Tunnels 05 - Spiral

bulb in a portable holder to what looked like a car battery, and it was flickering only very dimly.
    As Will sat up, his head throbbing viciously, he was seized by a coughing fit. Once it had passed, he became aware of low, somber voices. One of them was Elliott’s.
    “You should lie down for a while,” Colonel Bismarck advised, coming into Will’s field of vision. The New Germanian had a bag slung over his shoulder with a large red cross on it.
    “How did I get here?” Will asked, still in a state of confusion.
    “You’re in one the briefing rooms. You had a bad knock,” the Colonel said, indicating Will’s forehead. “I stopped the bleeding and bound it, but you need to rest.”
    Will felt the bandage as he tried to remember what had happened. “The explosion,” he mumbled, and it began to come back to him.
    Despite Colonel Bismarck’s protestations, Will had made up his mind that he was going to get to his feet. In the penumbra cast by the feeble light of the bulb, he saw Chester and Elliott sitting in chairs at the other end of the room.
    “Hey!” Will exclaimed, overjoyed that his friends were safe.
    Then a memory — the split second before the explosion — dropped into place like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle. He remembered Chester’s parents in the entrance tunnel. They were together. Mr. Rawls was holding his wife, but the memory didn’t lead anywhere, dissolving into a spiral of fire and darkness and nothing.
    As if a powerful gust of wind had propelled him forward, Will sought the edge of the table for support. “Hey,” he repeated, only this time it was more like a gasp.
    “Hello, Will,” Chester replied, his voice expressionless. “How are you feeling?”
    “Head hurts . . . bit dizzy. And my ears are ringing,” Will answered.
    “Mine, too,” Chester said. “I’ve got a burn on my arm, but it’s not too bad. I was lucky.”
    Will moved down the side of the table, meeting Elliott’s eyes as she looked up. He could see that she’d been crying, her tears leaving tracks in the grime on her face.
    Chester was sitting ramrod straight and gripping the arms of the chair as if he were on a roller-coaster ride.
    Will cleared his throat. “Chester . . . I . . . I don’t know what to say. I’m . . . so . . .” He took another step, extending his hand toward his friend’s on the chair, although he didn’t touch him.
    Chester had been staring straight ahead at the flickering bulb, but now he focused on Will’s hand. His jaw began to quiver as if he was about to give in to his grief. But then he pulled his head up, his face blank as he stared at the light again.
    Will remained before him, his hand still outstretched, fingers slightly splayed. He knew only too well how he’d felt when his father had been gunned down in cold blood by the Rebecca twin, but in that split second the explosion in the entrance tunnel had claimed both Chester’s parents.
    Will wanted to say something to fill the silence. “Is everyone else OK?” he asked, regretting his choice of words immediately upon uttering them.
Is everyone else OK? Why am I bothering my friend with this right now?
    “Yes, I think so,” Chester replied in monotone. He glanced fleetingly at Elliott, who nodded in confirmation, then moved his gaze back to the light. “Sergeant Finch lost some of his cats, though. That was sad.”
    If Will could have felt any worse, this response did it. His friend was expressing sympathy for the cats when he’d suffered the worst loss imaginable. Chester had always been close to his parents, particularly after the untimely death of his sister. And Mr. and Mrs. Rawls had doted on their sole surviving child, only to have him snatched away from them when Will had taken him down to the Colony.
    And through no fault of Chester’s, his parents had been sucked into the whole nightmare with the Styx, and now they’d paid the ultimate price for their unwitting involvement. Will felt such a crushing weight of responsibility that he wanted to throw himself at Chester’s feet. He wanted to beg his friend for forgiveness.
    But he didn’t.
    Instead, he reached again for Chester’s hand, this time actually making contact. Chester didn’t move as Will’s fingers brushed his fist, tightly clenched on the arm of the chair.
    It was an awkward act, and Will didn’t know where to go from there. He wasn’t Elliott — he couldn’t hug his friend. Mumbling, “I’m so sorry,” he took his hand away