Keepers of the Flame Read online

  “Where?” Milly said.

  “You’ll know.” The child giggled. “You’ve never seen a reborn before?”

  Milly felt like maggots were burrowing through her brain and her neck tightened and her stomach went cold. The child was reading her mind. Or writing it like a sacred text?

  Milly woke drenched in sweat.

  Three months later, Milly had a secret, but not the one she’d planned. Most folks on Respite didn’t know about the ear, and nobody had ever heard anything on it. The myths of messages she’d heard from fire guards had no proof, and they’d been long ago. She was on duty at 2:15AM as the ear listened into the void.

  The ear was an emergency transceiver from the gone world brought to Respite by Chief Engineer Rocco Serregio, though his children didn’t know it existed. Its nickel-metal hydride power cell took thirty-six hours of full sun to charge, and it still functioned well, despite being well beyond its design parameters. It charged via a small flexible solar panel connected to the base station. Originally made for a water bottle, the solar panel generated energy that collected fresh water from the ambient air. The bottle was long gone, but teachers in the Foundation still used it as an example of the science the world once knew. Milly had always been the one to point out that the same science caused The Day.

  Master Aragorn took special precautions to maintain the ear’s battery, and this included never exposing it to heat, never overusing it, and storing it in an airtight sealed container made of an old world material called plastic. Even with all the precautions, Master Aragorn called it a miracle that the transceiver still functioned. To him it was proof that someday they would get a message.

  Milly set the ear up as taught, connecting the transceiver to the makeshift antenna made from metal salvaged from the Oceanic Eco. When the moon reached the right place in the sky, she flicked the “on” button. Nothing. Only the buzz of what Aragorn called static. That’s all Milly ever heard. That’s all anyone had ever heard with two alleged exceptions a long time ago. Radio signals could travel for thousands of miles, and the purpose of the ear was to catch one of these voices in the void and prove they weren’t the only survivors on Earth.

  The nothing continued for nineteen minutes, then fate changed Milly’s life.

  At first she thought it was her mother calling her through the static, but then the disturbance fell away and a female voice said the same thing over and over on a loop until the signal cut out and the static returned.

  “I don’t even know my real name?” Milly said. She and Peter fed the fire. Her mother had been dead six months, and it was three since the message. As far as she could tell, Peter kept his promise and told no one. He was content forgetting about it because then he wouldn’t have to do anything. He could drink corn whiskey at Old Days and drift through life like a fern leaf. She had bigger plans.

  “That’s bezoomny talk,” Peter said.

  “No, really. Leonard said his pa said Milly is short for Mildred. Maybe my name is Mildred and I don’t even know it.”

  “You believe it all? The fire guards and all the crazy stuff in the Foundation? A wave taller than trees? How stupid do they think we are?” Peter said.

  She knew he was just saying what he thought she wanted to hear, and a piece of her loved him for it. The rest of her despised him for it. Only the weak pander to someone to gain their affections. “I believe, just like all the sacred texts, that the truth lies somewhere in-between. There has to be something else out there, Peter.”

  “What?”

  “More,” Milly said.

  “The book your mother was reading when she…”

  “I know, I know. An island on an ocean planet. I don’t believe it. There was land before we came here,” Milly said.

  “Before the water rose,” Peter said.

  “You want to…” Milly checked herself. Do you want to find out? she wanted to say, but she didn’t. Instead she changed the subject. “Does it upset you that people think we’re sleeping together? Cheating on our spouses?”

  Peter reeled back as if stuck. “I wasn’t aware people were talking at all.”

  She knew he loved her, but she’d never felt that way about him. She also knew she could use his affections against him whenever she wanted. “Do you want to take a walk?”

  “Leave the Perpetual Flame unattended?” Peter said.

  “Stop calling it that. Nobody is here.” Milly chuckled as she watched Peter tremble as his desire for her and the fear of not doing his duty tore him in two. Desire won and Peter joined Milly as she left the Womb.

