Captives

NINETY-ONE

The stench was almost unbearable in the tunnels but Scott pressed on, wading through filthy water that lapped as high as his knees. The walls on either side of him were crumbling, pieces of rotten stone falling away as he touched them. Occasionally his hand encountered patches of the green slime that coated the subterranean passages like putrid mucus. It was like walking through the gangrenous veins of some sleeping giant, paddling in stagnant blood.

Scott realised that the sewer tunnels were so full because of the rain that was still falling. The knowledge hardly made his journey any more palatable, all the same. He would stop every few hundred yards to catch his breath and try to get his bearings. The tunnels usually ran straight, but when he reached the junction of two he had to be sure he was travelling in the right direction; otherwise he would merely double back on himself and end up wandering these cavernous halls until he collapsed.

There was one such junction up ahead.

Scott leant against a wall, feeling the slippery slime soaking through his overall. He ignored the cold and pointed the beam ahead. It cut through the tenebrous blackness, picking out something that glinted dully in the luminosity.

About fifty yards ahead there was a grille, the steel not yet rusted and crumbling like most of the metalwork down there. It must have been recently fitted, he assumed. Behind the grille the tunnel was much narrower. At present Scott could walk without needing to stoop; if he'd been able to get past the grille he would have been forced to crawl, such was the narrowness of the outlet beyond.

He moved off to his right, grunting as he felt a renewed stab of pain inside his head.

He tried to quicken his pace, but the water rushing around his knees prevented that. He fought his way on through the reeking flow.

Again he paused, sucking in deep lungfuls of the vile air, coughing at its rankness. The spasm set off a dull and persistent ache in his skull. He closed his eyes for a moment, touching one hand tentatively to his bandaged head.

When he brought his hand away he noticed, with horror, that there was blood on his fingers.

'Oh God,' he whispered, the sound amplified by the confines of the tunnel.

He must have opened up the wound when he fell from the laundry chute, he guessed. He'd have to be careful to keep it clean. If any of the dirt down in the sewer got into it, God alone knew what would happen.

Scott pushed on, reaching another tunnel junction.

Left, right or straight on?

He shone the torch first one way, then the other.

The right hand tunnel was blocked about twenty feet on by a new stone wall.

He chose to go straight on, trying to get some kind of mental picture of where he was. He guessed he was below D Wing by now. He couldn't be that far from the wall, surely? It felt as if he'd been walking for hours. His body was quivering from the cold and the pain inside his skull was getting worse.

Perhaps it was the cold breeze blowing into his face which…

The realisation hit him like a thunderbolt.

Cold breeze blowing into his face.

The breeze had to be coming from up ahead.

He'd passed beneath many outlets above, but had felt no cold air coming through them because of the depth of the tunnels. But now the wind was blowing into him. He must be heading in the right direction. He pushed on, his throat dry, his head throbbing but the thought of escape now giving him added energy.

Escape.

It had a beautiful ring to it.

He even managed a smile.

Ahead of him there was a loud splash.

Then another.

Something had dropped into the water.

Scott shone the torch around and it picked out two pinpricks of yellow light.

Eyes.

Staring back at him.

There was another splash, closer this time.

He felt something nudge his leg.

There were rats in the water.

The knowledge brought with it a stark and quite irrational terror that he found difficult to shake off. He moved forward more slowly now.

Close by him a furry shape scuttled along the low ledge that ran alongside the flowing effluent.

Scott moved away, his hand sliding into more of the noxious slime that coated the walls.

He moved as quickly as he could, the cold breeze now strong in his face.

Ahead, less than twenty feet away, he saw the grille.

Beyond it he could smell grass.

He tried to run, to reach the barrier more quickly, gripping it with both hands when he finally did. He could see through, out into the darkness of the night. He could see trees swaying, silhouetted against the swollen clouds that filled the sky. The stream of filth was now hardly over his boot tops. He tugged at the grille.

It remained firmly in place.

He tried again.

Still no luck. It was stuck fast, secured by six heavy screws which fixed it to the wall.

Scott pulled the knife from his belt and placed the blunt edge in one of the grooves on the screw-head. He turned it, putting all his strength into it, his teeth clenched.

He closed his eyes as he felt that all-too-familiar pain inside his skull.

The screw began to come free.

He turned it, twisting it the last quarter of an inch with his fingers. He dropped it into the water and set about the second one. Then the third.

Despite the cold wind he could feel the perspiration on his face as he worked to remove the screws.

The last one came free and he tugged the grille away from the wall, hardly feeling the pain as the steel cut into the palm of his hand. He tossed it aside and blundered out into the fresh air, almost slipping on the muddy ground. He breathed in the air. Clean air. Untainted by the stench of captivity.

The air that came with freedom.

He wondered if revenge would smell the same.

A brief image of Plummer flashed into his mind.

Then Carol.

He set off across the open ground towards the trees. Beyond it there was a road.

He would be well away before first light.

Free.

He ignored the pain in his head as best he could, but as he ran across the muddy ground a thought occurred to him.

The effects of the morphine were beginning to wear off.

And when it did, the pain would return.

Pain unlike anything he'd ever felt before.

Scott looked back over his shoulder, as if fearing he was being followed.

The prison seemed to be a part of the night itself, the huge walls apparently hewn from the solid blackness.

He ran on.

He knew what he must do now.