Tunnels 02 - Deeper

by Roderick Gordon

  She had to get as far away as she could and, as she rubbed the rather flaky and scabbed skin under the cat's incredibly wide muzzle, she recognized that she owed the animal a debt of honor. She would have almost certainly been caught if it hadn't come to her rescue. She couldn't leave it behind.

  "Come on," she said to the cat, and made for the Common. Her bruised head began to clear slightly as she saw the open path ahead. They ran together toward the metal arch that marked the entrance.

  Sarah was crossing the road in the direction of Main Street

  , but drew to a halt once she happened to glance back to make sure the cat was still with her. It was sitting on the pavement by the gate, looking down the road that branched to the right, as if it was trying to tell her something.

  "Come on! This way!" she said impatiently, thrusting a finger in the direction of the town center and her hotel. "We don't have time for this…" she trailed off, realizing just how difficult it was going to be to get the animal through the streets and into her room without being noticed.

  The Hunter remained steadfastly facing off to the right, just as it would have done when alerting its handler that it had scented quarry. "What is it? What's there?" Sarah said, jogging back toward it and feeling a little ridiculous attempting to converse with a cat.

  She looked at her watch, weighing her options. It wouldn't be long before someone discovered the scene back at the Burrowses' house, and then the Common and the whole town of Highfield would be bristling with police. But she took consolation from the fact that nightfall had only just begun. She was in her element; she could use the darkness to her advantage. She had to put as much distance between her and the house as she could, and taking the busier streets might prove to be a mistake. Not to mention that her battered face would make her stick out like a sore thumb.

  She tried to see what lay in the direction the cat was pointing: Perhaps it wouldn't do any harm to set down a false trail and, if necessary, take a more roundabout route back to the hotel. As she debated with herself, the Hunter pawed the pavement, eager to be on the move again.

  "All right — have it your way," she said, suddenly making up her mind. She could have sworn the cat grinned at her before it bounded off so quickly that she struggled to keep up.

  Twenty minutes later, they entered a street she didn't know and, from a signpost, she saw that they were heading toward the municipal dump. The cat hung back briefly by an entrance at the end of a long line of billboards, then turned into it. As Sarah followed, she could dimly make out an area of rough ground, overrun with weeds.

  The cat galloped past a derelict car and toward one of the corners. It seemed to know precisely where it was going. It skidded to a halt and stuck its nose into the air to sniff as Sarah fought to catch up.

  She wasn't far behind it when caution urged her to swing around and make sure nobody was following them. But when she turned again to where the cat had been, it was nowhere to be seen. As good as her night vision was, she had absolutely no idea where the animal had gone. All she could see were small clumps of bushes sprouting from the muddy soil. She took her key-ring flashlight from her bag and played it before her. Several yards away from where she was searching, she spotted the cat's head as it popped rather comically from out of the ground.

  It ducked down again, disappearing from view. She went over to investigate and found there was some kind of trench there, much of which was covered by a sheet of plywood. She stuck a hand in to try to feel what lay below — there seemed to be a sizable hollow there. She heaved the sheet aside, groaning from her aching ribs as she made the opening just large enough for her to get in.

  Stretching a leg tentatively into the darkness, she completely lost her footing on the loose soil. Her arms flailed helplessly as she tried to grab something to stop her rapid descent, but nothing presented itself. She fell almost twenty-five feet and landed in a sitting position with a loud crunch. Cursing quietly, she waited for the pain to subside, then switched on her flashlight again.

  To her astonishment, she found she'd fallen into a pit filled with what appeared to be a mass of bones. The floor was thick with them, all picked clean of flesh and shiny white under her light. Scooping up a handful, she selected a tiny femur and examined it. And as she looked around her, she spotted several small skulls. All bore teeth marks and, from their size, could have been rabbit or squirrel. Then she noticed a much larger skull with pronounced canines.

  "Dog," she said, identifying it immediately. Stuck to the skull was a chunky leather collar, darkened with dried blood.

  She was in the cat's lair!

  The newspaper article she'd read in the hotel suddenly came back to her.

  "So you're the one who's been snatching dogs!" she said. "You're the beast of Highfield Common," she added with an amazed chuckle, addressing the darkness where she could hear the cat's regular breathing.

  She got herself up, the skeletons cracking and splintering beneath her feet, and began down the gallery that led off the bone pit. Its sides were battened with timbers that to her practiced eye didn't look too sound — there were signs of wet rot and the green of excessive dampness on them. Worse still, there weren't enough of these props to brace the roof, as if someone had been randomly removing them without any thought for what effect it might have. She shook her aching head. She certainly wasn't in the safest of places, but she needed somewhere to recover from her injuries.

  The gallery took her lower, and then she emerged from it into a larger area. She glimpsed some duckboarding on the ground, its surface covered with spreading tendrils of white rot. On this was a pair of dilapidated armchairs positioned side by side. In one of these, the cat was sitting perfectly still, as if it had been waiting for her for some time.

