Ryan whistled softly between his teeth, considering all the options, failing to find one that looked even remotely worth trying.
The right fork of the corridor had finished in a blank dead end only fifty yards or so from the sliding entrance to the stores. Retracing their steps, they rounded the first bend to the left and found themselves faced with a dark section of the passage completely blocked by a massive earthslide.
That seemed to limit which direction they could go. The section of the stores where they'd found the fur coats led only to the totally wrecked sec door; Ryan knew they didn't have enough explosives to shift it. There was no other way out, and they could go neither forward or back.
It didn't look good.
"Figure there's enough stuff to eat an' drink to keep us alive for a week. Mebbe ten to twelve days if we're real careful," J.B. said.
"If we get through the slip, we should be somewheres round the place where the corridor passes the broken door. Should loop around," Ryan said.
"That looks like it's about a mile wide," Finn grunted, spitting in the dust.
Jak suddenly dropped to his hands and knees, staring intently at the floor where Finnegan's saliva had landed.
The others looked at him, puzzled, until Ryan also noticed what the boy had spotted.
"Fireblast! Look. Footprints. Those muties have been along here. Means there's some way in or out."
"And the air's fresh," Lori exclaimed, clapping her hands in delight.
"Let me," Jak said, not waiting for a reply as he scampered up the shadowed pile of gray-orange dirt and picked his way through the tumbled heaps of concrete and twisted steel. His newly acquired sectioned spear rattled on the stones as he went. When he reached the top, it was hard to see him, but his snow-white hair flared like a magnesium beacon.
"Yeah. Like other. Narrow, but dark. Can't see through." His voice was muted and they watched him disappear.
"Jak!" Ryan shouted. "Come back. We'll all go if'n it's safe."
The boy reappeared, his red eyes seeming to glow like rubies. "Yeah. Be tight for some." He stared pointedly at Finnegan. "But we can do it. Goes up at an angle. Seems to be another tunnel going off a few yards up here."
Ryan looked at J.B., seeing from his expression that he was thinking the same thing. "That mutie..."
"Yeah, Ryan. Small bastard. Dirt on his clothes. Spear like that... useful in a tunnel."
"You reckon they're up there?"
J.B. nodded. "Could be. Waiting for us."
"One way to find out."
The Armorer grinned, thin-lipped. "Fucking right, Ryan. Fucking right."
It was the beginning of one of the worst experiences in Ryan Cawdor's entire life.
At their highest the tunnels didn't reach five feet, and in places the group found it necessary to wriggle on their bellies. Mostly the tunnels were dry and dusty. But some of them were wet, with slimy mud that got all over everyone, making it hard to get any purchase on the rough floors with fingers and toes.
Most of the way, the tunnels were totally dark. But occasionally the black gave way to a dull gray light, which would fade away again as the tunnel dipped or straightened.
By mutual agreement, Jak went first, his lithe, skinny body folding easily around the sharp bends and inclines. Lori followed, with Finn struggling along third. Doc Tanner came fourth, his stovepipe hat cradled in his arms as he crouched and ducked like a rheumatic stork. J.B. was fifth, his Tekna knife in his right hand. Krysty was next, and Ryan brought up the rear. As the tallest of the party, he found the tunnels most difficult. He also got everyone else's dirt and mud pushed back in his face.
The only sound was panting and scrabbling, with an occasional curse or groan of discomfort.
It was agreed that Jak would stop every four minutes and that everyone would remain silent and still while Krysty listened for any warning of the muties.
At the third stop, at a point where the tunnel widened to about eight feet, and three other tunnels opened off it, they discussed strategy. Jak was for going on, picking every tunnel that seemed to go upward, on the assumption that eventually they'd emerge into the open air. Lori had become terrified, face glistening with sweat, voice high and thin as she chattered to Doc, begging him to take her back.
"I fear that we are in the land of no return, my dearest dove," he said gently, patting her on the arm in the way that one would try to gentle a frightened foal. "It is ever onward and upward for us all."
"Don't like dark, Theo, lover," she said.
"Get her to keep her voice down, Doc," Ryan warned. "If there's muties down here, they'll just have to sit quiet and tight and pick us off. Must keep as quiet as we can."
"Watch out for boobies, Whitey," J.B. urged the albino. "Sharp sticks, trailing wires, a deadfall in the tunnel. Anything like that."
"How come you know so much 'bout tunnels?" the boy asked.
"Read a book once. Found it in a ruined house, somewheres round North Platte, up in 'braska. Remember it, Ryan?"