  Did she lead him on? Yes. Was she a tease? Yes. Did she use him like a fishing pole? Yup, but as Milly lay looking at the stars, she felt no guilt at all. They’d walked the island, and she’d ranted about everything wrong with Respite. They’d kissed, but he seemed afraid to touch her, so they rested on the beach, and Peter fell asleep.

  He woke with a start four hours later. Milly pretended to be asleep. The night’s chill had set in, and blackness still surrounded them. Peter took several sharp breaths as his mind calculated how long they’d been away. “Milly. Wake up Milly. We gotta get back. The moon… oh shit, we gotta get back.” Peter shot to his feet and Milly pretended to come awake.

  “What is it?”

  “We fell asleep!”

  They ran back and darkness filled the Womb, and nothing was visible except the faint glow of embers that had been the sacred fire.

  Peter took down a torch and tried to light it with his fire rocks. The tapping of the two stones rang in the stillness, sparks shooting across Milly’s feet. The torch caught and Peter lit the rest. Then he tossed his torch onto the embers of the Perpetual Flame and went to get wood.

  “Wait,” Milly said. She lifted the torch and handed it back to him. “Get me something to dig with.”

  “I need to light that before someone sees! Get out of the way,” Peter said.

  “Peter, help me or I’ll tell Tris about tonight.”

  “What? That we kissed? Big deal,” Peter said.

  “And that we let the fire go out while we were doing it?”

  Shock froze his face, and he said nothing.

  “Being threatened doesn’t feel very good, does it?” Milly said.

  He looked away. Peter’s father had held her mother’s transgressions over her, threatening to tell all of Respite if Sarah didn’t do what he wanted.

  “Get me something to dig with,” she said again.

  This time he obeyed and returned with a shovel made from old world metal, bamboo, and dried vine. Milly pushed aside the hot embers and dug through years of ash, dirt, garbage and noni wood sludge. She found nothing. Black muck covered her from head to toe, and she smelt like ash. When the shovel twanged on something hard, she had a moment of joy, but it was soon dashed.

  Beneath the fire was solid stone, nothing more.

  Chapter Five

  Year 2065, Respite

  Milly spent two years searching every inch of the island for undiscovered caves. Being only thirty square miles, Respite had been thoroughly explored, but the mountain was steep in spots and covered in thick vegetation. A cave entrance could have been missed. She believed her mother was trying to tell her there was a chamber beneath the Perpetual Flame. Many cracks and caves split the mountain, but nothing that came anywhere near the Womb, or deep enough to reach beneath the flame.

  So the search ended where it started, at the Foundation and Hampton Infirmary, the two largest and deepest caves on the island. They’d been used since day one, including having served as primary shelter for several months after The Day. A patch of preserved graffiti in the Foundation attested to the fact that teenagers hung out in the caves before The Day, hiding from their parents who drank themselves comfortably numb at the tiki bar.

  Her father, Gary, didn’t aid Milly in her search. He’d gone into his shell and wasn’t coping well with the loss of Sarah. Neither was she, truth be told. She missed her mother far more than she thought sh
e would. Seeing Randy’s confusion and sadness when told he couldn’t see his grandma, and that he would never see her again, broke her heart.

  She’d searched every inch of the Foundation and the infirmary while on fire guard duty and found nothing. Both had spidery stone appendages that narrowed to nothing, but she saw no possible blocked entrances, or any sign that the cave walls were manipulated in any way. She had an idea, but she needed Peter’s help, and was afraid to ask. Their relationship turned chilly after she’d threatened him, and that suited her fine. Now she needed him, and she’d pull him back in.

  “What doesn’t belong?” she asked Peter one night. They were on duty and had wandered into the infirmary.

  “Um, the table?” Peter said.

  “No, the walls, the way they curve,” Milly said.

  The dark volcanic rock was pocked and cracked. Sharp to the touch in places, and smooth in others, the walls curved to the ceiling as if the space had been the interior of a cooled lava bubble. Jagged black rock marked the edges of the chamber, which had a stone pillar marking its center reaching from floor to ceiling. The column consisted of many small stones fit together and wasn’t a natural formation.

