Stephen Irwin - The Dead Path

He rose, turned and started walking again.

A moment later, he heard her footsteps behind him.

A quarter of an hour later, the water pipe loomed above them like a glacial wave of rust the color of dried and crusted blood. Rainwater flowed out of the twin tunnels below the pipe; the forest floor was still weeping out the heavy rainfall. They had followed the creek up the gully to the pipe, but it had been Hannah who’d pointed at the water.

“Look.”

Small creatures floundered in the cold, tea-colored stream. Spiders. Spindly, fat-bodied orb weavers; squat jumpers; spiny, coal-black widows; platforms; broad huntsmen; chunky imperials-all scrambled to escape the cold, mumbling waters, clutching at twigs or knotted in groups to crawl over each other. Some floated with their crablike bellies in the air, curled like dead fists, drowned.

“This could be bad,” said Nicholas.

It was.

The tunnels under the water pipe were so thick with web that there were no circles of light at their far ends. The mass of silk was so dense that it overflowed the pipe and the water carried it like an obscene caul some three meters downstream. Thousands of spiders made the silk shimmer darkly.

Hannah turned away and vomited up her lunch.

Nicholas watched, not sure whether to help her or leave her. He shifted awkwardly. “You all right?”

She nodded and wiped her mouth.

“I think she knows we’re coming,” he said.

Hannah dragged her eyes to the tunnels. “You went through there?” she whispered.

“It wasn’t as… bad as this.”

She looked at him, as if appraising him afresh.

Nicholas checked his watch and a fresh ripple of fear fluttered up his spine. The day was vanishing fast. He’d planned to repeat his trick, throwing another bug bomb into the pipe and this time lighting the gas. But the web plugged the tunnels so solidly that he wouldn’t be able to get the can more than an arm’s length in.

“We need a ladder. We need two ladders,” he mumbled. He looked over at Hannah. She was frowning, deep in thought.

“What?” he asked.

“How does she get through?”

Nicholas shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“How does she get through?” asked Hannah. “If her cottage is on the other side, she must come through somehow, right? Unless she can fly.” She looked at him, clearly worried. “Can she fly?”

Nicholas shook his head. He felt a fool. Of course Quill would have another way through.

“There must be a break in the pipe.”

Hannah shrugged as if that was obvious.

If there was a break in the pipe, it could be anywhere half a kilometer in either direction. It might take hours to find, and, knowing Quill, it would be disguised. Nicholas checked his watch again. It was three thirty. The temperature was already starting to fall.

“I don’t know where to start,” he said hopelessly. “Hacking our way through this bush is going to take hours-”

“Lift me up.”

“What?”

“Lift me up,” repeated Hannah. “I can walk along the top and look from up there. And I can go fast. My balance is good, see?” She stood on one foot.

Any other time, Nicholas would have said they should turn back, that it wasn’t worth risking her neck. But he was sure that if he didn’t deal with Quill before nightfall, he would be the next to die. And if he didn’t kill Quill, she would kill again. And again, and again.

“All right. I’ll get down, you stand on my shoulders, then I’ll grab your feet and push up. Okay?”

“Okay.”

He knelt. She put her hands on the flanks of the pipe and carefully stepped up onto one shoulder, then the other. When she was ready, he slowly stood, and realized for the thousandth time that he really should exercise more-his thighs burned.

“Yeah?”

“Go!”

He grabbed both her feet and lifted. Hannah sprawled over the top of the pipe and swung her legs clear. She stood. “I’m up!” She grinned and looked around. “Which way?”

Logic wasn’t going to help here. Nicholas tried to clear his mind, to forget the ticking clock, and found himself pointing.

“That way.”

Hannah nodded down at him, and started off, arms spread wide like a tightrope walker’s. In just a few seconds, the tightly packed trees had obscured her from view. Her light footsteps echoed faintly through the metal, then they, too, faded and were gone.

Nicholas was alone.

The minutes seemed to stretch into hours. He could almost feel the hidden sun falling faster and faster into the west. A light mist began to rise from the lush undergrowth like the earth’s own disturbed ghost. Nicholas had terrible imaginings of Hannah slipping on the damp pipe, scrabbling and falling, landing headfirst with the sickening bony crack that haunted his dreams of Cate. He shouldn’t have let the kid go. What was he thinking-?

“Mr. Close?”

Light footsteps grew louder, then Hannah’s pale face appeared high on the pipe.

“Did you find it?”

She was frowning. “I don’t know. It’s weird. This way.”

She waved him on. He followed from below, straining through dense thickets of native holly and blackthorn.

“Not far,” she urged.

“Easy for you…”

He struggled to lift aside a chaotic tangle of wait-a-while vine and the spiny stem grabbed at his sleeves and the duffel bag. Then he was through. He looked up.

Hannah was pointing. “There.”

He followed her finger.

Had he not been looking for it, he’d never have seen it. But sure enough, a narrow track almost devoid of undergrowth struck out perpendicularly from the pipe. He bent to inspect it closer. It was only two hand spans wide, but the ferns and saplings were compacted by years of passage into a distinct but well-hidden path. Whoever walked it was careful to stick to the same route every time. The weird thing was, it terminated right at the pipe.

“Does it go on the other side?”

Hannah disappeared from view for a moment, then reappeared overhead. “No.”

Nicholas suddenly realized what Quill had done.

“Clever bitch,” he muttered.

He stood close to the pipe and started running his fingers over its surface. They found the neatly disguised crack. He traced it-it made a rough rectangle a meter or so high in the side of the pipe.

“It’s a door,” he said.

“A door?”

“A hatch.”

He pressed against the curved rectangle. A slight give inward. He pressed harder and a loud clack echoed within the pipe. When he released his pressure, the steel hatchway opened outward on oiled hinges.

“Wow,” she said. “Catch me.”

Before Nicholas could argue, she’d slid down the side of the pipe into his arms. She wriggled to the ground and pulled the hatch wide, poking her head inside.

“Wow,” she repeated, and the word echoed away into pitch darkness: wow-wow-wowwww… She climbed up inside the pipe. “Did you bring a torch-orch-orch?”

“No. But…” He reached into his duffel bag and pulled out one of the Zippo knock-offs. “This will do.”

“Here,” said Hannah, “you hold that and give me the gun.”

Nicholas pulled her out of the hatch.

“I’ll keep the lighter and the gun. You follow me.”

I t was easy to decide which way to go inside the pipe. One direction was thick with dust and littered with insect carcasses. The other was almost spotlessly clean.

By the flickering flame of the lighter, they walked through the darkness, saying nothing, listening to their footfalls dance to and fro like ripples in some subterranean lake. The barrel of the Miroku occasionally ticked off the curved metal walls, the sharp sound chased away by a long, lonely echo.

“How will we know when to get out?” whispered Hannah.