Brenden weaved in and out of several rows of lockers before he finally gave up. With his piece of paper still dangling from his hand, Brenden returned to the entrance - where Daniel was calmly waiting for him in silence - and gave an imploring look in an attempt to gain some assistance from his guide. Without a word needing to be spoken, Daniel knew what the boy wanted and responded to the now forlorn expression on Brenden’s face by pointing at the paper. After a brief glance at the number, Daniel plodded off down to the end of a line of lockers. In no time at all, the strange old vampire led the boy to locker number 10,148, leaving Brenden to wonder if the man had either an incredible memory or if he had just been in the Tunnels for such a time that everything, even this maze of lockers, had become familiar. The boy pushed down a burst of anxiety caused by the very thought of so much time spent in a place such as the one he was in, hidden away under the ground with the stale air and little hope of anything new to look forward to but the very occasional entrance of a newcomer who had probably lost all hope before making the journey Brenden himself had just made.
The padlock Gwen had given to Brenden produced an unsatisfying, derisory click as the boy attached it to the hasps of the locker. He had placed his cooling bag and blood within the locker for safekeeping, but the idea of the thieves Gwen had mentioned and the clear problem of the flimsy lock convinced Brenden that leaving the blood behind would not be the right course of action. Indeed, as he inspected the other lockers, he noticed that of the ones that had padlocks, only a very few were locked. Whatever the reason for this, it reinforced his conviction that it would be best to take the blood with him, and after removing his cool bag, he asked Daniel to take him on to wherever they were supposed to head next.
What followed was the rather sad collection of rooms that were supposed to satisfy the entertainment and information needs of those condemned and those who had chosen to live beneath the earth. The first they visited was a temporarily abandoned, wood-panel lined room with two snooker tables, a dart board, a collection of worn and torn board games, and a cathode ray tube TV set. As Daniel expressed nothing further about the need to hurry on, Brenden took the time to pass through the semi-circle of plastic chairs that had been arranged in front of the television to switch on the set. To the boy’s disappointment, the screen displayed nothing but a black and white dance of static on every channel. But his hopes raised as his search of the cabinet below the TV revealed a hundred or so DVDs and the PlayStation 2 they could be played on. Atop the paltry pile of games for the console was a copy of Resident Evil 4, presumably bought as a joke as along with about half of the other items in the pile it was still in its original plastic packaging.
A library that seemed quite busy in comparison to the empty games room followed, populated as it was with about two dozen individuals, all of whom were engaged in the private contemplation of books that reminded them of the world they had left behind. Though Brenden was inclined to speak to some of the other inhabitants of his new home, the heavy silence that hung over the library and the lack of any clear figure who could be identified as being responsible for its books made the boy determine that it was best to just move on. His inspection of the individuals seated at the clearly overused and poorly cared-for desks that were inserted in the spaces not occupied by the many metal shelves of the room only reinforced this decision as some were so emaciated, grey and unmoving that you would be easily forgiven for believing that death had finally taken them. That was, of course, until one of the corpse-like beings had to turn a page.
An ageing and brittle map of a section of the Tunnels in the library, pointed out to Brenden by his guide, gave an indication not only of the size of the labyrinth surrounding the boy but also the location of some of the other amenities available. These apparently included a couple of gyms, rooms for supplies, a music room, a small cinema and a number of other things besides. However, Brenden was not all too keen to find out what these places were like anytime soon, not if the ones he had already been shown by Daniel were anything to go by. If anything, the only sites on the map that interested Brenden were those to which he assumed he could not go to, amended as they were with neat red crosses.
By pointing at the map, Daniel indicated that they would make one more stop, then head on to one of the accommodation sections where Brenden assumed he would find his plot. This penultimate stop turned out to be a
