The Last Portal (19 page)

Joe and Susie
joined in the digging and soon recovered more rocks from the
original roof that were also covered in glow-worm colonies. They
continued to claw and drag more rubble away, but for every piece of
rubble they removed, more fell down from above. Finally, tired and
exhausted, they were forced to stop.

‘Maybe I could
blast a hole through the rubble,’ Joe suggested, after staring
earnestly at his crystal weapon for some time.

Susie looked
doubtful. ‘Won’t you cave-in the rest of the roof?’

‘Umm… maybe,’
Joe conceded. ‘But I could also blast a hole clean through.’

‘Or you could
kill us all,’ Susie said.

‘Nah, there
can’t be much more rubble to come down,’ Joe said, leaning over to
peer up through the hole they had dug.

Susie turned to
Chris for support, but he just shrugged, feeling Joe had a valid
point. Surely all the loose rubble should have fallen down by
now.

Susie crossed
her arms. ‘You both have no idea what will happen if you fire that
thing in here. You’re playing with our lives.’

‘Nah, it’ll be
good,’ Joe said confidently.

‘At least we
should try digging a bit longer,’ Susie suggested, looking
hopefully at Chris.

Chris just
stared blankly back at her.

‘Well, I’m not
going to be anywhere near here when you cave in the tunnel,’ she
said, stalking up the tunnel a safe distance.

Joe grinned at
Chris and then aimed his weapon directly at the rubble.

‘You sure you
know how to work this thing?’ Chris asked, now feeling less
certain, after watching Joe behave as if he was in a shoot-out in a
cheap western.

‘What do you
think I was doing to those Zentor?’

‘Yeah, I know,
but there’s not much space and these weapons are pretty
powerful.’

‘I’ll just give
it a short burst,’ Joe said. ‘Just to see what it does.’

Joe took a few
steps back and aimed his weapon at a large boulder protruding from
the rubble. The weapon fired, lighting up the whole tunnel and
spraying rock fragments everywhere. Chris and Joe rushed forward to
inspect the damage, but were disappointed to find only a small
hole.

‘A longer burst
should do it,’ Joe said confidently.

They stood back
again, and this time Joe delivered a sustained blast. The whole
boulder exploded, sending rock fragments smashing into the roof.
Immediately more of the roof started collapsing. Chris and Joe had
to scramble up the tunnel to avoid being engulfed by falling
rubble. When the glow-worm light came back on and the dust had
cleared, they found the tunnel had been completely sealed by the
collapsed roof.

‘Yep, that did
it.’

Chris looked up
at Susie, who was shaking her head in that determinedly disgusted
fashion she used only when something truly appalled her. ‘You just
had to play with guns, didn’t you?’

Even in the
subdued light of the tunnel, Chris could see her face was turning
pink. Chris slowly picked himself off the floor and brushed off the
dirt.

‘It might have
worked,’ Joe said, also picking himself off the ground.

‘Now we’ll
never get out.’ Susie glared at the two of them.

‘Well, at least
I tried,’ Joe said, in rather an uncharacteristically subdued
voice.

‘Well,
congratulations!’ Susie shouted, pointing toward the cave-in. ‘You
tried and you succeeded in caving in the whole tunnel!’

Chris and Joe
said nothing. She had every right to be furious. The new cave-in
had not only sealed the tunnel, it had brought down tonnes of
rubble. The task to dig through to the other tunnel now seemed
almost impossible. Susie stormed off further up the tunnel and sat
down, periodically shooting venomous looks at them. Chris and Joe,
lacking the energy or will to resume digging, sat down despondently
on the tunnel floor.

Joe examined
his weapon for a while, as though somehow it was the weapon’s
fault, not the fact that he couldn’t take his finger off the
trigger.

Chris leaned
back against the tunnel wall and closed his eyes. He could feel the
dampness of the tunnel wall seeping into his shirt and soaking his
back. He didn't care. There had to be a way out of this, but the
more he tried to think the more he felt like falling asleep. He
heard a noise and opened his eyes. Joe's head had fallen forward
and he had dropped his crystal weapon onto the tunnel floor beside
him. He began making soft snoring sounds.

Susie, despite
her fury, was also beginning to nod off.

Chris closed
his eyes and began to drift off to sleep. Then he remembered. ‘I
can’t fall asleep!’ he almost shouted. You’ve got to keep me awake,
or at least tie me to something.’

