Tunnels 02 - Deeper

by Roderick Gordon

  "He's out. He'll be right as rain in a couple of hours," Elliott said, then addressed Cal. "You stay with your brother." She handed him the loose rifle scope. "And keep an eye on the foreshore... particularly the causeway." She pointed at the sea and the impenetrable blackness. "I need to know if you see anything, anything at all, however small. It's really important you stay alert... got that?"

  "Why, where are you going?" Cal asked, trying to keep the anxiety from his voice. He'd been worried before that he would be abandoned, and now that Elliott had lost Drake, the fear returned in spades. Was she planning to slope off with Chester and leave him and Will high and dry?

  "Not far... just need to do some foraging," she told him. "Look after this, too," she said, shrugging off her rucksack and dropping it beside Will's still form. That single action allayed Cal's fears — Elliott wasn't going to get very far without her kit. He watched as she pulled out a couple of sacks from the side pocket and then, accompanied by Chester, slipped into the darkness.

  "How are you doing?" Chester asked Elliott as he walked beside her. He was using the lantern on its lowest setting, shielding it with his hand so there was the thinnest strip of light to illuminate the way. As ever, Elliott didn't require any light, seeming to possess a preternatural awareness of her surroundings. They were moving deeper into the inlet, keeping the dense undergrowth to their left and the sea to their right.

  Elliott didn't reply to his question, maintaining a brooding silence. Knowing how distraught she must be at Drake's death, Chester felt compelled to say something, but found it incredibly difficult to do so. Although he'd spent a considerable amount of time with her on their patrols together, it wasn't as though they spoke much on these outings. He realized he hadn't actually gotten to know her any better since that day when she and Drake had grabbed him and Will. She kept to herself, as elusive as a faint breeze in the dead of night that you could feel but you couldn't touch.

  He tried again.

  "Elliott, are you... are you really all right?"

  "Don't you worry 'bout me," came the curt response.

  "I just want you to know we're all very sorry about Drake... We owe him for... for everything." Chester paused for a few moments. "Was it awful, back there, when Will had to... uh... to...?"

  Without any warning she came to a stop and shoved him hard in the chest, with such unbridled aggression that Chester was completely taken aback. "Don't try to mollycoddle me! I don't need anyone's sympathy!"

  "I wasn't—"

  "Just drop it, will you?"

  "Look, I'm worried about you," he said indignantly. "We're all worried about you."

  As she stood there, she seemed to mellow a little, and there was a huskiness to her voice when she finally spoke. "I just can't accept that he's dead." She let out a sob. "He often talked of the day that would come for one or both of us, and that it was just another turn of the wheel. He said you have to be prepared for it but not let it drag you down. He said not to look back, and to make the most of the moment you're in..." She repositioned her rifle over her shoulder, fidgeting with the strap. "I'm trying to do that, but it's hard."

  As Chester looked at her, her face hazy in the dim light cast by his lantern, the tough exterior seemed to drop away, revealing a very frightened, very lost teenage girl. Perhaps, for the first time, he was seeing the real Elliott.

  "We're in this together," he said warmly, his heart going out to her.

  "Thanks," she replied in a subdued voice, avoiding his eyes. "We should get going."

  They came eventually to a small strip of shoreline that appeared as if a shadow was cast across it. As Chester discovered when he examined it more closely, this had nothing to do with the light: A darker and heavier sediment had collected in these shallow waters.

  "Should be rich pickings here," Elliott announced, and handed the sacks to Chester. She walked into the water and, stooping over, passed her hands through it.

  Stepping sideways and still searching, she moved along the margin of the water, then suddenly straightened up with an exultant yell. A large animal flapped in her hands. A foot and a half from head to tail, its silvery body resembled a flattened cone with undulating fins down either side, which rippled crazily as if it was trying to swim away through the air. On the top of its head it had a pair of huge, black, compound eyes, and on the underside were two grasping appendages with spines extending from them; these were trying to curl around to reach Elliott's hands as she fought to keep her grip on the beast. She spun around and splashed back to the beach, Chester falling over in an effort to get out of her way.

