Free Mutant City by Steve Feasey Page B

any dark places on it!’
    Brick stared at his feet. ‘Your lip looks funny when you get angry,’ he mumbled.
    Rush took a deep breath, calming himself. ‘Look. I’ll take the torch and go ahead first. The way my luck is running, it’ll be a dead end. But if it does go somewhere that looks promising, I’ll come back and we’ll go through together. How does that sound?’
    He was answered with a shrug.
    He held out his hand. ‘Torch.’
    Brick dug around in his pocket and came out with it, putting it in the boy’s hand.
    ‘Look at me,’ Rush said, suddenly feeling a little guilty for having shouted at the big guy. ‘I won’t be long. Stay here and wait. See if you can spot Dotty. I know she’ll find us, she always does, but I’d rather have her back with us when we go through.’
    ‘Be careful,’ Brick said. He added something else, but Rush was no longer paying attention. Something about ‘bad things coming out of the dark’.
     
    Rush soon left the daylight behind. If he turned to look back, he could still just about make out the figure of Brick standing close to the entrance, but ahead the inky darkness was complete. The little cone of light thrown out by the torch didn’t penetrate far, but it was enough to show Rush that the fissure carried on deep into the heart of the mountain. The floor of the passageway soon began to get steeper and, despite the fact that this quickly blocked off any sight of the light behind him, he was grateful that the incline meant he was heading up and not down. He came across pinch points where he had to turn sideways to get through, as well as sections where the cleft opened up. Water intermittently dripped from above so he was soon soaked to the skin. At one of the sections where the passage became wider Rush realised that the mountain above him might not be as solid as he’d hoped. Rocks and rubble littered the floor, making the going underfoot different here: muddier than the hard surface he’d been walking on until now. He shivered, trying not to think too much about the vast mass of rock above him. He swung the torch up, but it hardly made any impression on the darkness overhead. Shining it towards the floor illuminated tracks. His heart quickened and he crouched down to inspect them more closely. Cloven-hoofed animals had passed this way. Mountain goats perhaps, or maybe sheep? The animals had used this pathway in the past, and that meant it led somewhere.
    He had no idea how long he’d been walking – it prob­ably seemed much longer than it really was – but there was a smell and it was getting stronger. An eggy, foul stink that made his empty stomach clench. He stopped for a second when the light from the torch began to dim again. As he was about to wind the handle to recharge the dynamo inside, he sensed a very faint light up ahead. He frowned, thinking he must have imagined it, but it was there all right. Somewhere up ahead was the tiniest hint of daylight. He switched the torch off and carefully carried on in the direction of the glow, putting a hand out to use the wall beside him as a guide.
    He stood in the entrance to a cave. A small break in the rock high up in the roof away to his left allowed in a shaft of light which fell at an angle on to the huge lake dominating the subterranean space. The surface of the water shimmered in the darkness as hundreds of jet-black droplets rained down from overhead. But neither the lake nor the narrow shore that surrounded it held much interest for Rush: he only had eyes for that small hole in the cavern roof, a hole that might be their way back out to the mountain again.
    Rush nodded to himself. Turning, he left the cave behind him and hurried back in the direction he’d come, switching Tink’s torch back on as he went.
    Usually so cautious, Rush’s pleasure at discovering a possible way out, and his eagerness to let Brick know, meant he didn’t bother to investigate the cavern properly. If he had, he would have