It was Maude's husband, Briney, who was first to discover their plans. He came upon them fortifying one of the abandoned houses in the village.
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"Charles?" interrupted Briney. Briney had come to like all three of them very much in the preceding days, and he felt terrible for their loss. "What are you doing out here all alone? We're about to leave."
"We're staying here," said Charles, lashing some boards together with twine made from the thin bark of the trees. "For when Isabel and Samuel come back."
Briney was fairly certain that neither of the children would return, that they'd been lost in the Highlands and could not have escaped the rising water. He felt he needed to speak the truth, but he didn't want to further discourage them.
Eliza could tell Briney was struggling with what to say. "It's all right, Briney," she said. "We know Isabel and Samuel might not come back. But they're all we have, and if there's even the smallest chance, we have to stay."
"But the Cleaners ...," protested Briney, yet knowing they would never listen.
"We appreciate your concern," said Charles. "But we're staying."
Briney couldn't help embracing all three of them, wishing them well, and telling them he didn't want to leave them behind.
"When they come back," said Briney, trying with all his might to encourage them, "race as fast as you can to the Flat-lands. I'll be looking for you."
Adele, the quietest of the group, spoke up. "Go take care of Maude. She's going to need you."
"Maude is the stronger of us two," said Briney. "But you're
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right, Adele. She does need me. I don't think she can keep going if we're not together to the end."
As Briney made his way back into the swarm of people preparing to leave, he felt they were like an army readying for a march into battle. There was an electricity about their movements, not desperate but purposeful, brought on primarily by Horace's leadership. It was true there was every reason to believe the day would hold death and destruction, but Horace led them straight and true and this made all the difference.
Before leaving, they lined the children and mothers up the very middle of the grove. In the paths between the trees next to the children, rows of men and women with supplies were positioned. After that came two long lines of men between the next row of trees, each with wooden spears. Through a final row of trees on both sides rode the remaining men from the Highlands on horses, ten on each side.
At the front of the procession were Horace, Maude, and Edgar, and at the back were a cap of twenty men prepared to fight off as many Cleaners as they could. Soon the party was moving, like a long arrow of humanity, steadfast on the outside, but delicate at its center.
Edgar was the first to sense something larger than a rumble from the Highlands and from the ground beneath their feet. "Something's changed," he said, walking alongside Horace and Maude. But then the feeling went away and he shrugged, though certain he'd felt a kind of swaying that he hadn't before.
Briney came alongside the group of three and told of Charles, Eliza, and Adele's decision to stay.
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"I suppose we should have expected that," said Maude. "There's not much optimism for where we're going. At least if they stay, there's a chance Isabel and Samuel will come back."
"They're not coming back," said Edgar. "They're underneath the Highlands, just like the rest. None of them are coming back."
Secretly, Edgar felt terrible for not staying in Tabletop himself. Losing Samuel and Isabel was devastating in a way he'd never experienced before, and he didn't think he would ever make another friend. Even though something told him they weren't dead yet, in his mind he could only envision them trapped in the laboratory, waiting for the water to find its way in. The waves had been so powerful that he couldn't see any other outcome but that the water would crush them in the end, if it hadn't already.
"Don't be so glum," said Horace. "You said they weren't dead when you last saw them. Maybe they found some other way out. Best not to think terrible thoughts based on what you don't know."
Edgar didn't respond. His mind was distracted as they came to the edge of the grove, for the soft swaying had returned under his feet. He put his arms out in order to keep his balance, while rows of men on horses stumbled back and forth and others began to scream. The ground was soon moving like an earthquake, uprooting the larger trees in the grove and sending people scattering in every direction.
And then there came the sound of crashing waves, so loud it made them all turn back. They couldn't see anything through
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the trees, but if they could have, they'd have been aware that the water had suddenly risen the last hundred yards without warning. The waves had crested Tabletop, a thin film of water making its way into the grove.
The ground stopped moving, and with it the sound of crashing waves subsided. But in its place there came a new sound in the stillness of the air. It was the sound of breaking bones, coming from both sides of the grove, through the fallen trees that lay in tangled heaps along the ground. The thousand Cleaners had arrived.
"Go!" cried Horace. "We must run!"
It was harder going than it would have been before the trees were knocked down. About half of the grove was still standing, but the other half lay in disarray. Most people had to maneuver around countless obstacles, with the sound of breaking bones growing ever closer.
Gill was waiting on his horse as the people reached the edge of the grove and burst into the open. "Stay in formation!" he howled. "And follow those in front of you!"
The lines of people stayed together as best they could, following Gill's orders as he moved back and forth along the line. When half of the people had emerged from the grove, the sounds of war welled up and overtook the world of Atherton.
The Cleaners had come in from both sides, crawling hideously over one another in a rampage to reach the fresh food that lay hidden in the grove. They attacked as one powerful wave over the first line of defense--the riders on horses -- and the men of the Highlands stabbed with spears, holding the
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beasts back. The Cleaners were momentarily surprised and reared back on one another, slashing for position, their anger flaring up into a violent rage of swarming for the front of the line.
