Sky stepped forward, angrily wiping tears from her cheeks.
“Otto is right,” she said, steeling her face into the hard expression she’d been using to protect her this whole time. “We all knew this was going to be dangerous. Jo knew what she let herself in for. She wasn’t stupid.”
The tunnel they found themselves in now was much smaller than the sewer. The height wasn’t much taller than Otto and if the big man stretched his hands out either side of him, he could touch both walls. Obviously man-made, the passageway had been built from red brick and curved overhead. These were the tunnels the workers used to move between the main tunnels if they were flooded.
“So where do we go now?” Tom asked. Although could barely believe he’d watched someone die—he’d never seen anyone die before—he was aware of time running out. He was only down here for one reason—David.
Samantha straightened, pulling herself together. “If the other tunnel is flooded,” she asked, “how do we get to where we need to be?”
Otto turned to their navigator. “Sky, is there a way? We need to get down without coming into contact with the water.”
“It won’t stay electrified,” Billy said. “The current will blow eventually.”
Otto scowled at him, despite his useful piece of information.
What does he have against him? Tom wondered. What does he think has happened that is so bad?
Tom remembered how Otto interacted with Billy in the cavern, how he’d clapped him on the back and they’d laughed together. Only since Billy had thrown himself in the water did Otto have a problem. Tom couldn’t understand it. Billy had risked his own life to protect the rest of them and Otto was treating him like shit.
“There are back tunnels, even smaller than these,” said Sky. “We’ll need to drop down through those and then we’ll be in the other tunnels.”
Tom frowned. “What ‘other’ tunnels?”
Her reply chilled him.
“The ones man didn’t make.”
Chapter 14
DAVID LAY IN bed, his sheets damp and cold with his own sweat. The material clung to his skin and he couldn’t get comfortable. A massive weight seemed to be pressing down on his body, preventing him from moving.
“Mum!” he called out, wanting her help. Then he realised his mouth hadn’t moved. The words had only formed in his head, his body too weak to comply.
The sickness had taken over and become a part of him, or worse, he’d become part of it. It seemed to be feeding from him and making itself stronger.
Fading in and out of consciousness, he’d lost track of whether it was day or night. Sometimes, he became aware of the hospital room around him, of the bed beneath him, and of his mother’s cool hand against his forehead. But these periods only made up only tiny snatches of time and he had no idea how much time passed between the moments of lucidity or even how long they lasted.
One time, he woke up with the doctor in the room, speaking with his mother.
“We think he has a secondary infection,” the consultant said. “We’ve run numerous tests, but we can’t seem to isolate the cause.”
Secondary infection.
David knew what that meant; it was the thing the doctors had been trying to avoid by not allowing his friends to visit after chemotherapy in case they brought in germs with them. Yes, he knew what those words meant; it meant he didn’t just have the cancer to worry about now. Something else was making him sick and, by the tone of the doctor and the strangled sob from his mother, he understood how serious his condition had become.
This part he was aware of, this and a few other snippets of the real world. For the most part, however, David existed somewhere else entirely.
Shadows surrounded him like a cushion of storm clouds. He floated in the darkness, all sense of pain gone.
Voices whispered inside his head, layered on top of each other. Some of them were far away, but some were so close they seemed to be whispering with their mouths pressed right up against his ear.
He didn’t hear the voices when he was awake and aware of the hospital room, but as soon as he faded to black, they came back again. His mother would tell him he was dreaming, but she’d be wrong.
This wasn’t a dream.
This place he went to was real.
Beneath those whispers lay something else, some large and ancient dark mass that shifted and seethed beneath him. The darkness called to him, using the whispers of all the others to reach him. David didn’t want to go, he wanted to stay in the room in the light, with his mother, but he had no choice.
The sickness had come to take him.
In a way, finally giving in was a relief. He’d been fighting for so long and he was exhausted. He wanted for it all just to stop; for all the pain, exhaustion and sickness to stop.
He would miss his mother and he already missed his father. He would miss the taste of chocolate ice cream, and their Friday evening ritual of fish and chips in front of the television. He would miss going to the beach with his family in the summer and tasting salt on his skin, and that first, breath-snatching, headlong rush into the ice-cold water. He’d miss his night-night; the soft feel of the blanket against his skin and its familiar, comforting smell.
David would miss all those things. He wanted to fight for them; he just didn’t think he had any more fight left in him.
* * *
SOMETHING WAS WRONG with Otto and the big man knew it.
The moment he’d reached down and grabbed Jo’s hand, something changed inside of him. He sensed it pass between them, like a frisson of electricity.
He could easily explain the sensation away. The feeling had simply been caused by sparks of electricity racing through the water, charging up the metal ladder and through Jo’s body to her fingertips.
Yes, it could easily be explained away in theory and Otto wanted to do exactly that.
But the feeling lingered, a strange after effect he wanted to blame on shock, but couldn’t quite seem to convince himself of. Receiving an electric shock might have affected the neurones in his brain. After all, the human body worked through tiny charges of electricity, so it only made sense that he wouldn’t be himself.
