arm again, this time keeping his fist tucked tight against his own chest.
Perspiration was soon pouring from him with the effort of pulling both himself and the injured man along, despite the numbing coldness in his lower body. The first journey into the tunnel ran through his mind, the deep, hollow silence, the discovery of the bodies, the gorging mutant rats, the petrified girl.
Kate! God, he wanted to see her again.
Bryce began to slip from his grasp.
'Hold him!' he shouted back to Fairbank as the injured man started to sink.
Fairbank grabbed Bryce beneath his shoulders and heaved him upwards. He held him against the wall, Bryce's mouth wide open against the dirt-grimed brickwork, gasping for breath. He tried to speak, but they could not hear his words.
'He's not going to make it!' Fairbank shouted to Culver.
Culver, too, rested against the brickwork and tried to recover his breath. He leaned close to Bryce and spoke into his ear. 'Not far now, only a little way to go. We can do it, but you've got to help.'
Bryce shook his head. His eyes were closed and he looked as if he were moaning.
Culver slid one arm from his jacket and slipped off the shoulder holster. Pulling the jacket sleeve back on, he tossed the flashlight into the swirling water, knowing there would not be room enough for both torch and revolver. He took the gun from its holster and tucked it securely into his jeans.
Somehow it was more important to him than the torch. He reached for Bryce's uninjured arm once more and tied the leather straps of the holster around his own arm and the Civil Defence officer's.
'You've got to help me, Bryce!' he yelled. 7 can't do it on my own. Lean into me and don't let the current pull you away! Fairbank, keep close! Keep bloody close!'
'I'm up your arse,' Fairbank assured him, even managing a grin.
It was like travelling uphill with a typhoon around their legs and a dead weight pulling against them, but inch by inch, foot by foot, groan by groan, they made progress. After a while they saw that the floodwaters ahead were bubbling foam and the wrenching grip was now around their hips. The water was rising.
'We've got to cross the tracks, get over to the other wall,' Culver shouted back to the others, inwardly cursing himself for not having thought of it when the going had been a little easier. The rushing, liquid roar was almost deafening and he wasn't sure that the others had heard him. He pointed to the opposite wall and Fairbank nodded.
Culver let go of the thick cables that ran along the wall at shoulder level and, taking a deep breath in case he should fall, stepped out into the flow. He almost lost his footing immediately, so strong was the current. He staggered back, but hands reached out to steady him.
'Let me go first,' Fairbank shouted into his ear. 'We'll form a chain. Me, then Bryce with you hanging on to the cables at this side. We should be able to stretch right across. McEwen can go with Bryce, keeping behind him to hold him steady.'
Culver gripped the top of the fixed cables and braced himself. 'Go ahead.'
Holding on to the wrist of Bryce's injured hand, Fairbank
waded into the water, body leaning into the flow, McEwen stretching out from behind to help. Careful not to trip on the tracks hidden below, the engineer reached the centre of the tunnel, Bryce supported by the ROC officer, left arm still strapped to Culver's, going with him. Fairbank paused, struggling against the tide to maintain his balance. He felt as if icy arms had wrapped themselves around his legs and were trying to drag them backwards, maliciously eager to unbalance him. He knew if he were to make it to the other side he would need all his strength and manoeuvrability; he'd have to release the injured man's wrist.
'Hold him!' he shouted to the others, then plunged towards the opposite wall, jumping forward slightly, knowing the current would carry him back. The idea worked, but he had trouble finding a handhold, for he was down in the water, the current sweeping around his chest. He was carried several yards back before finding something to grip. There was a small recess in the curved wall and he grabbed its edge gratefully. Dragging himself up, he rested there for a short while, catching his breath, chest heaving. He could make out the shapes of the others, silhouetted by McEwen's unsteady torch. Bryce would not last long out there in midstream, for McEwen was having problems himself. Fair-bank used the cables on that side to haul himself back.
When he was level with the other three men he took a firm grip on the top cable and stretched his body out towards Bryce, bending into the current as he did so. There was a gap of several feet still between them.
'McEwen, you next. Grab my hand.'
The ROC officer moved from behind the injured man, working his way steadily towards Fairbank.
Once the gap had been bridged, they could all move across providing the engineer had the strength to hold them all.
His fingertips touched Fairbank's, palm slid across palm, fingers curled around wrists.
'The torch, pass me the torch' Fairbank ordered. He uncurled his grip from around the other man's wrist and splayed his fingers.
Still holding on to Fairbank's arm with his right hand, McEwen placed the torch in the engineer's open palm, the movement slow and deliberate, the current threatening to dislodge them at any moment. The positioning was awkward and the light was never still, but it afforded them some visibility.
The strain on Culver at the opposite side of the tunnel increased, for only his strength now held Bryce.
He could feel the Civil Defence officer weakening by the second.
‘Hurry! he shouted across to the others. 'He can't last much longer!'
McEwen grasped the injured man's wrist, keeping his eyes off the bare stumps of the fingers, the makeshift bandage long since gone, concentrating only on pulling Bryce towards him.
Culver moved away from the brickwork, a foot brushing against a rail beneath the swirling dark waters.
He stepped over it, nudging Bryce ahead of him, his body angled against the current. He let go of the cables, stretching his arm forward for balance. The pressure was tremendous and he noticed that the water was up to his waist.
Fairbank pulled and Culver pushed and they might well have made it had not something rammed into McEwen's midriff. The object spun around so that its length jammed against all three men midstream.
When McEwen looked down and saw the wide rictal grin of the dead man, the lifeless eyes somehow conveying the
agony of drowning, something snapped inside. He screamed and both hands lost their grip.
The merciless water snatched him away before he could regain his balance.
The sudden total burden of Bryce's weight was too much for Culver's own precarious balance. Both he and Bryce plunged backwards.
Fairbank, shoved against the wall, could only watch in dismay as the three men hurtled back along the tunnel, only heads and occasionally shoulders bobbing above the surface. McEwen's screams could be heard over the roar.
He pressed himself back against the shiny brickwork and closed his eyes. 'Oh Jesus,' he said. 'Oh Jesus.'
Culver went under, his body spinning beneath the churning surface. Something was pulling him down, a weight that hardly struggled against the force that tore at them. Whether Bryce was unconscious or merely shocked into immobility there was no way of knowing, but regret that he was tied to the injured man stabbed at Culver's disordered thoughts like a taunting barb. He choked on the water that filled his throat, his lungs, forcing his way back above the foaming surface, spluttering, coughing, wheezing for breath.
He pulled at the limp body, dragging it up, Bryce's head rising next to his, unseen in the darkness but jerking violently as if he too were gasping for air.
Culver felt the straps around their arms loosening, Bryce's body beginning to slip away. It would have been a relief to have let the burden go, to use all his unencumbered strength to reach safety, but old, unrelenting memories
