Tunnels (23 page)

"How about a nice cup of tea?" Rebecca asked, forcing a smile as Mrs. Burrows quieted down again. Putting her arm around Mrs.
Burrows's
waist, she steered her in the direction of the living room.

Will was rudely awoken by the cell door crashing back and the First Officer hauling him to his feet. Still thick with sleep, he was bundled out of the Hold, through the reception area of the station, out of the main entrance, and onto the top of the stone stairs.

The officer let go of him, and he tottered down a couple of steps until he found his footing. There he stood, groggy and more than a little disoriented. He heard a thump next to him as his backpack landed by his feet, and without a word the officer turned his back and went into the station.

It was a strange feeling, standing there bathed in the glow of the streetlights after being confined in that gloomy cell for so long. There was a slight breeze on his face — it was damp and muggy but, all the same, it was a relief after the airlessness of the Hold.

What happens now?
he thought scratching his neck under the collar of the coarse shirt he'd been given by one of the officers. His mind still befuddled, he started to yawn, but stifled it as he heard a noise: A restless horse brayed and stamped a hoof against the damp cobbles. Will immediately looked up and saw a dark carriage a little way down on the other side of the road, to which two pure white horses were hitched. At the front, a coachman sat holding the reins. The carriage door swung open, and
Cal
jumped out and crossed the street toward him.

"What's this?" Will asked suspiciously, backing up a step as
Cal
approached.

"We're taking you home,"
Cal
replied.

"Home? What do you mean, home? With you? I'm not going anywhere without Chester!" he said resolutely.

"
Shhh
, don't. Listen!"
Cal
now stood close to him and spoke with urgency. "They're watching us." He inclined his head down the street, his eyes never leaving Will's.

On the corner was a sole figure, dark as a disembodied shadow, standing stock-still. Will could just make out the white collar.

"I'm not leaving without Chester," Will hissed.

"What do you think will happen to him if you don't come with us? Think about it."

"But—"

"They can be easy on him or not. It's up to you."
Cal
looked pleadingly into Will's eyes.

Will glanced back at the station one last time, then sighed and shook his head. "All right."

Cal
smiled and, picking up Will's pack for him, led the way over to the waiting carriage. He held the door open for Will, who followed grudgingly, his hands in his pockets and his head down. He didn't like this at all.

As the carriage pulled away, Will studied the austere interior. It certainly wasn't built for comfort. The seats, like the side panels, were made of a hard, black-lacquered wood, and the whole thing smelled of varnish with a faint hint of bleach, somewhat reminiscent of a gymnasium on the first day of school. Still, anything was better than the cell in which he'd been locked up for so many days with Chester. Will felt a sudden pang as he thought of his friend, still incarcerated and now alone in the Hold. He wondered if Chester had even been told that he'd been whisked away, and he swore to himself that he'd find a way to get his friend out of there if it was the last thing he did.

He slumped back dejectedly in his seat and put his feet up on the opposite bench, then pulled back the leathery curtain and stared through the open window of the carriage. As the coach rattled through the cavernous, deserted streets, bleak houses and unlit
shopfronts
passed with monotonous regularity. Copying Will,
Cal
also settled back and rested his feet on the seat in front of him, occasionally giving Will sidelong glances and smiling contentedly to himself.

Both boys remained silent, lost in their own thoughts, but it wasn't long before Will's natural inquisitiveness began to revive slightly. He made a concerted effort to take in the murky sights passing him by, but after a short while his eyelids grew heavier as his extreme weariness and the seemingly endless underworld got the better of him. Finally, lulled by the rhythmic beat of the horses' hooves, he nodded off, occasionally waking with a start when the carriage's buffeting roused him. With a somewhat startled expression, he would look around self-consciously, much to
Cal
's
amusement, and then his head would droop and he'd succumb to his fatigue again.

