More cautiously this time, Vin ventured, “Dude, come on, everyone’s been dumped--”
“You didn’t even care.” Hector got in Vin’s face. “She was--” The anguish briefly broke through his anger. “Man, I… I needed you. You weren’t around.”
Hector softened, expecting Vin to do the same. Instead, it seemed he had struck a nerve.
“What are you talking about? I’ve hardly left your side since it went down. I gave you my freakin’ oranges after dinner like three weeks in a row. Oranges! Who knows how long those will last? You know I like the oranges…”
Hector listened, stunned into silence. He wasn’t sure Vin had ever really snapped like that before. Nor had Vin ever really disagreed with him before.
Vin went on, “I mean, what do you want me to do? Shouldn’t I be trying to help you move on? At what point am I enabling your pity parade?”
“Not yet,” Hector sulked. “I was a wreck--”
“Are you serious? Some friend. This is what I’m talking about, why can’t you just--”
“No, Hector, come on, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Then how did you mean it?”
“I meant that I was there. I was there for you, I always have been, and I don’t think you’ve ever really--”
“Shut up, Vin.” The worst part of Vin’s little rebellion was that he was making sense.
Vin’s face flushed with indignation in the dim light. “Screw you, man! That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all. To me or to her. You’re acting like she cheated on you or she died. But from what I can tell, only one of you is handling the breakup badly.”
He was right. “I said stop.”
“Now you’re coming at me because your ego’s been bruised--”
“Then go, Vin! Fuck off back home to your oranges. Why did you even agree to come with me? You never have fun, you just trail behind, bitching and waiting for something to jump out at you.”
The two stood only inches apart. Hector broke away to search his pack for a lighter.
“You think about that question and then you tell me why I keep coming back. I was a good friend to you--I really tried to be. If you want to stay angry out here all by yourself then fine. I will go home. Don’t fall in the fucking Channel.” Vin shoved Hector and backed away with sadness in his green eyes, now a strange and muddy brown in the orange glimmer of the fungus-covered walls.
Hector stood still, breathing heavily, watching him go. He couldn’t scream or throw something because Vin would hear the echoes--and he would not let Vin know how angry he’d made him--so he sparked his flint and steel and lit up his torch once again. He resumed his course down the tunnel, slower this time, less sure in his stride. The temptation to kick that puffball mushroom into oblivion was almost too strong, but decidedly not worth risking any of possible effects of the spore cloud inside.
Maybe he had been unfair with Vin. But as his best friend, Vin should know that he still couldn’t deal with any mention of Willow. He didn’t know when he’d be able to. If I ever see her again, it will be too soon, he thought. Truth be told, he didn’t know where he was going, just that he had to get away from everything. From all the people.
Living in North Camp was like trying to stay on top of a spinning water wheel. More often than not, he felt like he was working from the moment he opened his eyes in the morning to the moment his head touched his pillow at night. Hector was a clerk at the village pantry, and it was his job to inventory their food supplies. There were worse gigs. But that fact didn’t make counting and recounting all kinds of fungi and crickets for eight hours a day any less painful.
Feeling a cool breeze, he looked up to see a light pass the opening of the tunnel--an opening! He was right. This had to be an access tunnel to the Channel, and the light meant that a boat was nearby. He and Vin had followed the tunnel in what he presumed to be the direction of the Channel, but if he had turned down any of the many other offshoots or intersections, he could have ended up anywhere. That was why people generally weren’t allowed to traverse the tunnels without an experienced Scout. Too many had wandered off and never found their way back.
Finally reaching the end of the passage, Hector stepped out onto a metal grate and inhaled deeply, struck by the crossbreeze--the closest thing to fresh air and surely the strongest wind he had ever experienced. The platform jutted out of the wall about three quarters of the way up. Hector walked to the edge and put his hands on the railing. His gaze swept across the vast expanse of the enormous circular tunnel. The Channel. It had to be a quarter of a mile in diameter and filled about halfway with dark, churning water, moving swiftly downstream. Peering into it made him uneasy--the glow of the fungi clinging to the walls glittered on the water, causing the illusion of movement beneath the surface. There was no telling what lurked in the blackness, and there was surely no return from its depths. Leaning over the edge, staring down, Hector recalled the tall tales he had heard of the Channel since he was small--of things that had washed up, of people who had washed away. He and his friends would laugh at the Scavengers’ tales, but he couldn’t deny that the look in their eyes was harder to shake from his mind than their tall tales ever were. And now, standing above the black river with only a rusted grate between him and a long way down, the water lay in wait below like a mass of writhing bodies extending infinitely into the shadows in both directions. He shivered, shook his head, and backed away from the edge, attempting to focus on his achievement--after a lifetime of stories, he now finally saw the Channel for himself.
It was cool here, and a scavenger boat bobbed lazily upstream, its light pointed into the water. The echoes of the Scavengers’ speech sounded strange, like some long forgotten secret language. Only they were allowed in the Channel because, somewhere along its endless span, there was access to the Surface--allegedly. It was the responsibility of the Scavengers to deal with anything that washed down into the Channel. They would salvage it for use or trade, leave it in the water, or kill it if necessary. So they said. Forget the Exterminators, these guys had some great stories.
One would expect the Channel to be deafening given the ease with which the smallest sounds echoed in the tunnels, but the water was deceptively quick for how quiet it was. Again approaching the metal railing, Hector strained to listen to the men on the boat, who had gotten louder. One shoved another to the ground, and two more forced the fallen man’s arms behind his back. Then they tore the sack off his head.
One of them got down on one knee so he was at eye level with the restrained man. Whatever he said was too quiet to hear. They heaved the man off the ground and stood him up at the side of the boat, facing the stone brick wall. The first man brought out a massive oar, and the clunk of wood on bone resounded all the way to Hector’s ears, succeeded only by a splash and silence.
Hector stepped backwards into the tunnel. But an abrupt scuffle behind him caused him to leap forward, banging his shin against the railing of the platform. The echo reverberated throughout the tunnel like the bellow of a grandfather clock. His stomach fell. Then, everything went white. The blinding searchlight swiveled directly into his eyes. He turned away to see Vin squinting into the blaze. He must have been the scuffling noise. But Hector didn’t have much time to process his feelings on the matter.
“DON’T MOVE,” someone roared from the boat.
