Tunnels 06 - Terminal

a muddy stream.
    There were numerous crates of apparatus in the rear of the vehicle that the New Germanian brothers had hastily assembled for the expedition. Despite this, there was still plenty of room for Will and Elliott to spread out.
    As they sat across from each other on the side benches, Will caught Elliott’s attention. ‘He’s doing it again,’ Will mouthed at her, as he indicated the bushman in the front seat.
    The bushman’s new appearance had taken some getting used to. He looked very different now, wearing a pair of blue dungarees, a boonie hat and a pair of wraparound sunglasses, all very necessary to protect him from the sun since he’d lost his extraordinary epidermal layer.
    But this wasn’t why Will was pointing at him. As he haddone since the first moment Elliott had spoken to him in Styx, the man was forever sneaking glances at her, as if he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. And each time Elliott returned one of his glances, he quickly averted his eyes.
    He now did this yet again, peering at her over his shoulder. And, true to form, as Elliott made a move to acknowledge him, he whipped his head back round to the windscreen again. Never once had he met her eyes.
    Will leant towards Elliott, waving her closer so she could hear him over the sound of the engine. ‘Reckon our bushman here has a massive crush on you,’ he suggested mischievously.
    Elliott shook her head. ‘Don’t be an idiot, Will.’
    Will was grinning. ‘We should give your new BF a name. We can’t keep calling him the bushman .’
    Elliott didn’t rise to Will’s teasing as she thought out loud. ‘No, I get the feeling he’s sort of frightened of me … for some reason,’ she said.
    ‘I know! Woody!’ Will burst out all of a sudden. ‘Yes, that’s what we should call him – Woody … get it?’
    Elliott groaned. ‘That’s as bad as one of Drake’s awful jokes,’ she said, smiling sadly. ‘I never thought I’d miss them as much as I do.’
    ‘And if Woody’s leaves grow back, we can change his name to Russell,’ Will added, but in a flat voice, because like Elliott he was thinking about their friend Drake and how unlikely it was that he’d survived the nuclear explosion.
    What Elliott had said about Woody, as he’d just been christened, did have some credence, though. He did seem to be in total awe of her, and, although he’d gone back to scanning the passing trees through his wraparounds as they continued theirway through the thick jungle, he did seem to be only interested in Elliott. For the first twenty-four hours after Woody had regained consciousness, he’d repeatedly tried to throw himself at her feet. And all he would say were the same words, ‘They have returned’.
    The revelation that Elliott was half Styx – or half invader, as they insisted on putting it – had taken the two New Germanian brothers by surprise, because neither Will nor Elliott had considered her parentage relevant when they took Jürgen through the series of events that led to the release of the virus in the inner world. But the New Germanian brothers seemed to accept it after speaking in more detail to Elliott about the matter and, in any case, by the start of the second day Woody’s fever had completely abated. He stopped babbling his set phrase in Styx and, indeed, clammed up altogether and became very withdrawn.
    Werner’s diagnosis was that Woody was suffering from shock because of his abrupt physical transformation. In an effort to help him to readjust, Jürgen had spent time with the bushman in his room, trying to communicate with him as he had done previously using the medium of the hand-drawn hieroglyphs. At the very least, Jürgen wanted to make him understand that he was immune to the virus and could leave the quarantine ward whenever he wanted.
    Then they had put that to the test. After many weeks of being cooped up inside, it was quite an occasion when the New Germanian brothers, along with Karl and Woody, filed through the decontamination areas without suiting up. Nobody spoke as they emerged from the shadowy interior of the hospital and stepped from the main entrance, followed by Will and Elliott. The rains had come and washed much of theash away so that the streets looked cleaner than before. It was almost as if the city had returned to normal, except that the mound of charred bones remained as a testament to the terrible impact of the plague.
    As they stood in the glaring sunshine, everyone was