Tunnels 05 - Spiral

to Eddie, who was waiting beside a single remaining crate of detectors. “This is where we part company. Good hunting.”
    Eddie gave him a nod in response, then looked at Elliott. “Do you want to come with me?”
    Elliott paused, throwing a half glance at Will through the steady fall of snowflakes. “OK,” she replied casually.
    Will’s jaw dropped; he hadn’t expected for one second that she’d accept the invitation. He felt betrayed and abandoned by Elliott and, although he would never have admitted it to himself, a little jealous of her newly established relationship with her father. And he realized how much he relied on her being at his side, just as he did with Chester.
    Parry struck out for the edge of the field, but Will didn’t move. Drake nudged him in a friendly way with his arm. “It’s all right, old mate; before you know it, she’ll be back with us again,” he assured him.
    “Um, right . . . yes,” Will mumbled, realizing how obvious his feelings must have been. He hunched forward, pretending to cough so he had an excuse not to speak to Drake as he began to walk beside him.
    Battling the blizzard as they went, everyone followed Parry through several fields until they came to a fenced-off area. Here he opened a gate. On the other side was a raised, snow-covered mound the size of several tennis courts. Will tried to make out where they were, but there wasn’t time as Parry led them briskly around the edge of the mound, then down some ice-crusted steps and through a door.
    They were grateful to be out of the freezing wind and snow, and they filed after Parry, descending several more flights of basic concrete steps. Then they came to a battered metal door with a sign that proclaimed PUMP ROOM .
    Chester went through before Will. “Look at this!” he whispered to his friend.
    They were on a platform complete with a Tube train waiting in the tunnel. The platform wasn’t that different from the old-fashioned ones still in use in the London Underground; the walls were tiled, although it was impossible to see what color they were due to the thick crust of dirt and efflorescence on them. And the platform was littered with massive drums of armor cable and rotting wooden boxes filled with engineering components that were more rust than metal.
    Will spotted a board with ALERT STATUS just visible at the top, beneath which were a pair of hooks, although there was nothing suspended on them. And as he scanned farther along the platform, he couldn’t see anything to indicate the name of the station.
    “We must be near London?” he asked Parry.
    “No, that’s a good thirty miles away. We’re in Essex.” Parry waved a hand at the roof. “We’re directly under Kelvedon Reservoir, and you won’t find anything about this place in any of the history books,” he said. “This was known as the First Circle of the defense infrastructure, so the government could decamp from the capital if things got sticky. When it was built, this train link originally ran all the way to Westminster.”
    “So that’s where we’re going?” Will said.
    Parry shook his head. “The last mile’s been out of commission for years — due to flooding.”
    Will had turned his attention to the train. There was illumination coming from inside the two cars directly in front of them, although their windows were almost opaque with dirt.
    “It’s been maintained by a few of the Old Guard, more as a hobby than anything else,” Parry said, then swung around when a whistle rang out from the far end of the platform, and the train doors creaked open. “And there’s one of them now.” The man was too far away for Will to see him clearly as Parry waved to him and shouted, “Everyone in!”
    The interior of the car consisted of a wooden slatted floor on which there were a few heaps of tattered tarpaulins.
    “We have to keep the speed down because of the state of the track, so the journey takes about an hour. You should try to get some sleep,” Parry advised as everybody took their Bergens off and chose somewhere to put themselves.
    Drake took over. “The golden rule is to catch some shut-eye whenever there’s an opportunity. You never know when you’ll get the chance again.”
    “So we’ve had a helicopter, and now a train,” Chester said to Will. “What next?”
    “Maybe a boat,” Will suggested, lying down with his head against his Bergen and trying to make himself comfortable. As the doors ground shut, he gave a