Tunnels 05 - Spiral

of vehicle before, but he remembered Drake had told him that as the race of master miners dug into the rock, they were careful to infill crevices and open faults with the spoil as they went. They regarded the Earth as a living entity, treating it with respect and not wanting to cause it excessive damage with their excavations.
    Sweeney pointed. “There!” he said.
    Coprolites — a group of around thirty of them — were milling around. Although their mushroom-colored and bulbous suits were almost indistinguishable from the surrounding rock, light poured from the luminescent orbs mounted in the eye openings of their suits.

    “And some ex-Stickies,” Sweeney added.
    Will saw the bodies of Limiters sprawled on the ground and looked at Elliott, who nodded. It was clear a four-man team had been supervising the Coprolites. Will was wondering if Drake or Elliott, or both of them, had dispatched the Styx soldiers, when Drake yelled from the front.
    “OK! Batten down the hatch and buckle up!” Then when everyone was seated and strapped in, he floored the accelerator.
    The digger was capable of impressive speed. Sweeney, Will, and the Colonel kept the boiler well fed and well stoked as they went, always heading downward in this new tunnel.
    They passed what must have been a Limiter checkpoint along the way. They only knew this because they could hear the bullets striking the thick crystal windshield as the Styx soldiers tried to stop the digger. But their efforts were completely ineffectual, and everyone in the vehicle laughed and gave each other the thumbs-up.
    Elliott was in the co-driver’s seat beside Drake, continually checking the tracker. When Drake eased off the accelerator to allow Sweeney to tend to the boiler, Will took the opportunity to undo his seat harness and come forward.
    “We’re dead on the signal,” Elliott shouted, showing Will the twitching needle on top of the detector.
    Drake leaned over from the driver’s seat. “If this tunnel has been completed all the way down, we’re going to reach Smoking Jean in record time!” he said. “Maybe a few hours!”
    Will frowned. “But the journey from Martha’s shack to the submarine in Smoking Jean took us a week!” he pointed out.
    “You were following natural fault lines then, and wandering all over the shop. This is as the mole burrows,” Drake said. “It’s direct.”

    Despite the fact he was being jostled around by the vehicle, Will dozed off in his seat. He had no idea how long it had been until he was rudely awoken by shouting. He at once realized that they were no longer traveling down an incline but were on the flat. Then he caught sight of a well-lit area through the windshield.
    “Yee-ha!” Drake yelled as he drove right at several Limiters in front of some sort of shack. They leaped from the path of the vehicle, and the digger exploded through the structure.
    “Straight ahead!” Elliott yelled, checking the tracker.
    Multiple shots struck the digger all over its hull, then an explosion lifted it clean into the air.
    As it landed, Drake was shouting and laughing. He kept his foot pressed firmly to the floor. There were rock outcrops in the way, but he simply smashed through them.
    Will caught sight of something familiar. Although he couldn’t hear what she was saying to Drake, Elliott was pointing at it. It was the tall boulder with the carving where Will had hidden one of the radio beacons, and where his father had leaped into Smoking Jean.
    But for the life of him, Will couldn’t think what Drake was intending to do next. The shots continued to rain on them from behind, so there was no way they could stop or go back.
    They were almost at the void, and still Drake kept the vehicle moving at full throttle.
    “Drake . . . what are you —? . . . DRAKE!” Will screamed at the top of his lungs as they careered past the tall boulder where the beacon was hidden. Will knew he was right about this because he could just make out the rash of clicks from the detector in Elliott’s hand.
    There was a crash as the roof of the digger caught the top of the opening on the side of Smoking Jean. But the digger simply crushed the rock.
    Then they weren’t on firm ground any longer.
    They were tipping into the void.
    Falling.
    Drake killed the engine, leaving just the sound of rushing air as they gently turned over.
    “Stay strapped in — in case we hit anything,” Drake advised.
    A few loose stones floated around the cabin — even now