Descent by Robert Kirkman & Jay Bonansinga

Author:Robert Kirkman & Jay Bonansinga [Kirkman, Robert & Bonansinga, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250067906
Amazon: 1250067901
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Published: 2015-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

It takes Bob and the others several precious seconds to find a suitable spot in the tunnel ceiling through which to punch their hole. These are seconds that they would have preferred not to waste—they have no idea how Lilly is faring up there in the mob of walkers, whether she has made it to the chapel—but at the moment they need to be proactive and nobody has a better idea. In a series of hasty extrapolations, consultations with Reese, and glances at the survey map, Bob chooses a spot four-hundred-plus feet back down the tunnel, around a bend, and under a convoluted phalanx of stalactites—about the length of a football field between this spot and the heart of the swarm—in order to give them the optimum amount of room but still be close enough to get the horde’s attention.

They use the square-edged spade that Matthew brought along, and Speed—probably the strongest of all of them—does the honors. The former defensive end weighs a hundred and ninety-five pounds, and Matthew and Ben have to get down on their hands and knees, elbow to elbow, directly underneath the spot, in order to give Speed something to stand on. They work quickly, communicating with very few words—Bob doing most of the talking—as Speed climbs onto their backs and begins to cut a divot in the ceiling with the shovel, his AR-15 dangling on a shoulder strap.

“How do we know there ain’t pavement directly above us?” Ben wants to know, still on his hands and knees on the floor, his voice strained with effort, the weight of Speed’s clodhopper boots pressing between his shoulder blades. “How do you know it’ll break through?”

“I don’t,” Bob mumbles as he turns to David. “Look in the front flap of my backpack, see if that dental mirror we found at the drugstore is still in there.”

While all this is going on, the thumping sound of Speed slamming the blade into the roots overhead continues, a loud drumbeat, each impact sending a fresh load of dirt sifting down into the darkness. The hard Georgia clay is unyielding, but Speed puts his estimable shoulder and neck muscles into the job.

A few feet away, in the darkness, looking on nervously, Reese chews his fingernails.

An invisible stopwatch ticks in Bob’s brain as he waits for Speed to break through. A couple of minutes have elapsed now since Lilly was plunged into the herd, alone, exposed, fighting her way through the throngs. The sound of her gunfire has ceased. Good news if she made it to the chapel; very, very bad news if she ran out of ammo or got engulfed—and now Bob’s heart begins to race.

“Whoa!” Speed jerks back when a huge spadeful of dirt cascades onto the backs of Matthew and Ben. Daylight streams into the tunnel—a blazing yellow nimbus—diffused by all the dust. The walker stench is immediately evident as though somebody just opened a garbage can. “We’re through! We’re through!”

Bob steps closer. “Okay, now blast a few controlled bursts out the hole, not too many, don’t waste a lot of ammo, just enough to get their attention.

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