  “Notice it yet?” Milly asked.

  “Do you mean the support column? Everyone knows it’s not a natural formation. Doc Hampton said they added it for extra support,” Peter said.

  “Yet it ties to no beams on the ceiling. It’s supporting the four by four square of ceiling above it, nothing more.”

  “So… what? You want to take it down?”

  Milly smiled.

  They talked to Doc Hampton who refused to confirm or deny anything, but said, “The secrets of the island are secrets for a reason.” Milly hated when he talked like that, but he was an original islander, and if he didn’t know what her mother had meant, who would? Yet he refused to speak with her about it, adding only, “You’ll discover what you should when you should.” Peter tried speaking with his grandfather, but Ben tossed him down the steps in front of his shelter.

  She was starting to think the elders of Respite were hiding something, a conspiracy like Ice-nine or a mind game like the Ludovico technique. She remembered her childhood before she knew about the gone world. Everything on Respite seemed so normal, and then they told her she lived on an island in a sea of ghosts. They were aliens on their own world. Some said God had wiped the Earth clean. What about them? Had God forgotten about them?

  “You’re bezoomny,” Peter said. “Even if Doc helped us, the council will never let us rip up the infirmary.”

  “We’ll put it back. And nobody is in there right now. It’s empty, and you and me can do it on our own time.”

  Peter laughed. “No way. Tris will kill me.”

  “Oh, right. You’re a little boy again. My mistake, Peter Pan.”

  “What’s the end game, anyway? Why waste our time and make trouble for ourselves? Don’t we have enough secrets?” Peter said.

  “I think when I find what I’m looking for we’ll have a way off the island,” Milly said. She felt that with all her being though she had no proof.

  “The great quest we talked about when we were kids?” Peter said. “That’s what this is all about for you? I thought it was some book or machine or something.”

  “You don’t wonder about what’s out there?” She smirked. He’d never had an answer for that. He loved her and would follow even if it meant losing Tris.

  “Let’s be smart. Have Doc close this section for cleaning. You and I can do the work on our shifts. Take it down and put it back together in three nights. We’ll time it for when Doc is unlikely to stop by. Maybe when the weather’s bad.” Many of the old folks got their food delivered to Citi, so they didn’t have to climb up to the Womb.

  He had a point. “Deal,” she said, and held out her pinky. On Respite, that was the sign of an accord.

  Thunderstorms raged for two days, the sky dark to the horizon in all directions. Keeping the firewood dry took extra time, and while everyone else hid in their homes, Milly and Peter pulled double shifts of fire guard duty. Nobody wanted to work in the cold rain, and except for fire guard trainees who hauled wood, delivered food and water, and worked in the Fire Wood, they didn’t see many people. An occasional young citizen came to get water, but nobody used the fire to cook and relied instead on stored food.

  They took extra care disassembling the column. On the underside of each stone, Peter scratched a number so the pillar could be put back the same exact way if it got reassembled. They told Doc they’d closed the side wing of the infirmary for cleaning because there was nothing else for them to do because of the rain. He only smiled. That was Milly’s greatest clue. Whatever secrets the island held, Doc Hampton had helped perpetuate them.

  On the third day they hit an immovable slab of odd shaped rock that served as the column’s foundation. They put ropes around it, pushed, pulled, but the stone didn’t budge. The cave ceiling was dark and looked solid.

  “What if we break it up?” Milly said.

  “No way. Then they’ll know for sure,” Peter said.

  She hated his feebleness and insecurity. “So? Shit don’t mean shit. Remember?”

  “Tris…”

  “Yes, your wife might find out you and your oldest friend dug a hole. Strap you to the cliffs,” Milly said.

  “Break it how? We’d need a hammer bigger than anything we’ve got. And think of the noise it would make.”

  “All good points,” Milly said. “But there’s a guy.”

