“You know,” Mr. Dalton whispered, “I dug a tunnel.”
Carter’s eyes snapped up as the old man paused, bracing himself against the Wall with one withered, paper-white hand. Mr. Dalton slowly raised his head, the skin beside his eyes crinkling as he squinted up at the moment where the cement began to curve in the colossal dome that was home to all the people of their enclosed city, New Jerusalem.
The little schooling they received in New Jerusalem was just enough that Carter had learned about the foundation of their enclosed city. Some seventy years ago, they’d been told, a massive Plague called “The Cough” raged through the world; men, women, and children of all ages began dying suddenly. Coughing, hacking, vomiting blood – no one was immune. Millions upon millions caught the disease just by breathing the same air – what had they called it? – an airborne path…pathogen? Death was certain, and it was nearly instantaneous. It only took a day.
And so, Carter had been told, the Wall was built, half-obscured within a mountain, as a way for those who weren’t yet infected to survive the terror. Surrounded with cement and bathed in sanitizers, they were told the Wall was meant to keep the disease at bay; left to fade slowly outside the Wall as the human race lived on in confinement. Carter himself had been born and raised within the Wall of New Jerusalem (his late grandmother had been one of the original occupants), and that made Mr. Dalton’s stories of a time before the cage-like city intrigue him more than any other. The way his face, weak and wrinkled, would animate; the way his aged eyes would glow with youth for those brief moments was entrancing to Carter.
“It’s no new project, of course,” Mr. Dalton continued after a moment, with the same air as when he was about to tell Carter an exciting new story. “I’ve been working on it since I was twelve, same as you.”
Twelve, Carter thought. That was how old Mr. Dalton had been when he was evacuated to New Jerusalem along with the other first inhabitants.
“I left my sister there, you know. I don’t think I’ve ever told you about her. Five years old, the sweetest little angel. Name was Mattie. My mother and father too. Both gone. I was angry, you understand, so I started digging. I didn’t care about sicknesses or death; I just wanted to see them again, you see. The cement, well it’s thick, and it was deeper than I’d thought at first. Eventually I realized rescuing them was futile, but it became like an addiction, you understand. I felt like I was making progress, taking a little time out of each year to dig down deeper – kept me sane, I think. But it seems it’s taken more time than I have. I need someone to take over for me when I’m gone, Carter. Even now, I’m too weak to pick up a spade; these trips out here are just about as much as I can handle. If anyone can help me out, it’s you.”
“Me?” Carter squeaked, drawing his knobby, bare knees to his chest and clutching hard. “Why?”
Carter knew why. He spent most of his time at the Wall. Even as a young child he had felt a draw to the outside world. Something within him soared whenever he rested a hand on the cement Wall, knowing that he was just that much closer to whatever lay on the other side.
Mr. Dalton let his offer hang in the air for another moment before his raspy, distant voice took on a more somber tone.
“Please,” he pleaded softly, the following sigh as heavy as the weight of the world.
Curiosity had always been Carter’s weakness. It was what kept him going back to the Wall each day, despite the rules against it. And it was what would keep him from walking away now.
“How much is there left to do?” Carter asked, standing up and brushing away the dirt that clung to his skin.
Mr. Dalton smiled and shook his head slightly. “Very little,” he assured Carter, “I can feel it.”
---
The tunnel was hidden underneath a stack of logs, completely unnoticed if one wasn’t looking for it.
Immediately following his arrival, Carter began his task, making his way down the section of the tunnel Mr. Dalton had already completed, armed with a shovel. For hours he breathed in the damp smell of the dirt and mud surrounding him on all sides, working away without rest at the wall of packed dirt ahead of him. He had made only a small amount of progress when he heard Mr. Dalton calling for him and with aching muscles, Carter had to make his way back to the surface. Mr. Dalton awaited him there, a glass of water in his hand.
“How’s it coming?” he asked quietly, squinting away from the harsh, industrial lights above them.
