The under-road drain was cold. Colder than any place Len had touched since crossing the border canopy on Day 1. The stone walls were coated in thick sheets of white fungal mycelium that smelled intensely of old flour and damp cellar lime. When his lantern light hit the mold, it didn’t reflect cleanly. The velvety filaments absorbed the yellow beam. That left him in a choking pocket of shadow that extended barely three feet in any direction.
The ceiling of the under-road drain arched over him at a height of barely four feet. That forced him onto his hands and knees in the freezing black sludge that covered the floor. The sludge was a mixture of rotten leaf mold, decayed wooden props from past expansions, and the thick, jelly-like run-off of sulfur-rich compost. It seeped through the knees of his heavy wool trousers within seconds, biting into his skin with an icy, chemical burn that made his teeth chatter against his tongue.
The stonework surrounding him bore the marks of old country building. Fifty years ago, before the sky shield was conceived, stone masons from the River Ward had cut these granite arch stones with broad chisels, numbering each arch stone with roman numerals to track the slope toward the salt flats. Now, those numbers were buried beneath hardened lime runs and thick, purple sheets of mold that cried stale water onto his neck as he crawled forward.
