For the first time in a while the tunnel doesn’t branch, just continues on and on. Every time they run past a light bulb Reid has a moment of fear. All it would take for the hunters to win would be for them to shut off the power. Then either the black creatures Reid is sure are connected to the experiment or the hunters themselves would be able to sweep in and clean them up.
But the lights continue to burn and they keep running.
The tunnel has a constant mild curve to the right, making it impossible to see more than one bulb ahead. It feels strange to Reid for him to be leading the run after following the pack for so long but it doesn’t take much time for him to readjust to the need to move quickly with no one in the way.
Even in the gloomy yellow glow of the well-spaced bulbs, Reid spots the rock fall ahead without much trouble. He slows, finally stopping in front of it, nerves making him jumpy and more than a little angry. Reid can see the tunnel on the other side, just over the mound of rocks and splintered wood, but it still makes him tremble.
They are watching him, to see what he’ll do. If he panics, they will follow him down that road to definite destruction. Reid has to hold it together if only to keep the rest of the pack from falling apart.
He turns to them with far more confidence than he feels, trying to hide he’s keeping a vigilant eye on the ceiling above the collapse. It gapes black above him, ready to swallow him up, he’s sure of it. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to go. Single file, one at a time.” They start to shake and whimper among themselves. It’s pretty obvious why. Reid clenches his teeth and fills their need for leadership once again. “Fine. I’ll go first and make sure it’s safe.”
“Leave us behind, more like it,” Marcus snarls but no one is listening to him anymore. In this they are happy to let Reid risk his neck. Nice of them, but he can hardly blame their attitude. And while Reid knows Leila or Cole or even Milo would go instead if he asked them, he won’t.
Reid approaches with caution, testing the ground around the cave in. The footing is loose and rough, every step raising a puff of dust. His sneakers slide over the first stone, forcing him almost to his hands and knees. He struggles for balance, cut left hand barely holding him while his busted right aches from the pressure of supporting his weight.
He goes slowly, testing foot and hand holds while they watch him in silence. Their collective stare is like a mountain on his back, a distraction he doesn’t need. He wobbles on one foot for a moment, dodging back, ankle protesting the strain, nose stinging from the dust he raises. His traction is useless on the jagged stones. A grab for a broken beam drives a sliver of wood under one of his fingernails. He gasps, hears them groan behind him. But with one last leap he is free and safe on the other side.
Reid draws a shaking, grateful breath before turning to face the others. “No sweat,” he calls to them. “Just stay in the center. It seems the most stable.”
One by one they come to him, their terrified faces pinched with fear but their eyes full of the last scrap of trust they can muster. He coaches them over the rubble, time and again going after them when they slip or wobble. The smaller ones Reid lifts down rather than forcing them to make it the whole way on their own, despite his own pain, to save them the chance of a fall, not to mention what strength they have left.
Milo almost rejects his help but takes it, grudgingly, small, dark hand clutching Reid’s only long enough for his feet to find solid ground before pulling free the instant he can. Alex hugs his little arms around Reid’s neck when he is lifted over and Reid has to pull him loose to help Cole. Marcus he allows to descend on his own and is vaguely disappointed when he makes it over without falling on his face.
Leila is last, long blonde hair hanging in her frightened face but she is agile and stronger than she looks, making it to the other side unharmed. It infuriates Reid Marcus left her behind, but she holds him back from confronting him about it.
“It was my choice,” she says.
Reid lets it go, not believing her, only because they have to run again.
He sees the second collapse shortly after. This one is much worse. It takes Reid quite a while to work out a safe path and by the time he reaches the other side, he’s drenched in sweat. But he repeats his help of the smaller kids, and gets to smirk after all when Marcus trips on the last step, the rock turning over under him, sending him crashing to his knees in the dust. Marcus’s jeans are black when he gets up, spots of blood left behind on the stone of the tunnel floor from the impact.
Again they run on. Reid is growing desperate for a new tunnel. This one shows so much sign of decay it’s making it difficult to think about anything but the next collapse. He glances up from time to time, seeing the cracks and fissures in the stone above his head, knowing the whole thing could come down without a breath of notice.
Timbers groan in agony overhead, soft sifting dust falling in loose patterns around them, as though their passage is almost too much for the earth to bear. Reid shudders from the image that the tunnel is a giant mouth, the walls crushing jaws, more dark and deadly than the creatures they run from.
All the while, the hunter’s cries carry to them, seeming from all around. No matter how faint those howls are, the fearful echoes certainly aren’t helping any.
When Reid finally spots a fresh opening branching off up ahead he feels a rush of relief. Just in time. On the heels of that, he has an epiphany that drains his gratitude away, driving a fist of fury into his gut.
It’s so perfect it’s like this is planned. Which is exactly what the hunters had in mind. This is no ordinary mine and he admits to himself at last he’s known it for a while. It’s a construct, just like everything else about the hunters and the experiment. Aren’t mines supposed to have open places, where ores and coal can be brought out? Tracks for transportation, different levels? This is simply a maze, one tunnel after another, designed for the hunter’s maximum enjoyment. It’s all about the chase and the stalk and they are the prey caught up in it.
