The birds of doom haunt the barren surface high above the caverns. 

Fear their despair.

The Manuals of the Bunker, Vol. 3, Verse 4

For a moment, Amy and I just sat there, silently.

The last time I had entered this place, there had been a draft rising through the shaft from below. Now, the air stood still like death. Yet I shivered, and not only because of my wet clothes.

A rustling sound made me look up into the dark shaft. I had heard it before, right before I had fallen.

I knew the sound, and I grabbed the grid of the platform with both hands. "The birds!"

The flapping noises closed in on us.

"Let's get out of here!" I said. "The birds, they'll attack us."

"Birds?" She laughed—short and bitter.

"Don't you believe me?"

"They're bats, stupid." Still bent over her candle, she raised an eyebrow. "Are ye 'fraid of bats?"

"Bats?" I did feel stupid now, but that wasn't hers to say.

"Yes, bats... critters like mice with wings. Don't ye know them?"

No, I had never heard of bats, but I didn't reply. The flapping was almost upon us. My muscles tensed, but I didn't want to ask her if they were dangerous. She'd probably laugh at me—she'd be running by now if they were.

Would she? Or had she stopped caring? Her mom and her other folks were down below—at the bottom of that ladder where the water had rushed in.

Something brushed my head, and a black shape zipped past me.

I flinched.

"Aren't they dangerous?" Unable to hold back the question, I crouched low and shielded my head with my arms.

"No, stupid." She looked up from her lap and eyed me. "They're a real pest if ye go higher, but there's only a few down here. They leave ye alone most of the time. And they taste like flying shite."

One of them whizzed across the gap between us. I shied away.

She cocked her head. "Coward." The light in her lap lit her features from below. The thin line of her mouth and the tip of her nose glowed a bright orange, yet her eyes hid in the dark.

Everyone she knew must have drowned. She was all alone now.

And Ed—he had died while tinkering. And I had talked him into this.

"I'm sorry about your folks," I said, concentrating on the lass next to me. Ed was too hard to think about.

She turned her gaze towards the dark shaft. "They..." She swallowed. "When we had a cave-in, about a year back... as the ceiling came down in one of the tunnels, where we grew most of our food, many people died. Me mom told me we had to go on, in moments like these. We have to endure, and we have to adapt." The last words were but a whisper.

She looked back at me. "And I'm sorry about yer friend, the big one."

I nodded, not knowing what to say.

She moved a finger across one of the windows of the lamp, leaving a wet smear. "Never give up." Her words were clipped, like those of a petulant child. "Giving up is fer the weak, fer the cowards."

"Who says?" I had never heard that phrase. It wasn't from the Manuals.

"Me mom."

Before I was able to comment on this, she got up. "I've gotta go. The lantern will burn down soon. It needs a new candle. And I'm hungry."

"The... lantern?" I rose, too, wondering what she was talking about. And how she could think about food.

She waved her light. "This here is a lantern, stupid."

"And where can we get a new candle, smarty?" I stood taller than her, and I liked how she had to look up at me.

And the stupid banter made me forget. Almost.

"Where can we get a new candle?" She held up the light to her face, where it illuminated another eyebrow lifted at me. "You mean as in... I and ye?" In time with her words, she gestured first at herself and then at me.

I shrugged. She seemed to know her way around here, and I didn't.

The rejection in her words hurt.

"I..." She pointed her thumb at her breasts. "I'm going to the upper cavern to nip some stuff there. And ye... I dunno about ye." Her finger poked my chest, almost making me lose my balance.

I stepped away from the edge of the platform, closer to the wall. "Nip?"

"Steal. Take what others have even though it's yers."

Theft was punished with whippings. But I doubted she was interested in that kind of detail.

She gestured at the latch. "Ye can leave through that door here, somehow make yer way down that slide of yers, and join yer family in stinky village. Who knows, they might even have missed yer black buttocks."

The sarcastic smirk on her face riled me, and anger made me clench my fists. "Family? My mom's dead. The bishop has arrested my dad. And he's trying to arrest me, too."

Her eyes widened, but only for a heartbeat, then they turned back into slits. "Oh, he's trying to arrest ye? That's interesting. I thought yer church is all about justice. So it must have some good reasons to try catch ye."