It rang a distant bell for Ryan. "Sure. Tunnels in the Viet wars. You loaned it to me."
"And you lost it, you son of a bitch."
"Yeah, I remember that, too."
J.B. turned back to whisper to Jak. "There were tunnels in the Viet fighting. Place called Cu Chi. Lotsa little men being chased by bigger men. Naked guy with a bamboo spear killing a soldier with a dozen blasters strung all over him."
"Guess blasters no use in tunnels, huh?"
J.B. sniffed, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Despite the intensely cold clamminess in the tunnels, all of them were perspiring.
"Read of one. Smith an' Wesson .44 Magnum. Six-shot, cylinder load. Weighed in around two pounds. Exposed hammer on it. Fired fifteen-pellet round, starred like a shotgun. But they cut out most of the noise and the flash."
"Sounds good t'me," Jak said, smiling. "Could do with one of them here, case we run into muties."
"Keep that spear handy, son," Ryan warned.
"He's right," Krysty added. "Got me a feeling that we'll have some company real soon."
They moved on.
At one point the tunnel dipped steeply and then came up almost vertically so that Finnegan got stuck and had to be pulled by Lori and pushed from behind by a panting Doc Tanner.
When he was free, he hissed back to Ryan that they ought to abandon their bulky cold-weather coats. "Be best, after a fucking tight spot like that. Can't do that again, Ryan."
Despite Finnegan's almost limitless courage, Ryan heard the thin note of frayed panic that haunted the fat man's voice. Being in this twining, bending maze of darkness was like living one's worst nightmares. The walls seemed to close in, and the clumps of dirt that fell constantly from the roof kept the chilling fear of a cave-in fresh in one's mind.
"Keep the coats as long as we can. When we get out, we'll need them, Finn."
"Sure, Ryan. Whenwe get out. Or maybe it's if we fucking get out."
"We'll get out, Finn. Air's tasting sweeter, and the light's not so bad."
A hundred feet farther along, they came to a dead halt. The tunnel had sloped down again, getting wetter and wetter, until they were crawling on hands and knees through clinging mud. Krysty whispered to Ryan that she thought she could hear the sound of running water.
"If it rains up top, then it's coming this way," he whispered back.
"I just love the way you reassure a girl, Mr. Cawdor," she said. "If these tunnels start to fill up with water, it'll be a million laughs."
Jak's voice floated back to them. "It goes under water. I figure it's mebbe a trap. I'm going through. If it's safe, or I can't get through, I'll come back."
Ryan pushed past the others and touched the boy's shoulder, feeling it slick with mud. "Don't try and be a fucking hero on this one, Jak. Don't push it too far. Remember that Doc and the girls, and Finn, won't be able to get as far as you can."
"Sure." The mane of tumbling hair, although matted and streaked with dirt, glistened white in the narrow confines of the tunnel.
Ryan, his eyes accustomed to the poor light, watched as the boy crawled to the point where the flat, leaden water waited. Jak took several deep breaths, then gave a quick thumbs-up sign. Slipping into the unknown deeps of the pool, he wriggled out of sight like an eel.
A feeble trail of bubbles burst to the surface, hung there for a moment, then vanished. To Ryan, the bubbles were a lingering reproach for allowing the lad to risk the dive. He counted fifty slow beats of his heart. Then he saw an ominous swirling in the water, as though some sinister creature were moving deep below them.
"There he is," Krysty said, pointing at a faint white blur in the darkness.
Jak burst out of the side of the pool, expelling air from his lungs in a wheezing gasp as he shook his soaking hair away from his face. "Easy. Go down coupla feet and swim straight for around fifteen feet. No more'n that. Air's fresher other side. Colder. More light."
"What about tracks?" Ryan asked.
"Can't see none. But I figure it's raining up top. Water streaming down passage."
"Best get it over," Krysty said.
"Yeah, lover. Let's... What's wrong, Lori?"
Huddled in her new fur coat, the girl shook as if she had an ague. When she tried to speak, her teeth chattered so much it was impossible to understand her.
Doc hugged her, then looked away from her to the faces of the others, seeing his own concern mirrored in everyone's eyes.
Finn broke the silence. "She can't fucking swim," he said quietly without anger. "That's it, isn't it, Lori?"
The girl began to cry, then buried her face on Doc Tanner's shoulder, which answered the question.
"I'll take her through," Jak suggested, standing up, muddy water pouring from his clothes. "But we best go quick."
Lori pulled away, backing against the wall of the tunnel, eyes wide and blank with terror, her right hand dropping to the butt of the pistol at her belt. Ryan saw immediately that she wasn't going to go through easy.
