Strangelets Read Free

and was acutely aware of the press of earth overhead. There were frequent news reports about tunnels like these collapsing. Old Israeli cynics called them “wormholes,” claiming they offered a theoretical passage to some alternate universe (Egypt certainly qualified). Get stuck in one and you’d vanish in time, like a rat Palestinian smuggler or a bit of stardust.
    At the bottom of the stairs Anat waved the beam over rough-hewn walls. At least this tunnel appeared well constructed, despite its size. She had to tilt her head to keep from brushing the ceiling. This was one of the few times that her height worked against her. If she jutted out her elbows, they’d scrape the walls on either side of her. She swallowed down the claustrophobia and pressed onward.
    To distract herself, Anat tried to picture the underground barrier that the Egyptian army was building somewhere close by. The bomb-proof steel wall extended along the border for more than ten kilometers and plunged eighteen meters below the surface. Once it was completed, this type of escape would no longer be possible. Anat tried to take comfort from that. She couldn’t have afforded to wait, right?
    Anat had no idea how far this tunnel went, or where exactly it would emerge. She’d heard that some were nearly 800 meters long. That was all right. Even stooped and stumbling, she could walk that in less than twenty minutes. Steeling herself, she picked up the pace. A street map of Rafah, Egypt was tucked in her backpack. But she didn’t need it; she’d memorized the fastest route from the tunnel exit to the small hotel where she was meeting Hazim.
    That is, if the tunnel ended where she thought it might. Khalid had been a little vague about the exact spot, or what she could expect to find there.
    Something shimmered up ahead, just past the beam of her flashlight. Anat’s heart leapt into her throat. The air was suddenly thick with a pungent smell that reminded her of burning plastic. Khalid had also promised that she wouldn’t encounter anyone else. The last thing she needed was to run into real smugglers.
    Trembling slightly, Anat raised the flashlight beam. She frowned. The tunnel ahead had vanished, the dirt floor dropping into darkness. Had a section of the floor collapsed, maybe?
    “
Kus emek
,” she muttered.
    Her eyes widened as more of the floor slid into the void. Its advance picked up speed under her flashlight, like a fishing line being reeled in. Anat took a step back, then another.Seized by panic, she turned and sprinted back toward the trap door, the flashlight jerking crazily over the rough dirt. Her breath came in tight gasps. Her chest burned. The straps of her backpack slipped from her shoulders, but there was no time to retrieve it. She’d move faster without it anyway.
    She’d nearly reached the stairs when she had the disconcerting sensation of being sucked backward. Anat fought to grab hold of something, clawing at the dirt with her nails. But she was drawn inexorably toward the encroaching void.
I should have known better than to trust a smuggler
, she thought. With that, the force swallowed her whole.

The Hospital
    Sophie opened her eyes and frowned. Weird. She was still in a hospital bed. Of course, in most near-death experience stories, people woke up just like this. She hadn’t expected to be one of them, though. She really thought she’d
died
. But then, she’d always joked that spending eternity in a hospital was her idea of hell. Wouldn’t it be ironic if she turned out to be right?
    Her wry smile faded to a frown as she took in her surroundings. If she was still alive, they must have moved her. This wasn’t the hospice room where she’d spent the last few weeks of her life. The fake ficus tree in the corner was gone. The cheap TV had been swapped out for a swanky flat screen. And instead of being hooked up to numerous beeping machines—via needles and sticky pads and probes—she was attached to nothing. At least,