  "Yipes!" he cried. "What's that?"

  Elliott swung down the animal, smashing it against a rock. Chester didn't know if she'd killed it or merely stunned it, but it seemed to still be moving, only very slowly now.

  She rolled it onto its back, and Chester saw the two appendages still flexing and its circular mouth, lined around its circumference with tens of glistening white needles.

  "They're called night crabs. Really tasty."

  Chester swallowed, so disgusted he thought he was going to be sick. "I swear it's just a ginormous silverfish," he groaned. He was still lying where he'd fallen. Elliott glanced at the sacks where he'd dropped them, marched over, and pushed the animal inside one.

  "That's the main course," she said. "Now let's—"

  "Don't tell me you're going to catch another of those things," Chester pleaded, his voice high, bordering on hysterical.

  "No, that's not likely," she replied. "Night crabs are pretty scarce. And only the younger ones come this far in to feed. We lucked out."

  "Yeah, score," Chester said, only now standing up and brushing himself down.

  Elliott was already back in the water, this time shoving her arms deep into the mud. "And these are what the crab was looking for," she informed Chester. Thick mud covered her arms up to the elbows as she pulled them out. She held her hand out to Chester so he could see the two curved shells in her palm.

  "What a treat: mollusks! I'll see if there are any more."

  Chester gave an involuntary shudder at the idea that she actually expected him to eat any of these creatures.

  "Go on, knock yourself out," he said.

  * * * * *

  As they made their way back along the beach, Chester had an intimation that things weren't as they should be. A complete lack of movement; no wave or call of acknowledgment from Cal. Elliott, livid, made straight for the boy. Although he was still in a sitting position, his head hung awkwardly forward as he dozed next to his brother, who was similarly dead to the world.

  "Doesn't anyone listen to me around here?" she said to Chester. She was apoplectic — he could hear the breath hissing between her teeth. "Didn't I make it clear he needed to keep on his toes?"

  "Yes, you did," Chester answered loudly.

  "Shush!" she ordered him as she moved a small distance down the beach, where she raised her rifle to scour the horizon. Chester waited by the two slumbering boys until she returned.

  "Drake wouldn't have let this go," she said tensely, pacing up and down behind Cal like a lioness about to strike. Cal remained blissfully unaware of her silent fury, his head swaying gently as he slept on.

  "What do you mean?" Chester asked, trying to read the look in her eyes.

  "He would've dumped him here. Upped camp and let him fend for himself," she said.

  "That's way harsh — how long do you think Cal would last on his own?" Chester objected. "It would be like passing a death sentence on him!"

  "Too bad."

  "You can't do that to him," Chester spluttered. "You have to cut him some slack. The poor kid's absolutely knackered. We all are."

  But she was deadly serious.

  "Don't you get it? By falling asleep, he might have dragged us all down with him," she said as she threw a glance over the water. "We don't know what they're going to throw at us next... If it's Limiters, I probably won't even see them coming. But it could be civilians —
they're often sent in as the vanguard because they're a dime a dozen — pure cannon fodder, collateral. That's how the Styx operate sometimes... the soldiers follow in later on to mop up."

  "Yes, but—" Chester said.

  "No, you listen. You make one mistake and you'll end up facedown in that," she said frostily, thumbing at the sea. She deliberated for a moment, then slung her rifle over her shoulder, stepped behind Cal, and slapped him hard on the back of the head.

  "ARGHHHHH!" he cried, smacked wide awake. He leaped up, his arms waving wildly. Then he realized that it had been Elliott and glared at her.

  "S'pose this is your idea of a joke?" he said, huffing resentfully. "Well, I don't think it's funny..."

  At the sight of her stony face, his protestations shriveled on his lips.

  "You do not fall asleep on watch!" she barked menacingly.

  "No," he said, smoothing down his shirt and looking thoroughly abashed.

  "Thought I heard voices," Will said drowsily, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles as he sat up. "What's going on?"

