Tunnels (41 page)

Will's eyes were feverish and unfocused, and his voice trembled. "I really think we should get help," he said, mopping the sweat from his brow.

"Is there anywhere we can go?"
Cal
asked.

Will sniffed, swallowed, and nodded, his head feeling as though it were about to burst. "There's only one place I can think of."

* * * * *

"Get
yerself
out here!" the Second Officer bawled into the cell, his head pushed so far forward that the tendons in his bull-like neck stood proud, like knotted lengths of rope.

From the shadows came several sniffs as Chester did his best to control his terrified sobbing. Ever since he had been recaptured and brought back to the Hold, the Second Officer had been treating him brutally. The man had taken it upon himself to make Chester's life a living nightmare, withholding his meals and waking him up if he happened to nod off on the ledge by emptying a bucket of ice-cold water over his head or by screaming threats through the inspection hatch. All this probably had something to do with the thick bandage wound around the Second Officer's head — Will's blow with the shovel had knocked him out cold — and, what was worse, when he came to, the Styx had spent the best part of a day interrogating him over the accusation that he had been negligent in his duties. So to say that the Second Officer was now very bitter and vindictive would be putting it mildly.

Chester, half starved and exhausted to the point of collapse, wasn't sure how much more of this treatment he could take. If life had been hard for him before the botched escape attempt, it was that much worse now.

"Don't make me come in there and get you!" the Second Officer was yelling. Before he'd finished, Chester shuffled barefoot into the wan light of the corridor. Shielding his eyes with one hand, he lifted his head. It was streaked gray with ingrained dirt, and his shirt was torn.

"Yes, sir," he mumbled subserviently.

"The Styx want to see you. They've got something to tell you," the Second Officer said, his voice distorted with malice, and then he began to chortle. "Something that'll fix you good and proper." He was still laughing as, unbidden, Chester started down the corridor toward the main door to the Hold, the soles of his feet rasping sluggishly across the gritty stones.

"Shift it!" the Second Officer snapped, thrusting his bunch of keys into the small of Chester's back.

"
Ow
,"
Chester complained in a pitiful voice.

As they went through the main door, Chester had to cover his eyes altogether, he was now so unused to the light. He continued to shuffle along, heading on a course that would have taken him through to the front desk of the police station if the Second Officer hadn't stopped him.

"And where do you think you're off to? You don't think you're going home, do you?" The man started to guffaw and then became deadly serious again. "No, you go
right
, into the corridor, you do."

Chester, lowering his hands and trying to see through his scrunched-up eyes, made a slow quarter turn and then froze, rooted to the spot.

"The Dark Light?" he asked fearfully, not daring to turn his face toward the Second Officer.

"No, we're past all that now. This is where you get your comeuppance, you worthless little
squit
."

They passed through a series of corridors, the Second Officer chivying Chester along with further jabs and shoves, chuckling to himself all the way. He quieted down as they rounded a corner and came in sight of an open doorway. From this an intense light streamed out, illuminating the whitewashed wall opposite.

Although Chester's movements were languid and his expression blank, inwardly his fears were raging. Frantically he debated with himself whether he should make a run for it and bolt down the corridor ahead. He didn't have the slightest idea where it led, or how far he'd get, but it would, at the very least, put off facing whatever was waiting for him in that room. For a while, anyway.

He slowed even further, his eyes hurting as he forced himself to look directly at the blaze of light flooding from the doorway. He was getting closer. He didn't know what was waiting inside — another of their exquisitely horrible tortures? Or maybe… maybe
an executioner
.

His whole body stiffened, every muscle wanting to do anything but carry him into that dazzling light.

"Nearly there," the officer said over Chester's shoulder, and Chester knew that he had no alternative but to cooperate. There were going to be no miraculous reprieves, no timely escapes.

He was dragging his heels so much that he was barely moving at all when the Second Officer gave him such a hefty shove that he was knocked clean off his feet and sent flying through the doorway into the light. Skidding over the stone floor on his front, he came to a rest and lay there, a little stunned.

