Sunchild

But how could they go on? What lay in front of them?

“FASTER,” Jak murmured, his mouth set in a thin, determined line.

“Not too fast—bring it all down on us,” Ryan reminded him, feeling tightly enclosed in the dark tunnel. Jak was a couple of feet ahead, passing rocks down his body and packing the walls and ceiling. He was full length, and Ryan knew almost the whole length of his own body was in the tunnel. So they had to have burrowed through at least three yards of earth and rock.

“Nearly there,” Jak snapped back. “Earth loose…”

MILDRED HEARD the movement of the rocks and earth grow louder, and climbed over Dean to where the rock that had defeated him stood, jammed in the tunnel entrance he had made.

“Pull him back, John,” she whispered, and as the Armorer pulled Dean’s prone body back from under her, she began to work at the rock. The rocks and earth around it began to loosen as the opposite side of the rock moved. She used the way in which it had wedged to swing it around and shore up dirt that was beginning to fall from the roof of the small tunnel.

The earth fell away slowly from one side while she clawed at it from the other. A residual light from the other side of the tunnel, almost unbelievably bright in the total darkness she had been forced to work in, backlit the white hair and scarred pale features of Jak Lauren.

Mildred almost cried with joy to see him. The flicker of a smile even flitted briefly across the albino’s features. It was driven away as he remembered how precarious their position was at that moment.

“Quick, not last long,” he breathed.

Mildred nodded and began to enlarge the hole where the tunnels met. Soon it was large enough for Jak to crawl through.

“Come,” Mildred gasped, “Dean’s unconscious.”

As she backed out of the tunnel, Jak crawled through. He was completely blind in the total blackness, but felt Dean’s limp body, and slithered back into the tunnel, dragging the prone boy after him.

Ryan scrambled back out of the tunnel, having heard Mildred and realizing that he would be of better use at the tunnel mouth to help bring his son into the open shaft.

As Jak appeared, pulling the still unconscious Dean, Ryan suppressed the fear that his son was dead…but not enough for Krysty not to notice and shoot him a worried glance.

Mildred crawled through, drawing the cleaner air in great gulps through her tortured throat. J.B. brought up the rear, and lay gasping for breath as Mildred immediately checked Dean, ignoring her own condition.

“He’ll be okay,” she told Ryan in short gasps as she drank greedily from the canteen of water he offered her. “Just needs to recover from the heat and the air—get some oxygen into him.”

Even as she spoke, Dean was stirring slightly. Krysty was resting him in a reclining posture against her, and Doc held the boy’s head, gently tipping water to his lips.

“Take it easy, my dear boy,” Doc whispered. “The worst is over.”

“Mebbe,” Ryan said softly, overhearing Doc, “but we need to get moving quickly, no matter how tired we are. We can’t risk staying here.”

“Take turns carrying Dean until recovered enough walk alone,” Jak offered.

Ryan nodded. “Me and you first to give J.B. and Mildred a chance to recoup their strength.”

The albino nodded and turned away, looking at the sudden bend in the shaft.

“Hope not hit another slide,” he said quietly.

Chapter Four

“Dark night! This explains a lot,” J.B. said breathlessly, wiping his spectacles on his shirt.

Ryan whistled softly. “Seems stupe to go all the way up just to go all the way down, but I guess mebbe that’s the only way for it to be.”

Jak was sitting with his legs dangling over the precipice. “We okay, but how Doc?”

Doc made an expression of distaste. “I think that after the trials of the past few hours, this will be a mere bagatelle.”

They had finally reached the top of the shaft after several hours’ climb, lengthened because of their weariness in dealing with the landslide. Although all of them would have liked to have rested, Ryan was certain that the only viable course of action was to keep moving. The others knew he was right, even though J.B. and Mildred were almost unconscious as they walked, and Dean was carried for the first hour by a relay of Ryan and Jak, and then Krysty and Doc, the latter breathing heavily the whole way, but refusing to give in to his own weariness until Dean was able to stand unaided.

