Drake was suddenly brought back to wakefulness as a cell phone began vibrating in the bag on the passenger seat.
Drenched in a cold sweat, it took him a few moments to remember where he was. The car engine was still running, and as he listened he realized he’d missed the rest of the Ultra Bug report.
“Get your act together,” he growled, furious with himself. He was still swearing as he checked the phones inside the bag until he found the one that was buzzing. He pulled it out and answered it, turning off the ignition with the other hand to silence the radio.
“Hello,” he said, rubbing his face roughly to force himself fully awake.
A woman spoke, although she didn’t identify herself. “Hello?”
“Yes,” Drake said.
“I’m calling on behalf of—”
“No names,” Drake interrupted sharply. “I know who you are. Why isn’t he calling me himself?”
The voice was sad, hollow. “He’s … he’s unavailable.”
“Oh dear God,” Drake exclaimed, knowing exactly what the woman’s words really meant. His contact was either dead or missing. So far, not a single person he’d got in touch with from his old cell was still active. His network had been dismantled.
The woman’s voice became harder and more emphatic. “And don’t go to the Hill Station.”
“Why?” Drake asked, clenching the phone so hard that the plastic casing creaked.
“It’s off-line,” she said, then hung up.
Drake looked at the phone for several moments, at the small bars on the display that fluctuated with the strength of the signal. Then he flipped the phone over and removed the back, sliding out the SIM card. As he got out of the car, he dropped the card onto the pavement and ground the heel of his boot into it. He scanned the road and the area of open parkland as he went to the tailgate and opened it. From a black case he took out a handgun, quickly tucking it into the back of his waistband. Then he locked the car and strode across to Preacher’s Hill. As he made his way up the slope, keeping behind the few straggly bushes, his boots left prints in the frosty grass.
Once on higher ground, he paused to survey the area again, his eyes finally settling on his destination. The Hill Station, as it had been known to the members of his network, was a large Edwardian house at the end of a row of similar properties. Drake left the grassy slope and returned to the road. Although he’d just received an unequivocal message from the caller, he had to see it for himself. But he had to be careful — they might be watching. So he walked straight past the house, apparently giving it only a casual glance. It was sufficient for him to take in the barricade across the entrance to the driveway and the sign that read KEEP OUT — STRUCTURE UNSAFE, and to see that all the ground-floor windows had been boarded up. He continued along the street for several houses, then glanced at his wrist-watch as if he were late for something, and doubled back.
Upon reaching the entrance to the driveway, he effortlessly vaulted the red-and-white-striped barrier. He kept close to an overgrown box hedge along the side of the gravel drive, making for the side of the house. As he came to the entrance to the basement, he saw there was no longer a door — just a charred frame. He opened his greatcoat and took out his handgun.
He stepped cautiously through the scorched doorway, covering all angles with the gun. All that remained in the basement were the metal skeletons of desks and small pools of melted plastic from the banks of computers that had been on top of them. Everything else was reduced to ash. The walls were blackened from smoke, and the ceiling had collapsed in several places where the joists had burned through. The whole area looked as if it had been engulfed by some sort of localized firestorm.
He knew it was a waste of time to check if any of the equipment or records had survived. He backed out of the basement and returned to the car.
The Styx had been characteristically thorough: While he had been in the Deeps, the whole network had been dismantled. Drake felt a crushing sense of helplessness. The only course open to him now was to try to get in touch with one of the other cells that operated independently across the country, the risk being that he might prejudice them in the process.
But he was desperate.
“Wales it is,” he said wearily, and started the engine.
“I can take her if you want,” Chester offered as Will went to lift Elliott.
Will shook his head. “Doesn’t make much difference, does it? It’s not as if she weighs anything down here.”
Chester swung the three rucksacks over his shoulders. Back on the surface, carrying such a burden would have been unthinkable, but now, as he jumped up and down several times, he was hardly aware they were there. He stooped to pick up his rifle between his thumb and forefinger, and held it out at arm’s length. “Yeah, isn’t that amazing? It’s as light as a pencil. You’re right — nothing weighs very much down here!”
With no idea where they were going, except that the cave seemed to penetrate farther into the wall of the Pore, they began to follow it.
Even after several miles, they found they were still walking on the springy surface of the fungus, which coated every inch of the tunnel around them.
Then they turned a corner and were confronted by a vertical wall of fungus. “Dead end … not mushroom in here,” Chester joked.
“Very funny. It’s not a dead end, anyway,” Will muttered, pointing at the opening above their heads. “Dim your light for a second,” he said as he put Elliott down. He flicked the lens over his eye to investigate. “Looks like it goes some ways,” he informed Chester, “but I can’t see what’s at the top.”
“Well, that’s it, then,” Chester replied, disheartened.
“You’re forgetting something.” Will took a short running start and leaped straight up the wall. He took off, disappearing from sight. Not to be left behind by his new master, Bartleby sprang after him.
“Oh, great, just leave me here by myself,” Chester muttered, peering around the pitch-black. He clicked his lantern up and began to whistle to comfort himself. After a while there was still no sign of Will, and he became anxious. “Hey!” he yelled. “What’s up there? Don’t leave me alone down here!”
