"Let's go," Cal shouted, then screamed, "now!"
"OK," she agreed, swiveling on her heels to run back to the door through which they'd entered.
They were immediately plunged back into the darkened world of the Bunker, the dust-laden air swirling around them. As their eyes readjusted from the clinical brightness of the strange room, they continued down the corridor in the direction she'd originally been taking them.
"Keep close," Elliott whispered as they crept along.
After a short distance, she came to a halt.
"Come on, come on! Which way?" Cal heard her mutter urgently to herself. "Has to be down here," she decided.
Several corridors later, they entered a small hallway from which two doorways led off. She went from one to the other, then paused between the two, shutting her eyes.
By this point, Cal had lost all faith in her ability to get them to safety. But before he could express his doubt, there was a clanging from nearby. A door was being battered down — the Limiters were closing in.
Elliott's eyes flicked open.
"Got it!" she shouted, choosing which doorway to take. We're in the home stretch now!"
At the end of a sequence of lefts and rights, they were slipping and sliding down the stairs into the submerged basement again. This time Cal had absolutely no qualms about lowering himself into the stagnant water and was clambering up the stairs on the other side in seconds flat. Elliott had held back to set a sizable charge on the opposite stairway just above the waterline. Once she'd done this, she caught up with him, and they were just passing under the sections of collapsed concrete as the charge went off.
The whole place shook and torrents of silt fell over them. A deep rumbling turned into an ominous grinding noise: Everything seemed to be shifting. Huge slabs of concrete crashed down, sending water and dust in all directions, and sealing the way behind.
"That was a close one," he heard Elliott pant as they thundered through the linoleum-floored room and climbed into the duct, scrabbling their way down it.
Emerging from the duct, Cal dropped onto the floor of the Great Plain again with a cry of pure relief. Elliott helped him to his feet and right away began retracing their steps along the wall. They raced on until they were swinging around the corner into a lava tube, away from the plain. And they didn't stop running.
Will didn't know how long he'd been asleep when he was rudely woken by urgent shouting. His head hurt like crazy, a vicious throb stretching across his temples.
"GET UP!"
"Hey…!" Will spluttered. "Who…?"
He blinked groggily. Elliott and Cal were standing over him.
"Get up!" Elliott ordered harshly, then kicked him.
Will tried, but then collapsed back. He was shaky and confused, finding it impossible to order his floundering thoughts. He saw her face. Although it was black with filth, he could see she wasn't the remotest bit pleased to see him again. And here he'd thought that she and Drake would be congratulating him for keeping on, for making it against all odds!
Perhaps he'd totally misjudged how they would react, and they were furious with him for becoming separated from the group. Perhaps he'd broken another of their inscrutable rules. Rubbing the salt crystals from his red-rimmed eyes, he studied Elliott's face again. It was set in the grimmest of expressions.
"I… I didn't… how long have…?" he slurred, noting that Cal's expression was similarly grim, and that both he and Elliott were dripping wet and smelled of chemicals.
Chester had begun gathering the food containers together into his backpack, fumbling in his haste.
"They got him," Cal said, his chest heaving as he lashed his stick demonstratively through the air. "The Limiters got Drake!"
Chester stopped what he was doing. Will shook his head disbelievingly, and then looked to Elliott for confirmation. He didn't need to see the grazes on the side of her face, or the blood welling from a deep gouge on her temple, to know that his brother was telling the truth. The sight of her narrowed, angry eyes was enough.
"But… how…? Will gasped.
She merely turned and marched off in the direction of the subterranean sea Will had spent so long beside.
Part Four
The Island
35
The boys had the greatest difficulty keeping up with Elliott, she was moving so swiftly. As if she didn't care whether they kept up or not.
Of the three of them, Cal was struggling the most. He shuffled along and even fell several times as they trekked across the sandy bank. But he always managed to drag himself to his feet and carry on. He was saying something to himself — prayers, perhaps, though Will couldn't be certain and wasn't about to waste his breath to inquire. He had a splitting headache that he couldn't shake, and he was weak from lack of sleep and food. His thirst remained unquenchable — without stopping, he would take gulps from his canteen, but it did little to assuage it.
None of the boys spoke. Questions were burning in their minds. With Drake gone, would Elliott simply abandon them and go off by herself? Or would she continue with the plans that Drake had discussed and keep them together as a team?
Will was pondering this as he noticed a barely perceptible change in the terrain. The punishing, shifting sand had firmed up, becoming a little easier to traverse. He wondered why.
The sea was still to his right. He could hear the odd lugubrious slap of a wave, but he knew that the cavern wall — to his left and invisible in the darkness — must be quite some distance away by now. They were going deeper and deeper into an area that Will had only touched upon in his hours of blind wandering.
Then, under the dim light shed by his lantern, he saw the pale sandiness had transformed into darker ground. He stumbled over something solid and immovable, his boot striking hard against it. He stooped to explore what it was: It felt exactly like a small stump from a felled tree. Will tried to contain his curiosity, but it got the better of him and he clicked up the lever behind the lens of his lantern.
Immediately Elliott swooped back. She stood threateningly in front of him.
"What do you think you're doing?" she growled. "Turn that down!"
"I'm just having a look," he answered, refusing to engage her flashing eyes as he surveyed the area around his feet. It had changed. There were several stumps of varying heights, between which were strange-looking plants — succulents, Will guessed — covering the ground so thickly that little of the sand showed through. They were black, or at least a darkish gray, and their leaves, sticking out from stubby central stems, were round and bloated and covered with a waxy cuticle.
"Salt-loving," he proposed, nudging one of the succulents with his boot.
"Turn that light down," Elliott ordered, scowling. She was barely out of breath, while Will and the two other boys gasped heavily, grateful for this small rest stop.
Will looked up at her. "I want to know where you're taking us," he demanded, holding her stare. "You're going so fast, and we're all totally knackered."
She didn't answer.
"At least tell us what the plan is," he persisted.
She spat, barely missing Will's knee. "The light!" she hissed through her teeth as she brought the butt of her rifle up threateningly. Having zero desire to get into a fight, he dutifully clicked his lantern back to the lowest setting. She flicked her head away from him and strode off, passing Cal, then Chester, to take the lead again. It reminded Will of the way Rebecca had treated him back in Highfield. He pondered whether all teenage girls had a similar streak of vindictiveness, and wondered again if he would ever fully understand the opposite sex. In the hours that followed, despite his pleas for her to slow down, it seemed to Will as though Elliott had stepped up a gear and was forging ahead even faster now, purely to spite him.