Tunnels 05 - Spiral

hadn’t encountered a single living soul — human, Styx, or Coprolite — as they emerged into a vast cavern where the ground was peppered with large, teardrop-shaped boulders.
    Will had taken advantage of the incline to stretch his legs and was jogging behind the cart alongside Sweeney.
    “Oh God!” the boy suddenly burst out.
    “Whassamatter?” Sweeney asked, peering around them. “Got something?”
    “No, it’s not that,” Will assured him. “I know where we are . . . and I hoped I’d never see it again. My brother died not far from here. And my real mum, too.”
    Sweeney was silent for several of his lumbering strides. “That’s tough, Will. I’m sorry.”
    They crossed a path of well-worn paving slabs, and an hour later the huge opening in the ground came into sight.
    “There it is . . . the Pore,” Will told Sweeney gloomily.
    Drake and Elliott had come to a stop and were waiting for everyone to catch up.
    “We’ve spotted something new,” Drake informed them. “There appear to be some huts by the side of the Pore.”
    Elliott had her eye glued to her rifle nightscope. “Three . . . three huts,” she confirmed.
    “We know this area well, and they weren’t there before,” Drake said. He’d spent years in this land of eternal night, latterly with Elliott, and as Will watched them both now, he realized they were back in their element. “We’re going in to investigate,” Drake said, then he and Elliott moved ahead again. Colonel Bismarck followed at a distance, keeping the stallions to a steady trot, as Will and Sweeney remained on the lookout for any Limiters.
    When they finally reached the Pore, the continual deluge of water from above splattered their heads and shoulders, helping to cool them. The ground by the basic huts was strewn with deflated hot air balloons, and beside them a wooden platform extended almost forty feet over the huge void. Will, the Colonel, and Sweeney stepped around the sagging forms of the balloons as they moved to the end of it.
    Sweeney whistled as he tried to see across to the other side of the titanic void and, not finding it, peered down. “That’s one . . . big . . . mother. You threw yourself down it, didn’t you, Will?” he asked.
    “Didn’t have much choice at the time,” Will mumbled. It dawned on him that they were here to do precisely the same again. Unless Drake had a better idea, such as using one of the balloons to carry them down to the fungal ledge far below.
    Will began to retrace his steps along the platform, repeating to himself, “I
really
don’t want to do this.” And he really didn’t — the prospect of taking a step off the edge and pitching headlong into that black nothingness again filled him with unremitting dread. He sought out Drake where he and Elliott were deep in conversation. They fell silent as he arrived.
    “What’s the plan now?” Will demanded. “Are we really going to jump down the Pore? And how the heck are we going to know when we’re deep enough to find the passageway?” He was furious that the two of them seemed to be leaving him in the dark, just as it had been all that time ago when they’d first rescued him, Chester, and Cal on the Great Plain. After all he’d gone through, hadn’t he earned the right to know what they were intending to do?
    Drake caught the edge in the boy’s voice. “For lack of any other alternative, that was my original idea,” he answered. “I agree that our chances of hitting the right fungal ledge at exactly the right depth are slim at best. Particularly as there isn’t a radio beacon to guide us.”
    Drake slipped a tracker from a pouch on his belt. It resembled a strange-looking handgun with a dial on top of it and a small dish where the muzzle should have been. The tracker was able to detect the VLF, or Very Low Frequency, signals that the radio beacons broadcast. Will had planted these beacons at various points along the route he’d taken with Dr. Burrows and Elliott when they’d somehow found their way through to the inner world the first time.
    “Haven’t seen one of those in a while,” Will said as Drake aimed it at the Pore and depressed the trigger. It emitted a single click, then remained silent. Will frowned. “That’s weird,” he said. “Is it working properly?”
    “It should be. Don’t forget the beacon you left at the jump-off point on the second Pore is quite some distance from us,” Drake reminded him.
    “Yes, by Smoking Jean,” Will