Will floated back down and landed lightly beside Chester. “There are several openings we can try. Let’s go!”
“So now we can fly,” Chester said. “All in a day’s work, I suppose.”
They encountered more of these vertical seams, and despite the fungal growth that obscured nearly everything, Will began to recognize that there was a pattern to them. They seemed to be arranged in a series of concentric circles radiating out from around the Pore. He pictured it as the geological equivalent of a pebble dropped into a pool of water, the ripples spreading out from it, and wondered if rapid cooling of the bedrock had given rise to the circular fractures.
“So the earth isn’t solid at all,” Will had said to Chester as they were walking. “It’s more like one ginormous Swiss cheese — full of holes.”
“Do you have to talk about food?” was Chester’s rejoinder.
But Will was beginning to suspect that there might be, in fact, a great deal more of these seams hidden from sight, and that over the centuries they had been invaded by the rapacious growth of the fungus. It filled him with a sense of wonder that the fungus was probably one huge organism, stretching for hundreds of miles, both in a sheath inside the Pore and also through the surrounding rock.
“Do you know, we could actually be inside the biggest plant in the world,” he mused on another occasion, but Chester gave no response.
They eventually came to a place where the tunnel before them split into three. They stopped to decide which fork to take.
“Well, we’re really spoiled for choice this time,” Will was saying.
His friend hummed in agreement.
“Look, Chester, quite honestly, I don’t care which way we go,” Will said. “Makes no difference to me — they all look pretty much the same, don’t they?” He scrutini
zed the tunnels again: They were all of a similar dimension and each appeared to continue horizontally, although who knew what lay just around the corner? The boys had already been forced to turn back several times, when the way had become impassable due to excessive fungal growth or because it pinched down to crawlways too narrow for even the most determined ant to get through.
“I picked last time. It’s your turn,” Chester threw back at him.
“Actually, no, you didn’t. Bartleby chose the last one,” Will reminded him.
“Well, let him do it again,” Chester suggested.
They both turned to regard Bartleby, whose head was high in the air as he sniffed, his tail swishing briskly.
“Go on, Bart, take your pick,” Will urged him.
“Bart?“ Chester asked. “Where did that come from?”
“Cal,” Will said quietly.
“Oh, right, yes.” Chester stole a glance at Will, wondering how he was dealing with his brother’s death. But Will seemed to be entirely focused on moving through the network of tunnels, as if he had some sort of plan in mind. If he was as concerned about their current predicament as Chester was, it certainly didn’t show. From the discovery of the nets on the fungal outcrop, at least they knew that there had been people down here, even if they weren’t still alive. But apart from this, there was no getting away from the fact that he and Will were just wandering aimlessly along. However, Chester wasn’t about to challenge his friend about it, because they had to do something.
“If you can’t make up your mind, I’ll decide which way,” Will said to the cat, who seemed to be in no hurry as he continued to sample the air. Then Bartleby scampered into one of the tunnels. He had gone a little way down it when he came to a sudden halt. Following close behind, the boys pulled up just as abruptly.
Will gasped as the odor of decay hit him. “Something big died in here!”
And Chester noticed the sound his boots were making as he stepped across the tunnel. “There’s gooey stuff on the floor. It looks pretty rank.”
“Over here,” Will whispered as he caught sight of a number of structures along the wall.
There were four wooden benches in a row against the side of the tunnel. Resembling something that might be found in a butcher’s shop, they were sturdily built, their legs and tops made of thick pieces of timber. The abattoir impression was further enhanced by the fact that the benches were bloodstained and covered with what seemed to be scraps of old, dried meat, in some places a solid inch deep. A huge hatchet was buried in the top of one of the benches, as if its owner had swung it down hard, and was expecting to come back and use it again.
“Oh no!” Chester swallowed as soon as he laid eyes on the hatchet. He gave Will a horror-stricken glance.
Will’s first thought was that they could have stumbled upon a tribe of subterranean cannibals, although he wasn’t about to share this with his already-petrified friend. As he took a step back from the benches, he lost his footing in the debris covering the floor. He landed on his knees, just managing to keep a grip on Elliott. It gave him an opportunity to see more closely what they had been treading in.
It appeared to be a mass of hacked-off body parts, but there was nothing Will could immediately identify. “Bits of animals?” he said as he noticed a huge compound eye and the sections of shiny black articulated legs covered in bristles almost the width of his little finger. “No, insects … giant insects?” he croaked in disbelief. The largest intact body part he could see consisted of ten or so glossy black insectoid segments, all with legs sprouting from both sides. It could have come from some colossal centipede, but because each individual segment was two feet long, he wondered how big the whole creature had been.
“We are getting out of here. Right now,” Chester said in no uncertain terms as he helped Will to his feet. “And as far the freak away as we can.”
They raced back to the intersection again.
Chester was pointing down one of the other tunnels when a piercing screech made them leap out of their skins. “What the heck was that?” he whispered in the ensuing silence.
