Tunnels 02, Deeper

under his eyes and across his forehead and neck, and dark smudges dappled his white hair. Under different circumstances, Chester might have joked that Will bore a striking resemblance to a panda.
    Will came to a halt a short distance away, refusing to make eye contact with any of them. Instead he bowed his head to look at his feet and scratched at the palm of his hand with an index finger, as if trying to remove something from it with his nail.
    "What did I do?" he said. It was difficult to understand him; his speech was slurred as if his mouth was numb, and still he didn't cease picking at his hand.
    "Stop that!" Elliott said sharply.
    Will quit scratching and let his arms hang limply at his sides, his shoulders sagging. As Chester watched, a droplet detached itself from Will's face and sparkled momentarily as it caught the light. But Chester couldn't tell if it was a tear or merely seawater.
    "Look at me," Elliott ordered Will.
    Will didn't move.
    "I said look at me!"
    Will raised his head and regarded Elliott groggily.
    "That's better. Now let's get something straight... we did what we had to," she told him firmly, then softened her voice. "I'm not thinking about it... You do the same."
    "I... " he stammered, shaking his head slowly.
    "No, don't... Listen to me. You made the second shot because I couldn't. I failed Drake, but you didn't. You did the right thing... for him."
    "OK," he eventually replied, the word almost lost in a sigh. "Did you mention something about dinner?" he asked after a long pause. The look of despair was still deep in his black-ringed eyes.
    "How do you feel?" she asked, remembering the night crab she was standing on -- and not a moment too soon, as it rippled its fins in the sand to dig itself out, frantically trying to get back to the water.
    "Rough," he said. "My head's stopped buzzing, but my stomach feels like it's been on a roller coaster."
    "You need to get some hot food in you," she said, lifting her foot from the night crab as she unleashed her knife. The appendages under its head were flexing like animated TV antennae.
    For a split second of silence, Will took in the creature, then cried out:
    "Anomalocaris canadensis!"
    To everyone's surprise, his demeanor went through a rapid transformation. He became wildly excited, jumping up and down and waving his arms.
    Elliott flipped over the night crab and positioned her knife in the join between segments on its flat belly.
    "Hey!" Will screeched. "No!" He stuck out a hand to stop Elliott from killing it, but she was too quick. She pushed in the knife and the appendages on its head immediately went limp, ceasing their endless waving.
    "No!" he shouted again. "How could you do that? It's an Anomalocaris! " He took a step toward her, his hand outstretched.
    "Keep away from me," she warned him, holding up her knife, "or I'll skewer you ."
    "But... it's a fossil... I mean... it's extinct... I mean I've seen a fossil of it... It's EXTINCT!" he yelled, becoming even more agitated as none of the others seemed to understand what he was trying to tell them.
    "Really? Doesn't look too extinct to me," Elliott said, hefting the dead animal up before him.
    "Don't you realize how important this is? You can't kill them! Leave the rest alone!" He'd noticed the second sack and wasn't shouting anymore, just yammering, as if he knew he wasn't going to get anywhere with Elliott.
    "Will, chill, OK? The other sack's only got shells in it. And anyway, Elliott says there's a shed load of these crabs out there," Chester tried to tell him, motioning out to sea.
    "But... but... !"
    Elliott's expression of pure exasperation was enough to stop him from making any more of a fuss. He bit his lip, looking on in horror at the lifeless Anomalocaris .
    "It was the biggest predator that swam the seas... the T. Rex of the Cambrian period," Will mumbled forlornly. "It's been extinct for nearly five hundred and fifty million years."
    When Elliott produced the mollusks, as she called them, from the second sack, Will was equally flabbergasted.
    "Devil's toenails!" he gasped. " Gryphaea arcuata . I've got a box of them at home. I found them with my dad at Lyme Regis... but just fossils!"
    So, with the impaled Anomalocaris suspended above the flames, Elliott, Cal, and Chester sat around the prehistoric barbecue, while Will sketched a living devil's toenail that he had begged from Elliott. Its brothers and sisters (or maybe both -- Will couldn't quite recall if they were supposed