Jude in Ireland by Julian Gough

Author:Julian Gough [Julian Gough]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781906964962
Publisher: Old Street Publishing
Published: 2011-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

32.

I fought free of the carpet, and surfaced, gasping, alongside the terrified camel. The wall of water was propelling us along the underground tunnel at astonishing speed, towards a pair of closed and sturdy metal doors. But, rather in the manner of a liquid Piston, the advancing water compressed the air ahead of it against the doors. The compressed air lifted them off their hinges long before the water itself arrived.

My ears sang as the air pressure collapsed. Then, as the wave began to approach the next set of metal doors, the pressure rose again…

My ears rang like bells after a couple of these pressure changes, and, tumbling in the turbulent front-waters of the advancing wave, I had trouble avoiding inhaling seawater, tangled as I was in my sheet, the strap of the heavy gun nearly pulling me under.

My chief concern, however, was to avoid the flailing hooves of the wild-eyed racing camel alongside me in the torrent, for if he were to tread me beneath the water I was a dead man.

I grasped the scruff of his neck. Taking a deep breath, I hauled myself aboard his great, stinking dun frame, up out of the stinking, roaring water. Though terrified, and bucking his mad head as we flew down the fluorescent corridor, his powerful legs seemed well able to keep him upright, high in the water and pointed in the right direction.

As I leaned forward to grasp his neck tighter, I felt a sharp stab in the thigh. I reached down and found a carpet tack caught in my sheet of Egyptian cotton. I pulled it loose, and fashioned it into a pin or clasp to hold my sheet about me as a kind of robe, freeing my hands to clutch his mane.

At length, the laws of fluid dynamics caused the flood to lose vigour, and the level and speed of it dropped to the point where the camel’s thrashing hooves on occasion clipped solid ground.

We passed an open side-corridor, which diverted some of the flow, reducing our speed again, and I seized my moment.

Digging my heels into his flanks, I gave a great ululating cry. Noble racing beast that he was, he pinned back his ears, stretched forward his proud neck and swam as though his life depended upon it. Under the circumstances, I thought this wise. Bursting free of the wall of water with a great clatter of cloven hooves, he gave a snorting, bellowing roar of exultation.

I clung to the ochre mane of the mighty animal as he found his racing stride and pulled smoothly away from the great tide of debris and water pursuing us down the immigrant tunnel. Fluorescent lights flashed brightly and died above us, then ahead of us, as electrical equipment exploded and sparked and died beneath the chasing water.

At last we were in darkness, as our hoof-beats echoed their own echoes. Automatic doors swung open ahead of us, as we powered toward the light at the end of the tunnel.

We burst into the great Cavern of the Black Unit.

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