Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [60]
Guided only by Wizard’s incomplete sketch of the Refuge, they had guessed—correctly—that their aqueduct’s tunnel led to the same place as the fortress’s main ascending tunnel.
West ran to the top of his tunnel, peered out, saw his lifesaving team-mates on the other side of the lava-filled chamber—saw Lily and Zoe safely in their midst.
He would have yelled his thanks, but he arrived there just in time to see the spreading body of mud reach his tunnel’s raised entrance and swallow the corpses of the four CIEF men as it went by.
The molten mud just seared right through their bodies, liquefying them in an instant, before oozing over them, absorbing them into its mass.
It was the same on the other side of the chamber—the creeping body of mud had just flowed across the entrance to Pooh Bear’s little tunnel and was now heading quickly towards the main doorway of the domed chamber.
The effect was simple.
West was now cut off from both his comrades on the far side of the chamber and from the main entrance.
And the level of the flowing mud river was rising.
Any second now, it would rise up over the lips of the two arched aqueduct tunnels . . . and flow down them!
From the look on his face, Pooh Bear had seen this, too.
‘Pooh Bear! Get out of here!’ West called.
‘What about you!’ Pooh yelled back.
West nodded back down his aqueduct tunnel. ‘No other option! I have to go this way!’
‘Jack!’ Wizard called.
‘What!’
‘Judah used a tunnel-boring vehicle to drill through the old filled-in excavation tunnel! They must be planning to take the Pieces out that way! Check your sketch! You may still be able to get a look at the Pieces! All may not be lost!’
‘I’ll do my best!’ West nodded at the expanding mud pool. ‘Now get out of here! Call Sky Monster! Get to the Halicarnassus! I’ll catch up somehow!’
And with that, West’s team split, went their separate ways, disappearing into the two arched tunnels on either side of the domed chamber—the chamber whose perfectly round floor was now little more than a lake of stinking dark mud, a lake that surrounded a raised island containing the only existing remains of two Ancient Wonders, now lying discarded and broken on their sides.
West bolted down his aqueduct tunnel as fast as his legs could carry him. It was long and tight and dead-straight.
In the main tunnel of the fortress, Marshall Judah and his two teams were also hustling, pushing their six-wheeled rollers—bearing the two Pieces of the Capstone—down the slope.
They rushed through the many-pillared hall of the fortress before they emerged in the chasm and raced down the guttered rampway that stretched down from the front of the Refuge.
While in the left-hand aqueduct tunnel, Pooh Bear, Big Ears, Stretch, Wizard, Zoe and Lily also rushed headlong through their own tight dark passageway.
All three groups ran for good reason—for in the domed chamber high behind them, the radially-expanding mud lake finally reached the edge of the round room and began to rise up and over the lips of the three tunnels. . .
. . . at which point it flooded rapidly down each of them!
Three surging fingers of mud roared down the three sloping tunnels.
Since they were tight and small, the two rivers of mud flowing down the aqueduct tunnels moved faster than the one flowing down the wider main tunnel.
As he ran, West turned to see the boiling hot liquid pouring down the tunnel behind him. It moved powerfully, relentlessly, as if it had a will of its own, a will bent on destroying any living thing in its path.
Then, abruptly, West burst out into open space—and found himself standing on the high aqueduct bridge that spanned the right-hand arm of the Y-junction.
The bridge was very high—at least 200 feet—long, and very narrow, barely wide enough for one person to stand on. For it was not made for human crossing. Its surface wasn’t even flat; rather, it contained a sunken 2-foot-wide channel for mud to flow across.
‘Oh man. . . ’ he breathed.
He stepped out onto the high aqueduct bridge, and suddenly saw