Freedom

Chapter 34

Out of the frying pan, into the fire. Away from the passive danger of being lured into jumping to my death trying to cross an uncrossable chasm – and into the active danger of being eaten by something really big. I'd tell you what it was, but I was too busy running to get a good look at it. And yet, as I ran along the tunnel, there was something I couldn't help but notice – the shape of it. It was round. Very round. I doubted it was perfectly circular, but it was nothing like the caverns I'd traveled through earlier.

I could hear the heavy footfalls behind me. It actually sounded like only two feet; I was surprised to be chased by something bipedal under the circumstances, but not curious enough to stop or look back.

No, I was concentrating on running fast. I also felt very hungry, but I can talk about that later. As the beam from the light on my chest bobbed about, the back of my mind was working on the shape of the cavern.

I thought of old science projects from elementary school. Of earthworms tunneling through dirt. Of that movie with Kevin Bacon, and the underground monsters. Of that asteroid in The Empire Strikes Back.

But alas, that wasn't what was chasing me. In the positive corner, the tunnel was sloping upward, a welcome change. In the negative, the tunnel was sloping upward, and I was gasping for breath because running uphill is hard at the best of times.

So, it probably won't come as a surprise to you that I wasn't nearly as deep down as I thought I was. Don't get me wrong, it was still really deep – but I wasn't miles beneath the surface or anything. I mention it because the rock overhead was turning to soil, and I could see what appeared to be a foundation – but only for a moment.

I did outdistance whatever was after me – though it took several minutes of hard running, some ill-advised turns, and a lot of my energy, which was a bigger deal than it sounds like. It was cold on the surface, and even colder underground. Worse yet, I still hadn't fully dried out; it wasn't like I was walking around in the sunlight. Furthermore, I hadn't eaten in, by my estimation, eleven or twelve hours. That's not enough to really weaken someone, but on top of everything else, it wasn't helping. My core temperature was low, and if you've ever been there, you know it doesn't make you feel strong and energetic. The only part of me that was warm was my right hand.

But enough feeling sorry for myself – there were two positive things. The first was that I seemed to finally be moving up. The second was that there was somewhere for me to go at all. I'd been walking and climbing for hours on end – this system of caverns was massive, and there was no guarantee that it wouldn't just stop short.

I kept up a brisk pace for a while after I could no longer hear footsteps behind me. Maybe whatever it was had a way to track me – a keen sense of smell would be a requirement for something that lived down here – but I couldn't run forever.

Once I knew I'd put at least a kilometer between myself and the spot where I'd last heard my mysterious pursuer, I stopped to get my breath. It was another of those curiously round corridors, dripping with icy water, and lit up by the fungus from the lower caves. The light was pale here, weaker than what I'd seen earlier. It was still better than absolute darkness.

I had to rest. I sat down on a low shelf of rock, gazing up the tunnel. Soon I wouldn't just be walking uphill, I'd be climbing. I didn't know if I was glad or not; my exhaustion was profound.

Not for the first time, I found myself wondering what I was doing there. How had I gotten from my life to this? When nothing's going on, small things seem like big things. You can get bent out of shape over a headache or a parking ticket. But when something's really going on, it's hard not to feel like parking tickets and headaches are triflingly easy to deal with. How could I have ever felt stressed in a situation where anything less than death was on the line?

I honestly didn't know. I did know that if I got out of the Zone alive, nothing would ever shake me up again. And maybe that was the value of being here. Rather than proving to myself that I was capable, I was actually becoming capable. I mean, if all I'd wanted to do was prove I could fight, I could've just done some MMA bouts and knocked a couple of people out.

Instead I'd come here and killed some people. It hadn't seemed like such an extreme decision from the outside.

It didn't bother me that I'd killed; it was survival of the fittest here; there was no way around that. It bothered me a little that I could kill so easily, though. I mean, a week ago I was an ordinary guy. Pretty normal, I think. Maybe I'm wrong about that, because it felt like I'd picked things up awfully quickly. I'd known it might be necessary here, but I hadn't predicted it would come so soon, or so often.

I knew I had the rest of my life to think about the philosophical ramifications of what I was doing, provided I ever got home. There was no time for this while I was here. In fact, I needed to do the opposite. If I wanted to survive, whether I stayed for my whole year, or cut and ran as soon as Velvet was finished with me – if I was going to make it, I couldn't just switch off philosophy. I had to change it. Whatever preconceptions I had about morality had to go. I couldn't question the decision to pull the trigger – I just had to do it. Over and over, as many times as it took to get me out of here in one piece.

I looked down at my right hand for a moment, then pulled the glove off. The spot seemed to flicker, shimmering in the pale light of the glowing mushrooms, as though it were somehow fluid.

I had to become the kind of reptile that could do whatever it took. It was the only way. I'd been lucky so far, but I wouldn't be lucky forever.

A hand fell on my shoulder, and my eyes snapped open. The Morton Stalker was looking down at me, one eyebrow arched. "Dude," he said.

I flinched away, hit my head on the rock, and swore aloud.

"Dude," he repeated. "You're way too intense. You need to lighten up."

I got to my feet, stunned. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Going that way, I guess." He pointed down the tunnel, which sloped away into the dark.

"There's nothing down there."

"How would you know?" He cocked his head to one side. I just stared at him in disbelief. He shrugged and backed away, then started down.

"Wait," I said, for lack of something better.

"Go on." His voice floated back to me through the darkness. He was moving fast. "It's not far now."

I stared into the dark, hardly believing what had just happened. I wanted to go after him – but couldn't make myself move deeper into the caverns. Time passed before I pulled myself together enough to turn and begin again to trudge upward. I didn't get far.

I could hear something. Actually, I saw it first. There was light ahead. Real light.

I moved forward, but stopped as I couldn't help but notice the sound. Like a clicking, or rustling. Odd. I continued forward, more interested in the light.

The ceiling of the tunnel had been broken, maybe even blasted open. I wasn't sure what was up there, but it was up, and I could see flickering blue light. There was concrete, maybe part of that same foundation I'd spotted earlier – and some jutting rebar.

I looked back into the tunnel. The sound was getting louder. My hand was telling me that was bad. It was high, but not too high. I didn't feel up to it, but what could I do? It took a couple of jumps, and I had to give myself extra height with a crumbling ledge, but I managed to get my hands on a fairly solid piece of rebar. For a moment I hung there, then started to pull myself up. This was not easy, climbing from one piece of rebar to another – and bracing myself against the concrete when there was none – but more than the burning in my muscles, I felt grateful to finally be seeing something man-made. There was still a ways up, and I could hear the rustling very clearly now.

Grimacing with exertion, I stole a glance downward, and the light on my chest lit up the tunnel below. It was moving. The whole tunnel was moving. Well, no – the stone wasn't – but the thousands of black bodies pouring over it were.

I climbed faster.