Tunnels 02, Deeper

going! GET OUT!" he shouted in a cracked voice. "GET OUT!"
    He began to stumble along, calling out to Drake and his father, to anyone, to help him. But he heard nothing except his own echoing voice. Then there was a fall of small stones behind him, and he thought it perhaps too dangerous to continue to shout anymore and fell silent. But he kept going, counting a rough rhythm in his head as he went:
    One two, one two one, one two...
    Before long he was seeing horrible things looming out at him from the invisible walls. He told himself they weren't real, but that didn't stop them form coming.
    He was losing it. He truly believed he'd go mad if the thirst and hunger didn't get him first.
    One two, one two...
    He rued the day that he had made the decision to take the Miners' Train and come down here to the Deeps. What had he been thinking? To be lost like this, when he could have gone Topsoil! After all, what was the worst that could have happened to him up there? Spending the rest of his life on the run from the Styx didn't seem so bad now. At least he wouldn't have gotten himself into this situation.
    He fell again, and it was a bad one. He'd tumbled across some jagged rocks and banged his head. He slowly rolled onto his back and stretched out his limbs so he was spread-eagled. Then he lifted his hands in front of his face. Where he should have seen the white of his palms, there was no differentiation from the blankness, the canvas that had become his universe. He did not exist anymore.
    He rolled over and felt in front of him, terrified there might be some sort of drop just ahead. But the tunnel floor continued uninterrupted, and he knew that he would have to get back up.
    Without anything else to rely on, he'd become highly attuned to the familiar echoes his boots made as he trudged through the gravel and dust. He'd learned to read the minute reports of his footfalls as they reflected from the walls -- it was almost like he had his own radar. On several occasions, he'd been forewarned of gaping chasms or changes in the floor level, purely by the nature of these echoes.
    He got to his feet and took some steps.
    There was a dramatic change in the sounds. The feedback was fainter, as if the lava tube had suddenly ballooned in size. He advanced at a snail's pace, filled with trepidation that he was about to stagger blindly into a vertical shaft.
    Within a short distance, there were no more echoes at all -- none he could discern, anyway. His boots were encountering something other than the usual debris. Pebbles! Knocking and grinding against one another and giving that unmistakable slightly hollow sound. They shifted under his feet and, in hid exhausted state, made it even more difficult to walk.
    Then he sniffed, suddenly aware of humidity on his face. He sniffed again. What was it?
    Ozone!
    He smelled ozone, so evocative of the seaside and trips to the beach with his dad.
    What had he stumbled on?

     

32

    Mrs. Burrows stood by the door to her room, watching the events farther down the corridor.
    She'd been roused from her afternoon nap by raised voices and the rapid tap of footfalls over the surface of the linoleum out in the hallway. This struck her as odd. For the past week there had been next to no activity in the place. An uneasy silence had fallen over Humphrey House, the patients largely confining themselves to their beds as, one after another, they succumbed to the mysterious virus that had all of England in its grip.
    When she'd first heard the commotion, Mrs. Burrows had assumed it was simply a patient kicking up a fuss. But minutes later, a loud crash came from the area of the service elevator, followed by a woman's voice speaking in urgent tones. It was the voice of someone who was distressed or angry and wanted to shout but was just managing to keep herself in check. Only just.
    Her curiosity getting the better of her, Mrs. Burrows had finally decided to take a look. Her eyes were considerably better, but still painful enough to force her to squint.
    "What's all this?" she mumbled through a yawn as she stepped from her bedroom into the corridor. She stopped as something by the door to Old Mrs. L's room came into focus, and her red eyes opened wide with surprise. Mrs. Burrows had seen enough TV hospital dramas to identify what was there:
    A paradise cart -- the horrible euphemism for a hospital gurney with stainless-steel sides and top. It was a means of transporting dead bodies without alerting anyone as