Tunnels 02 - Deeper

by Roderick Gordon

  Sarah drew to a halt and stared at the shop. For generations, the population of the Colony had relied on the Clarkes for regular consignments of fresh fruit and vegetables. There were other Topsoil suppliers, but the brothers and their forebears had been trusted allies for as long as anyone could remember. Short of the possibility that they had both died, she knew they would have never closed shop, not voluntarily.

  She contemplated the sealed shutters of the storefront one last time, then moved on. The closing of Clarke Brothers bore out what the note from the dead mailbox had said: The Colony was subject to a lockdown, and the majority of the above-ground supply links had been severed. It underlined just how far things must have gone down below.

  Several miles later, Sarah rounded the corner onto Broadlands Avenue

  . As she approached the Burrowses' house, she saw that its curtains were drawn and there was no sign of life anywhere in the place, either. Quite the opposite: A discarded packing crate under the lean-to, and the unkempt front garden, spoke to her of months of neglect. She didn’t slow as she walked past it, glimpsing in the corner of her eye an uprooted real estate agent's sign in the long grass behind the chain-link fence. She continued along the row of identical houses to the end of the avenue, where an alleyway took her through to the Common.

  Sarah put her head back and flared her nostrils, drawing the air into her lungs, a mix of the city and the countryside smells. Exhaust fumes and the slightly sour scent of massed people fought with the wet grass and fresh vegetation around her.

  Sarah kept to the perimeter path for several hundred yards and then ducked into the foliage, pushing her way through the trees and shrubs until she could see the backs of the houses on Broadlands Avenue

  . Moving stealthily from one to another, she observed the occupants from the ends of their gardens. In one, an elderly couple sat stiffly at a dining table, drinking soup. In another, an obese man in a vest and underpants was smoking while he read the paper.

  The inhabitants of the subsequent two houses were lost to her, as both had their curtains pulled, but in the next, a young woman was standing by the windows and playing with a baby, bouncing it up and down. Sarah stopped, compelled to watch the woman's face. Feeling her emotions and her sense of loss begin to rise within her again, Sarah tore her eyes away from the mother and child and moved on.

  Finally she reached her destination. Sarah stood on the very same spot behind the Burrowses' house where she'd stood so many times before, hoping to catch the smallest glimpse of her son as he grew up, and away, from her.

  After she'd been forced to leave him behind in the church graveyard, she'd searched high and low for him all over Highfield. For the following two and a half years, wearing sunglasses until she became acclimatized to the painful daylight, she'd combed the streets and hovered outside the local schools at the end of classes. But there was absolutely no sign of Seth anywhere. She'd widened her search radius, venturing farther and farther afield until she was wandering around the neighboring London boroughs.

  Then, on a day shortly after her son's fifth birthday, she happened to be back in Highfield again when she caught sight of him outside the main post office. He was steady on his feet, running around wildly with a toy dinosaur. Already he was quite different from the child she'd left behind. Nevertheless, she had recognized him immediately; he was unmistakable with his unruly shock of white hair, precisely the same as hers, although she was now forced to use dyes to mask it.

  She'd followed Seth and his new mother home from the shops to find out where they lived. Her first impulse had been to snatch him back. But it was just too dangerous with the Styx still after her. So, season after season, Sarah came back to Highfield, even if just for part of a day, desperate for the briefest sighting of her son. She'd stare at him over the length of the garden, which was like some untraversable abyss. He grew taller and his face filled out, becoming so much like hers that sometimes she thought it was her own reflection she was seeing in the glass of the French doors.

  And on those occasions she yearned to call out over the tantalizingly short distance, but she never did. She couldn't. She'd often wondered how he would have reacted if she'd walked across the garden and into the house and, there, had clasped him to her. She felt her throat close up as the imagined scene unfurled before her like a preview of some television melodrama, their eyes filling with tears as they looked upon each other with startled mutual recognition. He would be mouthing the words Mother, Mother, over and over again.

  But all that was history now.

  And if the message from Joe Waites was to be believed, the child was now a murderer, and he had to pay for his crimes.

  As if she were on a rack, Sarah was torn between the love that she had known for her son and the hollow hatred that simmered at its borders, the two extremes pulling remorselessly at her. They were both so powerful that, caught in the middle, she was plunged into a state of confusion and an utter, overpowering numbness.

  Stop it! For the sake of all that's holy, snap out of it! What was happening to her? Her life, for years so controlled and disciplined, was slipping into disarray. She had to get hold of herself. She raked the nails of one hand over the back of the other, then did it again, and yet again, each time pressing harder, until she broke the skin, the stinging pain bringing a bitter relief of distraction.

  * * * * *

  Her son had been christened Seth in the Colony, but Topsoil somebody had renamed him Will. He had been adopted by a local couple called Burrows. While the mother, Mrs. Burrows, was a mere shadow of a woman, who spent her life ensconced in front of the television, Will had evidently fallen under the spell of his adoptive father, who worked as the curator of the local museum.