Which meant it had to be hard.
"Lori," he said, calm and friendly, stepping toward her, watching her fingers gripping the butt of the small Walther PPK blaster.
"No, no, no, no, no," she repeated, flat and dull, shaking her head.
"That's all right," he reassured her. "Nobody'll make..."
He watched her eyes, seeing her glance across to Doc Tanner for reassurance. That was the moment.
The punch jarred through his wrist and elbow, clear up to the shoulder. There had been no point in trying to pull it. The girl was in such an advanced state of panic that she could easily have gone for her gun. And then he'd have had to kill her. Better to lay her out cold.
Her teeth clicked together as she went over. His fist had hit her clean on the angle of her jaw, so that she was sent back up the tunnel, heels teetering, spurs jingling, before she crashed down, one leg kicking out in a residual gesture.
"You cowardly bastard!" Doc Tanner yelled, stepping toward Ryan and raising his sword stick.
"Don't do it, Doc," J.B. said gently. "Ryan did it for the best. We try and force her, someone'd get chilled. We leave her, she gets chilled on her own."
The old man turned away, eyes closed, shaking his head. "I had not thought... had not..." He turned back, moving to kneel beside the unconscious girl.
"Leave her, Doc," Ryan said. "No time. Finn, you and Jak drag her through. There's room?" he asked the boy.
"Easy. I'll hold hand over nose and mouth. Won't choke."
Finnegan and Jak plunged into the dark water, gripping the limp figure of the girl between them as they kicked their way out of sight. Ryan counted a hundred heartbeats, then gave the old man the nod.
"Go join 'em, Doc. And tell her I'm really sorry about hitting her."
"I accept that you were correct in your course of action, Mr. Cawdor, but you can scarcely expect me to relish it."
Hat jammed on his head, one hand steadying it, Doc Tanner vanished from their sight. Ryan, J.B. and Krysty waited for a few moments. The water at their feet swelled and surged, lapping at the toes of Ryan's combat boots.
"Fireblast!"
"What's?.." Krysty began, looking down. "It's rising. It's getting..."
"See you the other side," the little Armorer said, tucking his beloved fedora into the front of his coat as he jumped feet first into the pool. A trail of bubbles indicated his progress under the ledge of rock.
"The rain," Krysty said. "I can hear it. Hear it louder. Ryan... it's like thunder on..."
There wasn't time for her to finish the sentence. The pool began to foam and froth, a reddish scum appearing on its surface. Where it had begun to rise slowly, inching up the slight slope toward them, it now swelled wolfishly, clawing at their boots, forcing them back up the tunnel into the blackness behind them.
They hesitated. Already the water had risen at least two feet, pushing along a dozen feet or more. The power of the surge was frightening, bubbling like a monstrous cauldron.
"What d'you think, Lover?" Krysty asked. "Be difficult to swim through that now."
Ryan bit his lip in anger. Another half minute and they'd all have been through safely. It crossed his mind to wonder how the other five were on the far side of the pool. If the flash flood had this kind of awesome power, then what would it be like in the chamber beyond?
"Got to move back. No knowing how long this'll go on 'fore it subsides again. Could be a couple of hours. Come on."
He led the way. Now the light had virtually disappeared, and he felt his way along the slippery walls, hearing the thunder of the water behind them, imagining it pursuing them. The passage rose and fell, and Ryan wondered if the flood had sought out a lower level ahead of them where it would trap them.
He felt the tension of panic rising in his chest as his pulse and respiration thundered. His good eye probed the blackness ahead as he tried to remember the way the tunnel had gone and wondered whether there was any side trails to confuse them. Water lapped around his ankles, cold and glutinous, like the embrace of a dying sticky.
"You there, lover?" he called, shouting at the top of his voice against the rising roar of the torrent.
"Yeah, keep moving. Getting deeper."
The passage sloped down, and for a few moments the water was up to his waist, chilling his groin, making him gasp in shock. Then the passage jerked up again, so that the water only slurped at his boots. The floor was streaming, slippery and infinitely treacherous. The current was so fast that to fall would mean death in the shrinking darkness.
When the passage narrowed, he banged his head hard on the ceiling, stunning himself. "Watch your head," he screamed, hearing fear ride his voice.
Then the ceiling caved in, and someone fell on his shoulders. Fire lanced across his ribs from a knife or spear, as fingers clawed at his windpipe. The extra weight was enough to knock him off balance, and he slipped over, head plunging into the cold mud.