and wailed in terror. The air in his lungs crushed his chest against
the floor and his back against the roof.
He couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or shut. He pushed forward with
his feet and regained the inch he’d moved back. He stretched with his
arms. Felt up ahead again. His shoulders were jammed so tight he
couldn’t move his hands through much of an angle. He spread his
fingers and scrabbled them left and right, up and down. Solid rock
ahead. No way to go forward. No way to move backward.
He was going to die trapped inside the mountain. He knew it. The rats
knew it. They were sniffing up behind him. Coming closer. He felt
them at his feet. He kicked out and sent them squealing away. But
they came back. He felt their weight on his legs. They were swarming
over him. They burrowed up around his shoulders. Slid under his
armpits. He felt cold oily fur on his face as they forced their way
past. The flick of their tails as they ran ahead.
To where? He let them run over his arm, to estimate their direction.
They were moving ahead of him, into the blind darkness. He felt with
his hands. Felt them flowing left. Their passage was stirring the
air. The air was cool. He felt it move, a faint breeze, on the sweat
on the left side of his face. He jammed himself hard against the right
hand wall and moved his left arm sideways, ahead of him. Felt for the
left hand wall. It wasn’t there. He was stuck at a junction in the
tunnels. A new seam ran at a right angle away from the end of the seam
he was in. A tight, narrow right angle. Ninety degrees. He forced
himself backward as far as his thumbs would push him. He scraped his
face on the end wall and jammed his side into the rock. Folded himself
arms first around the corner and dragged his legs behind him.
The new seam was no better. It was no wider. The roof was no higher.
He hauled himself along, gasping and sweating and shaking. He
propelled himself with his toes, an inch at a time. The rats forced
their way past him. The rock tore at his sides and his back. But
there was still a slight breeze on his face. The tunnel was heading
somewhere. He was gasping and panting. He crawled on. Then the new
seam widened. Still very low. A flat, low crack in the rock. He
crawled on through it, exhausted. Fifty yards. A hundred. Then he
felt the roof soar away above him. He pushed on with his toes and
suddenly he felt the air change and he was lying halfway into the
motor-pool cavern. He realized his eyes were wide open and the white
Econoline was right there in front of him in the dark.
He rolled onto his back and lay gasping on the grit. Gasping and
shaking. Staggered to his feet and looked back. The seam was
invisible. Hidden in the shadow. He made it as far as the white truck
and collapsed against its side. The luminous figures on his watch
showed he’d been in the tunnels nearly three hours. Most of the time
jammed there sweating in panic. A three-hour screaming nightmare come
to life. His pants and his jacket were shredded. Every muscle in his
body was on fire. His face and hands and elbows and knees were
bleeding. But it was the fear that had done it to him. The fear of
not getting through. He could still feel the rock pressing down on his
back and pressing up on his chest. He could feel it clamping inward on
his ribs. He got up again and limped to the doors. Pushed them open
and stood in the moonlight, arms out, eyes crazy, mouth open, breathing
in lungfuls of the sweet night air.
He was halfway across the bowl before he started thinking straight. So
he ran back and ducked into the motor pool once more. Found what he
wanted. He found it on one of the jeep’s tow hook assemblies. Some