Tunnels 04, Closer

Bright? Martha was obviously convinced she'd heard one, but then again she didn't look right. Her face was drawn and haunted, and, as Chester watched her, she was acting very strangely. Her eyes were continuously darting from side to side, as if she was seeing things up in the trees.
    Getting to her feet, she returned to the shelters to finish them, then began to prepare some food. When it was ready, Chester accepted it without a word -- he was just too hungry and too tired to argue with her. As they ate in silence, Chester puzzled over the incident. Bright or no Bright, he decided he didn't want to be around her a moment longer than he had to. He had to make a break for it as soon as he could.

    * * * * *

    Rebecca Two staggered out into the sunlight. She didn't put her sister down right away, taking a moment to evaluate where she was. A narrow, rocky plateau stretched ahead of her, bordered on the left by a series of jagged peaks. The peaks were too steep to consider climbing them, although Rebecca Two's sense of direction told her the city she'd seen must lie on the other side.
    Directly in front of her, the railway tracks continued for several hundred meters, then culminated in some sort of a low building. A dirt road appeared to lead beyond it. She wondered if this would prove to be the way down to the city.
    As the wind got up and blew her long hair across her face, she turned to her right. "I climbed a mountain, all right," she muttered, looking out across the tops of the giant trees, which extended to the far horizon. "We're on some kind of ridge above the jungle," she told her unconscious sister as she held her in her arms.
    Rebecca Two wasn't terribly surprised. She'd been climbing continuously since the spectacular view of the metropolis, and even then she'd been at a considerable height.
    "Follow the yellow brick road, I suppose," she sighed, feeling the blistering heat on her skin as she kept to the railway track and walked down the slight incline to the building. The plateau was completely exposed to the sun, and there was absolutely no sign of any vegetation. "Got to get you into the shade," she said to her sister.
    A weak moan came from Rebecca One.
    The building was basic, fabricated from sun-bleached timber and pitted sheet metal. But at least it was a refuge from the heat. Once she'd put her sister down, Rebecca Two began to explore further. There were a number of railway trucks in one corner, and she went to the nearest of these and scooped up a handful of the material that still filled it. "Mining," she said, tipping pieces of rock from her palm. It was obvious that these trucks had once been used to bring out the spoils from the workings in the mountain.
    She quickly searched the rest of the building, but there was nothing there of use to her. As she approached a door at the rear of the building, she knocked over some empty beer bottles with her foot. "Just water would do me," she muttered, as the bottles came to rest on the concrete floor.
    She passed through the door, finding she was out in the open again. There she discovered an old three-ton lorry, the rubber of its tires perished away into dark piles around its wheel hubs. She touched the emblem on the battered radiator grille of the vehicle -- although it had been damaged, there was an enameled manufacturer's badge that resembled an old-fashioned space rocket, and underneath this was a name.
    " BLIT --?" Rebecca Two read out loud, but the rest of the letters were missing. Next to the lorry were four large fuel tanks -- probably each capable of taking several hundred gallons. "Petrol," she decided as she sniffed at them.
    Her eyes followed the dirt track until it turned a corner a little further ahead. "So that's our way down," she said. She'd been right -- it was evidently the only means up or down the mountain, either for lorries or on foot.
    Over the bluster of the wind, she heard her sister calling. They were both dehydrated and badly in need of water, but more pressing than this, Rebecca One required urgent medical attention. If she didn't receive it, then Rebecca Two was under no illusion: it would be touch and go whether the girl survived this ordeal.
    Rebecca Two had just begun to turn back toward her sister when she spotted something from the corner of her eye. She held completely still.
    A flare climbed above the trees on a vertical trajectory. It bisected the perfect white of the sky with a thin crimson line, much as a surgeon's