Page 44 of What Remains

“Why are you still here?” John tried to squelch the irritation in his tone and failed, miserably. He didn’t know whether toclasp her in his arms or give her a good shaking. “I told you to getout.”

“Last I checked, you’re not my mother.” Her light swung from John to Driver and then back again. “What took you so long? Did you get through to Mac?”

Driver started to reply, but John cut him off. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s?—”

The rock beneath his feet gave a sudden, sharp jolt. The sensation was like being on a subway stopped so abruptly that people fall into one another. Water swirled and churned up to their knees. The rocky floor twitched again and trembled.

“Do you feel that?” Roni’s voice was tight. “Was it another missile?”

“Can’t be.” Could it? Would Mac call in another drone strike? No, not now, there was no need. Flowers and Shahida would have made it out andtoldMac what was happening.

Another spastic jerk as the earth flinched—and did not stop. The tunnel rumbled and the rock under their feet trembled like a cornered animal wounded too badly to escape.

We’re going to die in here.“Go!” he shouted as rocky debris and rubble jumped from the sides, catapulting into the murky rush of water swirling and tugging and snatching at their feet, their legs, trying to upend and pull them back the way they’d come. Clasping Roni’s left arm, he hauled her around and gave her a push. “Move!”

Then, behind them, where men had hammered and drilled and tortured the earth—there came a deep, guttural rumble.

And then, a roar.

“Run!” John bellowed.“Run!”

11

Roni let go of a shriek. “John!”

“Come on, comeon!” Hauling her to his chest, he tried shielding her as the torrent came for them, advancing in an icy rush. Water was gushing over rock walls that squealed and screamed and fractured with bony cracks right and left. The torrent hammered the rock floor and John knew that the flow wouldn’t stop, not until the amount of water coming in from the neighboring aqueduct equaled that going out.

Because water is a force of nature and nature abhors a vacuum.

“Listen to me!” Clipping his light to his vest, he bawled into Roni’s ear as bone-chilling water swirled around their thighs and grabbed at their legs. His feet were already numb. “We’re on a slope in the old aqueduct but once we get out of here and back to where we saw the kids, it levels out. But we have to stay above the water! The current’s too strong; we’ll get tripped up and then—” He didn’t have to finish that thought. Get tripped up and swept back downhill, and that would be the end. But climbing would be hard. Water this cold would drain them of their strength much faster.

“I understand, but how?” Her face was contorted in a rictus of terror. “What if the water fills up the tunnel?”

“It won’t! Worthy’s right.” Panting, Driver searched the wall, scouring the rock right and left with his flashlight. “There’s a lot of water, but all we have to do is stay above it.”

“Oh, is that all?” Roni’s voice was tight with barely controlled hysteria.

“Take it easy. Here.” Driver sloshed to where Roni had perched to wait for them. “All we have to do is what you did. Stay above the water and we’ll be fine.”

“It’s one little shelf.” Roni couldn’t keep the despair from her voice. “We won’t all fit. The water’s only going to keep rising.”

“It can’t. The water will flow where there’s the least resistance and that’s back the way we came. Besides, we’re not staying to find out. The rock’s got a lot of divots here where the guys who used the old wells to get down here and keep the aqueduct clear. There are shelves all along here. Come on.” Clipping his flashlight to his vest, Driver butted the toe of his right boot into a vertical cut and heaved. Water sheeted from his waist and legs. Reaching with his left hand, Driver snagged a rocky spur and pulled himself up another half foot. “Follow me, come on!”

“Go. Driver’s right.” He remembered what Flowers had said just, what? An hour and change ago? “We just stay above the flow, so we don’t get tripped up.” He didn’t want to think about what might happen if one of them did. Fall back into the water and while a person probably wouldn’t drown, the current might pull him further back into the tunnels they’d just left. Even now, water swirled and tugged around his thighs. “I’m right behind you, honey.”

“Youbetterbe.” Roni’s tone was fierce, the cords taut in her neck. Later, John would think that if this had been a movie, the director would’ve cued the heroine to knot the hero’s shirt in herfists and pull him into a desperate kiss. But this was reality, and Roni only jabbed a finger into his chest. “Rightbehind me!”

Don’t worry about that.Hauling up his right leg was like pulling against concrete. Water sheeted over stone as he butted the toe of his boot into the cut Roni had just used. Grunting, he strained against the suck and the pull of the current. The water gave, though grudgingly. His muscles screamed with effort, but then he was moving, above the water level now, monkeying up the wall in what felt like slow motion. The water’s roar was relentless, a bellow. Waves hammered and broke against stone, sending up arcing jets.

What if Roni’s right?Wedging the toe of his left boot into the rock, he stretched to the right, grappling for a handhold. There was a bark of pain as jagged rock sliced his palm, but he muscled that aside and kept moving. As a kid he’d been to an indoor wall, the kind where they tied a couple ropes around your waist so if and when you slipped, you didn’t break your neck. One of the instructors, a younger guy with ropes of muscle in his arms and thighs as big around as tree trunks, said he should always maintain three points of contact.Whatever combination works. You forget that just once and you’re not roped?

“Kiss your ass good-bye,” he muttered now.What if the water just keeps rising?No, that wouldn’t happen, would it? Water would keep flowing downhill and whatever flowed alongside would peter out as the levels reached steady?—

The thought dropped out as something let out a high-pitched, grinding squeal followed by a sudden, loud, brittlecrack. The sound was like that of a dried branch broken over a knee. He snatched a look over a shoulder in time to see the wall on the opposite side of their tunnel and about fifty feet from where they’d just exited split in two. Chunks of rotten, pitted rock hurtled through the air. Turning aside, he cringed, turtling his neck into hunched shoulders, while his hands clawed anddug in and held on. Something whizzed past his left ear and smashed stone while the largest rocks plunged down, smacking the water and sending up watery coronets that sheeted over his body and doused him head to toe.

Close.Shaking his head to clear water from his eyes, he blinked then froze a moment at a new sound: a liquid fizz. Turning, he saw that where the rock had given way, a new watery jet spewed. It was like something from a movie about a submarine that’s gone below crush depth. First, the bolts went and then water blasted through cracks and chinks and seams strained to the breaking point from the pressure.

That’s what is happening here.Limestone was porous, brittle, and there’d been just enough quaking and shaking for the stone to shift and cracks to widen as the walls buckled under the relentless pressure.But maybe that break’s enough to relieve the?—

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