The Anomaly(54)

I got myself into as tight a crouch as possible. I’d already reconciled myself to bangs and knocks—and tried to relax myself about the prospect. I did as I had when coming in the other direction, inching each foot forward, using hands and elbows to brace against the passage walls. I kept my eyes shut, against the retinas’ attempts to interpret sensory deprivation in misleading ways. A couple of inches at a time.

I focused on the sensations in my fingers and feet, the feel of the rock, the smell of the dust. Every step was hard, but thank God we were going back rather than forward. I knew it would end. If you’re patient, one step at a time will take you as far as you need to go. I submerged myself in the process, blanking out everything else.

But then I became aware of fast, uncontrolled panting behind me. “Moll? Are you okay?”

“I can’t do this. I can’t. I have to get out.”

“That’s what we’re doing, love,” Ken said. “Getting out. Just keep going.”

“I can’t. I can’t do this. We’re going to die down here and that’s okay, but I can’t die in this tunnel. I can’t die here. I have to get out. I HAVE TO GET OUT.”

I stopped trying to move forward. “Moll. Shout it again. Shout it one more time. Get it out.”

“I…” But her voice cracked, and she started crying.

“Moll, come closer. Come right up behind me.”

She shuffled up. I felt her forehead on my back. It was slick with sweat, and her entire body was trembling.

“You’re wrong, Moll. We are going to get out of here.”

“No, we’re not!”

“We are. We can rely on Feather. She will get down to the river. Or she’s there already. Dylan will be there, and he’s a big macho bundle of testosterone who will get right on to turning himself into the hero of the day—which involves saving us. You met the guy. He’s going to be all over that. No save, no hero, no parade. Don’t you think?”

She mumbled something.

“And you know what else?” I said. “Even if he has bugged out or sunk the raft or gotten abducted by aliens, I trust Feather to swim it. I trust her to get to the beach and wait until she sees someone and shout her head off. Someone will come, Molly. Today or tomorrow or soon. Depend on it. All we have to do is keep our shit together until it happens. It will not be easy and it will not be fun, but we will do it. And step one of that is getting out of this crevice. Because it sucks in here. This is the place and point and time from which the rest of our lives start. There is a path from here. And so we need to move along it. We have to go on, and keep going. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, very quietly. Then, a little more strongly, “Okay. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. You’re amazing. In your position I would have exploded by now. Literally exploded. It could still happen. Which would be gross. I’m not enjoying this process either, and that’s because it’s shit. So let’s go.”

I started to shuffle forward. After a moment, I felt her follow, still holding on to my shirt.

We kept moving. Slow yard after slow yard.

And then somebody screamed.





Chapter

32



The sound wasn’t loud or close but it was sudden and very penetrating. We froze in the blackness. A second later we heard it again.

“Fuck was that?” Ken said.

“Gemma,” I said.

I told myself to keep it slow but it was impossible. Not when you’d heard something like that. And so I scraped and banged my way down the remaining yards of the confined section, hearing my breath start to become ragged and constrained, trying not to panic. Then I reached above my head and found we were back in the section where we had to go sideways but could straighten up. The smell was back, too.

“We’re nearly there.”

The scooting-sideways section was longer than I remembered but at least I could stand upright. I nearly turned my ankle on the cracked floor and had to keep forcing myself not to start running, recalling only at the last minute that we’d had to step up into the fissure—and so there’d be a drop into the room when we finally got there.

And there it was. “I’m out,” I said.

My stomach rolled over, and I gagged. The smell was even stronger than I remembered. I took a couple of steps into the room, mouth firmly shut and hand over my nose, trying to picture the direction we’d need to aim in. Molly and Ken dropped down behind me.

“You worked out the angle?” he asked.

“I think so.” I reached out with both arms and gathered one of them on each side.

We hurried together into the blackness. Within a couple of steps I noticed something was different, but Molly was faster to articulate it. “Are your feet sticking?”

“Yeah,” Ken said. “That black stuff on the floor—it’s tacky. It wasn’t earlier.”

“We must be walking on a different part,” I said. “Whatever—just keep moving.”

We missed the door but only by a couple of feet. We shuffled sideways until we found it. Then we were out into the corridor and could see a glimmer of light from the main room. I’ve never been so pleased to see something so basic.

I let go of the others and we ran.