Tunnels (34 page)
Will nodded, feeling his eyes fill with tears.
"Thought as much!" Tam boomed. Like your mother… like Sarah… a Macaulay through and through!" He grabbed Will firmly by his shoulders. "My head knows you have to go, but my heart says otherwise." He squeezed Will and sighed. "Pity is… we could have had some times down here, the three of us. Some high times indeed."
* * * * *
Will,
Early in the morning, before there was a stir in the house, Will packed his bag and tucked the cloth map Uncle Tam had given him into the top of his boot. He checked that the node stones and light orb were in his pockets, then went over to
"I'm off," Will said in a low voice as his brother's eyes flickered open.
"Thanks for everything,
"Course I will," his brother replied, then frowned. "You know I'd give anything to come, too."
"I know, I know… but you heard what Tam said: I have a better chance by myself. Anyway, your family is here," he said finally, and turned to the door.
Will tiptoed down the stairs. He felt exhilarated to be on the move again, but this was tempered by an unexpected pang of sadness that he was leaving. Of course, he could stay here, somewhere where he actually belonged, if he chose, rather than venturing out into the unknown and risking it all. It would be so easy just to go back to bed. As he reached the hallway, he could hear Bartleby snoring somewhere in the shadows. It was a comforting sound, the sound of home. He would never hear that sound again if he went now. He stood by the front door and hesitated. No! How could he ever live with himself if he chose to leave Chester to the Styx? He would rather die trying to free him. He took a deep breath and, glancing behind him into the still house, slipped the heavy catch on the door. He opened it, stepped over the threshold, and then closed it gently behind him. He was out.
He knew he had a considerable distance to cover, so he walked quickly, his bag thumping a rhythm on his back. It took him a little under forty minutes to reach the building at the edge of the cavern that Tam had described. There was no mistaking it as, unlike most structures in the Colony, it had a tiled rather than a stone roof.
He was now on the road that led to the Skull Gate. Tam had said that he had to keep his wits about him because the Styx changed sentries at random intervals, and there was no way of knowing whether one was just about to appear around the corner.
Leaving the road, Will climbed over a gate and sprinted through the yard that lay in front of the building, a ramshackle farm property. He heard a pig-like grunting coming from one of the outlying buildings and spotted some chickens penned up in another area. They were spindly and malnourished but had perfectly white feathers.
He entered the building with the tiled roof and saw the old timber beams leaning against the wall just as Tam had described. As he crept in under them, something moved toward him.
"What—"
It was Tam. He immediately silenced Will by putting a finger to his lips. Will could hardly contain his surprise. He looked at Tam questioningly, but the man's face was grim and unsmiling.
There was hardly enough room for both of them under the beams, and Tam squatted awkwardly as he slid a massive paving slab along the wall. Then he leaned in toward Will.
"Good luck," he whispered in his ear, and literally pushed him into the jagged opening. Then the slab grated shut behind Will, and he was on his own.
In the pitch-darkness he fumbled in his pocket for the light orb, to which he'd already attached a length of thick string. He knotted this around his neck, leaving his hands free. At first, he moved along the passage with ease, but then, after about thirty feet, it pinched down to a crawlway. The roof of the tunnel was so low that he ended up on his hands and knees. The passage angled upward, and as he heaved himself painfully over jagged plates of broken rock, his backpack kept snagging on the roof.
He caught sight of a movement in front of him and froze on the spot. With some trepidation he lifted the light orb to see what it was. He held his breath as something white flashed across the passage and then landed with a soft thump no more than five feet ahead of him. It was an eyeless rat the size of a well-fed kitten, with snowy fur and whiskers that oscillated like butterfly wings. It stood up on its hind legs, its muzzle twitching and its large, glistening incisors in full view. It showed absolutely no sign that it was afraid of him.
Will found a stone on the tunnel floor and threw it as hard as he could. It missed, glancing off the wall next to the animal, which didn't even flinch. Will's indignation that a mere rat was holding him up welled over, and he lunged toward the animal with a growl. In a single effortless bound it leaped at him, landing smack on his shoulder, and for a split second neither boy nor rat moved. Will felt its whiskers, as delicate as eyelashes, brush his cheek. He shook his shoulders frantically and it launched itself off, springing once on the back of Will's leg as it sped away in the opposite direction.
Will spat a few choice curses at the retreating rodent, then took a deep breath to steady his nerves before setting off again.
He crawled for what seemed like hours, his hands becoming cut and tender from the razor-sharp shards strewn across the floor. Much to his relief, the passage increased in height, and he was almost able to stand up again. Now that he could move at full speed, he became almost euphoric, and felt an irrepressible urge to sing as he negotiated the bends in the tunnel. But he thought better of it when it occurred to him that the sentries at the Skull Gate probably weren't very far from his current position and might somehow be able to hear him.
Eventually he reached the end of the passage, which was cloaked with several layers of stiff sacking, dirtied up to camouflage them against the stone. He brushed them aside and drew his breath as he saw that the tunnel had come out just under the roof of a cavern, and that there was nearly a one-hundred foot drop to the road below. He was proud that he'd gotten this far, past the Skull Gate, but he felt certain that this couldn't be right. He was at such a dizzying height that he immediately assumed he must be in the wrong place. Then Tam's words came back to him:
"It'll look impossible, but take it slowly.
He leaned over to scan the array of ledges and nooks in the rock wall below him. Then he cautiously clambered out over the edge of the tunnel lip and began the descent, checking and rechecking each
skaking
hand- and foothold before he made the next move.
He'd climbed no more than twenty feet when he heard a noise below. A desolate groan. He held still and listened, his heart thudding in his ears. It came again. He had one foot on a small ridge with the other dangling in midair, while his hands gripped an outcrop of rock at chest height. He slowly twisted his head and peered down over his shoulder.
