Chapter 58
The smell of musty, wet dirt hit Katherine in a pungent wave. It stopped her breathing momentarily as if her body rejected the impure air. Katherine’s mind’s eye immediately invented a vision of the tunnel as covered in a carpet of black and green mildew crawling with any number of space bugs. She was only comforted halfway when Amnon cracked open another light and revealed the truth of the tunnel’s layout.
As the light reflected back to her the contours of the tunnel’s walls, Katherine didn’t see a fuzzy organic layer, but there was a shine to the dirt and rocks that told here the conditions were right for mold and mildew. She instinctively put a hand over her mouth and nose knowing that if the air was going to kill her she’d already inhaled enough to do the trick and that her hand was going to little good in defending her lungs. Still the action made her feel slightly better about her chances.
“I can’t believe he was going through with this,” Amnon said to no one and he moved the light around to see more of the tunnel. “The good news is,” he turned to Katherine, “if this is anything like the plans I’d heard rumors of, we should be safe from prying eyes for a while.” He took a step forward. “That is if no one enters the chamber to see what’s become of us.” He continued on. Katherine was not about to be left there in the dark and quickly caught up to him.
“See, this whole building, what a misuse of funds, this whole building was sold to Chieftain Dol as a place to house the worst of the worst criminals. The disloyal, the spies, the foreign soldiers. But, the whole really it was built for one person: Princess Lillian. Watch your head.” Amnon ducked his head to pass under an uneven place in the ceiling. Katherine, who was slightly shorter than Amnon ducked even though she didn’t need to. She was certain something was about to fall in her hair at any moment. “I mean I thought the whole thing was more talk than action. I was left out of the leadership meetings back then. Never in my wildest dreams did I think the construction had gotten this far along. Just shown I needed to get out of town more often.” He chuckled to himself. “If I’m not mistaken the idea for this tunnel was to connect this facility with the prison in the center of the city; where you and I first met. A prisoner could be transferred more securely and out of sight of the nosey neighbors.
“From the looks of things, Dol must have shut down construction almost as soon as Saw took off after Lillian. I know this doesn’t connect with the prision, but hopefully, we can get closer this way, and more safely, than if we attempted the same thing above ground.
“So, you don’t know if there is a way out of here?” Suddenly, the walls seemed closer to Katherine.
“I don’t know if there is, yes,” Amnon said, “but I know the construction would need some kind of access points here and there for maintenance or accidents.”
Katherine nodded in the dark behind Amnon, unsure what he was saying was true. He’d never seen the plans. He didn’t know the construction had happened. Katherine instinctively searched the ceiling for any signs of manholes, ladders, or other signs of potential escape.
On and on, they walked. Though the sides and top of the tunnel was rough and craggy, the pathway on the bottom was reasonably smooth and level. Katherine had no idea how long they had been down there nor how far away from termination center they might be. For that matter, she had no idea if the tunnel was actually moving them closer to the center of the city, to Evan, or to freedom.
“Here we go.” Amnon stopped at an indention in the tunnel wall. It was the first of its kind, though maybe not. Katherine was certain she would have passed this one if Amnon hadn’t stopped, as the door was practically the same drabness as the rest of the tunnel.
On the door was printed a sequence of letters, numbers, and symbols that meant nothing to Katherine, but it seemed to make sense to Amnon. “This should have some goodies for us.” He tried the door, and it didn’t open at first. Amnon tried again, and the the door moved a little, just enough to give encouragement. “It’s either rusted or out of power,” Amnon said passing the light to Katherine. “Hold this. Point it right there at the gap.” She did as she was told and Amnon slid his fingers into the gap and began to pull on the door. It began to give way and with great strain on Amnon’s part and great screeching on the door’s, the gap was eventually wide enough for the twon of them to slip through.
Amnon fumbled for a light control and eventually found one. The room’s lights popped on one by one, giving great relief to Katherine’s dread. She was surprised to feel so much relief at something simple, like the lights coming on, especially since what the lights revealed was not that comforting. She saw a space of spartan materials: a couple of tall cabinets, a desk, and what would have passed for a rail of shaker pegs back in Athens.
“What is this place?” Katherine asked.
“From what was on the door, it should be some kind of armory. Though, from the looks of it, I’m not hopeful we’ll be able to find anything.” Amnon walked to one of the cabinets and flung open the door. “How about that?” he said. Inside the cabinet were several rifles, pistols, and grenades. “But do they work?” Amnon asked reaching out for one of the weapons. He took it out and examined it under one of the ceiling lights. “Looks reasonably reliable. Remarkable for the amount of moisture down here. But we won’t know till we use them. Here.” He passed the rifle to Katherine who took it from him even though she wasn’t sure what he expected her to do with it.
Amnon went back to the cabinet and shoved several pistols under his belt, grabbed another rifle, and crammed a few grenades wherever he found space in his clothes. When he was satisfied enough with his battle readiness, he started handing weapons to Katherine, who did her best to imitate what Amnon had just done. With every piece of explosive hardware she placed on her person, she felt increasingly dangerous; if she sneezed wrongly, she wondered if she would blow herself to the sky.
“Alright,” Amnon said let’s keep going.
He led them back into the darkness of the tunnel. On and on, the pathway led until it abruptly stopped. Amnon placed his hands on the damp rock wall in front of him. “So,” he said, craning his neck, “we need to find a way up.” He held his light directly at the ceiling, backtracking to see if he could see anything he might have missed along the way. “There it is,” he said eventually.
Amnon pointed his light at a round hatch door embedded in the stony ceiling. It was low enough that Amnon could work the latch with little strain. As soon as the door dropped open, light poured into the tunnel, and something fell on top of him, narrowly missing his face. An emergency ladder. “You first,” he said to Katherine.
“Do you think it will hold?”
“Only one way to find out.” Amnon put his foot on the bottom rung to stabilize it a little. Katherine, not wanting to be an resistor and wanting to be a teammate grabbed the sides of the ladder. Everything in her told her this was a bad idea, but she placed her left foot on the bottom rung and began to climb. In three steps her head peered out of the top of the hatch door. She found it was two hatches that work in tandem. Two more steps and her head was above the second opening and she could see nothing but arid wilderness.
“It seems to be all clear,” she called down.
“Okay,” Amnon said. “Keep going, and I’ll follow you.”
Before long, they were both standing outside in the starshine and breathing fresh air again. Katherine could feel the impurities leaving her insides. She looked all around her and was shocked to see that they weren’t was far away from the Termination Center as she had imagined. The building itself was small but clearly visible on the horizon. A few yards to the side looked to be an abandoned hut with the nose of a transport poking out from the back.
Amnon and Katherin looked at each other and both took off for the transport. Finding the building empty, they didn’t worry themselves with why the transport was there without any people. Katherine wordlessly climbed on behind Amnon as he fired up the engine, and in moments, they were moving across the pathless ground.
Ahead of them, Katherine saw plumes of black smoke lifting from what seemed to be the center of the city. Her thoughts immediately went to Evan. She squinted her eyes and hoped beyond hope that she would find him in one piece.
