Roderick Gordon - Deeper

Little by little, Sarah was dying, and the Limiters knew it. So much for emergency medical attention. They didn't give a jot about her. They would probably get a pat on the back from Rebecca even if they delivered a dead body.

But Sarah knew she had to stay conscious and was fighting the darkness that threatened to swamp her.

"…made for walking… one of these days…"

One of the Limiters grunted something guttural at her, but she defied him, carrying on with the song.

"… these boots are gonna walk all over you…"

Sarah's blood left a broken, splattered trail behind her. Quite by chance, once or twice it spilled across patches of Parchers that Elliott had sprinkled in her wake as she and the boys had fled the very same way. Brought to life by Sarah's blood, the bacteria flared with such brilliance it was as though light was blazing directly out of the very ground itself, like flashlights from the outermost circle of hell.

But Sarah was oblivious to her shining path. She had fixed her mind, completely and absolutely, on a single, overwhelming purpose. As far as she could fathom, the Limiters were taking her in the same direction Will and Cal had gone.

That was good and bad.

It probably meant that further Styx were also on their trail, so her sons were in danger.

But it also meant that she might still be able to help them. Even if it was the last thing she did.

When he came up behind the Limiter patrol, Drake had to slow down. He swore silently. There was nothing he could do to get ahead of them.

Chancing his luck, he crept closer, to assess the situation. They were dragging someone with them, but he wasn't going to jump to any conclusions about the captive's identity. Maybe it was just some unfortunate renegade the soldiers had caught, he thought as he kicked his heels, impatient to get going again. He touched the stove guns strapped to his thigh — it would be pushing it to use them against four soldier in the first place, and he also didn't want to risk hitting their prisoner.

So he was forced to bide his time until finally the patrol lugged the prisoner out onto the ledge a the drop to the Sharps. From there, they took the longer ridge path down. As soon as they were out of sight, Drake rapidly descended the rusty Coprolite ladder, taking cover the instant he touched bottom. The air glittered with millions of tiny, slow-moving glass particles, which rimed his eyes and lined his throat. As he weaved between the massive glass stumps and the fractured sections of column left in the aftermath of what clearly had been a devastating explosion, he repeatedly had to stop and hide. He spotted a number of dead Limiters around the place, but it was swarming with quite a few live ones, too, conducting a search of the area.

He came to the passage he knew Elliott would have taken, but its mouth was completely blocked by a collapsed glass column. His only option was to skirt farther around the perimeter and take the next available route.

In the process, he spotted the patrol with the prisoner again as they stormed down the last section of the ridge. Two of the four Limiters immediately peeled off, probably to check in with their comrades deeper in the cavern. The remaining two allowed their captive to drop to the ground. He heard a woman's scream as the figure fell.

Whoever she was, Drake couldn't just leave her to their mercy.

He picked up a shard of obsidian and slung it fifty feet to the left of the Limiters' position. The pair of soldiers reacted immediately, raising their rifles and stalking toward where it had landed. Drake chose his moment and threw another large shard to draw them even farther away, then stole across to where the woman lay. Cupping a hand over her mouth lest she cry out, he lifted her in his arms and made for the exit tunnel.

Once he'd run far enough, he put her down.

She was wearing a Limiter's uniform, but, even stranger than this, the woman's face was somehow familiar to Drake. She tried to say something, but he told her to stay quiet as he assessed her injuries.

"These bandages… who did this?" he asked, noticing with surprise that the dressings were identical to ones he and Elliott carried.

"You're a renegade, aren't you?" Sarah threw back at him.

"Just tell me — did Elliott do this?" he pressed.

"Small girl, big rifle?" Sarah managed in reply.

Drake nodded, still trying to figure out where he knew her from.

"A friend of yours?" Sarah asked. She saw Drake raise his eyebrows. It was uncanny; for an instant it could have been Tam before her: a leaner version, maybe, but the quizzical expression was identical. At once she felt she could trust this total stranger, this grizzled man with hard blue eyes and an odd-looking device around his head.

"Well, she's a lousy shot," Sarah chuckled grimly.

Drake was taken aback; the woman was showing the most incredible bravery despite the magnitude of her wounds. But he was wasting precious seconds.

"I've got to go," he said apologetically, standing up. "My friend Elliott, she needs my help."

"And I need to help my sons, Will and Cal," Sarah said.

"Ah, so that's who you are," Drake realized with a start. "The legendary Sarah Jerome. I thought I recognized your—"

"And if you want to know what the Styx are up to," Sarah interrupted, "we can talk along the way."

Elliott led the boys to another arch, although it hadn't withstood the ravages of time as well as the first one. Only a single pillar was still standing, the rest lying in pieces across the flagged platform.

Will and the others had just stepped off the giant flagstones when the baying of stalkers rolled toward them again. The sounded alarmingly close. Elliott had been going at full speed but came to a dead stop, spinning around to face the boys.

"How can I have been so incredibly stupid?" she burst out in a fierce whisper.

"What do you mean?" Chester asked.

"Can't you see it?" she said, her voice cracking with exasperation.

Crowding around her, Will, Chester, and Cal exchanged blank looks.

"They've been harrying us for miles… and I didn't spot it." Elliott gripped her rifle with such aggression that one of her knuckles cracked. "What a fool!"

"Spot what?" Chester said. "What are you talking about?"{

"The pattern… We've run into Limiters at every turn, and we've gone exactly where they wanted us, like hens in a roundup! They've corralled us, time after time."

Will thought she was about to break into tears, she was so livid with herself.

"I've played straight into their hands…" She let the stock of her rifle slide to the ground until it rested in the dirt, then she leaned against the barrel, her head bowed. She was visibly crestfallen, as if all her sense of purpose had suddenly left her. "After everything Drake taught me. He wouldn't—"

"Oh, don't even, we're doing just fine," Cal cut her off, trying to remain calm but sounding far from it. Spent to the point of collapse, he just wanted to get wherever and finally rest. "Can't we just go along there?" he appealed to her, pointing at the perimeter of the Pore.

"No way," Elliott replied wanly.

"Why not?" he pressed her.

She didn't answer for a moment, her eyes on Bartleby. The cat's head was up and his ears cocked alertly; as they watched he raised his head even higher and sniffed. Elliott gave a resigned nod as she finally answered Cal.

"Along there, somewhere, is a bunch of Limiters, all with rifles trained and ready." At the boys's continued refusal to accept what she was saying, she seemed to pull herself together, her eyes flashing angrily at each of them in turn. "And out there" — she jerked her thumb to the left — "will be enough White Necks to fill a stinking church. Why don't you ask your Hunter? He knows."