Part 78 (1/2)
A protruding bolts tears the skin of her knuckles, and now she can hear her pursuer behind her.
Nelly shouts something to her, but Jackie can't make out the words.
The voice makes panic bubble up inside her and the hand holding the stick is sweating.
She trips over a brick, loses her balance and starts to fall. She throws her arm out, puts her hand through some thick spiders' webs and hits the wall hard. Her back shrieks with pain, cutting through her like a javelin with the sudden contortion, and she can taste blood in her mouth.
A crash from the tunnel behind her makes her ears ring. It sounded like the cupboard full of gla.s.s objects falling over. She hears a load of gla.s.s break, shattering and scattering across the floor.
Jackie wipes her sweaty hand on her legs, takes a firm grip of the stick and carries on as fast as she can. The fingertips of her right hand have gone numb from the rough brick wall.
She can hear footsteps behind her much faster than her own.
Jackie turns into a side-pa.s.sage in panic.
Her heart is pounding.
This isn't going to work, she thinks. Nelly knows her way round these tunnels, this is her territory.
Jackie forces herself to go on. The pa.s.sageway is narrower than the last one. She stumbles over some old fabric and feels something catch round her foot and drag along behind her.
'Jackie?' Nelly shouts. 'Jackie!'
She tries not to cough, feels herself pa.s.s a hole in the wall fairly close to the roof, and hears air streaming through it as something grabs at her clothes. It's holding on to her blouse, pulling her backwards. She flails her arms in panic, and hears the fabric tear. She's stuck, and is trying to pull free when she hears Nelly once more.
She must have followed her into the side-pa.s.sage.
Jackie pulls at her blouse and turns round, puts her hand under her left arm and feels a thick pipe. She walked into a pipe that's somehow hanging from the roof, it's got caught in her clothes and she has to back up several metres to free herself.
Nelly is close now, mortar is crunching under her boots and her clothes rustle as she moves.
Breathing through her nose, Jackie carries on along the pa.s.sageway, then she hears Nelly let out a whimper she too has walked into the dangling pipe.
A metallic clang echoes off the walls.
Jackie hurries on and emerges into a large room with a slower echo.
There's a smell of stagnant water in the air, like an old aquarium. Jackie keeps moving, and almost immediately b.u.mps into something and drops her stick.
She's breathing far too quickly, she bends over and feels a large trough filled with dusty soil, twigs and pieces of bark. The pain in her back almost makes her topple forwards, but she goes on searching beside the trough, feeling tentatively across old bottles, spiders' webs and twigs.
She hears Nelly call out to her, she's nearer again.
Jackie gives up looking for the stick, she'll have to go on without it. With her arms outstretched she feels her way past a series of alcoves with brick walls dividing them.
She stops in front of a large object that's blocking the whole room. It's a long, steel washbasin. She feels along it to one end, and has just made her way round it when she hears Nelly's footsteps behind her.
Jackie clicks her tongue loudly, the way she has learned to. The room around her reflects the sound as vague echoes that her brain turns into a three-dimensional map. She clicks again, but is far too scared for it to work well; she doesn't have time to listen properly, can't get any real sense of the room.
Panting for breath, she moves on. Her whole body is shaking and she doesn't know how to stop it. She turns her head and clicks again, and suddenly becomes aware of an opening off to her left.
Jackie reaches the wall with her hands, follows it until she finds the opening, and once again feels the coolness of air from outside.
It's a narrow pa.s.sageway, its floor covered with loose grit and what smells like the charred remains of wood and plastic. One foot treads straight through a windowpane lying on the ground, and it shatters with a loud crash. She knows she's cut her foot, but stumbles on across the floor. As she reaches out to the wall her fingers dislodge crumbs of dry mortar, and then she hears Nelly stand on the gla.s.s.
She's right behind her.
Jackie breaks into a run, with one hand against the wall and the other stretched out in front of her. She runs into a wooden trestle and falls over it, lands on her left shoulder and groans with pain. She tries to crawl but something hits the floor right beside her. It sounds like a plastic pipe, or a broom-handle.
Jackie crawls forward and hits her head on the wall. She manages to get up onto her feet again, stumbles across some fallen bricks, and leans against the wall.
135.
Jackie isn't entirely sure of the direction of the pa.s.sageway. She turns and follows the wall backwards for a metre or so, listens, but can no longer hear Nelly. Her own breathing is so laboured that she has to hold one hand over her mouth in an effort to stay quiet.
Something rustles in front of her, down on the floor, moving slowly.
It's only a rat.
Jackie stands completely still, breathing through her nose. She has no idea how to find her way out. Terror is preventing her from thinking, she's too stressed to be able to interpret her surroundings correctly.
A short distance away from her something creaks. It sounds like a heavy door, or even an old mangle. She desperately wants to hide, curl up on the floor with her arms over her head, but she forces herself to go on.
Her feet crunch on stones, charred pieces of wood and drifts of sand and grit. The walls have collapsed in places, completely blocking the corridor, and she has to clamber over the heaps. Stones roll down the slope behind her, and fragments of gla.s.s break into smaller pieces.
Jackie hears air rus.h.i.+ng through a small gap higher up, and keeps crawling, leaning on her hands. A broken plank sc.r.a.pes her thigh and her feet slide across bricks and mortar.
There's a rustling sound behind her and she climbs faster until she hits her head on the roof. She can feel the breeze on her face, but can't locate the opening. She fumbles desperately in front of her with her hands, trying to push through stones tangled in metal wire, sweeping aside loose mortar, and then she finds the narrow gap. Jackie puts her fingers through a piece of chicken-wire and pulls. She manages to loosen a large stone, digs the hole a bit larger, and cuts her palm. She shuffles forward and tries to crawl through. Groaning, she manages to push one arm and her head through, stones tumble away on the other side of the hole and she forces her way through, kicking with her legs and panicking that she's going to get stuck.
Jackie fumbles in front of her with her hand, trying to get a grip on anything to help her pull herself through the hole. She can't hear Nelly behind her, has no idea if she's scrambling up the heap of rumble with her knife raised.
Jackie feels a piece of tape with her hand and starts to pull herself through as she pushes as hard as she can with her legs. Chicken-wire and stones scratch her back, but she makes it out. Taking a load of grit with her, she shuffles down the other side, catches her foot on the edge of the hole, pulls, then pushes her foot back, angles it differently and finally it comes loose.
Jackie slides down the heap of rubble and reaches a floor. Without having any idea of where she is, she walks forward with her hands outstretched until she finds a wall, and begins to follow that instead.
The bricks are colder here, and she realises she must be getting closer to a way out. She turns a corner and finds herself in a larger room. The ceiling is much higher here, noises rise and spread out, like a gentle sea.
Jackie stops and rests for a moment, trying to catch her breath. She leans forward on her knees, her whole body shaking with exhaustion and shock.
She has to go on, she thinks. Has to find a way out.
With bleeding fingers she feels along the wall with her hand, then hears a metal door open with a creak some way off to the right.