Amara Bennett's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

The decoy had worked, but the regime now sat too close. Amara stood in the greenhouse at dawn and studied the ridge through the glass. The false trail had pulled scouts down the slope. When they came in force, they would sweep this ridge. Rows of green plants filled the greenhouse, but glass walls stopped nothing. One volley would shatter every pane. She had a camp full of people and no place to fight from. Jin-Ho found her tracing the ridge line with her finger. The scar over his eye caught the pale light. He had stood at her side against the old leader, and he read her silence now. "You're not looking at the plants," he said. "I'm looking for a wall," Amara said. "Something we can hold. If they hit us here, we die in glass." He crossed his arms. "There's nothing on this ridge but snow and a butcher shop full of lies." But Amara remembered a thing the wood teams had mentioned. A hatch, half-buried, near where the cattle grazed. She pulled on her coat and went out into the cold. The herd stood in the drift, breath steaming, chains and buckles worn on their gray hides. Behind them a wind-packed mound of snow humped against the slope. She dug with her hands until her fingers struck metal. Under the drift stood a heavy door. Two steel panels, streaked with rust, set into the hill. Amara brushed the snow clear. Pipes ran across the surface. A dead red light sat above the frame. She hauled the handle. The door groaned and swung. Stairs dropped into the dark. She lit a lamp and went down. The air was still and warm. Metal panels lined every wall. Bunks, a stove, shelves of dusty cans. One way in. One narrow stair a single fighter could hold against ten. She turned in a slow circle and understood what she had found. Jin-Ho came down behind her. He touched the steel walls, then the tight stairwell. "This we can hold," he said. "They'd have to come one at a time." "And we shoot them one at a time." Amara climbed back up into the light. She looked at the greenhouse, then at the buried door. "We move the people down here. The plants stay above. If scouts see growing rows, they see a farm, not a fort." They worked all day. Amara ran the crates and the food down the stairs. She set watch rotations at the hatch. By dark the greenhouse stood empty of people, and the camp slept below in steel. Amara stood last at the top of the stair. She had her chokepoint now. But moving underground meant the herd and the plants sat exposed above. She could hold the door. She could not hold the food that kept them all alive through winter.