He didn't know if he'd been asleep for minutes or even hours when the driver cracked his whip, waking him again. The carriage surged forward, and the lampposts flicked past the window at less regular intervals. Will assumed they must be reaching the outskirts of the town. Wider areas opened up between the buildings, carpeted by dark green, almost black, beds of lichens or something similar. Then came strips of land at either side of the road, which were divided into plots by rickety-looking fences and contained beds of what appeared to be some sort of large fungi.

At one point their speed dropped as they crossed a small bridge spanning an inky-looking canal. Will stared down into the slow and torpid water, flowing like crude oil, and for some reason it filled him with an inexplicable dread.

He had just settled back into his seat and was beginning to doze off again when the road suddenly dipped down a steep incline and the carriage veered left. Then, as the road leveled out once more, the driver shouted "Whoa!" and the horses slowed to a trot.

Will was wide awake now and stuck his head out the window to see what was going on. There was a huge metal gate blocking the way, and to the side of this a group of men huddled around a brazier as they warmed their hands. Standing apart from them in the middle of the road, a hooded figure held a lamp high and was waving it from side to side as a signal for the coachman to stop. As the carriage ground to a halt, to Will's horror he spotted the instantly recognizable figure of a Styx emerging from the shadows. Will quickly yanked the curtain shut and ducked back into the carriage. He looked questioningly at
Cal
.

"It's the Skull Gate. It's the main portal to the Colony,"
Cal
explained in a reassuring tone.

"I thought we were already in the Colony."

"No,"
Cal
replied incredulously, "that was only the Quarter. It's sort of… like an outpost… our frontier town."

So there's more beyond this?"

"More? There's
miles
of it!"

Will was speechless. He looked fearfully at the door as the clipped sound of boot heels on cobblestones drew nearer.
Cal
grabbed his arm. "Don't worry, they check everyone who goes through. Just say nothing. If there's a problem, I'll do all the talking."

At that very moment, the door on Will's side was pulled open and the Styx shone a brass lamp into the interior. He played the beam across their faces, then took a step back and shone it up at the coachman, who handed him a piece of paper. He read it with a cursory glance. Apparently satisfied, he returned to the boys once more, directed the dazzling light straight into Will's eyes, and, with a contemptuous sneer, slammed the door shut. He handed the note back to the driver, signaled to the gateman, turned on his heel, and walked away.

Hearing a loud clanking, Will warily lifted the hem of the curtain and peered out again. As the guard waved them on, the light from his lantern revealed that the gate was in fact a portcullis. Will watched as it rose jerkily into a structure that made him blink with astonishment. Carved from a lighter stone and jutting from the wall above the portcullis, it was an immense toothless skull.

"That's pretty creepy," Will muttered under his breath.

"It's meant to be. It's a warning,"
Cal
replied indifferently as the coachman lashed his whip and the carriage lurched through the mouth of the fearsome apparition and into the cavern beyond.

Leaning out the window, Will watched the portcullis shuddering down behind them again until the curve of the tunnel hid it from sight. As the horse picked up speed, the carriage turned a corner and raced down a steep incline into a giant tunnel hewn out of the dark red sandstone. It was completely devoid of buildings and houses. As the tunnel continued to descend, the air began to change — it began to smell of smoke — and for a moment the ever-present background hum grew in intensity until it rattled the very fabric of the carriage itself.

They made a final sharp turn, and the humming lessened and the air grew cleaner again.
Cal
joined Will at the window as a massive space yawned before them. On either side of the road stood rows of buildings, a complex forest of brick ducts running over the cavern walls above them like bloated varicose veins. In the distance, dark stacks vented cold blue flames and streamed vertical plumes of smoke, which, largely undisturbed by air currents, rose to the roof of the cavern. Here the smoke accumulated, rippling slowly and resembling a gentle swell on the surface of an inverted brown ocean.

"This is the Colony, Will," said
Cal
, his face next to Will's at the narrow window. "This is…"

Will just stared in wonder, hardly daring to breathe.

