Hugh Howey - Half Way Home

I put my back against one of the walls jutting out from the center and tried to place my hands against the opposite side, wondering if a taller person could shimmy their way up to the branches and leaves overhead. It would take monumental endurance.

“Give me fruuuiiiiit,” someone howled, and we all laughed at the way the vertical canyon toyed with their voice. I popped out of my indention and imagined us carving a little village right out of the trunk, all of our individual caves interconnected. We could dig up some mosses and plant our Terran seeds in the soil, see if they would grow in the filtered sunlight. The tarps we could save for gathering and storing water. I stepped back and looked up the tree, imagining how we could make it work.

Tarsi came up behind me and wrapped her arms around my stomach. I turned into her embrace and gave her a joyous squeeze. To our side, I saw Kelvin step away from the tree and glance over at us, that expression from earlier on his face. I waved him over and he grudgingly joined in our little group hug.

“I’m gonna miss our tractor,” he said.

“Even on floor night?” Tarsi asked.

“Even then.”

“I wish Oliver was here,” I told the others, breaking out of the hug and looking back in the direction of base.

“Yeah,” Kelvin said. “I wonder what he—”

“Hey! Check this out!” Vincent backed away from the tree and pointed. He had wandered fifty feet or so further down the trunk. We all ran over to see what he’d found.

“Did you carve that?” Samson asked, pointing his machete at one of the outcroppings of bark.

“With what?” Vincent said, shrugging his shoulders and lifting his empty hands.

I pushed past the people up front to see. Leila stood right next to the tree, rubbing her hands over it.

It was an arrow. Carved into the trunk.

Pointing up.

“None of you carved this?” Leila asked.

“How are we supposed to go up?” someone said.

“Why should we?” Kelvin asked. “I don’t want to be up there. If it was Mica or Peter that made this, let them come down here and join us.”

“I don’t like being on this side of the tree,” Vincent said. “If we’re really looking to survive for the long term, setting up camp next to the people we abandoned might not be the best plan.”

“I agree,” Britny said. “We should make our way around one of these guys and set up camp on the other side. Maybe move even further as we explore. For all we know, there’s open fields on the other side of this thing.”

“No way,” Jorge said. “Colony wouldn’t have cut its way through the canopy and set up here if there was open space like that nearby. I’d be surprised if there was a clearing this big anywhere else in the temperate zone. It would’ve picked the best spot. That’s like its primary job.”

“What were you trained for?” I asked Jorge.

“I’m a miner, but that doesn’t make me any less smart than you.”

“Whoa,” I said, holding up my hands. “Just curious.”

He shook his head and looked away, and I resolved to step lightly around him from then on.

“Guys, I found the way up.”

We turned and looked further down the trunk where Mindy stood, her hand on an outcropping of bark several paces away. The crowd shifted again, curiosity driving us along.

“Holy shit,” one of the guys said, looking up the trunk of the tree.

It was a spiral tunnel, rising up and off to the side, further around the base. The angle wasn’t too steep, and the carved indention ran behind the gear-like outcroppings, exposing the inclined plane to air before weaving behind the next outcropping, and so on. Kelvin stepped between two of the juts and ran his hand along the exposed core of the tree.

“Something created that,” Samson said.

“No shit.”

“I mean, like, chewed that out.”

“He’s right,” Kelvin said. He ducked his head into the cylinder of missing wood and looked up the incline. “I wonder how far it goes?”

“You’re not thinking about exploring it, are you?”

“Maybe we should,” Vincent said.

“I say forget about it,” Mindy said.

“What about the arrow?”

“Probably Mica and Peter throwing off pursuit.”

“Yeah, why would they think other people would come out and join them?” Mindy asked. “They could be trying to get Hickson killed as much as help us find them.”

“She has a good point.”

“It worms back down that way,” Kelvin said, looking through the shaft in the direction we’d come. “I think it comes out behind the arrow.”

Vincent ran down and stepped between the two outcroppings back at the carving. “It does,” he said. “I still think we should explore it.”

Tarsi turned to Mindy. “It must be biological,” she said. “The difference in us, I mean. The boys want to go up it and the girls want to circle around and set up camp.”

I didn’t say anything, wondering what it meant that I agreed with the girls on that score.

“Maybe there’s all kinds of passageways dug through the trees,” we heard Vincent say, his voice muffled. He popped his head out where Kelvin stood, having walked up through the tunnel from where the arrow was. “Maybe there’s all kinds of cool caves to live in and we could save the digging.”

“Hey, genius, whatever ate those holes are probably still around. You think they’ll let us just move in with them?”

“Maybe they taste good,” someone said, which made us all fall silent. I watched the thought settle throughout the group, lips literally being licked.

“Meat,” one of the boys said.

“You’ve never had meat in your life,” Leila pointed out.

“Yeah, but I know it’s good,” Jorge said. “It’s primal.”

“ You’re primal,” Britny said, which got more than a few of us laughing.

“I say we vote,” Kelvin said, scanning the crowd.

“No fair,” said Tarsi. “There’s six of you and only four of us.”

If she was referring to gender, she probably didn’t realize that the vote might just as easily be half and half.

“What if we do both ?” I asked, hoping to prevent my exposure as a wimp or me having to fake some machismo I didn’t feel. “Why don’t some of us set up camp, get a fire going, rig up some cover in case of rain. Meanwhile, a scouting party can go partway up the tree, look around a little, maybe find Mica and Peter if they’re up there.”

“Sounds good to me,” Vincent said. I looked up to follow his voice and saw his hand reaching out between two of the outcroppings further along.

“I don’t like the idea of splitting up,” Tarsi said, looking directly at me.

“I’ll stay here and help with camp,” I said, shrugging as if I’d just as well scale a tree but didn’t mind staying for her benefit.

She smiled. I looked to the tree and saw Kelvin glowering at us before he was able to store the emotion away again.

“You guys can take the flashlight,” I told him. “Just in case it gets dark before you get all the way back down.”

He nodded and forced a smile. I realized how badly I needed to talk to him and wondered when I would ever get the time.

Before the boys set off, we all dumped our packs and arranged our meager supplies across the moss. More than half the water went to the climbers. We kept the tarps, most of the rope, one of the machetes, and all the domestic gear. They took the small amount of medical supplies and packed several bombfruit in their sacks. We agreed they would only climb until nightfall, then descend with the flashlight, but Vincent and Kelvin argued they could set up camp within the incline, behind one of the outcroppings, and descend the next day.