Tunnels (19 page)

He was just stepping off the sidewalk onto the cobbled road when there was an earsplitting crash of iron on stone. In a blinding flash, four white horses bore down on him, sparks spraying from their hooves, breathing hard and pulling behind them a sinister black coach. Will didn't have time to react, because at that very instant they were both yanked off their feet and hoisted into the air by the scruffs of their necks.

A single man held them both, dangling helplessly, in his huge gnarled hands. "Interlopers!" the man shouted, his voice fierce and gravelly as he lifted the pair up to his face and inspected them with a look of repugnance. Will tried to bring his shovel up to beat him off, but it was wrested from his grasp.

The man was wearing a ridiculously small helmet and a dark blue uniform of coarse material that rasped as he moved. Beside a row of dull buttons, Will caught sight of a five-pointed star of orange-gold material stitched onto the coat. Their massive, menacing captor was clearly some sort of policeman.

"Help," Chester mouthed silently at his friend, his voice deserting him as they were buffeted about in the man's viselike grip.

"We've been expecting you," the man rumbled.

"What?" Will stared at him blankly.

"Your father said you'd be joining us before long."

"My father? Where's my father? What have you done with him? Put me down!" Will tried to swivel around, kicking out at the man.

"No use wriggling." The man hoisted the struggling boy even higher in the air and sniffed at him. "
Topsoilers
. Disgusting!"

Will sniffed back.

"Don’t smell too good yourself."

The man gave Will a look of withering scorn, then held up Chester and sniffed at him, too. In sheer desperation, Chester tried to head-butt the man. He jerked his face away, but not before Chester, with a wild swing of his arm, had swiped his helmet. It spun from his head, exposing his pale scalp, which was covered with short tufts of wispy white hair.

The man shook Chester violently by the collar and then, with a horrible growl, knocked the boys' heads together. Although their hard hats protected them from any injury as they crashed noisily against each other, they were so shocked by his ferocity that they immediately abandoned any further thoughts of resistance.

"Enough!" the man shouted, and he stunned boys heard a chorus of bitter laughter from behind him, becoming aware for the first time of the other men who were peering at them with pale, unsmiling eyes.

"Think you can come down here and break into our houses?" the man growled as he swept them toward the center fork, where the road descended.

"It's the clink for you two," snarled someone behind them.

They were frog-marched unceremoniously through the streets, which were now filling with people emerging from various doorways and alleys to gawp at this unfortunate pair of strangers. Half dragged and half stumbling, each time they lost their footing the boys would be yanked savagely to their feet by the enormous officer. It was as if he had complete control over the situation.

In all their confusion and panic, Will and Chester looked frantically around in the vain hope that they might find an opportunity for escape, or that someone would come to their rescue. But their faces drained of blood as this hope receded, and they realized the futility of their plight. They were being dragged deeper into the bowels of the earth, and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.

Before they knew it, they were heaved around a bend in the tunnel, and the space around them opened up. They were struck dumb by a dizzying confusion of bridges, aqueducts and raised walkways crisscrossed above a lattice of cobbled streets and lanes, all bordered with buildings.

Dragged on at an impossible rate by the policeman, they were watched by huddled groups of people, their wide faces curious and yet impassive. But not all the faces were like those of their captor or the men who had pursued them up in
Highfield
, with their wan skin and washed-out eyes. If it hadn't been for their old-fashioned dress, some would have appeared quite normal and could easily have passed unnoticed in any

"Help, help!" Chester cried hopelessly as he halfheartedly resumed his efforts to extricate himself from the policeman's grip. But Will hardly noticed any of this. His attention had been seized by a tall, thin individual standing beside a lamppost, dark coat that reflected the light as if it was made from polished leather. He stood out strikingly from the squat people around him, his shoulders slightly bent over like a highly strung bow. His whole being emanated evil, and his dark eyes never left Will's, who felt a wave of dread wash over him.

"I think we're in real trouble here, Chester," he said, unable to tear his gaze from the sinister man, whose thin lips were twisted into a sardonic smile.

