The Dying Fall
Chapter 24: Last Undersound
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Chapter 24: Last Undersound
Only the quiet clink and swish of dishes and cutlery in the washing up bowl could be heard as Carrie pushed open the kitchen door. Molly was standing at the sink, gloved hands in the water and head bowed as she scrubbed a plate. Carrie watched her for a moment, thinking of the soft, silky tone she’d heard coming from her mother’s lips twice now. The second time, the sound had pierced through the beating organ in Carrie’s chest, straight to her three-year-old self in a twilight memory, to a time when that sound had once lulled her to sleep. The memory had been lost under layers of resentment, anger, and pain, and had only resurfaced as Carrie had lain on Savannah’s bed, wrestling with her confused perspective of the past and her uncertainty over her present choices.
Watching her mother now was like seeing her for the very first time, and Carrie wished she had known this truer version of her better and earlier.
“Uhh…” Carrie said, shifting the strap of her bag on her shoulder, as her mother noticed her at the door. “I’m going to Meg’s now.”
Molly placed a plate on the draining rack before replying. “Okay. I’ll see you in the morning?”
“Yes, see you in the morning,” Carrie nodded. “Have a good evening.”
“You too,” Molly replied, turning back to the dishes.
On a sudden impulse, Carrie crossed the kitchen and kissed her mother’s cheek. “Bye, Mum.”
Then she turned and strode out of the kitchen to the front door. Leaving the house, Carrie crossed the road to Mrs Giles’s and rang the doorbell. She had to ring a second time before Mrs Giles opened the door, in thick socks and leg warmers that made her heels stick out of the back of her slippers, and a hot water bottle hugged under her cardigan.
“Can I come in for a minute?” Carrie asked.
Mrs Giles smiled, nodded and shuffled to the living room. Carrie followed her, shivering at the distinctly chilly air of the house. In the living room a feeble fire was flickering in the wood burner, only one side light was on, and a single candle stood ready on a small side table with a box of matches beside it. Carrie perched on one end of the sofa as Mrs Giles sat at the other, arms folded to her chest and eyes patiently watching Carrie’s slightly flushed face.
“Will you look after something for me?” Carrie asked, after a moment’s hesitation. “Just for this evening?”
She reached into her bag and took out Savannah’s journal, wrapped in an old scarf. It had occurred to Carrie that if she were caught and arrested by the Patrol this evening, the first thing they’d do was search her home, and she couldn’t afford for the journal to fall into the hands of the authorities. For a start, it would reveal her as Vannah’s creator, which on its own was enough to put her away for a very long time. For the same reason, she’d also taped the DEBUT bud, and the one with her personal copy of Vannah on it, to the inside cover of the journal. Secondly, Carrie hated the idea that the only piece of herself that Savannah had left behind might fall into the hands of those responsible for cutting her life so short. Most of all, Carrie didn’t want her mother finding out about the journal: not yet anyway. She fully intended to tell her mother about it soon, at the right time—but that wasn’t now.
“I’ll pick it up tomorrow,” Carrie promised as she handed the scarf-wrapped bundle to Mrs Giles and then got to her feet. Mrs Giles nodded and went to rise as well, but Carrie stopped her gently. “It’s okay—I can see myself out. Thank you.”
Stay safe—Mrs Giles signed.
Carrie let herself out of the house and then walked to Meg’s, her step a little lighter and excitement building in her chest at the anticipation of the night ahead of her.
The children were still up when Carrie arrived, so they played board games until Lights Out. Then candles were lit, sleepy little ones were tucked into bed, and Meg and Carrie played cards until Talissa began to snore softly in the armchair. Eventually, Carrie gently put her hand to Meg’s knee as she shuffled the cards again.
Undersound—Carrie signed.
A slightly pained, wistful look crossed Meg’s face. Is it safe?
“I think so.”
