Tunnels 02, Deeper

looks.
    "They've been harrying us for miles... and I didn't spot it." Elliott gripped her rifle with such aggression that one of her knuckles cracked. "What a fool!"
    "Spot what?" Chester said. "What are you talking about?"{
    "The pattern... We've run into Limiters at every turn, and we've gone exactly where they wanted us, like hens in a roundup! They've corralled us, time after time."
    Will thought she was about to break into tears, she was so livid with herself.
    "I've played straight into their hands..." She let the stock of her rifle slide to the ground until it rested in the dirt, then she leaned against the barrel, her head bowed. She was visibly crestfallen, as if all her sense of purpose had suddenly left her. "After everything Drake taught me. He wouldn't--"
    "Oh, don't even, we're doing just fine," Cal cut her off, trying to remain calm but sounding far from it. Spent to the point of collapse, he just wanted to get wherever and finally rest. "Can't we just go along there?" he appealed to her, pointing at the perimeter of the Pore.
    "No way," Elliott replied wanly.
    "Why not?" he pressed her.
    She didn't answer for a moment, her eyes on Bartleby. The cat's head was up and his ears cocked alertly; as they watched he raised his head even higher and sniffed. Elliott gave a resigned nod as she finally answered Cal.
    "Along there, somewhere, is a bunch of Limiters, all with rifles trained and ready." At the boys's continued refusal to accept what she was saying, she seemed to pull herself together, her eyes flashing angrily at each of them in turn. "And out there" -- she jerked her thumb to the left -- "will be enough White Necks to fill a stinking church. Why don't you ask your Hunter? He knows."
    Cal glanced at his cat and then regarded Elliott dubiously, as Will and Chester took a few paces in the directions she had indicated to scrutinize the barren landscapes.
    Pulling down his lens, Will could see a considerable distance up the slope where the menhirs lay in haphazard arrangement. "But... but there's absolutely no one there," he insisted, his voice whining with the implausibility of it all.
    "Nothing this way, either," Chester added. "You're getting jumpy, Elliott, that's all. We're fine, really," he pleaded as he and Will wandered back to rejoin her.
    "If fine is being shot to shreds, boy, then I'd have to agree with you," Elliott said tersely as she swung up her rifle in a single deft movement, readying it against her shoulder.

     

52

    Drake bombarded Sarah with question after question as they went, grilling her about what she knew. She was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate and often answered disjointedly, sometimes getting the sequence of event in the wrong order as she told him about Rebecca and the Dominion plot.
    Eventually they lapsed into silence, Drake because he was trying to conserve his energy to carry Sarah, and Sarah, because the spells of light-headedness were coming with greater frequency. Like a leaking bucket, she felt the lifeblood seeping form her. The odds were stacked heavily against her ever seeing her two sons again.
    "These boots are gonna..." she wheezed as Drake carried her along. The pain from her shattered hip was so vast and all-consuming that at times she saw herself as a cork bobbing on the surface of a shiny red-hot ocean, which, at any moment, might fold over her and suck her into its depths. She fought and fought to stay afloat, to stay focused, but her whole head throbbed with a searing pain from the gunshot wound to her temple, as if her brain had been cleft in two.
    "You keep lying when..."
    And finally, Drakes chest heaving with the exertion, they came to the gradient down to the Pore.
    Despite his fragile cargo, he broke into a run.

    * * * * *

    A singsong shout rolled over the expanse toward them.
    "Oh, Will!"
    He went rigid.
    "I know you're there, Sunshine!" it called gleefully.
    Will recognized the voice without a moment's hesitation. He locked eyes with Elliott.
    "Rebecca," he gasped.
    For an instant none of them moved.
    "I think we're in trouble," Will said helplessly.
    Elliott nodded. "You're so right," she agreed, her voice devoid of any intonation.
    Will felt exactly like a rabbit caught in the blazing headlights of a huge juggernaut that was thundering down on it.
    It was as if, deep in his bones, he'd always known this moment would come, that it had been inevitable right from the start. And yet he'd led all of them straight into it. His