The First Escape, Julie Steimle [fiction book recommendations txt] 📗

The cautious seldom err. But then the cautions seldom do a lot of things.

“Wake up!” a familiar voice said. Something or someone was shaking him awake as he tried to sleep.

“Wake up!” the voice insisted.

Jafarr opened his eyes and blinked. The room was still dark. He could barely focus on the shadowy silhouette outlined by the blue light from his floor lights. He blinked again with a look up, still groggy. “What is it?”

“Get up, son. We’re leaving,” his father’s voice said. The silhouetted figure stood up, pulling the thin blanket off of the fifteen-year-old’s body. Yes, Jafarr was fifteen Parthan years that very day. He had technically turned it at one that morning, but all Jafarr really wanted to think about was sleep. It was two a.m.

“Get up, Jafarr. I’m not leaving without you,” his father said.

It was clear to Jafarr now that his father was not going to leave him alone. He only blearily hoped this was not a birthday prank.

Rolling off the bed, Jafarr rubbed his head. He stood up then sleepily opened his clothes drawer.

“Just throw something on, Jafarr. We have to hurry.” His father rushed out of the room.

Jafarr looked up. His mind cleared somewhat as he glanced around his room. “Dad! It is the middle of the night! What’s going on?”

Jamenth Zeldar ran back into the room with a knapsack where he started to stuff a few computer cards and personal things inside it from Jafarr’s room. Jafarr watched his father do this, still in a daze.

“Get dressed. Hurry!” his father urged.

Reaching over his shoulder, Jafarr grabbed the back to his pajama top and pulled it off, tossing it on his bed. Confused, but obediently, he pulled on a clean shirt and he changed his pants. His father rushed in and out of the room, checking on him as he hurried.

“Come on! Get your shoes on or they’ll leave us!” his father said, grabbing Jafarr’s shoes off of his chair and handing them to his son. Jafarr took them and put them on, but he eyed his dad like he had lost it.

“Who is going to leave us?” he asked.

“The others,” his father said hastily, handing Jafarr his jacket. “Here, you’ll need this. It is going to be cold.”

Jafarr stood up, grabbed his jacket, and followed his father as he marched into the kitchen. “Wait a second. Where are we going?”

His dad was stuffing mulch cakes into the sack now. He looked up. “Partha.”

Jafarr stopped. “What? Partha?” He glanced around the room, throwing up his hands. “It is the middle of the night!”

His dad closed his mouth and nodded. “I know.”

Jafarr nearly choked. “Hold it! I’m not going to Partha—especially in the middle of the night.”

Turning, Jamenth looked at his son hard. “I’m not leaving you here, and I’m going. The P.M.s will kill you sooner or later, and I’m not risking that.”

Standing back, Jafarr folded his arms. “So you are running like a coward.”

His father stopped and looked hard at him. A flash of anger crossed his face as his jaw clenched. Jafarr stepped back, unfolding his arms.

“No, Son. They found us. It will only be a matter of time before they trace me to you,” his father said. He then continued packing. “They have my prints. They have my blood.” Then he looked to his son again. “Jafarr, we had a weapons run tonight. I was shot.”

Going pale, Jafarr quickly looked down now to where his father had been gripping his arm. He had not noticed before then. Then he peered back up at his father’s earnest expression.

“I’ll be fine, but once they identify my blood it is over for you,” his father said. “I didn’t want you to have that kind of life, running from P.M.s.”

“What if I wanted that life?” Jafarr at last said.

His father closed his eyes.

“I know you do, son. I know you do.” Then he looked up at him. “I just can’t bear to lose you. You are the most precious thing to me. Ever since I lost your mother….  I just can’t bear to lose you too.”

Jafarr closed his mouth, his face softened, and he nodded. “Alright.”

They slipped out a door his father had created under their kitchen cabinet. How long he had it there, Jafarr never knew. The squeeze was tight at first, but soon they crept into a wider gap between their floor and their downstairs neighbor’s ceiling that was covered in dust and filled with stale air where they crawled for several minutes. After while, they climbed down into the machine workings of the undercity apartment panels.

The space above the cavern was dim and the distance between the metal ceiling of the middlecity floor just like where they had done their repairs, just high enough for people to move about to fix things but not high enough for a person to jump, even an millimeter. They could see the sky panel below them and the dimly lit rotating bulbs under their feet. The catwalk grid gave them just enough room to walk and only a tiny bit of room for the daring to run. 

