Tunnels 02, Deeper

remove the bacteria before they sucked the moisture from his skin and flared fully into life. A moment too late and the reaction would have been as painful as if his hand had been immersed in acid. He'd witnessed enough stalkers yelping and bucking in agony, their noses shining as brightly as a tail light on a Topsoil bicycle, to know how it went.
    But he'd removed the bacteria in time and, aware that Elliott wouldn't have used them unless she'd thought it absolutely necessary, he began to run.
    That was when he heard a massive explosion from somewhere up ahead.
    "That sounds suspiciously like my Sharps munitions store going off," he said to himself.
    There followed a deep rumbling that could have been mistaken for rolling thunder, although it lasted for considerably longer than any Topsoil storm. The wind in the tunnel faltered, then reversed direction.
    If he had been moving rapidly before, he now flew through the tunnel, terrified he was going to be too late.
     

50

    "Got something?" Chester asked Elliott as they studied the horizon through their rifle scopes.
    "Yes... activity to the left," she confirmed. "Do you see them?"
    "No," Chester admitted. "Nothing."
    "There are two Limiters, maybe a third," Elliott said.
    They'd already had several sightings of Styx along the way, and each time had been forced to change direction. This had been the pattern since they'd emerged into a goliath space with odd-looking, dough-shaped rock formations scattered throughout it -- menhirs, Will had called them.
    "We'd better make ourselves scarce," Elliott said. Although the Limiters were a considerable distance away, she and Chester kept low and used the menhirs for cover as they strode back to where Will and Cal were waiting.
    "What's up?" Will asked.
    "More of them," Chester replied curtly, keeping his eyes averted.
    "Doesn't look promising," Elliott said, shaking her head. "We can't go the way I wanted, so we're going to cut down the slope closer to the Pore, and then... then on to..."
    She hesitated as the distant sound of a howl carried through the arid air, followed by barking.
    Bartleby let out a small meow, and his ears pricked up like radar dishes as he spun his whole body around to where the noises were coming from.
    "They've got the stalkers in here," Elliott said. "Come on."
    They kept on the move, filled with a sense of urgency, but Will and the others found they weren't as panicky as they might have been. For one thing, the soldiers were far enough off that it didn't feel as if they posed an immediate threat. But more significantly, the fight with the Limiter had had a profound effect on each of them. Elliott's words of reassurance to Cal back at the Sharps resonated within all three boys; it was as though they had been partially anesthetized from the constant fear and dread that they'd been living with. Elliott was right -- the experience, horrible as it was, had toughened them up.
    And they'd found out their opponents weren't the invincible warriors they had once thought. The could be beaten. Besides, the boys had Elliott on their side. As they tramped down the slope, Will dreamingly began to imagine her as some new kind of superhero. The incredible exploding girl , he mused, with fingers of dynamite and nitroglycerine for blood . He chuckled to himself. She always rose to the occasion with something up her sleeve to help them out of a tight corner. Long may it continue , he thought.
    So it came as a surprise when, after another stop to reconnoiter the horizon, Elliott grew increasingly agitated. She was always so calm and collected that her behavior began to infect the boys, setting them on edge. She was seeing Limiters everywhere.
    "This isn't good. We've got to head even farther down," she told them, making a brisk quarter turn and lifting her rifle to her shoulder for a final check before setting off on the new course.
    Will didn't grasp the importance of this change in direction until they eventually came upon the Pore itself.
    Water drizzled down on them in sporadic, wind-tossed showers, as Will gazed into the seemingly infinite cavity.
    He whistled in astonishment.
    "That's one humongous hole!" he exclaimed, immediately going to the brink and peering down.
    His vertigo affecting him, Cal maintained a wide margin between himself and the edge of the enormous drop.
    Will was examining the curvature of the Pore through his headset. "Man, this is big. Really big."
    "Yes," Elliott said. "You could say