Will and Chester stumbled and tripped as they were hauled up a small flight of stairs into a single-story building nestling between what Will took to be drab offices or factories. Once inside, the policeman pulled them to an abrupt halt and, spinning them around, roughly yanked their bags off their backs. Then he literally hurled the two boys at a slippery oak bench, its surface dripping here and there with polished indentations, as if years of wrongdoers had rubbed along its length. Will and Chester gasped as their backs slammed against the wall and the breath was knocked out of them.

"Don't you move!" the policeman roared, positioning himself between them and the entrance. By craning his neck forward, Will could just see past the man and through the half-windowed doors into the street outside, where a mob had gathered. Many were jostling for a view, and a few started to shout angrily and wave their fists as they caught sight of Will. He quickly sat back and tried to catch Chester's eye, but his friend, frightened out of his wits, was staring fixedly at the floor in front of him.

Will noticed a bulletin board next to the door, on which a large number of black-rimmed papers were pinned. Most of the writing was too small to decipher from where he sat, but he could just make out handwritten headings such as
Order of Edict
, followed by strings of numbers.

The walls of the station were painted black from the floor up to a handrail, above which they were an off-white color, peeling in places and streaked with dirt. The ceiling itself was an unpleasant nicotine yellow with deep cracks running in every direction, like a road map of some unidentified country. On the wall directly above him was a picture of a forbidding looking building, with slits for windows and huge bars across its main entrance. Will could just make out the words
Newgate
Prison
written under it.

Across from the boys ran a long counter, on which the policeman had placed their backpacks and Will's shovel, and beyond that was an office of some sort, where three desks were surrounded by a forest of narrow filing cabinets. A number of smaller rooms led off this main room, and from one came the rapid tapping of what could have been a typewriter.

Just as Will was looking into the far corner of the room, where a profusion of burnished brass pipes ran up the walls like the stems of an ancient vine, there was a screeching hiss that ended with a solid clunk. The noise was so sudden that Chester sat up and blinked like a nervous rabbit, stirred from his anxious torpor.

Another policeman emerged from a side room and hurried over to the brass pipes. There he glanced at a panel of antiquated dials from which a cascade of twisted wires spiraled down to a wooden box. Then he opened a hatch in one of the pipes, prying out a bullet-shaped cylinder the size of a small rolling pin. Unscrewing a cap from one end of it, he extracted a scroll of paper that crackled as he straightened it out to read it.

"Styx on their way," he said gruffly, striding over to the counter and opening up a large ledger, not once looking in the boys' direction. He also had an orange-gold star stitched onto his jacket, and although his appearance was much like that of the other officer, he was younger and his head was covered with a neatly cut stubble of white hair.

"Chester," Will whispered. When his friend didn't react, he stretched over to nudge him. In a flash, a truncheon lashed out, smacking sharply across his knuckles.

"Desist!" the policeman next to them barked.

"Ouch!" Will jumped up from the bench, his fists clenched. "You fat…," he shouted, his body trembling, trying to control himself. Chester reached out and grabbed hold of his arm.

"Be quiet, Will!"

Will angrily shook off Chester's hand and stared into the policeman's cold eyes. "I want to know why we're being held," he demanded.

For a horrible moment they thought the policeman's face was going to explode, it turned such a livid red. But then his huge shoulders began to heave, and a low, grating laugh rumbled up, which grew louder and louder. Will threw a sidelong glance at Chester, who was eyeing the policeman with alarm.

"ENOUGH!" the voice of the man behind the counter cracked like a whip as he looked up from the ledger, his gaze falling on the laughing policeman, who immediately fell silent. "YOU!" The man glowered at Will. "SIT DOWN!" His voice held such authority that Will didn't hesitate for a second, quickly taking his place next to Chester again. "I," the man continued, puffing out his barrel chest self-importantly, "am the First Officer. You are already acquainted with the Second Officer." He nodded in the direction of the policeman standing by them.

The First Officer looked down at the roll of paper from the message tube. "You are hereby charged with unlawful entry and trespass into the Quarter under Statute Twelve, Subsection Two," he read in a monotone.