“Well enough,” Carter replied, wiping sweat from his brow. “I’ve just been hitting more dirt for hours now. I thought once I worked for a few hours it wouldn’t be much longer, but…”
“All in good time, Carter.” Mr. Dalton unfortunately did not live near the Wall, but rather somewhere closer to the center, so Carter was forced to dig horizontally until he reached the edge of the Wall.
There was a long silence. Mr. Dalton handed Carter the glass of water, which he guzzled gratefully.
“Do you really think its better out there?”
Mr. Dalton paused for a long moment at Carter’s sudden question, considering his words. His thin lips opened briefly only to snap closed once again. Heaving a deep sigh, he said, “I think anything’s better than being trapped here. You young folks don’t quite understand just how good it was.”
“Do you…do you ever wonder if anyone made it?”
Mr. Dalton slowly shook his head, a sad look crossing his face. “No. No, I don’t think so.”
“Then what do you think is out there? Anything? Or is it all like the teacher said…just wasteland?” Carter continued his questioning; finally voicing the questions he’d been asking himself for years.
Mr. Dalton turned back towards the house and reluctantly said, “I couldn’t tell you, Carter. But does that mean we shouldn’t try to find out?”
As Mr. Dalton made his way back inside, Carter looked back towards the hole, staring at it for a long moment before taking a deep breath, stretching his fingers, and picking up his shovel.
They had told him, they had told everyone, that it was barren. Wastelands, all of it. Maybe some plants at best. Carter had always had a mental image of a desert. What would he do, then, if all of that was true? If nothing was waiting beyond the Wall?
---
For weeks, he dug. Mr. Dalton was getting weaker by the day but promised that he would see the day that his dream came true.
“What’s that?” Carter had asked.
“I’m waiting for the day that you go down there and you don’t come back, because you’re out there, seeing the world. The real world. I’m waiting until then.”
And finally, that day came. Weeks after Carter had taken over Mr. Dalton’s task, he finally reached the Wall. In a blur of excitement, working off pure adrenaline, Carter dug with new vigor, digging at an upwards angle to reach the surface without burying himself with falling dirt until finally, his shovel met no resistance. Open air. Carter began climbing out of the tunnel, squeezing himself upwards through the passage that had become smaller in his haste, dragging himself up until he had almost reached the surface.
With one final haul, Carter dragged himself from the narrow hole, pulling himself up by the elbows. Panting there on hands and knees, his head hanging towards the ground below him, his heart skipped a beat. Grass. This discovery was massive within itself. They had been wrong. It wasn’t a desert! It wasn’t a wasteland! There was grass here, there was grass!
He felt the blades poking at his hands where they lay, the color brighter than anything he’d ever seen within the Wall. He let his hands run over the crisp, prickly plant that felt so different from the artificial grass within the Wall before slowly raising his head, anxious about this defining moment – what awaited him here; what had he just stepped into?
A whole new spectrum of colors surrounded him – deep reds, forest greens, bright yellows; shimmering gold. Trees, tall, short, thin, wide, dying and just sprouting, met him on each side. The pads of Carter’s fingers brushed the bark of a large one nearby, eager to discover for himself everything one could possibly know about this thing called a tree. A warm tingle dusted his cheek, and he turned towards the source.
The real sun, so different from the white light he had grown up with. Carter’s heart clenched as he stared at the massive star, feeling the warmth of its rays caress his pale skin like a mother’s gentle touch.
Carter’s eyes, wet with unleashed tears, took in the new world around him. It was all just as he’d imagined, and then some.
Behind him, the grey cement of the wall, camouflaged in the rock of the mountain surrounding it, looked lifeless and desolate in comparison.
This world had trees. This world had grass. This world had birds and a sun and breezes that didn’t come from the air conditioning.
The world he had left was as barren as they had made this one out to be.
“Hey!” some unfamiliar voice shouted from a distance, and Carter’s head whipped towards the noise.
