by D Haltinner
But there was only one shadow. Only one man had come after them.
Had they not seen Darren when he was watching from around the whiteboard? Maybe only the one man had seen him, or maybe they only saw the quick movement of Darren hiding when they turned that way.
Whatever reason, only one came after them, so what were the remaining three doing? Did they have confidence in this man in catching the intruders, or could they really not have seen Darren after all?
The shadow shrank further, the man stopping what had to be at least a dozen feet inside the room. Darren’s heart raced and his armpits beaded with sweat as the man glanced the other way, paused, and then moved back toward the door as his shadow grew again.
Darren watched the shadow envelope the entire pool of light and as the shadow vanished from sight. It left only the pale light of the fluorescent bulbs in its place. He let out a sigh and leaned back, bumping an electric space heater with his elbow.
“Come on,” Darren said at a whisper. “Let’s get out of here before they come back.”
Darren kept his eyes on the light cast upon the floor and crawled out from beside the desk before standing up. Audrey moved away from the desk on her hands and knees, her hair reflecting the pale glow coming from the next room. She stood and faced Darren, her face veiled in black.
Darren waved Audrey to him, took her hand, and led her toward the door leading back into the tunnel. He’d never think that he would consider the tunnel a place of safety, but he did now. The men wouldn’t be treating them very well if they discovered Darren and Audrey were listening into their meeting.
The dim light faded fast and Darren reached for the flashlight in his jacket pocket when Audrey’s hand slapped his arm.
“Run!” she said.
Darren obeyed, not knowing what Audrey knew. He had to have complete trust in her in order for them to stop what was happening on Tuesday together, and he put as much of that faith into her now as he had.
Audrey pushed him around a cabinet when the light came back into the room. Darren obeyed, cutting between a pair of tables, covered with glass beakers and flasks.
“Hey!” A voice yelled from behind them.
Darren couldn’t stop himself from glancing back. The balding man was chasing behind them, his comb over lifting off his head as he ran.
Darren’s hip grazed the side of the table, knocking a flask loose from the clamp holding it upright. It chipped when it hit the table, rolled, and as Audrey pulled Darren back toward the door, it crashed to the floor.
A strand of Audrey’s dark hair whipped Darren’s cheek as they ran. They had moved too far away from the open doorway to see too well anymore, but the path leading into the tunnel stood before them like a void against the painted walls.
The balding man continued to follow them. He wouldn’t be able to catch up to them before they reached the tunnel, but with the way Darren’s muscles were starting to lose cohesion, the man might have a chance in catching up to them in the darkness of the tunnel.
And there was no telling what the man intended to do if they caught Darren and Audrey.
Audrey let go of Darren’s hand and burst through the black cloak of the doorway, with Darren at her heels. She turned, disappeared into the darkness ahead of Darren, not even making an attempt to grab her flashlight.
Maybe they would have an advantage over the man if they ran in the darkness, without trying to use their lights. They knew the man hadn’t been in the tunnel in years, so it was possible that the balding man would be lost easily. If they made it to the area below the road without hurting themselves on the caved in section or the stairs, the man would have no chance of finding them without a light of his own. Even if he did have a light, Darren and Audrey could hide in the portion of the void that was growing through the south east wall.
Darren didn’t want to hide inside the void though. He didn’t want to go within a mile of the thing if he didn’t have to. But if it meant keeping Audrey safe, Darren could spend the entire day hiding in the blackness.
“Stop!” the man yelled from behind them.
The voice wasn’t as close as Darren was expecting. He turned back, but was unable to see anything with substance against the darkness behind them.
“You don’t know what you’re doing!” the man yelled. He sucked in a loud breath, fighting his lungs to keep them from panting. “You don’t know what you’re interfering with!”
“Neither do you it seems,” Darren said at a mumble.
“You don’t know!” the man yelled again.
His voice hadn’t grown any closer with any of his outbursts. He wasn’t following them into the tunnel. Perhaps he did know something about what was down here that scared him, or maybe he was just afraid of going into the darkness without a light.
Audrey must have also noticed that the man wasn’t following, because her flashlight clicked on, spilling into the tunnel ahead of them. Darren wrestled his own light free from the pocket of his jacket and fumbled it on as Audrey slowed down and looked behind them. Darren followed her beam with his eyes to settle his own nerves.
“He stopped following us,” Darren said.
“Smart man,” Audrey said.
“Yeah, we’re the ones down here in the dark. They are the ones in the light just planning away.”
“But what were they planning, besides kidnapping us?”
“I’m not sure, but it would seem that they were working against us.”
“They did want to stop us.”
“But how could they know what we’re doing? We don’t even know what we’re doing.”
Darren shined his light down the tunnel, illuminating the cave-in at the furthest reaches of the beam. “They apparently don’t know much if they think it’s me and Jack running around.”
“Why didn’t they seem to know about me?”