  She shone the light around her and gasped with surprise. At its widest point, the earthen chamber was approximately fifty feet across, but at the back end the wall had evidently collapsed, a drift of soil reaching almost as far as the armchairs. Water dripped steadily from the roof and, as she edged around the wall, she stepped straight into a puddle. It was deceptively deep, and she lost her balance.

  Cursing, her foot drenched in muddy water, she grabbed at the nearest thing she could to steady herself, one of the roof props. Her hand came away with a clutch of soggy splinters and she fell against the wall, her leg slipping even deeper into the pool. Worse still, as the prop she'd grabbed shifted, a gap opened in the bowed timber planks supporting the roof. A torrent of soil cascaded over her.

  "For heaven's sake!" Sarah fumed. "What stupid fool built this place?"

  She stepped out of the pool, wiping the soil from her eyes. At least she'd managed not to drop her flashlight, which she now used for a more detailed examination of her surroundings. She made her way carefully around the excavation, assessing the props, all of which appeared to be in various stages of decay.

  Pursing her lips, and asking herself what had possessed her to come down here, she turned to the cat, which hadn't as much as moved a muscle while she'd been flailing around. It was sitting patiently in the armchair, its head held high as it studied her. She could have sworn that there was something about its expression — as if it was quietly amused by her antics.

  "Next time you try to take me anywhere, I'll think twice about it!" she said angrily.

  Careful! She held her tongue, reminding herself what she was dealing with. Although the cat looked placid enough, Hunters, especially if they turned feral, could be volatile, and she shouldn't do anything that might alarm it. She edged closer to the empty armchair, taking care not to make any sudden movements.

  "Mind if I sit down?" she asked in a gentle voice, holding up her muddy palms to the cat as if to show she meant it no harm.

  As she lowered herself into the seat, a thought began to nag at her. She was looking around the excavation, trying to work out exactly what it was that was bothering her, when the cat made a small lunge toward her. Sarah drew back, then relaxed as she saw it was merely ru
bbing its muzzle against her armchair.

  Sarah noticed something draped there, and slowly reached across to take it in her hands. It looked like a piece of damp fabric. Sitting in the armchair, she spread it open. It was a mud-soaked rugby shirt of black and yellow stripes. She sniffed at it.

  Despite the heavy odor of rot and damp that pervaded the air, a single smell could be perceived. Just the faintest trace. She sniffed it again to make sure she wasn't mistaken, and then looked intently at the cat. Her brow furrowed as a bubble rising to the surface of water, it suddenly burst into the open.

  "This was his, wasn't it?" she said, holding the shirt in front of the cat's scarred muzzle. "My son, Seth, wore this… and so he… he must have dug this place! Goodness, I never knew he'd gotten quite this far down!"

  For a few seconds, she peered around the excavation with renewed interest. But then she was thrown once more into a tumult of conflicting emotions. Before the note, she'd have been in raptures about being here in her son's excavation, as if it brought her closer to him. But now, she couldn't enjoy the discovery — indeed, she felt uneasy in the place, uneasy about the hands that had created it.

  Another thought exploded in her mind. She turned to the animal, which hadn't once averted its unwinking eyes from her. "Cal? Were you Cal's Hunter?"

  At the mention of the name, the cat twitched a cheek, drops of moisture on its long whiskers sparkling in her light.

  She raised her eyebrows at the animal. "You were, weren't you?" she spluttered.

  With a frown, she sank deeper into thought for a few seconds. If this cat was indeed Cal's, then it might substantiate what Joe Waites had written in his note: that Seth had forced Cal to go with him Topsoil before dragging him down to the Deeps. That would explain the cat's presence here — it had accompanied Cal when he had escaped to the surface.

  "So, somehow, you got out of the Colony with… with Seth?" she said, thinking out loud. "But you know him as Will, don't you?" She carefully enunciated the name again, watching for a reaction from the cat. But this time there was no sign of recognition.

  She fell silent. If it was true that Cal had been on the surface, then was everything else true about Seth? The implications were too much for her. It was as if all her love for her eldest son was slowly being sucked out of her to make room for something ugly and vengeful.

  "Cal," she said, wanting to see the animal's reaction again. It cocked its head toward her, then slid its eyes back to the entrance of the excavation.

  Wishing the cat were able to answer all the hundreds of questions knocking around her confused mind, she let her head sink back against the chair. She found herself gradually succumbing to sheer fatigue. Hearing the shifting and groaning of the timbers around her and the occasional patter of falling soil, she briefly took in the various roots dangling from the roof above, before her eyelids grew too heavy. As her finger slipped from the button on her flashlight, the chamber was plunged into darkness, and she was almost at once asleep.

  8

  The boys retraced their steps past the flickering blue flame and back into the railway tunnel. In a little more than twenty minutes, they reached where the train had come to a stop.

  Crouched by the guard's car, its dust-filmed windows now dark, they looked down the locomotive's lone line to where the engine sat. But nobody was in evidence — it seemed the train was completely unattended.

  Then they moved their attention to the rest of the space. From what they could see, the cavern before them was at least several hundred feet from side to side.

  "So this is the Miners' Station," Will said under his breath, focusing on the area to the left of the cavern, which was dotted with a line of lights. It didn't look like much, consisting of a row of rather ordinary, single-story shacks.