Reid wants to yell curses at the top of his lungs, challenge the hunters to just come and get him then, but he can’t. Won’t. The kids don’t need to find out what he knows.
He has to keep it to himself.
Reid comes to a halt at the branch in the tunnel to work it out. He can no longer think like prey if he wants to make it out of there. No, it’s time to start thinking like a predator. What would the hunters expect him to do? On the right is a tunnel, more or less level, at least without further down grade. On the left the passage leads up. Level could mean deeper into the maze and up might be the surface. But he had no guarantees of either. Everything about this place is a contradiction and he can’t trust any of it.
“What are you thinking?” Leila’s voice is soft and hesitant as she joins him.
“What would the hunters do?” He smiles at her. “I’m tired of being on the wrong side of this.”
She is quiet for a moment before blurting, “I’m sorry.”
He almost forgot she gave Marcus ammunition against him. And honestly the pain of the betrayal is long gone, lost in the endless run through the tunnels. “I know,” he says. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not,” she says. “I never meant for… he overheard me talking to Milo.”
Reid believes her. Chooses to believe her. And at this point, really, what does it matter? “Leila,” he says, “you don’t have to explain.”
“I owe you so much. We all do.” Her thin hands clutch at each other like if she lets go she’ll fall apart. Reid reaches out and takes her twined hands, gently separating her fingers and holding them in his own. The throbbing in the back of his broken hand is less, the bite not so bad either.
“No,” Reid says. “Don’t ever say that. You’re alive because you kept yourself alive. And that’s just the way it is for all of us.”
Her pale eyes meet his, and he can tell she wants to say otherwise but, instead, she folds her fingers into his grip, drawing a soft breath.
“I’m sorry.” She smiles at the repeated apology. “What were you saying?”
“We need to focus.” Reid looks down one tunnel then the other.
“Right,” she says. “What would the hunters do.” She looks back and forth with him, forehead furrowed. And rolls her shoulders forward in a shrug, her shoulder blades protruding sharply from under her grubby t-shirt. “They don’t make anything easy, do they?”
Reid tenses, wondering if she’s figured out what he has but she just shakes her head and pulls her hands free.
“What do you think?” She looks startled when he asks her that. He’s so tired of making choices it’s nice when she points.
“Up, of course.” She breathes deeply, exhales in a rush. “Time to get out of here, don’t you agree?”
“Up it is.” He is relieved. Whether it’s the right choice or not, he feels good about it. Because he didn’t have to make it alone. And Leila is right. They need to get out of the tunnels. He wishes things worked out differently, is still second guessing the original choice that put them underground in the first place, mind drifting to Drew, when she catches Reid’s fingers again and gently squeezes, careful of his injuries.
“Not now,” she whispers, her voice vibrating with a gentle tremor hiding just below the surface. “We’ll fall apart later, question every turn, every choice, and mourn the ones we’ve lost or had to leave behind. But right now our only job is to get these kids out of here.”
Reid squeezes back, almost calm in the face of her surety. Why did he doubt her again? He doesn’t have an answer, especially as she stands there, smiling at him, blinking moisture from her pale eyes, weariness in every line of her face but a steady and level look that gives him more strength than he deserves to ask for from her. Good thing she’s offering freely, then.
Reid finally breaks her gaze and turns to face the pack, happy to have something to tell them. He is about to turn back to Leila, to ask her if she wants to share the choice they’ve made, when he spots Cole looking up.
The boy murmurs something to Marcus. Points at the ceiling. Marcus looks up too. Reid’s eyes follow, find the crack above them, the fault line running across the two paths of the tunnels. Reid instantly understands Cole’s reasoning without hearing him speak. Knows before Marcus acts what the outcome will be.
Reid is in a better position to see than they are and has been following the disintegration points of the tunnel’s structure since the second collapse. The crack isn’t just over their heads but runs sideways as well, into the level tunnel and off toward the next light bulb.
What the two boys are considering will most likely bring down the whole ceiling and kill them all.
Everything slows, time against Reid as he opens his mouth to say, “No!” But he is late, too late, Marcus is crouching, lifting a large rock, his arm pulling back. Reid lunges forward, his body trapped in time, like swimming in cold honey, as Marcus winds up and throws the stone right at the fault line.
The rock makes a horrible sound, a sharp and hideous crack, the ceiling a worse one, deep rumbling heralding the end of the world while debris rains down on the pack. A jagged hole opens overhead, zigzagging away in three directions. The kids run forward as a group, terror forcing them ahead, into the tunnel leading upward. Reid is already in motion, stones falling around him, reaching for Cole who stares with his mouth gaped in a comic ‘O’ of surprise.
Reid reaches the boy, lifts his slim form in both hands, his own body still slow, so slow. He spins into the lift and heaves Cole with all his strength at Leila, just as the world comes crashing down.
***