They opened five cases altogether, but they were all the same. Ryan couldn't stop laughing at the look on J.B.'s face. There they were, all in rows, all in a thin coat of grease to protect them through eternity and beyond.

Something like three hundred thousand black plastic zippers.

Ryan whistled softly between his teeth, considering all the options, failing to find one that looked even remotely worth trying.

The right fork of the corridor had finished in a blank dead end only fifty yards or so from the sliding entrance to the stores. Retracing their steps, they rounded the first bend to the left and found themselves faced with a dark section of the passage completely blocked by a massive earthslide.

That seemed to limit which direction they could go. The section of the stores where they'd found the fur coats led only to the totally wrecked sec door; Ryan knew they didn't have enough explosives to shift it. There was no other way out, and they could go neither forward or back.

It didn't look good.

"Figure there's enough stuff to eat an' drink to keep us alive for a week. Mebbe ten to twelve days if we're real careful," J.B. said.

"If we get through the slip, we should be somewheres round the place where the corridor passes the broken door. Should loop around," Ryan said.

"That looks like it's about a mile wide," Finn grunted, spitting in the dust.

Jak suddenly dropped to his hands and knees, staring intently at the floor where Finnegan's saliva had landed.

The others looked at him, puzzled, until Ryan also noticed what the boy had spotted.

"Fireblast! Look. Footprints. Those muties have been along here. Means there's some way in or out."

"And the air's fresh," Lori exclaimed, clapping her hands in delight.

"Let me," Jak said, not waiting for a reply as he scampered up the shadowed pile of gray-orange dirt and picked his way through the tumbled heaps of concrete and twisted steel. His newly acquired sectioned spear rattled on the stones as he went. When he reached the top, it was hard to see him, but his snow-white hair flared like a magnesium beacon.

"Yeah. Like other. Narrow, but dark. Can't see through." His voice was muted and they watched him disappear.

"Jak!" Ryan shouted. "Come back. We'll all go if'n it's safe."

The boy reappeared, his red eyes seeming to glow like rubies. "Yeah. Be tight for some." He stared pointedly at Finnegan. "But we can do it. Goes up at an angle. Seems to be another tunnel going off a few yards up here."

Ryan looked at J.B., seeing from his expression that he was thinking the same thing. "That mutie..."

"Yeah, Ryan. Small bastard. Dirt on his clothes. Spear like that... useful in a tunnel."

"You reckon they're up there?"

J.B. nodded. "Could be. Waiting for us."

"One way to find out."

The Armorer grinned, thin-lipped. "Fucking right, Ryan. Fucking right."

It was the beginning of one of the worst experiences in Ryan Cawdor's entire life.

At their highest the tunnels didn't reach five feet, and in places the group found it necessary to wriggle on their bellies. Mostly the tunnels were dry and dusty. But some of them were wet, with slimy mud that got all over everyone, making it hard to get any purchase on the rough floors with fingers and toes.

Most of the way, the tunnels were totally dark. But occasionally the black gave way to a dull gray light, which would fade away again as the tunnel dipped or straightened.

By mutual agreement, Jak went first, his lithe, skinny body folding easily around the sharp bends and inclines. Lori followed, with Finn struggling along third. Doc Tanner came fourth, his stovepipe hat cradled in his arms as he crouched and ducked like a rheumatic stork. J.B. was fifth, his Tekna knife in his right hand. Krysty was next, and Ryan brought up the rear. As the tallest of the party, he found the tunnels most difficult. He also got everyone else's dirt and mud pushed back in his face.

The only sound was panting and scrabbling, with an occasional curse or groan of discomfort.

It was agreed that Jak would stop every four minutes and that everyone would remain silent and still while Krysty listened for any warning of the muties.

At the third stop, at a point where the tunnel widened to about eight feet, and three other tunnels opened off it, they discussed strategy. Jak was for going on, picking every tunnel that seemed to go upward, on the assumption that eventually they'd emerge into the open air. Lori had become terrified, face glistening with sweat, voice high and thin as she chattered to Doc, begging him to take her back.

"I fear that we are in the land of no return, my dearest dove," he said gently, patting her on the arm in the way that one would try to gentle a frightened foal. "It is ever onward and upward for us all."

"Don't like dark, Theo, lover," she said.

"Get her to keep her voice down, Doc," Ryan warned. "If there's muties down here, they'll just have to sit quiet and tight and pick us off. Must keep as quiet as we can."

"Watch out for boobies, Whitey," J.B. urged the albino. "Sharp sticks, trailing wires, a deadfall in the tunnel. Anything like that."

"How come you know so much 'bout tunnels?" the boy asked.

"Read a book once. Found it in a ruined house, somewheres round North Platte, up in 'braska. Remember it, Ryan?"

It rang a distant bell for Ryan. "Sure. Tunnels in the Viet wars. You loaned it to me."

"And you lost it, you son of a bitch."

"Yeah, I remember that, too."

J.B. turned back to whisper to Jak. "There were tunnels in the Viet fighting. Place called Cu Chi. Lotsa little men being chased by bigger men. Naked guy with a bamboo spear killing a soldier with a dozen blasters strung all over him."

"Guess blasters no use in tunnels, huh?"

J.B. sniffed, wiping the sweat from his forehead. Despite the intensely cold clamminess in the tunnels, all of them were perspiring.

"Read of one. Smith an' Wesson .44 Magnum. Six-shot, cylinder load. Weighed in around two pounds. Exposed hammer on it. Fired fifteen-pellet round, starred like a shotgun. But they cut out most of the noise and the flash."

"Sounds good t'me," Jak said, smiling. "Could do with one of them here, case we run into muties."

"Keep that spear handy, son," Ryan warned.

"He's right," Krysty added. "Got me a feeling that we'll have some company real soon."

They moved on.

At one point the tunnel dipped steeply and then came up almost vertically so that Finnegan got stuck and had to be pulled by Lori and pushed from behind by a panting Doc Tanner.

When he was free, he hissed back to Ryan that they ought to abandon their bulky cold-weather coats. "Be best, after a fucking tight spot like that. Can't do that again, Ryan."

Despite Finnegan's almost limitless courage, Ryan heard the thin note of frayed panic that haunted the fat man's voice. Being in this twining, bending maze of darkness was like living one's worst nightmares. The walls seemed to close in, and the clumps of dirt that fell constantly from the roof kept the chilling fear of a cave-in fresh in one's mind.

"Keep the coats as long as we can. When we get out, we'll need them, Finn."

"Sure, Ryan. Whenwe get out. Or maybe it's if we fucking get out."

"We'll get out, Finn. Air's tasting sweeter, and the light's not so bad."

A hundred feet farther along, they came to a dead halt. The tunnel had sloped down again, getting wetter and wetter, until they were crawling on hands and knees through clinging mud. Krysty whispered to Ryan that she thought she could hear the sound of running water.

"If it rains up top, then it's coming this way," he whispered back.