Tunnels 04, Closer

concealed, somehow."
    "Ah, a mystery. I like a mystery," Cox cackled, fluttering his two misshapen hands under his shawl.
    Colonel Bismarck furrowed his brow. "It's no laughing matter. In light of the number of men who have gone missing over the years, and that they were all combat trained and operationally equipped, these natives should be considered highly dangerous. Every so often we send a spotter plane over to sweep the quadrant. They never find anything." He fixed Rebecca Two with his gray eyes. "So, in all probability, your quarry will have already perished."
    "But who exactly are these natives, as you call them?" Rebecca One said. "Guerilla fighters?"
    "No, on the contrary -- if they have weapons, then they must be very rudimentary. Our archaeologists believe they're the descendants of an ancient race which, many centuries ago, lived in huge cities on all the major continents in this world. Indeed, the archaeologists believe their society to be the origin of the Atlantis myth."
    Rebecca One made a 'pah' noise. "If he's cottoned onto that, boring old Dr. Buckwheat's gonna be in seventh heaven."
    "Seventh?" Colonel Bismarck asked, not comprehending the idiom.
    "Don't worry about it." Rebecca Two's face was resolute as she went closer to the map to examine where the pyramids were marked. "Whatever you say about the risk, we need to initiate the search right there," she said. "That's where the people who stole our virus will be."
    "And if Will Burrows isn't already dead, he soon will be," Rebecca One added, placing a hand on her stomach as she remembered the pain from her gunshot wound. "When I hack his guts out."

    * * * * *

    Eliza filled a spoon with the gruel and, with her other hand, yanked down on Mrs. Burrows' jaw so that her mouth gaped open. As she regarded the contents of the spoon, Eliza seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then she nodded to herself, and deposited the gruel at the back of the unconscious woman's tongue.
    "You may be as dumb as a Coprolite, but that doesn't stop you gobbling our food, does it?" Eliza said.
    But something seemed wrong with Mrs. Burrows' swallowing reflex, and her throat tensed and the gruel spewed out of her mouth.
    "For goodness' sake, you messy cow!" Eliza fumed. "It's gone all over me!" Jumping up, she quickly wiped the drops that had landed on her face and blouse.
    "Second time lucky," Eliza said, as she returned to her chair and tried to force-feed Mrs. Burrows another spoonful. But she rejected this as well. Eliza persevered again and again, but the outcome was the same -- Mrs. Burrows coughed them up with a spasm that seemed to emanate deep within her chest. Defeated, Eliza dropped the spoon into the bowl and placed it on the side table.
    "Well, if you don't get your nourishment, you really are going to be in trouble," she proclaimed to Mrs. Burrows' slack face. She gave the woman's chin a quick wipe, then picked up the bowl and began for the door.
    "She knows," the old woman said, appearing from the hallway. She was agitated, wringing her arthritic hands together.
    "Don't be daft -- look at her -- how can she?" Eliza replied to her mother.
    "She's always taken her food down before -- why not now? She knows, she does," the old woman maintained, with absolute conviction.
    "What codswallop! She's got a cough -- a touch of fever -- that's all," Eliza said. "But if she's stopped eating, she won't last long, and we'll get the result we're after anyway." She glanced at the bowl in her hands. "Better get rid of this -- we don't want anyone else helping themselves to it. I'll wash it down the drain." Eliza headed for the kitchen to dispose of the gruel, which had been lightly dusted with slug poison, while the old woman hung back in the doorway.
    "There's more to you than you're lettin' on," she accused Mrs. Burrows' slumped form in the bath chair. She may have been in her dotage, but the old woman's intuition hadn't been dulled by age. Her wrinkled face was fearful -- she'd almost been complicit in a crime that went against everything she believed. "You know what we were up to... you know we were tryin' to give you poison, don't you?" With a whimper, the old lady scurried away.
    Of course I know , Mrs. Burrows thought as she withdrew to the dark haven in her brain. And if you try it again, I'll be ready for you then too .
    Against all odds, she'd survived this long, and she wasn't about to let this pair of women get in the way of her escaping Topsoil.

    * * * * *

    In the