Paintshark (30 page)

The grille of an air duct was kicked open, and as it fell to the floor it was soon followed by a flaming torch and then a pair of size nine boots landing heavily on it. Elias picked up the flaming baton and shone a light down the dimly lit passageway and then signalled to the others watching him from above that the coast was clear, then more feet dropped onto the grille.

Elias took the layout plans of the prison out of his pocket and held his light over them, hard to do with one hand, the passageway ahead was dark and cold and a musty smell lingered in the air. Elias wiped his nose and looked up from studying the plans.

“We go this way,” he said, pointing down the passageway.

“Are you sure?” questioned Nayan who had sidled up behind him unawares and held up the torch.

“Yeah, but it’s a long walk though, we head down there, go through a few doors and at the bottom take a left.” He looked at the plans again, easier now with his torch hand free. “Then that should bring us to the sub generators…and it’s quite a junction from there, we’ll have to wait and see.”

Nayan put a hand on Elias’s shoulder. “Would you like me to read the plans for a while? You’ve had them for ages and you must be tired by now.”

Elias smiled in gratitude. “No thanks my friend, I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? And do you really know where we’re going?”

Elias grinned and Nayan knew that was enough for him. He hadn’t know Elias Glaucas for that long but trusted him emphatically, as did most of the prisoners he wasn’t just a teacher to them but a leader albeit a reluctant one, Nayan handed the torch back to Elias and let him lead the way. The men all followed anxiously, in the middle of the long line Felcey was being helped along by Aubrey and Kimberley and bringing up the rear were the nervous forms of prisoners Midman, Reede and Bailey, reliable ex-smokers wishing they hadn’t have given up quite so soon. Aubrey, at ease with carrying Felcey, asked him a question. “I say old man, you sure you’re up for this jolly boy’s outing? I mean it must be quite a strain on the old body there eh?”

Felcey steadied himself and tried to put his pain behind him. “Thanks but I’ll be fine, just got to keep going until the end.”

He flashed a glance at Kimberley. “Whenever that may be.”

Kimberly didn’t even see the look he gave her. When she was in Olympia she was a teenager, young and naive but carefree, then she was imprisoned in Gommerstall for something beyond her control.

All she wanted to do was get back home to Olympia and start her life over and if possible avoid water in the process.

Another door was easily slid open and the prisoners passed through on their descent to the hangar.

The current section of corridors had no lights on the wall, only Elias’s flaming torch lit the way, the musty smell increased, making many wipe their eyes and hold their noses.

Elias held the torch aloft and looked at the blackness that waited ahead, he turned around and shouted at the men, “FROM HERE ON WE HOLD HANDS.” Groans of annoyance followed. “IT’S TOO DARK, THE PERSON STANDING NEXT TO YOU, TAKE THEIR HAND AND FOLLOW ME, IF YOU HAVE OTHER LIGHT THEN USE IT.”

Kimberley thought for a second and closed her eyes concentrating hard until her hands gave off a dull yellow glow, she spoke to Aubrey. “Can you take Felcey from me? I don’t want to burn him.”

Aubrey took Felcey without a reply and helped him along as Kimberley held her hands aloft with light slowly seeping through; as they pressed further the hard ground beneath them grew softer with each passing footstep and now they trod on leaves, Elias grew more alert.

“WATCH YOUR STEP!” he shouted to the group and then whispered to himself, “Elias, watch your step.”

Only Elias’s torch and Kimberley’s glow were the only forms of light through the now winding passageway, the men gripped their partner’s hand tight as their eyes grew more accustomed to the dark.

The strong musty smell increased and the prisoners felt the walls for balance as they stumbled in the darkness, Faris’s nose, like everyone else’s, kept on twitching.

“What is that funky smell? Smell’s like something died in here?”

Elias kept him in check. “I know it’s bad but stay alert, who knows what’s down here.”

“Didn’t want to hear that, Chief,” moaned Faris.

“Sorry.”

Aubrey piped up, “I’m inclined to agree with you old boy, that smell is worse than this dodgy shower of reprobates.”

