The Treemakers (A YA Dystopian Scifi Romance Adventure) Read online

  “Farther down,” I finally repeat with a sigh.

  Jax holds the light above my face. “You aren’t scared, are you?” He wraps an arm gingerly around my waist to bring me closer.

  “Of course not.” I stare, unwavering, into his green eyes.

  “Joy Montgomery . . .” He kisses me without warning, his lips lingering on mine before he backs away. “Your bluffs don’t work on me.”

  My body numbs, warms. “You . . . kissed me.”

  “Did you like it?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “We can do it again if you—”

  “No, it’s okay. . . .”

  “Ouch.” He lays a hand dramatically over his heart, then tugs his breather into place over his mouth and nose.

  I pull mine on, too, tighten the strap, and activate the air lock. “Let’s just . . . get to the warehouse.”

  §

  After a long walk in awkward silence, winding through dark and littered corridors, we reach the busted warehouse door of Bunker A. Perched on a sewage pipe, a red-eyed rat twitches its whiskers at us, and I freeze. Jax holds out his hand for the spear, and I give it to him slowly as we stand in silence, holding our breath. I pray for the rat to scurry off and, after another few seconds of it sizing us up, to my relief, it does.

  “It’s been a while since we came across a jumper, huh?” Jax whispers.

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why?”

  “Every time you do, seconds later, a frothy-mouthed, bloodthirsty killer dives at us from the ceiling.” My eyes travel up to the iron support beams where jumpers like to hide. I let out a long breath as we climb over a fallen door to push aside the tilted one leading into the warehouse. Ransacked crates—torn through by the Superiors, maybe; or by the last of the living—lie spread open, covered in years of dust.

  “Is it me,” I say, “or are there fewer of those things every time we come down here?”

  “Rats? Oh, I dunno. But, seriously . . . you didn’t like the kiss?”

  “I didn’t say that, but . . .” I stop in my tracks, searching for a good explanation. “You’re my best friend,” I say. “Like a brother, even. . . .”

  “Oh, come on. You can’t honestly tell me you’ve never thought about kissing me.”

  “I didn’t say that, either.” We lock stares for a few seconds, and a slight grin slips through.

  Jax puts his arms around me. “I knew you did.”

  “Jax, no”—I push away—“it’s not right. Like, bad timing, maybe? Toby—”

  He puts a finger to my breather, over where my lips are. “You’re breaking rule number two.”

  Right. Rule number two: Leave all of the bad stuff upstairs. This is our time together to be free, and that means free from all of the darkness in our minds.

  “Sorry,” I whisper.

  Shuffling from somewhere in a dark corner snaps both of our heads in that direction. Jax waves the light stick, illuminating the shelves and crates scattered here and there. Too many places for them to hide. I glance up, and right as I do, I lock eyes with a gigantic rat—fat and white, barely able to fit on the support beam. It hisses, displaying four blood-stained, razor-sharp teeth. Jax grips the spear in the ready position—slightly under and behind the beast. If it knows he’s there, it doesn’t let on. It seems to have dinner plans for me.

  I ease back and step on something both squishy and crackly. I glance down, and scream at the bloody, half-eaten carcass of a smaller rat lying there, freshly enjoyed. When I turn back, the jumper lunges. I scream again, and Jax impales the creature straight through its middle. It screeches and thuds to the floor with a clank from the spear. Another twitch, and its eyes close, its body goes limp.

  “Dinner?” Jax jokes.

  “Not funny.”

  “I know, I know. Sorry.” He yanks the spear free from the jumper’s belly, using his foot to hold its body to the ground. My stomach threatens to turn inside out, as well.

  I shiver. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Visions of being gnawed to the bone while still alive has been the source of many-a-nightmare.

  “Here.” He hands me the spear. “I need to grab some supplies. Cover me.”

  We make our way to the side room door Jax busted the lock on when we first started coming down here. To our amazement and delight, it’s filled with supplies: clothes, blankets, tools, light sticks, books, and some things we have no name for. But unfortunately, no food or medicine. Those, we still have to rely on the Superiors for. Unless, of course, we find it while scouring the living quarters five floors below, where our families once lived. But we’ve already torn that apart.

  Jax starts stuffing his backpack: a handful of light sticks, a couple blankets for the new boys to share, and some clothes I’ll have to hem to make them fit anyone. Most of the clothing we find are adult sizes. Jax whistles and holds up a slinky black thing that couldn’t possibly be an article of clothing.

  “What exactly is that?”

  “Oh, come on. You’re the girl. It’s obviously a dress.” He tosses it to me. “And it would look great on you.”

  “Oh, no.” I hold it at arm’s length. “Not on your life.”

  “Just take it. Here, I’ll put it in the bag. Maybe you’ll change your mind about it.”

  “No”—I toss it back to him—“I won’t.”

  He shrugs, but tucks it into his bag anyway, then digs through a crate full of books. “You ready to try this one yet?” He holds up a book written by somebody named Stephen King. The cover alone would steal the children’s sleep for weeks.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so. Probably way too advanced for me, anyway.”

  He tosses it back in the box and holds up a larger book with bent corners and animal pictures on the cover. One of their favorites.

