“We need to close that before we open this one,” he gasped. “That way, we won’t flood the other tunnel.”
Branner understood at once. They swam down to the door and pushed it shut, holding it by kicking vigorously while Jim got the key back into it and locked it. Then they took a moment to get their breath. The water was no longer rising in the cross tunnel, although they still only had about twelve inches of air. Then they heard a deep sustained rumbling from behind the door and the entire door frame began to shake, rippling the water in the cross tunnel as they stood there on tiptoe.
“It’s caving in,” he said, watching the ceiling now as the vibrations from the other side precipitated the ominously familiar rain of dried mortar. “We’d better move.”
They half-walked, half-swam down to the other door. Jim wasn’t sure whether they’d gone up the tunnel or down. In the darkness, it was hard to tell. Branner held the light while Jim put what he thought was the right key in the door. It didn’t work. He tried the other key. It didn’t work, either.
“What the fuck?” Branner said, pushing a hank of wet hair out of her eyes. Beyond the far door, the rumbling was tapering off, but the door itself was making noises now. Jim flashed the light down on it and they saw that it was bulging under the sudden pressure of the tunnel collapse. Jim frantically tried all the keys that fit the Fort Severn doors, but none of them worked. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, he reminded himself, but the lock didn’t budge. Damn thing had let them into the tunnel-why didn’t one of these keys work? He had never gone into the right-hand tunnel because-why? He couldn’t remember. Hell, he couldn’t even think. There was more water than oxygen in the air. The rain of mortar dust was turning into a spatter of old lime. Branner was looking at him expectantly. Then he had a bad thought: Maybe it had been the right-hand tunnel that had collapsed. But no-that wouldn’t affect the door behind them. He shook his head in frustration and to get the sweat out of his eyes. Why was it so warm?
“Is this water rising?” he asked Branner.
“I don’t think so,” she said, still staring back at the other door. The whole door frame was creaking and cracking under some enormous strain. Just for the hell of it, Jim tried the ornate iron door handle, reaching underwater and pushing it hard down. To his astonishment, the door opened, allowing yet another tidal wave to sweep them off their feet and out into the right-hand magazine tunnel in a tumble of arms and legs. Branner dropped the light and the wave of water swept it down into the tunnel. But the waterfall effect was over quickly this time, as the full flood couldn’t reach them. Not yet anyway, Jim thought, remembering the cross tunnel’s door.
He got to his feet and chased the Maglite. He came back to where Branner was sprawled on the floor in about six inches of water.
“This is getting tiresome,” she said, spitting out bits of mortar and wringing out the edges of her clothes.
“Lemme get this door closed in case the other one gives way. But as long as these doors hold, we’re not going to drown.”
He shone the light at the other door, which was leaking water around its seams. He closed the near door, then tried to find a key to lock it. This time, one of the keys worked. Once he had the door secured, he looked around by the beam of the Maglite. As far as he could see, this tunnel was the mirror image of the one he’d been into before. He could see the cement-block wall where the PWC people had sealed the gun pit tunnels. The anteroom to the actual magazine sloped down, just as the one on the other side had. The air was mustier and reeked of wet cement. Branner got up and came over to where he was standing, sniffing the air.
“What?” she said.
Jim shone the light up and down the tunnel area. Then he held it still. There was a mist in the air, but it wasn’t water. He felt the pressure in his ears again and tried to clear them, to no avail.
“What’s that mist?” Branner asked.
“Mortar dust,” he said. “These tunnels are unstable. The cement between the bricks isn’t really cement anymore.”
“What’s holding it all up, then?” she asked, lowering her voice.
“Faith, hope, and charity,” he said. “And some Roman engineering. Look, on the other side, there was what looked like a way out, in the powder room. Some kind of ventilation hole. We searched topside but never found the outlet. We need to see if this magazine has the same arrangement.”
“Why not go back to the main tunnel-that way, right?” she said, pointing back up toward the main tunnel complex.
“Because it’s flooded to the ceiling by now, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” she said, frowning, aware now that her brain wasn’t working all that well, either. “Does that mean we go down this tunnel?” She eyed the locked oak door behind them, remembering how the frame of the other one had been shaking. Obviously, down wasn’t what she wanted to do just now.
“I think we have to take a look,” he said. “By now, they have to know something’s happened. All the utilities, all the electric power in Bancroft Hall’s gonna be out. All sorts of shit shorted out. Phone lines dead.”
“I’ll buy that,” she said, leaning against a wall and examining the bruises on her arms. “Except that it’s almost two o’clock in the morning. But what can they do about it? And how can they get to us?”
Good questions, Jim thought. At the least, they’d have to drain the tunnel, and the main route for doing that, the storm drain, was blocked. He wondered which lucky soul would get the honor of going up the storm drain from the river and pulling that blockage loose.
“They’ll realize the storm drain’s blocked. Once they get that opened, the tunnels will drain themselves.” All except these old fort tunnels, he realized-they were one level below the main passageways. From the sound of it, the left-hand tunnel had already caved in, and this one didn’t look too great. He shone the light beam down the tunnel again and saw the same silent cement snowfall. If that bastard goes, he thought, we’re buried. And they might not even know we’re in here.
“Wonderful,” she muttered, as if reading his thoughts. “Powder room it is.”
They walked down the now-slippery brick slope. When they got to the anteroom in front of the magazine, there was at least two feet of water pooled on the floor, glimmering in the light from the flashlight. The magazine doors were identical to those on the other side. Jim sloshed through the water to one of them while Branner held the light on it. He worked the latches and pulled hard. The door resisted but then moved, and, to their astonishment, the anteroom was flooded with white light.
Inside the powder room, the floor was flooded to the same depth as in the anteroom. But that wasn’t what got their attention. The room was lit by four fluorescent light fixtures mounted vertically on the wall beneath the domed ceiling. These lights were on despite the lack of electrical power throughout the rest of the system. There were six lab benches, all filled with various kinds of electronic equipment: video monitors, what looked like PCs without their cases, oscilloscopes, tools, a crude telephone switchboard, several printers, and three large wiring patch panels where wires of every description were jumbled into complex loops. On one side of the room, now almost afloat, was a single mattress, of the kind found in most midshipmen’s rooms. Next to it there was a small refrigerator. A makeshift hanging bar for clothes was rigged on the opposite wall, where there were some civilian clothes, as well as what looked like the vampire costume. A trash can in one corner had pizza boxes and beer cans in about equal numbers.