Except the weird sensation was getting worse by the minute. He felt as though he were somehow outside of his body looking down. His mind didn’t seem to be attached to his body, even though he was still capable of putting one foot in front of the other, of opening his mouth to speak, and could feel cold against his skin.
Bugs’ sharp claws dug into his neck as the animal scurried from one shoulder to the other and back again. Its whiskers twitched, tickling Otto’s skin, and its tail flicked nervously like an anxious cat.
Otto reached up a hand to stroke the rat’s fur, murmuring “Ssshh” and “There boy” to try to placate his pet, but if anything his reassurances agitated the animal further. His fingers touched the smooth, cool skin of his friend’s ears and he tried to smooth them, but the rat turned and nipped at the soft skin between Otto’s fingers, a warning to stop.
He snatched back his hand and the rat settled back down again. Otto bit the inside of his mouth and tasted the copper tang of blood, trying to suppress the need to scream building inside of him. Somehow, the rejection of his pet was the worst of all, his loyal and constant companion no longer so loyal.
Something was wrong.
He couldn’t say anything to the others. He knew what they’d think.
The Shadows.
No, there must be another explanation.
Otto kept walking, his head down. His emotions were torn between the desperate need to remain in denial and the need to protect his people.
Tom was walking right behind Otto. As Otto slowed, Tom stepped on the back of his heels and the two men stumbled together. Tom fell, but managed to keep his balance, placing his palms on Otto’s broad back.
“Sorry, mate,” Tom said, but Otto ignored him and kept walking.
“Are you okay?” Tom called after him.
>
Otto kept walking, like a robot or a soldier, marching on. Lost in his thoughts, he tried to figure out what went wrong and how he could make it better.
He turned over the events of the last few hours, replaying them in his mind. His thoughts kept running back to one thing, to one person.
Billy.
In his mind’s eye, he saw Billy jumping into the black reservoir water, sacrificing himself so the others could escape. He saw the Shadows slither after him, slipping into the water as quickly and smoothly as a crocodile entering a swamp. He saw the strange flipping motion of the Shadows in the water, how it propelled itself forward, strange and yet agile, moving faster than any floundering, fully-clothed man in water.
It could have killed Billy if it wanted to.
The Shadows could have wrapped itself around Billy, prevented him from surfacing. It could have filled his head with those terrible whispers, forced his mind to forget to even try to swim. But it had let him live. Why?
Because he was a carrier, that was why.
A rage built up inside of Otto.
He could try to turn to the others, tell them he thought he was infected. Tell them Jo had been too and that he thought Billy responsible. But he’d witnessed their reaction earlier. Billy was their friend. They would never believe him.
How much longer did he have before this thing took over completely, before he no longer had any control over himself? Minutes? Hours?
He needed to think of something else and do so before Billy infected the rest of them. It only took one touch—skin on skin. Otto was only too aware of Samantha, walking in front of Billy. Billy only had to reach out and touch Samantha’s smooth, long neck.
Did Billy even realise what he was doing? Was being a carrier the same as being infected? Did he feel its presence the same way as Otto or was he completely unaware? Was there a possibility he did not realise how his actions were being controlled, how he was being manipulated to spread the Shadows? Perhaps he could reason with Billy, make him see what was happening and tell him to stay away from them all.
No, it was impossible. Even if Billy could be reasoned with, the Shadows couldn’t be.
And the Shadows were in control.
* * *
JO’S DEATH HAD left a huge, gaping hole within the group.
It wasn’t just the loss of her sheer size that created the vacuum, but her easy humour and no-bullshit attitude. And they were all scared. Before Jo had died, the prospect of not surviving was more a terrifying theory than anything else, but now the threat was more than real.
A subdued and nervous atmosphere surrounded the group as they trudged through the much smaller tunnels. Forced to walk single file, Sky led with Billy at the rear. They seemed to have been walking for hours and no one dared to ask how much extra time the flooded tunnels had added to their journey.
To Tom, time was running out.
David felt closer to him now than he ever had. Tom sensed his presence almost as though his son walked along beside him. He didn’t know if David’s presence was real or something being conjured up by his guilty mind, but he took strength from the sensation and used it to stop his legs from buckling under him.
He prayed his son was all right.
When David had been a tiny baby, Tom used to check on him constantly during the night and pretty much any time the boy slept. He’d been so afraid that this tiny person would stop breathing and his life would change forever. Even when David had grown bigger and stronger, when he had started to walk and developed his own likes and dislikes, even then Tom had been filled with fear. If he woke up in the morning without being woken by the boy’s cries or chattering, the stupid, irrational fear that David had died in his sleep clutched at his heart.
Now the fear was with him constantly.
Tom believed a lack of control created the fear, the idea that no matter what he did or how he reacted, some other more powerful force would make the decision of whether his child lived or died. He’d been plagued by that fear when David was strong and healthy, so what chance did he have now?