It was a chaotic battle in which horses and men alike were felled. But miraculously, the line held as everyone within the arrow of humanity exploded up through the middle toward the end of the grove, charging with all their might. Yet the walls grew ever weakened by the violence outside.
Soon the second line of defense--the row of horseless men with spears--began to engage among the many who fought the Cleaners. A group of men, Horace among them, fell into position at the very back of the line to help the twenty who were already positioned there. Meanwhile, Maude had been ordered to take Edgar and escape the grove.
Soon all but the tail end of the line was free of the grove, moving quickly toward the Flatlands. Only Horace and thirty or so men remained, trying desperately to hold back the relentless tide of Cleaners.
And then, without warning, the ground began to shake once more as it had only moments before. More trees toppled over, pinning man and beast, and the Cleaners were thrown into confusion. They attacked one another, clamped down on the trunks of trees, rolled uncontrollably along the shaking floor of the grove.
When the quake subsided, the sound of crashing waves returned, louder than before. Something about the sound sent the Cleaners scattering in every direction. No longer were they
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interested in fighting and destroying. It looked as if they seemed not to know where to go and could only clang their terrible legs and teeth together senselessly.
"What's happening?" cried one of the men.
Horace didn't respond. Instead he roused the men, yelling for them to charge with everything they had left in them and to leave the grove with the rest of the group. And so they did. E
When
they emerged from the fallen trees they looked back and saw that nearly all of the trees in the grove had fallen over. Within the knotted roots and trunks the Cleaners that remained could be seen returning to the felled animals and people. They were, for the moment, satisfied with the bounty before them, uninterested in the idea of chasing after more that would take work to destroy. One of the horses, free of a rider, came bounding out of the trees and galloped at full speed toward the Flatlands, the only one lucky enough to emerge unharmed.
Looking past the Cleaners, Horace could see that the water was like a great lake of blue, frothing with whitecaps and spilling over into the far end of the grove. He worried about Charles, Eliza, and Adele, then turned and fled with the remaining men toward the Flatlands. Gill drew up alongside them on his horse in a state of panic. He had the additional horse that had escaped the grove attached to a rope.
"Hurry! Our time maybe running out!" cried Gill.
"What do you mean?" said Horace. He'd run out of the trees so fast that he could barely breathe.
"We're sinking," Gill explained frantically. "Tabletop is sinking!"
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Horace couldn't believe what he was hearing. He'd imagined it, but it came as a shock to find that it was actually true. He and Wallace had agreed--if the Highlands had fallen, why not Tabletop? "Are you sure?" he asked.
"I've ridden ahead and seen it with my own eyes!" said Gill. "It's already come down five feet or more. If we get another quake like that last one I'm afraid it will be too late. We'll be trapped."
This was the sort of motivation Horace and the men needed. In an instant they were charging for the edge of the Flatlands, glancing back as they went. Some of the Cleaners had moved away from the carnage and began pursuit. They were fast, maybe fast enough to catch them before they could get out, and Horace could not help thinking he'd made a mistake staying in the grove so long.
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*** CHAPTER 31 THE FLOOD
While the people of Atherton raced for the edge of the Flatlands, chased by a growing number of Cleaners, another race was underway inside of Atherton. Isabel was barely breathing and Vincent had never felt so awful in all his life. He kept hearing a dreadful voice over and over in his head: If she dies, it will be your fault. You will have failed her.
He carried her as fast as possible, even running when he could catch his breath, along the path that led under the Flatlands. It was the most open and expansive part of the inside of Atherton, and very soon it would be the only place inside that could ever be reached again. As Tabletop sank, so went the way in which to find the Inferno, the Nubian, all of it. Those things would remain, but it was uncertain if humans would ever see them again.
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The light remained, shooting up in fiery beams from the ground, and the mountains within Atherton rose all around them on every side. It was a stunning but desolate place, dry and lifeless, and yet it had an indescribable, haunted beauty.
Dr. Kincaid had tried to explain, to pass the time, that it was the Inferno that made light possible inside Atherton. The fire bugs, the cave eel, the flowing electric glass, all of it had something to do with how Atherton's underbelly was formed, how the sun could find its way through. He didn't claim to understand it, only that it was a delicate balance, and that all these things that were happening inside were important to what happened outside.
"How much farther?" interrupted Sir William. He and Samuel were keeping up better than Dr. Kincaid was, but Vincent was a remarkably fit leader. He had far more energy than all the rest, even while carrying a sixty-pound girl.
"If we go quickly and don't stop, only an hour. We have to get back to the rocks where Dr. Kincaid can help her before it's too late."
Sir William had already asked what Dr. Kincaid could do there that he couldn't do inside Atherton. He'd been told that there were certain medicines they should have brought along for just such an occasion, but that in their haste they'd left them behind. Dr. Kincaid had grave doubts, as did Vincent, that the medicine would do any good. Isabel was barely breathing and was cold to the touch. She might die at any moment.