  Sarah had followed Will on numerous occasions, trailing behind as he went off on his bicycle, a gleaming shovel strapped across his back. She would watch as the lonely figure, a baseball cap pulled low over his distinctive white locks, toiled in the rough ground at the edges of town or by the local dump. She observed him digging some surprisingly deep holes with guidance and encouragement, she assumed, from Dr. Burrows. How very, very ironic, she thought. Having eluded the tyranny of the Colony, it was as though her son was trying to return to it, like a salmon swimming upstream to its spawning ground.

  But though his name had been changed, what had happened to Will? Like her and her brother, Tam, he had Macaulay blood in him; he was from one of the oldest founding families in the Colony. How could he have changed so much for the worse in those years on the surface? What could have done that to him? If the message in the dead mailbox was correct, then it was as though Will had gone insane, like some insubordinate cur that turns on its master.

  * * * * *

  A bird screeched somewhere above her and Sarah flinched, crouching defensively behind the low branches of a conifer. She listened, but there was just the wind sifting through the trees and a car alarm sounding intermittently several streets away. With a last check of the Common behind her, she edged cautiously along the end of the Burrowses' garden. She stopped abruptly, thinking she'd seen light coming from between the closed curtains of the living room. Satisfied that it was just a stray beam of early moonlight poking its way through the clouds, she peered at the upstairs windows, one of which she knew had been Will's bedroom. She was pretty sure the place was deserted.

  She slipped through the gap in the hedges where a garden gate had once hung and crossed the lawn to the back door. She paused again to listen, then kicked over a brick at the side of the doormat. She wasn't in the least bit surprised to find the spare key still there — Dr. and Mrs. were a careless couple. She used it to enter the house.

  Closing the door behind her, she raised her head and sampled the air, which was fusty and undisturbed. No, nobody had been living there for months. She didn’t turn on the lights, even though her sensitive eyes were struggling to make out anything in the shadowy interior. Lights were just too risky.

  She stole down the hall to the
front of the house and entered the kitchen. Feeling around with her hands, she discovered the work surfaces were clear and the cupboards emptied. Then she backtracked into the hall again and went into the living room. Her foot knocked against something: a roll of Bubble Wrap. Everything had been removed. The house was completely empty.

  So it was true: The family had been broken up. She'd read how Dr. Burrows had stumbled upon the Colony under Highfield and been transported to the Deeps by the Styx. Most likely he would have perished by now. Nobody penetrated very far into the Interior and survived. Sarah had no idea where Mrs. Burrows or her daughter, Rebecca, had gone, and she didn't much care. Will was her concern, very much her concern.

  Something caught her eye on the floor by the front door, and she crouched down to feel around. She found a pile of letters scattered on the doormat and immediately began to gather them up and cram them into her shoulder bag. Halfway through doing so, she thought she heard noises… a car door slamming… a muted footfall… and then the faintest suggestion of a low voice.

  Her nerves fired like electrical short circuits. She held absolutely still. The sounds had been muffled — she couldn’t tell how far away they'd been. She strained to hear anything more, but now there was only silence. Telling herself that it must have been somebody passing the front of the house or maybe just one of the neighbors, she finished collecting the last of the letters. It was high time she left.

  She hurried back through the dark hall and, stepping through the back door, had just turned to pull it shut when a man's voice sounded not inches from her ear. It was confident and accusatory.

  "Gotcha!" it announced.

  A large hand clamped on her left shoulder and heaved her away from the door. She jerked her head around to catch a glimpse of her assailant. In the scant light, she saw a triangle of lean, well-muscled cheek and a flash of white collar.

  Styx!

  He was strong and had the advantage of surprise, but her reaction was near-instantaneous. She swung her arm against his, sweeping his hand from her shoulder, then looped her arm around his in one skillful move that put him in a painful lock. She heard his sharp intake of breath: This wasn't going the way he thought it would.

  As she arched her body to intensify the hold on him, he tried to push himself forward to relieve the pressure on his elbow joint. This brought his head within easy reach, and he'd just opened his mouth to cry out for help when Sarah silenced him with a single blow to the temple. He slumped unconscious onto the patio tiles.

  She had disabled her attacker with savage precision and blistering speed, but she wasn't about to stick around to admire her handiwork; there was more than an even chance of other Styx in the area. She had to get away.

  She tore across the garden, delving in her shoulder bag for her knife. As she arrived at the opening in the hedges, she thought she was in the clear and was already planning her escape across the Common.

  "WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?" came a furious shout, and a large shadow loomed in her path.

  She pulled the knife out of her bag, and the letters that she'd taken from the house came with it, flying through the air in a hail. But something whipped across her hand, sending the knife spinning from her grip.

  In the moonlight she saw the silver glint of the insignia, the numbers and letters on the man's uniform, and realized far too late that these weren't Styx. They were policemen — Topsoil policemen. And she'd already knocked one out for the count. Too bad. He had gotten in her way, and her self-preservation was paramount. She probably wouldn't have done anything differently, even if she'd known.

  She tried to dodge away from the man, but he moved quickly to block her. She immediately lashed out with her fist, but he was ready.

  "Resisting arrest," he growled as he swung something at her again. A billy club! She saw it the instant before it made contact. It struck her a glancing blow to the forehead, filling her vision with cascading pebbles of bright light. She didn't fall, but the club was quick to come again, swiping across her mouth. This time she folded to the ground.