All three of them, the boys and the cat, immediately looked up, noticing for the first time that there was a wide fissure right above their heads. The screeches began again, sounding like fingernails being dragged down a very long chalkboard. Apart from the fact that the boys had no idea what was making them, the sounds themselves were painful, tearing at their nerves.
Then the echoes of the screeches died away once more.
In the lull, Chester spoke very quietly. “That’s not rocks cracking or something, is it?”
Will didn’t answer immediately, observing how agitated Bartleby had become.
The nerve-jarring calls came again, louder than before.
“No,” Will whispered, “it’s not geological. Maybe it’s got something to do with all those insect parts.” He continued with urgency. “Chester, get the rifle ready. And the stove guns.” He began to take Elliott into the left-hand tunnel ahead of them. Bartleby was slouched low to the ground and so close to Will’s feet that he nearly tripped over him.
As he trod backward from the intersection, Chester fumbled with the rifle, trying to work the bolt. He finally managed to cock it, ramming a round into the chamber. Still walking backward, he undid the flap on the pad on his hip, in which two stove guns were stored.
The sound of a rope whipping through the air took all three by surprise. The world turned upside down as Will was whisked off his feet. He held on to Elliott, desperately trying not to drop her. Something closed around him from all sides. He caught a glimpse of what it was — mesh similar to what he’d seen on the edge of the fungal outcrop. He’d been trapped in a net.
Bartleby hissed and bucked as he was bundled against Will, who found the more he struggled, the tighter the net became, until he was hardly capable of any movement at all. Over the sound of his own cries and the creaking of the net, he was certain he caught a metallic noise, as if empty tin cans were rattling against one another. With Elliott’s shoulder pushed hard in his face and Bartleby writhing against his legs, he was in no position to tell if Chester had been responsible for this noise. He tried to see where his friend was and whether he’d been caught in another trap, but the net was spinning him around so quickly that everything was a blur.
The moment Chester registered that Will was in trouble, his first impulse had been to go over to help him. But he could tell Will was very much alive from his shouts, and he was more concerned by what was happening in the fissure in the tunnel roof. Rocks and soil were falling from it, as if they were being dislodged, as if something was coming. And the screeches were even louder and more numerous than before. He dropped the rucksacks from his shoulders, took a few more paces back toward Will, then trained the rifle on the opening in the roof.
It was fortunate he did.
Through the rifle scope, he saw something drop from the fissure. It fell without any noise whatsoever, like a shadow flitting across a wall. He quickly sighted on where he thought it had landed.
“What the …?!” Chester spluttered.
It was approximately ten feet across, with more legs than Chester could take in at first glance. These leathery legs extended from the thick circular disk of its body. On the area of the body facing him were three patches that sparkled as if they were studded with bike reflectors. But the most striking aspect was a long stalk that protruded from above its “eyes” with a glowing tip of muted yellow light.
As he watched, the creature seemed to sink lower to the ground, the glowing appendage bobbing gently. Then it slowly began to rise on its multiple legs.
Chester gripped the rifle. He couldn’t abide anything that crawled, even at the best of times, but this monstrosity was like a physical manifestation of his worst childhood nightmares. He shuddered as wave upon wave of revulsion swept through him. “You’re dead meat,” he growled. “I hate —” His words froze on his lips as the creature suddenly dropped its body back
down to the ground — a prelude, Chester thought, to launching itself at him.
“SPIDERS!” Chester screamed, jerking the trigger and firing. The single shot tore straight through the creature, cleaving it in two.
He watched as the halves toppled to the left and right, the legs going into a mad paroxysm of movement. With all the adrenaline coursing through his veins, Chester gave a hysterical laugh that sounded nothing like him.
Then there were no more screeching calls, just Will’s shouts from the net.
Chester had just straightened up when another of the creatures landed with a soft flopping noise, precisely where the first had been. His instincts taking over again, Chester cocked the rifle, then pulled the trigger.
He was met with a sound that made his heart stop.
There was a hollow click as the round failed to go off. He desperately tried to work the bolt again, but he couldn’t shift it — it seemed to be jammed. The beast was slowly rising up on its segmented legs. Knowing it was a waste of time, Chester tried to fire the rifle again.
Another dry click.
In sheer desperation, Chester did the only thing he could in the situation. He slung the rifle at the beast with all his might. The beast raised a foreleg and fended it off with a single deft flick. Chester glimpsed the rifle spinning away and heard a dull thud as it came to rest on the fungus-coated floor, out of sight.
Then it was just the creature and him. Chester’s stricken gaze locked on to its eyes, malevolent crystal spheres that glittered under the beam of his lantern like large droplets of water. There was the faintest hiss as it opened its mouth, revealing a row of vicious white fangs, each as thick as his thumb.
“Oh no!” he gulped, falling onto his back as he struggled to get a stove gun out of the pad on his hip. He was still watching the creature as he managed to pry one out, dropping the second in the process. He cursed as he tried to recall what Drake had taught them about using these weapons. “Hold it in the palm,” Chester said to himself, first making sure he had it pointed in the right direction. He was just curling a finger around the firing lever when the creature launched itself at him.
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