  "Nothing, just getting dinner ready," Elliott told him. Unseen by Will, she gave Cal a last lingering stare as she swiped her hand across her throat in a cutting motion. He nodded glumly.

  * * * * *

  Elliott dug a hollow in the sand, then dispatched Chester and Cal to collect some brush, which she placed around its edge. Once everything was to her satisfaction, she lit a small fire deep in the pit. As it grew, she further adjusted the brush as a precaution against any stray light leaking out.

  While she was busy tending the flames, Will staggered over to a series of rock pools by the sea's edge. He swung up the lens from over his eye and doused his face with water. Then he seemed to take forever to clean his hands, alternately scrubbing them with wet sand and rinsing them, repeating the process over and over again in a slow, methodical way.

  "Do you think I should check on him? He's acting a bit strange," Chester asked Elliott as he watched his friend's compulsive behavior. "What's wrong with his hands?"

  "Aftereffects," she said simply, leaving Chester and Cal none the wiser.

  Both boys were actually relieved that the opportunity to talk to Will hadn't presented itself. The act of killing had set him apart, putting him in a place they couldn't begin to understand.

  So how should they treat him? The question was at the forefront of both their minds. They certainly couldn't pat him on the back and congratulate him. Should they try to commiserate with him over Drake's death, to console him, when he'd been the cause? The reality was that they were more than a little in awe of Will. How did he feel about what he'd done? Not only did he have blood on his hands from shooting and killing another human being, it was Drake... one of their own... their guardian and friend... his friend.

  As Chester gave Elliott a considered look, he wondered again how she was dealing with it. After her brief moment of vulnerability on the beach, she seemed to have reverted to her old self and to be throwing herself wholeheartedly into looking after them. Chester's train of thought was broken as Elliott hoisted the night crab out of the sack and dropped it onto the sand. It was just as lively as when she'd caught it, and she had to place her foot on it to stop it from escaping.

  Chester saw that Will was coming toward them. His movements were still sluggish, as if he wasn't yet fully awake. Although dripping with water, he hadn't washed his face very successfully: Large sooty patches persisted under his eyes and across his forehead and neck, and dark smudges dappled his white hair. Under different circumstances, Chester might have joked that Will bore a striking resemblance to a panda.

  Will came to a halt a short distance away, refusing to make eye contact with any of them. Instead he bowed his head to look at his feet and scratched at the palm of his hand with an index finger, as if trying to remove something from it with his nail.

  "What did I do?" he said. It was difficult to understand him; his speech was slurred as if his mouth was numb, and still he didn't cease picking at his hand.

  "Stop that!" Elliott said sharply.

  Will quit scratching and let his arms hang limply at his sides, his shoulders sagging. As Chester watched, a droplet detached itself from Will's face and sparkled momentarily as it caught the light. But Chester couldn't tell if it was a tear or merely seawater.

  "Look at me," Elliott ordered Will.

  Will didn't move.

  "I said look at me!"

  Will raised his head and regarded Elliott groggily.

  "That's better. Now let's get something straight... we did what we had to," she told him firmly, then softened her voice. "I'm not thinking about it... You do the same."

  "I... " he stammered, shaking his head slowly.

  "No, don't... Listen to me. You made the second shot because I couldn't. I failed Drake, but you didn't. You did the right thing... for him."

  "OK," he eventually replied, the word almost lost in a sigh. "Did you mention something about dinner?" he asked after a long pause. The look of despair was still deep in his black-ringed eyes.

  "How do you feel?" she asked, remembering the night crab she was standing on — and not a moment too soon, as it rippled its fins in the sand to dig itself out, frantically trying to get back to the water.

  "Rough," he said. "My head's stopped buzzing, but my stomach feels like it's been on a roller coaster."

  "You need to get some hot food in you," she said, lifting her foot from the night crab as she unleashed her knife. The appendages under its head were flexing like animated TV antennae.

  For a split second of silence, Will took in the creature, then cried out:

  "Anomalocaris canadensis!"

  To everyone's surprise, his demeanor went through a rapid transformation. He became wildly excited, jumping up and down and waving his arms.