"…home."

Around the same time that Will and Cal were arriving at the Jerome house, Rebecca was standing patiently beside a lady from Family Welfare on the thirteenth floor of
Mandela
Heights
, a dreary,
rund
-down apartment building on the seamier side of
Wandsworth
. The social worker was ringing the bell of number 65 for the third time without getting a reply, while Rebecca looked around her at the dirty floor. With a low, remorseful moan, the wind was blowing through the broken windows of the stairwell and flapping the partially filled trash bags heaped in one corner.

Rebecca shivered. It wasn't just because of the chill wind, but because she was about to be delivered to what she considered one of the worst places in the world.

By now, the social worker had given up pressing the grimy doorbell and had started knocking loudly. There was still no reply, but the sound of the television could clearly be heard from within. She knocked again, more insistently this time, and stopped as she finally heard the sound of coughing and a woman's strident voice from the other side of the door.

"All right, all right, for
gawd's
sake,
giv
' us a chance!"

The social worker turned to Rebecca and tried to smile reassuringly. She only managed something approaching a pitying grimace.

"Looks like she's in."

"Oh, good," Rebecca said sarcastically, picking up her two small suitcases.

They waited in awkward silence as, with much fumbling, the door was unlocked and the chain removed, accompanied by mutterings and curses and punctuated by intermittent coughing. The door finally swung open, and a significantly disheveled middle-aged woman, cigarette hanging down from her bottom lip, looked the social worker up and down suspiciously.

"What's this all about?" she asked, one eye squinting from the smoke streaming from her cigarette, which twitched with all the vigor of a conductor's baton as she spoke.

"I've brought you niece, Mrs. Boswell," the social worker announced, indicating Rebecca standing beside her.

"You what?" the woman said sharply, shedding ash on the social worker's immaculate shoes. Rebecca cringed.

"Don't you remember… we spoke on the phone yesterday?"

The woman's watery gaze settled on Rebecca, who smiled and leaned forward a little to come within her limited field of vision.

"Hello, Auntie Jean," she said, doing her best to smile.

"Rebecca, my love, of course, yes, look at you, '
aven't
you grown. Quite the young lady." Auntie Jean coughed and opened the door fully. "Yes, come in, come in, I've got something on the boil." She turned and shuffled back into the small hallway, leaving Rebecca and the social worker to survey the haphazard piles of curling newspapers stacked along the walls, and the huge number of unopened letters and pamphlets littering the filthy carpet. Everything was covered with a fine film of dust, and the corners of the hallway were festooned with cobwebs. The whole place stank of Auntie Jean's cigarettes. The social worker and Rebecca stood in silence until the social worker, as if pulling herself out of a trance, abruptly bade Rebecca good-bye and good luck. She seemed in a great haste to leave, and Rebecca watched her as she made for the stairs, pausing on the way to glance at the elevator doors as if she was hoping that by some miracle it was back in service and she weren't facing the long trek down.

Rebecca gingerly entered the apartment and followed her aunt into the kitchen.

"I could do with some '
elp
in 'ere," Auntie Jean said, picking out a packet of cigarettes from among the debris on the table.

Rebecca surveyed the tawdry vision that lay before her. Shafts of sunlight cut through the ever-present fog of cigarette smoke that hung around her aunt like a personal storm cloud. She wrinkled her nose as she caught the acid taint of yesterday's burned food lacing the air.

"If you're going to be staying in my gaff," her aunt said through a fit of coughing, "you're going to '
ave
to pull your weight."

Rebecca didn't move; she feared any motion, however slight, would result in her being covered in the grime that coated every surface.

"C'mon,
Becs
, put down your bags, roll up your sleeves. You can start by putting the kettle on." Auntie Jean smiled as she sat down at the kitchen table. She lit a fresh cigarette from the old one before stubbing out its glowing stump directly on the Formica tabletop, completely missing the overflowing ashtray.