A boy, around his age, with sandy blond hair and small, tan freckles dotting his nose approached. A boy. Someone was alive. Mr. Dalton had been right! All this time and everyone inside still thought it was barren! He needed to go tell Mr. Dalton, he knew, but there were more pressing matters. Like the living breathing boy drawing ever closer.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Carter knew he must have looked a mess, covered in sweat and dirt and grime, compared to the clean-looking boy.
“I’ve never met someone here before,” the blond boy stated simply. “Where are you from?”
“New Jerusalem,” Carter replied, his voice shaky. “I’m Carter”.
“I’ve never heard of that place. My name’s Timothy. Why are you all dirty?”
“I’ve…I’ve been digging.”
“Digging where?”
“Here. I…I came from the mountain.”
“Are you going to be back in time then?”
Uncomfortable and confused, baffled by just the sight of another living human, Carter let out a confused, “For what?”
“School! We have to be in school in an hour or else they’ll call our parents. My parents are at work right now so I came to play in the woods. They’ll get mad if the principal calls them and they found out I’ve been playing here again. Come on, you can come with me. I have gym clothes if you want them; yours are all messy.”
Carter silently obeyed, still staring at the other boy as though he had three heads. Timothy led him away from the immediate area of trees until they found Timothy’s school bag. Carter, upon Timothy’s insistence, changed into the dark green shorts with a clean white tee-shirt from the bag, disposing of his ruined clothing beside a tree.
Afterwards, Timothy led him down to something somewhat familiar to Carter: a town. The buildings were bigger and more colorful than those in New Jerusalem, but Carter could at least recognize the structure of the place.
Timothy, eager to show off his new friend from the mountain, pulled Carter along towards a large brick building – the schoolhouse. He raved about how excited he was to have made such a mysterious new acquaintance. Though Carter was hesitant, Timothy grabbed him by both hands and pulled him into the building, and Carter was surprised once again to find everyone inside alive and well, going about their day without paying any attention to the unfamiliar boy stumbling down the hall. Where was the decay, the ruin, the rubble? The death; the disease?
At one specific door, Timothy pivoted, and with their hands still linked, Carter went reeling after him.
“Teacher!” Timothy exclaimed gleefully.
All the students in the classroom immediately looked to Carter. A young, skinny, dirty boy getting dragged into a school classroom in clothes too baggy for his thin frame was sure to draw attention. An older woman at a large mahogany desk in the front of the room slowly looked up from her papers, eyes peering over her spectacles.
“I made a new friend!” Timothy continued. “His name is Carter and I found him in the woods. He lives inside the mountain! I told him he should come learn with us today.”
The teacher seemed to process this, confused, for a moment, before her eyes shot open wide.
“No,” she whispered. “That’s just a child’s story.” Seeming to gain control of herself, she turned to the unfamiliar boy in her classroom. “Carter, where are you from?” she asked seriously. The students looked at each other in confusion, wondering why the woman seemed so panicked.
“I live in New Jerusalem,” Carter answered, confused as well.
“Show me,” she demanded. “Class, stay in this room. Do not leave, do you understand? Don’t let anyone in or out. Timothy, with us.”
Leaving the rest of the class, the teacher, Timothy, and Carter made their way back to where Timothy had found him – just outside the Wall. The woman dragged Carter by the wrist, keeping her face averted as they walked. She ordered Timothy to walk behind them, upwind. All the while, the woman stared blankly ahead, as though she was seeing something the boys could not.
“Impossible,” she whispered. “It’s impossible.”
“What’s impossible? Please, what’s happening?” Carter begged.
“Why did you come? Tell me this, why are you here? Where did you come from!”
Flinching away from the harsh words of the maddened woman, Carter shrunk in on himself. “I came from New Jerusalem! They told us you’d all caught the Cough, they said there was nothing left! Mister Dalton…he…he told me it wasn’t true…that there were colors…so I came to see for myself! And you are! You’re alive! They told us you were dead but you’re alive!”
Steps away from the mountain, the woman stopped dead in her tracks. “They told you we were the ones that were sick?”
Behind them, Timothy let out a small, wet cough.