Tunnels 02, Deeper

porch, then through the door. Cal slammed it shut behind them. Several bangs followed as bats dashed against it, then others brushed their winds over its surface. This fracas soon died down, leaving only their strange piping calls.
    The boys found they were in an imposing hallway replete with a large chandelier, its intricate design gray and furred with dust. A pair of elegantly curving staircases, which swept up to a landing, flanked this foyer. The place appeared to be empty; there was no furniture and just the odd tatter of curling wallpaper hung on the dark walls. It looked as though it had been uninhabited for years.
    Will and Cal began to wade through the dust, which was nearly as thick as driven snow. Chester, still shaken, leaned over by the front door, panting heavily.
    "Are you all right?" Will called back to him, the sound of his voice quiet and muffled in the strange house.
    "I think so." Chester straightened up and stretched his head back, rubbing his neck to alleviate the soreness. "Feels like I was hit with a basketball." As he inclined his head forward again, he noticed something.
    "Hey, Will, you should see this."
    "What's up?"
    "Looks like someone broke in here before us," Chester replied nervously.

     

9

    The small fire pirouetted on the scraps of timber, filling the earthen chamber with flickering light. Sarah was rotating a makeshift spit over the flames, on which two small carcasses were skewered. The sight and smell of the gently browning meat made her realize how hungry she was. The cat must have felt the same way, if the necklaces of milky drool dangling for its muzzle were anything to go by.
    "Good work," she said with a sidelong glance at the animal, which hadn't needed any encouragement to go out and forage food for both of them. In fact, it had seemed relieved to do what it was trained for. In the Colony, its role as a Hunter would have been to trap vermin, particularly eyeless rat, which was considered a rare delicacy.
    In the light of the fire, Sarah had an opportunity to inspect the cat more thoroughly. Its bald skin, like an old, partially deflated balloon, was crisscrossed with lacerations and, around its neck, a number of these were a livid purple and had clearly been recently inflicted.
    Across one of its shoulders was a nasty-looking gouge, flecked with spots of sickly yellow. The injury was bothering the cat, since it kept trying to clean the wound with its forepaw. Sarah knew she'd have to attend to the injury before long -- it was badly infected. That was, if she wanted the animal to live. But considering the possibility of some kind of link with her family, she felt she couldn't just desert it.
    "So who did you belong to? Cal or my... my... husband? " she asked, finding it difficult to utter the word. She gently stroked the cat's cheek as it continued to stare fixedly at the roasting carcasses. It wasn't wearing a collar with any form of identification, but this didn't surprise her. It wasn't common practice in the Colony, as Hunters were expected to move through narrow passages and crawlways, and a collar might catch on rocks and hinder the animal in the chase.
    Sarah coughed and rubbed her eyes. It wasn't an entirely satisfactory arrangement to have a fire burning underground; the kindling, which was too damp to begin with, had to be kept aloft from the pools of water on the chamber floor by a platform she'd fashioned from a pile of rocks. And, since there was nowhere for the smoke to go, it was filling the chamber so thickly that her eyes kept weeping.
    Above all else, she hoped that they were far enough away from anybody that the smell of cooking wouldn't be detected. She consulted her watch. It was nearly twenty-four hours since the incident, and any searches, particularly using dogs, would be unlikely to extend as far as the wasteland above. The police would be concentrating their efforts of the immediate area of the crime scene and on the Common itself.
    No, she didn't think it at all likely that she would be discovered here -- in any case, none of the police would have the finely developed sense of smell that most Colonists possessed. It occurred to her how remarkably safe she felt down here in the excavation -- and being underground again probably played no small part in this. The earthen hollow was a home away from home.
    She took up her knife and dug the tip into each carcass.
    "Right, dinner's ready," she announced to the cat at her side. It was rapidly