Crashland – Chapter 12

“What’s going on?”

Jacobs moved away from the door. Molya poured through it with that same fluid motion that Jacobs himself had shown so many times before. They took positions over Simon, one at his head and one at his feet.

“What’s going on?!” Holden repeated.

“William,” Jacobs said, reaching down to grab a hold of Simon’s stretcher handles. “We need to move, and we need to move now.” He hoisted up with a grunt. “You might want to make yourself scarce too.”

Holden grabbed his side. The aching had been coming back thanks to all the exertion and all this talk was making him nervous. He anticipated that whatever was going on would involve something… uncomfortable.

“Why?” he asked. “What’s happening?”

Simon was now hoisted between them. Jacobs looked in Holden’s direction and motioned with his head. Holden cleared away from the door obligingly. Simon’s head bounced as they moved him, the black boxes they had thrown in around him bashing against his limbs.

“Just trust me when I tell you to follow us. I’ll explain as soon as we’re topside.”

“Topside?” Holden’s face went cold. He hadn’t been up there since… He wasn’t sure his body would oblige him. “Why… why do we need to go up there? What’s wrong?”

They had already cleared the room. Molya and Jacobs both grunted from the effort of keeping Simon’s body and equipment secure on the stretcher. He wasn’t sure, but he suspected he heard Simon making noise as well.

“Follow us, William, don’t fall behind!”

The words echoed from the hall. Holden looked back into the room, the vastly empty room, and wondered if he shouldn’t just stay behind. What could be threatening them that they had to get out? A flood? A bomb? He didn’t see how that was possible. But then again, he still wasn’t one-hundred percent sure where they were. Old tunnels, abandoned tunnels. Who knew how these networks were laid out? And in the time he was contemplating all this, they were rapidly getting ahead of him. In the darkness of the tunnel, how hard would it be to get lost behind them?

“Holden!” he heard echoing from down the tunnel. They sounded pretty far now. He took a deep breath and pushed himself through.

The green light was the only thing to see by, but he still couldn’t see Jacobs or Molya anymore. All he heard was the sound, the grunting and groaning of men trying to be careful as they moved fast. Putting one hand to the wall, he pushed ahead and tried to keep up. They weren’t moving that fast, but he doubted if he could really keep up. His side was giving him all kinds of resistance.

And still he pushed. The cold tiled wall was making a chill run through him. He could feel precious body heat being sucked away through the contact of his palm to the unforgiving ceramic. He could see a small pile of green lights up ahead, what he hoped was a marker of some kind. The tunnel was barely visible anymore, but at least he had these things and the wall to go by, knowing that he would not stray over the edge and fall on the old tracks. Any accidents like that would be sure to split his insides open and send him back into a world of pain.

And speaking of pain, his side had reached a crescendo now. The mere effort of moving his right leg forward in tune with his left was becoming an agonizing burden. His own grunts seemed to be drowning out those of Jacobs and the other two. He couldn’t remember the last one he could hear over his own.

And then it hit him. He couldn’t hear them anymore! He paused as the knowledge flooded him with a new and terrible chill. He waited and held his breath, hoping that his own silence might bring them back.

Nothing. Nothing but the pounding of his heart in his ears. He moaned weakly, wishing he could still that too long enough to hear better. But it didn’t matter. If he couldn’t hear them now, he was too far behind to hear them at all. They had lost him!

“Jacobs!” he yelled. “Molya! Simon!” He could hear the helplessness in his own voice. The pathetic feebleness. He had lost his way, and whatever was coming was sure to get him now. And all because he was too weak, too wounded and too cowardly to keep up. He felt his knees beginning to buckle and the cold floor beckoning him. The pain was working away at his midsection too, making crumbling up into a ball seem very appealing.

But the green lights, what looked like the end of the tunnel. Those had to mean something. They weren’t just to provide illumination, they were absolutely useless in that. The ones he had spied down the other way, they had been placed to mark doors, hadn’t they? It seemed rational right now, but that could be nothing more than a farfetched hope. He desperately wanted to lie down, to rest, to fall into a deep sleep. But he could die here too. What could be done against all that?