Tunnels 03, Freefall

you've dreamt up between you, I have to assume it's all true," she said, then frowned. "It isn't some crazy stunt you're trying to pull on me, is it?"
    "Oh, dear me, she's seen through us, Will," Dr. Burrows declared, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
    "What did you say?" Mrs. Burrows asked, although there was no way she could have missed it.
    "Yes, it's all a complete fiction. I went to Disneyland for five months while you flogged my house and made a new friend," he said.
    Will noticed Mrs. Burrows' eyes had narrowed to slits, and knew that it wasn't a good sign. He was right. She clenched her fist and, without any warning, she leant forward and swung at the back of Dr. Burrows head, nearly knocking his glasses off. "You stupid sod!" she shrieked. She struck him again, this time precisely on the small balding patch on the top of his scalp.
    "Hey, come on, you two!" Drake said, the vehicle swerving as he tried to shield Dr. Burrows from any further blows. "Not in the car, and not in front of Will."
    "What was that for?" Dr. Burrows bleated as he rubbed his head.
    "What was that for?" Mrs. Burrows repeated twice in quick succession. "You selfish, selfish creep! You swan off on some half-baked frolic without a by-your-leave to anyone, and get my son and his friend stuck right in the middle of all this! They might have been killed!"
    "Mum, please," Will appealed to her. "He wasn't to know what would happen."
    "Really," she muttered, unconvinced. No one spoke after that, looking at the countryside as it rolled past them. Drake eventually turned into a single-track lane, lined on both sides by wild hedgerows. They drove through a ford, then several kilometers later Drake slowed to take the car into a field. Will saw they were at the bottom of an incline covered in lush grass.
    As they all got out of the car, Mrs. Burrows collared her husband. "You... you're coming with me!" she ordered, grabbing him with such ferocity he cowered. Will made a move to go with them, but Drake headed him off.
    "Let them talk," he suggested.
    Will watched as Mrs. Burrows frog marched his father up the grassy incline. He looked like a man being led to his execution. Although Will couldn't hear what his mother was saying, her head was moving as if she was in full flow. "I feel sorry for him," Will said. "The last time they were together in Highfield, before all this started, they had a flaming row. Dad was trying to tell her where he was going, but she wasn't interested -- she was too tied up with what was on TV. That was all she ever did... watch TV."
    Drake and Will strolled over to the shade of a large oak tree and Drake sat down at its base, using its thick trunk as a backrest. "My parents never once exchanged an angry word in all the time they were together. Not once," he said. "They bottled it all up, and I always reckon that's why my old man died so young." He tipped his head towards where Dr. and Mrs. Burrows were gesticulating wildly at each other on the top of the hill. "At least yours have got some life left in them." Selecting a couple of fallen branches, he took out his knife and began to strip off the bark, then whittled them to sharpen the ends. Will leant on a low branch and watched him. When Drake had finished, he put his knife away, and examined the clean white wood he'd exposed. "What do you get if you rub two Styx together?" he posed, tapping a couple of the smaller branches against each other.
    "I don't know?" Will asked.
    "Fire and brimstone," Drake replied. "That was something they used to say in the Rookeries... and how right it turned out to be. They certainly got their fire. Poor sods." Will saw Drake's eyes were unfocused as he stared past the branches and at the ground.
    "Those sticks remind me of when we were on the island," Will said. "Elliott barbecued us an Anomolocaris -- she called it Night Crab -- and some Devil's Toenails."
    "My favorites," Drake said distantly.
    "We were eating live fossils," Will reflected. He chuckled with the strangeness of it all, then he too became thoughtful.
    "It's good to be away from the darkness and the damp -- even if it's just for a while. It's funny but it all seems ages ago now." Letting his eyelids slide shut, he angled his face to catch the warm rays filtering through the leaf canopy, and filled his lungs with the fresh air. "I dreamt about a place like this when I was in the Deeps. There was long grass, wispy clouds and it was weird because there was someone with me in the