Tunnels 02, Deeper

heck are you talking about?" Chester's voice was hoarse with desperation. "What's wrong with you?"
    "I don't know," Will replied, shaking his head.
    "Well, shut up and concentrate on what we're doing. I don't need a freakin' lecture."
    "Right." Will blinked around him as if he'd wandered out of a fog and couldn't quite figure out where he was. He realized the desert rose was still in his hand and he lobbed it away. Then he put his rucksack back on. Chester watched him with concern as he set off again.
    They were approaching the high point of the slope, and the floor began leveling off. A ray of light streaked through the air and raked across the ceiling. It looked like a distant spotlight of some sort. As a precaution, Chester turned his lantern down to a mere glimmer and, at his insistence, Will did the same.
    They crawled along the last stretch, keeping low, with Chester making sure that Will, in his unpredictable state of mind, stayed tucked in behind him. At the top, they peered over, into a large circular space the size of a stadium. It could have been a moon crater, it looked so barren and dusty.
    "Dang, Will, look at this," Chester whispered, waving his friend alongside him and hastily switching off his lantern altogether. "Do you see them? They look exactly like Styx, but they're dressed like soldiers or something."
    On the floor of the crater, the boys could make out that there were around ten Styx -- although their clothes were unfamiliar, their thin bodies and the way they carried themselves meant they couldn't be anything else -- and two of them had stalker dogs. The men were drawn up in a single line, with a further Styx standing slightly forward from them and brandishing a large lantern. Although the base of the crater was illuminated by four large light orbs mounted on tripods, the main Styx's lantern was phenomenally powerful, and he was directing in on something before him.
    A tremor went through Chester's body -- as he watched the Styx, he felt as though he had stumbled upon a nest of the most evil and poisonous snakes imaginable. "Oh, I hate them," he growled through his clenched teeth.
    "Hmmm," Will answered vaguely as he casually examined a pebble with glittering striations that had caught his eye, then flicked it away with his thumb.
    It didn't take a clinical psychologist to recognize that something was wrong with him; that his brother's death had knocked a screw loose.
    "Hello! Earth to Will! You're acting pretty spacey," Chester said. "Those are Styx down there, murderous, mind-warping Styx."
    "Yeah," Will said. "Sure are."
    Chester was stunned by his total lack of concern. "Well, they make my skin crawl. Let's just get away from here," he suggested urgently, beginning to edge back.
    "See the Coprolites," Will said, pointing carelessly at the scene below.
    "What?" Chester grunted as he tried to locate them. "Where?"
    "There... opposite the Styx..." Will replied, pushing himself up on his arms to get a better view. "Right there in his light."
    "Where exactly?" Chester asked again in a whisper. He glanced at Will beside him and immediately growled, "You numskull, get your head down! They'll see you!"
    "Okey-doke," Will replied, ducking lower.
    Chester turned back to the scene and, despite the lancing shaft of light from the Styx's lantern, it wasn't until one of them stirred that he located it (or him or her, for that matter -- Chester found it hard to think of the lumbering Coprolites as people ). The Coprolites' eye-beams were barely noticeable in the well-lit area, and their mushroom-colored suits merged so effectively with the stone of the crater floor that, having found one, Chester still had great difficulty picking out the others. In fact, there were quite a number of them, standing in an uneven row opposite the Styx.
    "Just how many are there?" he asked Will.
    "Can't say. Twenty or so?"
    The main Styx was pacing between the two groups. He would strut up and down and then abruptly wheel to face the Coprolites, thrusting his lantern at them. Although the boys couldn't hear anything he was saying, from the jerking motion of his arms and rapid switching of his head, it was clear he was shouting at the Coprolites. The boys watched for several minutes, until Will became restless and started to fidget.
    "I'm hungry. Got that chewing gum?"
    "You've got to be kidding -- how can you be hungry at a time like this?" Chester asked him.
    "I don't know... just give me some, will you?" Will