A few hours later, a pile of scrap metal stood in one cornerof the clearing. Each segment of rail took an hour to getfree, and required all six of them to carry. The railroad tiessat in another pile; at least all the Smokies’ wood didn’tcome from live trees. Tally couldn’t believe how much theyhad salvaged, literally tearing the track from the forest’sgrasp.
She also couldn’t believe her hands. They were red andraw, screaming with pain and covered with blisters.
“Looks pretty bad,” David said, glancing over Tally’sshoulder as she stared at them in amazement.
“Feels pretty bad,” she said. “But I didn’t notice untiljust now.”
David laughed. “Hard work’s a good distraction. Butmaybe you should take a break. I was just about to scout upthe line for another spot to salvage. Want to come?”
“Sure,” she said gratefully. The thought of picking upthe powerjack again made her hands throb.
Leaving the others at the clearing, they hoverboardedup and over the gnarled trees, following the barely visibletrack below into dense forest. David rode low in the canopy,gracefully avoiding branches and vines as if this were afamiliar slalom course. Tally noticed that, like his shoes, hisclothes were all handmade. City clothing only used seamsand stitching for decoration, but David’s jacket seemed tobe cut together from a dozen patches of leather, all differentshades and shapes. Its patchwork appearance reminded herof Frankenstein’s monster, which led to a terrible thought.
What if it were made of real leather, like in the oldendays? Skins.
She shuddered. He couldn’t be wearing a bunch ofdead animals. They weren’t savages here. And she had toadmit that the coat fit him well, the leather following theline of his shoulders like an old friend. And it fended off thewhips of branches better than her microfiber dorm jacket.
David slowed as they came into a clearing, and Tally sawthat they had reached a wall of solid rock. “That’s weird,” shesaid. The railroad track seemed to plunge straight into themountain, disappearing into a pile of boulders.
“The Rusties were serious about straight lines,” Davidsaid. “When they built rails, they didn’t like to go aroundstuff.”
“So they just went through?”
David nodded. “Yeah. This used to be a tunnel, cutright into the mountain. It must have collapsed sometimeafter the Rusty panic.”
UGLIES 213“Do you think there was anyone . . . inside? When ithappened, I mean.”
“Probably not. But you never know. There could be awhole trainload of Rusty skeletons in there.”
Tally swallowed, trying to imagine whatever was inthere, flattened and buried for centuries in the dark.
“The forest’s a lot clearer around here,” David said.
“Easier to work through. I’m just worried about these boulderscollapsing if we start prying rails up.”
“They look pretty solid.”
“Oh, yeah? Check this out,” David said. He stepped offhis board onto a boulder, and deftly climbed to a spot thatlay shadowed in the setting sun.
Tally angled her board closer and jumped onto a largerock next to David. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness,she saw that a long space extended back between theboulders. David crawled inside, his feet disappearing intothe darkness.
“Come on,” his voice called.
“Um, there isn’t really a trainload of dead Rusties inthere, right?”
“Not that I’ve found. But today might be our lucky day.”
Tally rolled her eyes and lowered herself onto her belly.
She crawled inside, the cool weight of the rocks settlingover her.
A light flicked on ahead. She could see David sitting upin a small space, a flashlight glowing in his hand. She pulled214 Scott Westerfeldherself in and took a seat next to him on a flat bit of rock.
Giant shapes were stacked above them. “So the tunnel didn’tcollapse completely.”
“Not at all. The rock cracked into pieces, some big andsome small.” David pointed the flashlight down through achink between where they sat. Tally squinted into the darknessand saw a much bigger open space below. A glint ofmetal revealed a segment of track.
“Just think. If we could get down there,” David said,“we wouldn’t have to pull up all those vines. All that trackjust waiting for us.”
“Just a hundred tons of rock in the way, is all.”
He nodded. “Yeah, but it would be worth it.” Hepointed the flashlight upward at his face, making himselfhideous. “No one’s been down there for hundreds of years.”
“Great.” Tally’s skin tingled, her eyes picking out thedark fissures all around them. Maybe no human beings hadbeen there for a long time, but lots of things liked to live incool, dark caves.
“I keep thinking,” David said, “the whole thing mighttumble open if we could just move the exact right boulder. . . .”
“And not the exact wrong one, the one that makes thewhole thing crush us?”
David laughed and pointed the flashlight so that it lither face rather than his. “I thought you might say that.”
Tally peered through the darkness, trying to make outhis expression. “What do you mean?”
UGLIES 215“I can see that you’re struggling with this.”
“Struggling? With what?”
“Being here in the Smoke. You’re not sure about it all.”
Tally’s skin tingled again, but not from the thought ofsna............