Tunnels 05 - Spiral

the empty kitchen, and immediately ducked into the sitting room to fetch Will’s shovel from the sideboard. If there were thieves in the house, he was going to give them the hiding of their lives.
    The Second Officer crept into the kitchen and listened. There was another sound. He went to the far end of the kitchen and slowly opened the door into the small vestibule. He tiptoed across it to a second door, which led to the coal cellar. As he pressed his ear to the door, he was sure he heard a scrabbling noise.
Maybe a rat
, he thought to himself.
    But then he was certain he could hear whispering.
    Two-legged rats,
he told himself.
    Counting silently to three, he flung the door open and tore in with a roar.
    Someone moved in the shadows. He saw the whites of their eyes.
    He raised his shovel, ready to strike.
    “OOOH MY GAWD!” his mother wailed, her hands up to protect her face.
    Eliza screamed.
    “What . . . ?” the Second Officer cried, not believing his eyes.
    In their nightgowns, both his mother and sister were black with coal dust as they cowered in the far corner.
    “What in God’s name are you doing in here?” the Second Officer demanded, adrenaline still pumping through his body.
    His mother began to cry.
    “We thought it was the Styx at the door . . . coming for us,” Eliza managed to say.
    Both she and the old lady were still shaking as the Second Officer led them back into the kitchen and sat them down. He looked at them, so terrified, their faces and clothes thick with dust, then looked at the kitchen floor and the trail their bare feet had left on the tiles. The tiles that the old lady labored day in, day out to keep so spotlessly clean that one could eat off them.
    And he couldn’t be angry with them about the little dog any longer. But he
was
angry; he wanted someone to pay for what was going on in the Colony. Everything was falling apart. And this previously loyal Colonist, this upholder of order, knew precisely who was responsible.
    “This has to stop,” he whispered under his breath. “The Styx have to be stopped.”

    He made sure his mother and sister were safely tucked up in bed, then set off for the North Cavern. He went through still more deserted streets, not seeing a soul. Not even any Darklit New Germanians. Some streets he went down stank powerfully of raw sewage. Now that the regular work details had been suspended, nobody was going below the city to make sure the sluices were flowing freely. There must have been blockages in the main drains, and as a result the whole system was backing up.
    “What have we come to?” the Second Officer mumbled to himself as he suddenly stopped. Sure enough, at the mouth of the passageway into the North Cavern, there was a single piece of thick rope strung across the entrance, an official notice forbidding entry suspended from it. As the breeze rocked it gently, he considered the black-edged warning sign, then stepped over the rope and went in.
    And, as he emerged into the cavern, there were no longer any luminescent orbs on stands — they’d all been taken away — so he used his police lantern to light the way. Either side of the main track, there were only empty fields. No shantytown, no evidence that anyone had ever been there.
    The Second Officer thought he saw something. A movement. He tensed, fearing the worst, that he’d bumped straight into a Limiter. But after a few moments, when no one appeared, he carried on.
    A little farther down the track, he stopped again and shone his lantern before him.
    “Oh, G —!” he gasped.
    A shape, black and amorphous, rose from the ground. The Second Officer was absolutely convinced his luck had run out, and that this time, it could be nothing else but a Limiter.
    The flapping wings immediately told him he was wrong. He’d disturbed a small flock of miner birds that had been picking over the ground. They were unsightly-looking scavengers, with raggedy black feathers and spindly bodies, rather like etiolated sparrows. With no sound but the beat of their wings, they took flight, returning to their nests high in the canopy.
    Holding his chest and breathing heavily, the Second Officer took a moment to recover his composure, then began a thorough investigation of the area where the town had stood. It was strange to think that the last time he’d been here, he’d been examining three bodies while the Third Officer himself had looked on. But it was a different story now; he couldn’t find a single