Ben walked out into the dark and threw up.
This is what Marbury does to boys like Ben.
I shined my light on Quinn.
The kid was a mess.
He lay on his side on the ground, curled up with both hands inside the rip in his jeans, holding his nuts.
“Get up,” I repeated.
eighteen
We were tired.
If we were above, we’d have been asleep for hours by now, but we pushed ourselves beyond exhaustion.
We had no choice.
And now we had learned a little more about Quinn Cahill, the King of Marbury. I couldn’t help but worry about the other wonders we’d find down here.
Like Ben said, welcome to the fucking Nature Channel.
Quinn struggled to keep up with us, but we pushed on as long as we could. None of us wanted to rest without some sign that we might get out of the darkness of the Under, but I knew the boys needed to find someplace where we could stop.
I think it may have been the longest stretch of time ever in which Quinn Cahill said absolutely nothing. He just limped along, two steps behind Ben, who now carried the other flashlight. I walked at the back of our line.
And I don’t know exactly who was worse off: Quinn, who’d been beaten and deposed by three kids who didn’t belong in his kingdom, or the three of us outcasts who’d likely never find our way out of this hole.
Maybe we walked three miles; maybe it was three hundred feet. Who knew? But it was going to happen sooner or later: We came to a branch in the tunnel network and had to make another decision about which way to go.
Ben and I stunk like corpses. Ultimately, the three of us ended up abandoning our shirts, having to use them for wipe rags to smear the burning dust away from our eyes.
I tried telling myself that if we’d gone the other way—the way without the little bit of hair on the boy’s skull—that we’d already be dead. But that was a stupid thought.
Billy.
There was no escaping the idea that maybe if we were all dead, Ben, Griffin, and I would wake up back in their garage, or maybe stretched out on the deck beside their pool, lounging with Conner Kirk in the sunlight, talking shit to each other.
Maybe.
We stopped.
Ben punctuated his question by aiming his flashlight. “Right, left, or straight?”
The tunnel that intersected the one we’d been following was smaller; maybe only three-fourths the diameter, so it seemed darker, more cramped. It looked like something bugs would live in.
“How about we sit down right here and get a little food and water in us?” I said.
Griffin let out a big breath of air. “I’m fucking tired, Jack.”
I watched him peel the pack off, drop it, and in less than a second, Griffin was down in the dirt, stretched out, using his backpack as a pillow.
I shined my light on Ben. We were all so filthy. We looked like pictures you’d see of trapped coal miners—all dirt, teeth, and wide, haunted eyes. Without saying anything, Quinn sat down on the ground beside Griffin, grunting a little, holding on to the crotch of his jeans to keep it from yawning open and letting anything out.
He put his head down on the pack right next to Griffin’s, and then rolled onto his side like the kids were spooning or something. “I ain’t trying nothing, not-Ben. I’m hurt and I need to lay down.”
Griffin kept his eyes shut. “You touch me and I’ll jab my thumbs so far into your fucking eyes you’ll be looking out your asshole.”
Ben and I sat down.
I took Griffin’s map out of my pocket.
“Try to sleep if you want, Griff. Me and Ben will keep a watch out. But when I wake you up, you’re going to get your butt in gear.”
“Okay,” Griffin mumbled.
“And no complaining,” Ben said.
I dug into the pack and pulled out one of our water bottles. We passed it around. Griffin drank some.
We let Quinn have some, too.
I unfolded the map, and it fell apart. I had to lay the little parched rectangles together like a mosaic, flat on the dirt between my legs.
“You ever seen a map of this place before, Quinn?”
Quinn didn’t move. He stayed on his side with one hand pressing the cut on his cheek and the other cupped beneath his crotch.
“I never seen one, Billy. I heard about ’em, though.”
“Anything else you heard about that you’re not telling?” Ben asked.
Quinn didn’t answer.
Griffin breathed like a little boy when he slept, nasal and deep. The kid could sleep anywhere, through anything, like flipping a light switch.
I shined the light down on the puzzle of map lying in the dirt.
“Fuck this place,” I whispered.
“What do you see?” Ben leaned over, but he kept his own light pointed away from us. He was always watching.
Here was a place called Glenbrook. The streets and highway interchanges were all laid out the same. I could have drawn the identical map from memory. But nothing else outside, away from Glenbrook, was the way it was supposed to be.
Not-Glenbrook.
Ben could see it, too.
“I found a book when I came here the first time. A dictionary. I looked shit up in it.”
Ben just stared at me like I was stupid or something, like he was saying, Why the fuck would you want to expand your vocabulary when you’re in a fucking trap like this shithole?
“They didn’t have the word earth in it. No California, either.”
“You’re making shit up again, Billy,” Quinn murmured, his eyes shut, still pressed up against Griffin.
But I could tell by the look on his face that certain things began registering with Ben.
“You know what the book said about Marbury? That it’s the third planet from the sun, that this is where humans come from, and that it has no moon.”
“Jack. You’ve seen the same shit we all have. Do you think this is home? Do you think it’s supposed to be the way you expect in your head?”
“You guys are all fucking nuts,” Quinn said. “If you think I’m going to believe you came from somewhere else, and you ain’t Odds just like me, you’re all full of black salt and shit.”
And Ben said, “You ever hear of California, Red?”
Quinn pushed his face down lower into Griffin’s shoulder. “Leave me alone. I’m going to sleep.”
“If Jack wasn’t here, I’d fucking kill you.”
Ben looked up at the ceiling, then drew a circle around our spot in the dirt with his light. “Sorry, Jack.”
“It’s okay, Ben.” I leaned closer to the map, and Ben looked, too. “I promise I’ll get us home. I swear to God I will.”
“I trust you, Jack.”
There was an obvious coastline on the map. Lines that could have been highways—maybe before the war, maybe a long time ago when Marbury was some other place—connected the twisted veins of not-Glenbrook to a sea that had the word ENDLESS written in dark blue print that stretched toward the old edge of the map. Near the top of the paper, positioned on the coast, another knot of roadways clumped together at a place called Grove. It was the city where the four of us—Ben, Griffin, me, and Conner—found safety the first time I’d stumbled into Marbury.
I put my finger on it.
“You remember that place, Ben?”
“Things are different now.”
I glanced over at Quinn. He seemed to be asleep, too.
I whispered, “This is how we got here. I’m pretty sure we’ve gone back in time, somehow. But we also moved things around.”
“I don’t think this is Marbury, dude.”
“I saw it in the book.”
“Fuck the book.”
I sighed. “Look.” My finger traced a path toward the lower right corner of the map. “Bass-Hove. Do you remember the battle there?”
“Honestly?”
I nodded.
“No. I don’t remember anything anymore.”
“Do you remember a guy named Henry Hewitt? He was the guy who took you and Griff across the desert, and everyone in our crew except us three got slaughtered there. Remember?”
Ben looked down at the fragments of map and shook his head.
I sighed, pointed again. “This is where Conner’s going. Maybe he’s already there, waiting for us.”