She had to find a way into those tunnels. She had seen one possibility, just a hatch in a camouflaged outbuilding no bigger than a small shed and locked up tight—that matched what Lett had told her. He must have exited that when he first had his incident. She’d seen other signs, such as concealed housings for ventilation fans and ducts no bigger than chicken coops, and there were hills just up the mountain, but these were outside the perimeter fence, beyond the high forest even. She saw lava-gravel roads leading to them. Lett had mentioned other roads branching off back from Hilo. Maybe the trucks had gone there?

She took more trails and passed through the corners of camp, the bushes and ferns swelling around her. She reached the edge of the thicker tropical forest. The trails only skirted it. She sized up the wall of foliage just as she had the one behind Miss Mae’s bungalow that let her and Wendell escape from Frankie. She shot through, kept going, twisting and pushing the branches clear, the fronds and gnarly boughs slapping and scratching at her, and eventually the forest loosened up.

She looked down into a little gully. A narrow road ran down to it, from somewhere outside of camp. A skinny side path was cut out of lava rock. She followed that lower, grasping at rocks and leaves and flowers because her head was floating again from the whisky and humidity. She neared the end of the gully, where she saw a large black hole in the rising rock wall—a lava tube. Ferns grew all around it, wanting to poke their fronds inside, the spiky leaves making the orifice look like a giant green sea anemone about one story high. The road ended there. But there was also that lava tube.

She heard a clink, a clank.

She shot over to a bush along the path and squatted behind it.

She peered out, focusing on the lava tube hole. The clink-clank must have been a door; a metal door, a lock.

She heard footsteps.

A man emerged from the tunnel. He wore Army coveralls like a mechanic but they were clean as new. A holster and long knife hung off his web belt. His silhouette seemed to grow as he passed her and headed up the road when it should’ve been getting smaller.

It was no optical illusion. It was Frankie.

Her skin rippled, cold and hot and then colder.

21.

Early the next morning, right before dawn, Lett heard a noise outside. He was already wide-awake, rigid on his bed. He rose mechanically and cracked his door open.