Hugh Howey - Half Way Home

“How’re we gonna stop?” Tarsi yelled in my ear.

There were, admittedly, a few steps in my plan I hadn’t fully mapped out.

I considered sticking my foot out against the core side of the tree, then thought about picking splinters out of my sole for the next week. Lowering the front edge of the leaf, I experimented instead with adjusting the shape of the curve, but couldn’t tell that it had any effect. Continuing to unfurl it, I let part of the edge collapse completely, digging into the thin film of water. My reward was a furious spray of rainwater spitting right up in my face. Tarsi ducked behind me for cover, squealing, but our leaf definitely slowed. I played with it some more, then felt something bump into us from behind, nearly causing me to drop the edge of the leaf.

Tarsi squealed and I heard someone grunt and cuss behind us.

“Watch out!”

I turned around and saw Karl and Leila right on our tail. Both had expressions of half fear, half exhilaration on their faces. Tarsi and Leila shouted back and forth, teasing one another.

“Stop goofing off and tell Karl to lower the front into the water,” I hollered back to Tarsi. “Have him slow down and tell the next person.”

She adjusted her grip on my waist and turned to explain it to the others. I kept the edge high and let go of the leaf with one hand to wipe the spray off my face and out of my eyes. We quickly picked up speed again, and I could hear Leila’s yelps of delight recede as Karl slowed his leaf down.

“This is fun!” Tarsi screamed, hugging my chest with affection.

I laughed and tried to gauge our height off the ground to determine what our rate of descent was. Already, in my brief glimpses through the side of the tunnel, I could tell the canopy was receding overhead. I tried to get a read on the distance to the bottom. The best I could tell, we were already a good ways down. Maybe a tenth or so. A train of vinnies whizzed past on the coreward side of the tree and Tarsi and I leaned away as their bristles brushed against us.

“I wanna do this again!” she screamed in my ear.

I thought about the grueling climb up and shook my head. Then I recalled how nice the ride had been on the vinnie once I got over my objections and fears. I started to think that we could get up and down from the canopy without much difficulty—then I remembered the earthquake and the stampede. That returned me to my original doubts and I promised myself I would never leave the ground again if I could just get back there safely.

What took almost a full day going up ended up taking less than two hours on the leaf. I watched the ground outside draw closer and lowered the forward edge, kicking up more spray and slowing us down. Tarsi groaned in my ear with disappointment.

Just before the end of the chute, we reached the edge of a large pool of water where the diverted rain had built up in the tunnel’s dead-end.

We jumped off our leaf and leapt out of the nearest hole, splashing down on the soaked moss. Karl and Mindy slid to a stop right as we got out of the way, laughing and wiping the spray off their faces. We helped them over the lip and stepped out into the dimly lit clearing. Two more riders arrived going much too fast; they slammed into the pool of water and sent spray out several gaps in the bark. Samson and Leila fell out the bottom of the tunnel, over a lip of cascading water, gasping for air and giggling uncontrollably.

Moving out into the rain, I opened the flap on my little tarp sack and peeked inside to make sure its contents had remained dry. Tarsi wrung water out of the bottom of her shirt, her hair plastered across her forehead.

I looked off in the direction of the mountains, but I couldn’t see the mine from our lower elevation. What I could see was that we were in for a miserable camp, or a grueling, wet hike.

“What’re we gonna do now?” I asked Tarsi.

She shrugged, then looked back toward the tree. “What’s taking the others so long?” she asked.

“Sould we build a shelter?” Karl took a leaf from Leila, who went back to the tunnel to fish out another. “Or should we try and get a fire going?”

“At least we’re good on water,” Mindy said, indicating the miniature waterfalls spilling out of the last few gaps in the bark. The moss all around the base of the tree had turned into a small pond as it gathered the overflow of water.

“Uh, about the water,” Samson said. “I wouldn’t drink it.”

“Why not?” Leila asked, laying another leaf on the pile.

“It’s, uh, not clean,” he said quietly.

“What did you do?” Tarsi asked.

“I think I peed my pants a little…”

“You what?”

“When we passed that first vinnie,” he mumbled, trying to defend himself. “Anyway, it wasn’t much.”

“That’s so gross.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was sitting right behind you,” Leila complained.

“I said I was sorry.”

Tarsi and I bent down to work with the leaves as we laughed at the exchange.

“Good thing we filled our water up top,” she said to me. We each grabbed the sides of a leaf and tried to shape it into an upside down ‘v’, giving us a dry spot to stash our things. Unfortunately, the edges of the leaf were too flimsy and wet to stay put.

“I’ve got an idea,” Tarsi said, running over and grabbing Karl’s machete. She came back and sawed through the thick stem that ran the length of the leaf, breaking it but leaving the waxy surface intact. She bent the leaf right at the cut, sticking the end of the stem into the moss on one side and burying the tip of the leaf on the other. The stiffness of the stem kept both sides up, forming a tent of sorts, almost big enough for someone to ball themselves up under.

“Not bad,” I told her, admiring the simplicity of it.

“It’s better than not bad,” she said, her hands on her hips, rain dripping off loose clumps of hair. I laughed and hugged her, enjoying the feeling of both of us being soaked and not really caring.

“Where are the others?” Leila asked.

“Good question,” Karl said. He drifted toward the tree as if somehow getting closer to the conundrum would help solve it. “Jorge and Vincent were right behind us,” he said. “And Kelvin was supposed to bring up the rear.”

Hearing the worry in Karl’s voice and thinking about Kelvin induced a slight sense of panic in me. I left our makeshift tent and hurried to the tree, entering the fourth opening from the bottom. The lip there was low enough that I could lean into the tunnel, but not so low that the pool of water could reach up to it and leak out over the side. I stuck my head in and peered up the tunnel, which was dappled with light from the regularly spaced openings. Still, it was impossible to see beyond the first fifty feet or so.

I thought I could hear something. Over the patter of rain and the sound of water sliding against itself, a hissing noise seemed to echo throughout the tube—a sound like wet breath being forced between tongue and teeth. Someone was sliding our way.

“Here they come!” I yelled back to the others. Just as I turned around, something arrived in a flash and going at full speed. I barely saw the form before it whizzed by amid a mist of spray, and splashed into the pool beyond. I did see enough to know there weren’t people on the leaf—the shape was much too big for that.

“What the hell?” Karl asked, looking into one of the gaps lower down than mine. I left my spot and joined him.

Floating in the pool of water and spanning all of the last two gaps was one of the smaller vinnies. Dead. The front edge of a leaf had been bent back over its head and tied there by a length of rope.