***
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When the first of the people from the grove arrived at the place where the Flatlands began, Horace knew the time had come to stop and face the oncoming massacre. He knew that if he didn't stop and convince the men who were with him to do the same, many more would be lost.
He beckoned the thirty or so men around him to stop, and to his great surprise they made no effort to dispute his idea. They knew, as Horace did, that the only way to get everyone out was to stay and fight, to create a diversion.
"You have done a great service to the living in Atherton," said Horace. "Generations will recall this moment. They will remember how you stood and fought a terrible enemy so that others could live!"
The men gathered around him and called out a great cheer. They had been chosen for reasons they did not know to stand between the forces of destruction and a peaceful people. They formed groups of four or five each, turned to the sound of breaking bones, and dived headlong into a sea of Cleaners, beating them back with ferocious resolve.
As fate would have it, Horace was one of the last to fall, and he was given the gift of seeing with his own eyes the children and sheep and rabbits being hoisted out of Tabletop and into the Flatlands, their little feet dangling in the air as they were yanked hard and fast into a new life he would never know. He knew as he passed that his family and the others would make it out of Tabletop.
Horace's eyes closed and he was at peace, a leader among
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men, sleeping at last and searching on the other side for his good friend Wallace.
A small number of Cleaners bolted for the Flatlands, hearing the sounds of voices and seeing the immense quantity of food that lay in wait for them there. But they were greatly outnumbered and no match for the men and women who remained. The Cleaners were beaten back with flying rocks and spears by a great horde of humanity from above in the Flat-lands. The few who remained in Tabletop were soon lifted out, and the whole race of men in Atherton pelted the Cleaners with weapons until they retreated out of reach.
A huge shout rang out as had never been heard in Atherton. It seemed that everyone who lived was shouting at once, raising their voices with anger at all that had been taken from them, and with joy at all they'd overcome.
And then, as if to show them who really was in charge, Atherton began to quake as it never had before. It rumbled so hard and fast that many next to the very edge almost fell back into Tabletop as it careened spectacularly downward beneath them. In moments, Tabletop went from being five feet below them to thirty.
With a falling Tabletop the water came over the edge of the Highlands. Like a monster it charged, washing over the grove and pushing all the trees and homes from the ground. The Cleaners could hear the water rushing for them, and they reacted by trampling over one another in search of the Flatlands. But finding the edge leading thirty feet up meant finding a wall
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they could not scale. They attacked one another and leaped into the air, snapping their teeth.
And the water kept rolling through, covering Tabletop in a thin layer that glistened in the sun.
When the quake quieted to a mere tremor, Maude searched through the throng of people, trying to find the one person who had been put in her charge. She had lost her grip on him at the edge of the grove and hoped he was near, in the swarm of children. But she was wasting her time. She was in a place that had once been the lowest place in Atherton but had been transformed into the highest. Looking down, she wondered where the boy had gone. And she was right to wonder, for Edgar had gone back to the grove.
***
The first wave came into the grove without warning, toppling over a few of the trees that were left standing and barreling through the doorways of the very few houses that hadn't fallen over. This came as a surprise to Charles, Eliza, and Adele. They'd been spared the com
ing of the Cleaners, who were drawn into battle with the departing horde of people, but the wave was only the first of many that were about to overtake them. They had not prepared for the eventuality of a flooded grove.
And so it was a very good thing that Edgar had been the first to realize what was happening and to turn back. Something deep inside him had taken over when the ground shook so
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violently that second time. He was the firstborn of Atherton, and maybe this gave him certain powers of perception about the place of his birth. He began to remember his dream of the night before, of the words Dr. Harding had said in the House of Power. Suddenly, he was sure that Tabletop would sink, that the water would come, and that Samuel and Isabel's parents would perish if he did not go back for them.
And there was another part of the dream that made him feel a peculiar certainty that Isabel and Samuel were in danger but still alive, that he would see them again. They, too, were children of Atherton. They were born here, and Edgar sensed them moving inside, as if trying to be reborn as Atherton was being reborn. He felt Atherton had brought him by this way for a purpose bigger than himself--to bring Samuel and Isabel's parents to the safety of the Flatlands or to die trying.
Edgar now had a little experience on the water and had an idea of what might keep them afloat if the water reached as high as he thought it might. The space of Tabletop was an enormous area to fill, but the water was already flowing so fast over the edges of the Highlands, Edgar thought all of Tabletop would have a layer of water upon it within minutes. After that, it was just a matter of how fast and how high the water would rise.
He jumped down out of one of the only trees that remained standing and landed in a foot of water at his feet. He lapped up handful after handful. Even in the face of escalating danger he could not help but quench his thirst. The water was pushing hard against his legs and another wave was rising out of the Highlands, threatening to bowl him over.