Tunnels 02, Deeper

Plain.

     

34

    Cal had been concentrating all his efforts on walking, and when he looked up, what was before him came as quite a shock.
    He and Drake had been tracking around the very edge of the Great Plain, but the usual jagged rock wall wasn't there.
    In its place, a vertical and apparently smooth surface ran from the ground to the roof, completely filling the space between the two. It was as if the seam that was the Great Plain had simply been sealed up. The barrier was too perfect to be a natural feature and stretched into the gloom as far as the light from his muted lantern penetrated.
    He edged closer to touch its surface. It was solid and gray, but not as perfect as he'd originally thought -- in fact it was badly pitted, and in places large chunks were missing, from which reddish-brown stains spread downward, marking the wall.
    It was concrete. A huge concrete wall -- the last thing he'd have expected to find in this elemental place. And he realized just how huge as they continued beside it for another twenty minutes, until Drake signaled him to stop. He pointed at a rectangular opening in the wall, five feet off the ground. Leaning toward Cal, he whispered, "Access duct."
    Cal brought up his lantern to inspect it.
    Drake grabbed his arm and pushed it down. "Keep it low, you fool! Are you trying to give away our position?"
    "Sorry," Cal said, watching as Drake slipped his hand into the shadowy cavity. Then he heard a dull creak as Drake pulled, and a hatch of rusting iron pivoted open.
    "You first," Drake ordered.
    Cal peered into the grim darkness and swallowed. "You expect me to go in there?" he asked.
    "Yes," Drake growled. "This is the bunker. Been empty for years. You'll be all right."
    Cal shook his head. "Be all right? I don't want to do this, I do not want to do this!" he muttered, but scrambled unenthusiastically into the duct with a helping hand from Drake and began to crawl.
    The light from his lantern licked weakly before him, revealing foot after foot of the regular passage as his hands scrabbled in an inch of dry grit along the bottom of the duct. The sound of his own breathing was intimate and close, and he loathed the feeling of constriction. Caught like a rat in a drainpipe , he thought. Every so often he stopped to reach out with his walking stick and knock against the sides to check the way ahead. It gave him an opportunity to rest his leg, which was beginning to ache badly. It felt as though it was going to seize up completely, leaving him stuck in the passage.
    Nevertheless, he continued. The duct seemed to go on forever. "How thick are these walls?" he asked out loud. Then, as he stopped to probe in front with his stick again, the tip didn't encounter anything. He inched a little farther forward and checked again. Nothing: He'd come to the end.
    He cautiously clambered down from the duct. His feet safely on the ground, he turned up his lantern and swept it in front of him. He nearly cried out as a shape reared up beside him, and he raised his walking stick defensively.
    "Quiet," Elliott warned, and he immediately felt like a fool. He'd completely forgotten that she would have been clearing the way ahead, as she always did.
    Drake dropped soundlessly from the duct and appeared behind him. He nudged Cal on, and without a further word, they pushed deeper in.
    They'd been in a small, gloomy room, empty except for puddles of stagnant water, but now advanced watchfully into a larger space, their footfalls giving short echoes as they scuffed over a linoleum-like floor. It might have once been white, but was now streaked with filth and stained from piles of rotting acrid-smelling debris.
    As Cal and Drake held back for Elliott to scout ahead, Cal's light revealed they were in a pretty large room. Against one of the walls stood a desk, and the walls themselves were mottled with patches of brown and gray damp, with small fungi sprouting in sporadic outgrowths, like little circular ledges. And next to where Cal was waiting, there were some shelves filled with decaying files. The paper had been reduced by the water to a flowing amorphous mulch. It spilled from the shelves to form small mounds of papier-mache on the floor.
    Responding to Elliott's signal, Drake whispered to Cal to move on. They slipped through a doorway and into a narrow corridor. At first Cal assumed the indistinct sheen from the walls was due to moisture, but then he realized he was passing between massive glass tanks. He