Meg smiled and her shoulders heaved in a silent sigh. She mimed that she’d leave a front door key under the mat and then walked Carrie to the hall. After Carrie had zipped up her jacket, Meg gave her a fierce hug and then turned back to the living room, as if she didn’t dare to watch her leave.
Carrie slipped out of the door and into the darkness of the street. There was already a firm frost on the ground and she had to dodge piles of snow as she strode hastily to the square. The night seemed quieter and blacker than usual, the cobnut tree nothing but a long-fingered shadow as she passed under it on her way to the theatre. The alley gate didn’t make a sound as Carrie pushed it open and when she reached the yard at the back of the theatre, it was so still and silent she thought she might have beaten Nano to it. But as she crept towards the rear doors of the theatre, a dim light lit up the alcove and she made out Nano’s form in the doorway.
“It’s bloody freezing,” he hissed.
“Better not hang around then,” Carrie said.
Nano didn’t argue with that and headed immediately for the bins by the yard wall. Carrie climbed onto them behind him and they were both soon on the other side of the wall and wending their way to the Distribution Centre. Carrie’s stomach went through its usual flips and dips as they ducked from shadow to shadow, sprinting across sleeping streets, the hollow echoes of their footsteps following them through the darkness. Her stomach squeezed even harder, sending a biley lump up her gullet, as they finally rounded a corner and the blocky form of the Distribution Centre stood out on the other side of the road. The main steel gates were shut but Nano led the way around the fence to a pedestrian gate which opened easily for them.
They ran across an expansive forecourt towards one of the smaller units on the site and around to the back of a concrete building, where they came to the gated entrance of a stairway that descended to a steel fire door below ground level.
Carrie grabbed Nano by his sleeve as he placed a hand on the gate. “Wait—” she said in a whisper.
Nano turned and gave her a questioning look.
“This is the last one,” Carrie said.
Nano’s forehead furrowed further.
“This is my last undersound,” Carrie explained, feeling like she was confessing a sin.
“Really?” Nano was typically cynical.
“If there was just me to think about,” Carrie said. “It would be different. But it’s not just me—I have to start thinking about my mum too. I need to be there for her—I want to be.”
Nano cocked his head to one side as if weighing how seriously to take her. To Carrie’s surprise, he didn’t try to persuade her from her decision.
“We’d better make this a good night then,” he said. “Are you still coming over tomorrow to work on the new track?”
“Of course.”
“All right then.” Nano turned back to the gate but paused and faced her again. “Can I ask you something? Would you still come over if I didn’t have the production equipment—if we couldn’t make a track and I didn’t have any buds?”
Carrie’s answer was blunt but sure: “Yes. Would you still have invited me over if Savannah hadn’t asked you to look out for me?”
Nano raised his eyebrows. “If Savannah wasn’t your sister?” He shrugged. “I’d probably have asked you sooner.” A smile curled at the corner of his mouth and he held out his hand to her.
Carrie took it and they went through the gate and down the stairway to the steel fire door. There was a camera over the door, and, after Nano had directed a signal at it, they were let inside. The fire door must have been soundproofed as it opened straight onto the boom of the undersound. Another figure was hurrying out as Carrie and Nano went in, their chin tucked into their collar, as if they didn’t want to be seen. Carrie recognised Krev Angelo and he caught her eye as he brushed past her.
The space under the building—a disused packing and storage space—was vast but warmly packed with adrenaline-spiked bodies moving energetically under the bright lights. As they began pushing through the dancers to the edge of the crowd, Carrie noticed steel shelving, identical to the shelves in Nano’s basement, fixed to the walls, and stacks of empty crates lined three-deep in front of them. Strobing lights turned the air blue and pink, and sent a ripple of chaotic patterns over the undersounders that swelled around the central mixer’s platform, where, next to the sound desk, a large form was draped in a dust sheet. Carrie nudged Nano and pointed it out to him as they reached the bar.
“Is that…?” she began breathlessly.
“Bloody Earth!” Nano swore as he stared at the platform. “Dryce has got hold of a piano.”
