ToxicHaven by Gabriella Bradley Page A

appeared from beneath the slag. She rushed over and dropped to her knees, digging. It was Josias. He gasped and spat grey sludge from his mouth when she brushed the filthy material from his face. “That was some fall. Where’s Isan?” he asked after digging himself out and getting his breath back.
    “I don’t know. He fell before me, right after the door descended, so his fall was much higher than ours.”
    “Oh, my God! I hope he isn’t buried under that enormous pile.” Josias nodded toward the stinking mound.
    They rushed to the mountain of slag and were about to start digging when they heard a shout to the left. Following Isan’s voice, they scrambled in that direction.
    “Look, a lake,” Haven said. “It’s got some kind of crude wooden walkway built over it that leads to the slag pile. There’s wooden stairs down to the community at the foot of it.” 
    They reached what looked like a cliff’s edge. The water was about three feet below the flat rock surface they had stopped on. They saw Isan swimming toward shore. He tried to climb onto the edge but kept sliding back into the water. Haven and Josias hurried to him, lay flat on their stomachs and pulled him out.
    “That water’s like ice,” he said, shivering, his skin a bluish tint.
    “Probably runoff from the snow on the mountains. We’d better start crossing that bridge over to the other side. Looks like that’s the only way to get to civilization. You going to be okay until we get there?” she asked Isan.
    Isan looked dubious. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Let’s get going. By the way, that water is salty as hell. Couldn’t be from the mountains, unless there’s a sea up there.”
    “It must connect to an ocean somewhere,” Haven said, observing Isan. His teeth chattered and she knew he was freezing cold, but there was no way they could help him. They had no extra clothing, no warm soup, no blankets. Every few minutes, they stopped and sandwiched him between their bodies to give him some warmth. It was all they could do and it helped a bit, but also caused Haven and Josias to get wet and cold, though Haven warmed up fast again thanks to her body temp control enhancement. For the first time in her life, she was glad she had all her special abilities.
    On the bridge, they had to tread with caution. Several planks were rotten. Haven wondered if the settlers even used the makeshift bridge to get to the slag dumps. “Maybe they don’t use the slag,” she commented while avoiding two broken planks. “There seems to be an awful lot of it.”
    “You could be right. How could they move the material across this? It would collapse in seconds,” Josias said.
    Haven glanced worriedly at Isan. His skin was blue. The cold didn’t bother her that much. One of her enhancements controlled her body temperature. Obviously, the men didn’t have that one. If they didn’t get Isan indoors soon, hypothermia would set in.
    At one point, the supports that held the walkway creaked suspiciously. They hurried as fast as they could.
    Once they raced down the rickety stairs, they stood on rough ground. Haven scanned their surroundings. The land was sparsely vegetated. There was a scattering of trees, their roots exposed above ground and the branches reaching down to the soil like an umbrella. Alien vegetation had never ceased to fascinate her. The settlement wasn’t too far away. They hurried across the almost barren land toward the houses. To the side of the settlement, she saw several large greenhouses. She pointed at them. “That answers one question.”
    They headed for the first house that looked as if it was built by a mud-smith. The bricks were of crushed rock and clay. It didn’t surprise her. The planet’s soil was as hard as rock. Glancing at the other houses, she noticed they were all similar. They all had thatched roofs and smoke spiraled from mud-brick chimneys. She wondered where they found the materials and where they lived while they were building