Hugh Howey - Half Way Home

Of all the brutal days endured thus far on our strange planet—the cleanup following our birth, the eighteen-hour work shifts for the rocket project, the restless nights of exhaustion—none was ever so long as that day of waiting for the boys to return. And waiting. And doing nothing.

Several times, we lamented the fact that a scouting party, just two or three of us, could have gone to the breach in the fence and returned already, determining the reason for the horn sounding. After lunch—during which there was another round of distant target practice—the concern was raised that the boys wouldn’t be back before nightfall. By dinner, it was all we spoke of. As it grew dark, we stretched out by the fire, lying across the sumptuous moss, resting on one another, and sleeping as poorly as we had the night before, but for different reasons.

Tarsi and I lay with our heads together—hers on my arm—as we tried to convince one another Kelvin was okay. Most of the night was like that, whispers and fidgeting and people sneaking off to pee. Even the faint glimmer of stars through the new clearing in the distance did nothing to soothe my mind. Once again, I feared I would never sleep only to wake up to another missed dawn.

Gruff voices and laughter wormed their way into my dreams. I snapped up, waking Tarsi, who had fallen asleep on my stomach. We both turned to the sounds. Some small part of me feared it was a group from base coming to force us home, but the voices seemed to be leaking out of the tree.

Leaning forward, I smoothed Tarsi’s hair, kissed her forehead, and told her I’d be right back. I ran for the tree. Several of the girls stirred as I left the group, the voices from the tree becoming clearer. I jumped into the sloping tunnel and hurried up, my feet gripping the rough, exposed wood—the soreness in my hamstring forgotten.

Because of the slope of the tunnel and the wide tree’s nearly nonexistent curvature, I saw their feet and generic pants first, so I couldn’t tell each owner’s identity. I thought I heard Kelvin’s voice in the crowd and tried my best to tease his tenor out from the rest as I hurried along.

I came to Vincent first. When he saw me running to greet them, he smiled and shook his head from side to side as if to chastise me for all the fun I’d missed. I squeezed past him, patted him on the back warmly, and came next to Kelvin, who beamed at seeing me.

“What took so long?” I asked. I turned and walked down alongside him, the round tunnel plenty wide enough as long as we each walked up the curving floor a little.

“We got so close to the top on that first day,” Kelvin said. “In the morning we decided to keep heading up instead of going down. Wait ’til you see what we found.”

“Mica and Peter?”

“Not exactly,” he said, reaching over and squeezing my shoulder. “They definitely came this way, though.”

“So what is it?” I asked.

“The critters that made this.” He slapped the tunnel with his hand.

We heard screaming ahead of us as the girls encountered Vincent. Kelvin and I hurried forward, jumping out when the gap in the spiral became low enough off the ground. Tarsi leaped up and hugged Kelvin’s neck, her feet swinging away from him as he spun her around. As soon as he let her go, she slapped him on the arm for worrying us, and Kelvin laughed out of habit.

“We need to get a fire going,” he said.

I noticed—now that we were out of the tunnel and in the wan light of dawn—that his face had turned bright pink, especially his nose. Behind him, Samson jumped down from the tree, and hugs were exchanged in every permutation possible.

I set to work on the fire, building a nice vertical pyramid of fruit husk and shaved wood. While I flicked the back of the machete against the magnesium block, I listened to snippets of three different conversations at once, each boy trying to answer a half-dozen simultaneous queries.

I heard the word “excruciating” more than once when asked about the hike up. “Glorious” regarding what they’d found. And they wouldn’t stop teasing the big surprise that was coming—and why it was taking Jorge and Karl a bit longer.

Once the fire was sparked, I leaned down and blew on it to catch the husk, then closed my little pyramid by leaning a few thin strips of bark across the opening. Tarsi had already made a trip to the base of the tunnel to bring me the firewood we’d stored there in case of rain. I sorted through the pieces and leaned a few smaller ones around the growing flames. I wasn’t sure what Kelvin wanted with the fire, seeing that the morning was quite warm already, but they were the ones that had just scaled to the treetops, so the least I could do was chop some more wood.

I cut a few fat logs out of the tree by hacking the top of one outcrop’s corner, then the bottom, before finally prying out the loosened piece with the edge of the blade. Kelvin pulled himself away from the chatter around the fire and came over; Tarsi followed along.

“You need help?” he asked.

“Are you kidding? After what you just went through?” I took another swing with the machete, concentrating on doing it well now that I had an audience.

“Coming down was easy,” he said. “We were joking around the entire time, pausing to take in the view.”

“What was it like?”

“The other night was miserable, with the rain and all. But yesterday was unreal. The clouds blew off and the entire sky was as blue as the hole we made in the canopy. Only, it was as far as you could see. Just bright blue all around. And you can move around up there, the canopy is so tight on top. And—well, I want you both to see it for yourself.”

I laughed and shook my head before taking another swipe at the base of the tree. “I’ll take your word for it. I don’t think I’d enjoy the hike or the height.”

Kelvin stepped up and helped me pry loose a hunk of wood the size of my arm. “Nonsense,” he said. “The hike isn’t that bad.”

“You used the word excruciating.”

“That was because I didn’t know it would be worth it at the time. Damn, Porter, just say you’ll go.”

“Maybe after the harvest,” I said, kicking a few splinters on the ground out of my way and readying the machete for another hack.

“The harvest ? We have a long way to go before we even clear some land and plant some seeds.”

“Exactly.” I took a swipe at the tree, the blade singing with a poor blow. “What were you saying about Mica and Peter?”

“We found another carving at the top, so they were definitely there. It pointed across the canopy, away from base, but we could see in all directions without any sign of them.”

“How far did the canopy spread?” Tarsi asked.

“There’s a ridge of mountains west of here. Steep and snow-capped. Our heavy rains must be caused by them.”

I set the machete down and tried to recall what Kelvin had taught us about rain clouds—but I couldn’t remember. While prying another hunk of wood loose, I saw Samson casually drop two more small logs on the fire and realized I was falling behind.

“West is away from base,” I said, thinking out loud. “That’s where the arrow was pointing?”

“Yeah, why? Wait—are you thinking that’s where Mica and Peter were going? Why would they head to the mountains?”

I shrugged. “Why would they climb the tree?”

A surge of noise erupted from the girls, a cacophony of squeals, shrieks, and outright screams. I turned, expecting to find at least three of them on fire, and nearly fell over at the sight of the creature coming out of the tree next to me.

It looked like a furry snake, but was bigger than a man lying on his belly. Three times as big and four times as long. Its body was covered in bristles that waved along its length, seeming to propel it forward. I reached for the machete and backed away, my heart thudding in my chest. Kelvin laughed at me and took a step forward; he grabbed a loop of rope tied around the creature’s forward end.