Amara Bennett's Arc

Chapter 10 of 13

Amara stood at the top of the stairwell as the first storm wind hit the ridge. Below her the camp slept in steel. Above, the greenhouse held their winter food. Crates of grain, dried meat, the herd in the drift. She could hold the door with a single rifle. She could not stop one torch from ending them all. A regime raid would burn the stores while her people watched from below. Jin-Ho climbed up beside her, snow crusting his shoulders. The scar over his eye had gone pale in the cold. He had stood at her side against the old leader, and he read the worry on her face now. "You keep staring at the food like it will guard itself," he said. "It won't," Amara said. "One raid and we starve. The door means nothing if the larder burns." She walked the bunker's lower level with a lamp. Steel gave way to old stone. An arched opening led into a branching run of tunnels, worn and dry. She followed one passage until it forked, then forked again. The air stayed warm. A stout, dusty pig snuffled from a side chamber, rooting at the packed earth. The animal had wandered down and made a home in the dark. Amara stopped. She held the lamp high. "Here," she said. "We move it all down here." Jin-Ho ducked under the arch behind her. "The grain? The herd?" "Everything the regime could burn." She pressed a hand to the stone wall. "They can't torch what they can't find. We leave the greenhouse empty rows and a few thin crates on top. A farm that isn't worth the raid." They worked through the night and the next day. Amara ran crate after crate down the stairwell, past the bunks, into the tunnels. She stacked grain in a dry chamber. She led the herd down one animal at a time, hooves sliding on the steps. The pig watched from its corner. By the second dark, the greenhouse above held only bare soil and a decoy handful of sacks. Amara stood in the empty greenhouse and looked at the glass. Snow hissed against it. If scouts came now, they would find plants and nothing worth the fire. The winter supply sat buried under stone, safe from any torch. Jin-Ho leaned against the door frame. "You solved it," he said. "The food's ours now, whatever they do up here." "For now." Amara wiped the grime from her hands. The stores were safe. But the tunnels ran on past the chambers she had filled, branching into dark she had not walked. She did not know where they ended. If they opened somewhere on the ridge, the regime had a second way in. She had guarded her food and given the enemy a door she could not yet see.