"It's just that..." Why was I trying to explain myself to this brat? "Ah, forget it. It doesn't matter."

For a moment, we both said nothing. I looked at the wall beside me—the rungs bled dark stains into the concrete.

She broke the silence. "Okay... Tim. Ye may come with me." She rubbed at a smudge on the lantern, her gaze on the light. "To the upper cavern. As long as ye do what I say... and don't piss me off. As ye said down below." She swallowed. "Your life is naught if not spent serving." She rolled her eyes as she said the word naught.

Did I want to go with this flame-haired, irritated, and irritating waif? She had to be like one of those birds stalking the wastelands of the surface. Screeching, sharp talons, and best to be avoided. Her hair even had the color of the Phoenix on the amulet. I couldn't trust her.

I reached for the hatch, but then I hesitated.

What was the alternative? Try to make my way down to our village? And then what? Frankie was the foreman there now, and my dad was gone. And Ed's folks would be wondering about his disappearance.

My dad would be held captive somewhere in the upper cavern. 

And, maybe, Amy might need some company after all of this. Even though she'd never admit that.

"Okay," I said, my voice smaller than intended.

"So, let's go, or we'll soon be sitting here without a light. And then ye'd probably try to grab me breasts or something, and I'd have to smack ye." She got up and stepped onto the ladder. "Slapping ye might be fun, but too much of a hassle." Seconds later, the light and she were on their way upward.

I hurried to follow, limping along behind her.

Carrying the light slowed her down. We ascended in silence. She finally stopped and moved away onto a platform similar to the one at our cavern.

"Is this the door to the upper cavern?" I asked, panting, and took in the hatch beside her. It was higher than the one below. A bar of a dark material blocked its handle, running at an oblique angle across its frame and threshold.

"Yeah... the upper cavern. The one with the good food. The one that doesn't stink." She placed the lantern on the platform at our feet.

Flapping sounds from above made me look up. The shaft went on, its walls and ladder losing themselves in the dark.

"What's up there?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Bats... and their shite."

She gave the bar at the door a kick, and it slipped from the handle. "We're blocking the door with this thing here because we don't wanna people opening it from the other side. We don't need yer type to come snooping around the shaft and the tunnels."

"Why didn't you lock ours, then... the one below?"

"Why should we?" She leaned the bar against the wall. "We thought no one could access it from yer side. It's too far up, with no ladder going up to it. How did ye get there, anyway?" She studied me.

"I can fly, stupid." I shrugged, then I grinned.

"Eejit... Now, shut yer hatch." She placed a finger on her lips, turned towards the door, and pushed its handle. It swung outward without a sound.

Apparently, someone kept its hinges oiled.

She peered through the gap. A wall of cornstalks stood before us under the soft glow of nighttime, blocking the view ahead.

"Looks safe," she whispered as she turned her head to the left and right. "Listen. It will be morning in there soon, and we're running out of time. We'll go now. We'll visit that temple of yers and get ourselves the candles. On the way back, we'll find some grub. Then we'll return, lock this door here again, and have breakfast. Okay?"

Was it okay? Ed had just drowned, and her folk, too. Yet she seemed determined to go on.

Her face was grim as she eyed the cornstalks.

She turned her head towards me. "Don't stare at me, boy, or you'll get a taste of my fists."

"Sorry." I turned my gaze away from her, looking at the cavern instead.

She would not give up, that girl.

And she was right. My plan with the pump had failed—more than failed—and I would have to pay for it, sooner or later. But not before I'd try to save my father and the craner.

There had to be a way.

I peered out along the narrow alley between the corn and the cavern's wall. It was deserted at this time of the night.

She boxed my arm. "Hey, didn't you hear our plan?" she hissed.

Her eyes bored into mine from a ghostly white face. In the light of the dimmed lamps, she looked so different, like a hunter of the night—wild, pale, and violent.

"Yes, I heard your plan." Our plan.

"Good, then do as I say and keep yer trap shut." She turned away from me, but then she stopped and looked back. "And ye will carry the stuff we nip. Spend yer life serving, yer manuals say so."

Okay, I'd carry the stuff we nipped. One crime more wouldn't matter.