“I don’t have a clue, but they might now.”
“None of them saw my face. I don’t think they’d recognize me. And the man who did follow us-I’ve never seen him before, so I doubt they would know who I was.”
“Then let’s hope they don’t find a connection between the two of us.”
Audrey’s hand reached out and grabbed Darren’s. “I don’t think that would matter anyways,” she said. “We’re in this together, and they’re planning to come after you, so I’m already included deep enough.”
“I suppose so.”
“But what do we do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t go back if they’re going to be looking for you. They’ll know the minute you step foot into your room.”
“Then I guess we can’t go back to my room.”
“Where can we go?”
“They don’t know who you are,” Darren said, squeezing her hand. “I might just have to stay with you.”
“They’ll find out who I am,” Audrey said. “It won’t take that long.”
“But how? The history professor is the only one who could link us two together, and she wasn’t part of the group.”
“Yeah, but if the men can track our ID cards, I’m sure that they can also see who’ve you called on the phone in your room.”
Darren sighed, pursing his lips as he let it escape. “I’m not sure that professors can access that kind of stuff though.”
Audrey shrugged, the movement hard to see in the darkness. “One of these men could be a dean for all we know,” she said. “It’s a risk, but when we leave the tunnel, I’m not sure we have anywhere else to go.”
“When does your roommate come back?”
“Some time tonight.”
“What if she lets us in instead of you using your own ID?”
“I suppose it might work.”
“Think she’ll be okay with me staying there for a couple of nights, until Tuesday at least?”
“I can talk her into it. As long as we behave ourselves.”
“With all that’s going on down here, I think we’ll be too busy
and too tired to even consider misbehaving.”
“Probably.”
Darren pulled Audrey closer to himself. “I wish you hadn’t gotten caught up in the middle of this.”
“I did it myself,” Audrey said. “And now without Jack, you’re going to need my help more that ever.”
“I wish I could disagree,” Darren said. “I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Now that we know that some of the faculty are against us, I think we’ll have a much easier time knowing at least one thing we need to watch out for. Had we not stumbled onto them, they very well may have been able to kidnap you, and I could have been left alone to stop what’s coming.”
Darren nodded. “Someone has to stop this all before Tuesday,” he said. “And it looks like any possibility of going to the school for help is not an option any more. Not when the professors are trying to stop us.”
“But why? Why are they doing this?” Audrey said. “They must know what could happen, if it’s not stopped. They already know about the void and Blackburn, so why would they let it happen?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“It just doesn’t make sense.”
“None of it makes sense.”
“There’s only one thing that we have to know though, the rest of what’s happening isn’t as important.”
“What’s that?”
“We need to find out how to stop whatever is inside of the void. What it is, or why the professors want it to happen, doesn’t matter if we can stop it.”
“The answer seems to be evading us.”
“But it has to be down here somewhere.”
“I agree, but we still need to find it.”
“And find it in time.”
“So what do we do now?”
“The only thing we haven’t done yet.”
“What’s that?”
“Head north.”
Chapter 51
After a break to eat on the steps leading back to the wide tunnel below the road, Darren and Audrey gathered their garbage into Jack’s backpack and moved north along the trench.
“You didn’t happen to bring your map, did you?” Darren asked.
Audrey shook her head. She had tied her hair up into a ponytail when they ate, and now the tail was bouncing around her shoulders as she shook her head. “No, I didn’t think we really needed one,” she said. “This tunnel doesn’t even exist on it, and the only other room was north of the dorms.”
“I was just wondering how far away we could expect another tunnel moving west.”
“I don’t think it should be too far. There was one from Painter Hall that led through the administrative building up to the gym, but I don’t think there were any others. None at McCormick Hall, and the union might have caused a redesign in the plans, because of how new it is.”
“I hope it is as a simple as that.”
“There were no rooms or anything else odd about the tunnel heading this way that I remember.”
“It’s still worth a look though, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, it is. You never know what we’ll find.”
“I just hope we find something.”
The pair walked through the wide tunnel until they found a series of cement steps leading off to the west.
“Looks like we found our tunnel,” Audrey said.
“Looks like it.”
They continued up the steps until they came to a hatch a dozen feet from the top. Assuming it led into Painter Hall somewhere, they followed the turn that led them north. The monotony of the tunnel was broken only by the occasional cracks shooting across the walls like spider webs and by two hatches presumed to open up into the administrative building. It wasn’t until they reached a wall of black earth that they stopped.
“Dead end,” Audrey said.
“I’d say,” Darren said. “Looks like they didn’t bother trying to rebuild the tunnel after they added the union.”
“Guess not.”
“Odd though.”
“What is?”
“That they’d fix the tunnel for the roads and storm drains, but not their own new building.”
“It does if there was another way to reach the gym. There aren’t any other buildings north of here on this side of the campus.”
“You think there’s another stretch of tunnel north of here?”
