Tunnels 01, Tunnels

he reached the far side. He dismounted and hid his bicycle in a small dugout beneath the shell of an abandoned car, its make unrecognizable as a result of the rust and salvaging it had endured.
    "Here we are," he announced as Chester caught up.
    "Is this where we're going to dig?" Chester panted, looking around at the ground at their feet.
    "Nope. Back up a bit," Will said. Chester took a couple of paces away from Will, regarding him with bemusement.
    "Are we going to start a new one?"
    Will didn't answer but instead knelt down and appeared to be feeling for something in a thicket of grass. He found what he was looking for -- a knotted length of rope -- and stood up, took up the slack, then pulled hard. To Chester's surprise, a line cracked open in the earth, and a thick panel of plywood rose up, soil tumbling from it to reveal the dark entrance beneath.
    "Why do you need to hide it?" he asked Will.
    "Can't have those scumbags messing around with my excavation, can I?" Will said possessively.
    "We're not going in there, are we?" Chester said, stepping closer to peer into the void.
    But Will had already begun to lower himself into the opening, which, after a drop of about six feet, continued to sink deeper, at an angle.
    "I've got a spare one of these for you," Will said from inside the opening as he donned a yellow hard hat and switched on the miner's light mounted on its front. It shone up at Chester, who was hovering indecisively above him.
    "Well, are you coming or not?" Will said testily. "Take it from me, it's completely safe."
    "Are you sure about this?"
    "Of course," Will said, making a show of slapping a support to his side and smiling confidently to give his friend some encouragement. He continued to smile fixedly as, in the shadows behind him and out of Chester's sight, a small shower of soil fell against his back. "Safe as houses. Honest."
    "Well..."
    Once inside, Chester was almost too surprised to speak. A tunnel, several feet wide and the same in height, ran at a slight incline into the darkness, the sides shored up with old timber props at frequent intervals. It looked, Chester thought, exactly like the mines in those old cowboy films they showed on TV on Sunday afternoons.
    "This is cool! You didn't do all this by yourself, Will, you can't have!"
    Will grinned smugly. "Certainly did. I've been at it since last year -- and you haven't seen the half of it yet. Step this way."
    He replaced the plywood, sealing the tunnel mouth. Chester watched with mixed emotions as the last chink of blue sky disappeared. They set off along the passage, past stores of planks and shoring timbers stacked untidily against the sides.
    "Wow!" Chester said under his breath.
    Quite unexpectedly the passage widened out into an area the size of a reasonably large room, two tunnels branching off each end of it. In the middle was a small mountain of buckets, a trestle table, and two old armchairs. The timber planking of the roof was supported by rows of Stillson props, adjustable iron columns scabbed with rust.
    "Home again, home again," Will said.
    "This is just... wild," Chester said in disbelief, then frowned. "But is it really all right for us to be down here?"
    "Of course it is. My dad showed me how to batten and prop -- this isn't my first time, you know..." Will hesitated, catching himself just in time before he said anything about the train station he'd unearthed with his father. Chester regarded him suspiciously as he coughed loudly to mask the lull in the conversation. Will had been sworn to secrecy by his father, and he couldn't break that confidence, not even to Chester. He sniffed loudly, then went on. "And it's perfectly sound. It's better not to tunnel under buildings -- that takes stronger tunnel props and a lot more planning. Also, it's not a good idea where there's water or underground streams -- they can cause the whole thing to cave in."
    "There isn't any water around here, is there?" Chester asked quickly.
    "Just this." Will reached into a cardboard box on the table and handed his friend a plastic bottle of water. "Let's just chill out for a while."
    They both sat in the old armchairs, sipping from the bottles, while Chester looked up at the roof and craned his neck to look at the two branch tunnels.
    "It's so peaceful, isn't it?" Will sighed.
    "Yes," Chester replied. "Very... um... quiet."
    "It's more than that, it's so warm and calm down here. And the smell... sort of comforting, isn't it? Dad says it's where