"But…" Will began meekly.

The First Officer ignored him and read on. "Furthermore, you did uninvited enter a property with the intent to pilfer, contrary to Statute Six, Subsection Six," he continued matter-of-factly. "Do you understand these charges?" he asked.

Will and Chester exchanged confused looks, and Will was about to reply when the First Officer cut him off.

"Now what have we here?" he said, opening their backpacks and emptying the contents onto the counter. He picked up the foil-wrapped sandwiches Will had prepared and, not bothering to open them, merely sniffed at them. "Ah, swine," he said with a flicker of a smile. And from the way he briefly licked his lips and slid it to one side, Will knew he'd seen the last of his packed lunch.

Then the First Officer turned his attention to the other items, working his way through them methodically. He lingered on the compass but was more taken by the Swiss Army knife, levering out each of its blades in turn and squeezing the little scissors with his thick fingers before he finally put it down. Casually rolling one of the balls of string on the countertop with one hand, he used the other to flick open
open
the dog-eared geological map that had been in Will's bag, giving it a cursory inspection. Finally, he leaned over and smelled the map, wrinkling his face with a look of distaste, before moving on to the camera.

"Hmmm," he muttered thoughtfully, turning it in his banana-like fingers to consider it from several angles.

"That's mine," Will said.

The First Officer completely ignored him and, putting down the camera, picked up a pen and dipped it in an inkwell set into the counter. With the pen poised over a page of the open ledger, he cleared his throat.

"NAME!" he bellowed, throwing a glance in Chester's direction.

"It's
er
, Chester… Chester Rawls," the boy stammered.

The First Officer wrote in the ledger. The scratching of he nib on the page was the only sound in the room, and Will suddenly felt helpless, as if the entry in the ledger was setting in motion an irreversible process, the workings of which were quite beyond his understanding.

"AND YOU?" he snapped at Will.

"He told me my father was here," Will said, bravely stabbing his finger in the direction of the Second Officer. "Where is he? I want to see him now!"

The First Officer looked across at his colleague and then back to Will. "You won't be seeing anyone unless you do as you are told." He shot another glance at the Second Officer and frowned with barely disguised disapproval. The Second Officer averted his gaze and shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

"NAME!"

"Will Burrows," Will answered slowly.

The First Officer picked up the scroll and consulted it again. "That is not the name I have here," he said, shaking his head and then fixing Will with his steely eyes.

"I don't care what it says. I know my own name."

There was a deafening silence as the First Officer continued to stare at Will. Then he abruptly slammed the ledger shut with a loud slap, causing a cloud of dust to billow up from the counter's surface.

"GET THEM TO THE HOLD!" he barked apoplectically.

They were dragged to their feet and, just as they were being pushed roughly through a large oak door at the end of the reception area, they heard another long hiss followed by a dull clunk as a further message arrived in the pipe system.

The connecting corridor of the Hold was about fifteen feet long and dimly lit by a single globe at the far end, beneath which stood a small wooden desk and chair. A blank wall ran along the right-hand side, and on the wall opposite were four dull iron doors set deep into solid brick surrounds. The boys were pushed along to the farthest door, on which the number four was marked in Roman numerals.

The Second Officer opened it with his keys and it swung back silently on its well-greased hinges. He stepped aside. Looking at the boys, he inclined his head toward the cell and as they hovered uncertainly on the threshold, he lost patience and shoved them in with his large hands, slamming the door behind them.

Inside the cell, the clang of he door reverberated sickeningly off the walls, and their stomachs turned as the key twisted in the lock. They tried to make out the details of the dark and dank cell by feeling their way around, Chester managing to send a bucket clattering over as he went. They discovered there was a three-foot-wide, lead-covered ledge along the length of the wall that directly faced the door, and, without a word to each other, both sat down on it. They felt its rough surface, cold and clammy, under their palms as their eyes gradually adjusted to the only source of light in the cell, the meager illumination that filtered through an observation hatch in the door. Finally Chester broke the silence with a loud sniff.