Then the screaming starts.
Jason. I know that voice. Howling, pleas and promises and threats. "No! No! Please! I'll-no! You fucker, I'll kill y-"
And Frank screams too, and the other boy. Terror or rage, I can't tell.
The water thrashing and churning. Who's fighting who, or what?
At last, silence falls.
Much later, a broken oar drifts over the lip of the breach and bobs slowly across the lake to the shore. I pick it up. Its blade is smudged red, and cracked.
After a time, I remember to switch on the Geiger counter.
The screech is piercing. I turn it off. But they're all looking at me now. All but the youngest kids understand what it means.
Jean looks to me for a lead. No help, no decision there. Once again, it's all down to me.
"Alright," I say. "Now. Whatever happens, you stay close to me. Hang on to the person in front of you. Do not stop unless everyone else does. Understand?"
"Yes, Mr Forrester."
I meet Jean's eyes. She's pale, close to welling up.
Torches, batteries. No food. There isn't any. We've brought what coal we can, stuffed in our pockets, tied up in an old jacket.
I flick the torch into the mouth of one of the narrows, and then another. Where do you start? Which do you pick? It's all terra incognita.
In the end, I pick the longest narrow in sight. It extends a good fifty yards without a bend. This one.
"Alright," I say. "Let's go."
We start down it, torches shining ahead. A small hand is hooked into the back of my belt. It's the same all the way down the line.
I'll die first. That's what I thought. But-what was it pushed me on? The same refusal to die that drove me down here? Or was that what it was, after all? Was it something else? Did something call me down here, lead me into this? A secret love of the dark, a curiosity about places like this? If so, the narrows are the logical conclusion. Was it really a struggle to avoid going back in or a struggle against what kept me out?
Everything's coming apart; even my own motivations. I can't be sure what I want anymore, who I am, what makes me tick.
Or maybe it was simpler. Maybe I could've faced dying, but the kids-the kids and Jean-I know enough about radiation sickness, read and seen enough to know it's a bad death, maybe the worst. Could I have even put myself through it? In the end I couldn't put the children through it. Couldn't watch them die like that because of me.
Or… I just don't know anymore. It feels as if everything's been pushing us-me-towards the narrows. The radiation, whatever happened to Frank. Sooner or later, I had to give way.
What
did happen to Frank and the others? Something in the water? Something like what Jason heard in the narrows? Or did Frank decide it was a non-starter? Was the tunnel blocked further down? Was he going to turn back and the fight was between him and Jason?
We'll never know. No-one was going to chance trying it again. Maybe we should have.
Too late now.
"Paul?"
"What?" I snap out of the reverie. Snap being the operative word. I look back. Jean, scared face above a line of others like hers.
"I-sorry-Paul. If we go any further we'll be out of sight of the cavern."
She's right. We're about at the first bend. When we round that, the real narrows begin.
"Okay," I say. "Let's stop. Everybody sit down. No-one go anywhere. Not even to pee."
We sit. I can just see the rocks and the glimmer of the lake. Now we're so close to leaving it behind for good, I feel a pang of loss. Like it's home we're leaving.
This is the furthest we can go and hope to turn back. But of course we can't. The radiation…
After a while, I switch on the Geiger counter. It ticks and it crackles, but it's not too loud. Not yet. I switch it off again.
One of the girls, one of the older ones-Laura, Laura Rodgers-is crying quietly. I can find nothing to say to her.
Time passes. I switch on the counter again. It screeches in the narrow like a wounded bat. I switch it off. My eyes meet Jean's.
I force myself to stand. "Alright, everybody," I say. "Let's go."
The tunnel is endless.
Yard after yard. It stretches on forever.
A torch gives out. Dead batteries fall to the floor. New ones are pushed into place.
They will not last forever.
We keep walking.
Laura Rodgers keeps crying.
Finally we reach a fork. Left or right? I pick the left. We've gone right enough times now, and look where it's got us.
We've stopped twice. The first time, I waited till the Geiger counter screamed at me to move. The second time, I didn't even switch it on.
I just keep walking, leading the children on. Like a Pied Piper, going into the magic mountain. Hushabye. No trees sprouting candy canes here. My stomach growls. I don't think about it. Something scurries, small, somewhere. I can't see it. A rat.
Food. No. Don't go looking. You'll get lost and you'll never find your way back. Back to what?
I keep walking. And walking. And walking.
Laura Rodgers keeps on crying. It gets harsh, worse. I should tell her to stop, but I can't seem to. All I can do is put one foot in front of the other.
Her breath starts hitching. It's building. To a scream.
Stop her. Calm her down.
But even as I think it, she shrieks.
Yelps, cries of alarm, a struggle, blows.
"No! No!" She screeches, and breaks out of the line and blunders back down the narrow. She's not a big girl, only about fifteen and hardly tall for her age, but she knocks Jean aside like a puppet when she tries to hold Laura back. She runs off, still screaming.
"Laura!" I shout. "
Laura!"
But she's gone. Running back down the narrow towards the cavern. Except of course it won't be there. Still screaming, all the way.
The shrieks and sobs die, echoing into silence. And Laura's gone. We wait for a last screech, the sound of her meeting some final doom, but it doesn't come. She just recedes. Disappears. Is gone. Swallowed up.
The kids are crying. The three little ones, back at the far end with Jean, are almost in hysterics. She holds them tight.
"Everybody stay still!" I shout. I flash the torch, do a quick head count. Everybody here. Except one. Laura Rodgers. The first of us to go.
Me. Jean. And seven kids now.
"Everyone grab on to the person in front of you," I say hoarsely.
And we move on.
We stop again for a rest. I switch on the Geiger counter, remembering this time. A faint crackling murmur. Safe. For now.
We're all tired. And hopeless.
But this has to end somewhere. Doesn't it? There has to be a place where the narrows end.
Yeah. Maybe a blank wall.
An hour-?-later, I switch the counter back on. It's louder. Much louder. Too loud.
"Come on," I say, and stand.
We walk, and walk, and walk.
New narrows everywhere now. Gaping in the walls, beckoning us down them, like sellers in a bazaar.
Come this way. No, this way. No, that. That. The other.
"Shut up!"
"What? Paul?"
God I've spoken aloud. Cracking up. "Nothing," I say. "Sorry."
We keep going. "Rest stop," I gasp. We sit. I do a head count and-
"Jean?"
"What?"
"Someone's missing."
One of the boys. Danny Harper. "Where's Danny?" I say. "Where did he go?"
No-one seems to know.
"Who was behind him?"
A hand goes up. Lisa Fowler. "Where did he go?"
"I don't know, sir. I didn't see. I was just holding on to him. Whoever was in front of me."