Elias put up his hand to signal stop, but nobody saw it in the dark anyway. “Hold on a minute.” He shouted to the back of the group, “IS EVERYTHING ALRIGHT BACK THERE? REEDE, ARE YOU OK?”

There was a faint reply from Reede. “Yeah, we’re ok.”

He whispered to himself again. “What is that smell?”

Reede hurried, along trying to keep up with the others but Bailey had stopped to get a better listen of something he had heard seconds earlier, crouched on bended knees.

“Can you hear something?” he said, his voice was very loud and it was hard for him to whisper.

“I can only hear everybody walking away, you’ve broken the chain,” Reede sighed.

“There’s definitely something–” He stopped in mid-sentence as the smell was overpowering. “What the Hell?”

Bailey rose to his feet and Midman and Reede heard it too. Bailey cursed to himself as he still was carrying his matches hidden deep in his pocket in case his urge for a smoke overtook him, he casually took them out and struck a match, the small flame flickered in the slight breeze and he extended his hand in the blackness and that was he recognised what was running towards him.

“RUUUNNNNN!” screamed Bailey as his huge voice filled the passageway. Hundreds of rats scurried on the soft floor towards them, only beginning to screech when they saw the prisoners blocking their path, a moving carpet of red eyes reflected from what little light was available.

A huge surge of men pushed the line forward as they scrambled in the dark. Kimberley was knocked fell to the floor and the light from her hands was extinguished. Elias too dropped his torch and it was trampled by the onslaught of screaming prisoners, he tried in vain to calm them down but it was futile, some men, the braver ones stood firm against the side of the walls and let the rats run past them with a simple shake of the leg if they ran too close. Kimberley screamed, paralyzed with fear, on the ground. “SOMEBODY HELP ME!”

Felcey tried to pick her up but was knocked to the ground with ease by the men behind him, realising it was a girl, they turned back to help, she struggled to her feet again with the aid of some men but all of them tripped and fell to the ground and the wave of rats crawled over their bodies.

She tried to release the built up energy she usually stored in her for light as a weapon but it wasn’t working this time and by now there were too many rats all over her as she lay headlong in the ground.

“This is no place for a lady,” was the voice of a remarkably calm Aubrey has he hauled her frame from off the floor. “Time to run my dear, do be a sweet and take my hand.”

Kimberley didn’t need another invitation as she grabbed the gentleman’s outstretched hand squeezed tight and than ran.

Elias kept running, the passageway had opened up now, they were still in the narrow tunnel but there wasn’t a roof anymore and it wasn’t so claustrophobic, and although he still couldn’t see, the screams of the men echoed as if their voices bounced off huge rocks above them and the momentum from the men gathered.

Being right at the front he found he could not stop the force of the men behind him, still spooked from the rodents and still on the run, so he too had to keep running or fall beneath the stampede. There was an opening ahead, Elias could barely see, there was a shaft light entering from somewhere.

The army of rats still poured down the passageway, their shrieks of desperation mirrored the prisoners’ own. Something was chasing them; something had scared them.

The light coming from the opening was growing larger and being right at the front of the pack Elias could just about see what it was, it was a cliff face opposite with daylight shining in through the end of their tunnel and he panicked.

When he and the others entered the tunnel it was deep underground, but in the darkness they couldn’t see or feel themselves moving up, it must have bee a slow gradual climb, but Elias could see the light and see the high rock face across from him, but there was no bridge to be seen which would connect the two rock faces and he and Nayan also at the front were going to be herded off the edge to whatever lay below.

“STOP RUNNING, STOP IT!” But the men didn’t stop; the big black rats which bore down on them wouldn’t make them stop for anything and Elias was at the front of a wave of scared men who were going to push him over the edge of the tunnels high but if he stopped he would be trampled on…he had to keep running.

“SIDES. GET TO THE SIDES,” he yelled at the top of his voice. “KEEP TO THE SIDES, KEEP TO THE SIDES.”

The rats moved to the front of the stampede, which only increased the men’s speed, Elias’s life depended on what he said next and what the men would hopefully soon see. “TUNNEL’S END, TUNNEL’S END, BIG DROP, BIG DROP!”