Joe jolted
awake. ‘You don’t really want us to tie you up?’

‘Yeah, I do,’
Chris insisted.

‘But you can’t
go anywhere,’ Susie said.

‘I could kill
myself with a rock, or kill you with a rock…or strangle you.’

‘Okay, okay, I
get it,’ Joe said, climbing to his feet.

‘But just the
legs, so I can’t go running off,’ Chris said.

Joe wearily
came over and tired Chris’s legs together using a thin cord that
had been used to hold up Chris’s pants, then curled up around his
weapon again and quickly fell asleep. Susie, feeling somewhat
calmer, came over and sat down closer to Chris.

‘Come to check
his handy-work?’ Chris asked, hoping her temper had cooled.

Susie just
grunted.

Chris
manoeuvred himself into a more comfortable position.

‘Remember
Kaloc’s advice,’ she lectured. ‘The last thing you should think of
before you to go to sleep is that you can control your dreams.’

Chris nodded
solemnly.

Susie began
clearing away rocks and digging out a bed for herself from the
surrounding dirt. ‘I will be next to you if you need me,’ she said,
sounding a bit like an angry schoolteacher.

Chris smiled at
her and she managed a weak grimace. Much of the determination he
usually saw in her eyes was gone. Instead, her eyes were moist, red
and rimmed with deepening shadows of exhaustion. Like Joe, her face
was also thinner, her lips cracked, and lines of dirt trailed down
her cheeks. She pushed back some dirty strands of hair behind her
ear. She was a mess. But he couldn’t find any comforting words. Not
knowing what to say, or what to do, he looked away.

Joe was snoring
lightly a little distance away with the weapon on the ground next
to him. Chris cleared away any rocks and lay back. When he looked
back at Susie, she was leaning back against the wall of the tunnel
with her head lolling forward. He stared up at the tunnel roof
until the points of glow-worm light began to fade and his eyelids
became too heavy to hold open. His last thought was not to let
Batarr and Zelnoff control his dreams.

Chris woke up and
found he couldn’t feel his feet. The cord that Joe had tied his
legs with was digging into him. Joe and Susie were still asleep. He
sat up and tried to untie the cord, but the knot had tightened. He
was looking for something sharp to prise open the knot when some
movement up the tunnel caught his eye. The shape was unmistakable;
a Zentor was scuttling toward him. Its huge insect head and red
eyes flicking back and forth as it scanned the tunnel ahead.

Joe was just
across the tunnel, fast asleep. Chris slowly dragged himself toward
Joe until he drew level with him. He prayed Joe wouldn’t roll over
or start snoring. Without making a sound, he carefully lifted up
Joe’s weapon. The Zentor had moved closer, and was now no more than
thirty metres away. Chris took aim at the creature’s hideous head
with its saw-shaped mandibles and liquid red eyes. Something wasn’t
right. The Zentor should have seen him by now. Then he realised.
This wasn’t real. He focused all his thought on the Zentor. Slowly
the vision started to blur, then transformed into the sleeping
figure of Susie, just across the tunnel.

He quickly
pulled the weapon away and threw out his senses beyond Susie. There
was at least one other presence further down the tunnel. As he
concentrated he began to see its shape. Other strange visions came
into his thoughts, but he knew these were false. He re-doubled his
efforts to unmask whoever was there. The shape started to come into
focus. Batarr appeared, his face strained with effort, but Chris
had him now. He locked the Guardian in a battle of wills, trying to
break through the mental barrier Batarr had thrown up. Batarr’s
face began to contort with extreme effort. Shadows of his thoughts
were beginning to emerge. Still the visions flew at Chris, but he
brushed them away easily. Slowly he began to extract isolated
thoughts.

Then there was
nothing, as if another, much stronger barrier, had been brought
down. There was a second presence; more powerful, impenetrable.
Chris refocused. He felt this entity’s enormous mental power, its
will, its purpose. Suddenly something hit hard him in the side and
knocked the wind out of him. It was Joe.

‘Get off me!’
he screamed.

‘You had my
weapon,’ Joe said indignantly.

‘I wasn’t going
to use it,’ Chris yelled.

‘Well, what
were you doing then?’

Chris managed
to free his legs enough to give Joe a kick that sent him careering
across the tunnel and almost into Susie.

