Tunnels 05 - Spiral

ritual.
    As Will regarded the man, he couldn’t help but think of Uncle Tam, who’d been similarly well built. However, Sweeney looked like he could have given Uncle Tam a run for his money. He had massive shoulders and his wrists, where they emerged from his army woolly pully, were thick and muscular.
    He was also wearing a pair of stained and loose-fitting camouflage trousers, and on his head was an army-issue cold-weather hat with flaps hanging down over both ears. As he removed it from his head, the inside reflected the light as if it were lined with metal foil.
    “Does that help?” Drake asked.
    “Not much,” Sweeney grumbled in reply.
    Now that the man was without his headgear, Will could see that his forehead was also crossed with an intricate lattice of raised lines. Will found it difficult to tell how old Sweeney was because of his strange face, but estimated from his thinning gray hair that he had to be at least in his sixties.
    Narrowing his bizarre eyes, Sweeney studied Will and Chester in turn. “Told you anything about me, has he?” he demanded, sticking a thumb in Drake’s direction.
    The boys shook their heads mutely.
    “Thought not,” he said, then cleared his throat. “Forty years ago, I was in the Marines, the SBS, to be precise. But there’s a history of progressive myopia in the family, and my eyesight was on the slide. So it was either a discharge on medical grounds or spend the rest of my career shuffling papers behind a desk, when this boffin chap from an army research program showed up at the barracks, asking for me. It was as though I was being offered a miracle; he promised he’d fix my eyes so I could go back into active service. The army was my life, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, so I grabbed the opportunity. But you know what they say . . .”
    “Never volunteer for anything,” Drake put in with a smile.
    “Too right. Anyway, it was all to do with perception enhancement for combat applications.” With two fingers Sweeney described a figure eight around his eyes as if he were administering himself a benediction. “You see, by surgically implanting some gizmos in my retinas and ears, then boosting nerve conductivity and the synapses in my noodle, my vision and hearing were tuned to way beyond human limits. A side effect is that my reaction times are pretty fast, too.” He cleared his throat uneasily. “I was the third soldier the surgeons got their mitts on, and by the time it was my turn to be opened up and rewired, lucky for me they’d got their act together. More or less. The other guinea pigs weren’t so fortunate — one poor sap died on the table, and the other was paralyzed from the neck down.”
    As Drake had directed them, Will and Chester remained silent. Filled with awe, they simply stared at the man as he continued. “So . . . I’m fast, and I can see and hear things you can’t,” Sweeney said, then peered down at the hat in his hands.
    “Which is mighty handy for night ops and deep jungle insertions,” Drake explained.
    “Yes, that was how they deployed me — three decades of skulking around in the dark,” Sweeney said, nodding as he looked up. “Everything is amplified . . . supercharged. . . . If I’m not prepared for it, loud noises can be excruciating.” He frowned, the grid on his forehead forming a succession of Vs. “But, in the end, what gets you is that there’s no off switch. What they didn’t envisage was the 24/7 sensory overload. It can drive you clean off your rocker.”
    He pointed loosely at the woods and cocked his head to one side. “Right now, I can hear insects burrowing under the bark in those trees. They sound like jackhammers.” He swung in the direction that Drake and the boys had come from. “And the vehicle you left by the gate . . . I can hear the engine block cooling. It’s like icebergs exploding in here.” Sweeney raised his hands to his temples but didn’t touch them. “And there’s no way to make it stop.”
    “You can really hear all that?” Will asked quietly.
    “Sure. And as for my eyes, I can put up with sunlight, but only for limited stretches.”
    “Me, too,” Will muttered.
    Sweeney looked at him with incomprehension before continuing. “The real downside, though, is that anything with a current can play havoc with the circuitry in my bonce. So I’ve no choice but to live completely without power here in my cottage. I burn oil for the little light I need, and cook on a