The light was all around him, and he was blinking rapidly in its harsh glare. He heard the door slam and, from a rustle of papers, he knew at once there was someone else in the room. He immediately imagined who it — or they — would be: two tall Styx, most likely looming behind a table, just as there'd been during the Dark Light sessions.

"Stand up," ordered a reedy, nasal voice.

Chester did so, and slowly raised his eyes to the source. He couldn’t have been more astonished by the sight that greeted him.

It was a single Styx, and he was wizened and small, his thinning gray hair pulled back at the temples and his face crisscrossed with so many lines and wrinkles that he looked like a bleached raisin. Hunched sharply over a tall desk with a slanted top, he resembled an ancient schoolmaster.

Chester was completely disarmed by this apparition with the sheer light all around it. This was not what he'd been expecting at all. He was beginning to feel relieved, telling himself that perhaps things were going to turn out better than he'd thought after all, when his eyes met those of the old Styx.

They were the coldest, darkest eyes Chester had ever seen. They were like two bottomless wells that drew him toward them and by some unnatural and unwholesome power pulled him down into their voids. Chester felt a chill descend over him as if the temperature had plummeted in the room, and he shivered violently.

The old Styx dropped his eyes to the desk, and Chester swayed unsteadily on his feet, as if he'd been abruptly released from something that had had him in its relentless grip. He let out his breath in a rush, unconscious until now that he'd been holding it in. Then the Styx began to read in a measured tone.

"You have been found guilty," he said, "under Order Forty-two, Edicts Eighteen, Twenty-four, Forty-two…"

The numbers went on, but it meant nothing to Chester until the Styx paused and, very matter-of-factly, said the word
sentence
. Chester really began to listen at this point.

"The prisoner will be taken from this place and conveyed by train to the Interior, and there be Banished, relinquished to the forces of nature.. So be it," the old Styx finished, clapping his hands and holding them pressed hard together, as if he were wringing something out. Then he slowly raised his head from his papers and said, "May the Lord have mercy on your soul."

"What… what do you mean?" Chester asked, reeling under the Styx's icy gaze and the implications of what he'd just heard.

Without needing to consult the papers before him, the Styx simply reiterated the punishment and then fell silent again. Chester grappled with the questions that were racing through his head, moving his lips but emitting no sound at all.

"Yes?" the old Styx asked, in such a way that suggested he'd been in this situation many times before and found it thoroughly tiresome to have to converse with the lowly prisoner before him.

"What… what does that mean?" Chester eventually got out.

The Styx stared at Chester for several seconds and, with total impassivity, said, "Banished. You will be escorted as far as the Miners' Station, many fathoms down, and then left to do as you will."

"Taken
deeper
into the earth?"

The Styx nodded. "We have no need for your kind in the Colony. You attempted to escape, and the Panoply takes a dim view of that. You are not worthy of service here." He clapped his hands together again. "Banished."

Chester suddenly felt the immense weight of all the millions of tons of dirt and rock above, as if they were pressing directly down on him, squeezing out his lifeblood. He staggered backward.

"But I've done
nothing
. I'm not
guilty
of anything," he cried., holding out his hands and pleading with the emotionless little man. He felt as if he were being buried alive and that he would never again see home, or the blue sky, or his family… everything he loved and yearned for. The hope he had clung to ever since he'd been captured and locked up in that dark room gushed out of him like air from a burst balloon.

He was doomed.

This hateful little man didn't give a hoot about him… Chester saw that in the Styx's impassive face and in his frightful eyes — reptilian, inhuman eyes. And Chester knew that there was absolutely no point in trying to persuade him, or beg for his life. These people were savage and merciless, and they had arbitrarily condemned him to the most awful fate:
an even deeper grave.

"But why?" Chester asked, tears wetting his face as he wept openly.