  “That’s better.”

  He takes out two books from his backpack and returns them to the box, replacing them with the animal book, then tightens the drawstring and flings the bag over his shoulder. “Let’s go down to B to check out the freight elevator first. Then we’ll head back over here to A and check sub-level six for liquor. Hopefully, we’ll find some this time. Hey—maybe we’ll find more loose floor tiles. Remember when we found the Blue Notes someone hid?” He cracks a light stick, shaking it until the whitish-blue glow brings more life to the room.

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  Last time, we had to make a concoction for Humphrey from the bottles of liquids we found around the living quarters. Who knew what they were, or how long they’d been fermenting. Could have been medicines. Or rat poison. We’re guessing the latter now, though at the time, we figured they’d be something good because they had long names I couldn’t read. We mixed them together, hoped it wouldn’t explode, then gave the brew to Humphrey, praying it would do the trick. And it did . . . too well. Humphrey couldn’t work for two days.

  We head from the smaller room into a bigger one, kicking aside dusty debris as we walk. Rats must rearrange things when they scurry around down here; every time we come, things have moved. Unless the Superiors raid the bunkers. We’re positive they wouldn’t bother, though. The aboveground bunkers, maybe. But there’s nothing down here they’d want—that we know of, anyway. We hurry through the short tunnel connecting Bunker A to Bunker B, arriving at the door we busted the lock on a year ago, then we begin our decent into the stuffy, dusty stairwell.

  “Evenin’.” Jax greets the blackened corpse of Old Jonesy, slumped against the wall, still clothed in overalls and working boots.

  “Hey, Jonesy,” I mumble, stepping over him. “You need new boots yet?” I ask Jax.

  “No, I think I’ll let him hang onto those a while longer.”

  We wind around the dark corridors of Bunker B, sub-level six, where I took my mother to the clinic to get her “medications,” which were no more than shriveled roots and stale herbs that only gave her headaches. Seconds later, we stand in front of the freight elevator, our l
ight sticks reflecting in its semi-glossy surface.

  Jax knocks on the door. “Hello?” he yells, and jabs the down-arrow button a jillion times. “Anybody home?”

  I glare at him.

  “What? You never know. . . .”

  “How’s it supposed to work without electricity, Jax?”

  He shrugs. “Magic?”

  “Yeah. Not gonna happen. Not in this place.”

  We stand for another few seconds, before he heads left. “Come on. We haven’t checked a couple of corridors down here.”

  “Okay, but you know we’ll find what we always find—nothing.”

  “Aren’t you usually the optimistic one?”

  “I have my moments,” I say. “I’m allowed.”

  “That’s significantly bordering on breaking rule number four.”

  “Sorry. I’ll be more careful.”

  As we start down the corridor, an unfamiliar sound behind us makes my heart jump in my chest—a ding, and a squeaky whistle. We whip around, Jax aiming the spear toward the noise, and I’m frozen, heart pounding.

  A dim light flickers over a breathtaking and impossible anomaly: the elevator door is open.

  FIVE

  We jump back, and Jax drops the spear, which clatters to the ground, sound ricocheting off the long corridor walls.

  “Whoa, what the—?” He hurries to retrieve the weapon, while my heart beats against the inside of my chest. A whoosh of citrus-scented air swirls around us.

  “Jax, how . . . how did it open?”

  “You got me.” He breathes in and out heavily, and we stare at the rectangular yellow light that soon goes dark. The door begins to close. In a flash, Jax jumps in front of it, and the light turns on again. The door pushes back into its crevice. “Come on.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “You scared?” He winks, and offers me his hand.

  I hesitate before placing mine in his. “Terrified.”

  Jax tugs me onto the elevator and into his arms, wrapping me up tight. “I’ve got you. Don’t be scared.”

  Then, the door closes.

  “Enter destination,” an electronic female voice says through a tiny speaker, scaring the piss out of me.

  Jax points to the four rows of buttons along the wall, all with numbers beside them. “Nineteen more floors down.” His excitement meets mine, but it also meets the fear of not knowing what to expect.

  “Where do we go?” I say, voice shaking. “And why does it smell like citrus?”

  “All the way down. And I have no clue.”

  Slowly, he moves his finger to the last button, and I slap it away. “What if we get stuck down there, Jax, then what?”

  “What if we find the way out?”

  After a silent, heated stand-off, Jax, pausing to take a breath, presses the last button. It lights up.

  “Sub-level floor twenty-five,” the voice says.

  The elevator shimmies and begins to descend—quickly. My ears fill with pressure, and my stomach flutters. “Are we supposed to be going this fast?”

  “Guess we’ll find out in a few seconds.” He holds me tighter, and my ears pop. Sounds change from muffled to screeching.

  “Again with the not-funny. . . .”

  I watch each button light up, then grow dark as the elevator moves farther and farther beneath the Tree Factory. Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. . . . I hold my breath the way I do before we open the factory’s main room door to go sub-level. Except this time—like the very first time in the factory—I have no idea what to expect. Could be anything down here.

  Immediately, my overactive imagination starts replaying every monster story I ever heard when I was younger, until the number twenty-three lights up . . . and stays lit. The elevator slows to a stop, and the number twenty-five goes dark.