  "Had enough yet, you crazy hag?" he seethed, his contorted mouth spitting the words into her face as he leaned over her. She did her best to throw another punch at him. It was pathetically weak, and he fended it off with ease.

  "Is that all you've got left?" He laughed caustically, then fell on her, pinning her down with his knee on her chest. It felt as if an elephant were using her as a footrest.

  She tried to worm her way out from under him, but it was no use. She felt a numbness descending over her as she teetered on the edge of consciousness. Everything was going into a lopsided kaleidoscope: the trace of the club against the indigo sky, the hazy circle of the moon eclipsed by the officer's face, a ghastly pantomime mask. She thought she was going to pass out.

  No!

  She couldn't give up. Not now.

  From the patio, the injured policeman moaned, and Sarah's attacker was momentarily distracted. His arm poised above him for the next blow, he glanced quickly over at his partner. The crushing weight shifted for the briefest instant, enabling her to swallow a mouthful of air and regroup her senses.

  Her hands scrambled over the ground for her knife, a rock, a stick, anything she could use as a weapon. All she found was the long grass. The policeman's attention was back on her again; he was shouting and cursing, raising the club even higher. She braced herself, prepared for the inevitable, knowing it was all over.

  She was beaten.

  All of a sudden, something formless and blurred with speed attached itself to the man's arm. Sarah blinked, and the next instant his arm was gone, his weight lifted. There was the oddest silence; he didn't seem to be shouting anymore.

  It was as if time had ground to a halt.

  She couldn’t understand it. She wondered if she'd lost consciousness. The she glimpsed two massive eyes and a blaze of teeth like a stockade of sharpened stakes. She blinked again.

  Time restarted. The policeman let out a piercing scream and slid off her. He struggled clumsily to his feet, one arm hanging uselessly at his side as he tried to defend himself with the other. She couldn't see his face. Whatever was attacking him had wrapped itself around his head and shoulders in a storm of claws and hairless limbs. She saw long, sinewy hind legs raking furiously. The policeman fell flat on his back like a bowling pin as the onslaught continued.

  Fighting her dizziness, Sarah sat up. She pushed her bloodsoaked bangs from her eyes and squinted, trying to see, trying to make out what was happening.

  The clouds parted, allowing the weak moon to cast its light on the scene. She caught an outline.

  No, it couldn't be!

  She looked again, not believing what she was seeing.

  It was a Hunter, a type of large cat specially bred in the Colony.

  What in the world was it doing here?

  With the most immense effort, she crawled over to a nearby gatepost and used it to drag herself up. Once on her feet, she felt so groggy and confused, she waited for several moments as she tried to collect her wits.

  "No time for this," she chastised herself as the reality of the situation came back to her. "Pull yourself together."

  Ignoring the groans and stifled pleas of the policeman as he continued to roll with the Hunter on top of him, she tottered unsteadily up the garden to where she thought her knife had landed. Retrieving it, she also gathered up the letters. She was determined not to leave anything behind. Feeling a little steadier on her feet, she turned to check on the first policeman. He lay unmoving on the patio tiles where she'd dropped him, clearly not posing any sort of threat.

  Back at the end of the garden, the second policeman was on his side, his hands pressed to his face as he moaned horribly. The Hunter had detached itself and was sitting next to him, licking a paw. It stopped as Sarah approached, coiling its tail neatly around its legs, and regarded her intently. It flicked its massive eyes across to the groaning man, as if it had had nothing to do with his condition.

&n
bsp; The fact that both policemen were injured and needed help was neither here nor there to Sarah. She felt no pity or regret at what had happened to them; they were a casualty of her own survival, nothing more, nothing less. She went over to the conscious policeman, stooping to unhook the radio from his jacket.

  With a speed that took her by surprise, he grabbed her wrist. But he was weak. She broke his grip without much effort and then tore off the radio — he made no move to stop her. She threw the radio down and stamped her heel into it with a crunch of broken plastic.

  With some nervousness, she took a step toward the Hunter. Although they were born killers, it was rare for them to attack people. There had been stories of them going rogue, turning on their masters and anyone else who happened to cross their paths. She had no way of knowing if this Hunter could be trusted after what it had done to the policeman. From the appearance of its bare skin stretched over its ribs, it was badly malnourished and hardly in the best condition. She wondered how long it had been fending for itself up here.

  "Where did you come from?" she asked it softly, keeping a safe distance.

  The animal angled its head toward her, as if trying to understand, and blinked once. She ventured closer, tentatively reaching out her hand, and it leaned forward to sniff at her fingertips. The top of its head was almost on a level with her hips — she'd forgotten just how big these animals were. Then it suddenly leaned toward her. She tensed, but it merely rubbed its head affectionately against her palm. She heard the deep rumble of a purr kick in, as loud as an outboard engine on a dinghy. That was uncharacteristically friendly behavior for a Hunter. Either it had been slightly unhinged by its Topsoil life or it thought, for some reason, that it knew her. But she didn’t have time to ponder that now — she needed to decide her next move.