Audrey nodded. “Probably connects to the stretch below the road,” she said. “I think I remember seeing that this tunnel looped back around to the old dormitories after turning at the gym, so I would think that that stretch was maintained when they put in the road just like I was going to the science building.”
“I suppose we have no choice but to turn back anyway. We can head that way, then cut across and see if we can get to the room we saw on the map.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Darren and Audrey reversed their route, walking back the way they came. Audrey made a game of walking in the footprints she left on the way, holding onto Darren’s shoulder when she missed one or stepped onto one of Darren’s and her balance shifted.
They stepped back down the steps and into the vast tunnel running below the street, starting north again as Audrey’s gaze stared down the opposite direction. She didn’t shine her penlight back behind her, only stared and walked at a funny angle so she could twist her head over her shoulder.
“What are you looking at?” Darren asked, looking over his own shoulder to try and see.
“I’m not sure.”
She sounded sure though.
“You see something,” Darren said, straining his eyes to see in the dark.
“I think-” her throat bobbed as she swallowed, hard “-I think it’s a light.”
“What?”
“A flashlight.”
Darren’s mind went numb. There was only one possibility.
The men they stumbled upon were after them. They decided they couldn’t risk Darren and Audrey getting away even temporarily, and went after them.
What they would do if they caught up to Darren and Audrey remained a mystery, but Darren didn’t like to think about the possibilities.
“Move, fast,” Darren said.
Audrey didn’t protest. Instead she took Darren’s hand and rushed north with him at her side.
The light behind them didn’t appear to have spotted either Darren or Audrey-yet-nor did it seem to be moving after them with any real speed. In fact, the light seemed to be hovering around the tunnel that they had just exited from.
“Our footprints,” Darren said. “They’re staring at our footprints.”
“Maybe they’ll think we are still in that tunnel,” Audrey said.
“They should have seen our prints exiting.”
“At least they didn’t corner us inside of it.”
“I can’t disagree with that. I’m more worried about our prints in this tunnel.”
“There isn’t enough dust on the ground.”
Darren stopped and shined the light on the ground behind them. “I can see the prints,” he said. “If Barney can see them, they probably can too.”
“They’ll follow us then,” Audrey said.
“Maybe we should jump the trench and try to sneak past them the other way.”
“It’s too risky.”
“We haven’t been this way yet. We could be venturing into another dead end for all we know.”
“There’s got to be a hatch at the gym, it’s one of the original buildings.”
“The tunnel could have caved in.”
“We haven’t seen a real cave-in yet," she said. “You said it yourself, that these tunnels seem to have been well maintained.”
“What if the hatch is stuck, or locked like it was in Rosch hall?” Darren asked. “Can we take the risk?”
“I think we should.”
Darren sighed and looked off to the yellow dot of light behind them. It had began to move back toward them at a slow pace, not rushed as if they thought they were right on
the tail of their prey.”
“If you would feel safest doing that, then that’s what we’ll do,” Darren said.
“Okay,” Audrey said, squeezing Darren’s hand. “It feels like the right option.”
“Your gut?”
Audrey nodded.
“I think I’ve learned over the last couple of days to trust your gut before I trust my own mother.”
Audrey laughed. “Let’s hope her and I are never in disagreement.”
“Let’s hope.”
Audrey regripped Darren’s hand and the pair picked up the pace north. The trench loomed like a river of black off to one side, cement lining the other. A low rumble passed overhead as what must have been an overloaded semi drove over the tunnel. It was odd hearing a noise other than their own voices cutting through the thick darkness of the tunnel, but it helped to remind Darren that the real world was not far from reach, and that it was the real world that he and Audrey were down here trying to protect.
“There,” Audrey said when a cement stairwell came into view near the end of the tunnel. She led Darren to the steps, and then released his hand as she jogged up the steps.
The cement tunnel continued at the top of the steps, and the pair kept up their speed as they moved further west. A cement wall came into view a minute later, ending the section of the tunnel, but above the dead end was a hatch.
“I hope this hatch works,” Darren said.
“It will,” Audrey said. “Do you want me to go first?”
“I’ll do it. Just in case it opens up into someone’s office, I’d rather them not see who you are. They already know what I’m up to.”
“Okay, I guess.”
Darren climbed up the footholds built into the wall below the hatch and climbed up until he had to duck his head to fit below the metal door. He reached up to the cold steel and gave it as hard a push as he could. It opened easier than he expected, and he had to squint at the light that fell through the gap at him. He shoved the hatch back until it fell to the floor and climbed the rest of the way up.
He was on the floor of one of the Redfern Athletic Center’s locker rooms. There were a half dozen aisles of rusting lockers spread down the room from the corner the hatch laid in. Past the lockers was a line of sinks leading off to the toilets, and the showers in the opposite direction. There was nothing to tell Darren if this was the guys or the girl’s locker room, but at least no one was around to see him.