Tunnels 06 - Terminal

Mrs Burrows had proved to be the exception to this.
    ‘I’ll be glad when I’ve got my kitchen back,’ the First Officer grumbled, stepping over the toys the kittens had left scattered across the floor. It was an age-old tradition for Colonists to help out when a Hunter had a new litter, as it was quite an undertaking to care for and clean up after the lively offspring. Numerous gifts of food and old blankets had been left by the front door, but another favourite gift was the cloth toys people made for the kittens to play with. With their cotton-thread whiskers and shiny bead eyes, these generally resembled the different varieties of rats the cats would be expected to hunt in adult life.
    The First Officer sat down, then groaned with the effort as he leant forward to scoop up a toy that had caught his eye. This was no rat, but a little man dressed in black with a white face, and in its hand it had a tiny cloth book with the letter C embroidered on it. ‘Ha, a Styx, and he’s even holding theBook of Catastrophes! Someone’s got a sense of humour,’ the First Officer said with a chuckle. ‘If they’d caught anyone doing this, it would have merited Banishment or even death by hanging.’
    Mrs Burrows turned towards the First Officer. ‘Oh, it’s a Styx, is it? I thought that was meant to be you, love,’ she said, raising an eyebrow.
    The First Officer chuckled, then stopped himself as he wondered if she had been joking or not. Although Mrs Burrows’ sight was heavily impaired, most of the time her incredibly developed olfactory sense more than compensated as she went about the Colony, helping the First Officer to run things. But every so often he was reminded that she could hardly see at all.
    ‘No, I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be a White Neck,’ he said. He jiggled it around by one of its chewed legs. All of a sudden one of the kittens, who’d noticed what he was doing, made a lunge for it. ‘Whoops!’ the First Officer exclaimed as it was snatched from his hand and the kitten shot under the table with its trophy. ‘Nearly lost a couple of fingers there!’
    Colly wasn’t purring any longer, but was making a low growling sound as she stared gimlet-eyed at the First Officer.
    ‘And tell that bloody Hunter I’m no threat to her babies, will you?’ the First Officer said. ‘After all, she was my Hunter, once upon a time.’
    Mrs Burrows laughed. ‘She doesn’t mean it. And she’ll be your Hunter again the moment her hormone levels are back to normal.’
    The kitten emerged from under the table and jumped up so that both of its forepaws rested on the First Officer’s thigh. It may have been less than two months old, but it was alreadylarger than any Topsoil domestic cat.
    With a shake of its head, the Hunter kitten dropped the Styx rag doll in the First Officer’s lap. ‘Well, will you look at this? I think I’ve made a friend here. He wants to play.’
    ‘Oh, that one,’ Mrs Burrows exhaled. ‘He’s the biggest and greediest of them all. Just like Bartleby.’
    ‘He’s the spitting image of his old man too. So maybe that’s what we should call him – Bartleby, in memory of his pa,’ the First Officer suggested, as he sent the rag doll flying to the other end of the kitchen for the kitten to fetch. Colly growled again, even louder this time. ‘But I don’t think his mother wants to let him go, though.’
    There was a heavy silence in the room until Mrs Burrows spoke. ‘Talking about letting go, the more I think about it … I should never have let Will go off on that mission. What sort of mother am I?’ She didn’t give the First Officer time to answer as she added, ‘He’s been gone for such a long time now, and I have a terrible feeling something must have happened to him.’
    The First Officer gave a nod, but then gestured towards the ceiling. ‘But everything’s falling apart up there. He might have got back and be lying low somewhere … somewhere safe. After all, Drake and the others were with him. They would have looked out for him, and maybe none of them can get messages through to us because of the lockdown.’
    Under Mrs Burrows’ and the First Officer’s direction, the Colony had shut itself off from the surface because the scale of the problems Topsoil were so great, and there was the constant nagging fear that the Styx might eventually focus their attention on the Colony again and re-establish their rule. There had been lockdowns in the past, but these