Jabberwock Jack Read Online Free PDF Page B

looking.
    Believe it or not, he found a trail. It was no trail that my brother or I could see. Like I said, we're not forest rangers or trackers, but we can notice a cue or two when pursuing monsters, usually enough to tell which way they went in the past few hours. Somehow with his goggles, Dane claimed there was a trail leading off into a side tunnel.
    Szandor and I had short conference. Technically this was beyond the scope of what they hired us for. We had been hired to take the pair to where the armor had been. We had just done that. Did we want to go farther? We were already here and we didn't think the trail would travel too far from here. And who else was going to take the two down into the tunnels? Paulie? Meat? We were their best bet. We didn't want Dane and Abby coming down here on their own and getting killed. And maybe - just maybe - Szandor and I were curious where this might lead and what Dane might find. It ended up to be a foolish move, but we agreed to press on.
    The trail took us what I believed was east. These were tunnels that we hadn't yet mapped and compasses were notably bad in the labyrinth under New Avalon. We did pass a few points where we saw ladders that would probably bring us up to the surface - I noted these on our map for future reference. Then the nature of the tunnels changed. Rather than the well bored tunnels of the normal New Avalon system, these were roughly hewn. It was possible that these were support tunnels used to help create Avalon's proper tunnels, but I wasn't sure. This tunnel was wide and very rough cut. It also started descending a little sharply. The sound of dripping water was much louder in this darkness. I looked up and got an eye full of water. I almost felt like I needed an umbrella.
    "I think we're under the river," I said, pulling the hood of my jacket up over my hair.
    "That doesn't make me feel good at all," said Szandor. "Are you sure?"
    I shrugged. "No way to know for sure. We've been going down and east. We could be under the river. It sure is wet enough. And all the moisture seems to be coming from above."
    "Could the tunnel could fall down on us due to the weight of the water?" asked Abby. Her nervousness had only gotten worse the longer we were down here.
    "Nonsense, these tunnels have been here intact for decades!" said Dane. "Fine Avalon engineering!"
    "By Roger Carmichael, I'll remind you," said Abby.
    Dane conceded this point, though I wasn't sure why he had the sudden change of mind at that statement. "Okay, maybe it's less safe than I thought. But we still have no reason to think that this tunnel will now, at this moment, just happen to collapse on us for no apparent reason."
    "Except that seems to be how it works with you," said Abby.
    "Do we need to reevaluate this job?" said Szandor nervously after hearing their exchange. "Because I'm suddenly feeling like there's more danger to this than we were told. And not from the monsters."
    "Nobody's currently trying to kill me," said Dane, as if this explained how things were okay.
    "What?" blurted Szandor.
    "That we know of," said Abby under her breath.
    "I think we may want to head back now. Heading back seems a great idea. Mikkel, what do you think?" said Szandor, his voice quick with nervousness.
    I would have responded, but the world went into weird focus and a hot wave rushed over me. I was vaguely conscious of the group: me in front, Abby pointing her flashlight at something, Dane leaning down to grab something, and Szandor bringing up the rear and looking around nervously. Then the scar at my temple throbbed, just preceding the pounding in my head.
    It was what Szandor calls my Bad Feelings. He has no idea how horrible they feel, or he'd have a much worse name for them. It's like someone took a whole movie, added in director's commentary, crammed in a few more deleted scenes, hammered that all together into a writhing mass, compacted that down to the size of a softball and then tried to forcefully jam