Tunnels 05 - Spiral

not thorough; he set charges to knock out every last one of the backup generators. They’re all down.”
    “So there’s no power at all?” Will said. “Why did he do that?”
    “In case we tried to reroute the supply to the blast doors down there, I suppose,” Parry said with a wave of his walking stick at what remained of the entrance tunnel. “We’ve checked and double-checked — all the generators are crippled and completely beyond repair. Which has the secondary effect that there’s no power for the air recirculation system. And, in any case, the fire ate up quite a chunk of the available oxygen. On a rough calculation of what’s left, I’d say we’ve got a fortnight at the outside. Maybe less, because there are so many of us.”
    “We’re going to run out of air,” Will whispered, trying to deal with this piece of news.
    As Parry began to walk slowly toward Drake, Will went with him. “What about the vents where the air comes in? Can’t we open them up manually?” Will suggested, adding a further thought as it occurred to him: “And couldn’t we climb out through them?”
    “That would be a great idea . . . ,” Parry began, poking at something on the floor with his walking stick, then stooping to pick it up. It was a mug, and as Parry swirled it around, Will could see that it still had some tea in the bottom. “. . . only there aren’t any. The Complex was built on the principle that it can be completely closed off from the outside environment. It’s hermetically sealed . . . not a molecule gets in or out.”
    “So where does the air come from, then?” Will asked.
    “When the DEFCON is raised, the entrance tunnel is locked down, and air is provided from the reservoirs — the pressurized tanks on each level.”
    Will looked hopeful. “Then we’re OK because —”
    “The tanks are empty,” Parry cut across him.
    “This doesn’t get any better, does it?” Will murmured as they came to Sergeant Finch on his mobility scooter. Finch’s head was bowed as he stroked a tiny cloth bundle in his lap. It was one of his dead cats, and a kitten from the looks of it.
    Stephanie was kneeling beside Sergeant Finch. She looked very un-Stephanie-like, her hair all over the place and her face smeared with dirt. She briefly met Will’s eyes, then went back to what she’d been doing. He watched as she covered up the corpse of another cat. There were at least six of the small furry bodies, each with tea towels laid over them. These pitiful little corpses were evocative of television news footage Will had seen following dreadful accidents or terrorist attacks. Blood had soaked into the white cotton of the tea towels, in spite of the fact that these were cats and not people, the sight was still sickening.
    Will kept his voice low as he and Parry continued toward Drake. “Does anyone come to check on Sergeant Finch? I remember you saying something about food resupplies?” he asked.
    Parry shook his head. “Yes, there’s a two-monthly rota when a member of the Old Guard makes a drop-off at a bothy just around the mountain from here.”
    Will frowned at the unfamiliar word. “Bothy?”
    Parry gave a small shrug. “It’s an abandoned stone hut. The Old Guard have no idea who the supplies are for, due to the security restrictions, so the food will just sit there until it rots. And because of budget cuts, the obscure engineering department within MI5 that services this Complex only dispatches a team here once a year. As the next visit isn’t scheduled for seven months, I’m sorry to say, Will, we’re on our own.”
    Will had another idea as he heard a cat howling and glanced over his shoulder at Stephanie. “What about Old Wilkie? Won’t he be beginning to wonder what’s happened to us?”
    “Maybe, but he doesn’t know our location. Again, due to the security restrictions, I blindfolded him when I dropped him some sixty miles away from here. And I also ordered him to maintain radio silence.”
    This led Will to another thought. “Jiggs! What about J —”
    “He’s in here with us,” Parry replied, moving away. Will was left squinting at the shadows in the Hub, asking himself where the elusive man was right now.

    As the days passed, Chester seemed to spend every waking hour simply staring vacantly into space. And on the rare occasions he did fall asleep, he’d wake up screaming for his mother and father. Although Mrs. Burrows sometimes sat with him, Elliott had taken it upon