Tunnels 02, Deeper

all fours and coughed and retched, Will saw that he had been dragging something behind him. Through his watering eyes, he thought it was Cal. But his heart sank as he realized it was just the rucksacks.
    Chester howled, clawing at his face. He was completely covered in the white particles, his hair matted with them and his face furred where they had stuck in his sweat. He howled again, scratching violently at his neck as if he were trying to tear off his own skin. "It burns!" he cried in a strangled, tortured wail.
    "Use the dirt, rub it off!" Will yelled.
    Chester immediately did so, seizing handfuls of soil and scouring his face with it.
    "Make sure it's out of your eyes!"
    Chester rummaged in his pants pocket and, bringing out a handkerchief, dabbed urgently at his eyes. After a short while his movements became less frantic. Snot streamed from his nose, and his eyes were still watering and rimmed bright red. His face was a mixture of streaked dirt and blood, as if he were wearing some ghastly mask. He looked at Will with a haunted expression.
    "I couldn't take it any longer," he croaked. "I couldn't stay in there... I couldn't breathe." He broke into a racking cough.
    "I've got to get him out," Will said, starting toward the opening. "I'm going back in."
    "No, you're not!" Chester snapped, leaping to his feet and seizing hold of him.
    "I have to!" Will protested, trying to pull away.
    "Don't be stupid, Will! What if these things get you, and I can't get you out!" Chester shouted.
    Will grappled with his friend, struggling to break loose, but Chester was determined not to let him go. In sheer frustration, Will made a halfhearted attempt to punch Chester, and then began to sob. He knew what Chester was saying made sense. His whole body went limp, as if all his strength had suddenly deserted him.
    "OK, OK," Will said in an unsteady voice, holding his hands up to Chester, who released him. He coughed, then threw back his head as if looking for the sky, even though he knew it was hidden from him by many miles of the earth's mantle. He sighed a sigh that shook his whole body as the realization sank in.
    "You're right. Cal's dead.," he said.
    Chester fixed his eyes on Will, nodding once.
    "I'm sorry, Will, I really am."
    "He was just trying to help. He was trying to find us some food... and now look what happened." Will's shoulders sank and he bowed his head.
    As his raw skin continued to burn, Will rubbed his neck, his hand touching and unconsciously closing around the jade pendant that hung there. It had been given to him by Tam minutes before he was slaughtered by the Styx. "I promised Uncle Tam I'd take care of Cal. I gave him my word," he said bleakly, turning away. "What are we doing here? How did all this happen?" He coughed, and then spoke in a small voice. "Dad's probably dead somewhere just like that, and we're idiots and we're going to die, too. I'm sorry, Chester -- game over. We're done for."
    Leaving his lantern behind, he walked away from Chester, stumbling toward a boulder. There, in the dark, he sat down and stared into the nothingness before him, as it stared back into him.

     

18

    With a loud lash of the whip, the carriage left the Jerome house. It passed through the cordon as a barricade was hurriedly pulled aside by some policemen. A small crowd had gathered farther down the road, and Colonists were doing their best to appear to be going about their everyday business. They failed miserably, craning their necks toward the cab in a bid to see who was inside, as indeed many of the policemen.
    Sarah gazed vacantly through the window, oblivious to the faces and their curious stares. She was utterly exhausted from the reunion with her mother.
    "You do realize you're somewhat of a celebrity," Rebecca said as she sat by the old Styx, the younger one having remained behind at the Jerome house.
    Sarah gave the girl a glassy-eyed stare before turning to the window again.
    The carriage rattled through the streets to the farthermost corner of the South Cavern, where the Styx compound stood. The compound was encircled by a thirty-foot wrought-iron fence, and within it was a huge, forbidding building. Its seven stories were carved from the very rock itself, and it had two square towers at either end of its frontage. The building, known as the Styx Citadel, was functional and stark, its rough stone walls without a single decorative feature to relieve its geometric simplicity. No Colonist had ever set foot in it,