He knew he would never be able to control his own future, no one had that power, but right now he hated having so many other people telling him what to do. Everyone else seemed more in control of his life than he was.
Up ahead, Sky stopped in the small tunnel.
She faced the curved wall of the tunnel, her hands splayed, feeling her way around in the dim torchlight. An archway had been bricked up in a different coloured material—grey breezeblock as opposed to red brick—and she started to kick at the wall with her small foot.
“Piece of shit,” she spat when none of the blocks refused to budge.
Otto did nothing to help, so Tom squeezed around him and started kicking the bricks with his sole. The blocks were badly cemented, a rushed job, and he felt them shift beneath the impact.
He kicked once, twice, three times, and the bricks moved.
He heard the concrete crumbling from the wall, chunks falling to the ground on the other side.
Otto stood resolutely to one side, making no move to help. Billy pushed past Samantha. Tom saw Otto flinch, but even as Billy helped Tom kick, the big man made no move to help.
“I’ve never been this way,” Sky said, stepping aside, allowing the men to kick the wall down. “I hope I’ve got my bearings right. I think it will lead to maintenance pipes for the reservoir, but I can’t be sure.”
Tom shook his head in amazement. “This place is like a maze.”
Several of the breezeblocks fell through and Tom leant through with his torch. Things scuttled across the walls, out of the light—things with hard, black bodies and sharp, jointed legs. A shiver ran down Tom’s spine and he tried not to think about them.
The space was little more than a tube. They would need to get on their hands and knees and crawl through.
Billy started pulling more of the breezeblocks away, widening the hole.
“You’re sure you know where this goes?” Tom asked.
Sky gave him the same look she seemed to favour only for him. “No. Didn’t I say I’ve not been this way before? Strangely enough, I haven’t experienced the whole ‘flooded and electrified tunnel’ thing before.”
Tom put his hands up in defence. “Okay, okay. I only asked.”
She took a slow, deep breath in through her nose as if restraining her emotions before having to speak to him again. “Most of these tunnels are joined together by crawl spaces that are used if a tunnel collapsed or got blocked for some reason. Obviously, a flood would count as one of those reasons.”
Tom nodded and Sky continued.
“The tunnels are joined so if people get trapped at a lower level, they’ve got some way of getting back to the top again.”
“But don’t we want to head down?”
Again she gave him an exasperated look. “Tunnels aren’t one way—you can go up as well as down.”
Even he couldn’t blame Sky for being annoyed with him at that stupid comment. It wasn’t one of his finer moments.
Samantha nudged him out of the way, edging around him, and peered into the dark hole they had created. “We’ve really got to go in there?” she said, her voice shaking with nerves.
Sky turned to Samantha and for the first time Tom saw some compassion in her eyes.
“You don’t have to, Samantha. This isn’t your fight; you can turn around and go back if you want.”
She gave a small laugh and Tom finally understood how scared she was.
“On my own?”
Tom wanted to offer to take her back, wanted it so desperately the words sat on the end of his tongue, willing themselves to come out. But he couldn’t. His commitment was only to one person in this whole thing; he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. Yet still he felt responsible. Samantha wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t gotten so involved with David and his family. He had to remind himself that Samantha was already involved in this thing before David even got sick.
“S
omeone could go back with you” he managed. “What about Billy?”
Billy said nothing, but Samantha shook her head. “I’m not going to be responsible for breaking up the group. I came along to try to help, not ruin this for everyone else.”
Tom looked at Otto, half-expecting him to say something encouraging about Billy going back, considering he had tried to leave him behind only a couple of hours earlier, but Otto still said nothing. Tom frowned. Jo’s death seemed to have affected him worse than anyone else. Ever since it happened, he’d been sullen and moody. Tom could only guess he held himself responsible for her death, that he was chastising himself for not pulling her out of the water a moment sooner or that he should have paid more attention and noticed when she had gone back to Billy. The big man seemed defeated and the air of dictatorship that had left such a bad taste in Tom’s mouth earlier had completely disappeared.
He noticed something else strange about the big man; Bugs was missing. The animal that had been such a constant, if not pleasant, feature on Otto’s shoulder was nowhere to be seen.
Samantha stepped back from the hole. “I’m just not good with tight spaces.” She laughed nervously, considering what they had already been through.
“You’ll be okay,” Sky told her. “Otto and I will be out front and Tom and Billy will be behind you. We won’t let anything happen to you.”
Billy had been lurking in the background until this point. He was another person who seemed to have been knocked by Jo’s sudden death, but now he stepped forward.
“How long will it take until we are back in the sewer tunnels?” he asked.
Sky shrugged. “I’d like to say an hour, but I really don’t know. Could be more, could be a lot less.”
“An hour?” Samantha’s hushed voice echoed everyone’s thoughts. Even ten minutes crawling through those claustrophobic tunnels would feel like too long.
“And there is no other way?” asked Billy.
“Not that I know of. But we’ll never get where we need to be if we stick to these tunnels. We need to go deeper. If we stay in these, we’re just going to come right out the other end.”
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