The Suicide Exhibition: The Never War (Never War 1) Read Free Page B

Watertight and airtight.
    Airtight.
    The first man through raised his pickaxe. Streicher and the others stepped back to allow him room to swing at the wall.
    ‘No – stop him!’
    But Smith’s cry was too late. The pickaxe bit into the wall. Nothing happened.
    Not until the man levered it out again.
    There was a sudden, loud hissing sound. A white mist, like smoke, curled from the hole in the wall. Smith pulled his handkerchief from his top pocket and jammed it over his nose and mouth. He pulled Streicher away, struggling to get him back through the doorway.
    The man was coughing and spluttering – choking on the pale mist. The whole antechamber was full of it. Through the thickening fog, Smith saw men staggering into each other, clutching their throats. Falling. Their faces blotched with bursting pustules.
    One of them blundered in front of Smith. The whole side of the man’s face was peeling away, like it was drenched in acid.
    Smith shouldered the poor man aside, and with a final effort he dragged Streicher back through to the passageway. He pushed at the door, but it was jammed open. The deadly mist curled out after them, like a smoky finger stabbing towards Smith as he half dragged, half carried Streicher away. Something brushed against his leg, and Smith almost fell.He caught a glimpse of a dark shape lingering for a moment against Streicher, then scuttling into the shadows, like a huge spider. A trick of the light. An artefact of the drifting mist that swirled towards him…
    There was barely room for them both as Smith staggered back along the tunnel, holding his breath for as long as he could, lungs bursting with the effort. He had to breathe through his handkerchief, hoping the air out here wasn’t poisoned. Streicher was a dead weight against him.
    In the panic and the swirling mist, he almost stumbled over the edge where the floor had dropped away. Smith teetered for a moment on the brink, staring down into the blackness in front of him. He managed to take a step backwards. But what now? Streicher was in no fit state to jump. The man was practically unconscious, and retching and choking as Smith supported his weight.
    Deciding this was no time for playacting, Smith unceremoniously hoisted the SS officer onto his shoulders in a fireman’s lift, taking care not to drop his torch. He backed down the passageway, straightening up as he bore the other man’s weight. In the gloom of the tunnel he seemed taller, more confident.
    The torchlight juddered, cutting through the mist and dancing over the walls and floor as Smith ran towards the abyss. Despite the near-dead weight over his shoulders, there was none of the awkwardness of his earlier jump. But it was a hell of a distance for a man carrying another.
    The darkness rushed past below. The far side of the pit flew towards him. Before he was halfway, Smith knew he wasn’t going to make it.
    He fell short, his chest slamming into the top edge of the abyss. Streicher’s body was jolted from his grasp. Somehow Smith managed to heave it over the lip and onto the floor of the passage. The SS officer rolled away, groaning.
    The torch skidded after Streicher, its beam pointing straight back at Smith. Dazzling. Then he was falling, dropping into the bottomless pit.
    He scrabbled desperately, arms stretched out along the tunnel floor, fingers searching for the slightest purchase. Smith’s nails ripped as he tried to force them into the tiny gaps between the slabs. Finally, with an excruciating jolt, he caught hold with his right hand. He worked his fingers deeper into the crevice he’d found, scraping with his left hand to find a similar grip.
    It was a slow and painful process, but somehow Smith managed to haul himself back up. He was holding his breath, his lungs bursting, though all the air must have been knocked out of him by the impact on the side of the pit.
    He gathered up the torch and his handkerchief from the ground, then heaved Streicher over his shoulders