‘I was
dreaming, except I had control of the dream. I almost had Batarr
too, then a second presence intervened.’

‘Zelnoff?’
Susie asked, still rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

‘I guess so.
Anyway, there was no way I could read his thoughts.’

‘So you did
it.’ Susie leaned forward excitedly. ‘You managed to control your
dreams.’

‘Yeah, I guess
I did.’ Chris decided not to tell Susie that he had almost shot
her.

‘So what were
you doing with my weapon?’ Joe asked.

‘Well… at first
I didn’t realise it was a dream,’ Chris said. ‘They managed to
convince me that a Zentor was coming down the tunnel, so I crept
across and got your weapon.’

‘And you could
actually see Batarr?’ Susie asked.

‘Yeah, I saw
him alright, and I could also feel Zelnoff.’

‘But you
couldn’t see him?’

‘No, he was too
strong, I couldn’t force him to do anything,’ Chris said, still
remembering the enormous power that seemed to radiate from
Zelnoff.

‘So does that
mean they know we’re here?’ Joe asked.

‘Maybe…Yeah I
suppose,’ Chris said, feeling a sudden unease at the memory of the
Zentor attack soon after his last dream.

Joe came across
and, after considerable difficulty, managed to untie Chris. With
little other options, they decided to continue digging in the hope
that they could reach the Nethral before Zelnoff found them. After
a drink from a foul-smelling pool of water, the digging resumed. It
wasn’t long, however, before Susie signalled for Chris and Joe to
be quiet. She brushed away her hair and placed her ear against a
rock.

‘What do you
hear?’ Joe asked.

‘There are
sounds coming from somewhere behind the rubble,’ Susie said.

‘I hope it’s
not Batarr and his buddy Zelnoff,’ Joe said, picking up his weapon
and pointed it toward the rubble.

‘Maybe we
should hide further up the tunnel,’ Susie suggested.

‘There’s
nowhere to hide,’ Chris replied, after a quick shake of his head.
‘At least here, if it’s Zelnoff, we can shoot them as they come
out.’

Susie went back
to monitoring the rubble. ‘I can hear scraping sounds. I don’t
think they’re removing the rubble at the other end.’ She
repositioned her ear over a large, deeply buried boulder. ‘It
sounds like they are burrowing a separate tunnel around the
cave-in.’

‘The Nethral,’
Chris shouted, as he rushed forward and pressed his ear against the
rubble. ‘Surely only the Nethral could dig a new tunnel.’

The sounds of
digging quickly increased. Joe aimed his weapon in the direction of
the sounds. The wait proved short. The mound of rubble soon began
to vibrate, and rocks and gravel slid down to the tunnel floor.
Then, in a shower of dirt and rocks, a small, furry creature with
shovel-like hands and a long snout burst through the rubble.

Chris leaped
into the air. ‘Duss!’ he screamed, then rushed forward and dragged
the funny creature into the centre of the tunnel and embraced
him.

The creature
looked a little confused, but was clearly also delighted to see
Chris. He gave a low and very formal bow, which made everyone
laugh. Then a second creature burst through the tunnel, widening it
further.

‘Cass!’ Chris
rushed over and embraced her just as warmly. Cass also bowed low,
while Chris introduced Joe and Susie.

‘How did you
find us?’ Chris asked.

‘We were told
how you esscaped the Zentor by finding one of our tunnelsss,’ Cass
replied.

‘We
apologisse,’ Duss added quickly.

‘Yess, yess, we
apologisse,’ Cass continued. ‘Not all of our tunnelss are in good
repair.’

‘No, not all
are in good repair,’ Duss repeated. ‘We immediately followed thiss
one up and found it wass blocked.’

‘So who told
you how we escaped from the Zentor?’ Chris asked.

At this
question Duss and Cass looked briefly at each other before Cass
spoke. ‘We were sssummoned by our high council and told who you
really were. And how important it wass to find you.’

‘We were assked
to help in the ssearch,’ Duss added.

‘Yees, yess, we
were very excited to help them ssearch,’ Cass said, her voice
rising an octave. ‘We knew there wass ssomething sstrange about
you, but we had no idea.’

‘No, no idea,’
Duss continued.

‘But who told
the council?’ Chris asked.

As if in answer
to this question more sounds came from the newly dug tunnel and
several soldiers climbed out, followed by Kaloc. Susie rushed
forward and flung her arms around him.