He just had enough time to think that ‘Big drop’ is rather a silly thing to say as your last words. The rats raced ahead and the prisoners behind saw the cliff face in time and they all stopped at once and clung to the sides of the tunnel, their nails dug deep into the soft walls but the men at the back kept going and their was a mighty surge of prisoners pushing forward, shouts from the middle reached the front, but it was too late. The rats ran straight off the end of the cliff face and like lemmings fell from a great height below in to a cascading river Elias couldn’t stop and teetered on the edge arms, flailing like a marionette puppet, the rats pushing him further forward as they swarmed about him, he was going to fall.

Big drop
, he thought again.

As he fell, an arm reached out and just about grabbed his right hand, Elias looked down and the water below and as rats fell into his eyes he could just see his saviour, it was the hand of Nayan that held him firm, the big man lay on the ground as the rats swept over his body and off the tunnel’s edge and into the face of Elias, who couldn’t see anything now, the rats dropped, landed on his face and fell again. Elias could barely hold on, he was slipping from Nayan and some rats that used his face as a trampoline bit him as they bounced off.

Nayan ignored his new rat coat and pulled with all his might with other prisoners now holding his legs and dragging him back. Elias kept his eyes shut with the stench of the rats up his nose almost too much to bear, he snorted and sniffed but then opened his mouth to breathe and more rats tumbled into it, scratching their way in and then out again, Nayan almost retched when he saw the rats in Elias’s mouth and gave an almighty heave and pulled him up to the tunnel’s edge. Elias jumped to the side of the tunnel, letting the last of the scurrying rats fall beside him, he jumped up and down wiping any rat remains off his body, blowing their smell from his nose and frantically wiping his face before he ran back to the edge and was sick in to the water below as the final rats joined the others in the water below, the stream carried them off somewhere and oddly Elias hoped they would be alive wherever they ended up.

Nayan came forward and Elias reached over and shook his hand with added vigour. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Elias babbled. With that familiar glint in his eye Nayan smiled and cautiously looked over the edge at the furious river below he raised an eyebrow to Elias. “Are you sure you don’t want me to read the plans?”

Elias, still shaken through his dalliance with certain death, hadn’t lost his sense of humour and between breathing heavily and picking his nose, cracked a wry smile.

“Well we can’t go that way,” Elias said, pointing to the edge.

“So we’re going to have to go back the way we came, maybe there’s an entrance we missed, something not in the plans so unless we all fancy an early bath we must turn around.”

“What about the rats?” Nayan asked.

“Something obviously spooked them and made them run…I wonder what it was?”

Elias rubbed more rats’ droppings from his eye. “I can hazard a guess.”

“Vines.” The word came dryly from Nayan’s mouth with distain more than fear. Elias confirmed his suspicions with a nod. “Yeah, we have to move quickly.”

“So where do we go now?” a prisoner asked.

Elias didn’t even bother looking at the plans. “Anywhere is a good bet, anywhere but here but we have to move quickly, stick together and keep tight as a unit.”

The prisoners walked back through the darkened tunnel and they hardly said a word, keeping their mouths shut and their ears open for the sounds of more rats, they knew what the scratching noise was should they hear it again, but it was the possible attack of vines that really kept them on their toes. With their hands touching again on the sides of the tunnel for stability as they walked, it seemed the track back was longer this time, Elias no longer led, as the group turned their way around from the tunnel’s long drop exit above the stream, those who were at the back now were in the lead and vice versa. Elias and Nayan made their way into the middle of the group joining Kimberley, Faris, Aubrey, Jago and Felcey. Elias called to Felcey, he hadn’t spoken to the nervous young man for a while.

“You have a gift, don’t you? I don’t mean the milk stuff with your hands…I remember you bringing in some pots when we were at school…for show and tell?”

The army of rats had left everyone, especially Felcey, weak-willed and frightened, but he stammered a response.

“I’m a clay maker; I make clay, not very exciting is it? Kimberley can take down whole stadiums with her power, she can make blow things up… she has great strength where as I make clay, I mix milk and clay together and that’s what I do. I followed Kimberley into a nightclub and the whole place got showered with this ‘water’. I don’t know what happened but I had a clay model of Kimberley in my pocket and now I have this clay milky power.”