The tunnel was cold, dark. Edgar Allan Poe took out a flashlight, so dim that it only allowed him to see just in front of him if he pointed the light directly at the ground. Poe led the way while others followed, holding on to each other's shoulders in the darkness as they continued down the tunnel. It surprised Montag how much these people had trusted their leader enough to follow him into the city. And now that their leader had lost all credibility and was now bound by handcuffs, Montag wondered what kept them all going. He realized it was because they had nothing left to lose.
"It used to be a mine," said Dante's Inferno. "Look at the marks on the wall".
"If anything happens to us here," said The Book of Facts 2 to Granger, "We'll kill you first." The whole time later the death of his brother, he had been muttering nervously to himself, spontaneously moaning and crying during the walk and twitching violently. Alice in Wonderland walked alongside him, holding his wobbling body tightly and talking in a low, steady, reassuring voice.
It had been one hour, and people began to get tired. The tunnel began to get thinner and thinner, and the two members with the largest bodies had difficulty walking through. A man began breathing heavily, desperately pleading not to go any further. "It's too small. The sace is too small. We can't. I can't breathe!" He was moved to the back of the line by Montag, who reasoned with him that it was the best place to be because it was where the tunnel would be widest.
However, even to Montag, the mine seemed to be a winding path towards nothing at all.
After an eternity of twenty minutes, many people were speaking of going back.
Suddenly, a sneeze. Then a flicker of light from ahead.
Edgar Allan Poe stopped in his tracks. He stood, frozen in fear.
"I saw something," he said.
He gave the flashlight to Montag and backed away into the crowd.
Montag walked forward and what he saw made him gasp.
People.
It was a giant room carved out of the ground filled with people.Some were in sleeping bags, some were eating, and some sat around a heating lamp warming their frozen hands.
"Granger!" a small woman screamed. Immediately she ran like a determined bull towards the weak, handcuffed man. She appeared to glow like a lantern in comparison to Granger, who looked almost dead with exhaustion. The moment she touched him, Granger's pallor and stiff face contorted and he burst to tears.
They clung to each other and she kissed his rough face over and over again
"Oh God. I'm sorry. Oh God," was the only Grander repeated shakily, looking at the woman with an intensity that Montag did not understand He had never seen such a thing in his life. For quite a while he was entranced by this display. For the rest of his life, that image remained clear and vivid in his memory.
Montag had suddenly discovered that everyone here, too, was a book. He heard the silent murmurs of Charles Dickens (of course, he didn't know it was Charles Dickens at the time) from two men who sat by the fire. A woman carrying a baby was reciting a poem, absentmindedly playing with the infants hair.
"Montag," said Granger, whose removed handcuffs had left only faint marks on his wrists, "This is my wife, the Song of Solomon." She was beaming.
There was a sudden peace about Granger now, though the haunting video of the things he'd done reflected from his eyes. There was, in fact, a sudden peace about everyone as the group-from-the-woods rejoined their family and friends who had been stuck in a hole in the ground for days.
The chariot of fire had finally come to take them up, up, into the thundering sun.
Alice smiled at Montag and gave him an unexplained shrug before rejoining her family who'd stayed by the city as Supply-Retrievers. Montag smiled back warily.
"I think she likes you," said a familiar voice from behind Montag.
There was the sudden smell of socks and laundry detergent.
Montag grinned.
And turned around.