Tunnels 05 - Spiral

didn’t answer straightaway. “Yes, I suppose I do. But you do, too, don’t you?”
    “Mmmmm . . . I don’t think she’s as keen on me as she is on you,” Chester said, still surveying his pieces.
    “I’m not sure about that,” Will mumbled, then focused on the game again with a grunt — it hadn’t been going his way.
    “You should say something to her,” Chester suggested.
    Will finally moved his queen, then spoke with candor because he felt that he could trust his friend. “No, not with everything else going on. It would make things too . . . too complicated.” Will glanced at Chester as it occurred to him that he could have broached the subject because he himself had strong feelings for Elliott, and his friend wanted his blessing. But when Chester remained silent, Will assumed this wasn’t his motivation. “I have to tell you, I’m not sure I’m cut out for all this relationship stuff,” Will confessed. “Not after what went on with my parents.”
    Will had been thinking about Dr. and Mrs. Burrows. Stuck in their lethargic and loveless marriage, they’d led separate lives for years. He couldn’t forget the acrimony between them when he and Dr. Burrows had returned to Highfield. Mrs. Burrows had made it quite plain that she wasn’t prepared to take her husband back.
    “Which ones?” Chester asked.
    “Huh?” Will replied.
    “Which parents? You mean your real ones?” Chester said.
    This prompted Will to think about his biological parents and what Cal had told him, how Mr. Jerome’s allegiance had been not to his wife when their infant son was losing his life to chronic fever, but to the laws of the Colony. Driven mad with grief, Sarah Jerome had deserted her husband when she’d done the unthinkable and escaped Topsoil.
    Although it seemed irreverent to do so, Will laughed out loud.
    Chester looked up with surprise.
    “Take your pick,” Will said. “They were all as bad as each other.”
    They heard hurried footsteps in the hallway, and Parry appeared at the door. “Multiple signals!” he bellowed at the boys, his paging device bleeping so rapidly, it almost became a solid tone. He went to the gong on the hall table and began to beat it, the urgent rhythm filling the house. Then he tore into his study with the boys following behind. Mr. Rawls, still manning the telex, was already on his feet. Parry went straight to the monitor on his desk. He jabbed at the keyboard, flicking through different camera views. “There! Got one on infrared!” Parry shouted. “They’re inside the wall.”
    Will could clearly see a dark form flitting under a tree. He drew in a sharp breath as, caught on another camera, a man stood in full view with the main gates of the estate behind him. “Look at the weapon,” Will said, instantly recognizing the long-barreled rifle with its bulbous night scope that the Limiters used. “It’s them!”
    “Oh, God,” Chester gasped. “It is!”
    “Well, it’s certainly not the vicar doing his rounds. And there’s another team,” Parry pointed out as a camera showed at least four men creeping in the lee of a wall. “We’ve got several breaches of the perimeter — all to the south.” Parry looked up as Drake entered with Colonel Bismarck. “Did you catch that?” he asked his son. “They’re here.”
    Drake nodded once. “Time to bug out.”
    Stepping from behind his desk, Parry consulted his watch. “The Styx are on foot, so it’ll take them eight — maybe nine — minutes to get here. Stick to the evac procedure we discussed,” he said to Drake. “Draw them east while we take the storm drain to the Bedford. And if Sparks isn’t waiting for you, just go without him. He can look after himself.”
    “Jiggs and Danf —?” Drake began.
    “Jiggs likes to do his own thing, and Danforth’s already left,” Parry interrupted, holding up his pager. Then he swept his arms at everyone in the study. “Now, out — out — GET OUT!” he ordered. He went down on one knee beside his desk and flipped open a panel set into the floor. Inside a small recess was a key in a slot, which he turned. “I’ve primed the charges. They’ll not get a thing from this room.”
    Drake, Will, Chester, and Mr. Rawls met Elliott and Mrs. Burrows at the bottom of the staircase.
    “I sensed something was heading our way even before I heard the gong. I told Elliott to get dressed,” Mrs. Burrows said. “I take it we’re leaving.”
    “Yes,” Drake confirmed. “All