Uglies

"Watch this," Shay said. She pulled a tool from her backpack, an arm-length pole that telescoped out almost to Tally's height. Shay twisted one end, and four short struts unfolded from the other like the ribs of an umbrella. "It's called a powerjack, and it can move just about anything."

Shay twisted the handle again, and the ribs retracted. Then she thrust one end of the jack under a cross-tie. With another twist of her wrist, the pole began to shudder, and a groaning sound came from the wood. Shay's feet slipped backward, but she leaned her weight into the pole, keeping it wedged under the cross-tie. Slowly, the ancient wood began to rise, tearing free from plants and earth, bending the rail that lay across it.

Tally saw the struts of the powerjack unfolding underneath the tie, gradually forcing it up, the rail above begi

Shay gri

"Let me try," Tally said, holding out her hand, eyes wide.

Shay laughed and pulled another powerjack from her backpack. "Take that tie there, while I keep this one up."

The powerjack was heavier than it looked, but its controls were simple. Tally pulled it open and jammed it under the tie that Shay had indicated. She turned the handle slowly, until the jack started to shudder in her hands.

The wood began to shift, the stresses of metal and earth twisting in her hands. Vines tore from the ground, and Tally could feel their complaints through the soles of her shoes, like a distant earthquake rumbling. A metal shriek filled the air as the rail began to bend, pulling free of vegetation and the rusty spikes that had held it down for centuries. Finally, the jack had opened to its full extent, the rail still only half-free from its ancient bonds. She and Shay struggled to pull their jacks out.

"Having fun?" Shay asked, wiping sweat from her brow.

Tally nodded, gri

David

A few hours later, a pile of scrap metal stood in one corner of the clearing. Each segment of rail took an hour to get free, and required all six of them to carry. The railroad ties sat in another pile; at least all the Smokies' wood didn't come from live trees. Tally couldn't believe how much they had salvaged, literally tearing the track from the forest's grasp.

She also couldn't believe her hands. They were red and raw, screaming with pain and covered with blisters.

"Looks pretty bad," David said, glancing over Tally's shoulder as she stared at them in amazement.

"Feels pretty bad," she said. "But I didn't notice until just now."

David laughed. "Hard work's a good distraction. But maybe you should take a break. I was just about to scout up the line for another spot to salvage. Want to come?"

"Sure," she said gratefully. The thought of picking up the powerjack again made her hands throb.

Leaving the others at the clearing, they hoverboarded up and over the gnarled trees, following the barely visible track below into dense forest. David rode low in the canopy, gracefully avoiding branches and vines as if this were a familiar slalom course. Tally noticed that, like his shoes, his clothes were all handmade. City clothing only used seams and stitching for decoration, but David's jacket seemed to be cut together from a dozen patches of leather, all different shades and shapes. Its patchwork appearance reminded her of Frankenstein's monster, which led to a terrible thought.

What if it were made of real leather, like in the olden days? Skins.

She shuddered. He couldn't be wearing a bunch of dead animals. They weren't savages here. And she had to admit that the coat fit him well, the leather following the line of his shoulders like an old friend. And it fended off the whips of branches better than her microfiber dorm jacket.

David slowed as they came into a clearing, and Tally saw that they had reached a wall of solid rock.

"That's weird," she said. The railroad track seemed to plunge straight into the mountain, disappearing into a pile of boulders.

"The Rusties were serious about straight lines," David said. "When they built rails, they didn't like to go around stuff."

"So they just went through?"

David nodded. "Yeah. This used to be a tu

"Do you think there was anyone…inside? When it happened, I mean."

"Probably not. But you never know. There could be a whole trainload of Rusty skeletons in there."

Tally swallowed, trying to imagine whatever was in there, 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 boulders collapsing if we start prying rails up."

"They look pretty solid."

"Oh, yeah? Check this out," David said. He stepped off his board onto a boulder, and deftly climbed to a spot that lay shadowed in the setting sun.

Tally angled her board closer and jumped onto a large rock next to David. When her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw that a long space extended back between the boulders.

David crawled inside, his feet disappearing into the darkness.

"Come on," his voice called.

"Um, there isn't really a trainload of dead Rusties in there, 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 settling over her.

A light flicked on ahead. She could see David sitting up in a small space, a flashlight glowing in his hand.

She pulled herself in and took a seat next to him on a flat bit of rock. Giant shapes were stacked above them. "So the tu

"Not at all. The rock cracked into pieces, some big and some small." David pointed the flashlight down through a chink between where they sat. Tally squinted into the darkness and saw a much bigger open space below. A glint of metal 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 track just waiting for us."

"Just a hundred tons of rock in the way, is all."

He nodded. "Yeah, but it would be worth it." He pointed the flashlight upward at his face, making himself hideous. "No one's been down there for hundreds of years."

"Great." Tally's skin tingled, her eyes picking out the dark fissures all around them.

Maybe no human beings had been there for a long time, but lots of things liked to live in cool, dark caves.

"I keep thinking," David said, "the whole thing might tumble open if we could just move the exact right boulder…."

"And not the exact wrong one, the one that makes the whole thing crush us?"

David laughed and pointed the flashlight so that it lit her face rather than his. "I thought you might say that."

Tally peered through the darkness, trying to make out his expression. "What do you mean?"

"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 of snakes or bats or long-dead Rusties.

She wondered if David had somehow already figured out she was a spy. "No, I guess I'm not sure," she said evenly.