Ryan’s decision to keep moving was vindicated by the number of partial earthslides and movements that they had to traverse as they made their way up the shaft. It was no surprise that the elevators had long since been decommissioned by the change in geography, as the shaft, which had previously been fairly straight, began to bend at ridiculous angles, so much so that at times they felt they were turning back on themselves. The concrete platforms that formed the steps had moved to angles that sometimes entailed a climb of several feet to get over the top, followed by a drop to where the level had fallen on the other side. It became harder to discern their depth and when they were likely to surface. They could only tell when the tunnel began to lighten, and the hole formed at the top of the shaft became visible.

Eventually, with aching muscles that had begun to weaken to jelly, they saw the top of the shaft widen, and after two more scrambles over bizarrely angled platforms, they found themselves at the mouth of the shaft.

This had to have been the way that the survivors of the redoubt had taken some fifty years before, as the growth of mutated plant and vegetation around the mouth of the shaft was thick and heavily spread, suggesting that it had been established sometime, and therefore the earth movements had occurred during the period when the Illuminated Ones were still in the redoubt.

It was only when they came out of the mouth of the shaft and looked around that they could appreciate what had occurred.

They found themselves some fifty feet above the surrounding country, with the mouth of the shaft facing a sheer drop on one side, and a seventy degree descent on the other among some verdant foliage that almost choked the hillside. The shrubs and plants formed an unbroken carpet, hiding whatever mutated horrors might be found ground level.

It seemed obvious that in the time directly after skydark, when the Deathlands was formed in the upheaval and devastation, this part of the country had suffered severe tremors and quakes that had lifted up a part of the ground that, by chance, contained the gateway to the redoubt. The sec doors to what had once been the entrance were probably hidden and decayed in the lush vegetation beneath. The maintenance and emergency shaft had only been protected and preserved by the concrete platforms of the graduated steps.

They now took the opportunity to rest and recuperate before pressing on. Although it would be easy for them to be spotted from the lower levels, they also had a clear view of any potential enemy themselves. It would be impossible for anyone—except perhaps Jak—to move through the forest below without causing disturbance. The territory beyond the sheer drop was more sparsely vegetated, with the remains of a two-lane blacktop road about three miles to the east, with a ruined gas station and diner sitting on it like a toy. Anyone moving on the terrain would be as visible to them as they would be on top of the hill.

“So which way you reckon we move, lover?” Krysty asked Ryan as the one-eyed man stood on the edge of the drop, scanning the horizon.

“Guess we go down the rock face. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be less risky than going down into that forest,” he said. “What do you say, J.B.?”

The Armorer shrugged. “I don’t reckon either of them, but seeing as we can’t go back, either, I guess there isn’t much choice.”

“Better danger seen than not seen,” Jak added.

“I take your point, gentlemen,” Mildred said slowly, “but do you think all of us are up to it right now?”

“Madam, I shall endeavor as always to do my best. I can ask no more nor no less of myself.” Doc bridled.

“Relax, you old coot, I wasn’t particularly thinking of you,” Mildred answered. “I’m not too sure about myself at the moment, and even more so about Dean.”

“I’ll be fine,” Dean spit. “You can save your worry.”

“Don’t be a fool, boy,” Ryan snapped harshly. “Mildred’s right to a degree. You’ve been unconscious and haven’t had a chance to recover. If you’re concussed, then it could be a tricky descent.”

“I’ll be fine, Dad. What are we going to do, wait here forever ’cause I’ve had a sore head or Jak needs a bandage on a grazed knee or—?”

“That’s enough,” Krysty said softly. “If you stumble, we all do, remember?”

Dean stood and stared for a moment, biting his tongue. Then his temper subsided, and he had to agree. “Yeah, you’re right. But I’ll be okay. I just won’t be stupe about it.”

“Just as a matter of interest, where would you say we were…I mean in general geographic terms?” Doc broke the awkwardness by changing the subject. He knew the cloud cover would prevent J.B. from taking a reading with his minisextant.

“My guess is to the north, probably more eastern than central, judging by that forest,” Ryan replied, indicating the slope to their rear.