The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [72]
Five feet from Henry and Barandus, who stood at either side of the handholds, Laurel heard the roar and Raul’s shout. She looked behind at a rush of water coming toward her and the barreling shape of Raul, his mouth wide open.
Barandus turned and was stretching a hand toward her when the water hit.
She leaped for the handholds, missing by inches, her legs suddenly nowhere. Water rammed her back, knocking the wind from her lungs. She screamed and saw Henry’s light flash past a fraction of a second before something large and hard, probably a piece of flotsam, slammed into her back. She jerked and had drawn a big gulp of water when her harness tightened like a leash, halting her forward rush. Then an irresistible force pulled her head out of the water and smashed her against the rungs. No piece of flotsam, but Henry’s hand. Eyes shut, coughing and spluttering, Laurel frantically gripped the rusty bars until a massive paw slammed against her butt and hurled her upward, where other hands dragged her sideways.
She opened her eyes in a cavern, perhaps twenty feet in diameter, with a large round opening high up one wall. No ladder went up. They were trapped. She coughed, water dripping from her nose. Raul crawled out of the hole, followed by Barandus, who looked like a wild spirit with his long black hair plastered down the side of his face. Then Henry bolted behind Barandus and pushed him roughly aside.
“The pipes. Hang on to the pipes and climb!” Henry yelled.
Opposite the high opening, a dozen rusty pipes rose to the domed ceiling. Already, bundles of rags were taking positions and scaling the tubes, grabbing at the hoops holding them in place.
Instants later, with a deep whooshing sound, water exploded from the narrow passage they had just traveled and hit the opposite side of the cavern, climbing halfway up its wall to crash down in a flurry of foam. Then the water level started to climb. Eyes stinging and stomach heaving, Laurel reached upward, feeling strangely light until she felt Raul’s hand hauling on her safety harness. Then the roar ceased as swiftly as it had started, replaced by gurgling sounds as the water rose. They climbed even higher, the narrow beams of their LAD flashlights slashing across the black surface of the water below.
After a splash, a huge shape disappeared into the filthy water, which looked like a cauldron of rancid beef stew, to suddenly surface, grip the pipe, and tower above her. She turned to bury her face in Henry’s chest, and his wet ripeness and his voice snapped her out of her shock.
“W-what?”
“Did you swallow?” Henry asked.
Laurel nodded.
“You should induce vomiting to empty your stomach.” He showed the technique by sticking two grubby fingers down his throat. He dry-retched a few times until a yellowish gush belched out through his matted beard into the rising water. Laurel didn’t need to use her fingers. Between retches, she heard Barandus’s voice ring somewhere to her left. “The water is leveling off through the spill pipe. It won’t rise anymore.” And, after a pause, “It’s over. The level is stable. It should start to drop in a minute or two.”
Henry slapped a hand on the pipe. “That was close. The goddess of sewers must have taken pity on us.”
“Are you kidding?” Laurel croaked. “Goddess of sewers?”
“Right, Cloacina; she was an Etruscan goddess of fucking.”
“Gimme a break,” she moaned. “What has fucking got to do with sewers?”
“You really want to know?” The light dangling under Henry’s chin suddenly shifted to give him a definite sinister look.
“Roman logic could be twisted, but Henry is right,” Raul butted in right over her. “The Romans employed Cloacina as overseer of the Roman drainage system—a very important office.”
Laurel swallowed. True to character, Raul was an endless repository of scatological trivia. She reached for her Metapad and typed > We’re still alive.
Forty-five minutes after their narrow escape, they started to climb down, leaving behind the older, flat-sided, arch-topped tunnel when it connected with an intercepting sewer.