"Because it is the law," the old Styx answered. "Because I am sitting here, and you are standing there." He smiled without the remotest trace of any warmth.

"But—" Chester objected with a howl.

"Officer, take him back to the Hold," the old Styx said, gathering up his papers with his arthritic fingers, and Chester heard the door creak open behind him.

Will was thrown forward as a fist landed squarely in the middle of his back. Staggering drunkenly for a few steps, he rebounded off the handrail and turned slowly around to face his assailant.

"Speed?" he said, recognizing the school bully's scowling face.

"Where've you sprung from, Snowdrop? Thought you'd snuffed it. People said you were dead or something."

Will didn't reply. He was deep in the insulated cocoon of the unwell; he felt as though he were looking at the world from behind a frosted sheet of glass. It was all Will could do to stand there, his body quivering as Speed pushed his snarling face just inches in front of his. Out of the corner of his eye, Will glimpsed
Bloggsy
closing in on
Cal
a little farther down the sloping path.

They had been on their way to the subway station, and right now a fight was the last thing Will wanted.

"So where's Fat Boy?" Speed crooned, the moisture on his breath clouding in the cold air. "Bit different without your bodyguard, ain't it, dipstick?"

"
Oi
, Speed, check this out, it's Mini Me!"
Bloggsy
said, looking from
Cal
to Will and back again. "What's in the bag, gimp?"

At Will's insistence,
Cal
had been carrying their dirty Colonists' clothes in one of Dr.
Burrows's
old expedition duffel bags.

"Payback time," Speed shouted and simultaneously jabbed a fist in Will's stomach. Winded, Will slumped to his knees and then toppled over, curling up with his arms wrapped protectively around his head as he hit the ground.

"This is too easy," Speed crowed, and kicked Will in the back several times.

Bloggsy
was making ludicrous whooping noises and crouching in a mock kung-fu-fighting stance as he prodded two fingers at
Cal
's
sunglasses. "Prepare to meet your maker," he said, his other arm drawn back and ready to throw a punch.

Everything happened too quickly for Will after that. There was a streak of purple and brown lightning as Bartleby landed smack in the middle of
Bloggsy's
shoulders. The impact knocked the boy away from
Cal
and sent him tumbling untidily down the slope, the cat still latched onto his back. As
Bloggsy
came to rest facedown on the ground, he was writhing and trying to use his elbows to beat off the flurry of pearl white canines and barbaric-looking claws, all the while letting out the most awful high-pitched cries and screaming for someone to help.

"No," Will shouted weakly. "Enough!"

"Stop it, Bart!"
Cal
yelled.

The cat, still on top of
Bloggsy
, spun his head around to look at Cal, who shouted another command.

"Sic '
im
!"
Cal
pointed at Speed, who had remained standing over Will through all this, not believing what he was seeing. Speed's jaw dropped, and a look of sheer horror crept over his face. Bartleby fixed his eyes on the new quarry through the bizarre pink sunglasses, the Tibetan hat now slightly askew on his head. With a loud hiss, he bounded back up the slope toward the startled bully.

"Call it off! Call it off!" Speed shrieked as he started to run up the path as if his life depended on it — which it did. In the blink of an eye, the cat had caught up with him. Sometimes at his side, sometimes blocking his way, Bartleby circled around him like a playful whirlwind, attacking his ankles and slashing at his thighs though his school pants, lacerating his skin. The terrified boy stumbled and tottered in a spasmodic, comic dance as he frantically tried to escape, his feet sliding hopelessly on the pavement.

"I'm sorry, Will, I'm sorry! Just get it off me! Please!" Speed was gibbering, his pants reduced to tatters.

With a look from Will,
Cal
stuck two fingers into his mouth and whistled. The cat stopped instantly and allowed Speed to run away. Not once did he turn to look back.

Will glanced past
Cal
to the bottom of the slope, where
Bloggsy
had picked himself up and was half running, half falling in his haste to make an escape.