They walked for what seemed like an hour before they met up with another group of people, all packed for a trip to that other world where freedom was not just a dream. Some of them seemed to be as groggy as Jafarr felt. Most of them were as wired and anxious as his father. Jafarr recognized several of the faces in the crawlspace, and he looked down at his feet immediately to keep from staring at them.

Beneath them he heard the rumble of the metro as it shook the floor they were standing on. Jafarr peered down through the catwalk at the ventilation system below them that consisted of three tunnels made of sturdy aluminum. Below that he noticed the wire grid to the metro transit cavern lights. As the floor shook the people huddled together listening.

“That’s route ninety-three,” a middle-aged man said quietly to his fair-haired children.

They nodded with their mouths pressed closed, new at this game like Jafarr was. He figured those children must have been kept in the dark about their parents’ involvement in the rebellion as well.

When they were all together they walked across several catwalks, up tunnels, and through the machine works in some walls until they reached pure carved Arrassian stone where the machine works were anchored with metal rods to hold up undercity sky panels and catwalks that glowed reddish on their faces. One man led the group to a large vent where a door was laser-cut in the side. The door itself was bent, dented as if the door had been there for centuries.

“Step in,” the man whispered.

Jafarr let the middle-aged man and his children go first. He peered up over the vent at the cavernous rock carved nearly ten thousand years ago, his eyes flickering once then twice at the worn writing just above the door. It read, Keep it up, Jaff.

Jafarr blinked then shook his head. It was as if someone was writing to him from ten thousand years ago, using his old nickname. He reached up to touch it. A chill ran down his spine.

“That carving, people say, was written by a tunneler to keep the workers going through the harder rock down here,” one of the travelers said. Jafarr looked up. He saw one of his father’s old friends that used to visit when he was very young and his mother was still alive.

“We like to think of it as encouragement for us, so we can succeed against the P.M.s,” the man said.

With a nod, Jafarr peered up again at the writing, took a breath, and climbed through the door into the vent. The space was just big enough for him to crawl on his hands and knees. The metal showed signs of wear, clearly a regular escape route routinely used by the rebellion though it was not clear how many centuries it had been used. Jafarr noticed that the person ahead of him was far ahead of him in the vent, crawling like a rodent with experience in the cracks. He shook his head as he followed, trying not to hold the crowd behind him back though his thoughts reflected on how much the P.M.s had labeled them too well. Reduced to rats, it was the only way to escape.

They crawled a good mile, or at least that was what he had decided. His knees felt bruised and his hands were sore when they eventually climbed out of the vent out into another catwalk. His back ached. As soon as he could stand up straight he arced his back, turning his spine. But even as he stopped the others behind him urged him on. The leader of the group was already leading those ahead of him through the catwalk system to the other side of the broad space. Jafarr grimaced as he picked up his feet to follow. He knew the entire underground city was a maze just within the living quarters. Above and below it in the repair tunnels it was even worse. Though he didn’t know how their guides knew quickest ways through the caverns, he felt lucky they did. Otherwise Jafarr was sure he would get lost.

A few times they slipped into open living cavern, walking in groups of two or three as casually as any worker on the night shift. Most of the time they set Jafarr with a total stranger who acted chummy with him all the way to the next break through point. The last one took him into a middlecity metro tunnel where he was at last able to meet with his father again. As much as he had hoped they would just take the metro to wherever they intended to go, Jafarr was disappointed to find that they had to crawl through shaft from one of the maintenance ladders up to the Surface Gate

The Surface Gate after hours was eerie. Most of the shops were closed and the lights were dim yet not entirely off, glowing a faint bluish. Occasionally they saw a P.M. fly across the transit path, keeping watch, but not once did they spot them in their shadowy hiding place. Their guide was too cautious.

Their guide had them cross sparsely, each small cluster going to a different specified place. They had to split up to make it look random, unorganized just in case any one of them was spotted. The moment they saw an opening the leader gave the sign to go. The man with the children was the first to go. He crossed after a P.M. flight scooter zipped down the wide hall. They strolled as if merely going to work though quick enough to cross the wide commerce hall to avoid being spotted easily. But as the only pieces of life there, open and exposed to view, everyone on the side held his breath.

The man and his children made it safely across.

As each group crossed, Jafarr grew more anxious. Sometimes, members of the