Carrie shivered as she remembered the purity of sound that had sung around Mrs Lewis’s book trove. “Do you think someone’s going to play it?” she asked.
“I bloody hope so.”
Carrie swore softly to herself. Just when she’d decided to give up the undersound…
“Are you dealing tonight?” Carrie asked Nano as the barman handed them their drinks.
“Just for a bit,” Nano replied. “I didn’t bring much with me, so I should be able to shift what I’ve got pretty quickly. I’ll come and find you when I’m done.”
Carrie gave him a thumbs up and then wriggled her way into the swaying mass of dancers to let the tide of movement take her in its current. She spotted Rox almost immediately, in the middle of the floor, and worked her way towards her. Rox saw her and reached out a hand to pull her out of the tide.
“Carrie!” she cried in Carrie’s ear, slipping her arm around her waist as her own hips kept swinging to the music. “It’s been forever! Did you come with Nano?”
“Yes,” Carrie replied, nodding her head too, in case her bellowed answer was lost on the wave of music.
“Got any more songs for me to sing yet?”
Carrie jerked her shoulders and shook her head. She didn’t want to think about that stuff tonight. She just wanted to soak herself in this one, last night—let the music seep into her marrow and tsunami through her synapses until it had washed out all thoughts or feelings other than the ones it chose to elevate.
And it was easy to do. The world outside the undersound was forgotten and for a blissful, indefinite moment, all that existed was the changing rhythm, the bass-heavy air and a harmony of melded melodies, moving each listener separately but together in a bright bubble of shared, personal ecstasy. Any sense of time dissipated so that it seemed both an age and a second before Nano squeezed into the space next to Carrie with a smile. And it could have been hours or merely minutes later when the volume of the music suddenly dropped and Gubbs’s voice came over the sound system.
“Undersounders!” he addressed the crowd, with a conspiratorial tone. “To celebrate the reopening of this soundclub, we have something very special for you!”
The crowd became still and all eyes turned towards the platform as a figure stepped up onto it and walked towards where two members of the security team were lifting the dust sheet from a small, upright piano. The figure, a short, slight man in black-framed glasses, an old hoody and baggy jeans, lifted the lid of the piano and sat down on the stool as his fingers silently caressed the keys.
As the crowd shuffled forward a little, Carrie glanced down and saw her feet moving over some sort of spray-painted artwork on the floor that spread away in every direction around her. For a second, she began to wonder if this was more Dextinction graffiti, but then a sound rang through the undersound, as clear and clean as sunlight: a single note from the piano. The note pierced straight through Carrie’s breast bone and caught hold of her breath, transfixing her as the pianist began to pluck a familiar folk tune from the keys. Around her, no one spoke and a collective breath was held as first one, and then a second, and then a third tune poured like the sweetest honey from the instrument on the platform. Even with her eyes fixed on the man at the piano and her body spellbound, Carrie could sense the response of every other listener in the room, as if they were all connectors on a circuit board, passing a single electric current between them.
As the first bar of the fourth song began, Carrie’s hand met Nano’s and her pulse pounded a little harder as she recognised Vannah’s melody stroked out on the ivory keys.
And then the stillness was broken as there came a panicked shout from the back of the undersound.
“Patrol! Patrol!”
The piano fell silent and Carrie, along with every other body on the floor, spun around in the direction of the shout.
“The Patrol are—”
The voice was drowned out by a shuddering thud on the fire door they’d come in by. It was followed by another thud, which in turn was echoed by a solid, slow bang-bang-bang that began on another fire door on the other side of the undersound, each strike echoing with devastating clarity through the bones of very person caught inside the underground hall.
Next weekend: Chapter 25—Raid
The Dying Fall: Index
Welcome to the index page of The Dying Fall. Please scroll down to find links to each published chapter. If you need any help, let me know via the message button at the bottom of the page.
Author’s Notes:
We’re nearing the end now… four more chapters to go.
Chapter 25: Raid, coming next weekend.
PJ
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