It's all right, she repeated to herself. I know exactly where I am, and if I have to, I can get back without the goggles. But even as she silently reassured herself, she knew it wasn't quite true. She knew the turns well enough-there had been only three of them, and she hadn't changed levels at all. But as the smothering darkness wrapped more tightly around her, those first tendrils of fear began to coalesce into terror, and she quickly replaced the goggles over her eyes and switched them on.
For a moment the green fog seemed brilliant, and her fear backed away. But a few seconds later, as her eyes reacted to the sudden light, the green faded again, and her fear came rushing back.
Cranston, she thought. Call Cranston.
Groping in her pocket, she found the radio, pressed the transmitter, and whispered into the mike: "This is Control. Come in, Cobra! This is Control!" Three times more she tried calling; three times more she got no response.
Dropping the radio back in her pocket, she turned around and started quickly back the way she'd come. She hurried her step as the green light began to fade.
After what seemed an eon, she came to the last turn she'd made. She remembered clearly that she'd turned right, so now she turned left and gazed into the distance.
The tunnel seemed to stretch on forever, disappearing into the green haze.
But that was wrong-it hadn't been that long; she was sure of it. Had she turned the wrong way?
Spinning around, she looked in the other direction.
Again the tunnel seemed to stretch away into the fog.
The green glow was dimmer now, and she wasn't as certain of her bearings as she'd been only a moment ago. She turned again, searching for some clue as to which was the right direction, then turned once more.
But which way was she facing?
As the batteries continued to lose their strength, the green light faded, and Eve tore the goggles from her head in frustration. Losing her grip on them, she heard them clatter away into the darkness as once again the blackness closed around her.
But the men had always talked about light! Utility lights that gave them enough illumination so they didn't need the goggles most of the time.
Most of the time.
But not all of the time.
The goggles!
She had to find the goggles!
Dropping to her hands and knees, she felt around in the slime that covered the floor, searching. They couldn't have fallen far away-surely they weren't more than a few feet from her! She reached out, groping in the darkness, and a piece of broken glass slashed through the palm of her hand. Reflexively jerking her hand back, she automatically put it to her lips.
The taste of blood filled her mouth.
With the other hand, she groped at the wound, trying to determine how bad it was. She could feel blood running across her palm and down her wrist, and then her filthy fingers found the cut.
Two inches long at least, running across her palm. She had to bite back a scream of agony as her fingers traced the open wound, grinding the filth from the floor deep into the open gash.
Clenching her fist to stanch the flow of blood, she reached out in the darkness once more, this time with her left hand. But then she jerked it back before she could touch anything, terrified of what might happen to her if she slashed her other hand, too.
Getting unsteadily to her feet, Eve Harris took a tentative step, and bumped into a wall.
Panic welled in her, but she fought against it, bracing herself against the wall, willing her heart to stop pounding, battling against the panic that seemed to be strangling her and made it almost as impossible for her to breathe as it was for her to see.
Light, she thought. I have to find light.
But everywhere she looked, there was only the blackness.
The blackness, and the creatures that she could suddenly hear creeping through it.
Creeping toward her.
Jeff froze.
"What is it?" Heather asked from behind him. "What's wrong?"
He reached back, his fingers finding her wrist and closing on it. "Listen," he said.
A silence fell over the four of them, unbroken for a moment by anything except the dripping of water. Then they heard it. A great whumping sound, as if something heavy had been dropped from a great height.
Less than a minute later they heard it again: whump!
They were still in the utility tunnel, but they'd come to a cross passage, and it sounded like the noise was coming from straight ahead. But before they heard the sound again, another sound intruded on the quiet; this time, though, it was the familiar sound of a subway train.
The sound grew steadily louder, and they could feel the draft of the air being pushed ahead of the train coming down the cross passage. A moment later they saw the beam of the headlight cross ahead of them, and then the train itself thundered past the end of the passage, its lighted cars flashing like a strobe, the couplings rattling, the brakes squealing as it began to slow for a station.
Then the train was gone and silence once again descended. Just as he was about to start into the passage, a glimmer of red caught Jeff's eye, gone so quickly he wasn't certain it had been there at all. Yet every nerve in his body now seemed to be sending him a tingle of warning, and he stopped short, putting his hand back to block Heather. They were so close to their goal, but someone, he was sure, still lay between them and the one place where they might be able to escape the tunnels with no resistance from either the hunters, the herders, or the gamekeepers.
As the other three clustered close behind him, he whispered a warning so softly it was almost inaudible, but to his own ears he might as well have bellowed it into the darkness. "Someone's there. One of the hunters."
"We'll go," Keith replied as quietly as Jeff. "Heather and Jinx, stay here."
Both the girls opened their mouths as if to argue, but when Jeff shook his head and held a finger to his lips, they said nothing. "Stay here until we signal you," he told them.
While Heather and Jinx crouched in the darkness, Jeff and Keith crept noiselessly forward, edging closer and closer to the intersection with the subway tunnel ahead. Each of them carried a rifle, along with one of the backpacks taken from the fallen hunters. As they came to the junction, Jeff pressed against one of the walls, Keith against the opposite.
They waited, listening.
Nothing.
The seconds stretched into a minute, then two.
Still nothing.
Jeff was about to edge out into the subway tunnel when his father shook his head. Then, as Jeff watched, Keith shouted into the darkness:
"I'm coming for you, you bastard!" And as he shouted, he hurled the backpack he was carrying into the subway tunnel, dimly lit by the wide-spaced bulbs mounted high on the walls.
Arch Cranston-code name "Cobra"-had already snapped at the bait by the time he realized it was a trap. At the sound of the angry words, he raised his rifle to his shoulder, and he'd already locked the sight onto the object hurtling from the side tunnel and squeezed the trigger before he realized it wasn't the man he'd expected at all.
But it was too late, he was already committed. As he realized what was happening, the trap closed.
Before Keith's words had died away, they heard the chattering of a rifle, and the backpack was torn to shreds by the rain of lead slashing through it. The rifle was still chattering when Keith, holding the Steyr at waist level, stepped into the tunnel, pointing the rifle in the direction from which the other gun was firing and squeezing the trigger, spraying the tunnel with slugs.
As his bullets ricocheted off the walls and whined away into the distance, the other gun fell silent, followed by a small, gurgling groan.
"Got him," Jeff heard his father mutter. Turning away from the sight of the man he'd just killed, Keith said to him, "Let's get going."