  "Not exactly platform nine and three-quarters, is it?" Chester muttered.

  "No… I thought it would be far bigger," Will said in a disappointed voice. "Hardly remarkable," he added, using the phrase his father would utter when unimpressed by something.

  "Nobody sticks around here for long," Cal said.

  Chester looked distinctly uncomfortable. "I don't think we should, either," he whispered nervously. "Where is everybody? The guard and the train driver?"

  "Inside the buildings, probably," Cal told him.

  There was a noise, a muted rumbling like distant thunder, and then a huge clattering began.

  "What's that?" Chester exclaimed with alarm as they all shrank back into the tunnel.

  Cal was pointing above the train. "No, look, they're just loading up for the return journey."

  They saw large chutes poised above the higher-sided train cars. At least the diameter of an average trash can, they were cylindrical and appeared to be made from sections of sheet metal riveted together. Something was gushing from their mouths at great speed and hitting the metal beds of the freight cars with a massive clamor.

  "Now's our chance!" Cal urged the others. He got up and, swooping around the back of the guard's car, belted down by the side of the train before Will could object.

  "There he goes again," Chester moaned, but just the same he and Will took off after the younger boy, keeping to the lee of the train like Cal was doing.

  They ran down the line of lower cars, passing the one in which they had spent the journey, then continued beside their higher-sided counterparts. Dust and debris sprayed over their heads, and they had to pause several times to wipe it from their eyes. It took the boys a full minute to travel the length of the train, enough time for the loading to be completed. A few remaining scatters of whatever the material was fell from the row of chutes, and the air was laced with a gritty dust.

  Uncoupled from the train, the steam engine was farther along the track, but Cal had tucked down beside the last of the higher cars. As soon as Will and Chester caught up with him, Will lashed out, cuffing his brother around the head.

  "Oi!" Cal yelped, raising his fists as if about to retaliate. "What was that for?"

  "That was for running off again, you stupid little spud," Will chided him in a low, furious voice. "If you keep doing things like that, we're going to get caught."

  "Well, they didn't catch us… and how else could we get through here?" his brother defended himself vehemently.

  Will didn't answer.

  Cal blinked slowly, as if to say his brother was being tedious, and simply turned his head away to look into the distance. "We need to go down th—"

  "No way," Will said. "Chester and I are going to check first before any of us does anything. You just stay put!"

  Cal obeyed reluctantly, flopping onto the ground with a bad-tempered groan.

  "You all right?" Will asked Chester as he heard a loud snuffling noise behind him. He twisted around to look.

  "This stuff gets everywhere," Chester complained, then proceeded to blow his nose by clamping each nostril in turn with his fingers to clear them of the dust.

  "That's disgusting," Will said under his breath as Chester pinched a dangling skein of snot and flicked it to the ground. "Do you have to do that?"

  Taking no heed of his friend's distaste, Chester squinted at Will's face, then examined his own hands and arms. "We're certainly well camouflaged," he observed. If their faces and clothes had been filthy before from the continuous stream of carbon-black smoke on the train, they were even filthier now after being showered during the loading of the freight cars.

  "Yeah, well, if you're quite finished," Will said, "let's recce the station."

  On their elbows, he and Chester edged around the front of the car until they had an uninterrupted view of the buildings. There was absolutely no sign of any activity.

  Making not the slightest effort to keep his head down, Cal disobeyed Will's orders and joined them. He couldn't seem to stay still, positively vibrating with impatience. "Listen, the railwaymen are in the station, but they're going to come out soon. We have to get out of this place before they do," he insisted.

  Will considered
the station buildings again. "Well, OK, but we all stick together and only go as far as the engine. Got that, Cal?"

  They moved swiftly from the cover of the car, running half crouched until they came alongside the massive engine. Every so often it vented hissing jets of steam, as if it were a dragon in deep slumber. They could feel the warmth that still emanated from its giant boiler. Chester foolishly placed his hand on one of the massive plates of pitted steel that formed its slab-sided base and retracted it quickly. "Ow!" he said. "It's still really hot."

  "You don't say," Cal muttered sarcastically as they skirted around to the front of the massively proportioned machine.

  "It's awesome! Looks exactly like a tank," Chester said in schoolboy wonder. With its huge interlocking armor plates and giant cowcatcher, it certainly did resemble a military vehicle of some kind, an old battle tank.

  "Chester, we really don't have time to admire the choo-choo!" Will said.

  "I wasn't," he mumbled in response, still ogling the engine.

  They began to debate their next move.

  "We should go down there," Cal said forcefully, indicating the direction with his thumb.

  "Blah, blah, blah," Chester mocked under his breath, giving Cal a disdainful stare. "Here we go again."

  Will studied the area of the cavern his brother had pointed to. Across a stretch of about fifty yards of open ground was what could have been an opening in the cavern wall, metal ramps descending on either side of it from some structure above. Will couldn't see enough in the murkiness to be sure if it was a way out.

  "I can't tell what's there," he said to Cal. "Too dark."

  "That's exactly why we should go there," his brother replied.