Swinging a lantern, a man was strolling in the direction of the Skull Gate with two emaciated cows a couple of paces in front of him. He shouted something at them as he drove them along, completely unaware of Will's presence above him.
Will was totally exposed, by there was nothing he could do. He held absolutely still, praying that the man wouldn't stop and look up. Then just the thing Will was dreading happened: The man came to an abrupt halt.
Oh, no, this is it!
With his bird's eye view, Will could clearly make out the man's shiny white scalp as he took something out of a shoulder
bagg
. It was a clay pipe with a long stem, which he loaded with tobacco from a pouch and lit, puffing out little clouds of smoke. Will heard him say something to the cows, and then he started on his way again.
Will breathed a silent sigh of relief and, checking that the coast was clear, quickly finished the descent, crisscrossing from ledge to ledge until he was safely back on the ground. Then he dashed as fast as he could along the road, on either side of which were fields of impossibly proportioned mushrooms, their bulbous, ovoid caps standing on thick stalks. He now recognized these as
pennybuns
and, as he went, the motion of his light bobbing around his neck threw a multitude of their shifting shadows over the cavern walls behind them.
Will slowed his pace as he developed a painful stitch in his side. He took a series of deep breaths to try to ease it, then forced himself to speed up again, aware that every second counted if he was going to reach Chester in time. Cavern after cavern fell behind him, the fields of
pennybuns
eventually gave way to black carpets of lichen, and he was relieved when he spotted the first of the lampposts and the hazy outline of a building in the distance. He was getting closer. Suddenly, he found himself at a huge stone archway hewn into the rock. He went through it, into the main body of the Quarter. Soon the dwellings were crowding the sides of the road, and he was becoming more and more nervous. Although nobody seemed to be around, he kept the sound from his boots to a minimum by running on his toes. He was terrified that someone was going to appear from one of the houses and spot him. Then he saw what he'd been looking for. It was the first of the side tunnels that Tam had mentioned.
"You're going to take the backstreets."
He remembered his uncle's words.
"It's safer there."
"Left, left, right." As he went, Will repeated the sequence Tam had drummed into him.
The tunnels were just wide enough for a coach to pass through them.
"Go quickly through these,"
Tam had said.
"If you bump into anyone, just brass it out, like you're supposed to be there."
But there was no sign of anyone as Will ran with all his might, his bag crashing on his back at every step. By the time he reemerged in the main cavern, he was sweating and out of breath. He recognized the squat outline of the police station between the two taller structures on either side, and slowed to a walk to give himself a chance to cool off.
"Made it this far," he muttered to himself. The plan had seemed feasible when Tam had described it, but now he was wondering if he'd made a dreadful mistake.
"You haven't got time to think,"
Tam had said, pointing a finger at him to emphasize his words.
"If you hesitate, the momentum will be lost — the whole thing will go cockeyed."
Will wiped the sweat from his forehead and steeled himself for the next stage.
As he drew nearer, the sight of the police station's entrance brought back memories of the first time he and Chester had been dragged up its steps and the grueling interrogations that had followed. It all came flooding back, and he tried to put the thoughts out of his mind as he slipped into the shadows by the side of the building and heaved off his backpack. He dug out his camera, checking it quickly before he put it into his pocket. Then he hid his backpack and headed for the steps. As he climbed them, he took a deep breath, then pushed through the doors.
The Second Officer was reclining in a chair with his feet on the counter. His eyes swiveled to regard the newcomer, his movements dull, as if he'd been dozing. It took him almost a second to recognize who was standing before him, and then a confounded expression crept over his face.
"Well, well, well, Jerome. What in the world are you doing back here?"
"I've come to see my friend," Will replied, praying that his voice didn't crack. He felt as if he were edging out on the branch of a tree, and the farther he went, the thinner and more precarious the branch became. If he lost his balance now, the fall could be fatal.
"So who let you come back here?" the Second Officer said suspiciously.
"Who
d'you
think?" Will tried to smile calmly.
The Second Officer pondered for a moment, looking him up and down. "Well, I suppose… if they let you through the Skull Gate, it must be all right," he reasoned aloud as he lumbered slowly to his feet.
"They told me I could see him," Will said, "one last time."
"So you know it is to be tonight?" the Second Officer said with the suggestion of a smile. Will nodded and saw that this had dispelled any doubts in the man's mind. At once the officer's manner was transformed.
"Didn't walk the whole way, did you?" he asked. A friendly, generous smile creased his face like a gash in a pig's belly. Will hadn't seen this side of him before, and it made it all the more difficult for him to do what he had to.
"Yes, I had an early start."
"No wonder you look hot. Better come with me, then," the Second Officer said as he lifted up the flap at the end of the counter and came through, rattling his keys. "I hear you're fitting in well," he added. "Knew you would… the moment I first laid eyes on you. 'Deep down he's one of us,' I told the First Officer. 'Looks the part,' I said to him."
They went through the old oak door into the gloom of the Hold. The familiar smell gave Will the creeps as the Second Officer swung back the cell door and ushered him in. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, then he saw him: Chester was sitting in the corner on the ledge, his legs drawn up under his chin. His friend didn't react immediately but stared emptily at Will. Then, with a flash of recognition and sheer disbelief, he was on his feet.
"Will?" he said, his jaw dropping. "Will! I can't believe it?"
"Hi, Chester," Will said, trying to keep the excitement from his voice. He was elated to see him again, but at the same time his whole body was shaking with adrenaline.
"Have you come to get me out, Will? Can I leave now?"
"Uh… not quite." Will half turned, aware that the Second Officer was just behind him and could hear every word.
The Second Officer coughed self-consciously. "I have to lock you in, Jerome. Hope you understand — it's the regulations," he said as he shut the door and turned the key.