Tunnels 02, Deeper Read Free Page B

around, still kneading his neck.
    "Cal, I found him! I found Chester!" Will yelled, his words all but drowned out by the noise of the train. Cal's and Chester's eyes met, but neither spoke, being too far apart for any sort of exchange. Although they had been introduced very briefly before, it had been under the worst of circumstances, with the Styx snapping at their heels. There had been no time for any niceties.
    They looked away from each other and Chester lowered himself from the crate onto the freight bed, where he cradled his head in his hands. The trek he and Will had just made down the train had sapped all his remaining strength. Cal went back to massaging his neck. He didn't appear to be the least bit surprised that Chester was on the train. Or perhaps he simply didn't care.
    Will shrugged. "What a pair of wrecks!" he said in a normal voice, so that neither of them would hear him above the mechanical roar. But as he began to think about the future again, his anxiety returned, as if something were gnawing away at his insides.
    From all accounts, they were destined for a place that even the Colonists spoke of with a hushed reverence. Indeed, it was one of the worst punishments imaginable for a Colonist to be "Banished" and expelled there, into the savage wasteland known as the Deeps. And the Colonists were a phenomenally hardy race, who had endured the toughest living conditions for centuries in their subterranean world. So how were they going to fare? Will had no doubt that they were going to be put to the test again, all three of them. And there was no escaping the fact that neither his brother nor his friend was up to facing any challenges. Not right now.
    Flexing his arm and feeling the stiffness in it, Will put his hand under his jacket to probe the bite on his shoulder. He'd been mauled by a stalker, one of the ferocious attack dogs used by the Styx, and even though the injuries had been tended to, he wasn't in great shape, either. He automatically glanced at the crates of fresh fruit around them. At least they had ample food to keep up their strength. But other than that, they were hardly well prepared.
    The responsibility was immense, as if large weights had been placed on his shoulders and there was no way to shake free of them. He'd involved Chester and Cal in this wild goose chase to search for his father, who even now was somewhere in the unknown lands they were nearing with every twist and turn of these winding tunnels. That was, if Dr. Burrows was still alive... Will shook his head.
    No!
    He couldn't let himself think like that. He had to go on believing he'd be reunited with his father, and then everything would be all right, just as he dreamed it would. The four of them -- Dr. Burrows, Chester, Cal and him -- working as a team, discovering unimaginable and wondrous things... lost civilizations... maybe new life forms... and then... then what?
    He hadn't the foggiest idea.
    Will couldn't see that far ahead, see how all this would pan out. He just knew that somehow, there would be a happy outcome, and finding his father was the key.
    It had to be.

     

3

    From different points around the floor, the sewing machines rattled and the steam hissed back their responses, as if they were trying to communicate with each other.
    Where Sarah was sitting, the piping tones of a radio station, forever present in the background, were trying vainly to break through the mechanical din. Depressing the pedal with her foot, she whirred her machine into life, and it threw a thread into the fabric. Everyone on the floor was working flat out, as there was a rush on to get the clothes ready for the next day.
    Sarah heard someone shouting and looked up -- a woman was winding her way between the workbenches toward her companions, who were waiting by the exit. As she joined them, they chatted noisily, like a gaggle of overexcited geese, then pushed their way through the swinging doors.
    As the doors flapped shut behind them, Sarah