
“What happened here?” I ask.
“The usual. A god got to them before they could reach the bunker.”
One of the tanks is upside-down. Another seems to have been cut in half.
“Is there a god living in those mountains?”
“Not anymore,” Jude says. “Or at least we haven’t seen them for a while.”
“Do you know who did it?” I gesture at the broken vehicles.
He shrugs. “One that came from the sky, judging by the terrain. I hope I never find out.”
I look at the abandoned convoy and at the damage done to the cars and tanks. Some exploded during the attack and burned to a crisp. Or they might have overdone the firepower defending themselves.
There are almost three hundred gods identified and classified, and I know all of them. When I was younger, I was fascinated. I kept all the books and pamphlets I could find and read them at night before falling asleep. My mother used to call it mystrange obsession with death. But my knowledge has been useful more than once over the years. As they say,know your enemy…
I dig through my memory to find out which god could have come this way and destroyed the convoy. Too many of them fit the job.
I hope it’s not a repeat of our adventure with Scylla and that a monster is waiting in the shadows to attack.
The caravans climb for another hour before reaching the entrance to the bunker. It’s an armored gate hidden in the darkness of a natural cave. You need to get closer to see it. Back in the old days, they must have built it with human enemies in mind.
The gate opens, and the caravans are ushered into a large interior room. It looks like this is where the auction will happen. There are cages along the walls and a kind of stage. I watch with dread as the massive gate closes behind us. Will Griffin and Beet be able to rescue us inside the bunker? Or will they give up when they realize it’s too risky? From what I know of them, after a few weeks, they never balk at risk. Nonetheless, I’m not happy to be here.
“The last time I was here, they left the gate open for a while,” whispers Jude. “That’s how I escaped.”
“It looks like they’ve learned from their mistakes,” I say.
