Roderick Gordon - Deeper

Cal glanced at his cat and then regarded Elliott dubiously, as Will and Chester took a few paces in the directions she had indicated to scrutinize the barren landscapes.

Pulling down his lens, Will could see a considerable distance up the slope where the menhirs lay in haphazard arrangement. "But… but there's absolutely no one there," he insisted, his voice whining with the implausibility of it all.

"Nothing this way, either," Chester added. "You're getting jumpy, Elliott, that's all. We're fine, really," he pleaded as he and Will wandered back to rejoin her.

"If fine is being shot to shreds, boy, then I'd have to agree with you," Elliott said tersely as she swung up her rifle in a single deft movement, readying it against her shoulder.

Drake bombarded Sarah with question after question as they went, grilling her about what she knew. She was finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate and often answered disjointedly, sometimes getting the sequence of event in the wrong order as she told him about Rebecca and the Dominion plot.

Eventually they lapsed into silence, Drake because he was trying to conserve his energy to carry Sarah, and Sarah, because the spells of light-headedness were coming with greater frequency. Like a leaking bucket, she felt the lifeblood seeping form her. The odds were stacked heavily against her ever seeing her two sons again.

"These boots are gonna…" she wheezed as Drake carried her along. The pain from her shattered hip was so vast and all-consuming that at times she saw herself as a cork bobbing on the surface of a shiny red-hot ocean, which, at any moment, might fold over her and suck her into its depths. She fought and fought to stay afloat, to stay focused, but her whole head throbbed with a searing pain from the gunshot wound to her temple, as if her brain had been cleft in two.

"You keep lying when…"

And finally, Drakes chest heaving with the exertion, they came to the gradient down to the Pore.

Despite his fragile cargo, he broke into a run.

A singsong shout rolled over the expanse toward them.

"Oh, Will!"

He went rigid.

"I know you're there, Sunshine!" it called gleefully.

Will recognized the voice without a moment's hesitation. He locked eyes with Elliott.

"Rebecca," he gasped.

For an instant none of them moved.

"I think we're in trouble," Will said helplessly.

Elliott nodded. "You're so right," she agreed, her voice devoid of any intonation.

Will felt exactly like a rabbit caught in the blazing headlights of a huge juggernaut that was thundering down on it.

It was as if, deep in his bones, he'd always known this moment would come, that it had been inevitable right from the start. And yet he'd led all of them straight into it. His befuddled gaze fell on Chester, but his old friend gave him such a glare of bitter recrimination and contempt that Will had to turn away.

"Well, don't just stand there! Take cover!" Elliott barked.

They scattered, Elliott and Chester flinging themselves behind one menhir as Will and Cal took another.

"Oh, Willlllll!" the voice came again, spiked with little-girl sweetness. "Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

"Do nothing," Elliott mouthed at him with a rapid shake of her head.

"Hey, big brother, don't jerk me around!" Rebecca shouted. "Let's have a little chat, for old times' sake."

As Elliott had commanded, Will didn't respond. He stuck an eye around the side of the boulder, but saw only darkness.

Rebecca went on, unamused. "OK, if you're going to play silly games with me, let's get the rules straight."

There was a lull. In the ongoing absence of any reply from Will, Rebecca continued.

"Righty-o… the rules. One… as you seem a little bashful, I'll come down to you. Two… if anyone gets it into their head to take a pop at me, the gloves are off, and this is how it'll go. First I'll let slip the stalkers; my little darlings haven't been fed for days, so, trust me, you really don't want that. Or in the unlikely event the dogs don’t do you in, my squad of crack riflemen will. Last, I've got the Division with some heavy ordnance up here… their guns will smash anything in their path, you included. So, pull any stunts and you'll suffer the consequences. Got that?"

There was another pause, then her voice came, more strident and imperious this time. "Will, I want your word I've got safe passage."

Will quite trying to see up the slope and slumped back behind the huge menhir. He felt that Rebecca would be able to look right through even that, solid rock, as if nothing more than a pane of glass separated them.

A chill sweat trickled down the small of his back, and he found that his hands were shaking. He closed his eyes and, banging his head against the rock behind him, moaned, "No, no, no, no, no."

How could it have gone so wrong? They'd been making good progress toward the Wetlands, with wide open spaces before them and an abundance of routes to choose from. Now they were in this appalling predicament, hemmed in with a colossal black hole behind them. How could it have come to this .

And in Rebecca, they were up against somebody so utterly merciless and brutal; somebody who knew him like the back of his hand.

He shot a glance over to Elliott, but she was remonstrating with Chester. Will couldn't catch anything of what they were saying. As he watched, they appeared to reach agreement and their frantic exchange finished. Elliott quickly shucked off her rucksack and began to delve around in it.

"Hey, Mole-face," Rebecca called down. "I'm waiting for your answer."

"Elliott!" Will hissed urgently. "What do I do?"

"Buy some time. Talk to her," Elliott snapped, not looking up as she began to play out a length of rope.

Encouraged that Elliott seemed to have settled on a course of action, Will took several deep breaths and poked his head around the edge of the menhir. "Yes! OK!" he yelled back to Rebecca.

"That's my boy!" Rebecca answered cheerfully. "I knew you'd be up for it."

In the ensuing seconds they heard nothing more from Rebecca. Elliott and Chester each tied the rope around themselves, then Chester slung the other end of it across to Will as Elliott crouched down behind her rifle.

Will shrugged at Chester, who just shrugged back. Will could only think that, as a last resort, Elliott had decided they were going to attempt to climb down the Pore. He couldn't see any other way out. He turned to Cal. His brother was whimpering quietly to himself, his face nestled in Bartleby's neck as he clasped the agitated animal to his chest. Cal had lost it, and Will couldn't blame him. Will secured the rope around himself, then knotted it around Cal's waist. His brother passively allowed him to do so, without questioning why.

Will glanced back at the Pore. It was their only way out. But was it much of a solution? What was Elliott thinking? Will had seen for himself that the hole consisted of a sheer rock face, with nothing to cling to. It looked pretty grim for them all.

Will heard Rebecca whistling in the darkness as she approached.

"You are my sunshine," he murmured, recognizing the tune. "I really hate that song."

When she spoke again, she was much closer.

"Right, this is as far as I'm coming.

Massive searchlights blasted on from farther up the slope.

"Whiteout!" Elliott exclaimed, raising her head from her rifle as the blazing light hit the scope. She squeezed her eye shut several times, recovering from the glare. "That's just freakin' great!" she fumed. "I can't get a fix on anything now!"

Dazzling beams of light swept back and forth over the area where Will and the others were hiding, sending solid black shadows slashing across the ground.