“I wondered what changed your mind.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I still thinkthis is kind of stupid.”

It was stupid. If anyone caught themdown here there’d be hell to pay one way or another.

“What do you suppose this tunnel’s foranyway?” She was looking back toward the field house. A few yardsbeyond the ladder there were some steps leading down and a tangleof pipes and valves near the floor.

“Steam tunnel.” He examined the map on thetwo sides of the box, trying to determine which end was thebeginning. “Probably runs from the power plant to Juggers and thefield house. I think all the electric, water, phone and networkinglines run through tunnels like these, along with heat in the formof steam through these big pipes. Hence the term ‘steamtunnel’.” He looked toward the steps for a moment and thenturned and looked back the other way. He wondered if that distantlight was coming from the power plant. “I don’t really know forcertain, though. I tried to look it up online and couldn’t findanything about Briar Hills.”

“I’m sure the university doesn’t really wantto advertise its tunnels. I doubt if they’d be too thrilled to findus down here.”

Albert nodded. “Yeah. These things aredangerous. I didn’t find anything about Briar Hills, but I foundsome information on other steam tunnels. Lots of campuses use them.The one thing they all seem to have in common is that they all haveconfined spaces and extremely hot temperatures. There’s a very realthreat of heat stroke and severe burns from the machinery downhere.”

Brandy was looking around nervously now.“Will we be in trouble if somebody catches us?”

“Probably.”

“You could’ve told me about thisbefore we came down here.”

“Would it have changed your mind?”

“Yes.” But she realized even as she repliedthat it probably wouldn’t have. In fact, it probably would havemade the adventure even more appealing. Although sheprobably would have dressed differently.

“I’m sorry.” Albert looked back down at themap, turning it this way and that, trying to read it. “Hopefullythis will keep us away from all the really dangerous areas.” IfI can figure out how to read it, he thought. It was made upentirely of straight lines. A single line stretched around thecorner of the box, making sudden sharp turns as it went. Most ofthe time, another line continued forward a short distance from eachturn and then stopped, suggesting that the tunnel went on ahead,but was of no importance. Along the way, other lines jutted off themain path and stopped, showing other tunnels that should be passedby. Aside from this network of straight lines, there were nomarkings on the map. There was no start, no finish, not even an Xmarks the spot. “It doesn’t say which way’s up,” he observed, “butI figure if we go the wrong way we won’t get far before the mapstops making sense.”

Brandy nodded. She couldn’t stop thinkingabout what might happen if somebody caught them down here. How muchtrouble would they be in? What would her parents say?

“Let’s try this way.” He nodded toward thepower plant and then handed her the spray paint can. “That’s formarking the walls as we go. It’ll help us find our way back out ifwe get lost.”

“Good idea.” Brandy took the can and shookit.

“Sorry. I’d carry it, but the map’s a littleawkward.”

“I understand.”

They began to walk east through the tunnel,away from the field house. Above them, dim light glowed where thedrainage grates were located, a reminder that the world was only afew feet overhead and not lost forever. Albert’s eyes kept liftingto these. From up there, the glow of their flashlights must bevisible. He hoped nobody noticed them.

“There should be a left right up here.”

The light did not penetrate far in the darktunnels, but the words were barely out of his mouth when he saw thepassage appear up ahead. “So far so good.”

“Great.” Brandy removed the lid from thespray paint can and shook it.

“Make it subtle. No sense advertising to themaintenance crews that we were here.”

She marked the wall with a soft curvingline, a sort of subtle arrow indicating the turn. “How far do youthink it is?”

“Hard to say. The map’s not really wellscaled.” He shined his flashlight farther up the tunnel toward thepower plant and caught sight of an iron gate blocking access to apassage leading to the right. A chain and padlock prevented anyonefrom passing. He assumed that all access to any of the campusbuildings would be similarly barricaded. He was a little surprisedthat they’d gained entry so easily.

The next tunnel sloped slightly downhill.The large pipes continued on along the previous tunnel, but some ofthe cables and smaller pipes had turned with them. He wished heknew more about these tunnels. He hated not knowing where he wasgoing.

About forty feet ahead, Albert spied acrevice in the left wall. As they approached it, he realized thatthere was a square hole in this crevice and a steel ladder to carrythem down. He peered into the hole and saw that the tunnel belowran at an odd angle to the one they were currently in and matchedexactly with the one the map described, which was good becauseabout four yards in front of him was another iron gate bound withchains and a padlock.

“Looks like we go down,” he said, shininghis light into the darkness below.

“You sure?” Brandy was gazing down into thehole. Dusty white cobwebs crisscrossed the narrow passage. Shewatched with disgust as a particularly fat spider scurried beneathone of the ladder rungs.

“I’m not really sure about anything, to beperfectly honest.”

Chapter 7

The tunnels beneath Briar Hills weren’t likethe sewers on television. Although he knew that Briar Hills in noway required the vast subterranean systems that New York Citywarranted, he nonetheless had pictured the wide, gloomy corridorswith rounded ceilings that were so often depicted on television.What he found instead were confined, concrete passageways, many ofthem too short to allow them to walk without stooping. Shortlyafter their descent from the second passage, they were forced tocontinue on hands and knees beneath massive bundles of cables.

There was water everywhere. A perpetualdampness permeated the concrete around them, so that soon the kneesof their jeans were soaked through. Shallow pools of standing waterstretched along the floor in many of the tunnels, and the hollowecho of dripping water was as common as the shadows.

But nothing down here was constant, not eventhe sounds. At times there was a strumming of machinery echoingaround them and at other times the tunnels were silent as tombs.Several times they were startled by strange noises they knew wasthe natural gurgling of water through some machine or some otherharmless thing, perhaps even the simple flushing of a toiletsomewhere above them, but which sounded like the gargling moans ofsomething unearthly in the shadows. And several times there wereskittering, scuffling noises that very likely did belong tosomething alive and hungry (but almost certainly small andharmless).

At one point they stepped out into a large,open tunnel with an enormous pipe running along the center of thefloor. Here the machinery was the loudest and the temperature thehottest. But there were lights in this tunnel, and the floor wasdry for a change. It was a welcome passage while they traveled it,but too soon the map told them to exit into a passage on the rightand they found themselves in another damp corridor that took themto another rusty ladder that waited to take them deeper into thedarkness.

From here, the floors became muddier, thewalls slimier, and soon it became apparent to Albert that they wereno longer in the university steam tunnels. It had been some timesince they saw or heard any kind of machinery and the overall feelof the tunnels was different now. They found long stretches ofround, concrete passages with few intersections. A few times theyheard cars passing somewhere overhead and once they heard voicesdrifting from drainage grates in an adjoining tunnel, but for themost part they felt completely isolated from the world abovethem.