  Elliott flipped over the night crab and positioned her knife in the join between segments on its flat belly.

  "Hey!" Will screeched. "No!" He stuck out a hand to stop Elliott from killing it, but she was too quick. She pushed in the knife and the appendages on its head immediately went limp, ceasing their endless waving.

  "No!" he shouted again. "How could you do that? It's an Anomalocaris! " He took a step toward her, his hand outstretched.

  "Keep away from me," she warned him, holding up her knife, "or I'll skewer you."

  "But... it's a fossil... I mean... it's extinct... I mean I've seen a fossil of it... It's EXTINCT!" he yelled, becoming even more agitated as none of the others seemed to understand what he was trying to tell them.

  "Really? Doesn't look too extinct to me," Elliott said, hefting the dead animal up before him.

  "Don't you realize how important this is? You can't kill them! Leave the rest alone!" He'd noticed the second sack and wasn't shouting anymore, just yammering, as if he knew he wasn't going to get anywhere with Elliott.

  "Will, chill, OK? The other sack's only got shells in it. And anyway, Elliott says there's a shed load of these crabs out there," Chester tried to tell him, motioning out to sea.

  "But... but... !"

  Elliott's expression of pure exasperation was enough to stop him from making any more of a fuss. He bit his lip, looking on in horror at the lifeless Anomalocaris.

  "It was the biggest predator that swam the seas... the T. Rex of the Cambrian period," Will mumbled forlornly. "It's been extinct for nearly five hundred and fifty million years."

  When Elliott produced the mollusks, as she called them, from the second sack, Will was equally flabbergasted.

  "Devil's toenails!" he gasped. "Gryphaea arcuata. I've got a box of them at home. I found them with my dad at Lyme Regis... but just fossils!"

  So, with the impaled Anomalocaris suspended above the flames, Elliott, Cal, and Chester sat around the prehistoric barbecue, while Will sketched a living devil's toenail that he had begged from Elliott. Its brothers and sisters (or maybe both — Will couldn't quite recall if they were supposed to have been hermaphrodites) hadn't been so fortun
ate: Tucked into the hot embers at the edge of the fire, they sizzled softly.

  Will was talking to himself and grinning inanely, with the sort of absolute absorption a young child might show when examining a creepy-crawly it has caught in the garden. "Yes, really thick shell... look at the growth rings... and there's the lid," Will said, tapping the end of his pencil on a flattened circle at the widest end of the shell. He looked up to find all eyes upon him. "This is just so cool! Do you know this was the predecessor to the oyster?"

  "Drake mentioned something about that. He liked his raw," Elliott said matter-of-factly as she repositioned the Anomalocaris in the flames.

  "None of you has the faintest idea how important the discovery of these animals is," Will said, becoming frustrated all over again by their total lack of interest. "How can you even think about eating them?"

  "If you don't want yours, Will, I'll take it," Cal piped up. He turned to Chester. "What is an oyster, anyway?"

  * * * * *

  As the food cooked, Elliott brought up the bizarre corridor of sealed cells she had seen with Cal in the Bunker.

  "We knew that there was some sort of quarantine area," she mused, "but not where it was or what it was for."

  "Drake did say that, but how did you first hear about it?" Will inquired.

  "From a contact," Elliott answered, hastily looking down. Will could have sworn he saw a flicker of unease in her eyes, but he told himself it must have been due to her discovery of the sickening cells.

  "So all the people were dead," Chester stated.

  "All except for the one man," Elliott said. "He was a renegade."

  "The others were Colonists," Cal added. "You could tell from their clothes."

  "But why would the Styx go to all the trouble of bringing Colonists down here just to kill them?" Chester asked.

  "I don't know," Elliott shrugged. "They've always used the Deeps as testing grounds — that's nothing new — but all the signs now are that something big is about to break. Drake's idea was that the three of you might help us throw a monkey wrench into the works and mess up whatever the Blackheads are doing. Especially him over there." She made a face as she glanced at Will, who was still staring in horror at the cooking Anomalocaris. "Though I'm not too sure if Drake really thought that one through."