  “What the—?” Jax punches the button.

  The door opens like the birth of a demon—chilling and unnerving—and makes us retreat against the back wall. Smells waft in like a titanzium brick—years of rot and filth, left to multiply in the dark, mixed with citrus. Charming combination. Right outside the elevator, a dusty yellow bulb flickers, draped with a delicate cobweb that sways gently. The dim light beckons us out. My voice of reason says otherwise, but intrigue wins out when I notice the sporadic green lights along the ceiling—Bygonne’s universal symbol for clean air.

  “Um, Jax?”

  “I have speculations.”

  “Are they any good?”

  “Nope.”

  He walks us forward, still gripping me snugly around my middle, but I push against him, planting my feet at the threshold. “Uh-uh.”

  “Come on,” he says, “this is awesome. Most excitement we’ve had in like, what—ever?”

  I give in, and he guides me out. As soon as we clear the threshold, the door closes with another ding. An oxygauge on the wall next to us is covered with an inch of dust. Jax blows it clean, and we lean in to inspect it. The dial ticks steadily and hovers at safer levels than the Tree Factory has ever had.

  “How is that even possible?” I mumble.

  “I don’t know,” Jax says, “but . . .” He whips the breather off, takes a deep breath. “It’s not lying.” Then, he makes a face. “Other than that nasty citrus-and-death smell that’s much stronger now, the air’s good.”

  I strap my breather to my own head and inhale deeply the impossibility of such fresh, though stinky, air in the most unlikely of places. Ahead, the corridor stretches out bare, with only a couple of metal doors, but nothing else. Not turned upside down, like the upper bunker floors we’ve been raiding for the last year. The corridor’s so long, farther down, the lines, shapes, and lights blend together into a blurry mystery.

  “Apparently, no one’s cleared out this floor,” Jax says.

  To our right is another corridor, completely dark.

  “Any idea why this corridor is lit, but that one isn’t?” I ask.

  “I have—”

  “Speculations. Right.”

  We interlace our fingers, and start down the hallway. The minute squeak in Jax’s left boot pierces the silence with every step. He grips the spear in a spring-loaded fist. Lights surge brighter for a second before snapping off into utter darkness for one terrifying moment, then return to their still brightness.

  “Okay,” I say, “we should go.”

  “Wow, for a tough girl who’s not afraid of anything, you’re sure being a softy.”

  “I never said I wasn’t scared of anything. You’re putting words in my mouth.”

  “Oh yeah?” He stops us in front of a closed door, considering this. “Okay,” he says, “jumpers. But other than those, name one thing.”

  “Well, what’s behind that door, for starters. The rot smell has to be coming from something.”

  “Yeah. . . .” He winks and presses the dark, square button beside the door. “Time to find out what.”

  Nothing happens. A jostle of the handle doesn’t do it, either.

  We move farther down the hall, past two more locked doors with dark buttons, then stop.

  “Well,” says Jax. “That sucks.”

  I tap his arm and point down the corridor—“What’s that?”—toward a tiny green light set lower on the wall than the oxygen lights.

  “Let’s check it out.”

  We continue on cautiously, and the walls ahead start to change from plain, gray stone to magnificent colors. My heart thumps as we come closer.

  “Wow. . . .” we both whisper at the most brilliant paintings either of us have ever laid eyes on. Women, twirling in elegant dresses; hundreds of butterflies of all shapes and sizes; children laughing and frolicking in green, rolling pastures; valleys kissing a floral-laden mountainside. As we stroll down in small steps to soak in every last bit, the scenery shifts. From sunny and jubilant, to a delightful murky gloom, with purples and blues and a black sky dotted with gray stars. What appears to be one of our trees is surrounded by a horrific, nightmarish land with jagged
lightning shattering an angry sky. . . .

  Black paint glistens in the light of a flickering bulb. I touch the wall with my finger, and a lump forms in my throat. Panic spreads on Jax’s face.

  “It’s still wet,” I whisper. “How—?”

  “Someone’s down here.” Jax grips the spear tight. To our left, a door similar to the rest stands next to a button that glows green. Farther on, lights in the corridor end.

  “Is it just me,” I say, “or does it seem like we were led to this door?”

  “It’s not just you.” And before I object, he presses the green button. The door slides open. An overpowering citrus smell rushes out with a light fog or smoke that obscures the area.

  Jax chuckles nervously. “It keeps getting weirder and weirder. . . . The fog’s a nice touch!” he yells into the room.

  I glare at him.

  “What? I mean, obviously someone led us here, right? Come on out!” he yells in again. The fog soon clears, and inside, tiny blue and green lights sparkle in the darkness, lining the walls and the ceiling. I take a step toward the door, but Jax grabs my arm to stop me.

  “What?” I say. “Now you’re scared?”

  He shrugs, then holds his hand out in an “after you” motion.

  I step into the room, and as soon as we both clear the doorway, the door slides closed. Seconds later, a hissing echoes around us as more citrus smoke fills the room. The lights brighten—I shield my eyes—until a thin horizontal line of light fans the length of our bodies, and back up again.