The War Apiary

Chapter 17 Jack

"Quick now!" Vernon called as Nelly and Jack tried to keep up with him. They had fled the scene of the blast and Vernon had taken them into the heart of the tier. To begin with, Nelly had argued the point of taking the lift but Vernon was adamant that taking the lift was a death sentence. People were in chaos about them, some were crying on the ground whilst others smashed glass windows that hadn't been impacted by the blast and stealing the items within. Jack followed in behind, his system in shock. His Uncle had most likely died from the explosion or fell to his death. Why had his Uncle been here and not in Virtuem Spie?

They passed Parkes where people had started to organize safety zones for the injured and those who needed help. They passed the main plaza and headed into the suburbs of the city. The streets had taken on beautiful houses that were modelled after pictures that had been recovered from permafrost in the north. They were houses from the nineteenth-century britian.   

"Not far now," they rounded a bend in the street and Vernon slowed to a stop in front of a manhole cover. It had already been removed by someone else no doubt knowing the use of it and escaping the doomed city. "The rats are abanding the sinking ship," Vernon said with a hint of sarcasm. There was a shift in the ground and water that had gathered in blocked gutters that lined the roofs of the houses spilt out as the whole city tilted to one side. The three of them steadied themselves.

"What's down there?" Nelly asked, the idea of rats running down holes that they were about to embark into didn't appeal to her, nor did it appeal to Jack.

Vernon had already begun to lower his feet into the manhole. "A very long spiral stairway right down to ground tier. We need to move quickly if we want to use it though." He said before dropping the rest of the way into the hole. 

"Take my hand," Jack said and held out his hand to Nelly. She took hold of it and lowered herself into the hole where Vernon helped her to the floor. Jack took one last glance about him. If his Uncle had survived, how was he going to escape?

"Come on!" Vernon called impatiently.

Jack took a breath of the fresh air before jumping down the manhole. 

Vernon had a torch in his hand and he told them to stick close to him, saying 'that people got lost down here all the time if they didn't have an experienced tour guide, but luckily for the both of you, you do'.

The tunnels were large enough to drive a small land barge in them, and it didn't take long before Jack lost all sense of direction down there as Vernon led them down different tunnels. He led them down one that ended in a room the size of a small sitting parlour and at the centre was the beginnings of a spiral staircase. Small cupboards lined the walls, some had bundles of rope while others had items covered in rotting cobwebs. "Don't get dizzy," Vernon said as he took one of the bundles of rope and started to tie one end around his waist, "and don't slip... or you will be pretty smashed up by the time you get to the bottom." He handed the rope to Nelly. "Tie it around your waist and likewise Jack." Nelly took the rope and tied a loop around her waist before giving it to jack who did the same. "Now if one of us slips, the other can catch..." He said with a smile, "well... something like that, or maybe we will all be a ball of tangled rope and splintered bone at the bottom."

A bone-rattling cracking sound ripped through the tunnels and shook the ground. "Time to go!" Vernon shouted and he disappeared, pulling the both of them down with him. They began to run down, around and around and around. Step after step. The light that Vernon carried shorn on the curved rusty coloured walls, with Vernon always just around the curvature of the spiral, so that Jack was walking in half shadows. Time passed and the sound of metal stressing and cracking constantly filled the air around them. It wasn't long before Jack noticed that the steps had begun to angle at ten degrees back, making each step shallower and at an angle to step onto. The temperature had also risen in the stairwell, and soon it became unbearably warm. Vernon suddenly stopped, causing Jack to smack into Nelly who in turn fell on Vernon. The tube that the spiral stairway was sitting in had buckled under the weight of the tier to one side as a straw would if you put pressure on it. The steps had slipped to be thirty degrees and the kink in the piller had made a gap of that the three of them had to crawl through. The metal was hot to the touch due to the energy being put into it to cause the buckling.

"Take care," Vernon said over the noises of metal stressing. "We need to move fast!" They slipped through the kink in the tube and the steps were back to being level. They continued down the spiral at a fast trot. Jacks mind was racing. After the bombing of Prata and Chelmsford, Paris was now getting the same treatment, why would anyone do that? In his thought processes, Jack lost his footing and stumbled down the few steps headfirst into Nelly who gave a scream. The two of them fell on Vernon and they spilt out into a small room. 

"That was close." Vernon got up and dusted himself off. They had reached the second tier and it wouldn't take too long to get to the ground.