  Milly’s friend, Jerome, had a hammer with a head made of steel salvaged from the Oceanic Eco, and he agreed to let them use it if they let him in on the caper. This turned out to be a blessing because it allowed Milly and Peter to work in the Womb and diffuse any suspicions while Jerome hammered away.

  On the fourth night, Jerome yelled as if bitten by a shark. Milly and Peter went running and found him with his head down a hole in the floor. When he came up, he said, “It cracked and fell through. Grab me a torch.”

  Milly complied and Jerome dropped the light into the hole. It fell for several seconds and landed with a scattering of sparks and illuminated a lava cave.

  “Holy shit,” Peter said.

  “Indeed,” Milly said.

  “We’re gonna need rope, torches, water and food. We could be down there for days,” Jerome said. He got up and dusted himself off. “I’m outta here. Same time tomorrow? I’ll get some sleep then haul our supplies.”

  “Yeah,” Milly said. “We’ll cover that hole with some rocks until tomorrow.” She was glad her partners in crime understood that it wasn’t time to tell anyone what they’d discovered. If what they’d found amounted to anything more than a cover to keep people from falling into the abyss, there’d be time enough to squawk like a kura parrot.

  Milly was jumping out of her skin the rest of the night and the next day. The storm blew through and the Womb hosted a steady stream of people. She saw Jerome once in Citi and he avoided her. Curso already had suspicions, and she didn’t need to provide him any further clues by talking to someone she didn’t know. Peter said Tris suspected something also, and it had gotten so bad he offered to stay behind rather than endanger the mission. She flatly declined. She didn’t know Jerome, and she had no idea what they were in for.

  They got the fire going as big as possible, but did it matter? By the end of the night the Perpetual Flame might be a thing of the past. Jerome constructed a sling, and one by one they lowered themselves into the chamber below the infirmary. Milly’s hand shook and her torch light danced on the walls. The sound of water lapping against stone echoed through the damp cavern.

  The volcanic cave was thin and smooth, and they left footprints in the damp rock dust on the floor. They went left, and the tunnel turned upward and gradually closed into solid stone. They backtracked, and the tunnel got hotter, steam rising from the rock walls.

  “The fire must be right above us. Your mother definitely knew about this. There
has to be something down here,” Peter said.

  “How long have you guys known about this?” Jerome asked.

  Nobody spoke.

  “OK, but whatever happens here on out, I’m in on it,” Jerome said.

  The tunnel plunged downward, and in many spots they had to deploy rope to scale the steep cliffs. After an hour of climbing in the dark, they reached a large open cavern with a great lake at its center. On a ledge half way around the chamber a mound of branches and debris caught Milly’s attention. Water dripped down the walls, and the rank smell of the sea assailed them. Crabs scattered as the party made their way around the water, staying as close to the cave wall as they could manage.

  “No way all those branches got here naturally,” Jerome said.

  “They could have floated through the opening on the opposite side and gotten balled up in a rough sea or high tide,” Milly said.

  “We’re half-a-mile inland or more,” Peter said.

  “This is a volcanic island. Lava tunnels can run for miles unbroken,” Milly said.

  When they reached the pile of branches, they uncovered what lay beneath, and it didn’t take long to reveal the boat. Peeled paint formed a circle around the launch, but other than several massive dents, the old tender looked seaworthy. “Aluminum. The harder you pound it the stronger it gets,” Peter said.

  They pulled away enough brush to get inside, and what they found would forever change the lives of everyone on Respite.

  They discovered instructions on how to get the boat to open sea using the tides to adjust for drops and rises in the cave system, tools, and charts, all stored in an airtight container. The tender’s motor was dissembled and submerged in oil, and a single five-gallon industrial tank of gas, which a note claimed had been sealed and treated. It wouldn’t work if it was over five years old, and it was much older than that. Two sail rigs were preserved and modified to fit on the roof of the launch, and the rudder control had been redirected to a large wooden arm in the main cabin.